Back when Mandriva was called Mandrake, the distribution had the reputation of being the most user-friendly Linux distribution. Financial difficulties, personnel changes, and the rise of Ubuntu changed that, and somehow Mandriva never quite regained its reputation. With this week's release of Mandriva 2009, Mandriva has continued to work on user-friendliness. Aside from a poorly organized installation program and a few scattered problems, Mandriva 2009 offers a desktop experience that is at least the equal of any other distribution for everyday use and that has a strong claim of being the most advanced available for system administration.

Mandriva 2009 is available in three versions. If you want a download version, can choose between Mandriva Linux One, which consists of mostly free software with a few of the proprietary compromises that many GNU/Linux distributions use, such as the inclusion of Adobe Flash and Sun Java (rather than OpenJava, the free version), or Mandriva Linux Free, which contains only free software. You can also choose to purchase and download Mandriva PowerPack, which includes such extras as proprietary audio and video codecs and three months of Web support. Since Mandriva Linux One is the default choice on the download page, it is the one used for this review.

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