“- 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

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.

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

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.)

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 ?

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…