Mandriva back in my top list

After moaning about package managers recently, I have a happier experience to report.  I've had an Advent 4211 netbook for some time, and haven't had time to do anything time consuming with it like install Linux.  Not only that, but the absence of a CD drive meant that I was restricted to trying out other means of getting Linux installed.  I tried installing a live distro onto a USB key - didn't boot.  Tried Wubi, which is an Ubuntu non-invasive installer, but Ubuntu didn't recognise the admittedly rubbish Wifi adapter.

Anyway, I recently bought my parents a Samsung NC20 (highly recommended) and upgraded that immediately for them to a 320GB hard drive, leaving me with a spare 160GB drive that I could use to fool around with in my Advent machine.  I've also recently bought a Liteon external DVD writer (slim, USB powered thing).  This meant that I could install Linux properly and with less fuss.

I had managed to determine that Mandriva Linux, which I used to love, supported the Wifi card, which they seem to be alone in.  What I used to like about Mandriva (once Mandrake) was that the OS was really easy to install and there was a lot more GUI support for doing the things that I took for granted in Windows.  The last time I tried it, I had a bit of a bad experience and ended up going through a bit of a downer with Fedora for a couple of years, getting frustrated with gaps in the desktop experience, purist packaging that meant I needed to use poorly supported repositories to get something as simple as MP3 support, etc. etc.

I didn't have a massive amount of expectation for Mandriva, but I was frankly amazed.  The partition resizing worked where Ubuntu had failed, the Wifi not only supported my card but came with a brilliantly easy network manager.  The firewall gave me alerts even though I hadn't even got round to checking if it was turned on or configured, a backup utility gave me Apple Time Machine style backups, NTFS and Samba stuff worked, flash was installed in Firefox, sound worked, 3D desktop effects worked (although I turned them off).  In fact, I've yet to find something that doesn't work (touch wood).

So, this is the lesson.  A company charging for software with in-house developers has a different agenda to the Fedora bunch.  They target my laptop (and the other derivatives of the MSI Wind and other netbooks) as a key market for them, and rightly so.  And they write software to plug the gaps.  There are fewer gaps these days in Linux, but this bit of effort on Mandriva's part has made Linux a joy to use for me once more.  To the point where I actually think I could ditch the Windows partition!


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