Hello, I've been a long-time Mandriva user, but IMHO, this distribution is going downhill ever since version 2008.1, although some of my latest gripes can also be attributed to the overhaul of the sound system and the new KDE4 desktop environment -- things common to all KDE-based distributions.
As it is, I've upgraded several machines of myself and my users up to Mandriva version 2010.2, and with every "upgrade" more things got messed up that worked just fine before. Some examples: - Video playback (DV, MPEG, DVD) that used to be smooth on 2008.1 machines is now always more or less choppy, even with proprietary codecs and GPU drivers installed. - The sound system has become a horrible "one slider to rule them all" experience, without any of the old, fine-grained mixer features I like. Also, KDE now often reports that sound devices are missing, or that Phonon doesn't work -- whilst merrily playing the startup sound at the same time. - The Firewire device port that was always automatically and properly set up upon connecting a camera now requires manual intervention by root to make certain that /dev/raw1394 has the correct permissions -- every single time I hook up something. - Increasingly, applications demand that I install extra, paid-for codec packs in order to enjoy MP3 files, Internet radio or MPEG video. These things used to be installed automatically after adding non-free package sources, but no more. - And now I found that Ghostscript apparently has a problem: I can't use my printer for anything but text because any picture results in a "pstoraster failed" message. I never had printer problems before. And even if things weren't always peachy in the past, I always succeeded in finding solutions by searching the Internet. Not any more -- I spent many, many hours trying to solve the above problems, but to no avail. As you may gather, the situation is becoming unworkable, especially in terms of multimedia activities. BTW, the main reason to upgrade at all was the emergence of new video formats and codecs, such as HD and H.264, unsupported in most 2008.1 applications. Also, compiling stuff on this old distribution became troublesome, because of dependencies involving newer libraries. Please note also that the hardware is not the problem: all machines have ample RAM (1GB or more) and HD space, good graphics cards and 2.8+GHz modern multicore CPU's. So here's my question: what's the Cinelerra users' favourite distribution? Or which distribution would probably meet my requirements best? Thanks for any suggestions, and yes, I have a modern spare PC that I can use to try out any amount of distributions. Best regards, Richard Rasker _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
