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Alternative distribution [solved]


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Hi all! It’s been a while :)

 

I have been using Mandriva for 12 years now. But it seems this time has come to an end, although latest (2011) is good (I installed it on 3 coworkers’ PCs :) already).

 

Now, I want to use Gnome 3, and it is not part of the new Mandriva… So what would you recommend?

I want:

— repositories with dependency management (like urpmi) and broad choice;

— a good balance of stability and recent software, among which must be Gnome 3;

— multi-users (most distro are);

— a possibility to setup a newbie-friendly desktop session for some users;

— adequate performance.

 

I tried tinycore but there is no Gnome 3, and setting things up is a pain (for example: by default, pavucontrol does not find the PA daemon, although both pulseaudio and dbus are installed “on-bootâ€).

 

I’m thinking about trying Arch Linux. Is it a good choice?

 

Yves.

Edited by theYinYeti
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Fedora 15 uses Gnome 3 by default. Not sure why you would want it (Gnome 3) though... :P

 

I use Fedora 15 some and it seems ok. I prefer booting into Classic Gnome with Compiz (a login option) instead of the Gnome 3 shell.

 

I want to give Arch a try myself. I will once I get some time to devote to it and when am not tied to a cellular internet connection as I am at the moment.

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Good evening!

 

Actually, I find that Mandriva’s decisions are rather sensible. They can’t afford to do everything in their financial situation, so they only do what they do best. Nice. But not to my own taste…

 

I tried Arch Linux today. I had a bit of a rough start due to my ATI card (and me not knowing pacman at all), but once I got that working, I rather liked what I saw:

— Arch Linux is actually great! Simple and well-documented, up-to-date, with a broad choice of software. You have to know your way with Linux and the command line, though, which is my case ;-)

— I liked Gnome 3 a lot! I cannot wait to overwrite my current Mandriva with a fresh Arch Linux install.

 

I also liked the way the system is overall fast to boot and fast to shutdown. That’s a reason why I didn’t want to use Fedora, which runs on pretty much the same technical basis than Mandriva.

 

Thank you anyway for your answers. The switch is not done yet, so if you have a better alternative to propose, I’m still interested.

 

Yves.

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Hello Daniel.

I tried the Full Mandriva-2011. I really wanted to be fair and give it an honest try out. Compared to Mageia the difference is like Oranges and Lemons and Mageia is like Oranges.

Mandriva-2011 is so far away from earlier Mandriva that the only thing they now have in common is the name.

Mageia has been rock solid on every machine I have installed it on (4 at last count).

 

I am now a confirmed Mageia user but when ever Mandriva brings out updates or upgrades I will try them out on a spare machine so I am fully aware of what Mandriva is doing.

 

Cheers. John.

 

PS. I am still in Maine, USA

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Hey daniewicz, AussiJohn! Long time no see (my fault) :)

 

As I said, I *did* install Mandriva 2011 on a few PCs at work. KDE really doesn’t fit our needs (eg: many glitches with our low-quality integrated graphics cards), so I used XFCE on one PC, Gnome 2 on two others. All in all, it’s stable enough and working well, and I do appreciate that so many things are well integrated (really!) and easy to configure; but it feels a bit slow, and as if nothing had changed in the Linux land in the past couple of years… (except systemd)

 

I’m glad to read that Mageia is a valuable alternative. It would have been a shame if all this ease-of-use and cross-desktop integration had been lost on us. I’d still choose either Mageia or Mandriva over any Ubuntu derivative (I did use it).

 

That being said, I’m much happier now with Arch (although I’d sometimes like if things were /a bit/ more automatic :D )

 

Well… see you!

Yves.

Edited by theYinYeti
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I'm with John here; it's all Mageia for me. Mageia is like Mandriva should have been. It's working just fine on all our home hardware. The only hw I have not tried it on is the older workstation hw I'm running Mandriva as a server for my home

 

Go Mageia team!:thumbs:

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I, too, would agree with AussiJohn that Mageia is the distribution that Mandriva should have been. All those various desktop choices that are supported by the Mageia Team, even the Enlightment17 environment. And Mageia is the community that I had always hoped Mandriva could move closer towards; Rest In Peace Mandriva Council, you almost made it. The experience with Mageia so far is like Mandriva at it's best, all those friendly and familiar aspects are there in Mageia-1. Thank you Mageia Community! Better than just oranges, it's like sweet Tangerines!

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Thanks for all the responses. I am currently happy with my Mandriva 2010.0 and 2010.2 installs on various desktops, notebooks, and laptops around the house. When the time comes for a reinstall I will seriously consider Mageia.

 

It does make me a little sad though... :sad:

 

I know how you feel, I do too :sad:

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