Vlogcanic

Mandriva is a french desktop linux distro known for many significant innovations, controversial corporate decisions, and technical proficiency.

It got started when Gaël Duval released the first Mandrake Linux in 1998. It was based in Red Hat and, among many novelties, it included KDE 1.0 as a default desktop environment (something not done before by other distros), a friendly installer (a very big deal back in those days), rpm package administration and many other perks. It was the first distro to keep non-expert and non-command-line users in mind and to set itself the goal to come up with something usable and reliable enough to replace Windows.

Mandrake sailed under the easy to install flag, but faced quite a bit of corporate, legal and popularity problems. They got sued by Hearst Corporation over the name (Hearst owns the comic character Mandrake, an illusionist with super hero streaks), they went bankrupt and then started charging for some products and services which didn’t go to well in terms of pleasing the Linux crowd. Mandrake Linux and Mandrakesoft (the corporation behind the distro) lost the legal battle to Hearst so they rechristened themselves as Mandrakelinux, whithout spaces.

However, they kept innovating too: Mandriva Move was released in 2003, the first distro ever to be ready to work from a USB pendrive.

In 2005 Mandrakesoft bought (or merged with) two other Linux distros: Lycoris and the brazilian Conectiva thus calling themselves Mandriva from then on. The following year Mandriva signed an OEM deal wth HP to provide them with a Linux distro to go with their equipment in Latin America. That same year saw the first Mandriva Flash release, a commercial distro based on Mandriva ready to boot and run from a USB flash drive. Later in 2006, Mandriva fired G. Duval, the distro’s founder who has moved on to another project.

More recently, Mandriva has bought Linbox, a solution provider based on Linux and open source software and signed a deal with Turbolinux. This last agreement has stirred a bit of controversy: while it’s supposed merely to provide a common  ground for both distros through a development lab (Manbo-Lab), it’s kind of smelly for many folks as Turbolinux is among the Linux developers that have signed a patent agreement with Microsoft.

As the usability pioneer distro, Mandriva has inspired many other efforts to make Linux less of an esoteric geek toy and more of an every day desktop utility. MCN Live and PC Linux OS, among others, are user friendly systems based on Mandriva.

Mandriva’s available editions.

• Mandriva Linux Free is Mandriva’s free-software-only distribution. It’s free to download and install but it doesn’t run as a LiveCD and is usually available for both 32 bit and 64 bit arquitectures. It leans towards desktop use.
• Mandriva Linux One it’s also free to download and contains binary (non free) software. It’s an installer and LiveCD with two editions (one for KDE, one for GNOME).
• Mandriva Linux Powerpack is Mandriva’s commercial desktop product. It’s available as an installation DVD only, you have to pay for it, and it contains many non free packages and features in order to make it more interesting and easy to use (propietary graphics card drivers, Flash, Java, and things like Cedega or Real Player). It’s available for 32 bit and 64 bit archs, and includes both KDE and GNOME as well as other desktops to install on demand.

Mandriva’s distros are often noted for their wide hardware support, and high kernel and architecture customization. The 64 bit distros are among the best available in that arch, and you’ll get kernel updates suited for your particular needs (like kernels optimized for use in laptop computers, for instance). The 32 bit ones, on the other hand, are optimized for i586 and higher processors which makes them a bit faster than the more common i386 stuff but also means they take some more resources to run smoothly.

The distro has had a turbulent history, an oscillating popularity, but has contributed many key concepts now widely in use by all kinds of players. Things, however, seem to be getting better for Mandriva as their 2008.0 release, specially the Powerpack edition, gets good reviews consistently and some of their most impopular moves (such as charging for Mandriva Club membership) get corrected. Let’s see how the Turbolinux thing works for them.