Mandriva had two of the best tools in the business in their draktools collection; their print system and networking control were bar far the best available in Linux, anywhere.
They abandoned printerdrake first, with the 2010 distribution. Printing has been totally unreliable with Mandriva since. I have to poke at the printers on the server, restart them, unplug and replug the USB cable and sacrifice a dove or two before they are available to network clients. They last a half day, then magically disappear again.
With 2011 they have totally abandoned their drakx-net tools, and same deal: wireless networking has gone from the easiest, most compatible out of the box simple process (EXACTLY what Linux needs to win converts) to almost impossible.
On one machine I was able to remove networkmanager and get the draktools working. On different hardware, networkmanager appears to be necessary.
I haven't checked yet to see if the fork, Mageia, uses networlmanager as default or not. If not, that might be my go-to should Mandriva close it's doors:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/mandriva-in-danger-of-closing-its-doors/3335?tag=mantle_skin;content 
