But I am less disturbed by this small inconvenience, as I am more bothered by the cold I caught just before the weekend...

Before I was able to post this, I've perused two quick reviews of Mandriva 2008 Spring RC1, both focusing on KDE: Bill Beebe's Casual viewing: Mandriva 2008 Spring RC1, Fedora 8 (the guy seems to purposely ignore the legal reasons for some distros not to offer DVD playback out of the box, and also Flash seems to be a tough issue for him); Mandriva 2008.1 RC1 in a box (a better review).

When I see the default KDE layout (with the horrendous 'Menu' button), I wonder how many years would take to Mandriva to figure out a better default. As I forgot to mention in my previous ~3,700 older posts, I'll write it down here: defaults are so very important to me for a very simple reason: by definition, a default value/layout/etc. is supposed to please most of the users. A default is supposed to be studied as "the preferred option" or as "a reasonably good compromise" for as much as possible people from the intended targeted group.

When I am constantly dissatisfied with the defaults offered by a distro, this can only mean that (pick your choice): (1) I am not part of the intended target group; (2) the distro makers are careless; (3) the distro makers are lacking common sense and/or good taste; (4) the distro makers are clueless about what their users want. Either way, this is a bad grade for the respective distro.

Also, when I see that the default layout of a distro (being it KDE, GNOME or XFCE-based) only allows for a very few (2-3) application windows to be displayed before the taskbar to get cluttered and/or the windows to start grouping, I assume that for them, the targeted user is the casual user, not the user who would make an intensive use of the system. I then wonder how thoroughly have they tested the said distro if they focused on the casual user?!

Don't dare to say that the defaults can easily be changed (or course they can!); every human being is making the relevant opinion in the first 2-3 minutes of encounter with another human (being it a candidate for a job opening, that you dismiss for showing up carelessly dressed; or being it a romantic date, when the girl is disappointing for looking trashy and dirty), so why would a distro be given a special treatment? It must show well the (default) way it chooses to show up!

— § —

Back to our ship. Adam Williamson announced that Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring RC 1 Serapias (was) released, so I went to the Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring RC 1 Mirrors to find a working one. Good news, there were many mirrors working just fine, so I grabbed the 'One' GNOME flavor with 2 Mbit/s, my speed limit.

I never test a distro in a VirtualBox, but only on real hardware. So I thought of trying it on the old laptop — no fancy hardware, but otherwise harsh conditions: Celeron-128/850 MHz, 256 MB RAM.

The first time, it got stuck here:



The only thing that worked was CTRL+ALT+BKSP. Then, logging as root, I could startx (with a red background).

After a new reboot, it managed to pass that point, but a message said that the GNOME settings daemon was unable to start. So it was without the wallpaper and other settings. Once again, I decided I should try it as root, and simply replace the red background with the default wallpaper.



This time, it worked reasonably well, if I don't count the Nautilus crash that happened once I right-clicked on a picture to show its properties. Quite unstable for a Release Candidate, even when you know that it was a live system loaded in only 256 MB of RAM.

Oh my, no: at some point it crashed severely, and I was left with only the wallpaper, and nothing else. CTRL+ALT+BKSP was useless, CTRL+ALT+Fn didn't work either.

After a new reboot and startx as root, I could use it for some more time without issues (how annoying is not to have a shortcut for gnome-terminal, nor to have nautilus-open-terminal by default! and how pissing is to have F-Spot instead of gThumb!), and I was pleased to see a desktop shortcut to "ssh on beranger.org" once I have used ssh:// with Nautilus — I suppose this is because of the new GVFS?

As a LiveCD usage though, it is simply unusable with only 256 MB of RAM: I started RPMdrake and tried to load all the official repositories. It loaded them, then it started to crunch the CD for some 20 minutes, while pretending it was determining what applications were installed. It's after 20 minutes of lack of responsiveness when I pressed the OFF button for 5 seconds, as this was becoming way too ridiculous.

Remember, this is not a review. But I don't feel like falling in love with Mandriva again...

UPDATE: Via Scot's Newsletter, we're told that Mandriva has followed the path opened by Fedora, id est there is a changing of colors during the day! For the "Free" flavor, here's a desktop view in the morning, and a second one in the evening. Most people will salute this new feature as a nice enhancement, however I don't like when my computer is doing things I HAVE NOT TOLD IT TO DO, and on the other side, when I see the colors of my desktop change WITHOUT BEING TOLD SO, I usually suspect there is something wrong with the hardware!

Original link: http://beranger.org/index.php?pa...