Review : I started with Linux about 2 years ago in school, using the Red Hat 7.2 Publishers Edition version that came with our book. From there, we had to do tutorials, learn basic commands, things of that sort. Since then, I’ve graduated with my Associates Degree in Computer Science (and am going for my BS soon) and am a Network & Systems Administrator for a small business. I have gone through just about every major distribution popular in the circles of Linux..Mandrake, Fedora, Red Hat, SuSE, Slackware, Xandros, Ubuntu.. the list goes on. For some reason or another, I always found out in the end that there was something missing with whichever distribution I was using at the time.
It wasn’t that long ago that I discovered Mandrake was now Mandriva (since they acquired Connectiva and now Lycoris) and will be updating every year or so instead of several times a year like most distro’s of Linux do. From my standpoint, the main thing of importance for me was hardware detection and ease-of-use. Linux, for all its greatness, has gotten left behind because of those two standards that most would-be Windows converters looked for in an easy transition to Linux. Enter Mandriva.
Like I said before, I have used Mandrake before and I moved on from it to Xandros and Ubuntu because they were newer, meaning better hardware support and a newer kernel. I love to test Linux distributions and discover what’s new and what works with certain hardware. Mandriva is the first Linux distribution I have gotten to work with a wireless PCMCIA card AND a built-in mini-PCI wireless card. I found it amazing how easy it was to add a Windows driver (bcmwl5.inf) during the post-install routine and set up the card to get it to work. My wired Broadcom ethernet card was auto-detected automatically, all I had to do was put in my static IP address, DNS servers and my default gateway for my internet connection. Bingo, I was online. After that, a quick jump to an easy urpmi site to download things I used and didn’t have installed, such as K3B, Scribus and MPlayer.
Mandrake has always worked for me when I dual-boot Windows and Linux. I’ve used Fedora Core mainly in the past and always had to tinker with it to add my Windows partition to get information from there. Mandriva has always automounted my Windows partition (whether it be FAT32 or NTFS) and always flawlessly detected my USB mass storage device whenever I inserted it. Mandriva has gotten to the point it has because of an awesome community support and details to the ’’little things’’.
Now with the acquisition of two very important companies (Lycoris and Connectiva), I’m anxious to see what the next version of Mandriva will be like. I’m so impressed with Mandriva LE 2005 for what it is right now, it’s hard to imagine it getting much better. For anyone reading this article I’m writing who’s never used Linux but wants to, let me be the first to tell you it’s very easy to install and, with the exception of games you buy from an Electronics Boutique or stores of that nature, you can do everything in Linux that you can do in Windows.. but Linux is FREE! Out of the box, this is the first major distribution that’s completely free to download, use, maintain and works ’’out of the box’’ (or right from the CD-burner, as I say). Since I am a computer person, it’s my preference on all of my computers to dual-boot Windows and Linux. Mandriva makes this a possibility for all and I find myself using Linux more and more in everyday tasks. As long as Mandriva is still in business, Linux will always be free and easy to use and this article is living proof as I’m using it right now. It gets 5 stars in every category as far as I’m concerned. It belongs on the desktop.