I asked a similar question in a distro-specific forum once before, but I'm asking it here so I can get responses from a broader range of Linux users.

What is the general opinion of the Mandriva and Debian distros? Mainly asking what kind of user you consider the distro to be for (beginners, advanced, total newb, whatever), and whether you think they offer as much to an extremely experienced user as they would to a newb.

Those are my two favorite distros, and I really like Mandriva a lot. I'm trying to pick one to stick with throughout, but I'm not really sure if Mandriva is too automated and Windows-user oriented like Ubuntu (I haven't really delved into the deeper aspects of Linux so I have zero experience in this area now). This might sound a little elitist but I don't want to be using Mandriva and just be automatically dismissed as a newb on first impression just because I'm using Mandriva (although admittedly I am a bit of a newb at the moment, I don't plan on staying one).

thanks for any replies

Who cares what other people think; use the distro that's best for you!

This page is a good comparison of the two distros you mention (plus a few more): http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Personally I find that the desktop environment and applications you choose are much more important than the base distro. KDE+Firefox+OpenOffice is pretty much the same whether you are using Mandriva, Debian, or any other distro.

ps I am a Debian user thinking about giving Mandriva a test drive, we should just switch places for a week.

I'm a Debian and Arch user primarily. I love Debian testing, as I find that it simply has everything, is modern enough that it doesn't annoy me, but is very rarely unstable. I love Arch because it's VERY similar in many ways to Debian testing, but far more modern software. I choose Debian between the 2 simply due to issues with Arch not always liking some of my hardware.

I like Mandriva, but it's REALLY BAD with upgrading between versions. The Mandriva team seems to have a case of the Microsofts insofar as they look at versions. That is, they don't believe in upgrades, they believe in reinstalls. I've never had an upgrade from 1 version to the next go without a hitch in Mandriva. The latest 2010.0 to 2010.1 (2010 spring) is no exception. It's still usable, but about 50 packages have incorrect version dependencies that I can't get resolved, and won't upgrade until I do. I MUCH prefer Debian or Arch due to that mindset of Mandriva. I don't WANT to reinstall every time a new version comes out, that's the reason I initially switched to Linux, I was tired of reinstalls.

I have been running Mandriva from Mandrake 7.2 forward. I have never reinstalled, I have always upgraded. This installation (on my workstation, where I make my living) has a history that goes back about 10 years continuously, over several hard drives, motherboards, and processors.

Years ago, I did sometimes have problems with upgrades. Usually that was because I would do some ad-hoc upgrades using source and RPMs from other providers along the way, and wouldn't bother to maintain the packaging system, and once or twice I had interesting times when I finally did do a complete and approved upgrade, often causing me to have to manually fix things up, and frequently getting caught in dependency hell - which I always worked through, but sometimes it took awhile.

But I did it, and it worked. And, as Mandriva matured, the packaging system got better and the upgrades became easier and more reliable.

Just yesterday I upgraded from 2010 to 2010.1. I did it online, and my machine downloaded 3818 packages and installed them. No issues. I got rather annoyed when I rebooted the system; X failed to start (predictable and expected because I needed to recompile the NVidia driver for the new kernel), and a new 2010.1 feature kept popping up a text-based requester asking me if I wanted to reconfigure Xorg (I didn't; I just wanted to log into a console and recompile that driver). This "feature" was both insistent and annoying but I did ultimately get past it long enough to log into a console, shut down the display manager service, and recompile the driver.

I do a lot of development including kernel and kernel driver development, and I like Mandriva a lot.

I read an interview with Linus Torvalds once, he said he uses Fedora and prefers a full desktop environment over a minimal environment. What I'm getting at is that you shouldn't judge a person's competencies by the distro they use.

1/3 of my time at my current place of work is spent on linux sys admin, mostly CentOS or RHEL with a bit of Novel SUSE. For software development I prefer Arch so I'm working against the newest versions of libs, and Debian where I want stability. Yet, I'm as happy as can be working on my little laptop with Xubuntu.