The true legacy of Mandrake Linux is continued by Mageia, which is continuing with the same philosophies as we had in Mandrake all those years, since it forked from Mandriva. ROSA has taken the distribution in a new direction. As far as the changes you cited once Mandrake became Mandriva, there were no major changes in the distribution at that time, and I don’t know where this myth comes from. Also, Mandrake bought Connectiva, not the other way around. Finally, you gave credit to Mandriva for the new look and feel that started in Mandriva Linux 2011 and is now used by ROSA Linux, but actually ROSA was the one who contributed it for Mandriva Linux 2011, so they deserve the credit there.
Look at Mageia Linux to see a better legacy of Mandrake/Mandriva. It sticks much closer to the traditions of those earlier Linux distributions than Rosa does, yet is fully modern and very well supported.
Rosa is a fine looking distro, as polished as elementaryOS is.
I ran into a couple of problems though – the panel at the bottom of the screen cannot be moved. One can add an empty panel at the top and fill it, but “right click > Panel Settings > Screen Edge” is a nice way of changing things and the loss of that functionality is hard to justify.
The “menu” that appears when you click on the “Start” button is ridiculous. It takes up the entire screen – on a 1600×900, 20″ monitor. It looks horrible. Further, it cannot be removed. You can add a normal menu but the icon for the silly menu remains and cannot be deleted. And it is a silly menu. There is no justification on earth for a desktop OS to have a Start menu that takes up the entire screen. Further evidence of the loss of direction currently on display in software design, where the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater (along with the towels, the bath mat, the sink and the toilet).
I’m a bit of a config freak and I like my desktop to look exactly the way I want and I have and will continue to reject distros because they lock out that level of configurability.
So, as polished as it is, it’s not on my computer.
One thing about Rosa that did amuse me – I caught myself thinking “hmmm, a Russian distro, I wonder if it can be trusted?” and then remembered that of all the nations in the world, they don’t come close to America for lack of trustworthiness – where big software houses have and continue to work with the “alphabet agencies” against the interests of the “man in the street”.
Were you even a Mandrake/Mandriva user? The switch to Mandriva did nothing to Mandrake. Many were hoping to start using Smart or Synaptic as the default package manager, since Connectiva developed Synaptic, but not even that made it into Mandriva. They basically bought Connectiva and closed it down. Mandriva carried on just as Mandrake did. The reason users left was when Mandrake/Mandriva pushed users into the whole subscription system to make money while distros like Ubuntu came out, delivering a complete system for free on CD to your home. Many Mandrake users left for Ubuntu, others to PCLinuxOS, and still some to Suse. Many even stayed on, but it was clear the number of users had plummeted.
Mageia is the new Mandrake. I haven’t tried Rosa, but many of the old developers started Mageia and it’s quite good.
I echo the recommendation of Rosa Lxde.
A lot of people have said that Lxde could be a completely viable office and work desktop if someone just put some effort into it and set it up well.
Rosa are the only people who have done this – it is extremely smooth (once you switch the horrible default wallpaper).
I must admit that Mageia has been quite a disappointed for me. Versions 2 and 3 were those i couldn’t even install while version 4 was lacking lot of things like my sound settings, lack of codecs, very bad stability etc…. I just wonder why because distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, CentOS, Korora and openSUSE have worked fine – and Mandriva too (2008-2011).
I wonder how outdated my review of Rosa 2012 Marathon is…
The true legacy of Mandrake Linux is continued by Mageia, which is continuing with the same philosophies as we had in Mandrake all those years, since it forked from Mandriva. ROSA has taken the distribution in a new direction. As far as the changes you cited once Mandrake became Mandriva, there were no major changes in the distribution at that time, and I don’t know where this myth comes from. Also, Mandrake bought Connectiva, not the other way around. Finally, you gave credit to Mandriva for the new look and feel that started in Mandriva Linux 2011 and is now used by ROSA Linux, but actually ROSA was the one who contributed it for Mandriva Linux 2011, so they deserve the credit there.
Look at Mageia Linux to see a better legacy of Mandrake/Mandriva. It sticks much closer to the traditions of those earlier Linux distributions than Rosa does, yet is fully modern and very well supported.
Rosa is a fine looking distro, as polished as elementaryOS is.
I ran into a couple of problems though – the panel at the bottom of the screen cannot be moved. One can add an empty panel at the top and fill it, but “right click > Panel Settings > Screen Edge” is a nice way of changing things and the loss of that functionality is hard to justify.
The “menu” that appears when you click on the “Start” button is ridiculous. It takes up the entire screen – on a 1600×900, 20″ monitor. It looks horrible. Further, it cannot be removed. You can add a normal menu but the icon for the silly menu remains and cannot be deleted. And it is a silly menu. There is no justification on earth for a desktop OS to have a Start menu that takes up the entire screen. Further evidence of the loss of direction currently on display in software design, where the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater (along with the towels, the bath mat, the sink and the toilet).
I’m a bit of a config freak and I like my desktop to look exactly the way I want and I have and will continue to reject distros because they lock out that level of configurability.
So, as polished as it is, it’s not on my computer.
One thing about Rosa that did amuse me – I caught myself thinking “hmmm, a Russian distro, I wonder if it can be trusted?” and then remembered that of all the nations in the world, they don’t come close to America for lack of trustworthiness – where big software houses have and continue to work with the “alphabet agencies” against the interests of the “man in the street”.
I miss Mandrake.
I’m using rosa LXDE at present. It’s the best distro I’ve ever used up to now: rock solid stable, fast, elegant and easy to use.
Mageia is the true heir of Mandrake (IMHO).
Were you even a Mandrake/Mandriva user? The switch to Mandriva did nothing to Mandrake. Many were hoping to start using Smart or Synaptic as the default package manager, since Connectiva developed Synaptic, but not even that made it into Mandriva. They basically bought Connectiva and closed it down. Mandriva carried on just as Mandrake did. The reason users left was when Mandrake/Mandriva pushed users into the whole subscription system to make money while distros like Ubuntu came out, delivering a complete system for free on CD to your home. Many Mandrake users left for Ubuntu, others to PCLinuxOS, and still some to Suse. Many even stayed on, but it was clear the number of users had plummeted.
Mageia is the new Mandrake. I haven’t tried Rosa, but many of the old developers started Mageia and it’s quite good.
I echo the recommendation of Rosa Lxde.
A lot of people have said that Lxde could be a completely viable office and work desktop if someone just put some effort into it and set it up well.
Rosa are the only people who have done this – it is extremely smooth (once you switch the horrible default wallpaper).
I must admit that Mageia has been quite a disappointed for me. Versions 2 and 3 were those i couldn’t even install while version 4 was lacking lot of things like my sound settings, lack of codecs, very bad stability etc…. I just wonder why because distributions like Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, CentOS, Korora and openSUSE have worked fine – and Mandriva too (2008-2011).