Mandriva 2006 Free Edition - anyone try it?

hamster

Hi,

Any boarders try the Mandriva 2006 DVD iso lately? I recently tried version 2005 (v 10.2) from last year and it detected nearly all my stuff off my Dell Inspiron laptop except my winmodem (I have a driver for that). I had Redhat 9 for a few years and it seems to be more responsive. I put the standard no. of packages on and I appreciated it detected the power saving features of the laptop perfectly! Other than having to find Nvidia drivers - everything is pretty good.
Anyone try it or have comments on it? Redhat was nice and Fedora is having a bit of bother. I know Mandriva can be bloaty but you can just install 65Mb if you want.

Curious to know what how many partitions people usually go for? I hate having too many linux partitions . I had one for swap, home and / (for main stuff). Actually does anyone bother with /home and just use / for such purposes?

Rambo

After 4 weeks with Fedora core 4 trying to get it work with my wirleless network I gave up
this was the same with unbunto
I download Mandriva 2006 DVD install it and it worked first go with my wireless network
really fast install 15 min and detected all my software apart from the win modem
I am using kde and menu system is really good the best I have seen
and the menu system to configure your computer is excellent
great distro I would recommend it ..

MrVestek

I've tried it and quite liked it, although the X server even though it was selecting the right driver for my laptop's graphics card didn't seem to get on with it and would some times get caught in a loop. That's why I've switched to using SuSe 10.

hamster

Well... the news is getting better for me. I downloaded the latest linux drivers (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run) and edited 1 line on the /etc/X11/XF86Config file to "nvidia" from "nv" and then ran the .run install file under root (under init3). Only snag was it wanted the kernel source installed (so that the nvidia installer would install) but it was on the DVD anyway as a package.

A nice thing to try would be VMScumm. Might try that tonight (with Under a steel sky). DVD playback (thru mplayer is fine). Kaffine is the player I tried I think.

Only thing is the num lock with the laptop .... it comes on automatically and I can't stop (not bios related).

jaqian

I'd a problem with Mandriva 2006 and ditched it for openSUSE 10. After it installed on my laptop certain qwerty keys would type numbers instead of letters. I discovered if I held down the "Fn" key it, I could use the keyboard normally but I had to keep holding it down. No such prob with openSUSE.

hamster

jaqian,

I bet that was because numlock started on by default. Remember the query keys on a laptop double as number keypad with the function key. Sorry to put it so basic. I noticed that when I tried to log in. Even when I turned off numlock it came back on further down the boot process prior to the login screen. Annoying.

To fix this under KDE... try: (recommended by linuxquestions.org)

For KDE System->Configure->KDE->peripherals->keyboard.
Hopefully it will for me tonight.

jaqian

Thanks. I thought of that but it didn't seem to be on. Using openSUSE now so not a problem.

MrVestek

Funny that, I used to have that kinda problem in Windows... had to keep changing the keyboard driver. No such trouble on Linux tho.

hamster

hamster wrote:

Well... the news is getting better for me. I downloaded the latest linux drivers (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8178-pkg1.run) and edited 1 line on the /etc/X11/XF86Config file to "nvidia" from "nv" and then ran the .run install file under root (under init3). Only snag was it wanted the kernel source installed (so that the nvidia installer would install) but it was on the DVD anyway as a package.

A nice thing to try would be VMScumm. Might try that tonight (with Under a steel sky). DVD playback (thru mplayer is fine). Kaffine is the player I tried I think.

Only thing is the num lock with the laptop .... it comes on automatically and I can't stop (not bios related).

Doh! Forgot to get the SDL-1.2.9 drivers. ScummVM needs them. I'm hearing about Wesnoth (Rpg game)... seems to be pretty good.

telecinesk

I have it running ok on an ibm x21 laptop, all hardware was recognised, unlike when put win2k into it! Had mandrake9 and this is an improvement.

Strangely enough, tried mandriva on an acer laptop and have had endless "sound" issues, maby it is something im doing wrong?

Blowfish

Yep definitely go for wesnoth, i installed openSUSE 10, and discovered it, got rediculously addicted and havent even bothered configuring SUSE properly coz of it.

hamster

Actually when I first got it... it was version 1.02... now 1.11 is out with a lot of new features. Wahey!

Sandals

hamster wrote:

Hi,

Any boarders try the Mandriva 2006 DVD iso lately? I recently tried version 2005 (v 10.2) from last year and it detected nearly all my stuff off my Dell Inspiron laptop except my winmodem (I have a driver for that). I had Redhat 9 for a few years and it seems to be more responsive. I put the standard no. of packages on and I appreciated it detected the power saving features of the laptop perfectly! Other than having to find Nvidia drivers - everything is pretty good.
Anyone try it or have comments on it? Redhat was nice and Fedora is having a bit of bother. I know Mandriva can be bloaty but you can just install 65Mb if you want.

Curious to know what how many partitions people usually go for? I hate having too many linux partitions . I had one for swap, home and / (for main stuff). Actually does anyone bother with /home and just use / for such purposes?

Where can I download that?

hamster

Hey Sandals,

Go here -> You can get the CD isos or the DVD iso here. There are several mirrors available -> http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/downloads/mirrors/2006

hamster

I used ftp://ftp.mki.fh-duesseldorf.de a few weeks ago.