Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring released

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring released

Mandriva is proud to announce the release of its latest distribution, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. This new release brings features like full support for the Asus Eee, easy synchronization with Windows Mobile 5 and later, Blackberry, and Nokia devices, a new parental control utility, the Elisa multimedia center, Codeina for easy installation of necessary media codecs, PulseAudio by default and much more. Software updates include KDE 3.5.9 (with 4.0.2 available from the official repositories), GNOME 2.22, OpenOffice.org 2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.24.4, X.org 7.3, Compiz 0.7, and more.

If you just can't wait, you can download the One (live / install CD) or Free (traditional installer, 100% free / open source software) editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring right here. Direct BitTorrent download links can be found here, as the mirrors are likely to be overloaded for several days. The commercial edition, Powerpack, featuring exclusive commercial applications, is available immediately for direct download, and can be pre-ordered in boxed form (delivery will begin in two weeks), at the Mandriva Store. A large amount of information on the new release is also available at the Mandriva Wiki:

Main 2008 Spring page 2008 Spring Release Tour: a graphical guide to what's new in 2008 Spring 2008 Spring Release Notes 2008 Spring Errata 2008 Spring Reviewer's Guide: a useful read if you plan to review 2008 Spring

If you install the One version and decide later you want Powerpack can you buy and install Powerback without having to reinstall from scratch?

hmmm... I still have a powerpack subscription from when I tried 2008.0 But when I go to my torrents I only see the torrent for 2008.1 64bit version available (I need the 32bit). :confused:

antman: we'll get it up soon, sorry about that.

trmiv: what you can do is add the Powerpack disc as a repository and then install the extra packages from it. That's probably the easiest thing to do.

AdamWill said: antman: we'll get it up soon, sorry about that.

It's up... :popcorn:

I'll start the download tonight and install tomorrow and try it out. It sounds like a good release.

Cool, I might give it a try if Hardy turns out to be crap

I'm already downloading the Free DVD.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I've just finished downloading GNOME One(actually 5 hours ago) and I must say, I'm really impressed with it. All I can really say is this either Mandriva Free 2008 DVD KDE install with all updates sucks or Mandriva Gnome One 2008.1 just kicks that much ***. Can I say that? In all seriousness I don't know if its a Gnome Vs. KDE thing or the DEVS were just able to improve it that much. I'm still waiting on an email from the mandriva store before I buy the PowerPack, it truly is a wonderful system.

Just in case you're wondering what is so awesome about 2008.1(Gnome One)

Well for starters A LIVE CD was able to power up my bluetooth device and connect to my RAZR, I just thought that was truly amazing.

1. I thought that it ran pretty fast, for LIVE CD standards.
2. The new-look-theme whatever you want to call it just looks awesome.
3. Comparing it to 2008 KDE which im currently on well, its SIMPLISTIC which i guess is a gnome attribute, but it feels less cluttered and snappier I can't even describe it that well
4. Oh and the biggest OH too, my HP QUICKPLAY KEYS actually work, all of them.

I'm assuming Mandriva is still an RPM based system? I haven't used it since Mandrake 7.x.

If it is RPM based I'll stay far away.

Mithrilhall said: I'm assuming Mandriva is still an RPM based system? I haven't used it since Mandrake 7.x.

If it is RPM based I'll stay far away.

Yes, it's still RPM based. But RPM's are NOT a problem anymore. Systems do improve over time ya' know.:KS

I decided to give it a try today, and so far so good. I'll give it another week of experimentation to see how things go. So far, I am extremely pleased with my Mandriva experience.

...so far so good on my end as well...

Antman said: Yes, it's still RPM based. But RPM's are NOT a problem anymore. Systems do improve over time ya' know.:KS

oh yes, Mandriva's packager has improved quite a lot. Mandriva 2008 was great for me concerning repositories, its almost as good as apt

i gave 2008.1 a run the other day and had a horrible time installing, for some reason it would only let me access my drives if i used the nv_raid software, im sure this is just somehting to do with my nvidia mother board. hopefully they will work it out so i can give it another try. i use to love mandrake, i remember buying my distros from wal-mart for a while :)

Looks good so far. I downloaded the KDE version and ghe Gnome version. I like the KDE version better, but for some reason I can't get sub-pixel hinting enabled, the option is just greyed out. Sub-pixel hinting works fine in Gnome though.

If I can get the forward/back and zoom (I use it for refresh) buttons on my Logitech MX620 I may install it on this system. I wonder I can get btnx to work in Mandriva?

I loaded the PWP version unto my laptop (my membership is still valid from last year). I can watch movie Trailers from Apple's website (sometimes), but there is no quicktime sound at all. hmmm... It seems to be using the Totem firefox plugin by default... yuck... I'll have to track down the mplayer-plugin and use that since I really don't like totem.

Hmm, I'm not really impressed by this release. I do like how they've set up Elisa though. It won't run on Fedora 8.

Antman said: It seems to be using the Totem firefox plugin by default... yuck... I'll have to track down the mplayer-plugin and use that since I really don't like totem.

i agree, totem is the first thing i uninstall in ubuntu.

downloading mandriva right now. last one didnt wow me. but i always give things a fair shake.

No Yum for package management?

Mandriva has its own package manager called urpmi, or you could go with smart too.

trmiv: edit /etc/X11/imwheel/startup.conf and change the second line to:

IMWHEEL_PARAMS="-k --rc /etc/X11/imwheel/imwheelrc.MX500"

then restart X. That should get forward / back working. Not sure about the other button, you might be able to bind it with KDE Control Center or something. If this works, can you send me the USB ID of the mouse so I can make sure it's done automatically in future MDV releases? Just the output of 'lsusb' run as root should be enough.

BTW, we use Totem by default in order to have automatic codec retrieval via Codeina working. If you prefer another player or browser plugin, just urpmi it, and remove the Totem browser plugin package, and that should be all you need to do.

I'm a bit sad now :(

I was really looking forward to this - I've been trying the 2008.0 and release candidates but had more trouble with the final. I downloaded KDE One but had a number of problems, installing it over my Xubuntu 7.10.

• The install was really slow, over an hour, and then on the first reboot I had to wait 20mins with nothing on the screen except "Please wait, adding media". What media? I just formatted the linux partition, and the XP partition is tiny, I only keep a few programs and no data there. Not from the CD, I had ejected that, and not from any external drives.
• Finally my desktop came up but the volume control seemed to be registering a constant keypress on the volume down key, with a box that would therefore never close (nor could I use the sound)
• Lastly the repo system didn't work, I don't know if that's because they were swamped on the first day, but I couldn't download anything other than the base packages.
• Windows wasn't automatically added to GRUB. I think if I choose not to install over Windows, the installer's assumption should be that I do want to use Windows as a dual-boot (I'm sure I could edit GRUB, I think it's a file called menu.lst or similar, but that isn't as intuitive and is one more thing to sort).
• On the release page ELISA is one of the highlights, but I spend ages looking and couldn't find it. Only today I realise it is in another repo (/contrib) not the base install or even the main repo. ](*,)
• In this version of the KDE menu I had to log out (end current session) then shutdown from the login screen. Where is the one-hit wonder button 'shutdown' that I can press and walk away from the machine instead of waiting to log out first?

There are other problems I know I will have if I do get it up and running, e.g. my DVB tuner isn't loaded automatically like in Ubuntu and I need to find a replacement EPG program for Mandriva (I use Freeguide in XP and Ubuntu).

I will try again in a while, maybe even with the Gnome desktop after the glowing reports above, but as it happened I really wanted to get up and running to record The Sopranos last night and fortunately I managed to get Ubuntu 8.04 beta and Kaffeine installed, running and recording TV in under half an hour - it's the first time I've tried Hardy and I was really impressed. But yes I do mostly use linux for watching TV so don't test things exhaustively. ;)

I like the MCC, just keeps getting better - the backup and snapshot options are great to have, I like Metisse - scaling windows is great to reach the bottom of the nvidia-settings window when you are stuck in low resolution attached to a TV, the screen resize (xrandr?) is slick, and my wireless was sorted before even starting. Although I prefer the more natural colour scheme of Ubuntu (and SUSE), I love the idea of the slow-changing desktop.I really liked the (optional) data collection exercise - I'd be happy to do this for other distros if it helps. I'm glad so many people have had a positive experience. Mandrake got me hooked on linux, and I think the distro really deserves the popularity and support - the team are doing a fantastic job. So I'll keep my eye out for another chance to try Mandriva 2008.1 - there needs to be an evening with no good TV on and I'm not too busy elsewhere in the house! :)

Looks good so far. I downloaded the KDE version and ghe Gnome version. I like the KDE version better, but for some reason I can't get sub-pixel hinting enabled, the option is just greyed out. Sub-pixel hinting works fine in Gnome though.

It's the freetype lib included in mandriva that doesn't include that option because of the legality of those patches in the US. Gnome does sub-pixel hinting through cairo (or libxft, can't remember). So, you need the libfreetype6 from PLF, this is a link to *i586*; http://mandriva.cointech.net/pub/plf/mandriva/2008.1/free/release/binary/i586/libfreetype6-2.3.5-2plf2008.1.i586.rpm

r76: it was trying to add remote repositories, and being slow because it wasn't working, for the reason you surmised a little lower: all the mirrors are overloaded at present. I'm sure it's the same around the time an Ubuntu release comes out.

/contribs is usually added at the same time as /main, when repository configuration is working normally.

Several people seem to have that volume issue, but it never showed up during beta testing unfortunately. I think you should be able to remove the kdeutils-kmilo package to fix it.

Honestly, if you mainly use the system for watching TV, I'd stick with whatever distro you're most familiar with. The difference between distros for that kind of single-purpose use is not really too important...

Bug report for the volume control issue is:

https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=34747

please direct all comments to there. If you're seeing the bug, please add a comment specifying what keyboard, or laptop model, you have. Thanks.

Thanks Adam. I am truly so impressed with your hard work on these and the Mandriva forums. =D>

I'm happy it was just a problem with the repositories - they won't be as strained when I next get a chance to install. I actually managed to download the torrent very quickly (~20mins) - so I hadn't even considered the mirrors were busy. Mandriva have a good policy of recruiting early seeders.

AdamWill said: Honestly, if you mainly use the system for watching TV, I'd stick with whatever distro you're most familiar with. The difference between distros for that kind of single-purpose use is not really too important...

That would be the easy thing to do. I could even use Windows. It's not single-purpose just "most important purpose", of course - I still want to browse the web, email, manage media, edit photos....

I did have a purpose-built Arch setup but it wasn't nearly as much fun. I really want Mandriva to work, I think it is a beautiful, well-planned distro made by nice people - I'm happy to solve a few problems along the way.

Can I just ask about the shutdown dialog? Is that the way it's supposed to work or am I (typically) missing something?

I guess my install is hosed. Whenever I try to log out, the screen goes black and freezes... and I have to hit the power button to shut down the PC. Oh well... I may play with it a little more until the Fedora 9 preview is released. :popcorn:

antman: ATI graphics card, perchance?

r76: honestly, I don't know about the shutdown button :) I run GNOME, and with a non-standard panel (Gimmie) to boot. So it's all different for me. Er, check whether you're running GDM as the login manager but KDE as the desktop, or vice versa (KDM / GNOME)? I seem to recall that can lead to missing log out functionality sometimes.

AdamWill said: antman: ATI graphics card, perchance?

Yep, a ATI X1300. I'm familiar with this issue when trying to suspend, but just logging out of the system!? lol

Oh well... I'll wait until 2009.0 and try again.

EDIT: I'll play with it a little more and see if I can work past the issues I have encountered so far.

Ok... I reinstalled just in case the first install bombed. This time i enabled the PLF repos and removed totem, and installed my normal addons, plugins and codecs. I then applied all the upgrades. Now it seems I can play all the quicktime trailers and AVI's with sound.

Also suspend seems to work without an issue so far. ;)

I keep it on my test laptop for awhile and see how it works.:popcorn:

antman: great, that's good. If you still have the logout problem, it's a bug in the proprietary ATI drivers that can cause X to hang if you log out of the running desktop without restarting X. The workaround is to configure your login manger (KDM or GDM) to restart X each time you log out of the desktop.

Yeah, I love proprietary drivers. *sigh*

I got the image this morning and will have it installed when I get home. If the final is any more stable than the RC2 there will be a problem as the RC2 was the most stable OS I have ever used. Can't wait. I will say honestly that Mandriva has improved from being the head of the usability list at 2008.0, by the same magnitude that ubuntu has improved from 6.06 to 7.10 when it reached 2008.1 RC2. A truly great achievment.

So far my IBM T60 is loving Mandriva Spring. I think I will load World of Warcraft on it and see how it plays.

Also, it seems to do a better job at resuming my wireless connection after a suspend then either openSUSE or Fedora 8. :guitar:

EDIT: I like the Wifi Manager it uses. I have to see if I can use it on my Fedora box.

I'm not sure it would, as I don't believe we and Fedora use the same setup for network configuration. But it can't hurt to try, I guess :)

great job adam. this is the first time ive actually enjoyed using kde. right now it's part of my quad boot setup, and will probably keep it.

great job devs!

AdamWill said: trmiv: edit /etc/X11/imwheel/startup.conf and change the second line to:

IMWHEEL_PARAMS="-k --rc /etc/X11/imwheel/imwheelrc.MX500"

then restart X. That should get forward / back working. Not sure about the other button, you might be able to bind it with KDE Control Center or something. If this works, can you send me the USB ID of the mouse so I can make sure it's done automatically in future MDV releases? Just the output of 'lsusb' run as root should be enough.

Adam, here is the output of lsusb

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c521 Logitech, Inc. MX620 Laser Cordless Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Also, the stuff you told me to do worked for the forward/back buttons. My zoom button currently opens a new Konqueror window, so it does something, I should be able to get it to do what I want.

Great, thanks: I'll add it to ldetect-lst and future Mandriva releases will set it up out of the box.

The other button opens a new browser window as that's more or less what the analogous button on other Logitech mice is supposed to do. I think to make it do something different what you need to do is edit /etc/X11/imwheel/imwheelrc.MX500 and mess with this line:

None, ExtBt7, Control_L|N

it basically binds that button to a keysym, in this case, left control plus the N key. You can set it to any combination of keysyms. If you come up with a setting that does more or less what the same button does in Windows, let me know, and we can have that done out of the box in future as well. Thanks!

wolfen69: I'm afraid I've never had one of those Hauppauge cards, so I don't know how to set them up :( You might be best off posting a thread in the Mandriva forums, under General Hardware.

I love 2008.1. There is one thing that really bothers me though; there is no easy way of making a "view profile" stick to every part of the system. Furthermore, there is no logic to how it works. Try setting "file managment" to "detailed view" and pick what you want visible. Now, enter media://. You have to "set it up" it again. Enter smb://. You have to "set it up" it again. Keep in mind "file managment" is apparently the view profile even though things are not the same when you visit diffrent KIO slaves. I know this is a KDE thing, but one could always hope things like these would be patched up for a distro release. I guess KDE3 is a screwed up code base by now. Other than that, good work adam and co.

I've just installed 2008.1 on the internal SSD of my eeepc. From what I can tell so far, everything seems to work out of the box (used the gnome live cd). My original intention had been to just play with this until Hardy is released, but I'm now considering keeping it. The best thing is there's still plenty of space after a full install, and addition of lots of extras, codecs, java, samba, cups, multimedua apps, etc, etc:

[steve@eeepc ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             3.8G  2.2G  1.6G  58% /

+1 mandriva

I completely left kubuntu for mandriva. I love the looks of mandriva. It took only 6 mins to install on my computer compared to 19Mins with kubuntu 8.04 beta and 3 hours for vista(OEM version with all that extra junk although i dont use windoze anymore).

+100 for mandriva. this latest release is awesome. completely stable and flawless so far. i never thought i would find another distro as good as ubuntu, (and ive tried most) but this looks like a keeper.

I completely left kubuntu for mandriva. I love the looks of mandriva.

i can understand why. kubuntu left a very bad taste in my mouth.(although i love ubuntu) this is the first time ive actually enjoyed using K. anyone wanting to try a great distro should check this out.

Steve1961 said: I've just installed 2008.1 on the internal SSD of my eeepc. From what I can tell so far, everything seems to work out of the box (used the gnome live cd). My original intention had been to just play with this until Hardy is released, but I'm now considering keeping it. The best thing is there's still plenty of space after a full install, and addition of lots of extras, codecs, java, samba, cups, multimedua apps, etc, etc:

[steve@eeepc ~]$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             3.8G  2.2G  1.6G  58% /

id like to try an eee pc.

wolfen69 said: +100 for mandriva. this latest release is awesome. completely stable and flawless so far. i never thought i would find another distro as good as ubuntu, (and ive tried most) but this looks like a keeper.

i can understand why. kubuntu left a very bad taste in my mouth.(although i love ubuntu) this is the first time ive actually enjoyed using K. anyone wanting to try a great distro should check this out.

I gave it a try last week and I definitely agree with you. Kubuntu never felt "right" with me, and to be honest, it scared me away from trying other KDE distributions.

It is definitely one of the distributions I recommend to my friends beginning linux. I would probably be using it now, however, I haven't tried Hardy since one of it's early Alpha stages and so I'm downloading the iso for the RC now. If it doesn't impress me, I'll probably be reinstalling Mandriva in the next few days.

Well I'm going for both! I've downloaded the Spring Mandriva ready to stick on my spare partition, and I'll be once again using Ubuntu as my main install. I love Mandriva, and I know what you guys are saying, but Ubuntu just...I dunno....I find it generally so much easier and fun to use than any other distro. I can't imagine not having it as my main OS, but yeah so far 2008's Mandriva offerings have been sensational.

I look at Linux these days and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to install them on their PC. There's something for everyone and it's so easy to use. The choice is phenomenal for the newbie now.

but Ubuntu just...I dunno....I find it generally so much easier and fun to use than any other distro.

dont get me wrong, i love ubuntu and all things debian. but this latest release from mandy has me re-thinking things. it is so damn fast! everything opens instantly. firefox screams. etc. why ubuntu is slower for me, i dont know. but for now im going keep mandy and ubuntu, and enjoy both. a very quality distro indeed.

wolfen69 said: dont get me wrong, i love ubuntu and all things debian. but this latest release from mandy has me re-thinking things. it is so damn fast! everything opens instantly. firefox screams. etc. why ubuntu is slower for me, i dont know. but for now im going keep mandy and ubuntu, and enjoy both. a very quality distro indeed.

Have you tried out Hardy yet? I haven't, but I'm hearing nothing but good things, especially in the speed department.

I've installed Mandriva 2008 Spring now, and I do like it, but I have a bit of tweaking to do before I pass my judgement on it. Thus far it's very pretty and as you say it's very fast. I can't speak for Vista, but certainly on my very unremarkable PC it's shifting like the clappers! Makes you feel like your PC is brand new!

Hopefully I'll be able to get it to do the things I want. I do find KDE to be a bit of a drag after Gnome, but that's just my personal.

BigSilly said: I do find KDE to be a bit of a drag after Gnome, but that's just my personal.

i was never a fan of KDE until now. i think someone finally got it right. kubuntu was an absolute joke compared to this. why canonical doesnt put forth a better K product i dont know, but if they dont get their ** together, they should just do away with it. kubuntu is a very bad representation of what K is all about. ive been using mandy for about a week now without so much as the slightest glitch. *that's*** what it's all about!

I am so shallow, but i happen to like the "La Ora" theme better than anything i've found elsewhere. I hate KDE looks (feel free to disagree, of course), but mandriva just hit the nail on the head with "La Ora". Maybe it's because i'm a gnome guy. I dunno. What i *do* love about kubuntu is how all extra settings are baked in to "system settings" as modules instead of something like "mandriva control center". (ducks for flying objects...). BTW did you know that it is a GTK application? That said, mdc does it's job very well.

ive been running mandy now for a little while and it has been just about perfect. or as perfect as an OS can be. im blown away by it. dont get me wrong, i still love ubuntu and cant wait for hardy, but it's gonna be tough to stop using mandriva. not one glitch yet. :guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

also, does anyone else feel that mandriva deserves to have its own forum here? i do. it is now 10 years old and matured to the point of having a distinct identity. someone should not have to go redhat/fedora forum to discuss mandriva. i put in a request for a new forum in other os. go here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=761238 to show support. thanks.

wolfen69 said: ive been running mandy now for a little while and it has been just about perfect. or as perfect as an OS can be. im blown away by it. dont get me wrong, i still love ubuntu and cant wait for hardy, but it's gonna be tough to stop using mandriva. not one glitch yet. :guitar: :guitar: :guitar:

also, does anyone else feel that mandriva deserves to have its own forum here? i do. it is now 10 years old and matured to the point of having a distinct identity. someone should not have to go redhat/fedora forum to discuss mandriva. i put in a request for a new forum in other os. go here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=761238 to show support. thanks. I do agree with the easy of Mandriva and the forum also. I was going to wait a bit because of the new changes being made to the forum. :)

I have to agree that Mandriva Spring is excellent. I'm runnning the Gnome version on a spare partition of my desltop and also on my eee. I haven't tried the distro since 2004, when it was Mandrake 10, and what a change.

wolfen69 said:

also, does anyone else feel that mandriva deserves to have its own forum here? i do. it is now 10 years old and matured to the point of having a distinct identity. someone should not have to go redhat/fedora forum to discuss mandriva. i put in a request for a new forum in other os. go here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=761238 to show support. thanks.

YES and NO, Why would you want a Mandriva forum here? I think that mandrivausers.org and forum.mandriva are good, and I really don't see why there should be a forum here. On the other hand, if suse and fedora have their own here, mandy should too, but then again, will we also have one for every possible distro under the sun?

dawg said: will we also have one for every possible distro under the sun?

No, but for each of the major players using a distinct system (i.e. non-derivative) it would be fair enough. I think Mandriva is the only one of those missing. It's good to be able to ask questions somewhere before registering on a new forum.

I was bit by ATI (again) and the One LiveCD wouldn't even boot for me. I kept getting mode not supported not matter what cheat I tried. Oh well, maybe next time.

Hmmm, I'm having Samba issue(s) w/ Gnome install: when I use the 'connect to Server..' option in 'Places' menu I have to login twice? It creates an icon to the share on the desktop with an error indicating 'Can't display location smb://blah blah - the specified location is not mounted, click on that one it opens another login dialog and icon and that one lets you in to the share... Strange...

Although, it works fine opening Nautilus, hitting [CTRL]-[L] and placing 'smb://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/share in the bar...

Still, a phenominal release... Mandriva needs to now start concentrating on getting its Linux certified on hardware a'la Ubuntu w/ Sun. In a way, I kinda' hoped Elison & Oracle would've purchased Mandriva and helped out instead of rebranding RHEL like CentOS did. Heck, if that was the case Elison could've just took over CentOS and offered the support for that. Ah, I dunno' I'm rambling...

dawg said: YES and NO, Why would you want a Mandriva forum here? I think that mandrivausers.org and forum.mandriva are good, and I really don't see why there should be a forum here. On the other hand, if suse and fedora have their own here, mandy should too, but then again, will we also have one for every possible distro under the sun?

no, but i think all the major distros that have been around a long time should have one.

...another glitch, if I eject CD/DVD from drive using button on drive itself it throws up a 'cannot unmount volume, error freedesktop.org' something else to do w/ Hal/dBus...

Adam, are these legitimate bugs or is my default post install config messed up? Also, if I try to open a file created in MSO2k3 Word or Excel w/ the OOo equiv I get an error saying 'Couldn't display file.xls - There is no application for this filetype.' Even though if you check the properties it is automatically defaulted to use OOo - Calc...

Nevermind, I think this may be a permissions issue caused by the Samba issues I'm having...

dca: yeah, try reproducing on a local filesystem first. there can be oddnesses with permissions when using SMB via VFS. Personally I prefer to just mount my SMB partitions rather than accessing them through the VFS system (smb:// in the file manager); it's a bit more robust that way...

Thanks for all the kind words, BTW, everyone: sorry I haven't been around for a few days, was at a wedding up in the Lake District where I had no cellphone reception, never mind internet access!

dca It must be a Samba issue. I have e-mailed MS Word/Excel sheets from work and they all open perfect in 2008 and 2008.1

There doesn't seem to be a CD for amd64 so I ran the 586 one. It seems very nice, but interestingly Konqueror shares an annoying bug with OpenSuse that Kubuntu doesn't have. The icons get all screwed up with varied filename lengths and if Konqueror is set to display more than one line.

Hi There, sorry to barge in; thought I would extend my appreciation for a such a polished GNOME version and that everything works right out of the box; I am trying the GNOME LiveCD, and from boot to desktop not a single glitch. My HP notebook has ati card, and now only Ubuntu 8.04 and Mandriva Spring 2008.1 both pick up the config and load desktop without any hassles. Not ecven OpenSUSE does this. I am very impressed. I will install Mandriva as my Desktop system.

Adam, i thought you may be able to help. I am in South Africa; Ubuntu has local repos for updates and during installation if I choose Location=South africa, synaptic automatically loas SA specific repos sources. Does Mandriva have the same? Will I have to go outside SA to fecth updates or will the soruces synch with SA servers? I could not find info on the mandriva website [note: local SA servers use if free by my ISP here; pinging international servers, there is a cap, and i have run out of this cap right now].

thanks S

that's good to hear, as ive never tried the gnome version. K works perfect so far.

Samwyse, from the screenshot I seem to recall that there's a bug filed for that issue already. I'll have to try and find it and add your information to it. It's clearly something upstream if SUSE has it too, but interesting that Kubuntu doesn't.

shuttleworth: if you add repositories then look at /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg you can see what mirror it used. There is a South African server on the list - sun.ac.za - so if all the geolocation stuff works right, you should end up with that server.

After hearing all the glowing reviews I went back and installed then free version and it worked fine. It is beautiful and works well. I love the control panel. It beats PCLOS 7 ways to Sunday. My only problem seems to be it's seems kind of slow for some reason.

I would like to try the Ati driver but everything looks so good with the radeonhd driver I'm scared I'll mess things up.

An update: after playing with free for a bit I decided to play with One for a bit more. I looked around and I finally found a fix for my LiveCd not booting and now I have One installed. I like it even more than I did Free. It's a very well done KDE. I like it a lot.

voriangrey: glad it's going well :). just for info, radeonhd is inherently not particularly speedy: it's still in a fairly early stage of development and speed isn't really a development priority yet, it's more about getting everything working first.

At least it works. That's more than I can say for the Ati releases. That's not your fault, of course. I've read that in time the radeonhd drivers may be able to handle 3D easily.

Anyway, I've downloaded the Gnome version now to play with. :D

AdamWill said: Samwyse, from the screenshot I seem to recall that there's a bug filed for that issue already. I'll have to try and find it and add your information to it. It's clearly something upstream if SUSE has it too, but interesting that Kubuntu doesn't..

Mepis and Fedora don't have the bug either. I suppose Mandriva and OpenSuse use a patch that breaks Konqueror.

It's possible, yeah - or Mepis and Fedora and Kubuntu have a patch to fix an issue, that we don't have. :) Um, I don't remember if I found the bug report, sigh. So many things to do...

I love this os!!

I log into mandriva 80% of the time, and vista 20% of the time, and i didn't even think it was going to be like that when i first installed linux (sorry, ubuntu realy didn't impress me as much, and suse was hell)

[IMG]http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/4/6/18/f_snapshot7m_7647114.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/4/6/18/f_snapshot4m_e7619b8.png[/IMG]

That's great :) Have you checked out the official forums at http://forum.mandriva.com/ yet? We have a desktop screenshot thread over there.

AdamWill said: That's great :) Have you checked out the official forums at http://forum.mandriva.com/ yet? We have a desktop screenshot thread over there.

I been registered there for a while now, as SCS.Lol wasn't for the mandriva forum, i would probable be still with vista, or i would be using ubuntu.