I know you’re probably sick and tired of these comparisions. If so, don’t continue to read, and definetely don’t troll in the comments :).
I had so many various problems with 2008.0 that I felt it might be prudent to try some alternatives (I’ve upgraded to 2008.0 on 4 boxes so far, with not a single one going smoothly without issues). My choice fell on Ubuntu. Was considering to try out Debian too, but I know Debian is good – but not quite end-user desktop-friendly.
I live on the commandline. So just about all I do is identical on all distros since I just carry my configs with me. However I still see hw-detection and general usability and integration. So, I’m going to just start with a little comparison, and we’ll see where we go from here. The comparison is seperated into positive (+) and negative (-) comments.
This is all my personal opinions.
Ubuntu (7.10):
+ Live installer works very well. Especially nice that it removes unneeded locales and downloads missing ones during installation.
+ GNOME default desktop
+ sudo-only actually works quite well
+ Very well integrated into GNOME (ie. 3d-effects can be set up in the appearance applet in GNOME)
+ Clean, empty GNOME desktop by default
+ apt-get is great and shows how much it needs to download
+ aptitude looks good
+ integrated distribution-upgrade system
+ detected all the HW and worked nicely
+ Quite polished
+ Appears quite stable
+ gnome-app-install is pretty
+ Firefox patched to use native package manager to find plugins
+ Totem automatically finds missing plugins
+ More progress shared with other distros (ie. networkManager)
+ Progressbars when installing software (always in the GUI)
+ Ability to see verbose installation messages in the GUI
- Missing some translations
- Some of the translations isn’t of the best quality
- Synaptic is very ugly
- For some reason when I removed evolution, the menu item didn’t get removed (not even when using apt-get purge)
- Uses a white mouse pointer by default (I don’t like it, but luckily that can be easily changed)
- No profile.d
- Told me it needed to reboot after installing the nvidia driver
Mandriva (2008.0):
+ urpmi is also good
+ Well translated
+ Good hw detection
+ Has a tool for /everything/
+ PLF
+ RPMDrake is good (better than synaptic, not close to gnome-app-install)
+ Great perl module packaging
+ MP3 playback by default
- GNOME Live CD not published along with the rest of the distro
- GNOME Live CD not advertised for new users, they only get the option of KDE
- No beta of the GNOME Live CD
- Not as well integrated into the DE
- The tools aren’t as “polished”. Ie. when a drak* tool needs to install something it pops ups 3-4 small windows informing about what it’s doing – none of them has a progressbar, and sometimes they say the same. Also the windows aren’t refreshed as often, but block and become unresponsive.
- Although urpmi got improved it still doesn’t say how much it needs to download. Something other distros have had for ages, and that I opened a wishlist bug for in 2005
- I haven’t installed one 2008.0 machine without various issues (sound stopping to work, performance bad, sound not working properly, X driver not set up properly)
- Live CD set up autologin by default without asking about it
- No Mandriva Flash GNOME (except GUADEC edition)
Trolls and flames in the comments will be deleted.
Update:
Note that I made no conclusion on which distro was better. I’m simply attempting to write a simple and incomplete comparison. The comparison is also mostly based upon first impressions, and should be treated as such.
I’m also not saying I’m switching camps for those wondering ;).
Concerning GNOME Flash. Well, maybe that isn’t really fair. Flash is good, and GUADEC flash is good. However I did get annoyed that only a KDE was made available.
Also, no, the point isn’t /really/ that Mandriva prefers KDE for LiveCDs – it so happens I prefer GNOME and thus see GNOME as a plus.
When I talk about “better” integration, what I mean is basically that Ubuntu is more centered around the desktop environment than Mandriva is (which can be good and bad I guess).
In Mandriva to configure stuff you would use drakconf, in Ubuntu most is in the GNOME System menu. Granted, some stuff from Mandriva is available there too, but Ubuntu has everything.
However, Mandriva has, like stated, tools for just about everything. Ubuntu does not. They’re quite differently structured. The Ubuntu tools look like they are /made/ for GNOME and part of GNOME (which I guess they are). The Mandriva tools look like a seperate app, which they are, and is probably also good considering the wealth of tools available. It just feels a bit easier to just System -> Administration and select whatever you want to do there. Don’t get me wrong, Mandrivas GNOME is good. Kudos goes to Mandriva for giving a GNOME LiveCD, I’d just like to see it better marketed (not like on mandriva.com right now where you only get the option of KDE. KDE is good but imho you should be able to chose, as Mandriva One now appears to be the preferred version to download).
Concerning autologin, if I recall correctly, the previous versions of Mandriva One did not activate autologin by default, which is why I reacted negatively to that this time.
Update 2:
Yes, urpmi displays how much it needs to /install/. But it doesn’t (and can’t, since the information isn’t available in the current hdlist formats) display how much it needs to download. Which is often a good deal less than what it will take when installed.
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i have had problems with both. staying with linux mint 3.1 for now.
Right now I am dual-booting Mandriva 2008 & Ubuntu 7.10. Both are good distros. I work on Gnome only, with the same choice of apps on both. I would give the advantage to Ubuntu because of the Firefox issues I had in Mandriva (Gmail Notifier won’t connect, certain sites display really ugly fonts…).
However, AdamW from Mandriva has been very helpful with assistance, but couldn’t resolve those issues that are non-existent in Ubuntu.
I would say that the real contender in Fedora 8. Once released, we can start to give a better evaluation of the major distros from this season.
Right now I would say:
-1-Ubuntu 7.10
-2-Mandriva 2008
-3-openSUSE 10.3
But Fedora will come and change all that…
Wowo, you are now a celebrity, beranger published a link to your blog :p
http://www.beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2007/10/30/14/04/01-read-on-planet-mandriva-
So basically, half of the mandriva problem is the fact that mandriva is prefering kde livecd to gnome one ?
So far on the 2.6.22 kernel Ubuntu is the winner. I have had many problems with openSuSE 10.3 and wireless drivers and video.
You can get it working with f/w cutter but it fools you and sh ./install-xxxx makes it work for a short time and you do something and wireless stops working both in laptops and desktops.
Then you turn the machine off, remove the wired Ethernet then restart and something somewhere is changed.
From then on in wireless works. Probably having to do with doing a hard reset on the wireless card.
There was none of this or the video driver nonsense with Ubuntu. On both kernel 2.6.22 distributions finally the in box SD Card readers worked. One on a HP laptop (SuSE 10.3) and a desktop (ACER T180 6100/405 shrink wrapped AMD2 Nvidia Reference Design) as usb reader. Both showed as Kodak in /media/Kodak since a Kodak 7440 formated the Kingston SD Card.
It appears Canonical is making good on always providing it’s best work and openSuSE is making all of us a Beta testing group for SLED as does Fedora for RHE.
I still cannot find the restricted drivers for openSuSE 10.3 I have lost them from a 10.2 update on my work machine. Fortunately Gibbon was provided to my son who after being told that org vorbis as a preference is not supposed to play back on a MP3… proceed to rip, u-tube, and play DVD’s. So as far as I am concerned the Gibbon is trouble free. And no I did not give him root. (And I killed the sudo nonsense during my 1 hour install and driver set up.)
I don’t see the point of “- No Mandriva Flash GNOME (except GUADEC edition)” in the comparison.
First 2008.0 has no Flash KDE either, then does Ubuntu have a Flash GNOME ?
“+ Firefox patched to use native package manager to find plugins”
Well, we had that for three years in Mandriva firefox and it was dropped, for no good reason and now, people are saying “look how nice Ubuntu is” :( see bug http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=31869
“+ Very well integrated into GNOME (ie. 3d-effects can be set up in the appearance applet in GNOME)” : I don’t think it has anything to do with GNOME integration to have a 3d desktop tab. Moreover, you can’t enable XGL on the fly (need restart) and it doesn’t support Metisse. It is nice but it requires patching GNOME tools, render GNOME documentation incorrect (why Visual effects isn’t in help) and won’t work with KDE either..
“- Not as well integrated into the DE” : care to elaborate ?
“- Live CD set up autologin by default without asking about it” it is keeping the liveCD configuration. Maybe it should be asked during first boot after liveCD install
Mandriva’s #1 problem: drakxtools UI is super crappy. Hire a full time UI expert. And not the previous one you had either. Plus fix the ten or so extra drak* tools that are broken or under-developed. Make sudo’ed tools have same gtk theme as user #1. Make OK/Cancel consistent. Reduce popup windows and wizards.
Mandriva’s #2 problem: no polish. Many things are done last minute (again, lots of drak* changes during rc). Graphical inconsistencies. Not enough in-house testing. Hire some more staff. Buy some more hardware. Do more testing. Pay some high school students or something. Recruit some more volunteer devels. Yes, I said, actively recruit them. No, you’re not, currently.
Ubuntu’s #1 problem: no drakxtools equivalent. Hire ten people to make gnome-specific equivalents to drakxtools if you want your product to work as well and be as versatile out of the box as Mandriva, and yet still have the Ubuntu flair.
Ubuntu’s #2 problem: no PLF equivalent. Tonnes of rogue third party repositories. Hundreds of hacky “how to’s” that drakxtools+PLF can solve already.
You say
“- Although urpmi got improved it still doesn’t say how much it needs to download. Something other distros have had for ages, and that I opened a wishlist bug for in 2005″
What talking about Willies????
For example:
urpmi task-e17
In order to satisfy the ‘ewl’ dependency, one of the following packages is needed:
1- ewl-0.5.1.008-8mdv2008.0.x86_64: Enlightenment widget library (para instalar)
2- lib64ewl1-0.5.1.008-8mdv2008.0.x86_64: Libraries for the ewl package (para instalar)
¿Qué elige? (1-2)1
In order to satisfy the ‘libewl.so.1()(64bit)’ dependency, one of the following packages is needed:
1- lib64ewl1-0.5.1.008-8mdv2008.0.x86_64: Libraries for the ewl package (para instalar)
2- lib64ewl0-0.5.1.008-1mdv2008.0.x86_64: Libraries for the ewl package (para instalar)
¿Qué elige? (1-2)1
Para satisfacer las dependencias, se instalarán los paquetes siguientes:
Package Version Release Arch
(medium “Mandriva Linux – 2008.0 (Free64) – Installer (contrib)”)
galaxy-gtk12 1.0.5 3mdv2008.0 x86_64 (suggested)
lib64ecore1 0.9.9.041 2mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64edb1 1.0.5.008 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64eet0 0.9.10.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64embryo0 0.9.1.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64exo-0.3_0 0.3.2 9mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64thunar1_2 0.8.0 8mdv2008.0 x86_64
thunar 0.8.0 8mdv2008.0 x86_64
thunar-volman 0.1.2 3mdv2008.0 x86_64
(medium “Main (Official2008.0-1)”)
e 0.16.999.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64audit-devel 1.6.1 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64glib1.2 1.2.10 18mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64gtk+1.2 1.2.10 47mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64pam-devel 0.99.8.1 6mdv2008.0 x86_64
luit 1.0.2 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
xterm 229 2mdv2008.0 x86_64
(medium “Contrib (Official2008.0-7)”)
brasero 0.6.1 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
e_modules 0.1.0 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
edb 1.0.5.008 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
edje 0.5.0.038 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
embryo 0.9.1.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
emotion 0.0.1.005 4mdv2008.0 x86_64
enity 0.0.1 3mdv2008.0 x86_64
entrance 0.9.0.009 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
epeg 0.9.0.011 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
epsilon 0.3.0.008 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
esmart 0.9.0.008 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
etk 0.1.0.003 7mdv2008.0 x86_64
ewl 0.5.1.008 8mdv2008.0 x86_64
exo 0.3.2 9mdv2008.0 x86_64
gdk-pixbuf-loaders 0.22.0 11mdv2007.1 x86_64 (suggested)
gtk-chtheme 0.3.1 2mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64burn4 0.3.8 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64ecore1-devel 0.9.9.041 2mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64edb1-devel 1.0.5.008 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64edje0 0.5.0.038 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64eet0-devel 0.9.10.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64efreet1 0.0.3.006 2mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64emotion0 0.0.1.005 4mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64entrance0 0.9.0.009 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64epeg0 0.9.0.011 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64epsilon0 0.3.0.008 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64esmart0 0.9.0.008 5mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64etk1 0.1.0.003 7mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64evas1 0.9.9.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64evas1-devel 0.9.9.041 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64ewl1 0.5.1.008 8mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64exml1 0.1.1 8mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64gdk-pixbuf2 0.22.0 11mdv2007.1 x86_64 (suggested)
lib64isofs5 0.2.8 1mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64xfce4mcs3 4.4.1 4mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64xfce4panel1 4.4.1 9mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64xfce4util4 4.4.1 3mdv2008.0 x86_64
lib64xfcegui4_4 4.4.1 3mdv2008.0 x86_64
task-e17 2008 6mdv2008.0 noarch
terminal 0.2.6 4mdv2008.0 x86_64
80MB of additional disk space will be used.
¿Efectuar la instalación de los 56 paquetes? (S/n)
—So, please explain me what is missing:
I guess that many people (not you, at least you tried to analyze them) dislike Mandriva by default because:
*Is not Debian derivated
*Uses RPMs (it still persists the idea that apt is unique method for solving dependencias)
*Mandriva is not from America, nor was founded by a magnate
Sergio> urpmi show how much supplementary space will be used. When installing a new application, supplementary space used = download size. However when upgrading a package, or doing a –auto-select, you don’t have the total size of download packages. In this latter case, supplementary space used != download size
Supplementary space used is *never* the download size. Because RPMs are compressed and URPMI only knows of the uncompressed size, not the compressed size.
Thanks Facorat and Zero_dogg for explanation.
Sergio’s post inadvertently points out that our e17 packages are kinda broken too. Why all the -devel packages?
If you would to try a strong debian based distro that is user friendly too, please try Mepis 7, based on debian stable, Kde 3.5.8, kernel 2.6.22-1build686…
Can’t say I’m really interested in a KDE-distro, otherwise Mepis sounds interesting.
I had seen what ubuntu can do coz i had spent several weeks to adapt with ubuntu 7.10 and the result is….. i stick around with mandriva (right now i use mandriva 2008.0)
ubuntu is based on debian & mandriva based on red hat, according to several trial & errors… red hat based are still the best