… or, simply having to make any kind of choice.
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I should be generally more … magnanimous … I imagine, but sometimes that seems very difficult.
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Yeah, that’s pretty much why I dropped Mandrake/Mandriva.
Not when I started using it. I found it easy to install, If I remember correctly it was probably the ncurses UI, but I never had a problem with that, and I just selected the guided install… i’ve forgotten what it was actually called, but it neatly partitioned my HDD into 3 partitions root, home and Swap (I’ve followed that paradigm ever since), then when it got to the software selection I was able to select KDE or GNOME and applications.
Then there were all the GUI tools.
Yeah I remember TexStar. I can’t remember why I didn’t move to PCLinuxOS, I think I used Mageia for a while. But at that time I was Distro surfing.
The 3 Partition paradigm made it relatively easy to swap and change.
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They started using a graphical, mouse-driven installer as of Mandrake 7, if I recall correctly. And KDE 2.0 appeared in 7.2.
(I still have them all sitting on a shelf behind me.
)
Mageia and PCLinuxOS are still using those very same tools today, but they name them differently. OpenMandriva probably still uses them too, but its popularity has already long waned in favor of Mageia.
When Mandriva fired another bunch of their developers and packagers due to their corporate antics in 2011, the vast majority of Mandriva’s remaining developers forked the distro and joined up with their fired colleagues to create a community distribution, and this became Mageia.
Mandriva proper couldn’t even keep up with the progress made by Mageia anymore, and the company changed hands several times. It is now also a more or less community-driven project, but still with a commercial wing, and focusing more on the corporate desktop and server, whereas Mageia does not have any commercial division.
I know a couple of people within the Mageia community, and I’ve contributed some documentation translations for them in the past. They even credited me for it. 
PCLinuxOS is a strange beast, though.
-
First and foremost, it’s a rolling-release distro, whereas Mageia is a fixed-point-release distro.
-
Secondly, PCLinux uses
.rpmpackages in combination with a modified version of Debian’sapt-getandsynaptic— they also have an experimental.deb-based edition. -
Thirdly, they absolutely hate
systemd, and so they’re still using the old and no longer maintainedsysvinit, albeit with parallel script execution, so it does boot a bit faster than it used to. -
Lastly, the KDE Plasma edition uses an older version of
gdmby default instead ofsddm, because their PCC (“PCLinuxOS Control Center”, based upon the old Mandrake Control Center) does not have any settings forsddm.
It’s a very rough distribution under the hood. They continue improving things, but it’s nowhere as polished as Manjaro, or for that matter, Arch. Their update process also doesn’t replace the kernel with a more recent one. You have to do that yourself by way of synaptic.
Development-wise, they are on par with Manjaro Unstable, or at most, Manjaro Testing. Very bleeding-edge.
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My first Linux was Knoppix…with KDE 3.
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It was a guy I was working with in Sydney, who put me on to Mandrake… he was a Debian user, he actually did all his web development on it at work (another small shop with a relaxed attitude), who thought Debian might be a bit too much for me, and suggested something very noob friendly.
I was the ‘I know Everything’ Visual Basic (6 at the time) Developer.
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Distro-hopping seems the preferred idiom in these times; though, what difference it should make evades me.
I bought Mandriva once. Yes, bought; or rather, acquired it via mail-order (paying for someone’s time and ofcourse the physical media). I recall installing it and the first attempt at upgrading it via the then relatively new concept of public repo’s (ftp); however, the bandwidth and associated costs of the day, ensured my experience didn’t last long.
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Well, I stopped using it when it became Mandriva, but I myself also bought all of the Mandrake releases I’ve used, with the exception of one: Mandrake 7.2.
The first ones I bought were from a software shop, but the last two I bought were ordered from Mandrake itself, and that was a huge fiasco on both occasions. It took them several months (and lots of complaints via email) before they finally shipped it to me.
Given the way I was moving from one Distro to the next Surfing is probably more descriptive. But yeah I did actually mean Hopping.
Slighly OT… Back in the late 90s I used to run an NT4 Server at home, I stored lots of example code on it, and I used to access the machine remotely whenever I wanted a bit of code I needed. But almost as often the machine was down, and so inaccessible. So I would have to call my partner to restart it… usually the machine had crashed because she had been playing Pinball on it (Pinball on a server, only Microsoft), and every time she aced the game the machine would crash.
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I had (probably still have) Redhat 7.2 (sparc) – I have no idea why; and it still rears its ugly head occasionally when looking for something else.
Out of all of our Redmond friends’ offerings, the short-lived Win2K was probably my favourite – as solid as a brick …, outhouse; something I could rarely suggest of any other. I recall seeing discs available at auction some years later, so placed a bid; only to be confronted with 2 copies of ‘Windows Millennium’. When I brought attention to the obvious mistake, the response was “What? This is the 2000 one!”, or similar. 
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“For security reasons, all windows should be barred.”
– Cybe R. Wizard, in alt.os.linux.ubuntu, a couple of years ago
(He actually ran Debian Testing. )
You’re an Aussie, so you have to stay in character.
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Another popular misconception… Kangaroos hopping along every street.
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An even worse one I’ve heard — from an American woman — was that kangaroos would be native to Austria, which apparently also lies right next to Scotland on the world map. 
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Most Aussies have never seen one. We get them coming through our property, usually just after the rain, when there are fresh grass shoots.
This one stayed for a while. I was able to get close enough to get this shot with a 200mm lens.
I’ve also heard from Americans, that Australia is a small Island, they seem quite surprised to hear that Queensland is as big as Alaska, and Victoria, our smallest State, is as big as Texas.
Fortunately None of the Americans I know personally, are so misinformed.
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… and that Europe is a country.
That said, I saw one hopping down the street only last week; to the surprise of many a bystander.
“Curious creature”… the kangaroo was probably thinking.
I recall a popular American TV personality/ Recording Artist (who shall remain nameless) once thought she could just pack her bags and catch a flight to China to see the Great Wall; she was mortified to have her illusions shattered at the airport.
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Actually, if you were living in Belgium, that would be plausible. There was a still recent news report of people spotting a wallaby in the streets in a town over here — I forgot where, but it wasn’t a small town — but so far, nobody had managed to catch it or find out where it’s currently hiding.
It had probably escaped from a private zoo, although there haven’t been any more reports about it anymore in the meantime. 
One creature rarely seen of late are dropbears – they were once plentiful; especially in tourist seasons. My Dad used to tell me stories about them; terrible, vicious creatures; and how they would drop from trees on unsuspecting tourists; why tourists, in particular, was never revealed.
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