Mandriva 2007: Why is this distribution still around?

Michael J. Jordan, Linux Online Staff

October 11, 2006

Naming distribution versions after a calendar year sounds familiar to me. I'm thinking of Windows 95, of course. And my experience with French distribution Mandriva 2007 brought me back to those frustrating times I used to have with Microsoft's decade-old offering.

Before I get to the meat and pommes de terre of this review, which I think is going to be disappointing to anybody associated with Mandriva, let me first point out that, some years ago, I was an unconditional fan of the original Mandrake. I leapt to their defense when the company declared bankruptcy and was glad to have not misplaced my optimism when they emerged from it successfully. It seems that the years have jaded me, however. Perhaps more than jaded, I have been jilted. After trying a few recent lackluster versions of the distribution, I began to ask myself why Mandrake, or Mandriva, as it's now known, is still around.

As for their latest version, I had heard through a standard press release that the appropriately named Mandriva 2007. I say appropriately named, because they should have spent the last few months of 2006 polishing it up and then really releasing it in 2007 (if at all). Anyway, in the press release was a link to the download page and there were three versions available. There was a live CD called Mandriva One, a version called Mandriva Linux Free, a 4 cd set of only free (as in liberté) software applications and a third, which advertised itself as a 'mini' CD, which you could use to install a base system and install additional packages later. Since I live in the world of 1mbps connections, I figured I'd try this last method. Besides, my office drawers are overflowing with potential drink coasters, if figured I'd save a little plastic. So I downloaded this mini-cd image, burned it and plunked it into the CD drive of my first test machine.

Normally, this would be the part where I would offer you a series of screenshots and a detailed explanation of what I had to do to get this distribution working. But the fact is that I didn't get it working from this mini-cd. Actually, it did go through an installation process. I do have screenshots of that process. As a matter of fact, it was working pretty well. Someone at Mandriva has designed a very simple and intuitive installation process. The disk partitioning tool is the easiest to use that I've seen since I've been writing Linux reviews. I got through the whole process and rebooted, I assumed some basic graphic user interface would come up with a package management tool and we'd proceed to finish the install via the Internet. I had guessed wrong. I just got a black screen and command prompt. When I tried to start the GUI manually with the 'startx' command, I got an error message that the modules for my graphics card, which had been correctly detected, by the way, could not be found. I couldn't find any documentation on Mandriva's site for this mini-cd type install to see what I might have to do next.

Chalking it up to some graphics card glitch, I moved to another test machine. I got the same results. Just for good measure, and to see if the old adage about the third time never failing rang true, I fired up the CD on my old Thinkpad 600x, just to see what happened. Again, it went through the whole process smoothly, detecting the NeoMagic graphics card in the laptop and when everything was supposedly installed and the machine rebooted, I was greeted with the black screen and the command prompt again. I tried modifying the main configuration file that runs the Linux graphics system with generic settings to no avail. The black screen was here to say. With no documentation available and the version of Mandriva being so new, there were no comments on any forums that I could find, I finally gave up on this method.

I really didn't want this to turn into the review that almost was, so I was determined to try some version of Mandriva 2007. I proceeded to download the Mandriva One Live CD. This booted fine in the first test machine and I clicked on the installation icon on the desktop and soon got a working Linux desktop complete with wireless support

Again, my habitual review method is to give the reader a play by play of installation, setup and then talk about my experience using it. But shortly after I started working with Mandriva 2007 - very shortly actually - I asked myself: 'Why should I use Mandriva? Why not Kubuntu or OpenSUSE or Fedora Core or Freespire or Mepis?' It became apparent to me after about 5 minutes that Mandriva is the same Linux everybody else is offering with Mandriva's icons tacked on. What's worse is that Mandriva really wants you to shell out your money to buy a boxed set or to join their club. That's made painfully obvious to a visitor to their website. The download links that I had used last week have since been taken down. Even Linspire, who was the Linux community's favorite whipping boy when it first came out, now offers Freespire, a community edition, which they encourage you to download. Now don't get me wrong. I am the first to say that Linux distributors should be able to make money. Linspire and Xandros unapologetically make commercial distributions. But they also offer value ad-ons like software that will run Windows applications that can't be had for free.

What about Mandriva 2007? What value is added on? Is it worth buying? Based on what I have seen, I would definitely say not. If I could find the download links again, I wouldn't even waste my blanks CDs on it - and more importantly, nor would I waste my time.

Michael J. Jordan is the webmaster of Linux Online. He can be reached at Michael.Jordan**AT**linux.org