[arctic]

Sometimes I have this special feeling that some people don't use Mandriva because they feel ashamed of using it.

- Which distro are you using?
- Me? Debian of course. It is the only real thing. (You can replace Debian with Ubuntu, Slackware, Fedora,...) And you? What do you run on your system?
- Well,.... Mandriva
- Oh ....

*silence*

- Ever considered using a better distro?

:huh:

Quite a few times I have seen/heard/read similar conversations. The result is almost always that many people that use Mandriva suffer from an instant inferiority complex (IMHO). They switch as fast as possible to another distro and claim afterwards that they
1. never used Mandriva because it sux and ain't free (three lies in one sentence. Cool, eh? B) )
2. used Mandriva once but it was "horrible, nothing worked" (although in reality almost everything worked well)
3. used Mandriva, but it was soon too noobish for them

Ouch. How can it be that people tend to bind their self-consciousness to a distro? How can it be that people feel ashamed of using a distro that definitely offers a good working environment?

First of all, I'd like to tell you (those that don't know me that long) that during the last six years, I have used all major and an uncounted number (50? 60?) of smaller distros. Although some distros (well,... some of their users) suffered from the same inferiority-complex as some Mandriva-folks, most people are proud of their distro, which is especially true of Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian and Slackware-users. People claim that their system is either easy to use, rock-stable, bug-free, only for real geeks, bleeding edge, offers a great look, customizable, lightning-fast and some more.

Let's take a look at what Mandriva offers:
- Since years, it is considered as one of the easiest to use and administrate distributions available. It has been acknowledged in several reviews and hundreds/thousands of users
- Mandriva has thus made it easy for many people to switch from Windows to Linux without frustrating them
- Mandriva offers a bleeding edge yet very stable operating system, just like Ubuntu, Debian Fedora, Suse, Gentoo and others
- Mandriva offers a flexible distribution. You can use it as a KDE or Gnome or Fluxbox or ... centric distro
- It allows to use graphical tools for administration and also allows you to configure everything through the cli (the latter one is apparently important for many geeks)
- Mandriva offers a good looking and fast distro.

All good things to have. And what does it lack?

- Upgrading from one release to another one is not 100% safe, but no distro available right can offer a completely safe procedure. Even rolling releases can break.
- Marketing. While other distros have learned that marketing is essential for success, Mandriva still lacks in that area (financial reasons?)
- For some time it lacked a vision. The company made some grave marketing-mistakes with the 12 months release schedule, as the"bleeding edge messiahs" don't like 12+ months release cycles (as you might remember: they left the ship in search for alternative distros that stick to a six months release cycle)

So, what does Mandriva offer? Taking all things into consideration, the distro is from a technical point of view a very solid product that works with most hardware you throw at it. Unpleasant things happen now and then, but the same applies for every other distro.

Now ask yourself, considering all this: does anyone have to feel ashamed of using Mandriva? I'd say no. But still more people flock to Fedora, Ubuntu or Suse. Is it all marketing? Maybe, maybe not, but I really wonder why so many people tend to ignore Mandriva, which offers a great product and why many people develop this inferiority complex.

I have given many distros a try. Most of them, including Mandriva, are really good. No need to feel ashamed. ;)


Feel free to discuss it. Are/Were you ashamed of using Mandriva? Why might people feel so?

[theYinYeti]

I certainly am not ashamed of using Mandriva! And I recommend it to anyone asking me what distribution they should use to enter the Linux world :)

Yves.

[grendal]

Ahhh, I must admit that I have, from time to time, discovered that I fall for the anything is better than Mandy syndrome. Then I go and try distro F or Distro P and perhaps, Distro K(u). But everytime I do, I only seem to keep them about a month, or less, before I go back to good ol' Mandrake (oops, sorry Mandriva).

As the Yin Yeti stated, I alwasy recomend Mandriva to my friends as the Linux distro to go with for the simple reason of: It is truly user friendly, especially for anyone's first look at Linux.



P.S.> don't tell anybody that I run Mandriva. I wouldn't want that to get out. ;}

[ramfree17]

i am currently struggling with mdv on my laptop. i am not ashamed to be a mandriva user but i am having second thoughts on the second release on a row. this might be my hardware causing the failure but ubuntu does not have the same problem.

ok so ubuntu freezes my laptop which is why i uninstalled it. but nevertheless, i had high hopes for the current release.

archlinux on my desktop, and if the third time is not a charm tomorrow, i am going to try the latest ubuntu on my lappy. :(

ciao!

[neddie]

arctic, on May 26 2008, 03:45 PM, said:

Sometimes I have this special feeling that some people don't use Mandriva because they feel ashamed of using it.

Don't know where you've got that from, arctic, I've never heard of this phenomenon.

I've never heard of people switching out of embarrassment and those that do use it are more than happy to explain the advantages.

[{BBI}Nexus{BBI}]

Distro elitism/snobbery call it what you will, has and will always exist. If A,B,C is ashamed to admit they use Mandriva that's their hang-up. They are the same ones who would be ashamed to admit they still use Winblows too!! Mandriva is a popular distro and has a huge following. I can't even count the amount of times I go into forums and as far I can see Fedora problems dominate the threads. Like you I too have tried countless distros, but only two have instantly made me feel welcome and comfortable using them Mandriva (Mandrake as it was back then) and PCLinuxOS (I know it's a fork of Mandriva). I know they have crappy customer care, even so they still have a great following. It's all a bit of a nonesense aurgument because underneath all the gloss they are all the same GNU/Linux.

[theYinYeti]

arctic, on May 26 2008, 03:45 PM, said:

ashamed of using Mandriva? Why might people feel so?

In my opinion:
- Debian is a legend: THE free GNU/Linux for almost all Linux-supported platforms.
- Slackware is like the 100+-year-old elder in the neighboorhood: they knew how to do things, back in those days, and things weren't bloated like they are these days… (not my opinion, but that's the feeling I get from comments I've read about Slack)
- Fedora benefits from Redhat's excellent reputation, while still appearing new and dynamic to people, their fork from the "real" Redhat being quite recent.
- Ubuntu is shining new and richly supported by a very dynamic company. Besides, their "sudo"-centered administration (an idea I don't like) may certainly appeal to a lot of former windows users.

- And Mandriva… nothing.
It is old, but not that much.
It has no great past to build upon, because they suffered in the past from being described as a Redhat-based distribution, even though it quickly became more fud than truth.
The name, for people to remember? "Mandrake" souded like a joke (in France at least), and "Mandriva" is still too new to be widely recognized.

Still, from a pure technical point of view, Mandriva is my choice for reasonably modern hardware.

Yves.

This post has been edited by theYinYeti: 26 May 2008 - 07:47 PM

[arctic]

neddie, on May 26 2008, 05:18 PM, said:

Don't know where you've got that from, arctic, I've never heard of this phenomenon.

Well I read about it on several webforums and newssites (OSNews e.g.) and some years ago at the university. :mellow:

[AussieJohn]

I agree with Arctic on this one. The phenomena still exists and you can see it being expressed on numerous websites that allow comments to linux related articles.

I think that the fact that Mandriva is based in France whereas RedHat, SUSE and so on are based in the US plus also the Majority of Linux news sites are in the US too is a big factor.

I suspect Mandriva is doing well in Europe where the Majority are non English speaking.

I have my rants about Mandriva from time to time but to me it still surpasses the other distros for my purposes.

I think the ones who are most embarrassed are those that say that they tried it years ago and had lots of difficultys using it so gave it away, especially when they are reminded that all the others were just as difficult if not more so at that time. And even more so when informed about it being described in many articles as about the easiest of all to install and use

I certainly do not feel embarrassed about being a Mandriva enthusiast.

Cheers. John.

[yossarian]

I think it depends heavily on the nature of the population and location. I can tell you that in Israel, AFAIK, Mandriva doesn't have a better or worse name than any other distros(though sadly I must admit Linux in general is not very popular here). Personally I can tell you I was never ashamed in using Mandiva. Sure you can say I'm still a newbie that didn't have enough time to develop those negative feelings, but I don't see myself suffering from those inferiority fellings in the future either.

I must tell you that I told about Mandriva to two of my collegues at work, and after about a month of using Vi$ta they tried Mandriva's live CD, and from there continued to full installation (my modest contribution to our efforts to control the world :evilbanana: ).

[Reiver_Fluffi]

It's a good distro and I was never ashamed of using it, shame was never considered when I chose to dump it in favour of something else.

AussieJohn, on May 26 2008, 04:41 PM, said:

I think that the fact that Mandriva is based in France whereas RedHat, SUSE and so on are based in the US plus also the Majority of Linux news sites are in the US too is a big factor.

I suspect Mandriva is doing well in Europe where the Majority are non English speaking.

I'm not sure, in UK Ubuntu seems to be stealing the limelight, and that appears to be so across the continent (anyone from France, Gemany, etc care to chip in with their thoughts on this).

[ilia_kr]

Mandriva is still one of my favorite distros. Yes it has some flaws but it also has many advantages. I always recommend it to new Linux users (along with PCLinuxOS).

One thing i'm particularly proud of: filed a bug few weeks ago (2-3, can't remember) and the guys from bugzilla (Adam Wilson) contacted me yesterday about some additional information about it. Never happened to me. Good job!

I wish they improved their pre-relies QA though.

I was never ashamed in using Mandiva, because my friends don't even know what Linux is, so I'm kind of a Linux freak :ears:

[mystified]

I installed Mandriva on my laptop when I first got it because I wanted something easy to install and use. But I have an unsupported wireless card and my connection in Mandriva was terrible. So someone with the same card recommended Debian and I haven't had any problems since I switched. I installed Mandriva on my daughter's new computer because it's easy to use. But I left it because I had no choice. I needed wireless.

[Trio3b]

I have experienced the MDV ambivalence, and some other distros might have one or the other area covered, but none has the best all 'round marks for

installer/partitioner
hdwr detection
package selection
urpmi package installer (repos could be a little more clear...... even with easyurpmi))
stability

and to me the two most important

The MCC
the user base

IMHO no other distro comes close to fulfilling all these to the extent that MDV does.


I have loaded MDV on over 40 random PCs over the past 24 months and MDV nails everyone of them including dual and triple boots and dual HDs. I have loaded all the other major distros (*buntu, FC, Slack, Mepis, CentOS, Xandros) and about 10-15 smaller ones (pup, DSL, SAM, Zen, Austrumi, Kanotix, Linuxmint, sidux, etc) on these same PCs with mixed luck. Sorry, but for all the hype I have had more installation problems with *buntu than any other distro. Mandriva will load onto almost anything including my roto-tiller.


My only requests would be:
a cleaner website (which I believe they're working on)
easier to understand repositories (some packages/descriptions are not where/what a newb might expect them according to the MCC).
a little more PR to help push MDV along

This post has been edited by Trio3b: 26 May 2008 - 10:43 PM

[ramfree17]

i was thinking about this thread this morning and i just figured out what i would be ashamed of if i was using it for my desktop: SCO Linux. i think if that was the case then i would be this guy -> :hanged:

ciao!

This post has been edited by ramfree17: 26 May 2008 - 11:51 PM