I'm going to run through my upgrade experience on my old notebook, a Dell Inspiron 2100. (PIII 700Mhz, 256MB RAM & 20GB HDD). It's ancient, but Mandriva has always worked reasonably well on it running XFCE of course instead of the heavyweight KDE. I'm using this notebook to test it out to see if it's worthwhile upgrading my main PC. So here we go:
Installation
Hasn't changed much, just looks better. Been the same installer since 5 years ago. This is not a bad thing at all. Mandriva's installer is the best installer in my opinion, it combines simplicity with just the right amount of control to satisfy anyone from a newbie to a poweruser.
For my installation, I decided not to upgrade the system, instead I opted for a semi-clean installation that is to format the root partition and leave my /home untouched. This is easily done with the 'Use Existing Partitions" option. What this essentially gives you is a clean OS installation with all your user account customizations still intact. This saves you from having to change your wallpaper, panel options, etc. (The reason I chose NOT to upgrade is 1: to save time, 2: To clean up all the scattered hacks I've supplanted my system with.)
The installation went smoothly. Not a single error crept up.
POST Install
Post install config was as normal, I setup a user account with exactly the same name as my old system, It found my existing /home folder & used it. Nothing new here. So far same old options.
Repository setup & online updates
Rpmdrake has been updated with some niceties like a proper 'Select All' option. (You used to have to tick every box yourself) Also added is a new user friendly update screen that reminds me of the one in Ubuntu.(I didn't care much for this one) I setup my favorite repositories using easyurpmi.zarb.org as always. I later discovered that this was no longer necessary as the first time you start rpmdrake it will prompt you to add repositories & will do it for you automatically. (This is the proper way to do it & should have been there a standard feature since years ago) Finally the online update notification icon now actually works, without having to register an account with Mandriva.
I did find a strange bug in rpmdrake which I'm not sure if it's specific to my installation. When choosing a package to install, a window will popup to ask if you wish to install the required dependencies, it will list the dependencies on this window. But on my PC, the popup list is empty, if I said yes, it will still install the dependencies. I'm not sure if this is a bug or just something caused by my upgrade method since I can't find any mention of this in any forums or erratas.
Getting & Running XFCE
XFCE 4.4 was already available in the contrib source. I installed it by choosing the xfce4-common metapackage. XFCE 4.4 is a great leap from 4.2, it's so much better looking and works much more fluidly than 4.2 ever did. I loved it. The new Thuner file manager was so usable that I couldn't imagine how I managed to bare with xftree for so long.
Here's a FAQ tip for XFCE users. To make XFCE enable the Shutdown & Reboot option on the Exit menu, you need to add yourself into the sudoer file. like this (do this as root):
# visudo
(add this line in under user aliases)
where
Eg: (My username is jobe)
jobe ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/lib/xfsm-shutdown-helper
This will enable the greyed-out Shutdown & Reboot options in the Exit menu. This little hack is necessary only if you are running XFCE.
Well this is as far as I got before I dosed off. Till next time.. .ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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