Life on the bleeding edge

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Thursday 21 September 2006 17:54, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Mandriva's package management system is getting worse, not better.

Which one and how is it getting worse? They have more than one. I've 
always liked urpmi and thought it was a highly underrated package 
management system. With the acquisition of Connectiva, they also got 
SmartPM, which I'm using now on Fedora Core 5. It seems all right.

> Their shot at a live/install system, Mandriva One, fails to 
> impress. Besides the technical issues, recent management changes
> (ie, a nasty parting of ways with founder Gael Duval) have led to
> an attitude more like Red Hat and Novell than what
> Mandriva/Mandrake has traditionally offered. As a result they're
> putting more distance between the for-pay versions and the free
> ones.

I can't fault the management of Mandriva for wanting to make money, 
especially in light of the company's near death experience couple of 
years ago. They are criticized if they don't make money and end up in 
bankruptcy protection but then are criticized when they try to make 
money by differentiating their free product from the product for 
which they charge money. I haven't seen this distance you're talking 
about increase. They have always had versions that were not offered 
for free but the free version wasn't lacking anything that other free 
distros offered.

> By contrast, the commitment that there will only ever be one 
> "level" of Ubuntu, identical for commercial or free use, offers
> significant appeal. And the one feature that I liked best about
> Mandriva at the time that Colin and I wrote the for the TuxMag
> shootout a few months ago -- the PLF repository -- is now available
> for Ubuntu.

How long it will remain so is not clear. See: 
<http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-plf_discuss%40zarb.org/msg00084.html>.

> I may yet stay with Mandriva -- kubuntu may turn out to have
> "idiosyncrasies" of its own -- but I'd like to evaluate some
> alternatives before settling in for another few years.

I have been a Mandrake/Mandriva user for years. Until a month ago, I 
was running it on my laptop, which I use as my primary 
development/working environment. I went through a flurry of trying 
different distros because Mandriva 2006 that I had been using on that 
machine for the last year didn't support an external LCD projector at 
all. Apparently, it was because twinhead support in the version of X 
that shipped with 2006 was broken. I was surprised at how bad and 
fiddly twinhead configuration on X turned out to be. I ended up with 
FC5 not because I liked it but because it was the only one, out of 
Mandriva 2006, Mandriva 2007b2, Kubuntu (the latest, whatever that 
is - I can't keep the cutesy animal names straight), and Fedora Core 
5, that worked, well, sort of and not without rough edges. It was 
interesting to note that the Windows users at the conference I 
attended also didn't have a smooth ride with their laptops and LCD 
projectors. The Apple equipment, as can be expected, seemed to work 
without any fuss.

> Re-install 
> time is the best time to do a look around and re-survey the
> landscape. Heck, I might even be ready for Gentoo, if it can handle
> laptop issues such as wireless networking, battery power and
> hibernation...

I never use hibernation or any form of sleep mode on laptops with 
Linux or Windows because I've never found it to be without problems. 
The wake up time is often longer than boot time so I failed to see 
the attraction. I'd rather have something that boots quickly from a 
cold start.

As for Gentoo, I have it running on a few servers. I'm impressed by 
how fast a Gentoo box boots and by its package management system. 
There was a recent Linux Journal article about creating Gentoo 
packages and it seemed to be a very clean and straightforward 
process.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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