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Linux Mandrake 7.1 Reviewed
webword writes: "The Duke of URL has posted a pretty good review of Mandrake 7.1. There is a useful list of pros and cons, along with performance and usaability ratings. There are some helpful screenshots too."
BeOpen submitted a link to a 7.1 review on gnulinux.com,
Sensei^ one on linuxnewbie.org,
and Quick & Flupke serendipitously pointed out the new slash-like Mandrake Forum where users can (among other things) suggest features for upcoming Mandrake releases.
Anyway; why on earth does the article only cover the X interface ? Sure its nice to know that MD, before unknown to me, did contribute something and developed stuff like their own configuration tools. But there is way more to Linux then that, and those topics were left out the article IMHO:
Which directory structure does MD use? Still the 1 on 1 copy of RedHat or did they improve it?
Are those configuration tools 'exportable'. i.o.w.; is this something totally focused on MD itself or can users of other distro's take advantage of it as well? (if this isn't the case I would have to retract my earlier remark on contributing)
Are those configuration tools also available on the commandline? A lot of people seem to forget that you really do not need a cpu hog as X when you use Linux as a server.
Last but not least; any special improvements made to RPM ? For example; some script to automate kernel compiles ?
I know, perhaps I'm to much demanding but the article does make it very clear that some distro's completely seem to focus on end-users while there are but a few who also keep the "real" functionality of Linux in mind.
Duke of URL says in his review of Mandrake 7.1:
Well, I've been using Mandrake for over a year, and I'm currently at release 7.0, and I can assure you that it's not really all that hard to install TrueType fonts by hand, without needing to use the DrakFont utility.
The proof is that a couple of nights ago, I installed all the TrueType fonts from a Bitstream 500 Font CD in a little over five minutes, from the command line.
Admittedly, if I want to be able to use these fonts in FrameMaker 5.5.6 (Beta) for Linux, I'll need to install the PostScript equivalents (on the same CD), but I don't think that's going to be a problem ;-).
Oh, and Applix can't use these TrueType fonts yet...
But they show up fine in xlsfonts, xfd, the FontChooser dialogs, er, most everywhere.
The first thing I noticed is the Bogomips values reported at boot time are doubled for both machines over previous distributions, including Mandrake 7.0, Caldera 2.2 and 2.3 and RedHat 6.0 and 6.1.
My Dell box at work is no longer the strong but silent type; the sound card worked on the first boot up. With previous distibutions and also on an older Dell Gxi, it was always an annoying exercise to get sound working. I never had any trouble with the sound on the Gateway.
My main reason for installing 7.1 was to try the ReiserFS. I've set up both systems with ReiserFS on all partitions. I decided to give the ReiserFS a good test and after umounting the filesystems on a separate and still ext2 disk, I just pulled the plug and rebooted. It was the fasted reboot after a power outage that I've ever seen. Reiser took 18 seconds to do its thing on a 17 MB IDE disk, and then the system came up just perfectly.
I really like the new, improved menu system. So far, this is the best distribution I've used, and my Linux experience goes back to kernel 0.99 on Slackware.
This has undoubtably been mentioned elsewhere, but if you want to get Xfree86 4.0, you have to do the expert install.
Also, I usually make a separate /boot partition of about 20 MB, but when I tried to format it using ReiserFS, I got an error. I gave up and just made separate /, /usr, /var, and /home partitions of appropriate sizes and everthing worked fine. I made all these partitions ReiserFS. Does anyone have any suggestions about what an optimal setup might be? Could some partitions better be left ext2?
A brute force and sometimes quicker way of doing an upgrade is just to install over the old system, saving the /home directory by not formatting it and carefully saving other files you tweaked elsewhere. I planned on saving the log files in /var/log by not formatting /var. Well, the installer wouldn't let me get away with not formatting /var. Next time, I'll save my logs elsewhere.
Things I like:
/dev/hdb was too corrupt. There's nothing wrong with it! I just got a new hard drive, which is /dev/hda. I installed Win2K Pro, Win2k Adv Svr and Mandrake 6.1 a few weeks ago. Mandrake 6.1 has no problems with either hard drive. It even added entries for various partitions on /dev/hdb in to /etc/fstab. I can probably install into a partition on /dev/hda, but I would rather I didn't have to use this tool...
/dev/hda, and it wanted to save things... rather worrisome: I'm not sure what it was trying to save. I guess I was concerned that it wanted to modify the partition table, but it didn't say. I don't want the partition table changed.
1) They show where you are in the process of installing, much like one of those wizards in Power Point. It also makes it very easy to jump to another part of the install.
2) It ships with Roaring Penguin PPPoE client. Yes, I'm one of those unfortunate Sympatico HSE people who are forced to use this dreadful protocol with their DSL. It would be nice to see one of these distros coming with a kernel rather than user based PPPoE client.
Problems I had:
1) Disk tool/partitoner - it told me
I didn't change anything on
2) It took ages to install (upgrade), and the time estimate/taken was way off. It predicted that it would take about 15 mins... 3 hours later it was still saying 7 mins to go. I had a look in one of the other consoles and it seemed to be doing a lot of opening of the RPM database followed by about 15 transactions for each set of packages.
3) Selecting the Roaring Penguin stuff in one part of the install didn't automatically select the other part that I needed. Maybe this would have been detected later in the install, but I didn't get there due to it being so slow, and the thunderstorm that spiked the power.
From the review:
Mandrake has once again innovated in every sense.
Apparently a nice and stable Linux distribution is innovation. Hmmm...maybe I agree with that.
I have to admit, this is the first time since 1994 that I have been considering dumping Slackware very seriously... Does anyone know where we can get the other two disks the install script mentions? I have the first two from the ISO image - I will NOT buy a boxed set if it's the only way to get the other two disks - I'll just wait for Slack 7.1 "any day now".
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
I really like the option to let Mandrake decide how the partitioning should be done - including resizing your windows partition (something like fips?). I have problems deciding how much space to allocate all the time - and I've been using linux for years. Just the other day I tried installing (Redhat) linux on my g/f machine and didn't allocate enough space for /usr for the installation to work! I said "fuck it" and went with one big honking "/" partition. I know why I shouldn't do that - but I also know it'll work for now - and it's bad enough that I had to consider partitioning in the first place. Finally someone gets it: The hardest part about linux is installing it. (which has been getting better and better really fast recently with the advent of GUI installers)
:)
I also really like GRUB. I'll have to find a URL for that - say goodbye to lilo, and hello to GRUB - It's like the dosGUI version of lilo.
Anyways, cheers to the Mandrake people.
Joseph Elwell.
and it rocks.
I have been using Mandrake since 5.1, and this is the best yet. They really got everything organized well in the default KDE setup, integrating all the apps together, instead of putting the gnome apps in the "red hat" menu.
It recognized my pcmcia cards out of the box. I can even switch from my Aironet wireless LAN card (at work) to my 3Com 10/100 LAN card (at home) without a re-boot or anything, just re-starting network.
The "K -> Configuration -> hardware -> laptop settings" (kcmlaptop) is way cool and very usefull.
Eterm is (finally) included in the default install.
AbiWord "preview" version is included, and it's pretty cool. I was just messing with it a bit last night (I mostly use xemacs for any type of text stuff) and it worked great.
IBM thinkpad 240, btw, and it was just as easy as a standard desktop install.
enjoy,
geekd