Retrying Linux for the nth time: Mandriva Linux

I've lost count on how many times I have tried to use Linux as a desktop OS. However, I may have found the one good one out of the sea of annoyances. Mandriva Linux 2007. I burned the DVD ISO image and plopped it onto my DVD ROM drive. I didn't really expect it to work though, I didn't know if I can boot DVD ISO images. I guess I could. One thing I didn't like with the installation package was that it installs first then does post install configuration. That should be turned around and only give us configuration then install. However, the rest were easy enough for an impatient techie like me to understand. It also asked for a root password. I think because of Ubuntu and the Mac OSX, I expect the usage of a root account should be a thing of the past now. But I guess Mandriva is still stuck in that time zone. The system then procedes to ask me about creating new users. I think this procedure should be moved to after the system has been installed already and it was the first boot up. Like Windows (and if I recall like the Mac as well). Another minor nit is the avatar selection, there is no way of moving back in the selection, granted the selections looked pretty mediocre. Well aside from that the hardware detection was much better! It detected I have an NVidia card and asked if I wanted to use the proprietary drivers (which I said yes). I was also happy to see that my monitor resolution was detected properly (unlike Ubuntu 6.06 and PC-BSD which only registered 1280x1024 rather than 1680x1050). It couldn't find my printer though. It seemed to have lost the network connection in the middle of install (I assume it worked before since it didn't complain about the NTP selection). I will try it in a bit to see if it would print to my network printer. It defaults to LILO as the boot loader, which I changed to Grub, maybe I should've just kept it as Lilo, their Grub graphical boot loader screen looks fugly. It also defaults to KDE, but I wanted to see Gnome with the Xgl stuff running. Which I didn't see yet mind you. Maybe I should've left more of the defaults on. Also one other thing that made me happy was the installation actually worked with just my first run through. The Ubuntus after 6.06 (6.10 and Fiesty Fawn) were giving weird errors on my system (like kernel: not found or just not starting up at all. Anyway, this is my first boot up and post on Mandriva. Which may become the OS I replace Windows with. Of course it has to pass the following tests still:

• Nokia 6230i Bluetooth cell phone sync
• Print on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode
• Scan on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode
• Fax on the Brother MFC-240CN on network mode, and
• Allow me to chat with a Logitech webcam on Yahoo! and MSN networks.