Hi, I'm thinking of upgrading from Mandriva 2006 to 2007. Firstly, is it worth it? I'm thinking the 3D graphics would be good. Secondly, would an upgrade overwrite the bootloader? I dual-boot 2006 and Ubuntu and have a nice setup at present. I know bootloaders should be easy to fix, but quiet frankly, I've tried to fix them before without any luck.
I'm downing Mandriva 2007 powerpack right now. I think it's finished after 2 days (have to do it via bittorrent, because all other mirrors are way too slow). I'll install it on my PC, and I will then give feedback about it
GRUB can be tricky configure, basacally 1 partition has boot control (usually the last OS installed along with a bootloader) and you copy things like the kernel image, initrd the OS is using, it's easier if you create a separate /boot partition, the just edit the boot.list in the OS that has boot control (well that's how i do it)
I've installed Mandriva 2007. The first thing I noticed was, that it could recognise all devices. It can even support windows drivers (.inf) with an included graphical version of ndiswrapper (not the commandline version). The second thing is the 3d support. If you would enable it, you can actually "shake" with the windows, like they where made of pudding . If you would drag a window to the left or right corner of the screen, you'll see a spinning cube. That cube will spin to another desktop where you can put that window. So you can use multiple desktops on one screen . Mandriva 2007 also boots up very fast. EDIT: version 2007 has a program to run windows games. Also the program linDVD is used to play dvd's.
The problem with Mandriva is it's losing momentum. I've only been using Linux a short while but from what I've read Mandriva was *the* distribution to use a few years ago. But then came Ubuntu and other alternatives and the community looked away from Mandriva. As a result of this, it's difficult to find support for Mandriva these days. Few people are drawing up guides and HOWTOs. Unlike Ubuntu where almost always someone has asked and answered my questions already. Be it on the Wiki, the Ubuntuforums or the many blogs and articles. IMO, the only distributions worth bothering with these days are K/ubuntu, Debian and openSUSE
i'll still give it a go, to see what they've changed[ot]tried Susy but she didn't play nice, couldn't get on with her[/ot] BTW: Kubuntu is King
Hi, RHochstenbach. Thanks - a good mini review! I'm very impressed with my Ubuntu install (with downloaded KDE Desktop). Since I installed the latter, Mandriva 2006 lost a lot of its kudos with me. However, 2007 sounds as though it might be worth a try!
