As the title says: which one.
Mandriva 2009 is released. I have tested it. Its working great.
In my point of view, i examine openSUSE and mand 2009.
And sincerely i found mand 2009 more polish, stable, with more applications than openSUSE.
I am not trying to compare both. Both are great distros in LINUX world. But to some extent Mand 2009 is grabbing the market bcoz of its simplicity, stability etc. The good thing is, its very easy to USE, search around.
These are my thoughts, not going to start a thread for comparison.
So i am using two distros NOW, openSUSE11.0 and Mand 2009 in office.
Well it’s all a matter of opinion. I was almost shot on the spot recently for offering Mandriva 2009 as an alternative to someone have great difficulty installing Suse. I tried 2009 and certainly it’s nice, great to install and superb hardware detection.
I’m not sure I would agree with you about it having more applications. And in any case, you can install just about anything in linux, whatever distro you use, even windows apps if you have a mind to.
I’m always trying out the latest and greatest, usually in Virtual Box. I always like to use the installer for a distro rather than just run a live version, that way you can get feel for it better, see how it handles partitioning and grub placement.
I also booted up Mandriva 2009 the other day just to see what it was like. Everything was detected (not bleeding edge hardware though), quite sleek and pretty.
The great thing about Linux is that there are so many choices. The bad thing about Linux is that there are so many choices.
Often you will find that one distro will move ahead for a while because they have incorporated the latest advances. Then another distro gets released and leapfrogs it. And on the battle goes.
Use whatever suits your purposes best. I don’t dual boot, I don’t like downtime, but I do run different distros at different locations and for different purposes. Whatever, enjoy the power and the learning experience.
I tried Mandriva 2008.1 and the recent 2009.0. I found both to be inferior to OpenSuse 11.0. Configuration, updating, installing new software, all were easier and faster with Yast. The older version of Yast was not as good. All the problems I’ve had with OpenSuse were there with Mandriva, only slower. The only aspect that was faster was the boot startup.
I tryed Mandriva One 2009 on 2 computers and got disappointed.
PC
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
MSI K8 Neo4/SLI Platinum
GForce 6600GT
1GB DDR
2x SATAII (Maxtor&Hitachi)
DVD-RW Pioneer 215D
Never got passed boot screen! :\
Laptop
MSI msi v 601-x (intel platform)
Istalled in couple of tryes ( it just froze ) and got a distro thats good on paper but never performed that well in practise.
I like mandriva in general so Ill wait to see 2009.1
In my case the hardware detection of Mandriva 2009 is better than opensuse , as a example getting my printer working in opensuse , hours , in Mandriva it was done in 5 minutes.
And I had the impression that Mandriva runs faster.
Off course it just a minor detail but I like the screen savers
Mandrivan more than opensuse.
On the other hand use opensuse from opensuse 7.3 on so it
good old suse
My view is openSUSE-11.0 with KDE-3.5.9 has a lot of polish and works very well.
If one wishes to use the very neat, very shiny and very polished KDE4, then I recommend waiting until mid-Dec-2008 and install KDE-4.1.2. It promises to be slick, shiny and stable (with more features than KDE3 in some places, and less features than KDE3 in other places). IMHO
Another good reason for updating to 11.1 is the 2.6.27 kernel. I know of a couple cases where hardware that did not work under the 2.6.26 and earlier kernels, does work on the 2.6.27 kernel. Specifically the Intel WiFi Link 5100 ABG and WiFil Link 5300 AGN. Also I’ve read of (Ubuntu-8.10) users getting their Intel Graphics 4500 MHD working with the 2.6.27 kernel and an updated X-server driver (I think), although the view of some is that the 4500 MHD may still need a 2.6.28 kernel before it is fully stable. I believe there is also other very new hardware that may benefit from the 2.6.27 kernel. … although in general, the 2.6.25 kernel in 11.0 should be good for most users.
Also, in 11.1, if one wishes to stick with the old KDE3, it will include KDE-3.5.10. Its not a main desktop selection option, but it is there under “other” desktops. KDE-3.5.10 is still the classic KDE. It is polished, stable, and works very well, with loads and loads of features. I still have the view that no distribution has a KDE3 implementation as good as that of KDE3 in openSUSE.
Hence I think 11.1 promises to be an EXCELLENT release (of course I am a bit biased).
KDE4.0.4 on openSUSE-11.0 is really a non-starter for users looking for stability and similar (functional) features to KDE3.
If one wishes to influence the KDE4 implementation on openSUSE, then a good way to do it is to install the alpha and beta releases of the new openSUSE on a test PC (not one’s main PC). IMHO to install alpha and beta openSUSE versions, one needs a high resilience to pain, and it really helps if on has good Linux knowledge, and preferably good openSUSE knowledge (to help reduce the pain). …
i tried Mandriva 2009 KDE 4 too. two words: it sucks.
if KDE4 is the choice, then opensuse 11.1. if gnome is the choice, well then still opensuse 11.1.
if you want to spice things up a bit Gnome, then fedora 10.
Much has already been said - to throw in my two cents, Mandriva 2009 has better hardware detection than OpenSuSE: wireless card detected out of the box, printer much easier to add, newer kernel and GNOME (I always use GNOME). The look is also beautiful and elegant (like SuSE, btw). However, Mandriva I feel is so polished that it doesn’t allow you to learn as much about Linux as SuSE. And learning is the process of overcoming hardship, IMO. In the end, I’ve been with SuSE for some time, so I’ve gotten used to it, it’s pretty robust.
I ran mandriva 2009 on my notebook for a couple weeks, and I was very impressed. It felt very fast, and was the first KDE 4 install (with the exception of OpenSUSE) that didn’t feel like KDE 4. Trying the latest Kubuntu, KDE 4 felt like it was in my way all the time. In Mandriva 2009, you just felt like you were using KDE. OpenSUSE does this as well, and when you need to get work done, I feel this is very important. I did end up removing Mandriva and going back to OpenSUSE, mostly because I know my way around OpenSUSE better, and things just feel more stable. I would recommend Mandriva over the buntu’s, but not over OpenSUSE. Just my .02.
I’ve used Mandriva 2008, 2008.1 and 2009. Mandriva has very easy ISDN and printer setup and finds my 3 hard drives. OpenSUSE 10 and 11 has very easy ISDN and printer set up, but it only finds the drive I install it on and I can’t find anyway to make it see the other 2 hard drives. I’m using Linux Mint 5 KDE now. Mint has very easy ISDN and printer setup but I use KDE 3.x to setup the other hard drives. I only use the KDE desktop.
I’ll install OpenSUSE 11.1 when it’s finished. I hope it will find all my hard drives or provide an easy way to set them up. There’s a lot to like about OpenSUSE but the drive thing is a major pain. And the codecs thing. I need RealPlayer and a player for m4v files and Lives or Kdenlive for video editing and having everything in the repos for GIMP is a plus. Mandriva falls short on multimedia stuff but Mint has it all out-of-the-box. Even more than Ubuntu.
I’ve read a lot of threads like this at a lot of forums but it all comes down to 2 things. Does a distro run on your hardware and does a distro have all the things you need. I’d add one more. How long do it take you to get all the things you need installed from the repos and how many things do you have to go to websites to get because they’re not in the repos.
Every time I try a new distro I ask myself if I have to reinstall this distro will it take me hours to get everything reinstalled or will it take me days. If it takes me hours I’m happy. If it takes days I’ll keep looking.
Most distros still seem to think most users only want to surf the web or want to send email or will only use Linux in an office. There are a lot of users that do graphic art or write or compose music. Most distros don’t have everything for GIMP in their repos. Writing can be done with OpenOffice or Koffice. Composing music is a nightmare. Not because there’s too little but because there’s so much and it’s so complex and Pulseaudio conflicts with ALSA and OSS and most music apps aren’t ready to work with Pulseaudio.
Ok, I strayed a little from the topic at hand. I think I’ll like OpenSUSE better than Mandriva.
I’ve only used OpenSUSE 11, but I think it’s a great distro. OpenSUSE 11.1 might be a little bit better for me, because of the better KDE 4 integration and the new kernel 2.6.27 (now most of my hardware is working out-of-the-box, esspecially my ASUS Xonar DX and the Atheros wifi-card).
I guess your going to get a lot of responses in favor of openSUSE since this an openSUSE forum.
Some things to think about though. Mandriva’s own developers say that urpmi is ok for simple stuff, but use smart for good package management. I also don’t like their menuing. It is not as refined as openSUSE’s.
What brought me over to SUSE was urpmi. I was doing an update, and urpmi wanted to uninstall 4000+ packages, including rpm. I had all my repos set, so that wasn’t the issue.
Zypp has a ton more features than urpmi. There is only one other package manager that is even in the same league as zypp, and that’s smart.
So, the real questions is why are you considering the switch?
If for scholastic purposes, why another rpm distro?
If for hardware, then look at the kernel version.
If for packages, openSUSE or Debian.
Personally, I am so satisfied with openSUSE, that the other “big boys’” distros such as Fedora, Mandriva, and Ubuntu completely dis-interest me. It’s not that they’re “bad”, but that, all in all, openSUSE is the best balance I see in the “user-friendly-distro” world between ease of use and customizablility (I like making up words. It’s fun). openSUSE/Yast really settle it for me. If I was to try another distro, it would be something completely different, like Archlinux, Gentoo, LFS, or (maybe) Debian (but not Slackware). I would go for something that was really aimed at powerusers, or that gave me unique choices in setup or software installation, or that was purely an educational experience. As for the other “biggies”, sure they’re nice, but then what? There are generally no major differences in compatibility between same-generation major distros(Mandriva 2009 vs openSUSE 11.0 is not really a fair comparison because Mandriva has a newer kernel; openSUSE 11.1 will use the same kernel and most of those differences will go away).
