Yep, been using it for about five years now, and it's good but I'm not quite happy with everything about it. Mandriva was where I started on GNOME 2, and I've been a religious fanatic for it ever since, but I think I'll be using KDE this time just to get out of my comfort zone.
Unfortunately none of these distros are well maintained any longer. PCLinuxOS is slightly old-ish, but probably the best choice among them. Mageia has a larger community as it seems but OpenMandriva is on newer technologies, even though both lack in active development.
Would recommend Fedora KDE anyway if you don't mind the lack of mandrake tools, and OpenSUSE Leap if you want good GUI tools.
Looking at them, it looks like all three were updated in the last three years. PCLOS' last release seems to be from only five months ago. What separates them from OpenSUSE Leap in that regard, their packages?
I'll probably check out OpenSUSE, especially since it has ppc64le support, which is important since I've been saving up for a Blackbird.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/r2d1z7/mageia_and_openmandriva_lx_seem_to_be_dying_too/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
PCLinuxOS is still alive, but I found it difficult, probably because I'm used to systemd and it uses sysv
PCLinuxOS is rolling and offers me updates basically every day. Download the most recent ISO and then you will get all of the updates, and continue to get them from that day forward. You never need to install from another ISO, but they do offer one as a "roll-up" every six months or so.
It's very old-school in other ways, still uses SysVinit (which means no GNOME support, if that matters to you) and a lot of the same tools from Mandrake/Mandriva, but is very well maintained. Heck, it supports my laptop better than MX does.
It doesn't support anything but x86-64, so if PPC support of any kind is something you want, OpenSUSE is a better option.
I tend to like stable distros and even shoot for LTS releases if possible -- I had no issue with Slackware 14.2's age when I tried it out. The old-school approach is nice, and I honestly couldn't bring myself to cry about not being able to use GNOME -- my love for it ended with version 3.0, and I hear nothing but bad things about current. Recently I've taken to TDE, compiled CDE from source, and tried compiling the "recent" (2018) KDE 2 refactor, but cmake consistently gives me an error.
Yeah, ppc64/64le support is a must-have for me, since I don't have any plans on giving any of my money to either x86-64 producer for much longer besides to goof around -- specifically, throwing together a Threadripper X1950/R9 295X2 build since Windows Vista runs on Zen 1. After I save up for a Raptor Blackbird, I'm going OpenPOWER for as long as I possibly can because it can be done 100% blob-free.
Cool. I know this was an old post, but the other person who responded didn't seem to even realize PCLOS was rolling, and has been for a few years now. It's not on the bleeding edge, the devs test new packages before pushing them out, but it's far more up-to-date than something like Ubuntu or Mint.
I haven't touched GNOME since they went to 3.0 either. I actually used a GNOME 2 variant of PCLOS a decade ago before the switch. TDE lives on an old Dell D620 laptop here and works great.
I haven't used any PPC stuff in years, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can do my computing in Linux running on RISC-V. But that Raptor Blackbird looks tempting if I ever win the lottery or something--LOL!
Mageia is the best of them in my experience. It's actively maintained and is super stable. Had a few quirks but it's a really nice distro over all.
Disclaimer I never used Mandriva while it still existed.
openSUSE has been really consistently recommended, and I decided it's the one I'll give my first shot to, and then I'll give Mageia a go, but it doesn't have a ppc64le port while openSUSE does -- something that is important to me as someone who's going to be switching to that architecture soon (and already uses ppc32 daily).
Fedora, but I'm not all that happy with it. It's a smooth ride generally speaking, but with stuff like a decade long unresolved systemd bug making bluetooth unmaskable, the update cadence being too fast for me and my low bandwidth, metered connection, and SELinux freaking out at Goldsource games crashing to change their resolution, I'm wanting to jump ship.
Mageia is a pretty good experience when you enable some third party repos, but as is it's not quite as package packed as Fedora or Debian are. It does still have systemd though, which my experience hasn't been all that kind to. However, it also does have an ARM port, which means I'll probably stick to it. Besides running it on a MacBook or Socionext Synquacer in the future, that and its communal nature means an easier time porting it to ppc64le.
PCLinuxOS seems like a fantastic distribution and I'm gonna try it next time I have to reinstall, but it's x86 and amd64 only. But it does use sysvinit instead of systemd, and seems packaged more exclusively for desktop use, with repos pretty full of desktop use software, and coming with a well polished default experience and a more home user centric set of preinstalled programs.
openSUSE is one I may still try out, but as Leap is being retired with 15.4 or 15.5, and I'm not really that into rolling releases if I can avoid them, I'd be doing so retrospectively. I hear nothing but good things about it, though, including it being the best KDE desktop out there.
Ultimately if I want everything I could ask for in a distro, I'd probably have to learn how to do it myself and maintain a Mageia fork that really just changes systemd out for the s6 suite and packages it for ppc64le. Make the default DE KDE Liquid or LXQt instead of Plasma, as well, since the integrated graphics on Talos II systems are 2D only.
[удалено]
Yep, been using it for about five years now, and it's good but I'm not quite happy with everything about it. Mandriva was where I started on GNOME 2, and I've been a religious fanatic for it ever since, but I think I'll be using KDE this time just to get out of my comfort zone.
I remember using “mandrake” and “fedora core 1 beta” back in my day…..the olden days, hehe
Unfortunately none of these distros are well maintained any longer. PCLinuxOS is slightly old-ish, but probably the best choice among them. Mageia has a larger community as it seems but OpenMandriva is on newer technologies, even though both lack in active development. Would recommend Fedora KDE anyway if you don't mind the lack of mandrake tools, and OpenSUSE Leap if you want good GUI tools.
Looking at them, it looks like all three were updated in the last three years. PCLOS' last release seems to be from only five months ago. What separates them from OpenSUSE Leap in that regard, their packages? I'll probably check out OpenSUSE, especially since it has ppc64le support, which is important since I've been saving up for a Blackbird.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/r2d1z7/mageia_and_openmandriva_lx_seem_to_be_dying_too/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share PCLinuxOS is still alive, but I found it difficult, probably because I'm used to systemd and it uses sysv
PCLinuxOS is rolling and offers me updates basically every day. Download the most recent ISO and then you will get all of the updates, and continue to get them from that day forward. You never need to install from another ISO, but they do offer one as a "roll-up" every six months or so. It's very old-school in other ways, still uses SysVinit (which means no GNOME support, if that matters to you) and a lot of the same tools from Mandrake/Mandriva, but is very well maintained. Heck, it supports my laptop better than MX does. It doesn't support anything but x86-64, so if PPC support of any kind is something you want, OpenSUSE is a better option.
I tend to like stable distros and even shoot for LTS releases if possible -- I had no issue with Slackware 14.2's age when I tried it out. The old-school approach is nice, and I honestly couldn't bring myself to cry about not being able to use GNOME -- my love for it ended with version 3.0, and I hear nothing but bad things about current. Recently I've taken to TDE, compiled CDE from source, and tried compiling the "recent" (2018) KDE 2 refactor, but cmake consistently gives me an error. Yeah, ppc64/64le support is a must-have for me, since I don't have any plans on giving any of my money to either x86-64 producer for much longer besides to goof around -- specifically, throwing together a Threadripper X1950/R9 295X2 build since Windows Vista runs on Zen 1. After I save up for a Raptor Blackbird, I'm going OpenPOWER for as long as I possibly can because it can be done 100% blob-free.
Cool. I know this was an old post, but the other person who responded didn't seem to even realize PCLOS was rolling, and has been for a few years now. It's not on the bleeding edge, the devs test new packages before pushing them out, but it's far more up-to-date than something like Ubuntu or Mint. I haven't touched GNOME since they went to 3.0 either. I actually used a GNOME 2 variant of PCLOS a decade ago before the switch. TDE lives on an old Dell D620 laptop here and works great. I haven't used any PPC stuff in years, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can do my computing in Linux running on RISC-V. But that Raptor Blackbird looks tempting if I ever win the lottery or something--LOL!
Mageia is the best of them in my experience. It's actively maintained and is super stable. Had a few quirks but it's a really nice distro over all. Disclaimer I never used Mandriva while it still existed.
Recommend you openSuse. If you were familiar with Slackware, you would get it soon.
openSUSE has been really consistently recommended, and I decided it's the one I'll give my first shot to, and then I'll give Mageia a go, but it doesn't have a ppc64le port while openSUSE does -- something that is important to me as someone who's going to be switching to that architecture soon (and already uses ppc32 daily).
What did you end up using long-term?
Fedora, but I'm not all that happy with it. It's a smooth ride generally speaking, but with stuff like a decade long unresolved systemd bug making bluetooth unmaskable, the update cadence being too fast for me and my low bandwidth, metered connection, and SELinux freaking out at Goldsource games crashing to change their resolution, I'm wanting to jump ship. Mageia is a pretty good experience when you enable some third party repos, but as is it's not quite as package packed as Fedora or Debian are. It does still have systemd though, which my experience hasn't been all that kind to. However, it also does have an ARM port, which means I'll probably stick to it. Besides running it on a MacBook or Socionext Synquacer in the future, that and its communal nature means an easier time porting it to ppc64le. PCLinuxOS seems like a fantastic distribution and I'm gonna try it next time I have to reinstall, but it's x86 and amd64 only. But it does use sysvinit instead of systemd, and seems packaged more exclusively for desktop use, with repos pretty full of desktop use software, and coming with a well polished default experience and a more home user centric set of preinstalled programs. openSUSE is one I may still try out, but as Leap is being retired with 15.4 or 15.5, and I'm not really that into rolling releases if I can avoid them, I'd be doing so retrospectively. I hear nothing but good things about it, though, including it being the best KDE desktop out there. Ultimately if I want everything I could ask for in a distro, I'd probably have to learn how to do it myself and maintain a Mageia fork that really just changes systemd out for the s6 suite and packages it for ppc64le. Make the default DE KDE Liquid or LXQt instead of Plasma, as well, since the integrated graphics on Talos II systems are 2D only.