The free version of Mandriva Linux 2006 like any other Linux distro comes packaged as ISO files. There are three such files which you need to burn to CDs and then start the installation. I setup Mandriva to dual boot with Windows.

System Configuration:
Pentium III 1.1 GHz processor
256 MB RAM
80 GB primary hard disk with Windows XP Pro installed
20 GB secondary hard disk with two empty partitions of 10 GB each

I used Nero 6 on Windows XP Professional to burn the CDs. Once it was done it was time for a reboot. I made the necessary changes to the BIOS to boot from my CD drive. I popped the first CD into the CD drive and booted the system. I was presented with a screen with two options, 1. Press F1 for Help and 2. Press Enter to start installation. I went ahead and hit the Enter key. There was a short device detection session after which i was presented with the Language selection screen. I was ok with the default language and so i clicked Next. This screen allows the user to select multiple languages which will be available once the installation has been completed. The next screen presents the License Agreement which you have to read and accept in order to continue with the installation. If you do not agree to the license then the installation would be stopped and the CD would be ejected. Next comes the keyboard layout selection. I accepted the default option and clicked Next to move to the next screen. This is the security level selection screen. There are four predefined levels like Standard, High which is the default, Higher and Paranoia.

An option to enter the Security Administrator's email is present which could be very useful when the security of the system seems to be compromised. The next step is the most difficult step of installing any Linux distro. You got it right, it is the partitioning process. Fortunately, this task is not as difficult as it sounds. Existing partitions on the hard disk along with the type of file system has been graphically shown. Mandriva presents four options to select from such as use the existing partition, erase entire disk, use free space on Windows partition and custom disk partition. Select the partition to which you want to install Mandriva and select the mount point as root. In case you want to alter the partitions, it is not difficult either. If you want to dual boot with an existing Windows system, then make sure that you do not select the drive which hosts Windows for installing Mandriva. Also make sure that the partition you select is empty. Otherwise all the data in that partition will be wiped out. I selected the custom partition option and then selected an empty partition on my secondary hard drive. The installer told me that i do not have a swap partition. Though this is not required, it is recommended. I decided to carry on without a swap partition because my computer would be used only for fairly simple applications. Setup formatted the selected partition.

It took 12 seconds to format the entire partition. That was very very fast compared to a Windows format which takes about 5 minutes to format a partition of same size. Then there was a media check process. Here the setup presents all the needed media and instructs us to remove any media if we do not have any of the three CD. Then there is one more screen asking the user to identify any additional media that is to be used for the installation. Next comes the package selection screen. This screen is pretty easy to work with. The user is presented with various options such as Office Workstation, Game Station, Multimedia Station and Development Workstation. You can also select the web server, mail server and database servers to be installed. You can also select individual packages for installation. GNOME and KDE are the default desktop environments. KDE version is 3.4.2 and GNOME is 2.10. But you can also install WindowMaker, IceWM and FluxBox. Other software that are included are the OpenOffice 1.1, which is very old for today when version 2.0 is available. If you selected to install the Apache web server you will get a security prompt saying that there are no issues with installing the web server but in the future new issues could be identified. This might cast a doubt in some minds, but there is no need to worry. Once I selected all the necessary it was time for the actual install. The install took about 20 minutes for 2.4 GB of data. Next you should setup the administrator's password. There are no warnings if you use an all lower case name or a password with very less number of characters. The same applies to other users as well. Next I was prompted to setup autologin which i disabled. Having an auto login on a Linux box made no sense unless you are the only user of your computer. The next step lists out a summary sheet which mentioned all the stuff that has been configured and with an option to configure other deices such as Network Cards, Printers, other hardware and system services. The last one is an online update which I skipped. That was for the installation.

Once my PC rebooted, it booted into LILO the boot manager. Setup has detected my Windows partition and put an option in LILO. Mandriva is set as the default boot option. The user can however change these options later if required. On logging in I was presented the KDE desktop. The menu structure is well laid out but could have been more streamlined. The Home folder is well laid out to hold different kind of files. For Internet browsing we have Firefox and Konqueror. Kmail and Evolution are the email clients, Kopete and GAIM are the instant messenger, Aggregator is the RSS client. You have a lot of multimeda options. The greatest advantage of Mandriva is that it plays almost all the media formats out of the box. System configuration is centralized and the Mandriva Control Center is upto the task. GNOME 2.10 was also equally easy to use and you can set any WindowManger as the default for any user.
All in all it is a complete system with good performance.

For: Good Performance, plays all media formats out of the box.
Against: Older version of OpenOffice.org suite, Java and Flash are not provided

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This review is also available at my Google Base http://base.google.com/base/a/1057035/7285910162949410076