The Distro Tour Project - Mandriva 2007.1 (Spring)
June 1st, 2007This is the second part in my Distro Tour Project, featuring Mandriva 2007.1
Contents:
- Installation
- Hardware
- Default Applications
- Performance
- Software Management
- System Administration
- Documentation
- Other Special Features
- Conclusion
Note: I installed Mandriva 2007.1 Linux Free edition. So whenever I refer to Mandriva defaults, I refer to the defaults in this edition.
1. Installation (2/5)
My installation experience with Mandriva 2007.1 was a terrible one, but wasn’t without its own merits. The installation process itself was pretty easy and fast. It only took around 30 minutes to actually install the whole system, excluding the configuration/setting up portions (partitioning, choosing packages). The installer also offers some very basic defaults, and gives an Advanced button for those who wish to tweak even further.
My biggest problem I had with the installer is really the user interface and the workflow. This is the first installer I’ve ever encountered that doesn’t allow you to go back or even cancel the process. If you have made an error during installation or wanted to cancel the installation, your only option would be to turn of the computer. Maybe they made it that way so that you really, really installed Mandriva. Just kidding, of course. Another big problem I encountered is the arrangement of buttons, which are inconsistent, to say the least. I do not know if it’s a cultural thing, but somehow I’ve grown to expect that certain buttons would be in certain places. But it’s not really the installer’s fault in the final analysis. It’s more of how Mandriva Control Center behaves or looks. More on that later.
My last issue with the installation is the partitioner. There are two completely different partitioning interface for the normal mode and for the expert/advanced mode. The normal mode will require you to use a slider only to resize a partition. You cannot enter a specific numerical value. On the other hand, the expert mode will only let you enter numerical values, which is expected. Perhaps not being able to specify an exact size is what they consider as a beginner/normal level option. Whatever it was, it was sort of weird not being able to do that.
I should probably mention another hiccup that I encountered that happened after installing Mandriva and booting into the newly installed system. It stalled during the boot process. After much poking around, trying to determine what was causing it to seemingly freeze, I figured that it was trying again and again to connect to the Internet. During the installation process, I setup a PPPoE ADSL Internet connection, and configured it to connect at boot. Little did I know that Mandriva will refuse to continue the boot process until it got connected to the Internet. I found this behavior to be both weird and annoying. I had expected that the system would try to connect once, and having failed, would continue booting.
2. Hardware (4/5)
Hardware detection was actually pleasant compared to the installation. When I plugged in my printer and turned it on, Mandriva automatically detected the new device and started the printer setup dialog, which let me easily install the correct HP driver. The scanner also worked after the driver installation. The laptop’s display was automatically detected during the installation. It correctly set the maximum resolution, but somehow got the color depth wrong, which was very easy to correct (during the installation). USB devices worked with no problems. Of course, the built-in card reader didn’t work (I doubt that it will ever work out of the box), but that’s not a big problem. However, I did encounter a problem with my USB Bluetooth. There was no autodetection that occurred, nor did a configuration dialog popup. There was also no settings for Bluetooth in the Mandriva Control Center, other than setting up a Bluetooth Dial-up Internet connection.
Other than that Bluetooth hiccup, everything worked fine. Nothing much to report, as nothing out of the ordinary happened. And that’s good, right? 
3. Default Applications (4/5)
Mandriva 2007.1’s default applications are like many other KDE distros. It ships with KDE 3.5.6 by default, which was the latest stable release at that time. It also comes with a whole bunch of the most popular KDE apps like Amarok, K3b, Gwenview, and Digikam. Surprisingly, it doesn’t come with Kaffeine as the default video player. Instead, it installs KMPlayer, which is currently my own media/video player of choice. It also comes with Kdenlive, a video editor for KDE that seems to be gaining popularity. Of course, it comes with your usual OpenOffice.org and Firefox, but with Konqueror as the default browser. However, Firefox seems to be the browser that is launched when accessing Mandriva Control Center’s documentation from the Help menu.
What sets Mandriva apart from others would be the inclusion of GNOME/GTK+ apps in a default KDE installation. Nvu, GNOME Planner, The GIMP, and GnuCash are all installed. It was actually quite a surprise that Inkscape wasn’t installed, too. While I’m a big fan of KDE, there might be some areas where non-KDE apps would make more sense or are probably better. Whatever Mandriva’s reason for including those apps, this mixture of KDE, GNOME, GTK+, and Qt (Scribus) apps gives user a taste of the rich variety of free and open source software.
4. Performance (3/5)
I experienced no crashing apps while running Mandriva. I never experienced crashes when I previously tried out openSUSE 10.2 as well. Makes me wonder what I should be doing to test for crashes.
Mandriva’s overall performance was a bit of a puzzle to me. The system generally feels and looks responsive and fast, and apps start almost immediately when launched. However, KDE’s bouncing icon (launch feedback) hangs around much longer than it’s supposed to, specially when starting Mandriva Control Center, that it somehow gives the illusion of being slow or unresponsive. There are also times when it seems that the system takes a nap for a few seconds and doesn’t respond immediately, even for simple tasks like clicking on the K Menu. Looking back, it seems to happen most after I leave the laptop idle for a few minutes. Probably KPowersave is set to do that? I can recall no difference between openSUSE’s and Mandriva’s power settings, so it puzzles me quite a bit.
5. Software Management (3/5)
Installing software was very easy on Mandriva, definitely better than my experience with openSUSE 10.2 (which, I was told, will be better in the next release). The process is pretty straightforward. You select a package to install and it will also mark other packages that it needs to be installed. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t display correct what other packages will be installed. Sometimes I get a blank window and have to click on the More info button to see the packages. When two versions of the same package can be installed, it will ask you to choose which version you want. Sometimes the default choice is not the correct one. This happened when I tried to install KDevelop. The default version of libgraphviz that it was suggesting to me was not correct. I had to choose the other version before I could install KDevelop. Packages are grouped into categories, similar to Selections in openSUSE (but not quite similar to patterns). Metapackages in Mandriva are not so evident. In fact, the official documentation makes not mention of those. I later found out, through the wiki, that metapackage are prefixed with “task-”. Not quite intuitive, I think. Still, I was pretty much able to install (and remove) apps to my heart’s content. I was lucky not to run into any of the fabled “RPM dependency hell”. Maybe that’s a thing of the past. A strange thing about installing software on Mandriva is that it downloads and installs software one at a time, rather then downloading all of them in one go and then proceeding to install the packages. Another, small annoying detail, or lack of it, is that there’s no overall progress indicator. You only get to see, for example 1/35 (1st out of 35 packages to be installed) for some moments, when the package is actually installing. There’s no indicator while the package is being downloaded.
Rpmdrake, Mandriva’s graphical software management tool, was quite easy to use, standalone or inside Mandriva Control Center (I didn’t quite try to use the command line tool, urpmi). The documentation does quite a good job of showing the different parts of rpmdrake’s window. You just mark a package for installation by ticking the checkbox beside it. To uninstall something, you untick the checkbox. The package set at the top of the category list acts as a sort of filter, allowing you to view installed apps only, upgradeable apps, packages not yet installed, etc. A package search field allows you to search for packages by name, description, or filename installed by the package. Unfortunately, you can’t search by a name and description, or any combination of the three. Adding software sources (repositories) has never been easier, at least for the official ones. Just click on the Add button, select what type of source (update or distribution) and choose a mirror near you, and it automatically adds all the sources. No searching for URL’s. No adding them one by one. Adding an official repository is not as easy, but not difficult either. You click on the Add Custom button instead, and fill in the necessary fields yourself. I experienced this myself when I had to add a KDE 3.5.7 repository (which, by the way, is not available from Mandriva, but available for Mandriva in the KDE website).
6. System Administration (4/5)
What can I say? Like YaST, drakconf, the Mandriva Control Center, is great! Everything you need to graphically configure your system is available. Setting up an Internet connection (post-installation) is easy. Configuring the bootloader is easy as well. Heck, changing a lot of stuff is easy! MCC (Mandriva Control Center) does suffer from one thing that I also found lacking in YaST. You need to run two completely separate apps to do things that are generally considered to be “configuring your computer”: MCC and KControl, KDE’s own Control Center. It would have been nice if YaST or drakconf would be able to integrate KControl modules into their UI. Although, that’s probably less likely with MCC than it is with YaST. Anyway, more on MCC later.
One thing that quite annoyed me, though, is that it constantly asked for the DVD, for packages to install. As if the basic packages needed for configuration haven’t been installed yet. I didn’t do much investigating afterwards.
7. Documentation (4/5)
Documentation for Mandriva 2007.1 comes in two forms: the Starter guide, which is basically your user manual, and the DrakX Tools user manual, which is the manual for Mandriva Control Center. Both are available on the DVD. Neither are installed by default. You will have to install these documents, through the package manager. I can’t seem to understand why they don’t install these essential documentation by default in the first place. Maybe the presumption is that the user bought a boxed Mandriva set? While it’s not a big problem, I think it’s quite an inconvenience. I couldn’t seem to find a free version of the Documentation for Mandriva 2007.1. You have to be a Mandriva Club member to access that. There are online docs available, but for Mandriva 2006 and Mandrakelinux 10.1 only.
Once installed, the user is able to choose two formats for the documentation: HTML and PDF. The Documentation itself is done quite well. I think that the style of the documentation is more application-oriented rather than task or subject oriented. What I mean by this is that reading the Starter guide feels more like a walkthrough or a survey of the different applications that are installed. It’s an approach that is quite new to me. Not a bad thing, though, just new for me. I did notice, though, that the contents of the DrakX Tools manual and the corresponding sections in the Starter Guide are actually the same, which makes me wonder why they have to be separate docs. Maybe I overlooked something. But they sure do look very similar.
Mandriva does have a wiki, although the theme for the wiki seems to be development-oriented. Although there is a section on end-user documentation, to supplement the official documentation with community-contributed and free documentation. It was there that I learned about metapackages in rpmdrake, which wasn’t mentioned at all in the official documentation. The wiki also holds other information, like community activities, etc. But, like I said, it’s mostly focuses on development information.
If there’s one thing that’s quite prevalent in Mandriva, it’s the amount of available support and service options, most of them commercial, but there are some that are free ones as well. The most popular of these is the Mandriva Club, where members are offered different services or different levels of access to services. I vaguely recall Mandriva being criticized for how they handled this system, but I’m not really familiar with it. So I’ll leave it at that. There’s another support service called Mandriva Expert, where you can ask gurus for help, and the gurus get paid, although I’ve read that you can get help for free, but not as fast. It’s a rather unique way of helping users outside of the traditional methods of commercial support. I’m not sure how successful it is, since I’ve only been hearing about the Club. Free support options include Forums, some publicly accessible Knowledge Base articles, Mailing Lists, and IRC (yay freenode!). Mandriva also offers other kinds of support for different kinds of customers: enterprise, public sector, individuals, and partners. The Mandriva website is testament to the breadth of services that the company offers commercially.
8. Other Special Features (3/5)
Here are some of Mandriva’s most notable special features:
la Ora Theme
Mandriva makes use of a visual theme called la Ora. I don’t exactly know the origin or meaning of this name. Anyway, la Ora provides Mandriva with a consistent visual look across desktops and widget toolkits. So whether you are using KDE or GNOME, Qt or GTK, you have at least a uniform look. The colors used for Mandriva 2007.1 Free is quite pleasant. Not your usual KDE blue, but quite a nice shade of blue. The window manager is simple yet “shiny”. I did, however, had a difficult time grabbing window corners to resize windows. As a widget style, la Ora feels a bit weird, specially with menus. When you hover the mouse over the menu, it seems as though the menu is depressed, when it actually isn’t. I find this to be a confusing behavior. Neither the widget style nor the window decoration are configurable, so that’s definitely a minus. la Ora gives an alternative to the default Plastik/Plastik-like look on most KDE distributions.
Mandriva Control Center (drakconf)
Like openSUSE’s YaST, Mandriva Control Center, or drakconf, is Mandriva’s all-in-one configuration tool. It lets the user configure and administer the system in a complete graphical user interface. While it somehow looks like YaST in its layout, MCC does have its own strengths, and its own weaknesses as well. To me, personally, the greatest strength of MCC is its modularity. Each setting or configuration available through MCC can be run independently as an app of its own, with their executable names usually prefixed by “drak”. What does this mean? It means that you don’t have to load the whole MCC if/when you need just a single module. Mandriva’s K Menu is littered with these individual modules. Rpmdrake, the software manager, is a separate app of its own and is also embedded in MCC. I’m very sure that YaST is also modular. However, MCC’s modularity is made pretty obvious in the menus and even in the documentation. Another strength of MCC is that it logs every change or configuration that the user makes, and provides a way of viewing those logs too. MCC also has an “expert” option, which then displays some modules that are hidden when in normal mode.
The most annoying thing about MCC, at least for me, is the inconsistent placement of buttons. I do not know whether la Ora or MCC itself is to blame, though. Anyway, to make a long story short, buttons are either not where they usually are, or they do not appear in the same place in different modules. Sometimes, the Cancel button is at the far left, sometimes it’s at the far right. Sometimes there is no Quit button to get out of a module. Another peculiarity about MCC, which seems to be tied to the widget style, is the way checkboxes or radio buttons behave. While it’s quite normal that clicking on the label or a radio button would probably select that radio button, it’s quite strange that clicking on a blank area on the same row as the radio button, but far, far to the right, would also click the radio button. It’s as if the whole row is occupied by the radio button, including the empty space. Maybe they did this for accessibility or usability reasons? I really don’t know.
And probably the last shortcoming of MCC is that it’s GTK…
Default Settings
While I don’t usually review defalt settings, Mandriva’s are so different from your usual KDE distribution that it’s worth taking a look into them. A very important note, different editions of Mandriva 2007.1 seem to have different defaults, specially with regards to the K Menu layout, the wallpaper, and the color scheme. So different editions, different default experiences.
My first impression is that Mandriva has setup things to resemble Windows as closely as possible. It has customized the taskbar to appear like Windows: the horizontal menu launcher, a bunch of quick app launchers, the taskbar, system tray, and a clock. And like Windows, the K Menu is launched with a single button, the Win key. Another thing that Mandriva has setup similarly to Windows is double clicking to open files and folders. I wonder if they did this to make former Windows users more comfortable. At any rate it’s not really a big problem, except that the Win key is dedicated to launching the menu and that alone. So that one less modifier key available for use.
Mandriva also has some pretty nice defaults when it comes to the look and feel. As previously mentioned the color scheme is quite pleasant on the eyes, definitely a refreshing blue. The wallpaper “feels” a bit like silk, and is somehow peaceful. It’s beautiful, but not distracting, like what a wallpaper should be. I also liked the KDE startup sound that Mandriva has. Too bad they didn’t have a corresponding exit sound.
There is one default setting that I found to be a bit irritating, at least on Mandriva Free edition. I find that the K Menu is a bit too “fine combed”, that there were too many submenus. Some entries were buried beneath 3 sub menus. Of course, the default KDE menu layout isn’t without faults, as it is almost devoid of organization. And the menu layout can be change in MCC anyway. But never underestimate the power of defaults. Still, it’s not a big, irreversible flaw.
Metisse
While Mandriva provides Compiz and Beryl, it ships with its own brand of eye candy: Metisse. From the French In Situ project, Metisse aims to deliver innovative, fancy, yet efficient window management. But while Compiz and Beryl where really meant to be window managers from the start, Metisse’s target usage initially went beyond simple window management. In any case, Metisse offers some different effects and usages that most people would probably be used to by now. Personally, I prefer Metisse’s Desktop Grid over the Desktop Cube (Compiz/Beryl). While the latter is fancier, the grid is both fancy and usable. I also find the metaphor of a grid more intuitive than a cube.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get Metisse to work on my installed Mandriva, but managed to get it working from Mandriva 2007.1 One (Live CD installer). Mandriva offers a very simple dialog to install and enable 3D Desktop Effects from MCC. However, you can only enable, disable, or choose which fancy window manager you want from MCC. You have to separately launch their own configuration apps if you want to tweak the settings.
Metisse is like a breathe of fresh air from all this Compiz/Beryl craze. However, it probably needs a bit more work to be able to compete with its more popular cousins.
Mandriva seems to offer a stable distributions, with its own distinct “flavor”, and a whole set of support options. Mandriva has different editions custom made for different needs and audiences. Mandriva offers a wide variety of services, mostly commercial. It’s MCC, like YaST, is a great administration app. The package management system seems to be stable and usable. Metisse is an innovative and interesting alternative to Compiz and Beryl. And the default settings will make former Windows users feel at home in Mandriva. All in all, Mandriva 2007.1 is a pretty solid release. But it sort of didn’t give a “Wow!” feeling, although it did have special features mentioned above. It felt like a plain, solid, no-nonsense distro. Whether that’s a good thing or not, you decide. What Mandriva 2007.1 Free does feels like is a sort of demo version of a commercial product. The general impression that I have of Mandriva is that it is really a commercial product. It has different editions, each with their own unique blend. Using Mandriva Free is like using a demo product. You have icons for buying it, bookmarks to commercial services, etc. This is not a bad thing, though. To me, one of Mandriva’s strengths lie in the services that it offers. There are people out there who prefer a boxed set and commercial support over free options. Final verdict: Mandriva is a stable, no-nonsense distribution, with a commercial twist.
Overall rating: 3.4/5
Just some small updates, while I'm trying to get off my ass and migrate the site completely to Textpattern.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Sir, would you please tell me where i can find the repository packages storage for this Mandriva 2007.1 spring and would you please help me if i find trouble using this os?