Is Mandriva right for me?

[WorrFighter]

Hey everyone. I am fairly new to the Linux world. I will be keeping Windows XP on the desktop, it is for family use. I am interested in a distro that will easily partion for Windows, and be a good duel boot OS for a Linux noob.

I recently purchased the Linux Bible '08. Thanks to it, I have tried a couple of other distros. Debian, Xubuntu, and openSUSE. Debian has been my favorite so far. I still want to try Mandriva though.

So, I have a few questions that I really need answering. While I used the distros I mentioned, while surfing online, I always noticed that I would have to install Flash Player, or Adobe, and any other media plug-in. I went to install them, but was usually unsuccessful. Is Mandriva any easier to use? And, I also play Age of Empires 3, the others that I used would not support it, so I used WINE to play it. I read in the book about Mandriva Spring. It seems to have pretty much all I need to make an effortless transition. Does Spring still exist? Or, was it combined into Mandriva One?

Any help would be great.

[b2bwild]

Yeah, Mandriva is good you can try it.
The only thing i dont like about it, is its defaulted to KDE.
but KDE is also good. but i prefer GNOME edition.

Many non-free addons aren't pre-installed by default on many Linux distros but Linux Mint will come with all multimedia plugins, flash and java etc.

[WorrFighter]

Ok, that sounds good. But what about Spring. Does it still exist?

[gerard4143]

If your interested in Mandriva try this link:

Mandriva Linux

If your interested in Flash 10 try here

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/cof...sh-player.html


About distro's I personally tried Fedore, OpenSuse and a few others and finally decided to stick with Mandriva for a whole host of reasons...speed being the foremost...Hpoe this and the links help...Note I know the intrustions are for Fedora but they should work for Mandriva...Gerard4143

[gerard4143]

Also, if you have trouble with Flash 10 instructions please let us know...the instructions are in "Linux talk" and they can be a bit confusing and odd to a new comer....Hope this helpls Gerard4143

[rokytnji]

But what about Spring. Does it still exist?

Index of /pub/mandrake/official/iso/2007.1

[WorrFighter]

Cool guys, this helps out alot. And sorry rokynji, I don't really understand what that link is for.

[Charles4809]

Cool guys, this helps out alot. And sorry rokynji, I don't really understand what that link is for.

The website contains the answer to your question about spring!
Just go there and look for yourself. Being curious doesn't hurt.

[reed9]

Index of /pub/mandrake/official/iso/2007.1

That's a very old edition on Mandriva! I don't use mandriva myself, but as I understand it, spring is just the name for the point release that comes around every, er, spring. So there was a 2008 release, and then a 2008.1 spring release, the current release is Mandriva 2009, with 2009.1 in the works. The main difference is Mandriva editions is the "free" version vs the "one" version. Free does not contain proprietary software, such as adobe flash, and the one version does.

[WorrFighter]

I would like the version with Adobe, and all the other goodies. I have not yet found how to install thos add-ons yet. I do have the '08 Linux Bilbe. It comes with Mandriva on CD. Am I correct in assuming that when I install Mandriva, it will be given all the updates needed to be equal to the current One? And, in these updates, do you guys know if it will include things like Adobe, so I will simply be able to run the internet with no hick-ups?