I started useing Mandrake/Mandrive with v.10.0 Community and have upgraded as each version was released. I feel that Mandriva was premature in the release of the 2006 version. It does boot faster but that's about all, I have not found it to be any faster in overall preformance. I have successfully been able to install Nvidia drivers in every release till I installed 2006.0 and now no matter what trick I try I cannot make it work. I am not running any exotic setup and it has always worked in the past. I read that very few if any are experiencing issues with the PowerPack edition though, makes me wonder what tweaks they have done to the drivers or to the Xserver. At anyrate I do feel that its a poor way to force people to either aquire a boxed set or membership. All in all its a good distro but a little dissapointing as there seemed to be no forward movement. If you install KDE 3.4.2 in a 2005LE box you have a better system, of course this is just my opinion.

mandriva seems to be quite a good os, after having used it for a while and compared it to other systems, its a very attactive sollution.
i just dont agree that its worth a 5 (from the previous review). its a free os and quite a fine one too. simple and strait-foreward instalation and setup. only problam is the lack of recent vga drivers.

With all the "issues" I've ever had with Mandrake/Mandriva I still prefer it to Red Hat/Fedora or SuSE pre and post Novell.

Set up on just about any kind of hardware just works, which is really what a distro should do.

It boots in a flash, relatively speaking, and is highly polished and simply works like it should out of the box, as it were. (In my case out of the torrent.) For a lot of the things I do I just install it and, except for upgrades and updates, forget it.

It simply roars on my dual core AMD box. :-)

It seems, though, that the current version of Xorg doesn't like Nvidea drivers for some reason and Mandriva chose not to roll back to a previous version that did.

The program kat, which is the basis of a desktop search engine, seems to cause all kinds of problems on 32 bit machines and I've removed it on all of them. My 64 bit box doesn't seem as affected unless it's just that kat is monopolizing one core leaving me with the other. Kat it not ready for prime time.

One bother, though rather minor in the scheme of things, is the decision not to include a fair number of server packages with the regular and Silver member versions of the distro. (Roughly equivalent to Power Pak and Power Pak Pro.) It does force one into some playing post install to get things going and, while it's not all that hard it seems to me to be time consuming where I didn't have to spend that kind of time before.

All that taken into account (and more) I'd recommend this to any Linux newbie, windows doubter who says that Linux is to hard to install or Linux veteran.

I have used Damn Small Linux and SuSE in the past but Mandriva is a great OS. It can detect all my USB devices and I can access them easily.

The programs featured in Mandriva (using KDE) are easy to use and great for Windows Users as you can still save under Windows format.

The KDE or GNOME enviroments are easy to get the jist of and all the menu's are easy to understand.

I would mostly recommend this OS for people who want to start using Linux and are migrating from Windows, but also for people who are experianced with Linux.

Besides the installion of new software problem I've been having, this is an all round good OS.

If you are a n00b and want to trylinux to getused to an occasional command line that this distro is for you. You rarely have to use a command line becuase the GUI is so powerful. I had my wireless on my laptop set up in 15 mins.

I've been with Mandriva for a long time, and Mandriva 2006 has been really good. It has some more integration with things like clamav and it's a little faster running. It does have a few bugs here and there. I'm thinking about switching though because the quality of the product is going down as the company is getting more and more oriented with making money in my opinion. Still, this is a good OS, easy to use and learn on.

I've been with Mandriva for a long time, and Mandriva 2006 has been really good. It has some more integration with things like clamav and it's a little faster running. It does have a few bugs here and there. I'm thinking about switching though because the quality of the product is going down as the company is getting more and more oriented with making money in my opinion. Still, this is a good OS, easy to use and learn on.

Have used Mandake/Mandriva since 2000. Have found it to be a stable distro even when in cooker. Will continue to use and recommend it to all those Windoze people who are complaining about cost of windoze programs

i loved mandrake 9.0 and had a fantastic run with it. never upgraded cause i believe in not fixing something that ain't broke..i bought this from a company that specialize in linux distro's and couldn't be happier. some problems but only 3 hrs to rectify them and all works well. bit peeved cause i lost konqueror as a browser(it suffers winflaws problem of going slow. firefox works tho). loved to use konqueror but some concessions are needed. absolutely love kaffiene, its the answer to my wishes.. better than mand 9.0 in some ways.. well like all linux distros it can only get better..(not like winflaws that goes backwards first and never catches up).. comfiguring mandriva did take some thinking as i'm use to the menu being arranged differently but love the change and think i can bible bash more winflaws users with it.he he he.. it took me 7 hrs to fix winflaws xp's problems(i need both and my system is dual boot) amd 64 processor confused winflaws but i haven't looked up enhansing(spelt it wrong hey) linux to recognise the processor yet(may be my next headache who knows)... enjoy mandriva like i plan to!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'v started with Mandrake 8.1 and tried almoust every new version.2006 is the best.Works fine for me from september 2005.No crashes,no restarts.

The installation on my HP nx9110 laptop was very fast and easy. Almost everything were identified right out of the box, except the wireless card which I had to install manually. A small problem with ndiswrapper had me downloading an older version to get to work. Also sometimes it crashes with no apparent reason, but its only a matter of time until I figure it out. Recommended for new people.

I installed mandriva 2006. It can't detect my USB wireless adapter. In fact, it detects it as a scanner! :))

Having moved over to an AMD 64bit I chose to instal Mandriva2006. Overall it is a very good distro but reading the review above and trying it for a few days i dont think it compares to the Suse 10 i'm used to.
I didnt like the way you have to pay to join the "club" for online updates
I didnt like the fact that I never got the otion to name the mount points of my numerous partitions
I especially despised the part that called my partitions "windows c" "windows c2" etc as I dont even have windows on there
I didnt like the fact that it over installed my bootloader and didnt detect the suse instal but I got the impression it was only looking for a windows instal. Suse repair disc managed to find both distros and set a working boot loader.
Suse has Yast where you can add, delete or search for installed packages all at one screen. Mandriva insists on a screen for install, a screen for remove, the same with hardware and network settings.
But i
as i said overall it looked good, seemed secure and was easy to add ndiswrapper.
The only reason i dont reccomend this product is that Suse 10 is better.

I use this distribution on both my server and my laptop. My server runs the x86_64 version and my laptop is a x86 version.

After my install all of components, except my sd card reader, was found and works. The wireless card in my laptop was no problem.

i tested it in allmost all way's. like it so mutch that i went out and purchased the advanced version of this os. the download version did everything i ever wanted it to do execpt one thing. my atheros wlan card was only supported with the purcahsed version. in any other way, i just love this one.

for servers it may not be that intresting cuz it's not that super fast, but with the webmin package every noob can get a large server running in no time.

for desktop use it is just what you need. you can edit allmost every part of it and u dont have to go in console.

even for beginners it just rules

Mandriva 2006 is a great OS and I love it.

Mandriva2006.0 is an amazing release. It's got a good feel to it. My only beef with it, is that annoying "Kat" program. There's no way to kill it, and I have no idea what it does. At first glance one may come to the conclusion that it's the KDE Desktop Search Environment, but everytime I attempt to use it, it's still scanning. So, I just close it. When I say there's no way to kill it, what I mean is, I can't uninstall the package easily without taking out some very necessary dependencies. Also, I haven't been able to find a way to disable it from running at startup.

Aside from Kat, Mandriva2006.0 is an amazing release.

I an a newbie to Linux and found Mandriva 2006 easy to get started with and to set-up. The KDE part of it is the downside. It does not display most web sites properly. I have installed flash player at least I think I have, but a lot of the pictures and icons still do not display on most web sites. Back to the positive side, Mandriva installed all of my hardware with no problem, everything works great even my Kodak digital camera. I also love the security of Linux as compared to Windows. What a difference! For any newbie this is a great distribution to learn on. Now it would be almost perfect if I could get Fire Fox for my browser!

I've always liked Mandrake products, but they've been really buggy since 8.0 .
Mandriva 2006 seems to be reversing that trend.
After the free version worked splendidly* I purchased the for-pay version and a membership.
*Neither the free nor paid version automatically installed my onboard wireless, although both were configurable and working post-install. Neither free nor paid version can use my built-in SD reader. Both versions installed fine and correctly config'd all other hardware including both Nvidia and ATI video, and both Nvidia and ATI proprietary drivers installed fine and improved video performance.
Post install it gets difficult to add software for either version, as URPMI is crap software mgmt. Getting YUM or APT4RPM is a little challenging but well worth it as both systems are vastly superior to URPMI.
Please note that I'm talking about ease of installing this as a distro on bog standard x86 desktop, new x86_64 laptop and desktop, and c3 mini-itx systems.
This is a great generalists desktop/workstation. You can get betterhardware support from the paid SuSE 10 distro, better servers or task-specific performance from Debian, or security from OpenBSD... but all these ditros are tops.

From Mandrake 10.1 to Mandriva 2006, if you can't upload and install rpms what good is it. Many of the packages from urpmi or through MCC to not install. Waste way to much time finding out that its not the operator but the distro that isn't right.

Use this bloatware when you are 100% new to "linux" but be sure to buy 10000Mb 533333Mhz ran first... This distro will make you computer heavy!

I recommend Mandriva 2006 for Linux new users who are used to using Windows. Its installation is straight forward and much can be left to default settings without worries.
It can dedect hardware very well still drivers are not there or don't work well enough. I had to install drivers for my Speed Touch DSL modem (very daunting process), though the Hardware control center of Mandriva has dedected it from the first moment, still wasn't able to make it work? For Nvidia I needed to install the driver by downloading their installer and it made my OpenGL apps work (before they would cause X server to exit). I still can't get my on board sound card to work (It is detected, Yes but just doesn't work?!!)
I think the free distro is actually a good demo for the priced ones as it makes sure that you know it is able to know what your hardware is but promises that drivers will be available in the priced distor. Someone said the company is getting more money oriented, seems right.

I've been with Mandrake since version 7.2 and can say Mandrake was what got me hooked on Linux, the usability factor is high, and the installer is flexible enough to allow novice users to get started quickly and let professional users tweak every aspect of the installation process right up to the bootloader's options.
Some downsides have been over the past two years that Mandrake, now Mandriva, seems to drop some stitches here and there when it comes to leaving the freedom to the user; you can clearly see the corporate influence at work in Mandriva lately. You now have to deal with optional membership plans that enable you to unlock or acquire additional software or functionality, which wasn't Mandriva's old formula. Their old formula was to provide to the user the most complete, rock solid Linux based operating system, at no loss of functionality. That has changed to optional but rather highly advertised paid membership plans to get rid of intentionally planted barriers such as the inability to install Macromedia Flash player into Firefox without a paid Mandriva membership, if you don't have a membership going with them you simply get redirected to Mandriva's website where you are prompted to get a membership. Basically that leaves you with two choices: either you get your subscription or you remove Firefox and get a new installation package from Mozilla.org and install it again, and then try the Flash player thing again.
Another downside besides the corporate burn marks you'll find that some very common packages such as MySQL, Samba and PHP have been altered slightly to keep the Mandriva system working in harmony. While you won't really notice this if you don't dig around, if you -do- require some of those altered settings to be set 'correctly' you might experience breakage in Mandriva specific software.

Overall: Very nice distribution, highly flexible and configurable
Downsides: The smell of corporate burn marks - Open Source having a tough breather here, you'll remember Mandriva has had a rather poor financial history which created these burn marks we now see in their distribution. Hopefully, we won't see more severe burns in the future.

Definately recommended for the beginning and average user as well as the advanced user.

Hi all, I'm completely new to Linux, having downloaded Mandriva 2006 Free a couple of months ago. I found it easy to install on a dual-boot Linux/Windows machine.

I would have given this product a 10 but for two reasons - Driver availablity for TI/Edimax wireless cards and the difficulty in installing new programs. I think the latter is probably because of my inexperience rather than a problem with the OS though.

As a 'dyed-in-the-wood' Windows user, I have to say that it would be very helpful for developers of new programs or drivers to include an installer script, but then again, there are so many distros and people have their systems set up differently, so I don't know if that is possible.

Recently, because of driver availability problems, I have downloaded Fedora Core 5 in the hope that my wireless cards will will work, but found that the drivers supplied with my Edimax wireless card are for Fedora Core 2.4 and 2.6 only. It is very frustrating, but when I consider the fact that Linux is free and comes with so much already packaged, I can't complain too much about it.

I have been recommending Mandriva Linux to friends and colleagues as a cheaper and more stable OS than Windows and must say that it is living up to it's reputation.

Regards

John

I've been using Mandrake/Mandriva since Mandrake 9.2. We still use Mandrake 9.2 at work as our primary desktop for the bulk of our users. We've nearly phased Windows out completely. With 2006, I'm testing it now, the install was smooth and quick. It's run well. I do have an issue with the updater as it's apparently decided to not like the mirror (the usc one) I chose for updates in fact I seem to be choking on all of the update mirrors. That's about the only issue I've had to date.

Mandriva 2006 is a good distro has a lot to recommend it.

1) The Control Center is well laid out and easy to follow.
2) It is easy to use and a good distro for introducing Windows users to Linux
3)A quick easy install


Not so good points :

1) Dependency problems when doing updates. Synaptic which is used in Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS is far more efficient than update center.

2)When updating to KDE 3.5.1 I suffered KDE crash notices. It's the reason I started to check out and try other distro's.

Whilst Mandriva 2006 is a good distro, the RPM dependency problems meant I never felt confident enough to use it as a replacement for windows XP.

That honour went to PCLinuxOs 0.92 in May. 0.92 because it was the first distro that inspired the confidence I needed to use it on a daily basis.

0.92 itself has subsequently been replaced by 0.93a in August, which is even better.

PCLOS 0.93a is a cracking distro, the best I've tried to date and the one I would recommend to new users over Mandriva 2006 and 2007.

Sorry if I seem to be finishing on a Negative point, but I have used dual boot with windows and Mandrake/Mandriva for 7 years. Unfortunately it didn't inspire me to make Linux my main OS; PCLinuxOs however did.

No matter what i say, it is still and good distro that is worth a try and I hope you have more luck with it than i did.

i really have the 2007 virtion but i really like the 3d desktop and fast bootloader. it is a good linux distro and my first one too.

I was not able to install nvidia drivers to this, otherwise a very stable and fast system.