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The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring With GNOME

Author: Falko Timme

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring desktop (with the GNOME desktop environment) 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 One 2010.1 Spring desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

Internet:

Office:

Sound & Video:

Programming:

Other:

As you might have noticed, a few applications are redundant, for example there are two CD/DVD burning applications in my list (Brasero, K3B). If you know which one you like best, you obviously don't need to install the other applications, however if you like choice, then of course you can install both. The same goes for music players like Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox, XMMS or browsers (Firefox, Opera).

I'm using the Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring CD in this tutorial to set up the system. You can find the download here: http://www.mandriva.com/en/download, e.g. mandriva-linux-one-2010-spring-GNOME-europe-americas-cdrom-i586.iso. The procedure might differ if you use the Mandriva Free 2010.1 Spring DVD instead of Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring.

I will use the username falko in this tutorial, and I will download all necessary files to falko's download directory which is equivalent to the directory /home/falko/Downloads. 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/Downloads

you must replace falko.

 

2 Installing The Base System

Download the Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring CD iso image from http://www.mandriva.com/en/download, burn it onto a CD, and boot your computer from it. At the boot prompt, select Boot Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring:

The system will now boot into a live system from where you can install Mandriva to your hard drive. Before we can see the live desktop, we have to answer a few questions.

First, choose your language:

Accept the Mandriva license:

Select your timezone:

Select your time. Under Advanced, you can enable Automatic time synchronization (using NTP):

Select your keyboard layout:

Finally, the live desktop starts. To install Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring to your hard drive, click on the Install on Hard Disk icon:

The installation wizard starts. Click on Next:

Mandriva's default partitioning scheme is ok for our purposes, so you can select Use free space (if you want to set up your own partitioning scheme, select Custom disk partitioning instead). Afterwards the hard drive will be partitioned.

Click on Next to remove unnecessary packages from the installation:

Afterwards, the system is being installed to your hard drive. This can take a few minutes, so please be patient:

Afterwards we have to configure the bootloader. The default settings are ok, so we can click on Next:

The default boot menu entries are ok as well, so we click on Finish:

Click on Finish to complete the installation:

To use our new installation, we must reboot and remove the Mandriva CD from our CD drive. Log out of the current desktop session (System > Shut Down...), then select Restart from the upcoming menu:

You will be asked to remove the Mandriva CD/DVD from the CD drive. Press ENTER once you've done this:

Afterwards, select Boot Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring from the botloader menu (or wait a few seconds):

During the first boot, the system is adding online repositories to its configuration:

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

The First Time wizard comes up. You can use it to create an account with the Mandriva user community, answer a survey, submit your hardware details to Mandriva, etc. Click on Next:

If you don't want to submit any details, click on Decline on the following three screens:

Click on Close on the next screen:

This is how your new Mandriva 2010.1 Spring desktop looks:

The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva One 2010.1 Spring With GNOME