Mandriva
Mandriva is a Linux distro, and it is one of the very first Linux distributions designed with desktop users. “Mandriva is leading the pack, embracing the latest Freedesktop.org standards to provide the best open and standards-based Linux desktop. Implemented standards include …”
Origin – Home Page: France – Mandriva
Desktop: KDE, Icewm, Evilwm, Metisse, and Compiz-Fusion.
Price: Mandriva Linux Free and Mandriva Linux One are available at no cost, but the PowerPack cost about $60.00 or 50 euros
Comments: Mandriva Linux One (the free community edition) was used for this entry. Mandriva Linux One boots into a LiveCD environment and you can then install into your computer’s hard disk. The GUI installer is LVM capable, but it’s not the default.
This distro provides a choice of applications, and there is really no default application for most tasks – the system allows you to choose your own defaults (it’s the KDE way). For audio playback, you can choose from KsCD, Amarok, and Kaffeine. Amarok is the most popular and most feature-rich audio playback application for the K Desktop Environment (KDE), and will likely be your default.
Totem and Kaffeine are your options for playing DVD videos, but because libdvdcss, the Open Source library that makes playback of commercial (encrypted) possible, is not installed, you will have to add extra repositories to the system if you intend to view DVD videos on your PC. For tips on how to enhance your Mandriva One installation, go here.
For Web browsing, Firefox and Konqueror (the native KDE browser) are available. Out of the box, Firefox will play multimedia files – flash and quicktime – embedded in Web pages. OpenOffice.org, the Open Source, full featured office suite similar to Microsoft Office is installed.
Mandriva One includes the Codeina service (Codec Manager) by FLUENDO S. A., which provides non-Open Source multimedia plugins. All the plugins – with the exception of the MP3 decoder plugin – available from the Codeina service are not free, costing from 7 EUR – 28 EUR or 11 USD – 44 USD.
Like Parsix, Fedora, and openSUSE, Mandriva one has an integrated firewall, which is enabled by default, and a GUI firewall configuration tool. There is also a VPN configuration tool that supports Cisco VPN Concentrator and OpenVPN.
The Mandriva One Control Center has a feature – Parental Control – that we have not observed in any other distro listed on this site. With Parental Control tool, you can block access to certain Web sites, and limit Internet connection during a specified timeframe.
Another notable feature you will find in the Mandriva Control Center is the Import Windows tool, with which you can, if you are dual-booting with a Windows operating system, either share your Windows documents and settings or import them into your Mandriva installation. It’s point and click, and a breeze to use. Knoppix has a similar feature, but with Knoppix, the Windows partitions are mounted in read-only mode on the Knoppix desktop. With any Linux distribution, you can, with a slight modification to the /etc/fstab file, read and write to Windows, that is if you have a dual-boot setup.
Download/Buy:: You may download the free community edition or buy the PowerPack edition from here. The PowerPack edition comes with proprietary software that is not available with the community edition.
