2009.1 - first impressions

I've installed 2009.1 (a fresh install, not an upgrade, since I had some issues with my previous KDE install).

Reasonably fast, though its fast boot does not seem to be anywhere near the advertised 30 sec, leastways not OOTB.

Sound, wifi and card reader work. The wifi light doesn't, haven't tried mic and camera yet, though they have been recognised in the MCC

Cheers,

thoza

 

Lucky you

My first impressions were that I wasn't even able to launch the Live CD. I downloaded both the Gnome and the KDE-version, I put it both on an USB stick via Unetbootin and on a CD. Any of this four possible combinations resulted in a stall on boot: I was able to see the Mandriva boot screen with a grey bar in the lower left corner and then nothing happened. I tried it several times with fresh downloads, always the same, disappointing result.

For me, Mandriva 2009.1 = trash...

 

Unetbootin is made an a group of people totally unconnected with Mandrivia. You can't blame Mandriva for that, so no Mandriva is not "trash". If anything unetbootin is "trash", but imo, it is amazing unetbootin does work on so many distros at all...

Officially one can use Mandriva Seed to create an usb image: See http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=108860 HOWVER it isn't finished yet.

Though then conclusion is still the same, a bit hard to get Mandy on a usb...

 

Mandriva seed works see http://aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopi ... 780#p86779

 

I do blame Mandriva, because the problem was not only with Unetbootin. Even when I burned the ISO-Image on a CD and started the Aspire One from ths CD (ext. drive), the problem was the same. So for me, it's rather related to the distro than the utilities used to create a live CD. Unetbootin worked for me flawlessly on a big number of different distros, from Ubuntu to OpenSolaris.

 

Well, 30s, I mean the time from entering boot sequence to the login screen, it won't be 30s if you load the desktop, but I have installed LXDE, and login took just about 3-5s! though some features are lacked comparing to GNOME and KDE(never use KDE on AA1!)

 

My impressions are similar to "trash"... I always use Live USB just to try system before installing. Firs I created Live USB with Mandriva-seed as UNetBootin does not work with Mandriva. According to system USB was OK so I booted-up AA1 with USB plugged in. I had to try couple of times because of problems with running different part of the system every time. Finally I got KDE desktop and I was almost happy but.... Network Manager ignored my network settings (password) so I could not log in to my AP... After this experience I can say the same:

For comparison only - I never had any problems with Ubuntu/Kubuntu or other systems...

 

You shouldn't say that, I think that you have done something wrong, or may be problems concerning you hardware. After all, most users' Mandriva work here,

 

I have done the same as I did with a dozen of other distros, and every single one of those worked fine except Mandriva. I'm not a computer newbie and I try things several times before complaining in public (in this case, a forum).

 

Mandriva was the first linux distro that everything was working at boot...mainly wireless. True, lights
on Aspire don't light up, but I can live with that. It does run a bit slow with Kde4. One major thing that is missing
is printer support. As Mandriva left this off the One cd....like it wasn't important. I have tried every version
of Ubuntu based netbook remix and not one had wireless working without intervention. My fav distro so far on
Aspire was Lin-X (OS-X clone)....... but again, wireless was broken.

 

It's hard to say that which distro is the best, so far, in terms of compatibility, Mandriva has done well. The only tweak I have done is to enable the two SD card, which seems to be the common problem of many distro.(I ignore WiFi light as I never use the switch). With LXDE, it runs well.

 

This website worked for me: http://lordikc.free.fr/wordpress/?page_id=158. I no longer experienced the error that some previous posters were having with Mandriva hanging on boot.

 

Well impressions are ok. I installed it directly from internet (with help of USB stick). There was no problem.
It is definitely better than linpus + everything (except wireless light) worked out of box.

Only question I have is very stupid

How to get rid of login screen (where is asks password and user)? I do not need it and it takes hell a lot of boot time. I tried to enable Autologin from system administration but the effect was not something I really wanted (it was booting the desktop without login and with login at the same time, so when I was shutting down first, second was popping up asking for password).


And yeah, how to add additional keyboard layouts?

 

I have a comment about Mandriva locking on boot. I had this problem too. Tried USB no luck. Tried a CD, no luck. Both Mandriva and Linpus Lite. Weird. Both started and then crashed or locked. Equally weird both CDs would boot my dell. I finally figured out the problem. I was using old CD-RWs, apparently my external CD on the Acer didn't like them. I burned the same ISO images to new CD-Rs and Mandriva and Linpus now boot right up.