Convince me to stay with Mandriva!

Hi guys,
Despite the lack of penguins beside my avatar, I've been a Linux user for a few years now. I've seen all sorts of Distros and have always had a permanent Mandrake install since the latter days of 8. Thing is As happy as I was with LE2005 there's a couple of things that are niggling me about it - a recurring KDM issue, and mostly some problems that were fixed before in 10.0 and 10.1 but which have occured again in this version. :roll:

I'm hearing all sorts of good things about SuSE 9.3, and I always recommended Mandrake for ease of use, Multimedia support and the up to date packages. But now it seems Mandriva and SuSE have traded places....I'm gonna turn.... :twisted:

So convince me to stay! Tell me to go! I'm not gonna do another reinstall this month for a laugh- if I do it's for the long haul!

I am a fan of SUSE. After all of the distros I have, SUSE is my favorite.
Not that I have been using linux that long, about a week before I joined LFDO.
I really like Gentoo, Vector and Yoper too.
But SUSE 9.2 rules, I can't wait for 9.3.

Hmm, I've had similar thoughts. The reviews for the current SuSe version are glowing to say the least. It's probably a better distro... I would still stay with Mandriva though. I think it's better to pick a distro and hang on tight, learn all about it and tailor it to your own needs. That way IMO you learn a lot more.

So stay :o I think Mandriva LE is a slower boot than 10.1 though. I really hate the 'Menu' text sprawled across the applications button. But it works really well overall, and I want to support a great effort.

Hmm, im also thinking about making the switch to SuSe after troubles with getting my wireless card to work in 10.1. I say go for Suse as from the reviews and screenshots, it looks more polished.

Just upgraded my Mdk 10.1 to Mandriva 2005.

:cry:

Bad move. Messed up my ethernet connection, now won't go up on boot, has to be done manually each time; my superkaramba themes now show no information.; And it upset my nvidia driver (but I should've known that). Dunno what else that is upset in my system.

Read a cracking review of Suse 9.3 in LXF recently.

Go for Suse at this moment IMO.

I won't attempt to convince anyone to stay with one distro. Which ever you choose, others will tell you it's wrong. Besides, getting a well rounded feeling for all distro's is a good thing. Just remember... The grass will always seem greener whatever you decide. This distro's better for that, that one's better for this, etc...

If you do switch, at least let us know what you're thoughts are on the switch. I've been considering a switch myself.

Jeremy

I think they're both very nice distros, although I do prefer SuSE 9.3 to Mandriva 2005; it just seems more polished, and well it should, since Mandriva would probably be the "community" release if the company had remained Mandrake. I'm sure more and more bugs will get ironed out via patches as time goes on.

As far as ease of use, both distros have stellar control centers and software installation utilities (I prefer urpmi to pretty much anything but apt-get). I think that overall YaST is more powerful than the Mandriva Control Center, but I do find myself missing urpmi sometimes when I'm not using Mandrake or Mandriva.

Well like I said I've been around more distros than you could shake a stick at and if the level of polish on SuSE 9.3 is anything like on the LiveDVD of 9.2 then I'm probably sold. My only fear is a new nVidia driver install. Dammit and I was the man for soting out problems with the old one!!

Good ol LXF too, what a great mag. Though I did just fork out €12 for a mag that had LE2005 which I had already sourced. Dang!

Maybe I'll give it another day before I decide finally....

Any last Mandriva supportrs? Any more SuSE promoters?!

I read SuSE 9.3 has improved usb devices support, the firewall has more configuration options, ACPI power management has improved, and off course it has KDE 3.4 :) but you can install that yourself on Mandrake 10 I suppose...

Anyways, I have 9.2 now, very satisfied, but after reading the review of the 9.3 version, I think I'll make the switch to 9.3 when I can get it on DVD with Linux Mag or something :). For now I'm not willing to pay 100 euros for a distro (even though it's still far less than what Windoze would cost).

Quote:

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My only fear is a new nVidia driver install

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The YOU-based nvidia driver install works very well in 9.3 (I always disable the firewall temporarily for the install and haven't had any problems since 9.1).

As far as paying 100 euros for it, you can probably get it for free (just not from SuSE yet). As long as no money changes hands, Novell says it's OK to distribute.