Mandriva 2009.0 - One Step Forward
Friday, 10. October 2008, 07:21:03
Yesterday, 9th October 2008, was the big day. Mandriva 2009.0 was released as scheduled. And why is that so special? Because this time Mandriva aimed for cutting edge technology and included all the goodies in the new release.
We have the latest available kernel (2.6.27 rc8), the latest KDE4 (4.1.2 released only a few days before Mandriva 2009.0 release), a brand new design for the Installer and for the famous Mandriva Control Center and many other new stuff.
But this is about my first week with it ... yes, I couldn't wait for the final release, so I installed it from cooker (development mirror) last weekend.
I'm amazed... It is so different ... so new and shiny.
At first, you can observe the new installer. It's much more better looking than any previous one. By design it resembles a little bit of Win95, but just as a bad memory...
The installation is very fast. I've chosen default KDE4 installation and it take me about 15 minutes to set it up on an Intel Core2 Duo @1800MHz and 1G RAM, and another about 15 minutes took to do the configurations it asked for by install time (keyboard, language, partitions, users, passwords, etc.). Being a long time GNU/Linux user, I can't evaluate how easy it is the installer, but I think anyone with minimal computer knowledge can do it.
After installation is finished, at first boot time, you are presented the well knows Mandriva Welcome Screen, than KDE4 shows up. The theme they've chosen for this release of Mandriva is pretty good. I, personally don't like it very much, but I can say it is good design. They tried to maintain the colors of KDE3.x.x and the design of it, in a KDE4 environment. If you are a beginner and you don't know you have new KDE, you can be fooled at first sight. After a few clicks it becomes clear, you have the new KDE4.
I know lot of people don't like KDE4, it's their choice, but I like it. But, if you plan to use it, you have to be prepared that all that eye-candy new stuff and cutting edge desktop technology comes with a price. KDE4 is not yet as mature as KDE3.x.x was/is, but it is usable. If you like it, and if you invest some time to configure it, you will be pleased. Also, there are some applications and features missing in KDE4 compared with KDE3. They will come in the near future.
Now, let's talk about speed... in one word: FAST. Booting is very fast compared with previous releases. It takes 15-30 seconds from pressing the power button on my computer to have KDE4 loaded. KDE4 + Compiz works great, and finaly, with the new 177.x.x nvidia drivers, my desktop works really smooth. No more dropped frames on effects, no more waiting for drawing windows ... it's amazing. You may not be so impressed if you have an older nvidia graphics card. There were serious performance issues with previous nvidia drivers on new cards (series 8xxx and above).
I really can't form an idea about stability just yet. I had no serious problems, no system crashes or stuff like that. Some KDE applications crash from time to time, but that's not a tragedy. You have an error window, and that's all.
So, all in one, this Mandriva 2009.0 release looks excellent, and may really boost the fame of Mandriva. Good job guys!
by Csabi
We have the latest available kernel (2.6.27 rc8), the latest KDE4 (4.1.2 released only a few days before Mandriva 2009.0 release), a brand new design for the Installer and for the famous Mandriva Control Center and many other new stuff.
But this is about my first week with it ... yes, I couldn't wait for the final release, so I installed it from cooker (development mirror) last weekend.
I'm amazed... It is so different ... so new and shiny.
At first, you can observe the new installer. It's much more better looking than any previous one. By design it resembles a little bit of Win95, but just as a bad memory...
The installation is very fast. I've chosen default KDE4 installation and it take me about 15 minutes to set it up on an Intel Core2 Duo @1800MHz and 1G RAM, and another about 15 minutes took to do the configurations it asked for by install time (keyboard, language, partitions, users, passwords, etc.). Being a long time GNU/Linux user, I can't evaluate how easy it is the installer, but I think anyone with minimal computer knowledge can do it.After installation is finished, at first boot time, you are presented the well knows Mandriva Welcome Screen, than KDE4 shows up. The theme they've chosen for this release of Mandriva is pretty good. I, personally don't like it very much, but I can say it is good design. They tried to maintain the colors of KDE3.x.x and the design of it, in a KDE4 environment. If you are a beginner and you don't know you have new KDE, you can be fooled at first sight. After a few clicks it becomes clear, you have the new KDE4.
I know lot of people don't like KDE4, it's their choice, but I like it. But, if you plan to use it, you have to be prepared that all that eye-candy new stuff and cutting edge desktop technology comes with a price. KDE4 is not yet as mature as KDE3.x.x was/is, but it is usable. If you like it, and if you invest some time to configure it, you will be pleased. Also, there are some applications and features missing in KDE4 compared with KDE3. They will come in the near future.
Now, let's talk about speed... in one word: FAST. Booting is very fast compared with previous releases. It takes 15-30 seconds from pressing the power button on my computer to have KDE4 loaded. KDE4 + Compiz works great, and finaly, with the new 177.x.x nvidia drivers, my desktop works really smooth. No more dropped frames on effects, no more waiting for drawing windows ... it's amazing. You may not be so impressed if you have an older nvidia graphics card. There were serious performance issues with previous nvidia drivers on new cards (series 8xxx and above).
I really can't form an idea about stability just yet. I had no serious problems, no system crashes or stuff like that. Some KDE applications crash from time to time, but that's not a tragedy. You have an error window, and that's all.
So, all in one, this Mandriva 2009.0 release looks excellent, and may really boost the fame of Mandriva. Good job guys!
by Csabi
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 11. October 2008, 14:34
why are you writing this in plain English? what happened with Romanian?
anyway, Mandriva failed a few tests:
1. hotkeys
2. wifi
3. KDE4 usability if inherited KDE3 settings (plasma fails to work well)
4. repos are not available
patkoscsaba # 13. October 2008, 07:13
1. hotkeys are officialy NOT supported yet in KDE4, I know that, the application/service responsable for hotkeys was not ported to KDE4 yet. However, you can manualy assign the volume up, volume down and mute hotkeys in KMix by right clicking the apropriate channel and setting the hotkey. As I red, the hotkey service (I can't remember it's name) will be soon available.
2. wifi is working very well for me, at least on my pc with an RT61 based wireless card.
3. didn't tried it, today i'll do an install on my laptop keeping same /home/user, I hope it will be all OK.
4. they are now...
Anonymous # 31. October 2008, 19:59
OK Csabi, I know you like it a lot, but how we can explain this "official stable release":
- the kernel is a release candidate!
- the KDE 4.1.2 forced as "default GUI" is NOT YET MATURE! (applications are crashing all the way...) and lots of KDE 3.x appz are simply MISSING!
- the OpenOffice is a release candidate too...
- this one is better, amarok is even in SVN, not even a beta or release candidate!
- laptops are worst supported than the first RC! (I've already reported some bugs)
- at the installation they did not even think to offer a second chance to users that'll like to stick with the KDE 3.5.10 version (install it from contribs is "le parcours du combatant!)
- they continues to ignore the XFCE desktop to offer this option in the installer
- you cannot use more personal parameters when formatting with Ext2/3 file system (like the inod size for example)
- the power management is a disaster, if you forget to charge when using the laptop, it simply and brutally powers off and there's no way to get a warning 5 minutes before!
- the suspend function does not always resume your session!
- not to speak about the Eee PC support, the buttons are way too big and nothing is optimized for 1024x600!
I'm running 2009 with Gnome (I'm a KDE fan) on my Eee PC and with the kernel 2.26.3 final version released by the Mandriva Italian Backports community.
So, what Mandriva SA are thinking with this release, is this the way to tread its users???
patkoscsaba # 3. November 2008, 10:14
- kernel is RC, final version is in testing, but no big deal, the difference between RC and final is minuscule
- OOo, Gimp, Nvidia Drivers, Amarok, etc. All were properly tested and patched before release. They may be beta, rc, test, whatever ... but they should work
- Generally, I understood from the Mandriva guys, that they prefer to keep these stuff, even if the final versions were released as long as necessary to do proper testing/patching on the final versions. They don't want to break something by releasing an update...
- Everything works here. I even use Amarok ! Even if I don't like Amarok, at this point, it offers the most features and uses the less resources. If it is SVN? Yes. I don't mind as long as it works.
- Powersaveing with KPowerSave works excellent here... I can set lot of things, and believe me they work. I don't know about EeePC from Assus, so I can't argue with you on that point.
- As for KDE4... here we go again ... it's a personal preference for each of us. It has been a month since I installed it (or almost a month) and I've got used with KDE4. I can't say I know it as well as I know KDE3.5.x but I can use it without any problems. Stability is OK, I had only a couple of crashes in a month, and it was both times at shutdown when some program left running failed to properly shut down. At this point, on my laptop, KDE3.5 crashed about once per week... So yes, I'm happy with it.
- As for XFace ... I don't know ... I never really liked it, however I should take a look because I tried it last time about 5 years ago.