Mandriva

February 20th, 2008 • Category: Desktop & Server •

Previous« 1 2 »Next

Mandriva (formerly Mandrake Linux) is an RPM-based Linux distribution. It is one of the “founding” Linux distributions, and has some of the best administrative tools. Mandriva S.A., the company behind the distribution, is just one of a handful of publicly-traded Open Source firms.

Mandriva publishes three editions for the desktop:

Mandriva One – This is a Live CD edition that may also be installed to a hard drive. It is only supported on 32-bit platforms.
Mandriva Free – This is available for 32- and 64-bit platforms, but does not ships with non-free software. There is no Live CD for this.
Mandriva Powerpack – Like Mandriva Free, Mandriva Powerpack is installable on 32- and 64-bit platforms. The difference between Powerpack and One and Free is that Powerpack is a commercial edition. It ships with commercial and non-free multimedia codecs that is not available on One and Free.

Origin – Home Page: France – Mandriva

Features:

Installation – Mandriva has a graphical installation program. There is support for LVM and full disk encryption. It is possible to password-protect the boot loader.
Desktop Environments – GNOME and KDE are the two desktop environments primarily supported by Mandriva, with KDE as the default. There are separate installation media for both.
Software Management – Like all distribution, Mandriva has a graphical frontend to its application package manager. It is very intuitive to use.
Installed Applications – All the application you’ll need for your day to day computing needs are available in the Mandriva repository. Because it ships with commercial applications and non-free multimedia codecs, there are many more applications available on Powerpack than on One and Free.
Admin Tools – Mandriva Control Center (MCC), the administrative hub, has all the graphical applications that makes managing the desktop fun, even for new, inexperienced users.
Security Posture – Mandriva has some of the best network security tools enabled out of the box. There is a graphical firewall utility, and a system integrity checker (MSec). Because of its support for full disk encryption and boot loader password protection, it is possible to achieve the highest physical security rating on Mandriva.

Reviews & Tutorials:

Read all Mandriva reviews and tutorials here.

Download Mandriva: You may download the free community editions or buy the PowerPack edition from here. The PowerPack edition comes with proprietary software that is not available with the community editions (One and Free).

Buy Mandriva Installation Media: The latest Mandriva installation CDs, DVDs and USB drives are available for purchase at very low prices on .

Previous« 1 2 »Next

Subscribe by ...

To receive future articles like this one in your inbox or Feed reader, please take a few seconds to subscribe to this site by email or RSS. You may also follow us on Twitter.