yea!!
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
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Mandriva is the new kid on the block. Real classic Linux users will remember Mandrake.
I'm not a classic Linuxer (I switched in 2015) but I did once try Mandrake out of historical curiosity. From what I hear it was the recommended "beginner-friendly" distro before Ubuntu came out. And based on how hard it was to get working on a VM, I now understand why classic Linuxers talk about Ubuntu like it was this huge sea change.
It ran fairly well for me out of the box. I think it's similar to trying to run Windows 98/2000/XP on modern VM software, it gets utterly confused and needs very specific hardware configuration to boot. Modern VMs run this good in big part because of paravirtualized hardware.
I think what made Ubuntu so good is a combination of being based on Debian and also being there at the right time when Linux software was getting generally better. When I tried Mandrake it was too early for Wine to run any sort of game, codecs were lacking for video. When I tried Linux again with Ubuntu, there was now VirtualBox and computers fast enough to run that reasonably, graphics drivers were more usable. Compiz was popping off to show off that Xorg could now do compositing like macOS and Vista.
Mandrake was good but limited by what Linux could do back then. Enjoyed it quite a bit but 9 year old me ran back to XP for the games. When I tried Ubuntu I was a bit older and more interested in programming and WoW ran great in Wine, so I managed to stick and have been on Linux since.
Linux was a lot more fun in the old days, but it's a lot more useable now.