OpenMandriva Lx 3.0: a faint shadow of name

Mandriva may be a name unfamiliar to people who came to the Linux world recently, but it is very familiar to old Linux users. It was one of the first distributions ever created. It became a base for many offsprings or forks. Just to mention three – ROSA Linux, Mageia and PCLinuxOS.

However, corporate difficulties made Mandriva an abandoned project. The OpenMandriva project picked up the flag and continued Mandriva development. To be precise, OpenMandriva is not a "daughter" of Mandriva, but rather a "grand-daughter" with ROSA Linux standing in between.

The latest release from that area of the Linux world is OpenMandriva Lx 3.0. It first saw the light of day on the 18th of August 2016.

The image size of the 64-bit version of this Linux distribution is 1.8 Gb. It is available from several mirrors and from BitTorrent. I downloaded the ISO image and "burnt" it onto the USB stick with dd command.

The USB drive is in the port of my Toshiba Satellite L500-19X laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

Ruth Suehle: Red Hat and Fedora derivatives and forks are part of the community

No one will argue that Linux world is more fragmented than the worlds of other operating systems. Each distribution has its fans, developers and haters.

There are few companies among this ocean of distributions that work closely with the community and help the Linux world to improve. Would it be interesting for you to see what people in these companies think like? Let's talk to one of them!

Let me introduce: Ruth Suehle!

Your most expected Linux distribution is...

I have asked you recently about the most expected Linux distribution due to official release within next 3 months.

The options in the poll were Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenMandriva, Tails, Tanglu, or other.

It is time now to announce the results.

What is your most expected distribution?

Distrowatch.com, no doubt, is one of the most respectable resource for the Linux and, more generic, open source enthusiasts. This site's the most known feature is to list all possible Linux distributions available around the world. It may be your first point of contact if you are looking for the distribution of your choice.

Other than listing the distributions, Distrowatch also tracks reviews of them. DarkDuck is proud that his several reviews are listed there. Just to name a few: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mageia, PCLinuxOS, Porteus, Dynebolic, Kongoni, Agilia, SliTaz, Crunchbang, Puppy, ROSA.

Yet another feature of Distrowatch is announcement for coming releases for Linux distributions. If you look at the list of distributions due to be released within next 3 months, which one is the most interesting for you? Which new release are you looking for most?

• Ubuntu with its sisters of Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu?
• OpenMandriva?
• Tails?
• Tanglu?

Please vote! The results will be announced in a couple of weeks.

How fresh is the dew: ROSA 2012 Marathon?

Do you know what is happening with Mandriva as a company? It has been on the brink of collapse for quite a few years already. You can learn more from my discussion with Eugeni Dodonov, who used for work for Mandriva for several years.

There is no surprise that a Linux distribution under such poor management gets lots of forks. Mageia was a fork which I adore. Mageia 1 is a distribution which I have been running on my laptop from almost Day 1 of its release.

Mandriva 2011 Hydrogen was the latest release of the Mandriva team, and the world saw it in August 2011. This release was radically different from all previous versions of Mandriva Linux for a number of reasons. The biggest changes on the user interface side were brought by the team at ROSA Labs. ROSA Labs is actually a company closely related to Mandriva, they share the same management.

In May 2012, though, ROSA Labs released its own Linux distribution. Without much hesitation, it was also named ROSA. “Rosa” in Russian (spelt роса) means “dew”. So, what is in ROSA 2012 Marathon? Is it fresh like dew or as tiring as a marathon?

I decided to check for myself and downloaded the image. You can download it either from ROSA’s own server, or from Yandex mirror. We’ll see the Yandex name later in this review, but for now I’d like to mention that the downloading speed from Yandex was not bad at all. Other than direct downloading, there is a torrent option too.

The ISO image size of ROSA 2012 Marathon is 1.4 Gb. It is actually smaller than than size of Mandriva 2011 which was 1.6 Gb.

I used Unetbootin to “burn” the image onto my 8 Gb USB stick.official page

So, the preparations are over. USB stick is in the port of my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let’s go!

Three greatest failures in Linux world 2011

2011 is coming to its end. It is time to make final roundups and see what happened in our life in this year.
Linux notes from DarkDuck is a blog dedicated to operating systems. Mostly Linux-based, but I sometime deviate to other open source systems like BSD.
So, what was new in Linux world in 2011? What were greatest failures in 2011 from my point of view?

1. Mandriva 2011

Mandriva 2011 was a cardinal turnover point for this distribution. This is the first release made under new management, currently led by Russians. In this new release Mandriva lost good part of its user base, those who liked GNOME interface. Basically, because Mandriva 2011 only has KDE version of it. Another reason to name Mandriva 2011 a failure is quality of this release. It grew in size almost twice, without bringing much of new functionality. Indeed, lots of expected functions became unusable or too complicated.
What is next for Mandriva? It will survive. Mostly because it has solid administrative resource and commitments from several states. But will it be still widely used in other parts of Linux community? I am not sure.

2. OpenSuSE

OpenSuSE team released two versions of their operating system this year. These were versions 11.4 and 12.1. I name both of them as failures. To be precise, out of 11.4, I should only take GNOME version into this list. OpenSuSE 11.4 KDE was more or less workable operating system.
But OpenSuSE 12.1 is a failure in full. I have not written review of this OS, and I am not going to. It does not mean I have not tried OpenSuSE 12.1. I have tried, because I got orders for CDs with this Operating System from my site buylinuxcds.co.uk and from eBay. Each time I send a disk, I test it, so I booted my laptops into OpenSuSE 12.1 several time. And I dislike the result.
As I said, I won't review OpenSuSE 12.1 myself, but if you wish, you can read what was written by Deidomedo (64-bit and 32-bit) and Firestarter.
What's next? I am not sure of OpenSuSE at this point of time. From one point of view, it is "too big to fail". From another, this Linux distribution has recently changed management (again), and it is unlikely to improve the situation quickly, as you can see in Mandriva's example.
Enough about OpenSuSE.

3. Ubuntu 11.04

Canonical also released two versions of their operating system Ubuntu this year. Version 11.04 was the first where new user interface Unity was used as default. And it was a failure point. Unity was still in very raw condition at that time. Instead of gaining users, it scared existing Ubuntu fan base. How many of Ubuntu users switched to other Linux distributions? And how many did use Ubuntu 11.04 with GNOME2?
To be fair, second release of Ubuntu this year, version 11.10, fixed situation a lot. First, Unity became much more usable in October 2011 compared to what was in April. Second, users got more acquainted with new interface, so they were less shocked.
What's next? I think next release of Ubuntu will be as good as any Long Term Support release of this OS is: stable, polished and likeable.

Do you want to know about Three greatest successes in Linux world 2011? Follow the link!

Mageia, Mandriva and IBM: Battle of Giants

IBM X31

My laptop is very old, so old that many people don’t even remember the model. This is one of the last models designed and actually produced by IBM before it was sold to Lenovo – a good old IBM X31, upgraded to 2Gb RAM at the day of purchase in 2005. There is no single thing it cannot do for me – it works just perfectly for many years, and, perhaps, for a few years to come.

I am also a dedicated Mandriva user since those times when it was known as Mandrake and was one of the two Linux distributions on the market – it means, since late 1990s. True, there were some interruptions in my love story with Mandrake (I cheated on it with Windows for a few years), but apart from that I was true and faithful to this distribution.

So, what was the trigger that made me think about divorcing Mandriva?

Does Linux Community Need Corruption?

There is no secret that Mandriva as a company was on a brink of bankruptcy not so long ago.
It was good time for some external investors to take over the company. And there were such investors. Investment fund NGI bought a stake in Mandriva. Since then, things have changed in the company.
Let's look what is NGI. This is Russian-owned investment fund where Mr.Leonid Reiman has control. Same fund, by the way, controls another Russian company PingWin, but we'll come back to that later.
First, let's look at Mr.Reiman himself. Who is he?
Leonid Reiman was Russian Minister of Telecommunications (later Minister of Transport and Communications) and then Presidential Counsellor. During that time he was several times accused in bribery, holding a stakes in Russian telecom companies and other illegal affairs. Some of those affairs leaked as far as Wall Street Journal. During reign of Mr.Reiman relatively small company North-West GSM transformed into Russian market leader currently known as Megafon. It is the company from the "big three" of Russian GSM operators. Mr.Reiman, of course unofficially, held own interest in NW GSW / Megafon.
There is no secret either that Russian government is very corrupted. There are very few decisions which are made with clear concious. Most of the decisions are made for someone's lobbied interest. But actions of Mr.Leonid Reiman were too much even for Russian government. That's why he was moved from Government to Presidential Counsellor position, and later abruptly resigned.
So, ex-Minister invested his money into Mandriva. At the same time he started new Russian company ROSA Laboratories. And same fund NGI also acquired another Russian company PingWin.
If you look at sites of ROSA Labs (English version using Google Translate) and PingWin (English), it is easy to notice, they are located at the same address in Moscow: number 14 at Presnensky Val. Do you need any more proofs of their affiliation?
Now let's come back to Mandriva. Recent release of this Operating System, called Mandriva 2011 Hydrogen, was very revolutionary, if not say more. Mandriva dumped all the Desktop Environments, except for KDE. Distribution itself grew in size more than twice. And even KDE itself was reworked significantly with help of... surprise-surprise: ROSA Labs. As a result, we got monster operating system with oversized distribution, slow performance and very arguable interface. Reading all the reviews of Mandriva 2011, I have found no one where reviewer would be absolutely happy with new release.
But was happiness of users the task of Mandriva and ROSA Labs? Maybe answer is in another area? Let's look at another asset of NGI fund: PingWin. What does this company do? It promotes Free Open Source software, and one of the targets is... Russian public sector (English version): ministries, municipal and federal organisations and so on! Who can promote company among public sector better than ex-minister, especially if we talk about Russia?
And Russian is not alone in the scope of NGI-owned companies. Another target is Brazil. Mandriva was chosen as a vendor for Classmate PC project.
Having governments of these two countries in the pipeline for the projects, who would bother with rest of Mandriva user base? Definitely not the person who took his own interests above the public (remember the Megafon story).
And now it is time to ask a question to you, Linux users: does Linux community need this type of distribution? The one which is led by people with doubtful reputation? The one which puts its own interests above the community?

Mandriva 2011: Dusk or Dawn of Linux Legend?

You can never tell what happens with yourself next.

Did developers who started Mandrake project back in 1998 knew that their baby would become world famous operating system? But fate of this baby is not the easiest. It was renamed to Mandriva, remarketed, and finally split into at least two. I am talking about recent fork between Mandriva and Mageia. Of course, there were other forks before, but recent one was the most serious in the whole history.

But Mandriva as a project still exists. To prove this fact, new version of Mandriva Linux was released with codename Mandriva 2011 Hydrogen.

I have already written about Mandriva Linux several times. They were reviews of Mandriva 2010.1 and 2010.2, based on KDE. Up to that point Mandriva released different spins of their operating system: one CD iso image for GNOME and another for KDE version.

Latest Hydrogen release is different here. It only has KDE version. Other DEs were deprecated, although still available from community. And new ISO image weights more than 1.6 Gb. This is significantly more than previous versions which could fit standard CD. By the way, for limited time only you can still get CD with previous version of Mandriva from Buy Linux CDs web shop!

I was not much impressed with previous releases of Mandriva. But Mageia quickly became my distribution #1. That's why I was very curious how much Mageia 1 was different from Mandriva 2011.

It was time for me to create Live USB for Mandriva. Previous versions of this OS had special tool called "Mandriva Seed" to create Live USB. This time round I decided to use something more generic. And I was lucky! My Live USB was created from iso image with simple dd command. Same method is mentioned in release notes, if you bother to read them.

So, USB stick is in the port. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!

What is your best favourite KDE distro?

I have recently received a comment on the post about Pardus Linux, which made me think a lot.

The question in comment was:

What is your best favorite KDE distro? Mageia, Pardus, Kubuntu, Mandriva, PC Linux OS, Mint KDE.... which? :) I will use your choice :) thanks too.

omergex

First of all, I am very pleased that person looks at me as at specialist and asks for advice in system choice. Obviously, that is the point of this blog – to choose OS for your computer. Look at the top of the page to confirm.
Then, I should admit that’s a very good question actually.

Another Twist in Romance with Manny Tux

Once upon a time I have already told myself that I had enough of Mandriva Linux. It was too slow and not promising for me. I tested Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring that time.
There are some additional bonuses in running small range of Linux CDs (either on this page or eBay). You can never predict what your customer wants. This time round I got an order for Mandriva Linux 2010.2 KDE. As long as I need to test CD before despatch, I can also put some notes in here.
So, CD-R is burnt, placed into CD drive. Reboot. Choose to boot from CD. Let's go!

Old Manny Tux Baby

Babies are usually sweet and cute. We all like them. We endeavour them. We hope they grow up to be better then we are.
But that does not happen all the time. Sometimes babies just stay undeveloped and forgotten... That is unfortunately true for human society. Here we have social care for such babies. But Linux world also has some examples like this...
Mandriva Linux was forked from Red Hat project many-many-many years ago. It existed under name Mandrake even before centuries turn. It was developed separately from it's mother and got some babies itself.

One of these babies is Berlios. How good is it? Let's see...

Last Tango with Manny Tux, or Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

One of my previous posts was about Mandriva Linux Spring 2010.1.

That time I booted this system from pretty old 1Gb USB flash drive.
The results were not as nice as they could be.
Manny Tux showed herself in slow mood.
After some thoughts I decided to give Manny another try. This time I took brad new 2Gb flash drive for experiment.
So, “burn” iso drive to USB stick with Mandriva Seed. Reboot. Select USB boot option. Let's go for second round!

Cooking the Manny Tux... Slowly...

Today's post will be brief.
My first acquaintance with Mandriva was brief too.
Mandriva site has a unique opportunity to download the full installer of Linux on a flash drive. Called Mandriva Seed.

I say "unique opportunity" because it is the only developer of complete (not pocket) distribution which has own tool for this. At least one I am aware of. Of course, there is a utility at pendrivelinux.com site that allows you to copy almost any distro to flash drive. But pendrivelinux is a third-party developer with respect to the distributions themselves.

Okay, I digressed a little.
My guinea pig was Mandriva Linux One Spring 2010.1 with the KDE4 shell. The process of copying the distribution on a flash drive took just a few minutes. Reboot. Choose to boot from USB. Let's go!