I've tried many, many distros but for some reason, not Mandriva, I did install it once but got a new comp the next day, and never got round to installing it on that.

Well after becoming fed up with openSUSE niggles I'm looking for replacement as my secondary/backup OS so I thought I'd give Mandriva a proper go.

Before I jump in I do have one question I'd like to know, how does 64-bit work on Mandriva?
Is it like debian/ubuntu where you have to set up a chroot to run 32-bit apps, or is it more like openSUSE where 32-bit and 64-bit apps can run side-by-side transparently?

I find chroot a bit of a pain in the bum so I would prefer the openSUSE way or install the 32-bit version.

It runs both 32bit and 64bit, no chroot. For some reason, after I installed it off the "Free DVD", I had configured it to boot straight into X in my users account, but could not shut it down via main menu log-out, it did not install kdm, which is the KDE window manager for logging in and out. So from a terminal as root I would shut it down or re-boot with either of these two commands:

The first one shuts it down properly, the second re-starts the computer. Shutting it down most any other way shuts it down improperly and you get file system errors. Now I can't remember if I installed KDM from the disc or from repositories, I think I had to get it from repositories after setting them up here:

http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

After installing KDM I had the proper switches in the log-out menu for shutting down or re-starting. I also installed Mandriva 2007 32bit from the same DVD on my laptop that has 32bit Pentium M processor, it installed KDM on that one. Other than the KDM issue, there is one update for open office that shows up in the list and can't be installed, not a big deal, they may even have taken care of that issue by now as it's been a couple weeks since I checked for updates.

Other than that, it's very nice.