Years ago, I registered my Linux workstation with the Linux Counter project. Each year I receive a reminder from them to update my registration. Which I have, even adding servers and more workstations. Each year I marvel at the usability issues of the site, which (according to my memory) has looked the same for the past 10 years.
There was a time when Mandrake generated a lot of excitement and talk within the Linux community. The first distro to use egcs, compiling the binaries for Pentium class processors. Then the first to put a lot of focus on first time Linux useres by developing simple to use wizards and control panel applets (among other things). During that time, they put a lot of effort it differentiating themselves from RedHat (on which the distro was based).
Now that effort has come to full fruition: they are distinctly different from RedHat. And now… they should shrivel and blow away.
At work we have a Mandriva Corporate Clubp account. It’s worthless. Check it out yourself. There is no information, the site is stark and devoid of real information useful to a business using Mandriva as a server, let a lone a development group targeting it.
The distro itself contains cutesy features that are useful only when using it, cannot be ignored or turned off. A prime example is the “msec” tool. If you disable msec, by issuing msec 0 at the commandline, it totally neuters system security. For example, under msec 0, root no longer requires a password to log on.
Read the Manual, chant some. But the payoff is not there. msec is used only within Mandriva. It forces me to use it, rather than standard security tools, or even better my own. On RHEL, I can disable, even remove, SELinux and still have a system securable by using standard tools.