For many, many years I was a Mandriva Linux user.  In fact, I started back in 1999, with Mandrake (former name) 6.0, which I purchased, in box form, from Microcenter.  This was after a really revealing hack on my Windows 98 machine.  Since then, I have never looked back.  I dual booted between the two for a while, but after 2002 or so, I made the complete switch.  For the last 13 years I stuck with Mandrake, then Mandriva Linux for my main computer until about 3 weeks ago.  The transition away from Mandriva started on our netbook.

About six months ago, I got fed up with the performance of Mandriva 2011 on my netbook, so I tried something different, Ubuntu 10.04,  For the beginning, it was a much better match to the hardware.  Everything worked with minimal muss and fuss.  The Lenovo S10 never ran better.  Battery life was not great, but acceptable.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and my desktop machine just stopped working.  I was running Mandriva 2011, which is now a KDE only desktop system.  I had a lot of quirks, had to compile the nVidia driver myself, and it just was always on the cusp of crashing.  Not something you want on your main computer.  I had a combination of hardware failure, something on the motherboard, and a corrupt home partition.  I figured, screw it, I really like Ubuntu on the netbook, how about I try it on my main machine?

I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised.  Everything worked out of the box, including the nVidia proprietary drivers.  Unlike the ailing Mandriva, Ubuntu has a very healthy support community, and they support their LTS (Long Term Support) installations for FIVE years.  Pretty impressive for free.  I opted for the Unity (gnome based) desktop environment.  I have seen complaints about it being too cell phone like, but, to be honest, it is nice having a unified interface between my phone, netbook, and desktop computer.  It is simple and quick to use, even for an old salt like me.  The package management system, and how many packages are available, are outstanding.

Looking back now, I don’t know why I put up with the poorly supported and infrequently updated Mandriva.  I wish them nothing but the best, but I see why Ubuntu is the most popular.  Heck, even Suse is much better supported.  I have found it compares very favorably compared to Windows 7, and is much more polished and modern than Windows XP.