Alright folks, it’s time for me to run through my experience with the Live version of MandrivaONE.  Upon putting the disk in the drive and restarting, the system asks me for my language, country and the time I want set.  Now It’s all booted up and like all the other Live Distros I’ve tried this far, I was able to log into the wireless internet extremely easily.

There is a startup page which tells me all the cool new features in this 10th anniversary edition of Mandriva.  They tell you that security is improved, you can pick your desktop environment (KDE or GNOME, plus others), and play with Elisa (get your minds out of the gutter guys!), their media center program.

Anyways, my first reaction is that it’s almost identical to Windows.  I’m trying to get some screen shots to add to my page, but every method I use results in only a black image.  When I figure out whats wrong I’ll be sure to update all my posts (present and past).  In fact, if I wasn’t mistaken, I would say I was using Windows, with a bizarre theme and maybe a few extra widgets.  I guess if I had to choose a distro that was most similar to Windows, this would be so far.

You can minimize the start bar by making it slide into the right of the screen if you click the arrow button the right part of the start bar.  Otherwise, just like Windows, you can configure the bar to auto hide at the bottom (this can be delayed as well, very nice).

In essence this distro is a more customizable version of Windows.  It’s simple enough that you can put it on your grandmother’s PC and she’ll still be able to play her online games, read her emails, and do whatever grandmas do on computers and it would still be a good fit for those who are more computer savvy since they can customize the system to work for them.  Actually if I spent time listing everything this damn distro did, I wouldn’t stop typing until way into next week.

To make this post nice and short, this distro is a Windows clone.  Just about everything screams Windows, the control panel even looks like the Windows version.  It’s somewhat a breath of fresh air knowing there are Windows alternatives out there so people can transition easily into the world of Linux without feeling too overwhelmed.  Definitely check this distro out if you have family members who might not take to Linux as easily as you!