I just did an in-depth distro review for the first time in quite a while today.  Sorry I haven't had the time to devote to it but I promise I will from now on lol...Okay so let's get to it!!

Today I reviewed Mandriva One 2009, the Gnome Edition.  All I can say is Wow, wow, wow!  I absolutely loved it!!  *I'm pretty sure I can hear a certain friend of mine in Scotland just doing an I-told-you-so dance right now*  So what about it was so great?

First of all, I made a good old LiveCD, my favorite way of testing distros.  Then I booted it up.  I get a nice little splash screen right away and then I sit and wait for a minute.  It took a few but not as long as Fedora to load.  There was an option of hitting the ESC button to load verbose (it tells you what it's doing while it's doing it).  Then it showed me a remarkably Debian looking install type screen, where it asked the usual questions like keyboard, language and time zone before it went to the desktop.

As I said, I chose Gnome because I'm just not a fan of KDE and I personally find Gnome to be more stable (could just be me but I think so) and it loads right into a typical Gnome desktop.  The top and bottem panels are there, with the cute little Mandriva star and the 3 column menu.

Playing a bit in the menu reveals typical Firefox installation for internet.  Also included by default is Epiphany, the unofficial Gnome web browser.  If you've ever used Epiphany it is a fabulous, fast little browser with optional extensions (not many but they are useful). 

Also included standard is the entire OpenOffice Suite.  In other distros, usually only Wordprocessor, spreadsheet and database are included.  I was surprised by a TV application but also surprised only Totem, the Gnome media player was included.  I would recommend getting Mplayer or VLC to compliment this. 

So then I mosey down to the Software Manager and I really liked it.  It was arranged for example, with a category of packages with GUI..how much more newbie friendly is that??  The software manager is in the menu as its own entry but it also lives in the Control Center.

The control center is the infamous center of user operations that is duplicated in the distros of PCLinuxOS and TinyMe Linux and the idea is used in other distros as well.  This is where the user can configure most everything right from a GUI.  This is particularly helpful for a new Linux user.

Some fun little things I encountered were the gnome-panel-manager, which not only told me the battery life available on my laptop but also the current battery life of my wireless mouse too!  The latest Flash player is included and there are other desktop environments available, the default KDE as well as FVWM and IceWM lite.  Evolution (the Gnome standard mail client) is there along with Spam Assassin and parental controls.

I haven't said much about the appearance of Mandriva.  Not to say it's ugly, because it's not.  It just gets completely overshadowed by its awesomeness.  Which is a very good thing!  It is a very nice looking distro, a deep, rich blue and a very polished, classy Gnome look..I'm sure KDE has the more eye-candy looks to it but I prefer the professional look of Gnome.  Compiz-Fusion is ready to go by default and my windows wobbled right off the bat and the desktop is set up to cube away.

I am seriously considering installing this distro..very seriously!!  Especially since my wireless networks were detected right off the bat, a problem ongoing with Linux Mint.  I am also usually a Debian fanatic, since I like the ease of use in installing deb files but I could seriously get to like this...I swear I can feel a Scottish smirk being directed my way.

Well I suppose it's fairly obvious if you've gotten to this point that the look of The New Linux User Companion has changed a little.  I was playing around with the feature of my web host that allows modification of the html and css.  So I felt a little mini makeover was in order.  Enjoy!