I have been a Mandrivia user for a few years now. I chose Mandriva, then Mandrake, for one simple reason URPMI (ie. software installer). Lets face it, they are all linux with a few tweaks. At the time Mandrivia was one of the top distros but lately it seems Ubuntu has really leaped ahead of the competition. So my question is why? What does it offer that would convince me to make the switch. I obviously want to try a new distro, just trying to do some homework before putting the time in.

Any advice you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Why is easy. Successful advertising. Most new users want to jump on a bandwagon, and Ubuntu has a nice one going. As an experienced user, tho, your considerations should be somewhat different. If you're serious about changing, consider Debian rather than one of it's juniors. The move from URPMI to APT will be a real eye-opener. Why Debian...A Sales Pitch

i use ubuntu and i switched off of mandrake a few years ago, so my mandrake info is a bit dated, and my ubuntu bias is there.
why? well, both are extremely easy to set up, very user friendly.. i suppose because its based on debian which is as rock-solid as they come. The user community is vast, have a look at the ubuntu forums. But for me, mostly, its the end of rmp hell.
i like the style of ubuntu a lot. its like a debian desktop, the easy way. The development moves very fast because they have a lot of talented volenteers.
just some points, try out the live version if you like.
hope this helps.

Mandriva's homepage just confused me, and I don't like being told to subscribe to something. Ubuntu is free and free and free all the way, and its community support on the Ubuntu Forums (not the Ubuntu subforums of Linux Questions) is great.

Honestly speeking, I'd try many linux recently, from mandriva, suse, fedora, yoper, redhat, centos and etc. Ubuntu is the best desktop distro for my laptop acer aspire 1680.

The most important reason is:-
1. My ACPI battery work out of the box!! this is amazing because acer acpi is buggy and normally we need to hack the kernel source code manually. It will take much time, ubuntu is helping acer laptop users!

2. Good documentation, good support meaning good future. I have successfully install everything I need in my laptop, included eye candy xgl.

3. Large repository, I no need to download manually needed package and compile manually, included kxdocker and etherape.

4. ubuntu also commit that it will always free, from not to future.

Regards,
Ks

As far as I know Mandriva is just as free. You don't have to subscribe to anything in order to download and use the free (as in totally opensource) version. Its funny that people mention Mandriva and Ubuntu because they remind me of the evolution of Linux distros. Mandrake at one point got all the love and praise just like that which Ubuntu enjoys at the moment. At one time the fashionable distros were Redhat and Debian (they were obviously others before that like Storm and Slack), then Mandrake, then Gentoo, and now Ubuntu. I wonder which Linux is going to be the next fashionable one.

mandriva is free to download an use, however you need to pay to download updates etc. ultimately i stopped using mandriva for 2 reasons

1. my install was crippled and needed a clean boot
2. i needed to install updates but didn't want to be forced to pay for it

mandriva is a good distro don't get me wrong, well, it always was fine when i used mandrake 10.1 i don't know if it was just me, but after installing mandriva 2006 i noticed it didn't run as fast as 10.1 did

i've just downloaded kubuntu last night. not 100% sure if it'll end up being my primary os, given i like my gaming. but i need linux for some scripting i'm working on for websites and stuff, so it's just a lot easier to test in a linux environment. heard a lot of good things about it so we'll see

Wow, very well put reddazz. I never thought it that way, but I've been there: One time I loved Mandrake, then Redhat, then Slackware, then SuSE, now Ubuntu.

Why I've chosen Ubuntu? Well, the Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide is a big plus. I have been searching after a distribution which had such an easy to follow documentation made for the "average" and bellow average user for a long time . I'm not sure which level I'm today(user level-wise), but sometimes I want simple solutions to simple problems and Ubuntu is the very first one to provide that.

Second, I wanted a distribution with plenty of packages available and with a good package management. Compiling things were taking too long and fixing dependencies has always been a pain. I've used apt-get with Redhat 7.3 - 9.0 on the past, but from time to time I got things very screwed. However, that gave me a little "taste" of apt-get's power. I knew that Debian was the way to go so...

Of to Debian I went. Debian potato 2.x was the version if I remember right. Installer sucked. Worst I have ever used. Ever. Release cycles back then was awful. The "stable" release was older than my Nokia mobile(if you can call that "mobile" at all today. Looks more like a phone booth). I used Debian Potato as a server for a while, but did not want to use on my desktop. It was just too old. I went back to SuSE and loved it. Still one of my favorite distros to date.

But Ubuntu, and later Xubuntu got my attention. It was everything I expected from a distro: Great doc, well supported community and it goes beyond of being free. You can actually order FREE Ubuntu CD's from their homepage, which is great for peoples low on bandwidth.

For you to have an idea of how easy, yet powerful, Ubuntu is (thanks to the community writing great tutorials), take this example: I wanted to install Eclipse WTP, Sun's Java and Apache Tomcat in Ubuntu. Ten seconds on google and I found this:

http://flurdy.com/docs/eclipse/install.html

Try to top that with any distro and you are in for a very rough ride, unless you know what you are doing. Basically, anything I ever needed to do with Ubuntu, it was only a matter to either go to the Unnoficial Guide or to google.com, type Ubuntu + <whatever I need>. It saved me precious time that I used with more important stuff then trying to fix a dependency to install zsnes(just an example) from source.

Another thing that got my attention: One single CD. Most distros were going DVD's or even 3-5 CD's. I don't need all that, for crying out loud. I prefer to install what I want later. And don't let the one single disk size fool you. There won't be many applications an average user will need to install with the default Ubuntu distro. From games to OpenOffice: It is all there...

EDIT: My Debian rant does not apply to current Debian releases... they have fixed the installer, which is pretty much the same as Ubuntu pre-Dapper release, in my opinion ^_^

Mandriva Free is totally free and that includes any updates to the OS. Easyurpmi has a list of all the Mandriva Free mirrors where you can download the isos, do a network install or get any updates. There is also a link to the PLF repos which has stuff like nvidia drivers, codecs etc.

reddazz, that could be new then as i don't ever recall me being able to get updates off the free download. last time i used it was over a year ago so that free mandriva update is very welcome

if it has always been there then i was just being thick and didn't notice it... ah well

I've done my fair share of distro hopping. Firstly Debian Potato (you are right that the installer was terrible), Redhat, Mandrake, Suse etc. These days I use Gentoo more than any other distro or OS, but I guess its because I like to have total control of my system and I have the time to tinker (which I don't have to do once the system is setup the way I want).

I quite agree with you about Ubuntus strengths. One advantage it has over some other desktop distros is that it has a very good pr and marketing machine on top of a reasonably good distro. This is where the likes of Novell/Suse and Mandriva have failed. They have good products, but are hopeless at pr, marketing and community relations. I think that Ubuntu needs to provide more GUI tools to administer the system, for it to be classed as totally newb friendly. I've seen many complaints by new users about having to use the command line to do basic admin tasks. I don't mind the CLI, but maybe thats because when I started with Linux, you had very few gui config tools (linuxconf being the most popular).

i've never had a problem using the command line myself, regardless of when i first started using linux a few years ago or now as i know my way round the command line. i think a lot of this could be due to being used to using ms dos, which was all command line. is it possible a fair number of those complaining never really used dos?

i don't have a problem with more gui features being added, its all good as far as i can see

Its always been that way. I was a Mandrake/Mandriva user for years and I only ever subscribed to the club once (just to save the company from folding). Many people got confused by the introduction of the subscription thing and thought that Mandriva was going to be a commercial only distro, but Mandriva has never charged for the free version or updates for it.

The good thing about Ubuntu is that it has made it clear that it will be free as is price and freedom right from the outset.

I agree if you are used to linux then debian is the way to go
The only advantage ubuntu has (or Kubuntu which i am currently giving a try) over debian is the integration and ease with wireless.
Mind you i am having probs with mine now but at least it worked for a bit

The other thing i dont like about ubuntu is it doesnt really have a root user account and has some easy but fiddly work arounds and its not nearly as secure i'm sure

ah well, at least i wasn't the only one who got confused