Well, that was an adventure

[lordshipmayhem]

I got the latest Mandriva Linux up and running, LE2006. Next time (which is supposed to be next fall), I'll splurge and order the DVD's direct from Mandriva, and to hell with shipping - which is admittedly not much. I've done it before, and the DVD is much easier and faster than 3 CD's. Plus a DVD with "Software - value $0" blows Canada Customs agents' little minds (try calculating the duty on that value, gambatte ne!!), and that in itself is worth the price of admission.

Anyhow, the install went fast enough - and then I spent the next hour and three quarters installing updates of all sorts, and adding software I wanted - games, mostly, and most of which I'll probably play a handful of times and forget about.

And the latest version of Mandriva includes one kewel feature: you can instruct it to load multiple language support right from first install - so now I get to fart around with the Japanese input. The key to changing the keyboard input is a little icon on the taskbar. Fascinatingly, Mandriva seems to include Inuit language support, I think - the tag clearly says it's from the Americas, and it does look familiar to me.

Comments

[scruloose.livejournal.com]

One of the things I really like about Debian is that you can upgrade so painlessly. A simple apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade will keep individual packages up-to-date, and the package management is so powerful that you can use apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade to a whole new release of the distro (I've tried this on three machines with varying hardware, and it worked flawlessly on all of 'em). The big advantage of this is that your programs are all still installed and configured... saves you from wasting time on the old Windoze-esque wipe/reinstall/start-from-scratch routine.

Also, if you're doing a fresh install on a machine with a broadband connection, you can burn a "netinst" CD (180 MB download), and let apt simply download on-the-fly whatever packages you actually install. Who needs 35 GB worth of DVDs lying around when you're only going to install 5-10% of what's on 'em?