Monday, September 29, 2008
Mandriva for Me. Which Doesn’t Make Me Entirely Happy.
Ubunutu is my third favorite operating system (behind Mac OS X and the iPhone OS, which, though still a little immature, has made a real impression on me in terms of its simplicity, responsiveness, and innovative nature), which goes precisely nowhere in explaining how Mandriva has taken over the hard drive of my travel laptop.
Mandriva, which used to be Mandrake, is an older distribution and isn’t bad by any means, but it lacks some of the polish and reliability of the Ubuntu distribution that I was running for a while. I’ve had a number of hangs on startups, a few crashed applications, and one crash that forced a restart of the operating system--all things that shocked me from a mature Linux distribution. The interface (I’m running it with KDE without the more gratuitous windowing gimmicks, one of which makes the windows shake like Jell-o after moving them) is similar to Microsoft’s Windows, but it feels strangely twitchy in a way (and has some peculiarities) that Ubuntu didn’t.
Since the installed programs are similar (and in many cases identical) and each has a package manager to install any other necessary software, and since those software titles run much the same on each OS, how is it that I ended up with Mandriva instead of Ubuntu? Easy: there are some non-negotiable issues driving my choice of operating system.
With my work systems, the OS has to support all of the software in which I have invested thousands of dollars and it has to be quick and easy for me to use (which speaks more to my own preferences and biases than any native advantage to the OS itself). My work computer is fairly well limited to Mac OS X and I have no complaints about that.
The more travel I do, though, the more I realized that I didn’t want to risk the MacBook to the hazards of the longer trips. A low cost, reliable travel computer was in order and the non-negotiable issues changed significantly: the computer had to give me office applications at a low price, had to support my camera, had to be capable of recharging my iPhone and iPod, and had to support my laptop’s wireless card. It’s that wireless card that killed Ubuntu (and a number of other distributions that I preferred to Mandriva)--a card that didn’t work with any other free distribution that I tried. Out of the virtual box, Mandriva worked without having to do any extra work, a trick that I wish Ubuntu could learn.
So as I prepare to head off to India, Mandriva is being tweaked and modified to make sure that it meets all my needs and expectations.
One of the more interesting things that I’m finding as I explore the software available through Mandriva’s Install/Remove Software is that so much of the free software that is available is crap. Don’t get me wrong, there are some titles that are great (Scribus, for example, doesn’t do half the tricks that Indesign or QuarkXPress can manage, but it’s actually a really solid and flexible desktop publishing app), but much of the stuff filling the slots is rankly amateur in execution. Sometimes free is cool; sometimes free just sucks.
Why do I share this with you? Absolutely no reason whatsoever…
Comments & Trackbacks
Yo. I totally forgot you were going to India.
There’s a high likelihood you could get wireless working using [K]ubuntu. I’ll guess you just needed ndiswrapper. IIRC, Ubuntu doesn’t install that by default.
I will say that after being a long-time Redhat/Fedora user (Mandriva uses the same package management system—RPM—as Redhat), I much prefer the Debian-based approach of Kubuntu. The apt system is much better. And the Ubuntu respositories are really choc-full of stuff. However, I can uderstand if you don’t want to re-tool at this point.
So I’ll just invite you to join the CLUE-Tech mailing list. We just had an Installfest—I think it was even up north, where somebody would have gotten your wireless going.
Either way, enjoy using Linux!
I had installed ndiswrapper and tried to install the Windows driver for the wireless card, but I could never get it to even recognize the card’s existence. You’re probably right: if I had gone to the installfest, I probably would have found someone to help me. I just haven’t had the time.
After I’m back from India, I’ll probably try to get someone to help me get either Ubuntu or Dreamlinux--which I liked quite a bit but didn’t explore much since it had the same problem with my wireless card--running full time on the laptop. At that point I do want to settle on one, though, because constantly installing new operating systems on the laptop isn’t a recipe for data integrity.
Well, at least you’re using a man’s operating system (it even says so in the name!) instead of your usual pusillanimous Mac rubbish.
And I say that as someone who keeps threatening to buy a Mac! But in my case, the manliness is so well-established that I can do pretty much whatever I like. Even in three-inch heels and a slinky velvet dress, I’d be the manliest damn man in the whole man’s world. And dead sexy, to boot.
You, on the other hand, need all the help you can get. I advise flannel clothes, and perhaps some kind of facial scar.
Facial scar: check.
Flannel: that’s so 1991.
... because constantly installing new operating systems on the laptop isn’t a recipe for data integrity.
Oh, ZB, that’s such a Windoze comment.
But seriously, creating a data partition, and having the installer leave it alone, is an easy thing to do.
Anyways, have fun on the subcontinent. Jai Guru Deva Ohm, and all that.
I’m creating my own Linux distro: dorkafux.
What hardware did you end up buying?
Live, from New York, it’s…
Oh, never mind.
I ended up buying a refurbished Compaq from the Microcenter near where I live. It cost me about $350 if memory serves. It was between that and one of the Asus ultra-portables and the deciding factor ended up being two things: drive space and the ability to play with Linux distros easily. Curiosity often decides things for me.
I really like Microcenter. Except that they seem to be pretty busy these days. Which is, I suppose, better than having them go out of business. In a pinch, I can even bike down there.
Microcenter is great--I mean, for finding stuff that’s hard to find, for a wide variety of computer equipment, and for the fact that it’s about five minutes away from where I work. On the other hand, it’s so busy lately that checkout takes forever and I had to bug people to get someone to help me with buying the laptop.
Of course, in the Denver area there aren’t too many good computer stores left, are there? And it’s pretty rare that I go there and can’t find what I’m looking for.