Out of the box experience, and looks: Eye to eye

The out of the box experience on Windows 7 was much better than Mandriva, which is very surprising considering that even Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 lost by a mile. We’ll see how.

The first boot on Windows 7 was a big surprise, seeing a full resolution of 1024×768 at 32-bit colour, which is the native resolution of our 15 inch or 38.1 cm flat panel. Even Vista gave only 800×600 at 24-bit colour. Closer inspection revealed that the nVidia GeForce 9400GT was working with full DirectX 11 support. It turns out that Microsoft ships Windows 7 with modified nVidia Forceware drivers that enable support for DirectX11 (the Forceware drivers on nVidia’s website are still for DirectX10, but this is slated to change by the time you read this). Our Realtek AC’97 HD Audio worked as well, so did our Conexant CX11252 voice and fax modem (I still have a dial-up connection as a back-up, and I don’t use fax, though I can). Windows also recognised our keyboard’s multimedia hotkey caps (in previous versions I had to download and install IntelliType, a Microsoft add-on software; looks like Microsoft hates its own hardware), though only partially. The volume keys, playback control, mail and Web keys work; while the zoom slider, My Favourites, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music and Messenger keys don’t.

Windows 7 scores a perfect 10 for its looks. Microsoft’s taken Vista’s Aero to its next level, and added some features. They’ve removed some as well, like Windows Flip 3D (which I quite liked). One feature I quite like is Aero Shake, where you just hold a window by the Windows Manager and shake it, and all the other windows minimise, leaving only that one. The sidebar is now gone, and has been replaced by gadgets directly on the desktop, a la Konfabulator and KDE4. They call it the Windows Gadget Platform. Aye, refer to the photo gallery on the previous page to find out more.

When you first boot up Mandriva 2009.1, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that Mandriva is a visual disaster. The culprit is La Ora, the artwork stack of Mandriva, which makes it look like it’s from the last century. We did some handiwork and switched our Mandriva back to KDE4’s default look—Oxygen. It probably is a mere coincidence, but Windows 7’s and KDE4’s desktop look very similar: a transparent, big, iconised toolbar, widgets on the desktop… It’s another co-incidence that Mandriva and Windows 7’s default wallpapers represent a single fish in water. There are no glass borders on Mandriva, and the text won’t look as good as on Windows (as subpixel rendering is patented by Microsoft as part of its ClearType technology). No Aero Shake as well. However, KWin’s composting effects (now enabled by default if a good enough GPU is found) cover much more effects than Windows 7. These effects are more soothing than the ones on Windows, but the total effect is lost because of the lack of enough transparencies. And while Windows makes your windows look like glass panels, KDE makes them look like, umm… better.

Another feature was wallpaper slideshows. KDE has it, but it’ll cycle over all the wallpapers in your KDE wallpaper registry (or you can add your own ‘Pictures’ folders there). Over at Windows’s stable, there are huge collections of high-resolution images grouped into categories, such as scenes, cartoons, nature, etc. You select one such category, and your wallpapers will cycle over images from it. A category (called a theme) will also change the window border hue (no colour, because it’s transparent), and the sounds.

Hardware detection on Mandriva was typical of a Linux platform. Everything except our voice modem (it’s a software modem, and thus Windows specific) and the multimedia hotkeys on our keyboard was detected. Although our nVidia card was detected, drivers had to be downloaded from the Internet. That’s because we’re using the ‘free’ version, which means the DVD has only Free (as in freedom, not beer) software. The nVidia Forceware drivers are not free. But it wasn’t at all hard to set it up, however. We could enter Mandriva Control Centre (Mandy’s Control Panel) and just start the X configuration tool, and it asked us that since there were proprietary drivers available, would we like to install them? We said, ‘Yes,’ and after a few downloads and a logout later (no reboot, mind you—Linux doesn’t need them), our 9400GT was working like a charm. The Mandriva 2009.1 Spring One Edition comes as a live CD and includes the proprietary drivers as well, so everything works out of the box.

Don’t be fooled, however; Mandriva still looks a million times better than Windows XP.

Functionality

This is where all good things about Windows 7 come to an end. Let’s see…

Windows 7 takes up an elephantine 6.5 GB space. It dumps everything on the hard drive, and then disables three quarters of all the features waiting for us to enable them. Gazillions of unused drivers lie on our hard drives, taking up space and slowing down the boot process. And at that amount of space consumption, we’d expect some goodies to come along with Windows. We were left shocked.

Apart from Windows Media Centre, Windows Media Player and Windows Internet Explorer, all the software that we used to get bundled earlier is now gone. No Windows Mail, no Movie Maker, no Meeting Space, no Messenger, no DVD Maker, no Photo Gallery… nothing! We discover that we need another 173 MB download in the form of Windows Live Essentials to get anything at all working. Forget an office suite; you’ll have to pay Microsoft close to Rs 17,000 to lay your hands on one. Or settle for a feature stripped one at Rs 5,000. That’s still a lot. Simple CD burning can be done with Windows Explorer, but no Authoring (VCDs, Video DVDs and Audio CDs) and no ISO burning. And wait till you hear this: Windows Live still doesn’t have a DVD Maker, and its Movie Maker is dysfunctional, at best.

Mandriva is aeons ahead. It includes a complete office suite, with more functionality than MS Office 2003. It’s got the best audio player known to mankind, by the name of Amarok. A serious video player is lacking, but SMPlayer can be gotten from the repos. It has Kopete (instant messenger), KDENlive (a video editor), Gwenview (a photo viewer), The GIMP (an image composer with the same functionality as Photoshop, even with proper CMYK support) and a whole load of other software. Space consumption? A mere 2.5 GB when first installed.

So how can a 4.34 GB DVD install only 2.5 GB of software? Well, apart from KDE, the DVD holds another completely different set of applications for the GNOME environment. Apart from that, Mandriva can perform as a complete server. It actually has server packages for the Web, mail, database and DNS right on the DVD. Windows 7 does have IIS7, but it’s stripped, and none of the additional server software is present. And there’s also virtualisation and clustering software, and a full range of development software—from languages to IDEs.

Resource hogs

Windows 7 is a resource hog. It needs so much for itself that it leaves nothing else for others. With 2 GBs of RAM, we find only 427 MBs free for use. Just to display the desktop, it’s been hogging graphics resources (I can tell from the temperature of our GPU; in Windows XP it remains cool as anything, in Mandriva even cooler but on Windows 7 I can actually feel the heat radiating). With its new DirectX 11, it’s touted as a gamer’s OS. If I were to buy Windows 7 for gaming, I’d throw the disk into the sewers without remorse.

Mandriva on the other hand is based on Linux, and Linux has always been a low-requirements kernel. Compare the requirements: Windows 7 needs at least a GB of RAM, a good GPU and a 1GHz processor. Mandriva needs 256 MB of RAM, any old GPU which has worked in the history of UNIX and a 500MHz processor. And don’t be fooled by these low requirements; Mandriva certainly offers a good user experience.

And as of now, Windows 7 is downloading more than 700 MBs of updates for itself and Office 2007.

Multimedia capabilities

Both Windows and Mandriva play MP3s and MP4 (XviD) files by default. Both play DVDs as well, and none play FLVs. Mandriva has an edge, however, as codecs for unsupported media formats are automatically downloaded and installed the first time you play one of those formats, whereas in Windows you need to trudge for a third-party solution that breaks the default codecs most of the time.