[scoonma]

camorri, on Jul 10 2008, 04:38 PM, said:

I want to see what type of performance increase I can have by creating a stripped down kernel.

The performance gain here is about 15%.

BTW: I'm definitely NOT ashamed using Mandriva. It was recommended to me by a much more experienced user many years ago (already knew some Unixes), and I've never regretted it. Compared to SuSE i.e. it's a much better choice, and a very good distro to learn linux, too.

[adamw]

ffi: mostly I follow OSNews, Linux Today, fsdaily.org, Slashdot, The Register and tuxmachines.org to find news. I also follow the distrowatch review list in the sidebar. Periodically I just search news.google.com for Mandriva and see what comes up.

It's perfectly safe to build kernels on Mandriva, so long as you copy the source into your home directory and do it there. You can't damage anything else in the building process, and kernels are designed to be installed alongside each other - so you stick your new kernel and initrd in /boot , add it to grub or lilo, and try booting it. If it doesn't work, so what? All your other kernels are still right there on the boot menu.

You might be disappointed at the performance, though. Remember that these days the vast majority of drivers in the kernel are built as modules, which means unless the hardware they support is actually present on your system, they'll never be loaded and will never have the slightest impact on performance. Building your own kernel was a more useful idea back in the days - five, six years ago now - when distros provided kernels with lots of the drivers built in statically, so they were loaded all the time and wasted memory even if the hardware they supported wasn't in your machine.

[Burunghantu]

ffi, on Jul 10 2008, 11:19 PM, said:

I am not ashamed to use MDV but many times you mention it you get a lot of negative reactions to it and feel the need to get defensive. :sad: luckily at that time adam useally popups up (he must watch a lot of blogs and forum for mandriva to be mentioned)

When I came to Linux about a year ago. I was tired of XP, and wanted something I could work with and in time learn more about. I'm still an 'average' user. Meaning I don't do video editing, major graphics projects or anything else with my computers. SO naturally I want something that is polished and easy to work with. I can't be a hopper like some people. I want something that works and I want something I can keep using.

When I first started. Tried SuSE. I liked their lang support and working in China I wanted that. Then they did the deal and I chose not to bother with them. Then a friend told me about Mandy. Long story short, I was impressed then. Any troubles we had, were due to inexperience or in this case learning steps. We burned to fast. Media in China sucks!!! I now burn to DVD's cause the CD quality is just horrible and you never know which ones are good. (Some DVDs aren't good either)

I have two distros I use. Mandriva and 'sidux'. Now the reason is simple. Mandy is easy to use and works. 'sidux' works and the manual was so good that I began to learn things so it's good for learning. At my stage now. I just want to 'use' my computer. Not baby sit it.

sidux works and Mandy works. (I never tried Buntu, once Mint and what it was was slow. Buntu coding. Real Debian is cleaner and faster) Between Mandy and Debian, binary, I can find most of what I need. (I need e17!!!!!) E17 is also another reason I actually ended up with Debian, somehow that project seems mixed with Debian a lot.

Later, one of these days, I'll try Arch. (I think Gentoo is too hard for me but like having knowledge.) For this user, 3-4 distros is enough and Mandy will be one of my primaries.

I also play with Sabayon, cause I definately feel Gentoo is beyound me to set up on my own. Mostly I don't 'need' bleedng edge though and the other bonus for me of Debian is a stable that can sit there for a while before it needs upgrading... :P

I like Mandriva and give it to every windowsfile here in China who is complaining about their viruses and how to do things in windows cause in short they know nothing about computers. U know what, they always find Mandy is easier. (Now with Vbox, they can run those pesky little programs they 'must' have from windows) ;)

Mandy with attention to detail, is much more polished and better than Ubuntu. I think Mandy needs to get some company that makes PC's to put Mandy on it.

Here's my idea. Hint, if someone from Mandriva company reads this. Talk to VIA!! Their mininote idea was taken ahead by Asus, but with the new chip coming out and their chip development house invested in Linux, it can be a nice marriage. VIA is a Taiwanese company. Most of Asia is looking at Linux now especially gov to get out from under Big Brothers eyes and windows back doors to their gov secrets...

Happy to use Mandy. Next to sidux, it's the only other good supporter of my HP tx1000. Which is a bit of a troublesome computer I read from many other forums for many other distros. :mandriva:
It gets better and better. With this release, one problem was solved that worried me when giving it to new users. Configuring sources and when I used it and got that automatic Urpmi add sources. I was first a bit put out, I liked the old way cut and paste CLi, but then I was like "WOW", this is great! Now I can really give it to anyone!!

Keep up the good work and sometimes my only little niggle, is don't make a change for the sake of change. If it's good, like this new automated thing, and hope there'll be something to help automate upgrades, then it's worth the hassle cause such big changes may mean an upgrade for those of us starting earlier may be a hassle, but it's good in the long run for usability and the new comers. Yet just polish what is there. It's so much already...

Keep listening to the users about what is easier. I think it's paying off.

[tyme]

Burunghantu, on Jul 10 2008, 02:04 PM, said:

I think Mandy needs to get some company that makes PC's to put Mandy on it.

They had a few deals like this. Not sure what the current status of them is, though. adamw might know?

This post has been edited by tyme: 11 July 2008 - 04:13 PM

[adamw]

Well, seems I'm allowed to talk about this now...

http://www.gdium.com

is our current project. It's a netbook (or whatever you want to call it) which runs a customized Mandriva Flash. Interesting technical note is that it uses the Loongson CPU, which is not x86-compatible, so we ported Mandriva entirely to a new architecture for this project. It's a pretty normal netbook in most ways, but it has no internal storage: everything's on the 'G-Key', which is basically a Flash. Some people see this as a drawback but I think it's neat - it's great for security (just keep the key with you and only plug it in when you use the machine; even if someone steals the machine, or you lose it, there's absolutely nothing on it without the key), and flexible in situations where you would want a pool of machines (family or office, maybe). You just plug the key into any Gdium and go ahead and use it.

(It just occurred to me it'd be awesome if we could get big enough keys to be dual - plug it in a Gdium and it boots the Gdium-tailored edition, plug it in a regular PC and it boots normal MDV Flash, and the two share data - but I don't think that'll be possible for a few years. I should suggest it though!)

It's coming out in at least Australia later this year. I think it'll also be released in Europe, or at least France. Not sure about elsewhere in the world.

[arctic]

Sounds pretty cool. :thumbs:

[aRTee]

Ashamed of Mandrake?
Ehh, I mean, Mandriva?

Heck no, why would I have named my website after it?
:P
Why would anyone be ashamed of what OS they use, if it's something they chose on purpose?
Now, if you're ashamed of your past behaviour / choices or position, that I can imagine.

But I don't even think most MSWin users who 'know better' are ashamed...

Things that Mandriva (Mandrake) has in its favour (most already mentioned, but anyway) :
- one of the first if not _the_ first distribution to aim for the desktop, instead of corporate servers
- and make that work pretty well even back in the late nineties
- first gratis available distribution to offer NTFS partition resizing - back in the day when XP started becoming popular and more and more machines were sold with NTFS, this was really important
- committed to Free Software
- still one of the easiest to use distributions, solid hardware detection and support - yes people claim it was flakey in the past, no I'm not one of those, I've always had good to very good experience with Mandrake/iva also on hardware that was 'too hard' for SuSE, Ubuntu and whatnot
- DE/WM agnostic - though many keep FUDding that it's KDE centered
- fact that one can mix and match in the use of the drakwizards and config file editing.
- urpmi and the new automagical repo setup
- first 'mostly open' distribution to offer fully legal DVD playback (I know, I know, Lindows had that too at some point)
- community around Mandriva, though it's hardly as necessary (to me since I know how to use Linux / Mandriva, and to the users in general since Linux / Mandriva has become very very easy to use)


Things that Mandriva has against it:
- Ubuntu's astroturfing (see my Ubuntu review - I still rate it below Mandriva - didn't install latest yet I must admit - though it's catching up)
- people comparing Mandriva of x months ago to complete fresh distro y - on very new hardware, where distro y has a newer kernel which just happens to support said newer hardware better
- people thinking back at old and very old negative experiences with Mandriva/Mandrake

I'm sure in the above lists I'm forgetting some points, but these are the main ones to come to my mind at this hour of the night....

Am I proud to be a Mandriva user?
I don't know, don't think so. I'm proud to be in control of my systems, but I could do that with most other Linuxes as well, I'm sure.


On the gdium: I saw it mentioned somewhere before, and realised one thing: if this thing becomes popular, that'd be a sure sign of the end of Microsoft as we know it.

And another thing that I realised a long long time ago: the moment a fully Free Software system gets mainstream popularity (as in: over 15 - 25% marketshare) is the moment the hardware manufacturers can drop x86. As someone in the hardware / chip industry, I would really dig it if someone would just come up with a new CPU/dsp architecture and tilt Intel upside down...

[iphitus]

adamw, on Jul 12 2008, 03:07 AM, said:

It's coming out in at least Australia later this year. I think it'll also be released in Europe, or at least France. Not sure about elsewhere in the world.

Interesting, what cpu architecture, and what price (AUD)?

Ashamed of Mandrake? No, just moved on to other things. I don't really have any time for other distros nowadays unfortunately.

[tyme]

The data sheet seems to say it's a MIPS architecture.

This post has been edited by tyme: 16 July 2008 - 01:27 PM

[adamw]

Yep - it's based on the Chinese Loongson CPU, which is based on MIPS. Info from the manufacturer here: http://www.st.com/st...re/bd/13577.htm

This site: http://www.emtec-australia.com.au/products...m_empc_89/123/1

lists it at AU$580, which compares quite well to the Aspire One and Eee.