Mandriva Linux One 2010.2 Gnome - Review

Boot-up takes a while to load but once loaded the magic begins, from a Mandrake Fan yes I am one of the many user who tested and fell in love with Mandrake. It was during my short stint in a local secondary school where I accidentally bumped into Mandrake and since I love tinkering with new application especially with open source but don’t get me wrong I’m no Linux nor Open Source expert I just happen to be one of the million Linux Newbie and would eventually part of the former user of Microsoft Products, sorry bill but you should try Linux in one of your seminars one time you would be amazed how much fun and exciting driving a Linux Distro!

Oops sorry, I know it was supposed to be a Mandriva Linux One 2010.2 gnome review I just lost a bit there anyway back to the review, again after a long but tolerable boot-up it was almost a perfect desktop OS (we’re still waiting for such OS) let us start my amazing rediscovery of Mandrake now Mandriva!

At Load up:



Mandriva easily detected my internet connection no sweat! One feature I love with an OS especially as beautiful as Linux is the immediate detection of my internet connection some of my former reviews failed this simple test my mine.

Interface:

I would classify the creative team who designed the interface as a member of Michael Angelo’s Genealogy, I mean, I spend quite a time to enrich my interface be it gnome or KDE (I’m fairly new to LXDE) just to satisfy my taste for a unique and impressive NFGUI or Near Perfect GUI! To the creative team of Mandriva, Congrats!

Installed Application:

Installed Application were somewhat trim down or is it maybe since I’m only using the Linux One and not the Powerpack that they advertise as a complete OS, nonetheless, it’s perfect for a newbie just like me; Openoffice customized by the Mandriva Team, I don’t know what module they planted on their Openoffice Version but it seems working the customized version is a bit faster than other version I’m using right now.

I don’t think Iceweasel can be even compared to firefox, I maybe a FireFox fan but open to the idea of trying other browser and for a great Distro like Mandriva I think Iceweasel is a no go! Even though you might think I a bit biased towards Firefox still Iceweasel cannot replaced yet Firefox, but Chromium would do.
On Installing Software:

Searching and finding a particular piece of application for Mandriva is a fun thing to do but I got into somewhat bummer when I tried installing VLC one of my favorite software an amazing work of art I must say and yet Mandriva gave me a hard time doing such a simple task I mean from Ubuntu, to Linuxmint, to Opensuse, to YLMF, to Fedora and Puppy Linux it’s simply a piece of cake lovely to bite but Mandriva’s cake is a bit sour during my testing period. Even during my final review I still could not install that damn small piece of software!

My Rating:

All in all, my rating is 8/10! There are still some bumpers to fix and I think it would be the next Microsoft Windows killer! Beware Mr. Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer and Mr. William Henry "Bill" Gates III.

Review Machine:

Emachine D730 - Virtual Box

Processor -  i3-330M
Memory - 768MB Ram
Intel HD Graphics