Mandriva is equipped with a excellent firewall. This firewall is turned on by default. This is most times the reason you can't see shares. So don't confuse good safety with bad design..

I personally don't use the Command Centre to mount my shares. This is only really usable with a fixed share on a not movable workstation. I use smb4k, and that is a lot more comfortable - especially when you are connecting to different networks using a laptop.

I use Mandriva 2008.1 free edition as I write this reply now, an I can assure you all my shares are perfectly visible and mountable.

I agree the First Time application has some problems (although i did no see any Russian passing by), but you only run this one time in the entire life cycle of the distro, AND you can click it away any time you like and it won't bother you anymore. I can't say that is much of a deal.

So - to sum up. Samba was not working because the distro has turned on the firewall, and that is something EVERY OS should do by default in my opinion! Hardly something to turn the distro down, instead it is something the distro should be praised for. That only leaves the First Time application as the thing that went a bit wrong. The rest is working perfectly.

To resume .. As far as I can see, you say the distro is not recommendable only because a First Time application goes wrong. Sorry - I should say that is a (huge) bit over the top don't you think?

Just my 2 cents...