I am not trying to steer anyone away from Mandriva it is a was the first real linux distro I ever used and I liked the look and feel of it.So those of you interested in Mandriva and are new to gnu/linux I suggest to stay the route of Mandriva.Linux has always been free and I hope stays that way.
I chose suse not only because it is a good distro, but I feel Novell will take it in the right direction.There intentions are in the right place for now. And like most of us.They want to see linux grow to be the dominate desktop.I don't look at it as just supporting Novell or Linux. I look at it as putting MS behind us finally and giving people a choice. I don't feel I should have to pay for all software.Some programs are worth money others are not.It should be up to the end user to decide what a program is worth not company's like MS.As far as Mandriva they need to take notes from SuSe. 10.0 does not have free posted all over it which is a plus also it offers better hardware support.So why can't Mandriva do the same.Because they want you to buy not download for free.If you can get something for free why buy it then?To support the company thats why.I choose to support Novell.

there is no iso image for 2006 Final in the download sites, why?

I'm not sure if having Free posted on it is that bad of a thing. I use AVG Free Edition all the time on my Windows machines, and have no problem. Plus, if I recall correctly, the "free" in Mandriva isn't that hard to get rid of. Change the background and the side panel on KDE. (Two things most users do anyways)


I really want to like SuSE, but I think it's funny you mention hardware support, I find just the opposite to be the case. First, I'd rather compile the drivers with their installer for nVidia (makes for much better stability and speed).

The second thing is, I ALWAYS have some major piece of equipment not work with SuSE. I haven't tried 10.0 yet, but 9.3, 9.2 and 9.0 all could not find my sound card on my laptop (it's a 4-5 year old laptop witha PIII, Intel sound card too...so why wouldn't that be supported?). Then I was attempting to put 9.3 on my mom's business computer, which was built by me in 2002. It did not recognize her soundcard either, nor her wireless card. I had to use a reference driver for the wireless and then I never got the sound working fully. (It worked after fiddling for about 2 hours, but it was far from good quality or stable) So I finally just put Mandriva 2005 (and later 2006) on there, worked perfectly for the wireless card and the sound card since she lives and works over an hour away from me, I really don't have the time to mess with something that should just work.

Again, I want to like SuSE and I'm going to try 10 on my laptop today even, I just need better hardware support.

So far, Mandriva has done things right for me.