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Review of Linux Mandrake 9.0
CoolCat writes "It seems that Mandrake 9.0 has been surpassed or at least catched up by the latest versions of Red Hat and SuSE. OSNews has the review of the new Mandrake version and they have hit a number of bugs and problems. In fact, a number of Mandrake users in the OSNews comment's section agree that this release has been buggy and not a big step from version 8.2 or their competition. I use Mandrake for years and I really hope that the next version will bring us back the good ol' Mandrake we knew..."
...because all my mice have a wheel. Clicking in the right option, it would make my mouse jumping like crazy all over the screen making the installation impossible to continue.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but in 8.2 there was a little tag saying "ROLL THE MOUSEWHEEL", and if you neglected to do that, the mouse would jump all over the screen. Does mandrake have a bug here or did the reviewer just forget? I kinda wonder how thouroughly the reviewer went through the rest.
I didn't get _any_ problem that she mentionned in the review... WindowMaker works for me and everything else! She also mentions "nano" which didn't run correctly. But Nano is not even part of Mandrake 9.0!!! To my understanding, she has something against MandrakeSoft, that's all...
s letter/sn021017
I find Mandrake 9.0 just *great* and beautiful, the best Mandrake ever actually. Even on the desktop, SuSE & Red Hat are not as powerful as Mandrake. When I plug a USB scanner or camera under Red Hat 8.0, I don't have any icon showing up on my desktop...
By the way, there are two (really) interesting news about Mandrake today:
1) Mandrake was awarded "best distro of the year" by Linux Journal Readers (read on http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6380)
2) MandrakeSoft today published their new results (for latest fiscal year), which show an increase of nearly 30% for revenues!
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/new
In fact, a number of Mandrake users in the OSNews comment's section agree that this release has been buggy I read the first page of comments and don't know whtat some of those readers are smoking. Can't burn 700Mb isos on anything? I burned all three of them with the cdrecord on Debian Potato. In short, don't just blindly agree with the comments says, use your own common sense.
I use NVIDIA driver with my Geforce2 heavily (long
sessions of Quake 2 and Heretic 2) and I had only
one lockup. Get the source files from NVIDIA and
compile with yourself - that's what I did.
Gene.
OK, the author of the article clearly wasn't reviewing the product, she was whining. There is a difference. She convinced me of that when she started complaining about how "the default KDE isn't pretty enough for me". Lady, get a grip. I happen to think it looks quite nice, and I've left it at the default settings for the most part. So there. :-) (Besides, um, what default Desktop? The first time I logged in I was asked "which environment do you want" and given the choice of KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, and the assorted others I had installed. What's she talking about?)
:-) After that the install went smoothly.
:-) A friend of mine said the package is buggy and I should recompile from source, but I'm trying to avoid touching the command line for as long as possible, just to see how long I can last doing that.
:-) (If someone can explain why BZFlag kill the entire system but TuxRacer works perfectly fine, please let me know.)
Still, though, there are a few problems that I've found in the past few days since installing Mandrake 9.
Firstly, during the install, it hung for a long time on the kernel-source package, for reasons I do not understand. After I went to bed and woke up, it finally gave me the option to skip that package. It finished the install, then doubled back to package selection and went through the whole thing again, save for that 99% of everything was already installed, so it only took a few minutes (I selected a few extra packages
Secondly, UserDrake when run on its own works fine, but if run through the Mandrake Control Center it will not clean up its temp files when closed, which will prevent it from opening next time. (It uses them as lock files.) They can be deleted manually, but it is annoying.
Thirdly, GAIM keeps imploding when I try to send an IM to someone. I think it may be a bug in the MSM module, since it only started after I installed that.
Fourthly, several of the OpenGL games, for some reason, still manage to lock my system up cold. I do not understand why, though I'm not sure if it's a Mandrake problem specifically. I have an ATI Radeon 5000 video card, which at least in 8.2 was, somehow, the ONLY Radeon card in existance that lacked OpenGL support.
Fifthly, I STILL like Mandrake 9. I've yet to have to visit a command line to do ANYTHING since the system was installed. (Though I may have to so that I can get GAIM working.) The Mandrake Control Center is light years ahead of Linuxconf and the assorted other collection of poorly implemented "tools". KDE 3 is also sweet. (I've not tried GNOME 2 yet, I confess.) I LIKE having the distribution come with everything I could possibly want. If I don't like it, I won't install ir or will uninstall it. Duh. (Note to reviewer: In the install you can pick which terminals to install. You must have chosen to install all 7.)
Distro to end all Distros? No. But still overall quite nice.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
This is slightly offtopic, but i've been dying to say this for some time now...
I keep seeing people who say they *had* to buy 700meg cd's to burn the isos... That wasn't an option for me as i have an ancient HP-650 cdr (650megs only). So, if (and i suspect a lot of us are doing this) you are dual booting your system there is an easy solution. Download the isos to your existing windows partition and unpack the files to a common directory (lots of freeware windows apps out there, i used isobuster).
Then just make a boot disk (.exes to do so are included with the mandrake distro) and select the hd.img. This allows you to do your install from a hardrive instead of a CD. Reboot to the floppy, correctly guess the partition your windows install is sitting on, and select the directory with the files in it... Install goes quicker, no switching of disks is required, and no CD-Rs were wasted...
Of course if you are looking for a good excuse to convince the wife that a hardware upgrade is absolutely necessary... disregard all i've said and get a spiffy new burner.
http://metapundit.net
Slackware is just a feature rich as any other distro out there. Im sitting here with my flashy kde setup and all the good jazz.
I also run Slack on my laptop as well.
Ive used RH and Ive used mandrake. But when it comes to control and simplicity, slack cant be beat.
I agree with most of your points, but I seriously disagree with Eugenia. She doesn't review the product, she bitches about how she doesn't like the color scheme. These two are different, and the reviewer's personal taste should not interfere with the review.
In this case, the review is basically an editorial about the author's personal tastes, which is not good for that site's credibility. Sort of reminds me of Linux and Main's KDE bashing.
Also, some of your points are valid, and some are simply opinions on taste. I know a lot of windows users who tried Linux, and the number of programs is something they _really_ like. People like choice. The same applies to inconsistent menus - people don't care that much. The settings part is a bigger problem, but most distros are finally starting to get it right.
Overall, I'd say the review is overly negative and ignores many important aspects of the distribution. Note (in the comments section) how Eugenia rudely brushes off someone who says that Mandrake integrates well with Windows networks. Finally, she seems to be testing the distro on flaky hardware, with no less than 8 other OSs installed, and in expert mode, yet she tries to review it as if she was a dummy. That just doesn't seem fair to me.
>And Debian polishes packages up until their are
:(". Note that this is a regression of functionality as compared to 2.2, which worked fine.
>ultra-stable and then moves them from "testing" to
>"stable".
Except of course when a package (php4) sits broken in testing for months, with multiple bug reports filed against it, and they go ahead and move it to "stable" anyways, with a note in the readme "Sessions do NOT work on hppa, m68k, mips, powerpc, sparc, s390. Sorry about that.
Or when post-installation scripts fail for certain packages (squirrellmail) on a fresh install. Which doesn't really matter that much since there's been a known exploit for the package for a month, but a new release hasn't been packaged yet. (And in my case it won't work anyways due to the aforementioned php4 bug).
Or when binaries (cftp) segfault on startup.
I'm not saying Debian doesn't do an admirable job considering the bulk of software they offer. However I have actually run into more issues with Debian than I have with Red Hat, and in most cases I have seen quicker response from Red Hat in terms of fixing things that are broken.
Keep in mind that this my experiences are not necessarily typical, and I understand that Debian is working on volunteer effort, and supports a much broader range of hardware and packages.
I am, afterall, still using Debian on several machines, but my comfort level is not high enough to put it into serious production.
Matt
You are right on. Like when she installs and fails to do as instructed like move the scroll wheel for her mouse.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Lots of people on the Cooker list were calling for Bugzilla, but the developers insisted that the mailing list works just fine. Can anyone tell us if they've come to their senses? If not, the heck with 'em.
They have bugzilla now. I tested rc2 & rc3 this time around, and while the cooker mailing list had way too much traffic for me to keep up, they fixed most the bugs I complained about. Most serious was the inability to run the drak tools and urpmi...which they fixed. There were some little things, and the kernel was also unstable on my laptop. This they didn't fix but the linus kernel works, so I just switched to that.
I think they should have done a couple more release candidates, but I'm gonna test some of the beta's next time around so they at least get urpmi problems fixed before the rc's go out.
I like the decisions they made with the UI, I reconfigure the menu anyway so it's good to have every app there to begin with. I also install all the non-server packages since there is plenty of space and it saves me the effort of installing the things I need later. But, I know a co-worker that would have just prefered starting with that what do you want to do today menu they added; he's a business guy who hasn't tried Linux in a couple years so he's prolly as close to that mythical "regular user" as you're gonna get. He doesn't need 7 terminals, while I use 4 of them regularly.
FYI..I alos experienced problems . I did compile my own from the NVIDIA site and it also locked my laptop tight.
Well I'll throw in my own personal review for anyone who wishes to compare notes.
/etc/profile no longer work.
Overall I'm pretty happy with Mandrake 9.0, although I was upset that it featured a few new annoyances. Heres my list of pro's and con's so far that I've noticed:
Pro's
------
My HP printer FINALLY works right.
KDE3 installed by default.
A couple of nice new apps (Mr. Project)
Control Panel much better (in some areas)
Cons
------
OpenOffice is broken. Spell check does not work.
Some packages that I still need were removed and I had to get them elsewhere.
- libdvdread
- libvga
- libdvdnav
MySQL will not launch on startup even though I set it up to.
Setting ENV variables in
xscreensavers not visible on the KDE menu anymore.
Aside from the annoying glitches, the printer support and default KDE install are worth it for me. But I hope they fix this stuff in the next release.
Blender And Linux Fan
I agree that maybe mandrake 9.0 is less than 8.2 but it alwyas happened like that. Never assume that #.0 are stable. Even with the RC# you dont get a total full experience until #.1 or #.2- if necessary- comes up. I should recomend for people to review the bugs and test them to learn. Bugs are not bad, definetly a great opportunity to learn how OS is putted together.
The JZA
I upgraded to 9.0 (from 8.2) and had the same mouse problem, and I did move the wheel. That was one of my two biggest problems.
The other big problem I had was I jumped the gun and moved up to KDE 3.0.2 while still running 8.2. Mandrake migrated my KDE 2.2 settings and not my 3.0.2 settings. They were very similar so it wasn't a big deal to make some changes except for the KDE address book. That's one KDE app that needs work! I also learned after much study that KDE 3.0 stores the addresses in the file std.vcf which is very different from 2.2.
On the positive side, 9.0 found and fixed my sound card problems, which had been flaky for some time. Also, 2.4.19 is the first kernel to fully support my motherboard IDE chipset, so, for me at least, 9.0 solved more problems than it created.
Mandrake 9.0 no longer has Bastille firewall. At least in the download version I have. It now comes with shorewall, which can be brought up from the control center, which is good for newbies. But IMO bastille was better for a number of reasons, including stealthing your ports, whereas shorewall merely closes them.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
They had to fix this mess, it's LSB certified. (Ok, it's not fixed, but it's the only LSB certified distro, right now)
I understand, though, that this is a problem for all the distributions... it was with redhate when I checked it out.
Compile your own. Something's wrong with the binary's, don't ask me what. I had problems, I then compiled my own, and they were beautiful. no problems.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
I said that *OFFICIALLY* these images don't exist. I've even explained the whole thing in details on MandrakeForum:
- why two 700MB ISOs, and one smaller (because we needed 150MB place on third image for commercial packs)
- why no official 650MB ISOs (it's a mess to support more than one set)
- why unoficiall 650MB ISOs for MandrakeClub (few folks really needed it, and so we did it for their convenience)
- why this unoficial set will not be available on mirrors. (again, we don't want the support mess, and besides there are alternative instalation methods too.)
Mandrake 9.0's installer detected that the later partitions needed renumbering (e.g. /dev/hda5
goes to /dev/hda6 and so on) - it decided to
re-write the MBR to update this info. Fair enough
(meant some grub.conf hacking for other Linux
distros in those partitions, but no big deal),
but after I installed Mandrake 9.0, Win 98 SE
refused to boot (and no Win 98 SE boot floppies
would work either !).
Luckily, I used cfdisk to toggle off booting on the Win 98 SE partition and then toggle it back on again - Win 98 SE then sparked into life and booted OK, putting the blame squarely on Mandrakes rewriting of the boot partition numbering. A lovely bug for an end-user to encounter or what ?
For one: People have been bashing RedHat for the changes they've made to KDE.
Wonderful hypocrites - The GNOME implementation in Mandrake 8.2 has to be the butt-ugliest desktop I've seen. I'd rather be running twm - This is coming from a hardcore GNOME user.
For another: Mandrake consistently tries to push the limits of the hardware and software. It's *too* bleeding-edge, which is probably why you experience it as "broken" - I've had the same experience. I remember installing Mandrake on one system - It tried to perform some weird "hard drive optimizations" that rendered the system unbootable 50% of the time and horrendously unstable when it did boot. I installed RedHat and it was rock-solid. (To their credit and RH's detriment, RH always enables DMA if available in their installer. Normally this is a good thing, but both RH and Mandrake should contain checks for Intel Triton/Natoma chipsets which have broken UDMA support and drop into multiword DMA which works. To Mandrake's detriment, while their installer didn't have problems, UDMA was turned on as soon as the installer finished.)
Overall, while RedHat may be a bit "behind" Mandrake as far as the "latest and greatest", RedHat usually seems to do a better job of QC and provides a more polished product.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
MDK9 allows you to select a primary and a secondary language at the initial install phase itself. This is particularly important to me because this is the first time Tamil (a language spoken in South India, Singapore, Malaysia and SriLanka) is available 'right out of the box' in a major distribution. This is the first Indic language available in a linux distro. This is a great step forward in terms of simplifying deployment and training of computer technology without the language barrier. -TY