Reviews distribution Mandriva 2009 Graham Morrison asks whether this 10-year-old distro does enough to survive for another decade.

h, Mandriva Linux. This beginner- In brief... friendly system was really the first A major distro to put the end-user at User-friendly the heart of its installation process, and as distro that provides a result became the distro of choice for an easy introduction newbies, while retaining enough advanced for new users that’s features to keep more experienced users also suitable for the more experienced. happy too. Since then the rise of See also Ubuntu or has all but eclipsed Mandriva in the OpenSUSE. popularity stakes, but the last couple of releases from Mandriva Linux have brought this worthy distribution back on to our radar, taming that volatile mixture of cutting-edge features and stability. The 2009 release is no different: KDE 4.1.2 is the showcase component, a version of the desktop that was released just days before Mandriva 2009 hit the mirrors. And KDE is Mandriva 2009 includes many proprietary packages out of the box, including joined by Gnome 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Google Picasa, Google Gadgets and Google Earth. Firefox 3.02, and even a developer’s release of the Amarok music player. But the first window to let us through, all we got was a key to use it. Fluendo’s Codeina can be thing you’ll notice is the new installer. blue background and a lonely Xterm. That used to purchase and install media codecs, meant going back to a full install. but none are included, and there’s only a Dare to upgrade The second installation gave us a time-restricted demo of the LightZone It’s a real pain having to reinstall and chance to explore the new installer. There’s photo-editing application. You might expect reconfigure everything each time there’s a a desktop selection page, for example, that of a free distro, but not one that costs new release, so we instead chose to which features tiny images of Gnome and the best part of £40. But top of our list of upgrade our standard 2008 installation. KDE along with a custom desktop option. It annoyances is the Google Toolbar leaching Mandriva started off well. The installer would be more useful to have larger on to the Firefox installation. It may only recognised the previous version, and it took previews of each desktop, but it’s a nice take a second to remove, but many users the trouble to inform us that the KDE 4 touch; as is the installation summary, might feel that Google is pervasive enough configuration files were incompatible with which contains a comprehensive overview without needing Mandriva to evangelise for those used by the old version. of the default settings for the installation, it. Despite these setbacks, everything else Unfortunately, that’s where the good many of which can be changed before the works as it should. We had no stability news ends. After waiting patiently and final reboot. You can specify the default issues (other than with the Nvidia drivers), installing the updates, the inevitable reboot operating system for Grub, for instance, or and the high-quality software repositories only presented us with a broken Mandriva whether Pulse Audio is configured for provided every application we needed. The 2009 installation. Our USB keyboard didn’t surround sound. risk of including cutting-edge software work, and even when we tricked the login seems to have paid off: Mandriva Demo Powerpack 2009 is a solid release. LXF The KDE desktop has been tuned for Features at a glance Mandriva’s new look, which means lots of black embellished with Mandriva’s Verdict ‘fractured light’ colour scheme. Not being massive Pink Floyd fans, we changed this Mandriva Powerpack 2009 pretty quickly. To circumvent the new Web: www.mandriva.com Developer: Mandriva Linux Plasma KDE desktop feature and make the Price: €49 (download) change to KDE 4 a little clearer for KDE Features 9/10 oldthinkers (that is, users of the old 3.x Performance 8/10 versions), Mandriva places the virtual Ease of use 8/10 desktop folder plasmoid prominently in the Value for money 6/10 middle of the display. Mandriva also uses Worth the money if you’re looking for a KDE 4.1.2 Netbooks the classic menu view rather than the KDE cutting-edge distro with a wide choice of KDE is still the default This release has officially- 4 default, which is an excellent decision. packages and a modicum of support. desktop, and Mandriva has sanctioned support for the What isn’t so great is that the default done a great job of packaging Asus Eee PC, Acer Aspire and customising it for 2009. One and the MSI Wind. installation is littered with demo versions. Rating 8/10 is installed, but you no longer get a

22 Linux Format January 2009

LXF114.rev_mandriva 22 26/11/08 7:27:22 am