compare fedora to mandrival
GENERAL FEATURES
Fedora is a general purpose system — it does not concentrate on one specific market. It is suitable both for home users, programmers and the corporate server. In each case it requires some customization however. It is the price that needs to be paid for trying to be good for everyone.
Mandriva Linux (earlier Mandrakelinux) became extremely popular among novice users of Linux, mainly those switching from MS Windows. The system is known for its ease of use and user-friendliness. Mandriva is a very up-to-date distribution, it consists of the latest software which can occasionally cause stability problems. For desktop use it is acceptable for most users and it's a simple tradeoff for being very up-to-date.
Random screen shot
FEDORA MANDRIVA
Supported architectures
fedora i386, ppc, x86_64, sparc
Mandriva i586, ppc (unofficial port), x86_64
Minimal hardware requirements
Fedora
For text mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class, 64MB RAM, 620MB HDD
For graphical mode: 400 MHz Pentium-class, 192MB RAM, 620MB HDD
Mandriva
For text mode: 166 MHz Pentium-class, 64MB RAM, 620MB HDD, For graphical mode: 350 MHz Pentium-class, 128MB RAM, 620MB HDD
Software freedom status
Fedora Free as in freedom.
Mandriva Mostly free, but includes some proprietary drivers
INSTALLATION
Fedora
Installer – overall Very mature installer, offering features both for beginner and expert users. Contains most of the features a modern OS installer should have. The only flaw can be install speed and no separate expert mode.
Package selection Present. Single packages can be selected (all dependencies resolved).
Predefined package groups Very well-thought package grouping. All package groups include packages installed by default and optional ones. The default installation is a desktop system with GNOME.
Mandriva
Installer – overall Very good, well-designed installer, considered as the easiest installer of all linux-distributions.
Package selection Present. It's one of the advanced options during the installation.
Predefined package groups Wisely selected groups of packages: 1) Workstation (desktop, games, multimedia, internet, administration tools, programming, LSB), 2) Server (web, ftp, mail, database, firewall, router, 3) Desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, other).
CONFIGURATION
Fedora
Graphical system management Many graphical configuration tools (mostly GNOME-based). Most system-wide operations can be performed without the need to open the terminal window.
Console-based system management Some console tools provided, including network card configuration (netcard-config), etc.
Mandriva
Graphical system management Lots of useful graphical tools integrated into drakconf AKA "Mandriva Control Center (MCC)". Almost all aspects of the OS may be configured graphically.
Console-based system managementLately many graphical tools have become available also in the semi-graphical (ncurses) mode. It's very useful while using console or remote ssh connection.
EFFICIENCY
Fedora
System boot-up speed Average boot-up speed. The boot-up scripts written properly.
System responsiveness Acceptable speed and responsiveness, although there are no special optimizations for either desktop or server use.
Mandriva
System boot-up speed Fast bootup speed (comparable to Debian or Archlinux) due to use of pinit since Mdv 2007. Older versions are significantly slower at bootup.
System responsiveness Average system speed. Mandriva has not been optimized for responsiveness.This is just the price to pay for convenience and lots of automatization.
