One question
I am donwloading Mandriva from this page:
Mandriva-Linux-Free-2006-DVD.i586.iso

Is this the free mandriva without realplayer, flash, adobe acrobar reader, nvidia...?

What else will I miss?

How can I install those packages if I need them?
Is there something similar to apt repositories, that give them free?
like the Penguin Liberation Front?

Yes it is the free software. No it does not include those items.

See the link in my signature, and select the repository mirrors that are close to you and yes, there are PLF repositories.

urpmi is the Mandriva equivalent of apt

Ok, thanks for the info
Still need to wait 27 hours for the download to finish, I decided to download the 2006 DVD.

So, in my opinion, Ubuntu is the best distro, because it has a great community, I really think it's important for the end-user to have a lot of documentation, but that is just my opinion. I don't NEED easy and nice setup tools, since I'm ok with reading a bit.

But this Mandriva is for my mom who lives in the States, I want to upgrade her PC for Xmas, and install Mandriva, I really want her to use the internet, use Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice), print, use Yahoo DSL Pro!... without worrying about viruses or anything.

So, were can I find a Mandriva Guide or something?
Something similar to www.ubuntuguide.org, so that I can know how to install DVD playback, plugins and such

I've been using Linux since 2003, I even rent a RHE3 server, www.GamingAccess.com

I don't want to give the impression that I'm a newbie, so don't explain me everything, the basics will do.

I really appreciate your support, I want to use Mandriva quick and easily

There's not really a good, cohesive guide like that for Mandriva. Although a lot of problems are easily solved by posting here and someone will be able to help you quickly, sometimes even within minutes. Also, check out the Official Mandriva Forums (http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/index.php) Adam Williamson from Mandriva is always floating around there helping anyone with any problems or questions they might have.

As for the DVD playback, I would suggest you set up your repositories as mentioned. Once that is set up run this command(as root):

urpmi libdvdcss2

That will download the proper package. There is also a gui tool accessible from the Configuration utility called RPMdrake.

Most Mandriva utilities are named "something"drake eg. the partition utility is diskdrake.

Also, once you have your repositories set up, you won't need your installation DVD anymore. If you want to install new software, you search for it using urpmi. It will then download and install it right away, no hassle. If it's not available from urpmi, then most applications will have an RPM package available that should work with Mandriva.

Hope your mom likes it!

http://mandrivausers.org/ - forums, faqs, tips and tricks
http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/commun.../documentation - official documentation from Mandriva
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Main_Page - LQ Wiki, many articles have Mandriva-specific sections

Yeah it'd be a great idea if there was a Mandrivafaq or mandrivaguide similar to fedorafaq.org and ubuntuguide.org

ok guys thanks for the help
so what is the main free Mandriva help site? This forum in Linuxquestions.org?
One thing I didn't liked about Mepis was that it was just starting and Ubuntuforums.org had a gazillion post, Mepis forums weren't very active.

I would say that if you have money to support Mandriva it's a great distro. However WinXP cost $100 back in 2000, if you divide that by (12*5) that's a VERY low value per month ($1.8 jaja), Mandriva costs around $18 per month. Really, for me, it's expensive.

Microsoft may have it's flaws but it's gaming is second to none. think about it, people should use Mac (easy of use, no viruses) if Apple wouldn't be so expensive and (if you think about it) if games will work. Same for linux (not so easy to use, but free) but again, no games.

The video gaming industry moves a lot of money, I've been in the E3 expo 3 times and believe me, it's a massive industry, DirectX is amazing, making Windows a complete multimedia solution.

I don't like it, but I need it, I do mods for PES 5 every now and then, plus I love the game.

I am supporting Transgaming now, that I can afford AND it's a reasonable price

So in terms of economics, how well is Mandriva doing? I heard it had problems some years ago.
SuSE I mean Novell had a bad semester, but again it's Novell, there's a lot of money there
Ubuntu, come on, the founder Mark even went to space to hear opera, tough foundations (though he must have listened to U2 in the space)
RedHat always seems like top of the line company, their subscriptions are so expensive (for instance all of www.ev1.net uses them)
How well is Mandriva?

One thing is for sure, they have the most expensive distro. At the office we bought SuSE 8.2 and 9.1 (box, manual...) for like $60
actually that pays for the userguide and admin guide, two very nice books that come included. You could almost say it's free

The reason Mandriva was having problems a few years ago is because they weren't getting enough revenue for their product. They increased the price of the boxed product and club membership so that this wouldn't happen again. They've gained in popularity and have managed to aquire Lycoris and Connectiva in the process. I would think that they are doing quite well for themselves.

As for the main help site for mandriva, You will probably have more luck for a speedy response here on LQ, but the Mandriva forums are the best for specific, mandriva related issues. There really isn't a main site that I've found yet. but I love it here at LQ and any problems I've had have been fixed within a couple days with the help of people here.

The *official* Mandriva Forums are at Mandriva Club. But the best forums I have found are at MandrivaUsers.org. Of course, there is a great deal of help, here at LQ, as well.

I don't think that's a very good comparison - Mandriva is free and you get a huge amount of free software with it. All the stuff you'd have to either pirate or pay for on Windows (CD burning, office, security programs, utilities, graphics editing etc.) is all free and included with it. I don't know what all that stuff would add up to on Windows (it depends on your requirements) but it'd be a lot more than $100 for XP itself or the price of Mandriva.

You should be able to find that info on their website - they're a public, listed company.

Actually I think Redhat is - have you seen the prices for RHEL subscriptions!

I downloaded Mandriva 2006 DVD (free edition)

I am trying to install slmodem-2.9.10, I downloaded from the page, uncompressed it, and excecute
#make

I receive the following
make -C modem all
make [1]: Entering directory /slmodem-2.9.10
gcc -Wall -g -O -I. -DCONFIG_DEBUG_MODEM - modem.o -c modem.c
modem.c:In function *modem_reset*
modem.c:1701: error: Invalid storage class for functions * sregs_init*
modem.c:1713: warning: implicit declaration of functions * sregs_init*
modem.c: At top level:
modem.c:1727:error: static declaration of *sregs_init& follows non-static declaration
modem.c:1713:errorrevious implicit declaration of * sregs_init& was here
make[1]: *** [modem.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leavue directory /slmodem-2.9.10
make: *** [modem] Error 2

I installed the linux sources, gcc, and all the make and dev packages that I could find.

This is really not a good way to start with this Mandriva test

any chance that I could download the rpm package of this, without paying $120 at Mandriva.com?

forgive me but I think it's WAY to expensive, I could deal with a modem, I could install netbeans, eclipse, nvidia, java and flash by myself, but without modem this doesn't makes any sense

Sorry, I can't help you with this specifically, but I do have some advice that probably will improve your chances to get help.

I would suggest you make your own thread rather than piggybacking on this thread, you will for sure get more responses that way. Not many people look in multi-page threads to help with problems such as this

If I buy a Mandriva Online membership, will that allow me to install java, flashplayer and such?

One thing I REALLY DISLIKE about this distro, is that firefox has been modified. It doesn't allows you to install flashplayer normally, or java, it fails

In Ubuntu flashplayer installs in 30 seconds within firefox, here, it's obvious that it has been modified in order to force users to go to mandrake

So I guess that I have to manually install
1) firefox
2) java
3) flash
All the rest of the distro seems really fine, it's one of the best distros I've used for sure, let's see if there are lots of packages with the EASY URMPI repositories that I'm downloading

I guess that's why people don't use Mandriva THAT much, it's open source but really it's not that open you know

As far as my modem, I got it working!
I downloaded slmodem-2.9.9e-pre1.tar.gz wich compiled good in GCC 4.0, and now it works. Only thing that I don't have is the sound of the modem.

One question
Will I be able to download
1) kshowmail
2) eclipse
3) java
4) flash player
5) dvd, mp3... playback

with all these repositories that I installed?

I notice that the repositories are saved in
/var/lib/urpmi

From what I remember in Fedora and RedHat, this system is MUCH MORE powerfull than yum (I love the GUI)

One question, do you think that there are more people using Mandriva and enabling repositories such as these than SuSE?

That will make Mandriva and Ubuntu the best distros, since (from what I think), having lots of good software in the respositories is the key to make the distro outstand from the others

WOW mandriva surely looks amazing
one question though
how can I make sure that the /var/cache/urpmi aren't deleted after reboot?