one thing and this may sound stupid but will the updates that im doing on my 2006 beta get everything they fix from the time mine came out till realeace or will i have to get releace?? sorry for the typos but myt sleeping meds are kicking in.

From my understanding, yes, you can update your release candidate versions to the FINAL through Mandriva updates when they release the official Mandriva 2006. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, I installed Mandriva RC2 on my desktop and it's not ready. lol

I had the options of choosing the video card and monitor and no combination gave me a working 'test' screen. it was all garbled. I tried every combination from monitors to video cards to monitor refresh rates to resolution blah blah blah. None worked.

I guess it's up to RC3 or the final release!

I have a Nvidia 6600GT video card and a Samsung Syncmaster 930B monitor

I guess your PC got problem, need an upgrade now?

No, my PC is fine, thank you. Mandriva 2005LE works fine and so does my Windows XP. I realize this is a release candidate and NOT the final so I didn't expect it to work with every system out there.

when i use a beta/rc i expect all kinds of problems but even with the final releases not every disttro is gonna work on evey pc and i think thats what people that just start linux need to understand instead of having "linux" you have tons of "linux" not like M$ wher eyou only have a certian number of them.

Interesting! So since I have no linux right now, I thought I would try other distros. I tried Debian and Kubuntu (this time on my desktop) and they both gave me warnings about how Nvidia's DDC or DDP, or something like that, is not good with autodetecting. Both Debian and Kubuntu failed to load the XFree and Xorg. They gave me the garbled screen EXACTLY like Mandriva 2006 RC2. I guess the Nvidia 6600GT's don't like Linux? I hope Mandriva 2006 will be able to solve this problem.

Any other distros worth trying until Mandriva 2006 comes out?

you may try Fedora Core 4.

try going to http://www.distrowatch.org to find out all the big distros

i would suggest trying SuSe, slackware, fedora, or if you feel up to the challenge install Gentoo or LFS

Wow. I am now using SuSE 9.3 and all I can say is WOW! I thought Mandriva was the best, but I think I'm going to convert to SuSE 9.3. The Yast thing is amazing for installing packages and software. URPMI has nothing against Yast! I don't understand why SuSE 9.3 isn't more popular. Was it because of the whole commercial thing that turned people away? Plus I don't see what the hype about Ubuntu/Kubuntu is. I ran into sudo hell and it got SOOOOO annoying I uninstalled it. And yes, to each their own! But SuSE... wow! I'm loving it!

Anyway, just my really quick two cents on the distros.

Still looking forward to the final release of Mandriva 2006 on my laptop!

i agree Yast is very good im more fond of yum but its all in what you like. im running mandriva 2006 beta and i have to say even for a beta i ran into very few issues with anything. i use fedora and breezy more so than i do mandriva but i go to it every few days run updates and play with it