I started off by giving the KDE4 live CD a whirl and I was pleasantly surprised. This is the first KDE4 distro that seems somewhat usable to my eyes. The stupid desktop plasmoid was gone and the desk top arrangement look very familiar for an ex-KDE3 user. Like always with Mandriva, and unlike Ubuntu, the visual appearance is very pleasing with rather bring blue design, beatiful desktop login animations, wallpapers and so on – this is something that Mandriva has always done well. However the Kicker menu was disappointing as always:”K-K-K-K-K….” – when do the KDE developers realize that starting every application name with a “K” looks retarded and is just bad for usability?

Over to Gnome version then and I ended up also installing the desktop and cofiguring it for my daily needs. The Gnome environment is also nicely designed with pleasant theme and graphics. The default theme “La Ora” comes in many colors if the default color scheme is too bright for you. Interesting thing in comparison to Ubuntu  is that with the same basic configuration on my veteran Thinkpad T41 laptop, the Mandriva cosumes roughly 30-40 megabytes less RAM. My laptop has 1GB RAM so this usually is not a concern in web and desktop use, but this could make a difference if your PC has 512MB or less. If you want to use the ever lighter weight LXDE desktop you can do that by installing the meta-package task-lxde as using it shaves down the memory consumption further ~20 megabytes. I also tried Mandy on a Thinkpad X31 / 384MB and it was pretty responsive and perfectly usable. Besides memory footprint the overt all responsiveness is good and my subjective evaluation is that Mandriva is noticeably faster than the latest Ubuntu in desktop usage.

Mandriva also uses a 6 month release cycle so the changes in between versions are not too big. They introduced better boot speed, just like Ubuntu, and all the applications and components have been upgraded. Unlike with 2009.0 release, I did not immediately notice any serious bugs or flawed functionality. In addition to a good visual design and nice responsiveness, Mandriva also has the benefit of the Mandriv a Control Center system administration features, which would be a great addition to any distro (it’s open source, why nobody besides PCLOS is adobting it?). Mandriva traditionally has had a top notch hardware detection,  and everything was installed correctly in 2009.1 as well (Unlike Ubuntu Jaunty which installs incorrect graphics acceleration settings for old laptop ATI Radeon cards).

So if you are looking for some distro hopping I can warmly recommend to give the latest Mandriva a whirl – especially if you are looking for a KDE4 based solution, but their Gnome offer totally fine as well. You just might end up liking it.

Mandriva can be downloaded at: www.mandriva.com

As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

What went wrong since the spring of 2008

In my opinion the the ongoing half year period has been a disappointment as many distributions have been rolling out rather medium or even bad releases that don’t earn many recommendations.

In September our guest starring editor Siku raised concerns about the KDE4 desktop. The birth of KDE4 has been a lengthy process and even now, in December of 2008, we can’t say that the next generation a PC desktop is ready or even a contender to the other alternatives. Even thought the stability and features are improving release after release, the basic problem of KDE4 still exists – what is the additional value it delivers to the end user? Sure, it does introduce new features and changes some of the traditional desktop environment fundamentals, still to me it looks like it complicates things rather then resolves any usability issues. All KDE4 distros I have tried appear bloated, cluttered, more complex and slower than their KDE3.5 or Gnome alternatives. No killer applications or improved use-cases have been found.

Mandriva 2009 shipped the KDE4 as the primary desktop, but unfortunately with poor results. This release had more bugs than their 2007.x or 2008.x on release date and even though most of them may be now resolved via updates I simply don’t see the point of making beta quality releases. All they do is generate negative feedback towards the distribution and Linux in general. As release cycle of 6 months is short and the distributions come with very short support for updates (12-18 months), it is crazy that the first few months of the support period are wasted for making the release even stable!

My old favorite PCLinuxOS seems to have encountered the resource problems, as in many times is the case with small distros that focus on just a few or even a single developer. The 2008 MiniMe release was awesome and they managed to release a preview of 2009, but otherwise the updates of this rolling release distro seem to have stalled. I wish all the best for the PCLinuxOS project but at the moment their star is going down rapidly.

Ubuntu’s Intrepid Ibex we had a look at just a couple of weeks ago, and found it to be intermediate at best and definitely short of ‘intrepid’. Very slight improvements from the 8.04.1 Long Term Support version released in the spring and most Ubuntu experts still recommend the 8.04.1 edition as the primary choice, unless the newer software components are absolutely required for hardware support.

OpenSUSE 11.1 is ready to rock!

It seems that this release cycle is no different from the previous ones – openSUSE v11.1 is simply the best desktop Linux distribution out there. With the failures of the contenders during this fall, the openSUSE wins with a huge margin. The openSUSE 11.1 will be the baseline of the next commercial SLED release, so Novell and SUSE have put of huge amount of effort to this release. Our evaluation is based on the RC1 release candidate.

SUSE is often seen as a KDE minded distribution and some consider the 11.1 release to be the ‘make it or break it’ release for KDE4. Unfortunately it seems that even capable developers of openSUSE and Novell can’t get any real improvements out of it. Luckily openSUSE also has the best implementation of Gnome desktop out there – a very polished and usable desktop out-of-the-box with great attention to detail. The single bottom panel configuration with SLAB menu just works and keeps the most used applications at your fingertips.

openSUSE comes as Gnome or KDE4 LiveCDs with a very fast and easy installer. The hardware support is top notch, and it has the latest upstream improvements from Gnome v2.24 and Linux kernel 2.6.27. YaST configuration tools offer an excellent set of GUI based tools for managing your system. The Zypper package management seems to improve in every release as well. They have excellent repositories and good availability of backports which prolong the life-cycle of their releases. The community offers one-click installation links to typical end-user needs, such as restricted formats.

It is often asked that ‘when Linux is ready for the desktop?’ and I don’t think it can get much readier than this. No matter what operating system you are currently using I highly recommend you give openSUSE a look once the 11.1 stable release is out.

Go get it: http://www.opensuse.org

First of all I have to say that I am a big fan of Ubuntu because they do a lot of good for Linux. They productize the most popular(?) Linux distribution, provide good infrastructure for the user communities and gain a lot of positive publicity for Linux. I have also the understanding that Ubuntu contributes significantly to the upstream projects (Gnome, Debian, GNU/Linux). On the other hand I have a hard time understanding parts of their strategy, which in my opinion leads to intermediate releases. Pretty good, but boring, non-innovative and after all pretty damn close to the mother Debian.

From the live CD boot the latest Ubuntu looks and feels…well Ubuntu, and there has not been a lot of development for the last couple of years (6.10 Edgy Eft was the first Ubuntu version I tried). I have to say that the improvements so far to the visual aspects were a big turn-off. They consisted of a few changed icons, slight gradients in Gnome panels and a new (rather good) wallpaper and thats it. Oh yes, there is the new theme called ‘dark room’, which is even more brownish than the default. I really expected a bolder approach in re-working the user interface as Ibex is the first release after the previous Long Term Supported edition, so it would be justified to drive more radical changes and development. There are many small distributions that have been able to come out with slick visuals, so the required pieces for the puzzle do exist. For an example openSUSE, Ubuntu’s strongest contender on the Linux field, is able to deliver much more pleasing visuals that are more professionally finalized, well thought and more intuitive.

Under the hood the Ibex brings many improvements from the upstream. Gnome has been updated to 2.24 with slight improvements, the new Network Manager being perhaps the most interesting one as it now provides improvements for Wiress and GPRS/3G connectivity. The 2.6.27 Linux kernel should improve the hardware support in many areas, which is always welcomed and always an issue with Linux on the latest or less common hardware. New X.org 7.4 brings improved multi monitor support, but caused a gap in graphics card drivers which have not been updated to latest X.org revision yet (this should obviously improve over time).

The word intrepid mean something like ‘fearless’, ‘brave’ or ‘courageous’. Unfortunately the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex does not live up to it’s name. It lacks any ground braking changes, innovation in design or brave new approaches on the visuals and usability. I would really like to see the most popular Linux distribution to innovate something that would make it stand out from the crows, and especially Debian, more. Competitors like openSUSE and Mandriva are much better in this sense as they are delivering their own value adding features like YaST or Control Center for system administration. Version 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is a small incremental upgrade on the solid foundation of Ubuntu (or Debian), but are these changes worthy a new release? They seem more like a ’service pack’ to Ubuntu v8.04 Hardy Heron, if a Microsoft Windows expression is allowed here.

Unfortunately my short test period with the latest Mandy turned out to be such a turn-off, that it ended up being a very short one. Few times in the past Mandriva (formerly known as Mandrake) has hurt their reputation but slipping out a premature release, and unfortunately the history seems to repeat itself. The live CD worked as expected and followed the similar routines as the previous Mandriva releases, except for the fact that it was running KDE4 now. User is prompted for language, keyboard, and timezone settings before the desktop launches. The installer was fast and easy to follow as used to with Mandriva. First quirk I discovered was the fact that the live CD did not shut down properly, and interestingly I was able to reproduce with two very different kinds of PCs that I have handy (the Thinkpad, and an oldish desktop).

After the installation and a hard reset I had my KDE4 desktop up and running. At this point I have to emphasize that I have always favored KDE3.5 over Gnome, so I was hoping the KDE4 experience to be a pleasing one – unfortunately it wasn’t. Instead of simplifying the computer usage, the KDE4 seems to complicate it further.

The Kicker menu (KDE alternative to Windows Start menu) had no surprises, and Mandriva had wisely chosen the old-school menu rather than the Kickoff by Suse. I was very disappointed to see that the over extensive use of the letter ‘K’ in the application names has continued even in KDE4. Kontact, Ktorrent, Kopete, Kmail, Knode, KNetAttach, Kdebluetooth4…that just sucks and looks very unappealing, especially for a new user coming from the Windows land.

The KDE4 has the ability to put all kinds of widgets on the desktop, but unfortunately none of the included ones bring anything useful for the end-user. Analog clock? Dilbert comic strips? Is this really what the next generation has to offer? One very irritating detail is that whenever the mouse pointer moves over an icon or a widget, an ugly toolbar appears from out of nowhere. And what is the use for a desktop applet on the desktop containing the application icons?

Then of course there is the performance. The Thinkpad T41 is not a real powerhouse, but it runs KDE3.5 distros very nicely. Unfortunately the Mandriva One KDE4 was the most sluggish distro I have tried on this hardware and I have tried a lot of them. The memory usage was not bad, but something was dragging down the system performance. And then of course there is the much discussed stability. After my first post-install boot the Mandriva’s automatic updater picked up some updates and while retreiving them the KDE4 crashed. That was after 3 minutes of usage, or so…

And to complete the bashing of Mandriva One 2009, I have to wonder what an earth is their strategy and who are these beta quality releases for? As their 2008 editions have shown, they do have a solid baseline at their hands and they can deliver beatiful desktops for the common user. Unfortunately with their current quality their distrobution will only intrest the most dedicated Mandriva fans and the people interested in trying out the KDE4 (just to be disappointed later).

And the current state of Mandriva just ticks me off, as the do have many things right in their Linux franchise. The Mandriva baseline is good, as proven by 2008 editions and PCLinuxOS. Their hardware selection is also top notch, and so are system configuration tools. And unlike Ubuntu, the people of Mandriva can actualyl make their distros look good. In many areas they have some nice edge over the competition, but as such they are unable to utilize it.

In case you have read our articles, you know that I’ve been doing plenty of distro hopping recently. The freedom of choice is one thing that Linux fans often boast about – you can choose in between hundreds of Linux distributions, a number of desktop environments and so on. Initially this freedom seems appealing and interesting, but after a number of hops from a distro to another I have started wondering about the meaningfulness of the huge variety of distributions. And then I happened to read an article at the Linux Hater’s Blog, who makes an interesting statement:“This “choice”, as loudly as it is trumpeted, is a key reason that Linux has not made it on the desktop.” - and he is damn right about it!

The website DistroWatch.com currently lists 570 Linux distributions in their database. A majority of distros are something that you or I have never heard of, while the top of their list features corporate backed Linux distributions like Ubuntu, openSUSE, RedHat and Mandriva, but also some smaller spin-off projects such as the PCLinuxOS (my current favorite) and LinuxMint. But as we go down the list I really have to wonder what do we need all these distributions for? Do they actually contribute something for the common good? Last time I checked it was the mega distributions contributing most to the up-stream. Due to the enormous number of distributions the talent and effort needed for developing free and open-source software is fragmented, and inefficiently utilized.

And the excess freedom of choice is not limited in the distributions itself, obviously, and it actually gets even crazier under the hood. Why does every distro want to introduce their own package management system? Based on my experience the Synaptic / apt-get damn right works. RPM-based distributions on the other hand love to use their own package managements. OpenSUSE’s old ZMD plain right sucked, so they decided to make a new one called Zypper. Zyp sucks less, but still seems to be outperformed by apt-get (atleast in terms of performance). At the same time Mandriva is using their own urpmi, which has worked nice and fast for me. RedHat of course has their own package management as well – why there is no joint effort in between these RPM based distributions? I read somewhere that Conary (Foresight Linux) would be somehow revolutionary – all exceptional I found in Conary was the amazingly slow system updates. And if we go outside the package management and discuss the configuration features that the dsitros offer, it doesn’t make much more sense. Various ‘Control Panel’ -kind of graphical configuration interfaces also seem to be something that every distribution has to make them selves. Mandriva has the excellent Control Center, while openSUSE’s YaST is extremely powerful, so why they arenot utilizied by other distros?

And I don’t even want to start about the various desktop environments. KDE (3.5x) is the better desktop, and no doubt about that, but thanks to this awesome freedom of choice the killer applications seem to coming from the GTK/Gnome neighborhood, so I am either stuck with the Gnome desktop or running GTK apps on my KDE desktop.

Lets jump back to the distributions and talk more about these ‘one man shows’ that are common, but also perhaps a dying breed in the Linux world. It seems that every now and then a talented developer decides to start his own distribution. And with any luck and hard effor he may actually succeed in building a very good one, which typically gathers a small but fanatic crowd of users. The problem however is that these ‘one man shows’ tend to be developed behind closed doors, and problems arise when the one man army runs out of human resource. Mepis is an great example – several excellent releases but now the project is quickly going downhill as the developer was forced to re-enter working life. At least in Mepis they are trying to increase community involvement. PCLinuxOS, a wonderful distribution. However, just a while ago an upgrade to Pidgin upgrade was required in order to continue using the ICQ instant messaging network – I have not yet seen the updated package for PCLOS, and neither can I make one myself. The developer(s) of PCLOS have done amazing job in forking Mandriva and providing the rolling update model, but at some point the resources are going to give in and cause issues.

The total freedom of choice is a problem and the Linux bandwagon is being pulled to various directions. Unfortunately the average user does not want choices – he want’s a reliable system that “just works”. Linux Hater’s makes an excellent comparison to the web server world, where Linux is de facto standard, due to the fact that the choice almost exclusively is the so called LAMP environment – Linux Apache MySQL and PHP. Nobody seems to want an alternative to Apache, MySQL and PHP because these things just work! Why cant we have a LAMP for the desktop? Should we all just shut up and use Ubuntu’s long term supported release to for the common good?

More about ‘choice’: There is plenty to be found via Google

As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

The winner: openSUSE 11.0

openSUSE 11.0 is now at release candidate phase, with final version just around the corner, but it is already safe to say that this is THE distribution for the year 2008. openSUSE has put a lot of effort to KDE v4 implementation, but unfortunately the next generation KDE still feels premature and doesn’t seem to offer real additional value to for the end-user. I always prefer KDE over Gnome, so it was kind of a disappointment. Luckily openSUSE has the best implementation of Gnome, and the familiar KDE v3.5 is also available on the DVD.

Since the version 10.3 openSUSE has updated and improved the applications, now ships in installable live CDs and has dramatically improved the package management – both backend and the GUI. In all desktop versions everything looks very professional, and well laid out. Compiz 3D-desktop now works out-of-the-box in most configurations and overall the performance seems to be top notch. openSUSE 11 has everything that an average desktop users needs, outstanding configuration tools in YaST and plenty of features for office or corporate networks. OpenSUSE community offers one-click solutions for proprietary formats. The  community is very strong in every way, and the availability of packages and backports is excellent, so this distro has a pretty long life cycle. openSUSE is totally desktop ready and actully quite far ahead of the competition in many ways.

The 2nd: PCLinuxOS 2008 MiniMe

Some may see PCLOS as a strange selection for the 2nd place, but after plenty of consideration and using it trough the winter I just have to give it a lot of credit. PCLOS 2008 MiniMe is sort of a prologue for the upcoming full 2008 edition. It ships with a bare bone KDE v3.5 installation, with no additional applications – the user pulls the needed apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice and so on) from the repos using the familiar Synaptic package management. As a result the user has a very streamlined desktop system only with apps that he wants or needs. As such the MiniMe might not be the best choice if you are looking for your very first Linux as one has to understand the basics of Linux package management, even though it is a very simple process.

What makes PCLOS stand out is the stability and longevity. For me this has been the most realiable Linux distribution. It uses a rolling release strategy, so you do not have to upgrade or reinstall every six months, as the system stays always current just by applying the updates using Synaptic. PCLOS is somewhat conservative in updates, so the stability has remained good. On the other hand it seems that PCLOS is slightly lagging behind in Linux development and cannot me considered as a bleeding edge distro. The key applications are up-to-date but for example the kernel is typically couple of version behind. PCLOS is forked from Mandriva, but they have not systematically synchronized with Mandriva releases since their departure.

The 3rd: Mandriva One 2008.1 Spring

If you know absolutely nothing about Linux, but you wish to try the better operating system, then Mandriva’s latest is a top contender. It comes with excellent hardware support (best in my experience), beautifully designed desktop and easy to use Windows-like configuration tools. Mandriva is a KDE v3.5 oriented distro, but the Gnome implementation is decent as well. The downside of Mandriva is that the life cycle of the releases seem pretty short, and in my opinion the community is not very strong compared to Suse or Ubuntu. It is kind of a shame that Mandriva doesn’t get the attention it deserves, since in many ways it is a better system for the Windows refugees than the over hyped Ubuntu.

The 4th: Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

To me the Ubuntu just continues not to impress. As usual it comes with the ugly brown looks and quite spartan Gnome desktop. Also my subjective opinion is that the quality and stability of Ubuntu releases has decreased in the past two or three generations. I think the decision to ship an updated 8.04.1 version later this year, which should be “enterprise quality”, is a clear indication that this release has some rough edges.

So why is Ubuntu high on the 4th place then? First of all it is still a decent distribution, that is quite easy to use and supports a lot of hardware, even though it is not worth the hype and is showcases nothing exceptional. The Hardy Heron release has some serious edge over the competition: It is a so called LTS (Long Term Support) release with 3 years of updates for the desktop edition and 5 years for the server! This offer is simply unmatched by any recent desktop distribution. The LTS status of this release will also guarantee that there will be many Ubuntu Hardy based distributions on the market, most notable perhaps being the Linux Mint which corrects many of the faults complained here regarding the look and feel of the desktop. Besides the long life-cycle, the popularity and media attention of Ubuntu has made it very popular, which means that it has the strongest community, with user groups in many countries. In the non-commercial software world, the support of a local community is priceless.

Final words

That wraps it up for the spring of 2008 – openSUSE wins, second time in a row. Obviously there are many other potential distributions out there and actually the amount of choice is almost overwhelming. We try to help the people that are looking for an alternative to Windows, and in our opinion these are the most potential choices for that purpose. They all have their higlights and weaknesses, but overall the offering of openSUSE seems most complete.

Again we immediately run to the problem of defining that what are we actually comparing. As said before, Linux actually refers to the kernel of the operating system and that Linux comes in all kinds of shapes as sizes from mobile phones to super computers. To narrow things down we focus on modern desktop oriented Linux distributions. I have personally tried most of them, and have experience in openSUSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva and I am currently writing this using PCLinuxOS 2008. Windows also comes in various versions and editions, Windows XP being the market leader and Vista (various editions) being the most recent. I have very little Vista experience, so I will only touch that in this article, and focus on XP.

First of all I have to say that Windows XP is actually pretty good. It has been matured, service packed, patched and updated for seven years or so. That is actually an incredibly long life cycle for the operating system, and even today XP can tackle basic desktop needs very well. If good quality drivers are available for your hardware, it will be solid as a rock, unless You ruin it yourself by installing low quality software. Windows is the dominant operating system on the market, so you are likely to get good drivers for the hardware, or at least updates if defects are found. The quality of the software one installs on top of Windows defines the overall stability experience for the end-user. My desktop PC has Windows XP that I installed some 1,5 years ago and it has served me flawlessly.

Modern desktop Linux distributions have a furious development cycles releasing new versions once or twice a year. This means that the beta and release candidate testing periods are very short, usually only matters of weeks. Unfortunately a fresh Linux distribution on release date tends to contain a lot of bugs. Linux distros, like Windows, have on-line updating features and patches and updates are usually released a lot right after the release. Download and install Ubuntu 7.10 (from October 2007) today, and a huge load of fixes are available via the updater right after install. So Microsoft is not the only one pushing out service packs to improve their product quality. And the bugs of Linux distros can be very visible ones too: My Ubuntu suddenly lost all theme and icon settings, the Start button equilavent of Mandriva was visually broken, and openSUSE opens unnecessary Xconsole window if I enable clock synchronization via NTP Internet server.

Drivers and hardware support is a whole another story under Linux. Unfortunately hardware vendors are not keen on the idea of releasing their drivers open sourced, which has lead to the fact that Linux driver support is far worse than on Windows. I cannot use a native ATI driver on my Thinkpad T41, since none is available, so I have to use a 3rd party developed open source equivalent. And speaking of my ATI card, all Linux distros except Mandriva incorrectly configure this laptop for 3D desktop usage, so I have to manually edit the settings to make it work. Even with everything configured properly, 3D games seem to be a bit unstable on this computer and tend to crash or jam occasionally – I am not yet 100% sure what the issue is, but based on what I have learned from the net is that the problems are in the drivers.

So if one thinks that “I will intall Linux over Windows and never have problems again”, then one will most likely be disappointed. But there is a different side to this story as well. Linux at the core is rock solid. We here have been running our own web server for few years, and not once it has crashed, jammed, booted or had any issues with it. I haven’t checked recently but I think we around 500 days of uptime on this server since we did a complete reinstall due to mandatory update. And all the time the server is working, serving millions of database queries and sending the content to thousands of readers. In server usage, such stability simply does not exist in the Windows world, and that is why Linux has conquered the server market.

Just as I am writing this, our tech admin Xfiler dropped in to brag about his new Lenovo Thinkpad. He said it had Vista preinstalled, and it had crashed on him on the first day of use. I don’t have enough Vista experience to make conclusions myself, but based on the stuff I have read and heard, it has some maturity issues. So did Windows XP several years ago, but most likely Vista will mature after one or two service packs, just like the Linux distributions will mature after receiving a few months worth of updates.

So is the myth busted? To some extent I think that it really is. A user installing XP or a modern desktop Linux is more likely to find bugs on the Linux distro. Keep in mind that I am talking about basic desktop usage here, in other environment the situation can turn around completely. No matter what operating system you run, it is also a matter of configuration. At my work we have a customized Windows XP installations made by the IT department, and they are far less stable than my home setup made by myself. So your mileage may vary.

I have been using computers since the early 80’s and they have been PCs since 1987. I am rather advanced Windows users, and I have used all of them extensively, except for the new Windows Vista which I have barely tried. I have always had an eye for Linux and I had my first touch with it the early 90’s and I have spoken with Mr. Linus Torvalds himself on the phone. I have tried Linux distros as a desktop every now and then over the years, but my experiments have always failed and I have returned to Windows. So I am a real novice in Linux, although I have learned a LOT during this year, even though I know my way around computers very well in general. I will not go in-depth in this article. I simply want to bring out my personal and totally subjective overlook of the currect desktop Linux distributions.

The best Linux distributions for the year 2007:

The winner: openSUSE 10.3

openSUSE is closest to a commercial quality operating system among all Linux distributions. From installer to first boot it has professional design, visuals and it offers a good balance in between the ease of use and configurability. openSUSE has traditionally been considered as an KDE oriented distribution, but interestingly they also have the best Gnome offering as of today. No matter which you pick, you will get very pleasant visuals out-of-the-box. YaST2 offers good tools for various configuration and administration tasks, and make a Windows refugee feel like home. One-click-Install adds simplicity to certain installation procedures, such as Compiz Fusion or restricted formats.

However openSUSE is not perfect. The packet management (Zypper) is much better than the old ZMD (openSUSE 10.2 and older), but still a pain in the butt in comparison to Apt and Synaptic. it is slow, the GUI is awkward and dependency issues can occur. Luckily one can install Smart package management as well, which seems to be a much better choice. The release also has/had a handful of nasty bugs, but updates are rolling at a good pace. The installation seems to have issues with computers that have both IDE and SATA soft RAID hard drives installed – it does detect and even suggests mount points for Windows RAID partitions, but for some reason the installation of GRUB fails. If someone knows a fix for this, other that disconnecting hard drives or disabling SATA from BIOS, please let me know. I think it is a real show stopper and such an error should not occur in a stable release.

The 2nd: Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

In many aspects the strength of Ubuntu does not seem to be the distribution itself, but the popularity of this distribution, which results in a lively community. If you have any issues with your setup, then Google is your friend and you can be almost certain to find a solution. Ubuntu is so popular that at least all of my issues have been reproduced by someone else and help was found – I can not say the same for any other distribution!

In general Ubuntu works well out of the box. It uses a very basic implementation of Gnome combined with an ugly orange/brown theme. For some reason I always find the font rendering of Ubuntu worse than with openSUSE (KDE or Gnome), even with MS Fonts installed. Ubuntu offers an excellent and well working starting point, but I presume that a lot of people want to change some things to make it look and work better. Luckily in the Linux world one can change and modify just about everything as one sees fit.

In terms of software quality, the Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy seems to be a bit rushed. I was able to find a number of issues in the desktop environment itself, and the developers have been rolling out updates very frequently (which is a good thing). If you rule out the benefits of popularity, I really couldn’t figure out what is the Ubuntu hype all about? It is a good distribution for sure, but what really made it stand out from the crowd?

The 3rd: Mandriva One 2008

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrake, was one of the first distributions with a mission to make Linux a user friendly desktop environment. This distro has a long and colourful background with it’s ups and downs, but since 2007.x versions, they have been making a strong comeback.

For me the hardware detection of Mandriva was superior. It installed worked on (old) PCs that Ubuntu would not boot on and it is the ONLY distribution to correctly configure Compiz 3D desktop on my Thinkpad (ATI RV-250) out-of-the-box. It has nice configuration tools for managing the computer – not as extensive as openSUSE YaST, but very user friendly. The over all look and feel of the operating system is clean and polished – quite professional. I have only used the KDE edition, but based on what I have read their Gnome offering is decent as well. So in many aspects Mandriva seems much better than Ubuntu!

But the issue is that while Ubuntu has a great community support, and openSUSE has some (and they are working on to improve), the user community of Mandriva is almost non-existing. If you have problems, then who do you ask if nobody uses it? Well of course there are a lot of Mandriva users, and even commercial customers, but really the difference is evident when you are on a search for information. Also the software selection and availability is much smaller than with the above two (especially Ubuntu). Mandriva has also slipped some bugs to the release, even though the ones I found are minor, but the frequency of released updates has been a lot slower than with the above two.

If you feel like exploring, here are some others to try:

LinuxMint 4.0: Mint is basically just a modified Ubuntu, which improves the visuals and provides a lot of non-free stuff out-of-the-box. This means that all multimedia formats etc. will work out of the box. Mint is more or less a one man show with no clear road maps or upgrade paths in between versions, which makes is non-suitable for professional use. It is still an attractive choice for your bedroom PC, kids or whenever you want a setup that needs minimal configuration.

PCLinuxOS 2007 (PCLOS): PCLinuxOS is a fork of Mandriva, which has a small but fanatic fan groub. Like Mint does for Ubuntu, PCLOS also provides a lot of non-free stuff for the default install. Besides configuration, PCLOS has also changed the package management to use Synaptic, so the changes go deeper than surface. Like Mint, PCLOS is a more or less one man show, but suitable for many secondary uses.

SimplyMEPIS 7.0: Mepis is literally a one man show, that used to be based on Ubuntu, but the just recently released 7.0 is built from Debian Etch. Mepis comes with a very nice and clean KDE setup, and binary compatibility with Debian gives it some credibility. It is an exotic alternative to try, if you do not like Ubuntu – at least the KDE implementation is much better than in Kubuntu. While Mepis has been around for few years, I would not choose it for business usage due to obvious reasons.

This article was written using openSUSE 10.3.