The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva 2008 Free (Mandriva 2008.0)

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 10/11/2007

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva 2008 Free (Mandriva 2008.0) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Mandriva 2008 Free desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

• The GIMP - free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
• F-Spot - full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
• Google Picasa - application for organizing and editing digital photos

Internet:

• Firefox
• Opera
• Flash Player 9
• FileZilla - multithreaded FTP client
• Thunderbird - email and news client
• Evolution - combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
• aMule - P2P file sharing application
• Bittorrent client
• Azureus - Java Bittorrent client
• Pidgin- multi-platform instant messaging client
• Skype
• Google Earth
• Xchat IRC - IRC client

Office:

• OpenOffice Writer - replacement for Microsoft Word
• OpenOffice Calc - replacement for Microsoft Excel
• Adobe Reader
• GnuCash - double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
• Scribus - open source desktop publishing (DTP) application

Sound & Video:

• Amarok - audio player
• Audacity - free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
• Banshee - audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
• MPlayer - media player (video/audio), supports WMA
• Rhythmbox Music Player - audio player, similar to Apple's iTunes, with support for iPods
• gtkPod - software similar to Apple's iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
• XMMS - audio player similar to Winamp
• dvd::rip - full featured DVD copy program
• Kino - free digital video editor
• Sound Juicer CD Extractor - CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
• VLC Media Player - media player (video/audio)
• Real Player
• Totem - media player (video/audio)
• Xine - media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
• GnomeBaker - CD/DVD burning program
• K3B - CD/DVD burning program
• Multimedia-Codecs

Programming:

• KompoZer - WYSIWYG HTML editor (based on Nvu), similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
• Bluefish - text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
• Quanta Plus - web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editor

Other:

• VMware Server - lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don't have to entirely abandon Windows
• TrueType fonts
• Java
• Read/Write support for NTFS partitions

Mandriva 2008 Free lets you choose between multiple desktop environments (GNOME, KDE). I've decided to install GNOME in this article.

I'm using the Mandriva 2008 DVD in this tutorial to set up the system. You can find the download here: http://www.mandriva.com/en/download, e.g. mandriva-linux-2008.0-free-dvd-i586.iso. The procedure might differ if you use the Mandriva 2008 CDs instead of the DVD.

I will use the username falko in this tutorial, and I will download all necessary files to falko's desktop which is equivalent to the directory /home/falko/Desktop. If you use another username (which you most probably do ;-)), please replace falko with your own username. So when I use a command like

cd /home/falko/Desktop

you must replace falko.

2 Installing The Base System

Download the Mandriva 2008 Free DVD iso image from http://www.mandriva.com/en/download, burn it onto a DVD, and boot your computer from it. At the boot prompt, select Install Mandriva Linux 2008 on your system:

Select your language:

Accept the license agreement:

Mandriva's default partitioning scheme is ok for our purposes, so you can select Use free space. Afterwards the hard drive will be partitioned.

Click on Next on the following screen:

Under Package Group Selection, choose Install Mandriva GNOME Desktop:

The installation starts. If you click on Details, you can see what's happening behind the scenes:

Afterwards, provide a root password and create a regular user account (e.g. falko) and click on Next:

Afterwards, select your monitor model and the screen resolution that it supports (normally a suitable model is pre-selected):