Hello,

I am fairly new to linux and I am trying to decide which distro I'd like to focus my learnig attention on. I have had SuSE (didn't recognize much of my hardware) and now have both ubuntu 64-bit and i384, however, I have read great reviews about mandriva so I would like to try it. However, I cannot decide which version to install and run on my system.

Again I am still new to linux so I'd like some advice about which linux version to install. Either the newely released 2006 RC1 or the 10.1.

Any oppinions?

Mandriva 2006 LE Official should be coming out very soon. So I'd wait for that.
If you can't wait, I'd go for 2006 LE RC1, and then reinstall/upgrade once the final comes out.

The main reasons for using a newer version would be (likely) better hardware detection and newer software in mandriva URPMI repositories, that you probably will tap into (google 'easyurpmi' after installation).

Neither
- 10.1 is considered a little old, though *not* obsolete. However, 10.1 official is probably the safest choice.
- 2006beta: NO! As the name says, it is beta: it is for developers, and still has some bugs; this is normal.

I advise 10.2, also known as "2005 Limited Edition" (I don't know why: it is absolutely not limited in any way).

Yves.

i'm not an experienced linux user but i did install 2006 (a couple weeks ago) flawlessly and it runs great. I have had no problems.

One thing though is that web collage screensaver didn't work, but then it didn't work on 2005 for me either. I did some searching and it works now.

theYinYeti: Limited Edition because it was not released as a boxed set.

The betas and rc1 are full of bugs, so if you are not really experienced with Linux, you should avoid any distros still in their testing phase.

Well,

I tried 2006 RC1 and I'm not having any luck with it at all. I can't get online, can't mount my fat32 partition ( I can view it but can't write to it). It doesn't recognize my flash drive, or maybe its my USB ports. Too many things not working on install. I've read that if a distro can't recognize two or more things it's probably not a good distro for your computer. So, I'm following that advice and I'm going to try 2005 LE. As well as the advice from this thread that I should have listened to.

Well... My first distro was 10.1... It was nice to see a total linux n00b could install a linux OS with minimal problems. Since then ,Like 3 or 4 months, Got Mandriva LE 2005 tried that, played with that for a while. Everyone was raving about Ubuntu Linux...... Tried that, didn't like the way it was difficult to see or write to a fat32 partition... Downloaded Kubuntu Linux, played with that for a few days, because I wanted to try out k desktop 3.4.2... But it didn't want to access the fat32 partitions well either... Maybe there is an easy way to make them more accessable, but for a n00b? i'ts difficult.. So I went and got Mandriva LE 2006 beta, As most folks are telling you it's beta...... It ran not bad but it had a few issues and I wasn't smart enough to figure out. So..... After all that went back to Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005. and upgraded to K Desktop Environment 3.4.2 and got Superkaramba up and running, And loving it.. With the help of this fine forum of helpful folks....

Ok.. I'll quit now...........................................

I'd recommend 2005LE. Its much faster than 10.1, especially on older hardware (I'm using a 1999-vintage 433 MHz eMachine to post this) and is stable.

I wouldn't recommend any beta release.

Thank you for all of the advice. After trying both versions, I've decided upon 2005 LE.

try 2006 RC1, it is stable.

Don't do that! Don't recommend beta and RC!

If 2006RC1 is stable for you, good. But I know of many others for which it is not stable. As long as it is not a final release, there are bugs: it depends on the hardware you use.
This release is part of Mandriva QA process.

Yves.

I am using 2006 RC1 and there are still a lot of bugs particularly with xorg. I don't think its right to recommend testing releases to people without a lot of experience using Linux.

Sorry, I did try 2006 RC1 and found too many problems. So I'm now using 2005LE.

Beginning wrote:
How did you do that?

I've "installed" 2006 free edition (the only edition available from Australian suppliers). At least 3 problems so far:
1. kalarm cannot be configured - whenever you try, it crashes.
2. alsaconf is not recognised (needless to say, "the soundcard is not supported") and there are only partial (therefore, incomprehensible) instructions on how to configure alsa.
3. when activating networking (not working, of course) through the control centre, the control centre tried to install additional software without prompting me to insert the installation disk.

If I could upgrade KDE on 2005, I'd opt for that as one option on my new computer. Otherwise, I've had it up to here with Mandriva. Have you ever tried communicating with the company?