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Hands-on Review of Mandriva Flash


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Ok, if you've seen my other posts you know that I’m NO expert, but I’m not 100$ stupid either.

 

But even I am beginning to doubt that now.

 

I bought the Official M FLASH on impulse. After 2 weeks and it didn’t show, I tried to cancel my order, only to have THAT email refused.

 

It FINALLY arrived yesterday.

 

1) The packaging is a joke, its is a piece of cardboard that’s folded over 3 times with about 1/2 a roll of packing tape holding it all together. I was truly disheartened when I saw that it had come from France that way. BUT not to judge a book by its cover I dug in immediately, and found FOUR copies of the same receipt all showing a retail value of $8USD, with a statement that that was not its value but only for tax purposes (fraud anyone?). After the 4 receipts I pulled everything else out and laid it on the table.

 

Unfortunately 'everything else' consisted of a subscription form for Linux Magazine (a GREAT mag BTW, just VERY expensive here in the states) and a pre packaged 2GB Dane-Elec flash key. For a minute I REALLY thought I had been sent a blank key.

 

I opened the package and on the side that you CAN’T se, its stamped Mandriva, so there was a little hope.

 

But ONE thing was glaringly missing. The ad states a CD is included to allow you to boot from devices that don’t support USB booting. NO CD. Looking in the Mandriva.com Flash Forum, I'm finding that I’m NOT the only one who didn’t get one. But so far no one has heard back from support.

 

2) I plug it into the same AMD-64 3.8ghz laptop that I have been working with MCNLIVE on, reconfig the bios and boot away, and wait, and wait, and wait. Good thing I was feeding my son at the time, if I had to stare at the screen the whole Time I would have thought it was broken.

 

But lo and behold after several minutes a 3 or 4 page setup screen opened up and was in business.

 

Oh except it can’t find my wireless netw. So I load the same drivers from the same source as when I setup MCNL and it found the network and started cruising the net.

 

3) I started poking around to see what the $35 was for (I figure the key is worth $35).

 

There is a complete install of open office, which I like VERY much. Firefox is installed and the default, Another plus for me! But Thunderbird is not? That one was a little perplexing. I am learning to work with KMAIL and KPIM, but I really DO prefer thunderbird, and everywhere else that I can use it, that’s what I AM using. Oh well I can add that later.

 

GIMP is loaded, very nice. Plus the usual assortment of games and themes and 'pretties' I don’t care for these things much. The biggest thing I do to 'personalize' my desktop is once a week I swap out the photo of my son I use as wallpaper. otherwise I usually turn EVERYTHING off, as I find things tend to move faster that way.

 

K3b is installed, but not where one would expect it, you kind of have to look in order to find it.

 

4) I reboot and log in as root, or should I say TRY and log in as root "root logins not allowed"

 

ok I can set the root PW, but obviously I’m not trusted enough to actually log IN as root. OY!

 

So I reboot, log in w/ my user account and start cruising the shell, turns out that the advert isn’t EXACTLY honest. The image is 1.3GB and takes 1.4B of the stick so you don’t actually have an entire gig to yourself. Not a HUGE difference, but those folks that are finding it fills up pretty quick, now we can see part of why.

 

5) I open the CC to see what I can pull out, just for grins to see how slim you COULD get this if you wanted, and having just gone through this with MCL I decided to look for LOCALES I wouldn’t use.

 

Folks there is over 400MB of language paks here. Now I KNOW I must sound like the stereotypical American xenophobe, but I tell ya there are countries listed here that I haven’t heard of since I 1st played RISK as a kid! There are MANY countries that I would have told you, you were making UP if you stopped me on the street and asked me if I knew where upper suboria was (note: lower suboria didn’t make it in the distro - sorry guys!)

 

6) now the bad news. I've rebooted a total of 1/2 a dozen times. I went into the CC to try and do an install of audacity (not from the CLI, but I wanted to try the GUI 1st)

 

an error message states that its impossible to run 'unknown program install' you press ok and hit installed or installable and the next error is 'program has exited abnormally'

 

sigh.........

 

I haven’t tried URPMI yet, I will this evening, I REALLY hope it works. I prefer the GUI method, but the CLI

 

worse yet, I JUST tried to shut down, I got stuck for too long, hit ESC and have about 6 different "DISK FULL errors"

 

wow, this is bad.

 

There is a posting on the mandriva forum that they will be releasing a CD that will allow you to restore you flash to factory original, but if that doesn’t come out this week, this is going back.

 

you know I saw the ad for the flash and almost IMMEDIATELY pulled the trigger.

 

I DID wait 6 hours until I got home, and then sent my order in.

 

I should have listened to my inner voice the FIRST time.

 

if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have bought it. especially now that I have several different MCNLIVES running.

 

live and learn.

 

Hopefully this will benefit SOMONE

 

 

[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

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Ok, if you've seen my other posts you know that I’m NO expert, but I’m not 100$ stupid either.

 

But even I am beginning to doubt that now.

 

I bought the Official M FLASH on impulse. After 2 weeks and it didn’t show, I tried to cancel my order, only to have THAT email refused.

Before I answer I should say I have a friend who is an alcoholic and although he's a really nice guy really you should never give him money. A few years ago+ I made my first post on this board having a very similar experience with Mandrake ... basically dishonest packaging and damaged media and tried emailing them etc.

Several years later I still think Mandriva can be great but I would never trust them with money!

 

It FINALLY arrived yesterday.

 

1) The packaging is a joke, its is a piece of cardboard that’s folded over 3 times with about 1/2 a roll of packing tape holding it all together. I was truly disheartened when I saw that it had come from France that way. BUT not to judge a book by its cover I dug in immediately, and found FOUR copies of the same receipt all showing a retail value of $8USD, with a statement that that was not its value but only for tax purposes (fraud anyone?).

Actually that's normal for shipping software, $8 is the supposed value of the media ... I used to ship SW for over $1 million a shot and the value was the price of the tapes minus shippinng, insurance .etc.. in effect its like you bought the stick and the right to the SW .... so relax over that one :D
After the 4 receipts I pulled everything else out and laid it on the table.

 

Unfortunately 'everything else' consisted of a subscription form for Linux Magazine (a GREAT mag BTW, just VERY expensive here in the states) and a pre packaged 2GB Dane-Elec flash key. For a minute I REALLY thought I had been sent a blank key.

OK they are improving.... if they didn't send you a subscription for the mandriva club worded so it seems you need to join to use the prodct they have made one small step in the last few years!

 

I opened the package and on the side that you CAN’T se, its stamped Mandriva, so there was a little hope.
But ONE thing was glaringly missing. The ad states a CD is included to allow you to boot from devices that don’t support USB booting. NO CD. Looking in the Mandriva.com Flash Forum, I'm finding that I’m NOT the only one who didn’t get one. But so far no one has heard back from support.

Ah then this is the same company used tro be called Mandrake.... when they actually delivered in less than 6 months I was starting to think they must be a different company :D

You might want to check your credit card though ...sometimes it seems they charge 100x the amount by accident and then say its not trhier fault but that of their bank (although they will still REFUSE) to communicate with you.

 

2) I plug it into the same AMD-64 3.8ghz laptop that I have been working with MCNLIVE on, reconfig the bios and boot away, and wait, and wait, and wait. Good thing I was feeding my son at the time, if I had to stare at the screen the whole Time I would have thought it was broken.

 

But lo and behold after several minutes a 3 or 4 page setup screen opened up and was in business.

 

Oh except it can’t find my wireless netw. So I load the same drivers from the same source as when I setup MCNL and it found the network and started cruising the net.

This is perhaps more suited to a usuability review than your genuine business practice post :D

3) I started poking around to see what the $35 was for (I figure the key is worth $35).
Well the customs invoice says $8 ... + post, package and insurance.. from your descirption of the package lets say $5 in total? So lets say $70-$13 or $57

 

There is a complete install of open office, which I like VERY much. Firefox is installed and the default, Another plus for me! But Thunderbird is not? That one was a little perplexing. I am learning to work with KMAIL and KPIM, but I really DO prefer thunderbird, and everywhere else that I can use it, that’s what I AM using. Oh well I can add that later.

 

GIMP is loaded, very nice. Plus the usual assortment of games and themes and 'pretties' I don’t care for these things much. The biggest thing I do to 'personalize' my desktop is once a week I swap out the photo of my son I use as wallpaper. otherwise I usually turn EVERYTHING off, as I find things tend to move faster that way.

 

K3b is installed, but not where one would expect it, you kind of have to look in order to find it.

Again this is usability, you can change that so fair cop? (Im just seperating out the usability from business practice ... cos Im guessing if the rest had been smooth and HONEST you wouldn't be pissed !)

 

4) I reboot and log in as root, or should I say TRY and log in as root "root logins not allowed"

 

ok I can set the root PW, but obviously I’m not trusted enough to actually log IN as root. OY!

I would say search the threads.... this is the first thing you said I disagree with but I disagree STRONGLY.... please search the threads here, there is absolutely NO NEED ... if you insist you need to change 3 letters in kdmrc ... but I encourage you REALLY STRONGLY not to....

 

So I reboot, log in w/ my user account
No need to reboot? but lets continue....
and start cruising the shell, turns out that the advert isn’t EXACTLY honest. The image is 1.3GB and takes 1.4B of the stick so you don’t actually have an entire gig to yourself. Not a HUGE difference, but those folks that are finding it fills up pretty quick, now we can see part of why.

I didn't see the ad but I presume it says you have a GIG out of a 2 Gig stick?

 

This is so typical Mandriva they are just basically dishonest and can't see what is wrong with this.

The irony is they could easily be honest ... for no cost by removing a few games and making thee locales per country or per order for starters...

 

Before anyone says BUT he can do this himself .... No he can't because he might want to use the mythical restore CD and restore the flash stick... and if he has made it up to 1GB in room he won't have space ...!!!

Also how can he know its all working when he has to deinstall parts and thier deps?

 

5) I open the CC to see what I can pull out, just for grins to see how slim you COULD get this if you wanted, and having just gone through this with MCL I decided to look for LOCALES I wouldn’t use.

 

Folks there is over 400MB of language paks here. Now I KNOW I must sound like the stereotypical American xenophobe, but I tell ya there are countries listed here that I haven’t heard of since I 1st played RISK as a kid! There are MANY countries that I would have told you, you were making UP if you stopped me on the street and asked me if I knew where upper suboria was (note: lower suboria didn’t make it in the distro - sorry guys!)

Well this I'd say depends... since they advertise a GIG free then they should do something to free it... if this means making a different image per country/region then well.... this is a valid way to reclaim 400MB ...

 

6) now the bad news. I've rebooted a total of 1/2 a dozen times. I went into the CC to try and do an install of audacity (not from the CLI, but I wanted to try the GUI 1st)

 

an error message states that its impossible to run 'unknown program install' you press ok and hit installed or installable and the next error is 'program has exited abnormally'

 

sigh.........

 

I haven’t tried URPMI yet, I will this evening, I REALLY hope it works. I prefer the GUI method, but the CLI

There were some faults with URMPI and MCC ... Im guessing these are your problem here.... do a search or start a seperate thread for this... and hopefully we will sort this out....

worse yet, I JUST tried to shut down, I got stuck for too long, hit ESC and have about 6 different "DISK FULL errors"

 

wow, this is bad.

Again start a thread .... Im betting we at mandrivausers will sort this out....

 

There is a posting on the mandriva forum that they will be releasing a CD that will allow you to restore you flash to factory original, but if that doesn’t come out this week, this is going back.

LOL where to? seriously ...

you know I saw the ad for the flash and almost IMMEDIATELY pulled the trigger.

 

I DID wait 6 hours until I got home, and then sent my order in.

 

I should have listened to my inner voice the FIRST time.

 

if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t have bought it. especially now that I have several different MCNLIVES running.

 

live and learn.

 

Hopefully this will benefit SOMONE

Yep ... like I say I like a lot of the technical stuff from Mandriva but they just don't understand business ethics.

Like my alcoholic friend they just can't be trusted with money !

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The least they could do with the locales, is to ship all 400mb, and then during the install, remove the ones you don't need. Bang. 400mb saved, and the same image used for everyone.

 

That's a pretty disappointing experience, and one I hear frequently about mandriva/mandrake (how many of those were Gowator, im not exactly sure).

 

Their pathetic communication just echos my own experiences in attempting to report bugs and contact mandriva too.

 

James

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That's a pretty disappointing experience.
I completely agree. It seems that they could have made a good product and completely screwed it. :sad:

The sad thing is, that applies to everything they release. It's all got potential, but so poorly marred with bugs and issues that their products just arent up to scratch.

 

James

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Hmm... now you are a bit unfair. If you have the right combination of hardware, Mandriva is a pretty good distro. The good reviews some mags publish are surely not a product of the reviewers smoking some wird stuff, I guess. And your opinion puzzles me a bit because ... when was the last time you used Mandriva? AFAIK you use only Arch since several years. ;)

 

IMHO the biggest problem they have is that they haven't enough developers to do some thorough bugfixing for the over 10.000 packages they want/have to maintain. There are always tradeoffs if you have too few devels. Either you haven't enough (but stable) packages, then some people cry because they miss app XY, or you have too many packages, but then people complain because of the inevitable bugs.

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That's a pretty disappointing experience.
I completely agree. It seems that they could have made a good product and completely screwed it. :sad:

Hmm the product might still be good, its the "packaging" that isn't....

I didn't see anything critically bad in the "review" of the actual product... just the packaging and business practice being shoddy and misleading (well basically dishonest) ...

 

The space issue really sucks.... because its one thing to buy A product and not like the placement of K3B its another if its not fit for the purpose you bought it for... If you have worked out that your move will need 1GB of free space because you want to carry around photo?, music or whatever data and decided you can live with 1GB and find you have 600MB its pretty much useless for your intended use.

 

I compare this to buying an MP3 player with X Gb ... my GF just bought one and had calculated exactly she needed 5GB (and some space for new stuff) ... so we purchased a 6GB instead of the 4GB ... if she had got it home and found it had less than 6GB she wouldn have been able to use it as she intended which was the primary archive of her MP3 ´s as it is she has 1GB spare for the odd video or some photo? etc.

 

The ultimate irony is the Mandriva advert .. size does matter !

 

Mandriva Flash is a pre-installed Mandriva Linux distribution on a 2GB USB key. Plug in the key, take your Linux system everywhere with you, save and exchange your data in 1GB of free space!

It is not only practical, easy and pleasant to use but also high-performing and innovative. Mandriva Flash will surprise you whether you are already a Linux user or not.

 

With Mandriva Flash, you can now prove to the world that size does matter!

 

The fact is yes it blinking well does!!!!! and the lost 400MB is pretty poor especially when they could easily have said 600MB or got rid of some extraneous packages...

 

Speaking personally I would be very pissed .... because given the choice between the 3D desktop and the free space I take the free space for a MOVE type distro.... its really the whole point of having it on a ÜSB key NOT a bootable CD...

 

Hmm... now you are a bit unfair. If you have the right combination of hardware, Mandriva is a pretty good distro.

I dont think so ... he said bugs and issues... I find this and the lack of communication a HUGE issue.

Anyone using arch (which is free) or even kanotix/sidux would be given answers and somewhere to communicate and the devs would respond... they might just say sorry, its a mistake but they WOULD RESPOND ... so the total lack of communication really is a huge issue and when this is combined with bugs it compounds. Similarly Iph doesn need to be using Mandriva because he reads the posts here...

The initial release of 2007 was pants ... especially the broken RPM drake since this is pretty critical to a N00b actually fixing it and the l;ack of communication saying yes its a bug but if you download the new fixed RPM drake and rpm -i it then it will be fixed and you can deal with other stuff.

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Several years later I still think Mandriva can be great but I would never trust them with money!

 

That has been precisely my experience.

 

When I first tried Linux I shelled out the bucks for the Mandrake "Power Pack" because, although I'm fairly good at figuring things out through tinkering and Googling, I don't always have time to do so and thought that, for my first distro, it would be nice to have access to actual Mandriva tech support. That tech support turned out to be non-existent, but I was able to solve all my problems without it, leaving me wondering for what I paid. I might start trusting them again if they ever answer the voice-mail I left at their customer support number...four years ago.

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Hmm... now you are a bit unfair. If you have the right combination of hardware, Mandriva is a pretty good distro.

I dont think so ... he said bugs and issues...

Actually he said, referring to my "they screwed it" comment:

that applies to everything they release.
That is something slightly different, Gowator. It was not about their lack of communication.
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Hmm... now you are a bit unfair. If you have the right combination of hardware, Mandriva is a pretty good distro.

I dont think so ... he said bugs and issues...

Actually he said, referring to my "they screwed it" comment:

that applies to everything they release.
That is something slightly different, Gowator. It was not about their lack of communication.

Its still pretty fair IMHO because if the communication was there then it would not be such a let down.

 

but it also depends how you interpret "screwed it" .. I interpreted it like

"I was having a wonderful releationship then I screwed it" because I think the problem is the communication compunding the small technical mistakes.

If mindwave had the same experience but the product actually worked as advertised then I doubt he would be dissapointed so much. (Im just guessing) by the lack of communication.

The fact is if the distro worked as adveristised communication wopuld be less important .. it would still be regretable IMHO they don't communicate with their clients but not so negative.

 

I would be a lot more generous with buggy software from people who communicate... I just posted this on the bibble forum btw because I am OK with a little instability from then since bug reports are listened to and answered and in most cases patches available the same day!

 

I use this because its also commercial.... and my impression of Bibble is very good because of the communication. I honestly don't mind the odd crash with new plug-ins or stuff because I know they listen and actually do something...

if they stop doing this then I'd say they "screwed it" and my impression would then be that the product is bad... because my impression only stands as excellent while they communicate.

 

hmm does that make sense? I just mean you can't seperate them (communication and buggyness) over something subjective ...because a certain amount of buggynessis OK so long as its acknowledged?

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I realize that we are all geeks and willing to use our "geek logic" to aid Mandriva. I can only tell you that good business practices are absolutely critical, and communication is essential to good business. For us, how good it is means almost everything. I assure you that poor products with good customer support make more money than great products with bad support. Mandriva needs to appeal to the consumer in order to be financially sound. If us geeks could make it financially sound, Mandriva would have done it a long time ago. Our willingness to tolerate mediocre customer service has been mistaken as "OK" by Mandriva. It is unfortunate.

 

(Geek logic)

Anyway, $35 for a 2G flash stick is a good buy! B)

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Oh but it gets worse.

 

yesterday morning i got an error about no room on device EVERYTIME I tried to shut down.

 

THIS MORNING i started getting a SERIES of the same error messages, over and over, to the point that now it will no longer boot to the gui.

 

i havent tried a cli boot yet, but i'm not holding my breath.

 

i HAVE however attempted to boot it from 6 diferent pc's 2 laptop and 4 different desktps.

 

no go.

 

wow i REALLY hope tha on monday they post that recovery iso. otherwise i think a call to the CC company is in order.

 

maybe i'm coming off like a xenophobic american, but it just amazes me that the .NL club can produce a product like MCLN and provide amazingly fast support, for FREE.

 

and yet with several more dollars 9francs wahtever) mandriva closes on saturday

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