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Mandrake 7.1 Beta Ready For Download
I've gotten the word from the Mandrake folks that the beta version of 7.1 is ready for download. You can check out the details from the source as well. The current name for it is Hydrogen.
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This really is a great distro, if you are a RedHat user and haven't tried it, check it out...
IMHO, it is all-around better than RedHat. There tend to be some surprisingly cool packages installed, such as colorgcc, and supermount support is in the kernel. The install program is neat too, allowing you to download secure crypto packages from some european sites during the install. I believe it uses fbcon instead of X windows (a bit of overkill for an install program).
The system configuration tool is also nice, and the update-finder also seems to work well.
It also came with the BlueSteel E-theme, and lets you choose enlightenment without gnome from the kdm/gdm login without any extra configuring. It is actually usable out of the box...
I am speaking from the 7.0 release, haven't tried 7.1 yet, but I plan to.
Mandrake, I believe, refers to the name of the foreign exchange officer second in command to General Jack D. Ripper in the film Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. Really good movie, .
Devolver's Homepage... more fun than a box of crackerjacks.
Slackware rocks if you like BSDish systems or are a true unix die hard. I Run it on my laptop as well as my parents box.
Debian is a good full system and if your a Purist as many of the Nviidia post seem to be then its for you.
Redhat is nice for Newbies but every relase after 5.0 has been buggy as all hell.
Linux-Mandrake is simply put the Redhat that works. Plus its got a tun of other cool stuff.
I've used other distros plus *BSD's but for most people I think Mandrake or Slack is the best bet
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
Some highlights:
Some of the stuff in the previous version (7.0), was framebuffer support, SuperMount (which automatically mounts removable media), security levels (eg., 4 & 5 default to no externally accessible services - you have to turn them on yourself), and DiskDrake, which allows you to resize fat/fat32 partitions at install time (and is FREE!).
They've always been pentium-compiled and have always had a strong focus on shipping with a slick KDE desktop. They also appear to have more solid releases than Red Hat, and release often, so you can run stable-but-recent (as opposed to Debian, where you've got a years-old stable release system or recent unstable system).
There's a good article at LWN - http://lwn.net/2000/features/Linux Mandrake.phtml and, of course, information all over Linux Mandrake's website. ;)
The last time RedHat vs. Mandrake came up, RedHat was bashed for having some older packages that were a revision or two behind.
Simply put, unlike Mandrake, RedHat actually takes care to make sure their OS is stable. If this means using somewhat older, less cutting edge but tried-and-true stuff, than so be it.
I can't have any respect for a distro that's putting X 4.0 into any sort of release. Despite the fact that it's versioned as an actual release, the general consensus is that it's still beta quality w.r.t stability, and it definately is missing support for numerous cards, such as the I128s that are in the lab where I work on my current research project. Including X4 in a distro at this point is stupid. (Even a beta - why have your beta release held up until whenever X4 catches up to X3.3.6 in stability/card support? Who knows when that's going to happen?)
Also, on a similar note, if you have the slightest bit of flakiness with your hardware, Mandrake will die, and die badly. One of my friends was trying to set up IP Masq, and was using Mandrake. It was doing some sort of "ide optimization" crap that did only one thing - render the system unusable/unbootable. (hung during init cycle). Gave him a copy of RedHat 6.1, installed and ran like a charm.
Mandrake's got some impressive things going on. But they take too many risks for a distro that's supposedly targeting newer desktop users - they're just asking for a support nightmare.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
OK, to start this off and burn lots of karma (if I had any to burn) - I am not a serious linux user. Whoa! look at that karma burn A few weeks ago I installed Linux mandrake on my computer 'cause a friend asked me to, I put the CD in, rebooted my computer, and much to my surprise IT WORKED INSTANTLY, all I had to do was say how I wanted my hard drive partitioned (4GB Linux, 128MB Swap, 16GB FAT32 (far all my Windows games)) yes, I use windows - there goes more karma - why do I use windows? because I want to be able to break things and kill people without having to learn more stuff about computers Anyway, back to the story, I partitioned my hard drive, said yeah, ok, I'll take the recommended install, and let it do its stuff, a while later it had detected and set up all my hardware, Voodoo3, Creative Sound card, Intel Network card, etc with no intervention from me, all I had to do was stuff around with my IP address, point it to our webserver and it was working, well it was working until about half an hour ago, I brought my computer into work (mainly to pick up the LOTR quicktime thingy I downloaded at work), and turned on my computer (with a few of the microsoft worshipers looking on) to show off the beauty of linux, I am running mandrake 7.0 (I think), I got just past the colorful ascii-art penguin which comes up just before it switches to GUI - then - the screen went blank, the litle orange light came on which means no signal input, after a few seconds I figured out why, the resolution had switched to 1600 X 1200, my 19" monitor at home can handle this, a puny 15" monitor can't, Linux didn't detect that there was a different monitor which windows would detect(much to my disgust, and Bills evil Acolytes delight (who were looking on)) How do I switch resolution without access to the GUI???? mandrakes reputation is at stake(at least to 2 or 3 people)!!!!
You are not me, therefore you are not important
Both of the above, plus back in the 40s and 50s there was a comic strip called "Mandrake the Magician." I tend to prefer this interpretation for two reasons:
1. Mandrake-the-distro's motif is a magic wand and top hat. Well, Mandrake-the-Magician didn't have a magic wand (he "gestured hypnotically") but he did have a top hat. It wasn't blue, though.
2. Mandrake-the-Magician had an assistant named Lothar. Mandrake-the-distribution includes a program called Lothar which bills itself as "the hardware central configuration tool." Superficially it looks a lot like Windows 98's Device Mangler; I haven't tried it to see how it works.
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Someone you trust is one of us.
Oh, great. I started downloading mandrake 2 days ago, and now when I'm 64% done, they tell me there's a new version. Dang.
As to whether it is server or workstation "optimised", this is down to you. I run MD 7.0 both at work and home. The home setup is a wks with a small subset of servers running for the other PC (Win 98) and is very good - lots of toys etc etc.
The work box does a goodly amount of file serving. I use Samba to dole out antivirus updates (Sophos) to 3,500 NT PCs - this it does in an hour or so at 2-10Mb per client. This doesn't raise the run averages over 1 (it is a dual PIII 500 + 2Gb RAM). It does 802.1Q with a kernel patch to seven VLANs. There are normally up to 5 remote X sessions running and quite a few other things going on as well (eg NT server in a VMWare box). Up time is 80 odd days (I rebuilt the kernel to add VLAN tagging)
The point of the above diatribe is that I believe I have tested both sides of the coin and not found it wanting. Then again, if you spend long enough with any distro. or hand craft your own set up you can get all the bits together you need. However I have spent some time with other distros (admittedly older ones) and not found them to be so complete in terms of sensible customisations already applied out of the box.
There are, of course still a few rough edges but these are surprisingly minimal.
Another point I would like to make is that none of the bleeding edge stuff in this distro have caused me problems (what does a kernel oops look like anyway ?) The only apps that have dumped core on me are stuff that I have applied and KDevelop (which I had given a hard time)
Finally, why not trundle over to http://lwn.net - they have links to virtually all (sensible) distros and possibly links to some reviews as well as on goig developments.
100 pages about the ins and outs of LM, a user forum, an offline edition and a news letter.
cu
tom, MUO-webslave
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"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."