coverup Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 I was browsing a magazine stand this afternoon, and my eye caught this headline on one of the DVDs: Linux hits back at Vista. Try out Metisse, the new 3D window manager for Linux that competes with Vista's Aero Glass. Included as a LiveCD based on Mandriva One 2007. In an hour or so I was booting off the CD, which was burnt from the ISO image included in the DVD. Well, what can I tell that you don't know? I did not even get to see what all the fuss is about .... Mandriva started OK from the second attempt; the first boot was a fiasco because for some reason it did not like the monitor connected to the laptop, and I had to disconnect it. I was presented with I bright and shiny yellow/orange GUI, the mouse was moving OK, but... the system was responding at a speed of one click per second! There was absolutely no way I could check anything, or start an application! I somehow managed to start firefox just to find that it couldn't load the welcome page. One thing really p@#$%d me off. Since ethernet was down (to disconnect the monitor I had to take the laptop off the docking station) I tried to configure the wireless connection. Guess what? I was presented with a popup message saying that I had to sign up for the Mandriva Club in order to be able to download and use the proprietary driver for my Intel Wireless 2100 card. Hold on, but Novel and Ubuntu did not request me to pay for this! I was able to configure and use WiFi off Ubuntu 6.06 and OpenSuse 10.2 Live CDs with no problem. Did they breach their deal with Intel? I doubt. I'd rather think that Mandriva uses this cheap trick to squeeze another few bucks from unsuspecting noobies. OpenSuse 10.2 Live CD was on the same DVD, and I was shocked with how pathetic Mandriva One was compared to OpenSuse. One may or may not like Suse, but from the moment I put the DVD into the tray, everything worked as it should, including Internet, wireless, the external monitor was recognised, and OpenOffice was usable from the very first second. [moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 I was browsing a magazine stand this afternoon, and my eye caught this headline on one of the DVDs:Linux hits back at Vista. Try out Metisse, the new 3D window manager for Linux that competes with Vista's Aero Glass. Included as a LiveCD based on Mandriva One 2007. In an hour or so I was booting off the CD, which was burnt from the ISO image included in the DVD. Well, what can I tell that you don't know? I did not even get to see what all the fuss is about .... Mandriva started OK from the second attempt; the first boot was a fiasco because for some reason it did not like the monitor connected to the laptop, and I had to disconnect it. I was presented with I bright and shiny yellow/orange GUI, the mouse was moving OK, but... the system was responding at a speed of one click per second! There was absolutely no way I could check anything, or start an application! I somehow managed to start firefox just to find that it couldn't load the welcome page. Graphics drivers? One thing really p@#$%d me off. Since ethernet was down (to disconnect the monitor I had to take the laptop off the docking station) I tried to configure the wireless connection. Guess what? I was presented with a popup message saying that I had to sign up for the Mandriva Club in order to be able to download and use the proprietary driver for my Intel Wireless 2100 card. Hold on, but Novel and Ubuntu did not request me to pay for this! I was able to configure and use WiFi off Ubuntu 6.06 and OpenSuse 10.2 Live CDs with no problem. Did they breach their deal with Intel? I doubt. I'd rather think that Mandriva uses this cheap trick to squeeze another few bucks from unsuspecting noobies. 'Selling' or charging for the intel firmware, is very severely against the license for the ipw2x00 cards. I find this hard to believe. On top of that, any distro may freely distribute the firmware, so long as the user is presented with the license before use. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 It is odd that we have frequently found problems with data found in magazines. Seriously, I am beginning to suspect foul play! Several people have found magazine provided disks to be poorly produced, where a fresh download and burn worked just fine. At any rate, Vista is so terrible that I won't even consider loading it for the next 6 months minimum. I am telling all of my customers to not buy anything with Vista on it. (As soon as they do, I'll be forced to install it and figure out how to fix it!! ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mystified Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 I had a similar experience when trying to get my wireless card working on my laptop. It told me I needed an rpm that was only available through the Mandriva Club. I turned out I didn't need the rpm but I wasn't at all happy about this stunt from Mandriva. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 I had a similar experience when trying to get my wireless card working on my laptop. It told me I needed an rpm that was only available through the Mandriva Club. I turned out I didn't need the rpm but I wasn't at all happy about this stunt from Mandriva. Yep I think that's really about the bottom line .... Obviously for those in the know through long experience we know the drivers must be available if not from Mandriva themselves elsewhere... I think its pretty sad that Mandriva are probably maintaining the letter of the GPL while making it as awkward as possible... especially for n00bies... and completely bypassing the spirit of the GPL ... at least from my opinion... Like Iph said drivers for Xorg... but legally these drivers can be distributed .. mandriva just doesn't unless you pay... but they bypass this by making you pay for something else (club or powerpack) and then bundling the drivers. I think the wost part is companies like Intel are making a big effort lets give them some kudos for the graphics drivers and wireless stuff... and Nvidia aren't too bad either.... but if companies like Mandriva deliberatly withold these drivers or make stuff difficult for n00bs then people are not getting either a proper linux experience or a proper use of the hardware that the manufactuerers have actually spent time and money developing.... Its as well coverup isn't a n00b and already tried other stuff and realises what can be done... but for the hundreds who dopn't its really a negative experience from which Mandriva might gain a few club members who will probably become even more disatified once they realise the drivers were available for free anyway... One may or may not like Suse, but from the moment I put the DVD into the tray, everything worked as it should, including Internet, wireless, the external monitor was recognised, and OpenOffice was usable from the very first second. Pretty much a good description of Suse as far as I'm concerned... which just makes it even more sad IMHO for Mandriva. If you factor in the Powerpack vs paying for Suse then its just as much difference, Suse are profesisonal in their customer relations and give you far more for less? This wouldn't be so sad If I wasn't really anti-Suse... hardly my favorite distro but they have got some things off pat as far as the experience is concerned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexter11 Posted March 24, 2007 Report Share Posted March 24, 2007 You can calm down now. Mandriva Spring (aka 2007.1) will have a public non-free repo with drivers and Java and possibly something else. Plus when I tried RC1 KDE live CD and launched rpmdrake for the first time It configured ftp servers almost automatically including non-free. I just had to choose from the servers list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coverup Posted March 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2007 You can calm down now. Mandriva Spring (aka 2007.1) will have a public non-free repo with drivers and Java and possibly something else. Plus when I tried RC1 KDE live CD and launched rpmdrake for the first time It configured ftp servers almost automatically including non-free. I just had to choose from the servers list. I should have mentioned the magazine. the Australian Personal Computer magazine makes a consistent effort advocating Linux. Mandriva has done itself a bad favor as far as I am concerned, and if what dexter11 says is true, it is going to repeat the mistake. Making 'nonfree' stuff available for download is not the same as putting it on a LiveCD. IMHO many people use LiveCDs as tests. If I can't get wireless working from the LiveCD, what are chances that it will work after I download and install the driver? I'd rather go with the distro which proves to work. The irony is that the laptop in question runs quite happily under Mandrake, including wireless. I was looking for an upgrade, and Mandriva scored nil on my list, compared to Ububtu and SuSE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted March 25, 2007 Report Share Posted March 25, 2007 You can calm down now. Mandriva Spring (aka 2007.1) will have a public non-free repo with drivers and Java and possibly something else. Plus when I tried RC1 KDE live CD and launched rpmdrake for the first time It configured ftp servers almost automatically including non-free. I just had to choose from the servers list. And it's taken them more than 3 years to realise they can write a tool to do this. Woooooo! Go Mandriva, about freakin time! James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexter11 Posted March 25, 2007 Report Share Posted March 25, 2007 No the tool was there already for some years now. It just didn't launch automatically, you have to start it from the software sources manager. Plus it didn't add plf so everybody was using easyurpmi instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artificial Intelligence Posted March 25, 2007 Report Share Posted March 25, 2007 Strange they didn't fixed it back then... :huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted March 26, 2007 Report Share Posted March 26, 2007 The problem is not with the magazines, but with Linux in general. The level of eye candy intended for that release of Mandriva is only possible with all graphic elements in the computer at hand working perfectly. Now we all know how challenging it can be to get it all up and running smoothly on a specific system - to make a generic boot disk that gets it all right on many and disparate machines is virtually impossible. This is because things like display drivers do not enjoy enough vendor support and development to get them up to the level of their Windows' rivals. In fact, I take it back - the magazine is to blame. They made a stupid statement that cannot be justified. As a result, there are now people out there thinking, "jeez, this Linux thing isn't so hot after all." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted March 26, 2007 Report Share Posted March 26, 2007 Thank you SoulSe. I agree totally that it is a Linux thing, and not a Mandriva thing. BTW, I use several systems, including Ubuntu and SuSE. All of them run nicely once they are set up. (This includes Gentoo, although I have not used it for a couple of years.) Installing windows and having it magically run is a marketing myth. Every vendor using windows includes the drivers for their stuff in their box ahead of time. Any computer builder knows this. Try installing windows on the latest equipment with out access to the chipset drivers. You will not have decent graphics, networking, or sound until you at least install the chipset drivers. Of course, then you need to install the other drivers. Of course, you will never hear about this because you will never see a free version of windows provided to you in a magazine, will you? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mystified Posted March 26, 2007 Report Share Posted March 26, 2007 I agree with what Ix said. I have tried to install a non OEM package on computers before. If you're just installing windows that doesn't have the drivers you need it can be a nightmare to find those drivers and install them. So I wouldn't really say it's a linux problem but a problem with any OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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