linux mandriva

[krele]

first thing, excuse my lowercase typing... my keyboard driver is going wild again =(...

did any of you guys have linux mandriva as your os? i'm thinking about installing it, but won't undergo such a hassle if it's not any good... i've seen some videos on youtube and... it looks like a pretty cool os =)...

share your knowledge ;)

[Scotty]

I've never used Mandriva myself personally, and I'm not sure what your linux experience is, so for this, I am just going to assume you have not used linux at all, so my apologies ahead of time if this is insulting your intelligence at all.

As far as my personal Linux experience with regards to what flavors (aka distributions) are Ubuntu (my number one preference), openSUSE (not really using it anymore, but I started on it), and Red Hat Enterprise 5 (work).  For beginners, I always recommend using a distro that has excellent peer support.  From my experience, one of the most highly regarded when dealing with sheer numbers and peer support, Ubuntu seems to take the cake every time, so for every beginner, I always recommend Ubuntu .

From what I can tell with Mandriva, it comes stock with the KDE Desktop environment.  Keep in mind the desktop environment is separate from the Linux operating system.  For instance, Ubuntu can be used with the GNOME (most widely used by the Ubuntu user base), KDE, Xfce, EDE, and a huge plethora of others.  Mandriva uses the RPM package manager (same as RH, Fedora, and others), which is likely the most widely known package managing systems, making it easier to install rpm's from other distros.

So for my personal advice, I'd recommend downloading and installing VirtualBox, it's free and easy to use.  This will allow you to allocate a small "sub-partition" from your hard drive on windows (or linux) and set up a linux OS as a virtual machine.  The great thing about this is that it allows you to test the waters without committing by partitioning or wiping your entire hard drive (if it fails, all you have to do is delete the files via the tool, and you're back to normal).  There's no commitment necessary with virtual machines.  Download VirtualBox, download the iso for Mandriva, and give it a go.

I'd be interested to hear how you like it if you end up going with it.  Like I said, I have no experience with Mandriva, so I'd be interested to see how things work out.