Big difference trust me. First distro to use 4.1 and the first 'useable' version of KDE4. Mandriva deserve a big up for fixing a lot of beta problems over recent weeks. Currently this is well ahead of Kubuntu, Fedora etc. I recomend all to try!

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes#Upgrading_from_previous_releases

I don't think these settings are "wiped" as you put it. Just "lost". That is KDE4 will become the default desktop and it wont look for it's settings in the same place as KDE3... The ~/.kde folder should still contain all your settings and if you want to go back, you just need to install the packages for KDE3 and you'll be fine.

Also not sure what the proprietary Intel stuff referred to in the article is...?

"Support is available for all Eee models including Acer Aspire One, the MSI Wind, and others, the company said."

Erm, Acer, MSI et al are all Eee models and therefore owned by Asus now?

Paris cos, well, the original Eee model?

Yeah I thought that when I first read it too! I think it's just sloppy copy-and-pasting as if you read the reviewers notes page from Mandriva that the article links to, this sentence appears almost word for word except that 'including' comes before 'all Eee models'!

I'm considering making a big-time jump, and it's currently between this and Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (due at the end of the month). I'm definitely gonna give the new One a whirl, particularly in the realm of updated hardware support.

But kudos to the Linux community for making the jump increasingly attractive.

My old Mandriva install flaked out on me, something to do with a bug in the kernel for nvidia 6200 cards, and being a former Ubuntu user, I had no idea how to fix it.

Hope this one installs OK.

Now the main thing is, I like compiz/fusion eye-candy better than KDE4 eye candy. Here's how I did it:

(1) burn and run Mandriva-Free DVD. Or, as an alternative, you could install from the GNOME-ONE CD. But *not* the ONE-KDE CD, it (like "Free" and "Powerpack") contains only KDE 4.1

(2) when it comes time to choose a desktop, DO *NOT* select "KDE". Instead, install with GNOME or XFCE.

(3) After installation and restart, fire up the software manager from "Control Center" and install "task-kde3". It's a virtual package which gets nearly all of KDE 3.5.10 *WITHOUT* getting most of KDE4.

(4) Change your login manager from GDM to KDM (if you like point-and-click, as I do, you do this in the "boot management" part of "Control Center".) Go ahead and set auto-login if you're the only user, as I am. Restart. If you want to get 3d desktop, do it now (in MCC) and the correct KDE3 packages will be auto-magically selected for you.

I'm as happy as a clam! That Gnome "installation" is still present, but will never be used again. (You use GNOME too much, you get warts. Use KDE, no warts. *LOL* I won't even begin to talk about Mono, the disease you absolutely don't want to catch ;)

I have some unexpected advice for you: The problem you had was related to the DKMS-Nvidia not matching the Kernel (Mandriva messed up bad on that one).

What I always do is install from "Free", not "ONE" or "Powerpack". Then, instead of depending on Mandriva DKMS, I just build the original NVidia package from NVidia. In order to do this, you need to get the kernel development headers whenever you do an upgrade, and rebuild it (follow NVidia instructions, basically make the file executable and then run it as root). The NVidia script does a perfect job modifying xorg.conf and any other conflicts or things which might be there, it just works. "telinit 3" before running the installer, of course. BTW, both of my boxes are NVidia, and one of them is an integrated 6150-- the same GPU and NVidia code as your 6200 card. I've got an 8400GTS in this one, and I always use NVidia's driver to make compiz/fusion work better.

I have been testing intrepid on an old laptop for the last 2 months of so and it has been running very nicely. Wireless worked out of the box first time, as did Accelerated 3D graphics using open source ATI drivers, allowing Compiz fusion to work. If you like Gnome then it has a lot to recommend it. It is also due for final release in less than a month's time, compared with Mandriva that is not due for a while.

@AC: I think they mean Intel wireless firmware, which is part of non-free (along with lots of other wireless firmware). It's worth noting Free has Java now, thanks to OpenJDK.

Rick: The point of DKMS is it doesn't have to 'match' any kernel. A source dkms package contains the source code of the driver (or the kernel interface, in the case of NVIDIA) and automatically rebuilds it if you boot against a kernel for which it hasn't been built yet.

Dave didn't provide enough information to know what the NVIDIA bug he ran into was, but there was no known issue with NVIDIA / kernel updates throughout the 2008 Spring release. There were a few booboos with 2008, though. It's possible he was on 2008 and ran into one of these (where we updated the kernel and the updated NVIDIA *binary* driver packages weren't updated fast enough, so if you didn't have the source package and the kernel headers installed, you lost your NVIDIA driver). As I said, we got that sorted for 2008 Spring.

Using the upstream NVIDIA installer will basically work, but the problem is you have to re-run it each time there's a kernel update, and it doesn't handle switching between itself and nv very well, if you wanted to do that for any reason.

David Pottage: er, 2009 is out. Released. Now. Final version.

We're always about two-three weeks ahead of Ubuntu in the release cycle, that's just how it's happened to turn out.

um, David, this article was about the Mandriva 2009 *FINAL* releases....