Big switch to Linux Mandriva

Switch to: Linux Mandriva

Date: October 13, 2008

As a switch to MacOS X also means switching to new hardware, the story goes beyond operating system user experience.

I had a thesis to write; until then, my only foray into the Free/Open Source Software world had been to switch from Internet Explorer 6 to Firefox, at a time it was still called Phoenix (version 0.7) because IE crashed too often, was far too prone to virus infections, too slow etc. (incidentally, this allowed me to not feel the effects of the Nimda virus later on).
Well, I had started writing said thesis under Microsoft Word (in the Office XP pack, with all latest updates applied), and it crashed, often, repeatedly, corrupting my files every time.

I had heard about OpenOffice.org (OOo) before; actually, I always kept a copy of it installed somewhere, because it was very, very good at recovering files corrupted by MS Word or Excel; by then, version 1.0 was getting a bit old, and version 1.1 was well advanced. I hadn't switched yet because the interface seemed clunky, very unusual as it was not a typical Win32 application, and well, it was a dog to start.

However, having recovered for the hundredth time the first 15 pages of my thesis Word had just botched up for me, I decided to try my hand at typing the thesis right away under OpenOffice.org. I decided to try and use the stylist window for a change, and typed. And typed. And saved sometimes, though OOo didn't crash - at all.

Came the end of the day, I had typed more than 30 pages in a single go, diagrams and all, and I could even tinker with styles and page formatting, without any problem or unrecoverable error; the first 15 pages in Word had taken me 2 days to type 'just right'!

Around that time, I had installed a copy of Mandrake 9 on a small partition somewhere on my hard disks and started toying with it; it had OOo, Mozilla Suite, XMMS (I really liked WinAmp better than Windows Media Player), and some other stuff; I found myself sometimes starting up Windows, sometimes starting up Mandrake, and working on my document on both.

As time went by, I discovered applications under Mandrake that worked very well for what I did, and which had Windows ports; so, little by little, I replaced Windows applications with their Free equivalent: Firefox replaced IE completely when version 1.0 came out, Thunderbird did away with Outlook Express' clunkiness, OOo replaced MS Office completely, the Gimp took over Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop LE, Gaim (now Pidgin) replaced Yahoo! Messenger and MSN, and so on.

Then, one day, I noticed I booted more often under Linux than I did under Windows; at that time, I was building my current computer, so I geared it to use Linux first and foremost; at the time (end of 2005), I had a few troubles still: driver support wasn't very good, Wine wasn't very stable, the interface was still a bit clunky, so I kept a Windows partition just in case. I was being adventurous too, installing the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2006 right away...

Years 2006 and 2007 showed almost constant evolution: OOo 2.0 got much better with speed, stability and interface coherence (the 64-bit port got better too, and faster!), Nvidia dropped its closed platform drivers and supported the Free versions (sound, network, SATA), NTFS-3G finally provided stable (and later, fast) read and write access to NTFS, Gimp 2.2 and 2.4 came out with radically more efficient interfaces, Firefox got better, hald and dbus complemented the 2.6 kernel well enough for 'plug n play' experience, ALSA overcame OSS in sound hardware support...

Most of the kinks preventing Linux to run seamlessly on the desktop disappeared little by little.

A bit of history: Mandrake, now Mandriva, was first a Red Hat respin with KDE used as the main interface instead of GNOME; this, along with several tools added to make the use of a GUI easier on the user, made it a well-known distribution for desktop use. It fell into a bit of a slump with versions 10.0, 10.1, 2005 LE, at which time Mandrake having bought Brazilian Conectiva and being forbidden from using the Mandrake name, became Mandriva for release 2006, and conquered back some lost ground with version 2007 which was the first to integrate both AIGLX and XGL methods of 3D window management compositing directly.

Which window manager do I use? I started with KDE (then, it was version 3.1), which was standard with Mandrake, but I soon found the dizzying number of settings a bit confusing. Moreover, as it was Qt-based, and most applications I was using were Gtk-based, this translated into a heavy memory load and slow loading time; so, I first tried my hand at Enlightenment version 0.16 for a while, which was light and interesting (I loved its virtual desktop management, but its toolbars were too... rough to make me a convert), then Fluxbox, too light, then I tried Gnome.

Since at the time the FreeDesktop.org movement had made converts in both GNOME and KDE, and Mandriva was an early adopter, I could enjoy switching between KDE and GNOME very easily; ALSA removed esound and arts problems, dbus removed most application interaction problems...

The switch has been complete on the desktop for quite a while now, and I'm learning more and more about Samba: at work, my servers pick up more and more roles from older Windows servers: network shares, printing, and soon identity management will be done from Linux servers, and yet I have to retain SAMBA (instead of NFS and LDAP) for the odd Windows machine out there. Before you ask, no, I won't use Services for UNIX in those Windows machines: too unstable.

For those saying gaming in Linux sucks: well, since I started gaming under Linux, I haven't needed to hunt for CD keys, patches, system tweaks to improve performances, of for my wallet: there are enough Free games, many of them of very good quality, to keep any kind of gamer happy for a long, long while.

As for the future, I may just jump on KDE 4.1 when it comes out.

I consider myself a power user; as such, I stay with Mandriva due to its friendliness to heavy tinkering. I do install Ubuntu on some machines, usually geared for non technical users, due to its better integration, but I don't intend to switch – and anyway the two work well enough together.

Switch Satisfaction

Author

Switcher: Mitch 74
Website: http://www.moneyshop.fr
Profession: computer tinkerer (no, really!)
Location: Annecy, France

Switch

Category: Operating Systems
From: Windows
To: Linux Mandriva
Switch Date: July 2004

Usage type: Home/Business/Freelance
Used for: graphics editing, publishing, coding, gaming, Internet browsing, multimedia

Computer configuration:
Athlon X2 3800+, 2Gib DDR400, Geforce 6600, Geforce 6150 based motherboard, Hitachi SATA 250 Gb HD, integrated sound, Viewsonic 20

Previous computer:
Duron 950, 512 Mib DDR266, Geforce4 ti 4200, Via KT266+ based motherboard, Maxtor 20 Gb IDE HD + Hitachi 60 Gb IDE HD, integrated sound, Iiyama 17" CRT screen