I want to know whether you use Mandriva-based distribution for your main desktop OS or not. I want to know the reason too why you choose that distribution over distributions like Arch or Ubuntu or Mint or Debian, etc.

I was a fan of Mandriva and still interested in Mandriva-based distributions, but I'm already in comfort with Kubuntu.

You can't really say PCLinuxOS is based on Mandriva: it was forked from Mandrake way back in 2003! I often recommend it to beginners who want a rolling-release that's not bleeding edge and that's user friendly: unlike Arch on both counts.

The only times I tried Mageia and ROSA, I had a lot of hardware problems, but then I have old, odd hardware.

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Thanks for pointing my error.

That sounds great about PCLinuxOS. I've used PCLinuxOS when I was in middle school and yeah it's very user friendly.

The first time I'm using ROSA I thought it was a half-baked OS, but I don't know how is it today.

OpenMandriva was too not very good, but I don't know how is it today too.

The Mandriva-based distribution I've used the most is Mageia.

Now I'm back to using Mageia. Haha. It replaces Kubuntu on my system now.

I was a Mandriva fan when I was in middle school. I like how they design their desktop, wallpaper, and I think it's user friendly enough.

Unfortunately Mandriva was defunct and then I tried Mageia. I thought Mageia was a solid OS, but wasn't clean enough (like the MCC icon wasn't very good) back then. Yeah, I'm really affected by the aesthetics of a distro.

I have used Mageia since v. 3. I first used it dual-boot with Win7 on my Lenovo Graphics Tablet and now am using it on my Zareason laptop.

I can't give you a list of reasons why I use it other than that it's stable and it works and I like its feel, and it has a long version upgrade cycle. I have not yet run into a situation in which I got any tangible benefit from being bleeding edge, as opposed to proven and stable, other than boasting rights.

The only critical observation I have about it that the repositories are not as extensive as those of some other distros.

Yeah, it's good to have a system that's stable and you don't need to always upgrade in a short period of time.

I have Mageia 6 since March, this year. It controls Grub, as I have other distros too.

Installed Rosa Desktop Fresh R10 last week.

Now, trying to install PCLinuxOS, but Installer has crashed 3 times (2x Live, and Install without Live), while updating Grub:

update-grub2 failed: at /usr/lib/libDrakX/any.pm line 620.

What do you think about Mageia and ROSA?

About PCLinuxOS: that's a bad news.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

On Mageia, I still didn't get all capabilities of Chromium to play web-videos. I can watch some videos, but not others. It is not a big problem, as I prefer to read text and waste no time waiting for bla-bla-bla. But sometimes it is neede, and then it can be frustrating.

If I had only Mageia, maybe this problem was already solved. Having other distros in dualboot (multiboot) makes me lazy to face some difficulties

Rosa comes already able to watch web-videos. Installed last week, and still facing some problems, maybe caused by old external USB SSD.

Finally I achieved to install PCLinuxOS. Problem was Grub2 at the end of installation. Tryed to install in Live session, and also Install with no Live session. Finally, tryed Grub legacy in Text mode, and it worked.

But I still could not run graphical session after install. I Login and I have only mouse pointer in a black screen.

Tryed to Login as root and, yes, I get graphical session. It is dangerous, and happily Chrome does not open.

Did Firefox able to watch those videos (about Mageia)?

Seems like Mageia is the least problematic here.

Well, Mageia is working fine since March or April. But without Wine and web videos it is difficult to work a long time within it.

Reinstalled PCLinuxOS yesterday (Dec., 15), and it is working fine.

Problem to install was Grub2; so I installed with Grub legacy in Text mode.

Problem to Login was because old /home has 1000:1000 (UID:GID), and PCLinuxOS creates User from 500:500.

So, I had renamed old /home/user to /home/user-OLD, thus creating a new /home/user with the proper permissions.

I am working within PCLinuxOS since yesterday morning.

UPDATING Informations:

Solved problems with Audio & Video Codecs last week, after install Mageia 7 (beta2). ─ I just hadn't searched enough. ─ Now it is one of the best distros among the 12 distros I have at this moment.

Here are some notes on Mageia 7 (beta2). Unhappily it is in Portuguese (pt_BR), but there is a Translate button at the top of right column, in desktop monitors:

https://byteria.blogspot.com/2019/03...ll-config.html

PCLinuxOS is also very nice, after 1 year. It doesn't need to reinstall, because it is a rolling distro.

Rosa Desktop Fresh has been removed, because there is no good mirror near (downloads were very slow); and it is difficult to find good forums, except in Russian lang (found some large groups in VK, but VK has no Translate).

I have, on a Lenovo Thinkpad, which is my daily use main computer: Windows 7 (which I never even boot up);
MX-Linux (which I'm using at the moment);
Tahrpup 64;
ROSA (which version, I forget...)
I started using Tahrpup-64 years ago and used it almost exclusively for some years and it was wonderful! For some reason I decided to try MX-Linux for awhile and it was also pretty amazing. Then I moved to ROSA. It is also good, yet seems to be more "traditional", maybe? More Windows-like, I guess. Or maybe it's just the KDE desktop, which I wasn't used to and still don't prefer. I just don't like the "feel" of it, having used Gnome and its relatives for so long. But I do use ROSA a lot! I "take spells" and use 1 distro for several months, then feel a need for a change and swap to 1 of my other installed distros for awhile. But I've found all of them to be great, no serious problems. But ROSA =

I have been using KDE since my first Linux distro (Kurumin), back in 2007, and I really like it.

Yes, KDE seems near to old Windows appearance: ─ Panel, Menu, Title bar. ─ It made easy to migrate from old Windows, back then. (I don't know recent Windows).

The 3 problems I had with ROSA were mainly due to geographical circumstances ─ not to ROSA itself.

The 1st problem, could have been solved by trying a few more time. ─ I had the same problem with 2 other distros, and solved it by reinstalling them in other partitions.

2nd problem ─ most of forums in Russian language (without Translation) ─ is not a serious problem, except for a really beginner.

3rd problem was the very very low download speed from European mirrors, ─ and I still cannot solve it up to day. ─ There is no ROSA mirror at Brazil, and I still cannot get a good speed from the unique mirror in South America, CEDIA, at Ecuador. It is a good mirror, but from Ecuador to Brazil it seems that the "link" is busy.

This 3rd problem is the only really serious, and it is not a problem of ROSA itself.

If I gave up, it was mainly because PCLinuxOS and Mageia are working fine, and there was no need to keep a 3rd Mandrake-based distro.

Identical problem here with PCLOS; I believe this problem arises if you have an NVME drive; at least, that's when the problem first appeared on my hardware.

As far as the best Mandrake based distro, I agree with most of the opinions here; Mageia is by far the best choice. In particular, Mageia 7 is excellent.

There are so many cases of "DRAKLIVE INSTALL CRASH" in the PCLinuxOS Forum, and most of them don't fit my hardware case.

Here, what sucks is Grub2 + OS_PROBE, because I dualboot / multiboot 12 distros.

Back in 2017, solution has been to choose Grub with text menu, instead of Grub2 with graphical menu. ─ Then, I finally could accomplish the installation.

Now, theres is no more old Grub (Grub "1") in repos, and recent ISOs don't offer this option. ─ So, I had to unplug 3 old internal HDDs (Sata2), in order to deal with only 1 old external SSD (USB2). ─ So, Grub2 had to OS_PROBE only 2 other distros.

I think the problem could be solved (in my hardware case), if I could "DISABLE_OS_PROBER" in the Live DVD session ─ but I cannot reach this option, because it stands "after" the crash.

I only could choose not to probe other distros, when I had unplugged the 3 old internal HDDs. ─ Well, after unplug, there is no more problem, and "DISABLE_OS_PROBER" is no more needed.

https://byteria.blogspot.com/2019/08...ll-config.html