[Nottingham] Mandriva / KDE discs / new install....

[David Aldred]

For those who may be interested, this household now has:

A DVD of Mandriva 2005LE, 32-bit, with KDE3.3
A 6-cd set of Mandriva 2005LE, 32-bit, with KDE3.4 ("Club edition")
A 4-cd set of Mandrake 2005LE, 64-bit, with KDE3.3

If anyone wants copies, these can be arranged; if anyone has the bandwidth to 
get the 64-bit version with KDE3.4 if & when Mandriva make them available, 
I'd be grateful for a set.  Unfortunately Peter has now left university, and 
so can't use their bandwidth :-(

I pretty certainly blew my NTL theoretical download cap last month getting the 
64-bit version: they are not meant to be doing anything about their cap until 
August at least, but this might be a bad time to come to their attention by 
doing it again!

For anyone thinking about 64-bit Mandriva: it's certainly nice and fast, but 
there are a couple of issues: Flash and the Win32 codecs for mplayer etc.  In 
both cases there are no 64-bit versions yet, and the 64-bit host applications 
won't talk to the mere 32-bit elements!  The workaround is to install a 
32-bit browser (and presumably 32-bit mplayer), but dependencies appear 
awkward.  At the moment I'm still on 32-bit on a 64-bit machine, but intend 
to change once the KDE3.4 version is out, hence the appeal for a download!

Just a comparison which could be of use when evangelising about Linux: a new 
64-bit machine, install of both WinXP and Linux.   Ignoring in each case 
formatting/partitioning time (we took more than one go in Windows, because we 
were being complicated, so not fair to include it!), install times to working 
machine with soundcard/graphics fully working were:

WinXP:  1.5 hours - including CD's for relevant drivers, God knows how many 
reboots, and no Office system etc, just the OS.  No other interesting apps 
supplied....   Ten minutes and another reboot to get Office installed.  

Linux:  40 minutes, including copying CD contents to HDD, all drivers 
installed from standard CD set, OpenOffice and all usual apps /server apps/ 
variety of window managers; plus ten minutes working out how to make the 
soundcard do 5.1 surround sound (which turned out to be extremely simple, but 
we'd missed the obvious!).  One reboot in the middle of the setup.   A lot 
less swearing!

-- 
David Aldred