Mandriva LINUX – Great For Newibes Who Want To Test LINUX
Let’s say that you want to dump Windows, but you don’t want to go to Mac? That leaves LINUX as your only option. But you’re scared about moving to LINUX as you’re not sure that it’s right for you. No problem, there’s a LINUX for you and It’s called Mandriva LINUX One. I tried this out a week ago and it is nothing short of amazing!
First off the installation is dead easy. Simply boot your computer with the CD (which you download the disk image from their site and burn) and follow the wizard. Within 15 minutes or less you’ll be up and running. That’s right, I said 15 minutes or less. It was that quick to install the OS onto my Pentium 4. Compare that to an hour for Windows or Mac OS X. Plus you can play games while waiting for it to install. Finally it allows you to easily configure the various devices on your system with literally one push of a button. This makes it accessible to a large group of users who might be afraid of LINUX.
Secondly, it comes with a ton of stuff included. When I installed it I had chose all the categories except server and LBS from the Custom path, which gave me a system with 3.9GB worth of applications, including Firefox 2.0.0.6, GIMP 2.4.0 rc2, and OpenOffice.org 2.2.1. Not only that, but it includes some multimedia applications that allow you to create and edit sound files. You can edit video, watch DVDs too. There’s even a music player included.
Third, you can still run your Windows games. Mandriva includes an application called Cedega which allows you to run some (but not all) of your Windows games. I had half decent results with it.
Fourth there’s a utility that migrates all your Windows stuff easily called “Import Windows documents and settings.” This utility does as the name implies and works fairly well (at least it did for me). There’s also a Mandriva Linux Starter Guide, which is written primarily for new LINUX users. If you’re new to LINUX you’ll thank them for putting this in as it is very comprehenshive.
Oh yeah, all of this is FREE.
The bottom line is this: Mandriva is a great LINUX distribution and the hardest part about setting it up was downloading the disk image via BitTorrent (because my ISP throttles BitTorrent… grrrr. Though you can download it via a web browser too. But it will take longer). If you’ve been looking for a way to experiment with LINUX, this is the best way to do it. I highly recommend it.
May 1, 2008 at 3:15 pm
You may not believe it, but what you have described is true of almost all the major desktop Linux distributions (apart from the inclusion of Cedega – I wonder how they pulled that off cost-free, considering you usually have to pay for a Cedega license). I would also recommend Linux Mint.
May 1, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I would highly recommmend trying out Mandriva linux. It’s really easy to use which makes it good for first-time users.
May 1, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Mandriva is a welcome and increasingly typical example of major distro’s simplicity of installation and hand-holding for those new to Linux. Over time though, the simplicity and flexibility of using the debian based installation standard ‘apt’ wins out over the mandriva standard of ‘rpm’ (short for red hat package manager). The first task for many users faced with a fresh install is the acquisition and installation of propriety codecs to play MP3’s etc etc. The more successful at simplifying this task a distro is, the more newbie friendly it will be…at least initially.
I haven’t tried it out myself, but Linux Mint is built on Ubuntu, which means a huge amount of available software is open to it, it has all the propriety codecs installed as standard and like ubuntu, uses apt as the way to go when it comes to handling software installation. The latter part of that begins to make its value felt over time. Although there are plenty of die hard RPM fans who will disagree with me, and thats brilliant, because thats choice.
Anyways…if Linux Mint has a good info – pack for newbies on board, then I think that it would be the near perfect choice for the newbie who doesn’t want to have to learn about software repositories three minutes into entering their chosen desktop environment!
But a little planning can go a long way, and acquainting oneself with the ins and outs of installing propriety codecs and other restricted software on say, Ubuntu (who do try to make the process as easy as possible) would be time well spent.
But all the major distro’s are polished, fine honed and, compared to windows, are creatures of power, versatility and choice. Oh yes, they are free as well!
May 1, 2008 at 8:30 pm
switching to Linux is awesome. just last week i, as a Linux newbie and someone who hasn’t touched Unix in 8 years, jumped into Ubuntu’s latest release. i love it. it was a snap to install – sounds a lot like this one you found though i was not able to play games while it installed (which sounds sweet). Ubuntu also is able to demo from the CD and it installs pretty quickly for a clean (boot up) install. i also tested it out by installing it so it could coexist with Windows without creating a new partition (it makes it’s own virtual drive) which automatically sets up dual boot for your system. they have an installer called WUBI that makes this possible.
i recommend running a demo of the OS on your system just to make sure it’s going to work with your hardware. i don’t know if Mandriva is any different from Ubuntu but I was having serious issues with a system that had an ATI graphics card. i swapped it out with an Nvidia and reinstalled and it worked perfectly after that. so…just be cautious.
something else that newbies and people who are interested in making the switch should know about is VirtualBox. VirtualBox allows you to setup virtual systems in which you can install Windows (a number of versions supported as well as a number of other OS’s – no OSX). Virtualbox is free as well – and it performs pretty good. it allows you to dial in exactly how much of your system’s resources should go to the virtual system (HD, RAM and video memory) as well as map shared folders between Linux and the virtual system. so if you want to switch but have a couple Windows apps you can’t let go of, consider checking this out. you’ll have a fully functional, networked install of Windows that you can run from Linux and eventually you might find alternative software for those apps you can’t leave and you’ll finally be able to abandon Windows 100%.
LINUX FTW!
May 2, 2008 at 1:16 am
larryfroot> stop comparing apples and oranges !
you should compare dpkg vs rpm, or apt vs urpmi !
Ever use urpmi ? No ? So please document yourself before.
May 2, 2008 at 11:57 am
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