Mandriva 2007 Beta 2 - short review
[ Tuesday, 29 August 2006, Lukasz Ros ]
Beta versions of Mandriva 2007 have been appearing for a while now and the final release is coming soon. Bugs gets fixed, new features appear, together with the new looks… Thus, we have decided to give Mandriva 2007 beta 2 “Odin” a shot. This short review covers the key changes introduced in beta 2 - the Live-CD version with GNOME desktop onboard. Some screenshots are attached as well 
Author: Łukasz Roś,
Translation: Borys Musielak
New looks
The first and most noticeable change is the looks. A new theme has been developed to replace the old Galaxy theme. It’s called la Ore and is provided in a few versions, depending on the Mandriva flavor used. For now, only Gnome went through the face-lifting and actually this is the main reason we took this version for the review.
Pic 1. Gnome in Mandriva 2007 Odin
Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, Mandriva with stays among the worst-looking distros. The la Ore theme tries to resemble the old traditional looks but at the same time, add the bliss known from Mac OS X or the upcoming Windows Vista. So, all in all, one of the first things you will probably do after installing Mandriva is changing the theme… which is nice since it’s not a good thing when all desktops looks the same, anyway 
Selection of software
Mandriva beta 2 behaved in a very stable manner when run from a Live-CD. We could focus on testing the functionality, not debugging. The apps selection is pretty bold. There are latest versions of Firefox (1.5.0.6), Gaim (2.0.0 beta 3) and GIMP (GIMP 2.3.10). GNOME is also provided in beta (the second beta of 2.16 release). All in all the system is very fresh and breezing (creeping? :P) edge.
Pic 2. Firefox 1.5.0.6 - nicely integrated into system looks
Pic 3. Evolution 2.7.91 in Mandriva 2007 Odin
Pic 4. OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 in Mandriva 2007 Odin
I personally has been especially anxious to see GIMP 2.3.10. In most distros, older versions are delivered, although GIMP is a very active project and gains a lot of functionality with every new edition. In 2.3.10 the most visible changes are:
- the filters layout change - all types of filters are (eventually!) put into one menu.
- color management options - moved to a separate menu
The official changelog for Gimp 2.3.10 can be obtained from the project’s website.
Pic 5. GIMP 2.3.10 in Mandriva 2007 Odin
GNOME desktop in Mandriva is (as usually) very usable. The default apps selection is a bit conservative though. For CD and DVD burning there are two apps: GNOME CD Master and Gnome CD/DVD Creator (see the pictures below). Mandriva developers seem not to notice the great alternatives fro K3B like GnomeBaker or Bonfire. The default multimedia player is Rhythmbox (another GNOME default). Same applies here - why use Rhythmbox when we have Quod Libet, Listen or Banshee which provide a much cleaner interface and superior functionality?
On the other hand though, the defaults in Mandriva do not differ from what you may be used to from other distros. It’s a personal opinion whether it’s a good or bad decision. I just wish it was different, since different is better in this specific case.
Pic 6. Gnome CD Master in Mandriva 2007 Odin
Pic 7. Gnome CD/DVD Creator in Mandriva 2007 Odin
Pic 8. Rhythmbox, still the default in Mandriva
Localization
What may be important to non-English speakers, localizations are not included on the Live-CD. One needs to install them separately afterward. It doesn’t mean that the quality of the localizations is lower than usually. To the contrary - it’s actually as mastered as before - good point for Mandriva here.
Pic 9. GNOME Volume Manager mounts the digital cameras automatically
So, what is missing?
What I miss in the latest Mandriva is - by no doubt - the search integration. After what we’ve seen in Ubuntu 6.06 and openSUSE 10.1, this should be a standard in all modern distros.
In Mandriva, you cannot find any of those quick-search panels displaying the desktop and web search results delivered by Beagle and other search engines.
The fancy-desktop lovers are in a better situation, though. There is an quite easy way to add AIGLX or XGL+Compiz support. You can either do it graphically or use a config file for that.
Pic 10. Mandriva Control Center - a bunch of great wizards for system configuration hasn’t changed a lot
Pic 11. The Live-CD installer known from Mandriva One 2006 has been kept
Summary
Except for the software update which has been awaited by the Mandriva fans for a long time, there are no revolutionary changes or something that could put Mandriva 2007 in front of the competition. Still, not many distros provide such easy installation and configuration process. In Mandriva, almost all works out-of-the-box (including an MP3 player) or network setup. And this is the reason I think Mandriva can be still recommended for the newbie users.
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8 Comments
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Thanks for the review. On the default applications, Fred (Crozat, our GNOME packager) likes as a matter of policy to stay as close to upstream GNOME as possible. Also, in practical terms, I’d be opposed to Banshee being the default music player because it’s still way too broken and unstable - it still has trouble dealing with my moderately large music collection, and tends to crash a lot. Personally I use muine, but I think rhythmbox is a perfectly sensible default.
I’m trying to find out what we’re going to do about desktop search for 2007. We got rather burned by including Kat in 2006, so it may be a case of once bitten, twice shy…
I use the Gnome version as well and runs perfectly stable, not a single crash yet, and is just a beta2. But I see Mandriva is taking now the right dirrection after their disaster with 2006.
[...] Read full review [...]
[...] Polishlinux.org publica una corta revisin que repasa los nuevos aspectos de Mandriva Linux 2007 con el veredicto al que esta distro nos tiene acostumbrado: es una solucin perfecta para los “novatos” en el mundo Linux. Enviado por Ordo 30/8/2006 7:13 am | | | Mandrake | Del.icio.us [...]
Will I be able to replace ksplash or whatever is keeping me from seeing the pre-login background? I suppose since this is the “Free” version, I should not complain, but Ubuntu/Kubuntu let me show the user pics, the panel with single image, and desktop background changing when all users have logged our or are none are yet logged in. Is Mandriva purposely doing that to irritate users into buying the non-free version?
I personally have used the free Community edition for years and changing/customizing your desktop is really very easy so to answer your question, no.
The selection of default apps installed is basic only for the free edition (but still lots better than kubuntu/ubuntu). Upgrading apps or adding new ones you can choose from repositories of many thousands of software packages, urpmi is your friend.
The selection of default apps installed is basic only for the free edition (but still lots better than kubuntu/ubuntu).
Well, that’s very subjective you know. I personally like the Kubuntu defaults a lot (Mandriva is not bad either, to make it clear).
I tried Mandriva 2007 Beta 2 but it would not install on my SATA HD (can not find the HD). It did install on my PATA drive. Also the RPM installer did not function.Looks good tho.