I do think that less configurability might appeal to less tech able users, but that is my opion hey?

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Coming from Gnome KDE4 is cluttered.

Point by point, although I fear this will be a waste of time on my part.

1) You basically said what I did, only differently and expanded on what I said a bit.

2) Yes, you can do everything in both editions through the Mandriva control center. You forget though that you can do it easier in the Gnome edition than simply following the control center method. If I graded it according to the control center method it would score less, but still beat the KDE version.

Why penalise a DE just to satisfy a few fanboys?

3) Great, they check for updates automagically. So do *every* distro I have reviewed. But what if you want to *manually* check? Again if you really did your homework before anonymously firing of a comment you would realize that between the two editions there are different ways of doing things if you accept that the control center is not the only way to do it.

As for your closing paragraph – I spend more than only a few hours with these OS’s that I review. I have found a way of comparing them and avoiding personal bias as far as possible. I am probably correct in guessing that you are irked that I rated the Gnome edition higher than the KDE edition. Gnome SCORES better than KDE time and again in my reviews, and that is not my subjective opinion, I tested it and the results remain consistent.

If I had stated my impressions as impressions I would bluntly say that KDE4 has been a step backwards in UI design. KDE is cluttered. KDE does the “pretty” well, and the “practical” less well.

Gnome is better, in my subjective opinion. But that would not have been good enough for you either, would it?

In an effort to be fair in my reviews I devised a bunch of tests and stick to my method of testing that negates my bias. I have been surprised that the much lauded KDE4 have been bested by the Gnome interface time and again. Add to that a bunch of instability issues that plague KDE4 based distros and you will realise that Mandriva KDE is a really good package to have been rated as high as it has.

As for the comment on spreading misinformation, I disagree strongly. If you look at the content of the review in isolation, and the method by which I reach the scores and opinions you will know that I try and be as accurate as possible.

Everyone makes mistakes and where I do in reviews I always endeavor to correct them. You have provided nothing much along the lines of correction – and I suspect you have no interest in doing so.

I bet you would not have commented had I simply done the normal “ooh it is pretty and faultless” reviews that litter the internet.

I aim to be honest and critical, and that is a standard that I will strive to uphold.

Regards

Q

Listen in on http://letstalkgeek.net/audio-stream where I will be talking about blogging in South Africa. I will be talking about comments and using yours as an example.

Later tonite I will type out a more substantive reply to your comment.

Here’s a few corrections to get you started:

1) The description of the various Mandriva editions is just wrong. The One Edition (aka the “Live CD”) is DE-specific (that is, Gnome *or* KDE) and available as 32-bit only. The Free Edition has *both* Gnome and KDE (along with LXDE, IceWM, etc.), is available in either 32-bit or 64-bit, and costs nothing. Powerpack (also available as both 32-bit and 64-bit) is the only version that costs money. But the reason it costs money is that it includes commercial (not merely proprietary, mind you, but commercial) extras.

Mandriva even has a little-advertised “Mini” Edition that is dual architecture. It probes the CPU and installs the correct architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) automatically.

2) “Check hardware” is exactly the same in the Gnome and KDE versions of Mandriva, and, for that matter, in PCLOS. Same goes for any other feature available via the Mandriva Control Center (which is called “PCLinuxOS Control Center” in PCLOS). They can’t possibly be different.

3) Mandriva automatically checks for updates a few minutes after booting, and then every few hours thereafter. Whenever updates are available, the user is informed via popup, with an option to install the updates. It’s hard to imagine a “check for updates” procedure with less effort! (This is yet another instance where the Gnome and KDE versions of Mandriva behave identically.) Mandriva also offers an option to check for and apply any available updates as part of the installation process itself.

There are more (lots more). But the core point is this: casually messing around with a Live CD for a few hours is no basis for an accurate, much less substantive, review.

You like a particular Live CD? Great. You don’t like it? That’s great, too. But (quite inadvertently, I’m sure) all you’re doing with these “reviews” is spreading misinformation, and cloaking your superficial, subjective impressions with a lot of impressive-looking tables and statistics. You and your readers would be better served if you simply stated your impressions as impressions, and leave it at that.

Mandriva is known to be a KDE desktop distribution, but from what I know Mandriva has a really great GNOME desktop.

An extra addition I’d like to say is that from all the development distributions I used (Fedora Rawhide, Debian Unstable, openSuSE Factory, Ubuntu Development, Slackware Current, …) Mandriva Cooker has been the only one that proved stability and usability. Cooker is the only unstable version that seems to be really stable (and I use it for one year and a half with no crash).

Mandriva is having financial problems, but has proven to me more than any other that linux can be more than great on desktop.

I might just have made a typo re the scores. Sometimes the scores will change for all involved distributions when a certain one scores better than 100 in a test and then becomes the benchmark, causing the others scores to be adjusted downwards accordingly.

Regards

Q

Very fair review for an excellent operating system.