Review: OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0

It has been a while since I've done a review, and I apologize for that. This week isn't actually getting any less busy for me; last night I finished my undergraduate thesis and submitted it to my thesis advisor, and hopefully there aren't too many major revisions that I would need to make. Beyond that, though, I still have problem sets, a midterm exam, and final projects to finish. I'm just doing this review now because finishing the thesis was exhausting, and I need a short break before I can get back to work. In that time, I'm reviewing OpenMandriva Lx 2014.0.

KDE Homerun Menu

As the name might suggest, OpenMandriva is related to the old distribution Mandriva, which went out of business. The first fork of Mandriva was Mageia, which preserved the traditional KDE 4 interface. After that, Mandriva changed its GUI from standard KDE to the ROSA customization of KDE, which I reviewed a little under 3 years ago here. Following that, ROSA forked as a distribution from Mandriva to showcase its customization of KDE; I reviewed that almost exactly 2 years ago here. Since then, another fork has arisen from ROSA, and that fork is OpenMandriva.
I tried this distribution as a live USB system made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Featured Comments: Week of 2012 May 13

There was no "Featured Comments" post last week because there were no posts the previous week. This past week, there were two posts that got quite a few comments, so I'll repost a few of those.

Review: SolusOS 1 "Eveline"

Reader DarkDuck said, "The paragraph about Live system should be in bold red colour. :-) Have you been able to check which repositories are used in SolusOS? I would thing they're not Debian standard because of Skype."
Commenter Bernard Victor had this to say: "I have switched from Linux Mint, as it is much easier on system resorces. It is extremely stable, and very easy to set-up. The only problem I am having is getting Skype to work properly. It does everything but I cannot hear myself ???? Give it a proper try. I'm sure that you willlbe impressed like every other reviewer I have read."
Reader Ikey Doherty, who created and is the lead developer of SolusOS, had these clarifications: "I'm happy to package a newer skype :) Also if you look in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ you'll find we use backports, multimedia, and our own repo, which is now in the region of 6.6GB :) Regarding "process elevation" there is no root password on the live image, it's disabled for security reasons. You use sudo, which requires no password for the "live" user, so to become root: sudo su Et voila :) Other than those points, very very nice review :) Thank you very much and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Feel free to jump in on IRC or our forums, you'll find very welcoming people! :)"
An anonymous commenter said, "I tried solus on my netbook and I love it! Great OS, easy to set up, everything you should do to make debian a great desktop os is already done for you, so it saves a lot of time. It looks great, I really like the modified zuki blues theme. i'm pretty sure that solus will replace crunchbang 64bit on my desktop real soon! Thanks ikey, for this great distro!"

Review: ROSA 2012 "Marathon"

Reader Denis Koryavov, who I think is one of the higher-ups at ROSA, had this clarification: "Hello. Can you tell me what graphic card is used in the your laptop? If intel, then it is well-known bug, and it can be easily fixed: http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/Errata_ROSA_Marathon_2012#Incorrect_resolution_with_Intel_graphics_cards"
Commenter akdengi, who also seems to be a ROSA developer, added, "Some problem for now is modeset for older card (such ATI < 2000HD or older Intel). In Mandriva 2011 many, many users will have blank black screen instead installer :( Generic driver (and working installer on many system) is more good, than not working system. This is hacked workaround, because solving of problem is not been simple - or using different syslinux menu list with/without modeset or using chainloading, like in Ubuntu and autodetect (but it's need more code change). In next update ISO release we try fix this problem."
Reader Wanderer said, "I so wanted to try ROSA, but it died on the boot up I suspect it did not want to play well with my nVidia 8400. I tried to find a work-a-round from a couple of forums, but ultimately chose to use Mageia 2(RC). Mageia worked wonderfully and is on the bleeding edge of Linux tech, especially because I invoked the testing repositories. I've not had a single problem with it. I read an article about GIMP 2.8 and the next day or day after it was on my updates list. I didn't mean to steal the show from ROSA. I did a live DVD not to long ago and it worked well and I wanted to try it again like I said. Oh well. Thanks for your review, I liked it."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I have final exams through Wednesday, so I won't be able to post anything until Thursday which is when I get back home. In any case, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Review: ROSA 2012 "Marathon"

I have more time this week than usual to do reviews like this, because I am studying at my own pace for final exams next instead of frenetically finishing problem sets each night. Today, the subject of my review is ROSA.

You may have heard of ROSA before, but you may not be sure where. Almost 9 months ago, I reviewed Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen", and that version of Mandriva was developed in conjunction with ROSA Labs, a Russian Linux development group. Since then, Mandriva seen quite a roller-coaster ride and is now essentially on life support. It is all but certain that there will be no new releases of a distribution with the name "Mandriva" (or "Mandrake" for that matter). One fork appeared over a year ago, and that is called Mageia; that aimed to replicate and build upon the traditional KDE desktop that Mandriva used before the year 2011. The other fork is ROSA, and it is essentially a continuation of the novel desktop introduced in Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen". It seems like ROSA will become the haven for all Mandriva users that had not already gone to Mageia.

I tested ROSA on a live USB system made with MultiSystem. Follow the jump to see what it's like. (Unfortunately, at the time of typing that sentence, ROSA froze, and I had to manually restart the computer. This is also why there are no pictures this time around.)

Review: Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen"

Before I begin, I'd like to say that the reason why there was no "Featured Comments" post this week was because there were no comments on last week's posts. That's probably because I didn't write a lot last week as I was spending time with friends and family. Anyway, let's get on with the review.

Main Screen

I don't think Mandriva particularly needs an introduction. Suffice it to say that it was among the original premiere easy-to-use Linux distributions, along with MEPIS, even before Ubuntu existed. It came up with the all-in-one Mandrake Control Center (now, of course, the Mandriva Control Center) and made graphical installations easier to do. It has continued with a dedicated following, but in recent months it almost collapsed, even prompting the introduction of Mageia, a fork dedicated to advancing Mandriva while staying true to its core values (more on that shortly). Its financial woes have continued, but while the last few releases made a few changes to the implementation of KDE 4 but overall nothing too drastic, this release aims to bring back some of the old luster by completely rethinking the way KDE 4 is supposed to work. Let's see how true that is in a bit.

I tested Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen" on a live USB, first made with MultiSystem and then made with UnetBootin. I was surprised that Mandriva booted after having the live USB made with UnetBootin, because for the last few years Mandriva ISO files have failed to work right with UnetBootin. I guess that application has gotten better at properly writing these ISO files to USB sticks. I tested the installation procedure in a VirtualBox VM in a Pinguy OS 11.04 Mini UnetBootin-created live USB host with 1024 MB of RAM allocated to the guest OS; I initially tried to do the VM thing within the Mandriva live USB system, but that failed (more on that later), and anyway, using Pinguy OS ensured better consistency.

I don't think I've ever written about testing a system with both MultiSystem and UnetBootin. So why have I done so this time? Well, this was originally supposed to be a comparison test with Mageia 1 included. However, Mageia was not recognized by MultiSystem, and the UnetBootin-created Mageia live USB failed to boot properly. That was odd, considering that there were reports of older alpha and beta releases of Mageia that booted fine when the live USB was created with UnetBootin. I think I'll hold off trying out Mageia until it is supported by MultiSystem, at which point I'll review it separately but through the lens of a comparison test, sort of like how I approached Scientific Linux 6 and CentOS 6. In any case, I'm too impatient to hold off testing Mandriva for the sake of Mageia. Also note that while I made all the following observations about Mandriva in MultiSystem, I was able to replicate all of them in UnetBootin, as I have seen with other distributions as well.
With all this in mind, follow the jump to see what Mandriva 2011 "Hydrogen" is like.