Mandriva Spring 2008.1 - Part 2

Mandriva has just released their 2008.1 spring edition.

Continued from Part 1.

Multimedia & Browser Support:
Mandriva has many open source and proprietary codecs. Kaffeine on the ONE (KDE) edition and the FREE (KDE) edition handle Ogg, MP3, AVI, WMA, MPEG 1, MPEG 2, and Quicktime files out-of-the-box.
However, for no apparent reason Totem is the default Movie player even in KDE version. Question -- What is Totem doing in a KDE distribution, when Kaffeine can perform better?
The presence of all this media support by default does not make Mandriva a codec GOD, still many codecs like win32-codecs, gstreamer-ugly (for real media support) etc needs to be installed from the PLF repository. PLF is like a merge between Official and Unofficial repositories and can be easily configured using easyurpmi.
Again sun java or java-plugins are not installed by default ?? No idea why this is so, thankfully they can easily be installed from the repositories.
Firefox comes pre-configured with Flash and it works beautifully. However, with Konqueror, flash works but till the time video is over, I cannot do anything else. It's like the desktop and mouse freezes and only thing working is flash video, though I can still kill the XServer using CTRL+ALT+BKSPC, but this is hardly a solution. No other issues with Konqueror, which I found to occupy less Memory and CPU than the hungry Firefox.

The next generation of sournd server Pulse Audio is used by default. Quoting from Mandriva Site

"The release comes with the PulseAudio sound server installed and enabled by default in all new installations and upgrades performed via the official installer. PulseAudio's benefits include much improved handling of multiple sound cards, the ability to control the audio outputs of different applications separately, and advanced network capabilities. We have worked hard to ensure that the widest possible range of applications works correctly with PulseAudio. However, it is possible that some users may wish to disable it. Some of the known drawbacks of using PulseAudio are:

• PulseAudio uses a higher quality but more CPU-intensive resampling algorithm than ALSA. If your sound hardware is incapable of playing certain sampling rates natively, PulseAudio will resample the audio before sending it to the card. Resampling is also necessary when you are playing two audio streams with different sampling rates at once (for instance, playing a CD - 44.1KHz - and a DVD - usually 48KHz). When resampling is needed, PulseAudio will use around two to three times as much CPU power as ALSA would in the same situation. On most reasonably modern systems this will not be noticeable, but on older systems in can represent a significant percentage of available CPU power.
• PulseAudio is not really compatible with the JACK server used for professional audio applications. If you need to use JACK, you should disable PulseAudio first.
• There may still be some applications that do not work correctly with PulseAudio, despite out efforts to minimize the likelihood of this.

You can easily disable PulseAudio via Mandriva's sound hardware configuration tool, draksound."

A special Mention to Elisa. Quoting Again :

"Elisa is a sleek, cutting-edge media center based on the Gstreamer media framework. Elisa concentrates on presenting an attractive, sleek and simple to use interface that makes it both easy and visually appealing to watch videos, listen to music, and browse pictures from a dedicated interface. Elisa has a heavy emphasis on internet integration, with support for media sharing services like last.fm, Flickr, Youtube and more all built in. Its architecture makes it easily extensible through the use of plugins. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring's /contrib repository includes the latest version of Elisa, 0.3.5, and its associated plugins, making it easy to try out, and new versions of Elisa will be made available following 2008 Spring's release through Mandriva's extensive /backports repository system."

Personally speaking, I have tested it very briefly and was able to view a slide show of the pictures in my Pictures folder. For videos It only displays videos which are in videos folder, Videos in all other folders cannot be accessed.

Graphics:
Mandriva come loaded with graphic applications.

1. GIMP,
2. ShowFoto,
3. Ksnapshot, and
   
4. Digikam
   

We can transfer the images from digital camera using Digikam and perform normal editing like red-eye reduction, white balance etc in showFoto. showFoto also servers as image organizer. For users who require more advanced editing, Mandriva offers GIMP.

Office:

Mandriva comes installed with OpenOffice.org 2.4, which comes with improved integration to the desktop and packaging. Now the different OpenOffice.org components are separated in several packages. OpenOffice.org 2.4 features many improvements like:

• impressive OpenGL based 3D transitions
• improved multi language support in the documents
• block selection mode
• ability to show bars side by side and many others improvements to the charts module
• ability to convert text to columns in Calc
• improved performance

Further information about new OpenOffice.org features (with images) can be found on OOoninja.com website, or on Openoffice.org wiki

Finally:
After having spent two weeks with Mandriva, here is my list of Pro´s and Cons
Pro:

1. Excellent Hardware detection
2. Out-of-box support for NVIDIA binary drivers
3. Flash works by default in Firefox.
4. Very light memory footprint. The desktop always feels snappy. I can open 30 tabs in Firefox and have RPMDrake open, still OpenOffice will open instantaneously. I just have 512 MB RAM.
5. KDE Theme well integrated into all applications including Firefox.
6. Good set of applications serving almost all my needs.
7. Excellent Configuration GUI
8. Fast package Manager
9. easyurpmi makes adding PLF repository as easy as clicking a button. PLF repos has a huge number of packages
10. Very stable, never had a full freeze or a crash.
    
11. Parental Control.
    

Cons:

1. No Java by default
2. No Ktorrent by default, now this one surprised me.
   
3. Kaffeine is not default Movie player. Totem opens when I click on video file.
   
4. Flash does not work properly in konqueror.
   
5. sudo not installed by default.
   
6. Elisa sounds good, but is not user friendly.
   
7. Too much user intervention sought during LiveCD boot
8. Package Manager has basic capabilities, nothing fancy like YAST.
   
9. Presence of Join Mandriva and Upgrade to Power icons. I know I can just delete them, still its not good to suggest user to shift to paid version. Look as OpenSUSE or Ubuntu, they also have paid siblings but never prompt user to ¨upgrade¨.
   

Conclusion:
If you are a new Linux user, blindly go for Mandriva Spring 2008.1. It hand holds you and you would not require to open the dreaded command line for any normal task. Till now I have not opened it, except for my programming work. It has great artwork and a friendly community too.
This release has all the bells and whistles to impress all. Windows users will find the interface very similar to XP. Actually when it comes to installing XP ( with all associated drivers and applications) a new user will find Mandriva much easier and much - much faster.
Don´t believe me -- Give Mandriva a try.

NOTE:
Many screenshots have been shamelessly copied from The coding studio and HowToForge. I would be thankful to them if they allow me to use use the screenshots; else I might have to remove them.