Yeaterday I met a guy browsing the Linux magazines in easons. We started talking about Linux and he highly recomended Mandriva. I had been using Fedora for a month at that stage and to be honest I didn’t think that much of it. The man managed to convince me to buy the Linux Format magazine which included a live version of Mandriva.

When I got home I stuck in the CD, not expecting much since I was disapointed with both Fedora and Ubuntu. Oh My God it is brilliant!! Mandriva is the best operating system that I have ever stumbled upon! Absolutly brilliant! It combines all the good visual aspects of Microsoft’s Window Vista and the good old back end of Linux! The graphical ‘flowing’ widgets and the availability to completly customise everything visually creates a great user friendly (and more importandly Windows user friendly) interface.

So I set about getting rid of Fedora. I only had 12 GB hard drive space reserved for Fedora but I was so impressed by Mandriva that I managed to clear 34 GB for it! The OS is now installed and almost fully functional.

I have to say I am surprised that a Linux distribution has finally achieved what I have been waiting for. The things that I want in Linux are finally available, which are:

• The graphical, ease of use, user friendly aspects of a Windows distribution. Mandriva in my opinion has achieved this, and to my great suprise it has out-done any Windows OS that I have ever used in this section in particular.
• No Viruses. This has allways been available – but without the other points it means nothing.
• The ability to code properly, I have learned the hard way that this isn’t possible on Windows.
• Oh and everything is easy! Like MySQL for example, i found it impossible to set it up on Windows without using PHP MyAdmin.

Over all i think Mandriva is brilliant and I cant wait to get it working properly. The only one problem that I did find with it is that my 02 3G modem won’t work properly on it. I have found some articles to hack the config files, which I intent to do as soon as I find out how to log in as root!!! oh it will all work eventually…

Just to note I got The Strats website up at http://www.thestrats.com please check it out and give me a review here or preferably at http://www.webdesignforum.com/5904-review-my-new-site.html#post22842

At the momet I am developing my portfolio of web sites. I have a coulpe of sites up on my portfollio page, which I haven’t got round to actually finishing yet (the page i mean), but they are all my own projects and none of them are brilliant!

Therefore I have decided to break out into the lucrative web design scene and I hope to devolpe both my portfollio and my coding skill at the same time. For my first couple of projects I intend to charge very little in order to get the word out there that I am available to do work.

I started my first new portfollio project the other day – TheStrats.com. This work graciously was diverted to me by WebWorks, where I did my work experience during the summer last year. I am basically giving this site away at a ridiculous price, but it is worth having the experience in my opinion.

For the Strats I am using WordPress. I was a bit sceptical about using it at first but then I looked at all the benifits.

For the designer:
1. Less work
2. Quicker and easier
3. Cost and time effective
For the client:
1. Costs less
2. They can constantly update their website without the need to pay someone to do it for them

The site is coming along well and I like the way that wordpress works, I will consider making more of my sites through wordpress. I also looked into Joomla today. I downloaded it and I am looking into it to see how good it really is. I have heard good things so I expect alot!

But at the end of the day I do want to eventully be a programer so i don’t want to get to carried away with using other peoples scripts, and figure out how to write them myself!!