OK, I’m a geek and I freely admit it, but there’s something very pleasant about finding replacements for some of those applications that are commonly used in Windows with an open source alternative. Back in the earliest days of my PC experience, I had very little money to spend on anything, much less high-end software so I made due with lots of shareware packages, some of which were amazingly good. Running a Linux distro on my desktop allows me to freely explore again the wonders of open source, and if it also happens to divert cash from behemoth companies who shall remain nameless, even better.

With the new Mandriva 2010 release, I’ve been working on making myself a procedure list for the things I do whenever i install a new distro. Invariably there are a few things that need to be tested right from the start, once the distro has updated itself. Because I operate a mixed network with numerous different operating systems running, one of the first things to install and check is the Samba connectivity to the other machines in the workgroup - ironically, most distros can interact with the Windows machines in the group but may have issues talking to the other Linux boxen. Mandriva’s Control Centre (listed as Configure Your Computer in the menu) makes installing the Samba system a breeze.

Next on the list is usually DVD playability, which invariably in most distros due to the need to add the libdvdcss package which is usually not included in the distro due to copyright issues. The files are however readily available through the various repositories - in the case of Mandriva, the easiest way to get them is go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org and install the PLF repositories.Best choice in my mind for watching movie files is the VLC player, especially once the navigation is added.

After many years of using Evolution as my primary email client, I have finally shifted over to a new package - Kontact. Not only does it have a nice email client which seems to work as nicely as Evolution when it comes to handling multiple accounts and mass quantities of folders, but the package also includes a nice To-Do setup, a news feed aggregator, contacts, calendar, notes and more. A really nice information manager, all in all.

One of the reason I run Linux on the desktop is to be able to have a local web server available for testing purposes and Mandriva makes that a simple process. to do so easily, however, you first have to install the drakwizard package from the repositories. Once you have done so and reloaded the control center, the Sharing categorywill show up which allows the setup of a web server. Follow up by installing Webmin and you have a great environment ready in which to play.

Since the install of Mandriva 2010 went so well on the laptop, I’ve now changed over this desktop as well. I had originally thought about keeping the Fedora install, but decided to migrate the data off the drive and remove Fedora entirely. Though Fedora always behaved fairly well, there were some features from Mandriva that I missed, such as the ability to use to data card slot on the front of my PC. Not really a show stopper, but it was a nice feature that flat out didn’t work in Fedora.

The Mandriva install went very fast and had no real issues. Initially installed as a KDE platform, I then shifted over to Gnome. My HP 1012 printer was found and configured with no problems,and was much easier to do than it was in Fedora. VLC is working like a champ for watching DVD’s and Kontact is running happily to handle mail and appointments. So far so good.

I’m in the process of installing the latest version of Mandriva to my HP laptop as a dual boot with Vista, so this should be interesting. If all goes well, I may install it as a secondary distro on this workstation as well (which currently has Fedora 11 running). So far, so good. The installer found the empty space on the drive with no problem and ran through the formatting section in a snap. Though I have downloaded both the gnome and the KDE versions,I am installing the KDE version first to see how it looks.

One of the reasons I use Linux distros is to maximize some of the older technologies that are still floating around the house. For example, my old HP Omnibook is perfectly capable of running a modern install of Fedora, though it would probably bomb out on anything else at this point. We have an older home built pentium class machine that is destined for my sister-in-law, so I’m seriously considering putting Mandriva on that - it has plenty of power on the chip but not a lot of RAM, so it could be entertaining to see what happens.