Until Mandriva stops distributing or supporting Conectiva 10 give it some serious consideration as a Desktop client Or as a server. It is worth try and you can download it for free.

What does it offer over and above mandriva?

Stability and a good looking user interface.

Thorn168, you haven't actually answered the question.

I would also advise against using it as a server - when Mandriva stop supporting it, they will also not produce updates for it, leaving your server wide open for attack. This is poor advice so don't take it.

XavierP

quote:Originally posted by Boffy
What does it offer over and above mandriva? Thorn168, you haven't actually answered the question.


Oh yeah I forgot to mention the installer, the hard drive partitioning, APT-GET, and Synaptic.

XavierP

Said:

"I would also advise against using it as a server - when Mandriva stop supporting it, they will also not produce updates for it, leaving your server wide open for attack. This is poor advice so don't take it."

So what if they stop supporting it. You can still upgrade and update the kernel and the packages from the repositories.

You seem to forget that Conectiva was a founding member of the Linux consortium. Working on Standardizing the member distributions for compatibility and interoperability.

Here is the link: http://lwn.net/Articles/111389/

Furthermore, Mandriva cannot simply pull the plug on Conectiva without providing an upgrade path for the Installed Conectiva user base.

Which includes: The Brasillian government, Several banks and brasillian businesses.

Finally Conectiva was a commercial distribution which was professionally developed by a team of engineers. Unlike some other distributions which are the sole project of small group of volunteer developers.

Personally, I don't think we have seen the last of Conectiva.

No. I didn't forget about the Linux Consortium thing, I just didn't think it relevant. Mandrake came from Red Hat, both of which are corporations/companies. So I don't see what point you are making.

Apt-Get & Synaptic are available in all the Debian based distros, as well as the rpm based distros. So Conectiva isn't particularly unique in that respect.

All the distros offer stability. Admittedly, I would love to see a distro website give a disclaimer reading "warning, we only produce buggy and stable code" but it's unlikely to happen.

Unless someone forks off Conectiva, it is no more. Eventually the updates will die out. The Brazilian government will continue to be supported, as will any large entity who is prepared to pay for support (remember that Microsoft have only recently stopped offering paid for NT4 support) but I would imagine that part of the deal is that Mandriva will upgrade the desktops to their new distro. The fork issue of Conectiva could happen, but it won't be called Conectiva - Mandriva got that too.

"Unless someone forks off Conectiva, it is no more. Eventually the updates will die out.

Actually there is supposed to be a fork of Conectiva called Xavante Linux. However this seems to be vaporware.

The laws in Brasil are very different from "Anglo" laws. My impression is that Mandriva will have to continue to provide support for all Conectiva users until the "paying" Conectiva userbase disappears.

And all Mandriva will have to do is say "we would like to move you all to the latest Mandriva version as it is better supported". And, poof, Conectiva will no longer be used on the desktops.

In fact, since Conectiva probably signed a contract which would have said "upgrades to be provided at x interval", Mandriva will also be bound by that.

Since we mentioned Forking in this thread...

Do you know by chance how it is done and what it means to maintain a fork?

Thanks,

Thorn168

To create a fork from Conectiva just get all their source code, put on a cvs server somewere and start changing it together with other people to build your own distro ^^

I'm from Brasil and my first distro was Conectiva 8. I bought it at a store and it was a very good distro. A little complicated for a beginner, but a good one.

I'm not worried about the end of Conectiva and from what I read it will be merged to Mandriva on the 2006 version. My current distro is Mandriva.