Me too. It was my first Linux back in 2003 and I was immediately hooked. Back then codecs weren't as much of an issue as they were in the late 2000s to early 2010s so everything worked out of the box and the performance on Pentium 4 with 128 MB RAM was phenomenal compared to Windows XP.
For the record there are at least 2 distros that carry the Mandriva/Mandrake legacy. Besides OpenMandriva there is also Mageia which I believe is the more popular option.
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TIL Mandriva/Mandrake Linux is still around.
Me too. It was my first Linux back in 2003 and I was immediately hooked. Back then codecs weren't as much of an issue as they were in the late 2000s to early 2010s so everything worked out of the box and the performance on Pentium 4 with 128 MB RAM was phenomenal compared to Windows XP.
I'm so glad the project is still around.
Their 2007 version forced us to buy a codec pack when playing MP3s, MP3 was patented so open source implementations were legally grey.
You had PLF. For free.
For the record there are at least 2 distros that carry the Mandriva/Mandrake legacy. Besides OpenMandriva there is also Mageia which I believe is the more popular option.
Related, Mageia 10 was recently released (June 30, 2026).
https://9to5linux.com/mageia-10-officially-released-with-lin...