Mandriva 2009.0 review
Submitted by miggols99 on 9 October, 2008 - 19:38
Today Mandriva released a new version called "2009.0". This features the new kernel 2.6.27, KDE 4.1 or GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3.0 and Firefox 3.0. It also boasts better compatibility with netbooks such as the Asus EEE PC, the Acer Aspire One and the MSI Wind.
Installer
The installer has had a great new feature added to it for the people who have small hard drives, and the ones that hate extra "bloat". It can remove packages that you don't need on your system. It removed the bluetooth packages and extra firmware and drivers for me, it may be different depending on your hardware configuration.
Something that I didn't like with the installer was a license agreement. It shouldn't be there! It's not really necessary. It could put people off it. Linux Mint has proprietary drivers and it doesn't have a license agreement...
New Look
A few things have been changed in this version of Mandriva. There is a new wallpaper style, which is very clean and simple. The bootup screen is a lot nicer, but it fell back to text mode for a little bit at the end for some reason.
Unfortunately, there isn't a new widget style. They have only ported the old "LaOra" style to Qt 4, which I personally think is pretty ugly.
They have decided to use the "Aya" plasma theme, like openSUSE have, which integrates with the current colour scheme.
The KDM theme is also very ugly. It has GIANT fonts and a cheap looking transparent box in the middle of the screen with the controls. This is the worst looking part of Mandriva! And this is seen every time you turn it on, so it is pretty important...
The fonts don't support subpixel hinting out-of-the-box and look hideous on an LCD screen. Most people use LCDs now..isn't it about time this was fixed?
Someone has told me in the comments that you can fix this by installing the libfreetype package from this repository.
ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/Distributions_Linux/plf/mandriva/cooker/free/binar...
The control centre has had a complete revamp, and looks much, much better. Tabs are no longer chunky like GNOME menus are, and the colours look a lot more cleaner. The actual control centre modules haven't had anything changed though.
Driver Compatibility
My NVIDIA graphics card worked perfectly with Mandriva, the resolution was found automatically and worked with Compiz Fusion and KDE 4 running very fast. Unfortunately my wireless card based on the rt61pci driver built into the Linux kernel isn't working with it...yet another hunt for a distro for that computer..is there a single distro that works with this "Linux compatible" wireless card?
Speed
Mandriva have sped up their distro quite a lot. Bootups are now a mere 20 seconds instead of the lengthy waits in 2008.1. Programs start up quickly, as expected. The installer is quite slow though. I was waiting way over half and hour for it to install. This may be because of my CD drive though...
The package manager, urpmi, has had a noticable speed boost, as it was annoyingly slow in the previous release.
Gripes
Here's a little compilation of what needs to be improved in Mandriva:
GNOME programs such as Totem are installed in KDE 4. Really, there is no need. KDE 4 has it's own media player installed called Dragon Player, and there is VLC as it is Qt based now 
Why?
Adam has cleared this one up. Totem is included because Dragon Player doesn't support Codeina, the program that finds codecs for you.
Many computers around use LCDs now. CRTs are quickly disappearing. So why don't they just add support for subpixel hinting? They have other closed source drivers/programs included, so I'm sure they're not worrying about patent issues.. I'd rather not have to patch my libfreetype or something to get nice, clear fonts. Ubuntu is using patches and they're fine right? So why not? (see above 
)
The LaOra theme is so outdated! Over glossiness on everything is a bit much. And the blue. Ew. It's not aesthetically pleasing at all. So make a new theme. Please.
Conclusion
Mandriva have made a lot of good improvements to their distro, but there are still quite a few things that need to be fixed. The new look is beautiful, but a few things let it down. If you liked the 2008.1 version, you will definitely like this one
Screenshots
Default desktop: The desktop you will see when you first boot up Mandriva
Firefox 3: The new Firefox web browser
Comments
OT - for your poll
terminator is the terminal of my choice, but it´s not in the list...
A few things
Did you try setting up your wireless adapter via drakconnect ('create a new interface', or something like that, on the network tab of MCC)? Sometimes you have to run through that wizard to get a wireless card working right. rt61 SHOULD work, but I don't have one of 'em to test locally.
"GNOME programs such as Totem are installed in KDE 4. Really, there is no need. KDE 4 has it's own media player installed called Dragon Player, and there is VLC as it is Qt based now Smile Why?"
Well, for one thing, DragonPlayer doesn't support Codeina. Try playing a video you don't have the codec for in DragonPlayer and you'll get a blank screen. Do it in Totem and it'll use Codeina to offer you a codec, if it can find one.
On the subpixel hinting thing - it's a legal issue. The PLF package enables various things which are covered by patents and hence which we can't safely, legally, enable in the official package.
Adam Williamson
Mandriva
subpixel font rendering
Hiya miggols!
Install the patched libfreetype6 from plf!
ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/Distributions_Linux/plf/mandriva/cooker/free/binar...
It's "cooker" since 2009 isn't available yet (still works), but when it is, just navigate there instead.
That's cool :)
Thank you!! I have been struggling to find something like this. I'll add it to the review...
Well, your gripes can be fixed right?
I know first impressions matter and all, but it's not like the KDM theme can't be fixed.
The lack of subpixel hinting is a bit out there (but it can be fixed anyways), but the themes can be changed to something nicer.
So all in all it seems like a really great distro, and I would gladly use a distro that boots in 20 secs.
What are your hardware specs btw?
Forgot to add this
I'm zmjjmz from UF.