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..."

Comments

Going downhill....

[smd4985]

It was only a few months ago that others told me that Mandrake was the Linux way to go. After having checked out RedHat 8 and SuSe, I guess Mandrake has fallen behind. Hopefully they'll regroup and start churning out better releases - competition in the Linux distro world is always good...

Re:Going downhill....

[joestar]

I agree competition is good, but I disagree when you write Mandrake has fallen behind RH or SuSE! Recent move of RH and SuSE on the desktop hide the fact they have limited knowledge in this area while Mandrake has worked for years in this area. The latest Mandrake provides a great user experience, and very automated settings, but at the same time, an experimented user will never be frustrated because with Mandrake you can always get more options if you need them. Furthermore, I'm sorry but RH & SuSE have just a new look (even if RH has _unified_ the look&feel), whille Mandrake provides _real_ desktop options such as supermount (transparent access to removable medias) or the dynamic desktop. These features _really_ make user's life easier, it's not just vaporware like SuSE or Red Hat.

Re:Going downhill....

[bsharitt]

I think I disagree with youm and agree with the parent more. While Mandrake isn't exactly in the dark ages, it is losing it's edge as the desktop leader a bit. RH8, and those desktop distros like Lindows, Lycoris, and Xandros are getting their distros to look more like unified operating systems, and not overwhelming the user with options. While Mandrake isn't as bad as some, it's still the breed of Linux we saw around 2000 and 2001 whe it started taking more ground. Now I thing we are seeing it go further with distros like RH8, Lycoris, Lindows and all those, and I'll bet Mandrake 10 will be along those lines as well, or maybe it will stay the same and join the ranks of Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo to become an old schoold hacker oriented disto instead of a begineer desktop one.

Re:Going downhill....

[woogieoogieboogie]

Mandrake can be either a pointy clickety type install or you can do the old school text based install.

I think Mandrake has done an excellent job of creating tools which make Linux easy to install, maintain and use.

having a pretty unified desktop is useless if the administration tools require extensive reading of man pages just to change your resolution. mandrake is the leader in easy to use configuration tools which are a blessing to experienced linux users as well as anewbies.

Re:Going downhill....

[13Echo]

My biggest complaint about Mandrake was that it always seemed somewhat broken. Apps seem to not function properly, and there are a lot of weird config issues. Fortunately most of my system hardware worked right out of the box, making it easy to install and configure, but I've not had a Mandrake install that I was ever completly happy with. Back I went to Slackware (where everything works perfectly, but devices take more config time) and banged on it for a while until I knew it inside and out.

A lot of Mandrake never really seemed practical to me, but it has its own niche and followers. I don't use their software, but I became a Mandrake Club member eairlier this year to help support them. They did help me migrate to Linux after all, even though I didn't quite find that their software was right for me.

I agree with you. Mandrake seems to be caught in the middle of a spot where they want to appeal to everyone. Their installs are just too broad and there is a lot of useless stuff that gets installed in a base installation. Lycoris is a good alternative for beginers, but really seems behind on their libs since they fine tweak their software so much. They seem too dependant on certain finite specifics. They still have a one-up on Mandrake for the ease of use category, and they make it a point to not overwhelm you with lots of crappy apps. Please correct me if I am wrong though. I haven't used Mandrake much since the 7.x series, and don't know how much it has changed.

Re:Going downhill....

[swv3752]

A base install is about 61 mb. A typical install will run closer to 2 gigs. Btw, i could not reproduce Eugenia's problems with software apps.

Re:Going downhill....

[bsharitt]

I was mostly refering to the actual use of the OS, not the instalation. For most disrtibutions, the istall is usally easy, and I like Madnrake in that respect. I don't like the overall feel of the OS, but that could be due to using Mac OS x on a daily basis and every thing else is just inferior. :)

Re:Going downhill....

[woogieoogieboogie]

I was referring to the Mandrake Control Center (which works on a console also so you can SSH in and use all the tools). Thinks like harddrake, mandrake connection sharing, bastille-interactive, the rescue disk, etc....

Re:Going downhill....

[civilizedINTENSITY]

I tend to bounce from Debian to Mandrake to SuSE and back. I enjoy the variety. It seems that Mandrake does configure for a more easily used enviornment. Its also the distribution where everything just works when I install it. My mouse scrolls, my USB printer prints, my soundcard was recognized, and my monitor appeared in the list of monitors. Very sweet. Very easy. I like Debian for all the religious reasons, and apt-get/attitude. SuSE's emacs is compiled with nice solid options. But I'd only recomend Mandrake for a Newbie.

Re:Going downhill....

[Read Icculus]

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.

Re:Going downhill....

[budgenator]

I started with slackware, but switched to SUSE because at the time it had the software I wanted on the CD's. Lately I've had a lot of troubles getting patches from SuSE or their mirrors. I'm leanning toward going with debian but haven't decided. Anyone have comments on ease of getting and installing patches with the various distro's out there? Is budget constrates hurting everyone's bandwidth or just SUSe's

Basic rules of grammar...

[MasonMcD]

"catched?" Do forks need to fly in you eyes before you edit?

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[MasonMcD]

Erm... that should be "your" eyes

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[SmokeSerpent]

Why you problem! English not langage all speak in native moroon? Edit no posting to start make change and all be uncertain what say submit person and even speaking american people so what! Language fluid thing is to be undertood matters all, and who to say you are what is' the corrected way to write one thing or some other one thing:

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[SmokeSerpent]

My post was actually in response to the ./ editorial policy of not correcting spelling and or grammar, which is largely due to the fact that the ./ editors, who are to my knowledge all native speakers of American English, are, each of them, illiterate to one degree or another.

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[mandolin]

(engrish snipped)

How'd you do that? Did ya run it back and forth through babelfish a few times? :-)

.. that would make a fun webpage filter, actually.

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[SmokeSerpent]

No, I just made it up.

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[extrasolar]

What?

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[u38cg]

I hate to be pernickety (hmm, that's a lie. I enjoy it and you know it), but catched was perfectly good English a few hundred years ago, until someone came up with the idea that it should work like teach / taught, and invented the new word 'caught'. Here in Scotland, the change hasn't been fully made yet, and people can still occasionally heard to say catched. Of course, this leads to whole new areas of how 'correct' English is defined, and whether the English of Dickens is what should be perpetuated. Personally, I'm all for change - but change, not ignorance (cf. loose for lose).

Re:Basic rules of grammar...

[balloonhead]

Here was me thinking it was Yoda talking.

By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Flamester]

Isn't that the same person who trashed SuSE?

Does she like any distro?

Any relation to that Mikey guy who hates everything but Life cereal?

If a Life Linux distro were released, would she eat it?

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[joestar]

She likes BeOS, that's all. And Windows XP, perhaps.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Anonymous Coward]

do not forget, she is a UI designer and web developer

Oooh, a web developer - isn't she so smart then. Those credentials and $3.50 will get you a cup of coffee here in Seattle.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[LittleBigScript]

She must like trashing linux, Mandrake this time, even though she gives it 8/10 and 7/10 marks with few positive comments in the article, and compares it to Windows(tm) for Ease of Use(tm).

Strange. When I installed Windows ME it was a real-pain in the Buttocks(tm). NT2000, and XP are "better" but come with what she probably considers "crappy" default themes, no compiler, other Window Managers (Explorer).

And she mentioned Slackware! I thought she was some kind of User Interface guru, knowing what is best for Joe User and such.
It is like comparing Apples and Oranges and Watermellons (in no particular order).

Slackware makes an excellent rescue disk. The other distos...not so much, and Windows, get a Clue(tm).

"Well, you bought all those smoke alarms, and we haven't had a single fire."
-Homer Simpson

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[ender81b]

Eugenia does have a tendency to trash most *anything* she reviews. Sometimes it can be annoying yes but often times she brings up great points and nobody can accuse her of being biased (she did like Red Hat tho). Often times she explains it as she tries to look at the whatever as though a typical end user would - not a geek who understands and knows about many of the issues facing linux. I find a number of points she brings up quite useful/relevant:

• General UI crappiness - inconsitent layout/design, confusing menus (to a NORMAL END USER, not us geeks), multiple settings locations (really i despise this about all modern linux distros). She praises the few that get it right though, such as red hat with bluecurve (according to her at least).
• Stability Oh yes, 'linux' crashes. Sure we will say no it is just X that crashes but does the end user care/know? No they don't, and no they don't want to go into console to kill x and start it over again, instead they will just reboot. To be honest X crashes more on me than Win2k/Xp. Doesn't mean I don't like X any less just an observation.
• The Many and Varied issues with X - The most common of these, and the one that makes me shudder with hatred, is the only way to change your refresh rate is by going through and editing a set of .conf files (yes, yes I know this was just added to the CVS tree a few weeks ago but it isn't here now now is it?). This is a feature windows has had for nearly 7 years now! . Also, some of us use fixed-frequency monitors which means our computer is unusable until we can get through and edit these files. Personally my SGI monitor will work for about 10-15 minutes at 60hz (needs to run at 85hz) before shutting off. I hate having to go in and edit these files where as with windows it is a few clicks away. And many, many more problems. Not that X doesn't do some things great (terminal server anybody?) but it isn't perfect by any means.
• Too Many Programs - us geeks love having 13 web browsers. Other people would rather not care. She makes an excellent point with respect to the 7 terminal clients included with Mandrake. 7???? 1 or 2 at most, leave the rest to be installed by those who want them.

I think people who hate Eugenia's reviews the most are those who are unwilling to admit the huge flaws present in most linux distros today. BTW, I use debian at home for my desktop (apt-get rocks my world), it's not like I love windows but it does do quite a few things better than linux. And some things alot worse for that matter.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Zebbers]

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.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[alienw]

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.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[ender81b]

Not saying I particularly like how she reviews things (I mean, come on, installing it on ONE machine?) but I can always count on the fact that she will give her total unbiased opinion - even if it is dead wrong - and to me that is worth its weight in gold.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Dalcius]

I hope this isn't redundant and you folks need to realize that I haven't kept up with this woman, but from what I've seen, she really just don't know what she's doing in some places. From her review on Gnome 2 and her experiences with Gentoo, it seems to me that she tried to tweak things her way and blames the system she's reviewing when she messes up.

Just an observation.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[swv3752]

You are right on. Like when she installs and fails to do as instructed like move the scroll wheel for her mouse.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[King of the World]

If there was no technical difference between Windows 3.11 and OSX Aqua would you consider getting annoyed at having to look at Win 3.11 all the time part of a valid review?

Of course aesthetics count. People have non-visual filesystem aesthetics too due to architecture and features. You're drawing a line in the sand when there's no differences to be found.

Personal taste is fine, especially when it's a public's taste.

As for the flaky hardware comment you're just making it up as you go along. She says that there is no problem with other distros and that it is just a problem with Mandrake.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[fault0]

> Too Many Programs - us geeks love having 13 web browsers. Other people would rather not care. She makes an excellent point with respect to the 7 terminal clients included with Mandrake. 7???? 1 or 2 at most, leave the rest to be installed by those who want them.

Uh, that's why most distros only install a base system. Everything else is extra, and as you said, can be "installed by those who want them".

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[ender81b]

I believe her point was that those 7 where installed with the base system.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The guy in the dormroom next door to me is a graphics art major. He uses only Mac, owns 3 electric guitars and two acoustics, etc... He was extremely impressed with the default Dolphin look. I think it looks great. In terms of logon times, she sure isn't sitting at my machine. I just tested a console logon, and there was no delay percieved. My scroll mouse did get a wrong default, but if you actually read where it says to initialize with the scroll, its obviously wrong and correctable via tabbing. Not good, but not so bad as she suggests.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[berzerke]

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.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Afrosheen]

If she had just clicked the Expert install button instead of the Retard install button, she would've gotten everything she wanted and nothing she didn't.

She did make two good points I agreed with though. The first, that Mandrake needs to port it's config tools to QT if KDE is the 'default' WM. The GTK tools really do clash with KDE. The second, that it takes forever for the system to log you in. In 8.2 it was BAM you're in, in 9 it's like...ok..check if your plants are watered...done.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Afrosheen]

No, she didn't do a base install, she clicked Recommended. Rec gives you tons of crap you'll never use (depending on your tastes of course). The Mandrake installer is extremely flexible and it satisfies/removes dependencies on the fly. It's called 'expert install'.

A base install, with X, weighs in at about...oh...64 megs or so.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[King of the World]

1) I think you're creating an exception for graphics. Reviews aren't benchmarks, and any review without scientific basis and measurements and open procedures wouldn't be a bias review. Eugenia is a great reviewer because she goes to use the distro and she writes anything that happens to annoy her. It's not meant to be reasonable, but you're supposed to be able to understand why the reviewer formed her opinions and emphathise with that.

2) There's nothing to suggest her computer hardware is flaky. She frequently says that issues she has when installing some software doesn't happen in other distros or in Windows/BeOS. One would assume that as it doesn't happen with some software that it's a software problem.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Chainsaw]

Then why is it recommended to have seven different terminals, of which six are redundant and the last won't be approached by normal users?

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Afrosheen]

Choice brother, remember that? It's the reason people switched to linux and sought it out in the first place.

I use gnome's terminal, eterm, and konsole...they're all pretty much the same to me. The others aren't there because I did an expert install. It doesn't take an expert to do the expert install btw, just gives you more flexibility and the user's ability to seriously fuxor something up is minimal.

At any rate, I don't fully understand Mandrake's rational on their 'recommended' package selection, but then again, I never see it.

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[Dave_bsr]

X/GUI - I've had X crash - but that was with bad NVIDIA configuration. Otherwise it has been rock solid. the UI I use makes sense to me...but then I have just a bit of experience. I can think of many UI's that I just don't like so much. IceWM is where it's at baby. : )

The *nix desktops are all pretty nice - virtual desktops make my life just that much better. If you come from Windows, and want Linux to be Just Like Windows (tm) - you're stuck. If you want a great system, with options, and tools, and stability galore, that has it's own way of doing things - then *nix, and Mandrake 9.0, isn't too bad at all. Just don't expect it to be Windows. Don't expect it to do all that windows does. I just love it for what it is...

Too Many Programs - I like the choices I have. That's what they are - choices. You can install as many tools as you want. or you can not. it's about choice. I like playing with Konsole, Xterm, rxvt, aterm, etc. Windows users don't mind having four media players (WiMP, the DIVX Playa, QT, Real...) at least our apps all do what they are supposed to - I don't have 5 terminal clients cuz I have to, but because I want to!

Not to say that I don't agree with you on some points...just don't let it ruin your Linux experience because you can't change your resolution. Love it for what it is and does - and positively critizice, suggest, help, and write code. Eventually we'll get there.

: )

Re:By Eugenia Loli-Queru

[hkmwbz]

That doesn't necessarily mean that the review is a bad one. If she fails to install it properly, imagine how many others will have the same problem. If the instructions aren't clear enough, perhaps it is a problem with the distribution which should be fixed. Why shouldn't this be pointed out in the review?

You may say that she is stupid and does not follow the instructions, but you can bet your hat on a lot of other people having the exact same problem.

Then again, this would probably have been better pointed out in a bug report to Mandrake than in a review. When reviewing a product, one should perhaps try to follow the installation instructions properly. What do I know - maybe they were overly obvious. Maybe they were really obscure and hidden away. Maybe she did her research, maybe she didn't. But the fact that she did stumble upon this problem indicates a problem not only with the reviewer, but with the distribution as well.

For the record, what I've seen of Mandrake is great, but I've only used v8.1 (and didn't have any problems).

The truth about Mandrake 9

[Anonymous Coward]

GREAT review. RIGHT on target.
At last, someone had the *guts* to come out and write about all these happenings.
I have switched to Red Hat 8 since Mandrake 9.0 was released.

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[npietraniec]

So did I... I ran into a few bugs. The nail in the coffin was when I installed the nvidia drivers and it broke xfree86. RedHat 8 has been working beautifully... I'm a member of the mandrake club and even preordered a DVD too... Oh well.

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[joestar]

It's not a great review, it's a review especially done to be published on Slashdot, because it's controversial, and Eugenia is very good to write such articles! It reminds me of David Coursey/ZDNet. Eugenia, you're ready for ZDNet :-)

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[LittleBigScript]

I agree with the controversial bit. She spent a lot of time complaining in the article about what it should be used for, and then gave it realativly high marks.

I assume 9/10 is the max. I doubt any reviewer, escpecially her, would give a linux distro 10/10. Just the thought of Joe User would make it impossible.

The real problem is it confuses users who haven't updated or picked a distro yet. Someone who used VAX or Unix in the past would like to try it out right...? Home Users take their experiences to work? Microsoft Terminal Services license fees?

Ah, forget it...

CNet for her. Maybe she can interview Steve Ballmer about .NET

"Man : You must be stupider than you look.
Homer : Stupider like a fox!"
-Simpsons

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[CanadaDave]

I agree whole-heartedly. I was thinking about switching to Redhat...then I switched to Debian. Best thing I ever did in my life...besides switching from Winblow$ to Mandrake in the first place.

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[grytpype]

I switched to Debian when I couldn't get the beta Mandrake 8.2 to install. Never looked back.

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I have switched to Red Hat 8 since Mandrake 9.0 was released.

Although I've had a few problems with MDK over the past couple years (insane locations for simple things like all the .hidden-mdk-directory type of thing), I'd never go to RH. Call me what you will, but I've tried RH on several machines over the years, starting on 6.1 and up to 8.0 (mostly laptops, but...), it never wanted to work right, and MDK was always there for me to just simply run.

I haven't tried 9.0 yet, so I can't really comment on it (crappy old CD-R, I can't burn over 650M... :-( ).

I run Gentoo now, but I'll never stop promoting MDK for the n00b or just simply for people that need a box Just Simply Running(TM).

P.S. The RH revsa I've tried were both ISO burns and bought CDs.

Re:The truth about Mandrake 9

[fault0]

Yes, I agree, especially with an Redhat X.0 which have been notoriously unstable.

How often have they installed mandrake?

[Mabonus]

...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.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[npietraniec]

I was bitten by that bug. I selected a different mouse, when it loaded the driver to test, the mouse didn't work. Instead of reverting back to it's previous state, the mouse continued to be screwed up no matter what I did... Until I rebooted and started over.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[NiceGeek]

I had the same problem also but a few seconds of wiggling the mouse around fixed the problem.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[rdean400]

My wheel mouse requires moving the mouse wheel a lot, with the cursor jumping all over the screen. Then it suddenly gets everything reinitialized and it starts working properly.

It's been that way in Mandrake since 6.0ish. Not one iota of difference in this bug in all that time.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[Max Threshold]

What's with the Linux 3-button mouse drivers, anyway? You always have to roll the wheel to get it to detect the mouse. Even then it takes a few seconds -- mine always lurches to the top-right corner of the screen before it starts working right. Got the same thing when I installed RH7 and MDK8.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[Little Hamster]

I don't know what she's done, but my logitech wheel mouse works without any problem in my own mandrake 9.0 install. I think I did scroll my wheel though.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[CanadaDave]

I've always been amazed at this installation step. Why doesn't it just ask the user if they have a wheel and be done with it? The fact that they made the mouse jump all over the screen was always an oddity as well. My mouse always worked after this point, though, I never got stuck like this brain-dead reviewer. They could have made a call to the famous hide_mouse function though, to prevent the crazy mouse jumping action...

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[Feanturi]

Actually, I tried Mandrake 8.2 on 2 machines, with the same mouse (MS Intellimouse Optical, 5 button), and got different results. Seems to be a motherboard issue.

1) On the PIII, ASUS CUSL2-C i815, the mouse would go crazy (and stay that way) regardless of scrolling the wheel or not. I had to do the install with the keyboard until passing that part, then the mouse would work just fine. IIRC I also had to choose a mouse driver that was not the obvious choice (can't remember which) for it to work.

2) On the Celery, motherboard manufacturer unknown, i440 chipset, the mouse would be fine, and I mean totally fine whether I scrolled first or moved first, and I could choose the correct profile for it.

Both of these machines got re-installed several times over the course of a week, and the mouse behaviour was consistant for both.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[swv3752]

She did not read the instructions. It does say that. BTW, if it is a usb mouse, it works fine. She did not mention the first time user tool. That inclines me to think that she shared her home directory with other Linux installs. Or else it is because she did not use a *DM. That might also be the cause of her login problem. I switch to a virtual console and I login immediately. What newbie would not use a graphical boot?

I think she does not know what she is talking about.

Re:How often have they installed mandrake?

[idletask]

She did not read the instructions

Who does?

I've been working for Mandrake for almost two years, and I commited to rewriting the manual from scratch when I first arrived. I was also the one who suggested that there be a dialog at install time to add users...

Back to the manual anyway. I made a lengthy chapter on the installation process, giving a few hints here and there, trying to explain stuff and all... Explained Unix philosophy, the command line, how to access it, detailed a good number of utilities and even got as far as to "describe" ext2, kernel compile (yes, even that), SysV init and whatnot. I wanted users to *read* the darn thing, I thought it to be good to have an easy-to-use distribution giving the ability to empower the users.

Blah. I asked for internal peer review and got nearly none. When the manual was first out and I reread it afterwards I found quite a few errors and/or bad explained things. No bug report, either internally or from the users. They wouldn't even read the install manual to begin with. Either becuase they just didn't want or it sounded arcane to them, I don't even know. That was two years of frustration, I can tell you. I was left with the impression to waste my time (and the company's resources).

As for a UI designer, when I left there was none. There were graphic designers, but that's not quite the same. And my calls for real ergonomy work (and in particular a common look'n'feel for GNOME and KDE...) were redirected to /dev/null. "No, first let's add some functionality, it's more important". Read: Mandrake Control Center. For which I asked that it be integrated in a way or another to konqueror/gmc (at this time). Yeah, that sounds like some OS, but hey, people are used to that.

As a result, RedHat has begun on this front first, albeit after a LOT of time, raising criticism from KDE/GNOME fanatics. But the end user doesn't give a <beep> about KDE or GNOME, he wants (unconsciously that is) consistency. Choice is nice, but end users *DON'T* *CARE*. Mandrake is now doomed to react. If it were only for me they would have acted first on this front, especially since they have KDE *and* GNOME developers.

Anyway, Mandrake is not the first to blame. KDE and GNOME are, for they are still being developed separately and are too proud to look at the FACTS. A previous article I think clearly points to where the fundamental problem lies for Mandrake.

Re:Huh?

[Progoth]

yeah, works great for me, too...and it's running on a pretty old laptop.

this person is on crack. "oh, I knew that I couldn't boot off of an xfs partition, but the installer didn't warn me!!" what the crap? I'm booting fine just fine off of an xfs partition. lilo doesn't read the filesystem (which is used by default in mandrake), and even grub has xfs support.

anyway, take this article with a big jug (the kind with the metal spout) of salt:)

Buggy

[scotch]

And I thought 8.2 was buggy - if 9 is worse, that is some serious bad news. I was surprised with 8.2 - I thought 8.0 and 8.1 worked really well, even some of the betas I tried. But with 8.2, I had consistent problems with galeon and mozilla freezing, the gnome control panel wouldn't always start, evolution would freeze on me. Konqueror and other kde apps would just freeze. I always thought that there was something wrong with my setups - perhaps Java or javascript for the web stuff, but the same problems occured on 3 different isntalls, 2 of them fresh, 1 an upgrade, and I tried to upgrade pieces that were obvious candidates for being broken. Other people didn't see the same problems, as far as I could tell.

I decide to go back to redhat - 7.3 is better than 8, IMO, but neither one has the crashes or hangs I saw with Mandrake 8.2.

Re:Buggy

[scotch]

Yeah, I agree that my experience is anecdotal - I tried to convey that in the original critique. I was just kind of fishing to see if I was the only one. Keep in my this one a bad experience with _one_ user on _three_ machines.

Re:Buggy

[Afrosheen]

Well, some people like to build 3 machines with the exact same motherboard/hardware. If that's the case, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Nobody, anywhere, is 100% guaranteed that ANY distro will work on their hardware. You're a member of the shady 5% club, no matter what you try on your box distro X will not install or work right.

Re:Buggy

[scotch]

One was a k6-2 laptop, one was an athlon with scsi drives, one was a pentium three. Bad luck, I think - I wish I could have figured it out - having galeon lock up repeatedly was quite annoying.

*Very* surprising review...

[joestar]

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...

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/news letter/sn021017

Re:*Very* surprising review...

[Tosta Dojen]

I installed Mandrake 9.0 a couple of weeks ago; here is my take:

Installation was a breeze for me. I used 'Expert mode' and had no difficulty with my Logitech Cordless wheel mouse, though I did have to select it manually; it detected as an unwheeled mouse, as I recall. Like the reviewer, I also experienced a failure in the auto-update feature of the installation, though in my case that was due to incorrect network settings I had specified. Had I set those correctly, I probably would have been able to auto-update during install, but I can't say for sure. As for partitioning, I would have liked the ability to type in a number for the partition size instead of moving a slider. The slider wouldn't give me exactly what I wanted.

I have had no trouble with slowness on my single 500 MHz Celery, so I know not of what the reviewer complains. I do know my machine is running faster with Mandrake 9 than it was on Redhat 7.3. All of the applications I have run have worked perfectly, with the occasional exception of Mozilla, but I've upped that to the 1.2alpha, so I expect a few glitches.

Personally, I like the default KDE look; different strokes for different folks, I guess, but to me, improving the 'prettiness' of the GUI is not an issue. Usability, certainly, and the usability is fine. The reviewer just seems to have something against KDE.

With my previous install, (RH 7.3), I had significant slowdowns at times, and plenty of application crashes at random times. For me, Mandrake 9.0 has been nothing but great.

Re:*Very* surprising review...

[swv3752]

You can specify the specific size. You have to click in the box with the number and type in what you want. My celeron 366 works fine, so I find the mention of slowness surprising. I also have no problem with Everybuddy.

Distro War Fuel

[Otter]

I have a Mandrake 8.2 box that's been upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1, back to 8.0, and then to 8.2. There's a lot to like about it (a good installer, good config tools) but a lot of the user-friendliness gets in the way -- every time something doesn't work the way I expect, it has to be traced back through a string of aliases, scripts, tools and other tweaks.

Now, the Linux I love is Yellow Dog. It's RPM-based, but with apt-get updating, doesn't have dozens of dependencies for every package, and while it's updated regularly, the overall system layout is reminscent of "classic" Linux installations. Think Red Hat 5.2, or something like that.

So, I've got this Athlon/NVIDIA box, that's been through Red Hat 7.2, Mandrake and SuSE. (Debian wouldn't install, for some reason.) If Yellow Dog won't run on it, what's the closest x86 distro to it?

Re:Distro War Fuel

[CanadaDave]

Don't give up on Debian so fast! Why won't Debian install for you? Where does it have the problem? Did you use the bf2.4 kernel when you booted from the installation disks? It uses the 2.2 kernel by default, which is missing support for a lot of newer hardware.

I have an Athlon/NVIDIA as well and I just switched from Mandrake to Debian a few months ago. Debian has been a dream so far. Better than Mandrake ever was. So powerful, and remarkably, it is EASIER to use. Most of all, it is more stable.

I've had no problems

[geekd]

I've been using Mandrake 9.0 download edition since the day it came out, and I think it's great.

I haven't had any problems. It's snappier than past versions. I hear this is because it's compiled with gcc 3.2, which is nice to c++ than previous gcc versions.

The install went faster than in the past.

I don't see what there is to complain about. It's not a quantum leap better than 8.2 was, but it is incrementally better.

I am told the 9.0 designation was because of the gcc 3.2 thing.

Hard to bitch about a quality, free product. (that's quality AND free, not free of quality, smartasses :-)

Re:I've had no problems

[Lando]

Nod,

Started installing new distro's last week.

Still working on Redhat, seems to hang a lot on installation, not sure why yet.

Mandrake was a pain requiring me to go out and buy 700MB cds rather than the 650's that I normally use, but installation went without a hitch.

* Stepping on soapbox *
Suse, turned me off with their proprietary software a while ago, I won't use them again. Mandrake seems to be more focused on the community and Redhat has done a lot to contribute back to the community... Suse is just trying to make money off my work...

Anyway, I have multiple servers registered with Redhat for their Redhat network and I am a registered, ie paying member, of Mandrake... Both run me about $5/mth which is reasonable and I feel I get good quality from both.

I won't be using Suse or any of the Unified Linux platforms as long as I can help it...

* Leaving soapbox *

Re:I've had no problems

[Lando]

Blah, didn't say much in the last message.

The installation packages have changed a bit, so I am missing some of my old packages under Mandrake but for the desktop it works fine for me and accomplishes what I need it to accomplish... Having the QT Libraries and several other KDE libraries upgraded has helped a bit...

I don't know that Mandrake satisfies the hardcore Linux users, but I'm a system admin and all I want from my desktop is basic functionality... My servers on the other hand are hand rolled for their tasks... I wouldn't use Mandrake nor Redhat for them... But that's a different story...

Re:I've had no problems

[BradleyUffner]

"Mandrake was a pain requiring me to go out and buy 700MB cds rather than the 650's that I normally use, but installation went without a hitch."

I thought the 700MB ISOs were kind of odd too. They had 3 total images available for download. the first 2 were 700, the last was around 450 if I recall. Wouldn't it have been easy to hack 50MB off the 1st 2 CDs and stick them on the 3rd? That would have made the entire thing fit on the same number of 650MB CDs. I also noticed that RedHat did something almost the same.

Re:I've had no problems

[simeonbeta2]

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.

Re:I've had no problems

[shellbeach]

Well, I agree for the most part :)

I should say that I upgrade my linux distro but rarely (I skipped 8.2 entirely), mainly because I know it's going to take me a week to reconfigure everything exactly how I want it, and rebuild much of the software that I use from source. I therefore don't expect to be able to stick a fresh distro in the CD-ROM drive and have the "best linux ever" smiling back at me half an hour later. And I should say that if I went to re-install windows (at least Win98 which is the "latest" version of windows that I personally have experience with - I haven't used windows for years :) I wouldn't expect to have everything working first off either.

What I can say is that - having spent a week tweaking and re-compiling - Mandrake 9.0 is a big improvement for me. It's fast (yay gcc3.2!!) and seems extremely stable for the most part. While I have encountered some bugs - not the ones mentioned in the article, mind you - they've only been fairly minor ones. The only major problem I had was that the new drakfont didn't like installing some Windows fonts that I had extracted to a folder ... but I just got drakfont from my old Mandrake 8.1 and it works fine :)

It seems that there are always bugs in new releases, especially the .0 releases (redhat 7.0 anyone? and what about this recent story on RedHat 8.0). BUT ... the thing that's different with this particular Mandrake release is that it had no less than four Release Candidates, not to mention (I think) about three betas. Why weren't these problems picked up?

And the only answer to that, I think, is that a lot more people need to get involved in these beta releases and report these bugs. All of those complaining now (and I guess that includes me :) should have tried out the betas and made sure that the newbies - who don't instinctively know how to make things work - weren't faced with these silly, needless bugs.

Re:I've had no problems

[wunderhorn1]

The last CD was the "internationalization" disk, and they wanted to keep it that way so that the english speakers wouldn't have to download the extra ISO.

Personally, I only buy 700MB blanks. They're nice for mix CDs, you can fit like 2 or 3 extra songs on.

Re:I've had no problems

[geekd]

It's a common misnomer to use the term "quantum leap" when in fact the speaker means something more along the lines of a "cosmic leap" or a "galactic leap".

quantum leap

NOUN: An abrupt change or step, especially in method, information, or knowledge: "War was going to take a quantum leap; it would never be the same" (Garry Wills).

NOUN:1. Abrupt change from one energy level to another, especially such a change in the orbit of an electron with the loss or gain of a quantum of energy.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

Re:I've had no problems

[ProfessorPuke]

You're correct, this is a widespread language problem- quantum leaps are really very small.

However, the factor in defense of this usage is that particles which quantum-leap go between two points without crossing the intermediate. That seems special to people who are used to thinking of motion in purly Newtonian terms.

Re:I've had no problems

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Sweet solution. Hope you get modded up.

Re:I've had no problems

[breser]

As someone else has already said the 3rd CD is mostly internationalization. It also has some devel packages. But most users probably don't need it.

However there is another reason for the 3rd CD being smaller. The first 2 CDs of the download CD are the same as their standard boxed set. Only the 3rd CD differs. The extra space on the 3rd CD is reserved for commercial apps they can't put on the download CDs but do include in the boxed versions.

Re:I've had no problems

[deno]

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.)

Re:I've had no problems

[deno]

Frankly, what's needed is more $$$, so that we can employ more people in development and QA, and buy more hardware, and get more people in QA to test this, and - have I mentioned more hardware? .-)

I've tried out the 9.0, and it's in fact astonnishingly good distribution, but there is obviously some hardware on which it doesn't run well. More $$$ would not assure that the distro works perfectly on all hardware, but it would assure it works perfectly on more hardware than it does today.

In my opinion the most efficient way of assuring better hardware support in the future were to join the MandrakeClub, and start asking for support for YOUR hardware there.

Re:I've had no problems

[Lando]

Well, I'm going through and confirming my facts, I haven't touched Suse for years. After checking my opinion hasn't changed other than possibly replacing the word proprietary with restrictive to make my opinion a little clearer.

I use GPL'd software and release my work under GPL for the sole reason that it gives me control over the software I use...

Suse has always had in my mind a desire to make money off my work without reinbursing me... Redhat and Mandrake do this by releasing their distributions under the GPL.

The problem with Yast is that it contaminates the entire distribution... With Redhat or Mandrake, I can burn a copy and distribute them with new systems that I sell to my customers... Can't do that with Suse, because I am doing a sale for money... So while I normally package a Linux on CD distribution and Mandrake or Redhat with windows systems I sell, Suse licensing ensures that I can't use them as a distribution.

But this is my decision... You find the licensing acceptable... I don't... Nothing wrong with this either way... I just don't use their product because of the licensing issues.

I also don't buy anything and Yahoo, don't shop at Best Buy, hate utility companies, hate with a vengence cable companies and phone companies, etc.

As long as I have a choice I work with whatever company supports me the most, ie customer service, support, etc...

So you may be right that Suse is not proprietary, however I firmly believe that they want to be. Which is fine as long as it's their own software... But once they start including my patches and software, they need to be giving back to me...

I appreciate their work on x11 and KDE, but that doesn't mean I want to restrict my actions by using their software.

Below are references which among others have helped to form my opinions.

Non-disclosure Agreement which violates GPL

article, Director of Suse Sales implies to my mind that they want to make Suse proprietary in order to protect their product

This Article shows what Suse will do when they have the opportunity.

Flamebait...

[jasno]

I can feel the flames already, but here goes...

I've been a redhat user since 6.0, and after trying LFS and deciding I needed a desktop, I gave Mandrake 8.2 a try. It was buggy, not all that fast, and frankly I think the blue and gold colors are ugly(which is 50% of the reason I didn't like it :))

I was expecting a lot more based on all the good reviews I had heard. After that I tried the redhat beta (null) and never looked back.

I guess it might be nice if you need your 3d card to work out of the box, but I was looking for a desktop with more 'finish'.

Eugenia Loli-Queru -OSNEWS

[Nex6]

Eugenia Loli-Queru, reviews are very PICKY, and i find them sometimes leaving stuff out or just a rant session.

MDK 9.0 has built in support to join MS domains in the installer, real clean works great.

she didnt even know antil a post posted it,

i would take her review not as a final word but:

"with a grane of salt"

her hardware and setup a far from normal,

and she installs the os one time on ONE machine and that become the """"review""" of it.

she should install it a few times ussing different
methodes each time and fully explore the OS, taking in to account the target of the OS, and other factors. and not just some multi page rant like some idiot.

the more a read Eugenia Loli-Queru the i find her
lacking, to be fair, some stuff she says is REALLY good,

but some stuff is really BAD.

MY 2 cents

end rant

Nex6

Disappointed with MandrakeSoft

[Max Threshold]

I thought after all the problems they had with 8.2, they'd clean up their act. Their excuse on the Cooker mailing list for the quality of 8.2 final was "publisher deadlines". Maybe they need to get another publisher who understands that if it ain't ready, it ain't ready?

I haven't participated in Cooker development since the 8.2 betas. I got fed up with trying to contribute because they had no bug tracking system. All communication between developers and testers was on the Cooker mailing list, and it was sloppy and clumsy at best. Fixes were frequently overlooked and contributors got upset because they thought they were being ignored. During beta 2 I pointed out that the curl-config script was missing from the libcurl-devel RPM; during the RC I mentioned it again, and still it went to press without it. So I had to build my own libcurl to build an app against it. I had all kinds of problems just installing 8.2 final on my system; KPresenter always segfaulted on my laptop and wouldn't even start on my desktop; the Xenophilia RPM was entirely missing from the distro because they "forgot" to commit it; and countless other problems. So I went back to 8.1.

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.

Re:Disappointed with MandrakeSoft

[CanadaDave]

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.

Beta testing Mandrake 9.0 was one of the worst testing experiences because of this system. I hate subscribing to mailing lists...why do I need to hear about bugs which I am not interested in hearing about. The only person that needs to know about a particular bug is the maintainer of the package and any people who have requested to be CC:'s. MandrakeSoft needs to give their head a shake.

Re:Disappointed with MandrakeSoft

[Mr.Ned]

MandrakeSoft Bugzilla: https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/

Re:Disappointed with MandrakeSoft

[breser]

Bugzilla is sitll not the main setup yet... There was a lot of discussion about this after the release in this thread:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker&m= 103297553303638&w=2

It looks like they are going to do something different and that it won't be the mailing list. But it hasn't been implemented yet.

Re:Disappointed with MandrakeSoft

[1%warren]

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.

Bugzilla was a real PITA for them in a previous beta I was involved with. The mailing list is simply much faster.

All communication between developers and testers was on the Cooker mailing list, and it was sloppy and clumsy at best. Fixes were frequently overlooked and contributors got upset because they thought they were being ignored.

The bug reports I submitted I cc'd to the maintainer of the package, as a basic courtesy, as well as a means of getting their attention.

Problem with 700Mb ISOs?

[Little Hamster]

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.

Re:Problem with 700Mb ISOs?

[CanadaDave]

This was a big problem I remember when people were trying out the release candidates 1,2,3 with Mandrake 9.0. I assumed that this problem had to do with people (newbies) trying to burn the isos on 650MB CDs. But I'm not sure... It was a non existant problem from what I remember, when I was beta-testing 9.0.

Installed on one of those Gateway iMac clones

[woogieoogieboogie]

Se got a demo profile 4 to evaluate. I was supposed to Install Win 98 and evaluate the machine for company use but I figured that it would be a good test to show TPTB how easy modern Linux distros were to install. I installed Mandrake 9 on one of those Gateway iMac clones http://www.gateway.com/home/products/hm_dtp_prf4.s html and it was the smoothest linux install I have ever done. The only glitch was that Mandrake installed the wrong monitor with X, so I had to change it, but win 98 did it on the same machine also. Win 98 thought it was a laptop.

Haven't had a lot of time to play with M9.0, but if it isn't ready for primetime, M10 will be.

Re:interesting...

[khuber]

Wait until 9.1 comes out. I very rarely install X.0 or beta distributions. I still have Mandrake 8.2. I'm going to install Gentoo on my new system though. -Kevin

Re:I don't understand

[Raiford]

This is the way I understand it. It is Linux. It is open source. It started as one guy's desire to have a unix-like OS run on his PC and minix wasn't going to fullfill his needs. Then came the big parade of contributers which made it what it is today. You can be a big distributer like Red Hat and Mandrake or SuSe or whoever and try to get fancy with marketing and even do things to try to make Linux look like MS Windows, but you still have Linux. The point is that the strength of the OS is in it's bugs ! They are there for all to see and to improve upon. Not just some tiny team of geeks up in Redmond writing patches to fix bugs and calling them updates.

There is no more fun in playing with an OS than hacking the kernel trying to make something a little better.

Celebrate the bugs !

Mandrake 9 found my sound card; Redhat 8 did not!

[Newer Guy]

That's enough for me.....

Lame article, but there are a few bugs

[GrouchoMarx]

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?)

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 :-) After that the install went smoothly.

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. :-) 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.

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. :-) (If someone can explain why BZFlag kill the entire system but TuxRacer works perfectly fine, please let me know.)

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.

Re:Lame article, but there are a few bugs

[GrouchoMarx]

I figured out the GAIM issue. The problem is in the autoadd module. Once I turned that off, everything worked perfectly. Yay! Since I have no special need for that module, I'll just leave it off. Now I just need to get rid of those damned default sounds and get something decent. ;-)

Overview

[Espectr0]

Mandrake has always been a distro that if it works on your system, then it's excellent.

Some people have lots of problems and can't even install the thing, and for others (like me) it works perfectly

Criticism!=Bashing

[Sean Clifford]

I'd love to mod you up; you're right and your post is damned insightful. When someone does a review of a product they're *supposed* to bitch about all the warts and blemishes of the product and point out the gee-whiz stuff too. Eugenia does just that.

When someone criticizes a product, most folks think they're bashing it. It's not like you ever hear how Nokia's phones suck on a CNN segment, but you sure do hear how cool they are. That's true with most "reviews". We should hail Eugenia for her thoroughness, not bash her for unvarnished opinion.

Re:Criticism!=Bashing

[LinuxInDallas]

You can be biased towards bashing or biased at the other end of the spectrum. Does anyone remember the reviews Linux Journal used to do way-back-when? They were incredibly biased. They basically gave great reviews for anything that was linux related. It has only been in the last couple years that they have started pointing out the bad parts of what they are reviewing. I'd prefer someone to bash than to make something sound better than it's not. At least you won't be tempted to waste money on something that is actually not worth it.

Re:Mandrake 9 found my sound card; Redhat 8 did no

[CanadaDave]

Yeah, well YellowDog found my cat. Mandrake did not!

Re:I don't understand

[CanadaDave]

It seems to me that actually making the distro better by fixing errors you would get more users

This is what Debian strives for. I'm not sure if their user base is climbing though, in proportion to Redhat/Mandrake/etc..

It's kind of a nice equilibrium actually. Mandrake/Redhat are always pushing the bar, getting new software out there to the users in a packaged RPM format, which helps the actual developers make their software better because they can get feedback from those users. And Debian polishes packages up until their are ultra-stable and then moves them from "testing" to "stable". So users, as a whole benefit. There is a freedom of distribution...and at the same time software is being improved upon and features are added.

Aren't a lot of products with x.0 usually buggy?

[antdude]

I noticed a lot of softwares are usually buggy at X.0 versions. The newer versions like X.1, X.2, X.3, etc. are much better.

Hasn't anyone noticed that with Linux distributions?

Re:Aren't a lot of products with x.0 usually buggy

[Eric Smith]

Since Mandrake is so adamant about playing version numbering one-upmanship, despite the lack of any actual technical improvements to justify bumping the major number, I'm surprised that they don't simply start each new major version number with a ".1" for the minor version number. Anyone who is actually fooled by their version number inflation should fall for that as well.

Re:I don't understand

[Wdomburg]

>And Debian polishes packages up until their are
>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. :(". Note that this is a regression of functionality as compared to 2.2, which worked fine.

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

Re:Aren't a lot of products with x.0 usually buggy

[swv3752]

Lets see, new gcc, new glibc, new KDE and GNOME. yeah i think this deserves a new major release number.

Re:interesting...

[Kircle]

Just so you know, apparently KDE runs faster on Mandrake 9.0 than on Gentoo. Check out this thread at Gentoo's forum.

MandrakeSoft beta testing

[zenyu]

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.

The Eugenia Loli-Queru Linux distro drinking game:

[kreese]

Preparation: several kegs of beer, a lot of glasses, and a browser open at osnews.com

Participants: as many Linux, er, "fans" as possible.

Method: someone reads the review out loud. Best that they are a designated reader, as things tend to get messy. Then...

Scull one glass every time:
- BEOS is mentioned
- Eugenia replies to comments within three minutes of them being posted
- the words "my", "Celeron" and "533" appear in a sentence
- Eugenia refers to herself (this alone should make most pass out by the end of the first page)

Scull two glasses every time:
- the linux on desktop argument is exhumed
- some sly comment is made about tightwad companies not paying for mp3 licensing fees
- you hear a complaint about not a given distro being newbie friendly within 20 seconds of hearing a shell command line...er, command quoted

Bypass the glass and drink straight from the keg every time:
- you suspect that complaints about the distro's UI are overwhelming the substance of the review
- the review doesn't complain about nvidia at all
- somebody exclaims "what the f**k is she talking about!?"

and

Eat your hat if:
- Eugenia refrains from responding acidly to comments in her reviews
- you understand what the major fundamental difference is between a distro marked as 7.6/10 and one marked 7.8/10

BTW, if you get an opportunity to eat your hat, call a taxi, you're done for the night.

If I want an easy-2-use distro

[dh003i]

I'll stick with Lindows. Lindows is Debian-based distribution which offers an excellent set of GUI-tools, and is easy to install for the newbie. Also, it will be around in 5 years from now because Lindows has a REAL business strategy, which means making people pay for their product and not offering it for free for download online, while still complying with the GPL.

Also, Lindows knows what it wants to be. I wants to be a GNU/Linux distribution for the average desktop user.

That said, I'm not a newbie and I don't need hand-holding. I personally use Debian, because of its great track-record for stability, and because I can freely obtain it. Any graphical tools which I like in Lindows I can also get in Debian, either by download or by buying the Lindows CD and putting those apps on my computer.

Despite sticking with Debian, however, I really think that Lindows is a great thing for Debian GNU/Linux. Lindows can be to Debian GNU/Linux what OSX is to FreeBSD: an easy-to-use OS designed for ease of use for a new user (a diplomat between the world of power-users and newbies). Also, I'm excited about how Lindows is being sold pre-installed on very cheap computers. This is great, because many people just need a computer for very basic needs, and Lindows helps one buy a computer for under 500 dollars. This might be just the thing GNU/Linux needs to get newbies on-board.

Mandrake /usr/lib and /usr/include garbage pail

[truth_revealed]

While checking out Mandrake 8.2 I looked in /usr/lib and /usr/lib and saw hundreds of files that had no business being there - they dumped all the KDE libraries and include files directly into the system directories. At least they should have thrown KDE into /opt/kde or something. Mandrake sorely needs a major directory structure overhaul - it's a hornet's nest. I'd expect this from Windows (system directory and its thousands of DLLs) but not a major Linux distribution.

I haven't had the time to check out Mandrake 9.0.
Did they fix this mess?

Mandrake X Red Hat

[Jungle guy]

I have tested Mandrake 9 and Red Hat 8 and can say that, for a desktop, they are in a tie. However, we can see Red Hat has stronger foundations to make a good desktop, and their following releases should surpass Mandrake.

Red Hat has better usability, intuitive menus and Open Office integration. The Blue Curve theme is also great. The Red Hat Network, enabled at every boot, is a pain.

Mandrake does a better job when it is about integration with peripherals, like digital cameras an PDAs. And RPM Drake "just works", compared to RHN, that requires registration.

My Personal Experience

[fishlet]

Well I'll throw in my own personal review for anyone who wishes to compare notes.

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 /etc/profile no longer work.
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.

Re:My Personal Experience

[rdean400]

Regarding MySQL not starting on startup, I found that for some reason, Mandrake put the kill script (K90mysql instead of S90mysql) in runlevel 5. Go to /etc/rc5.d and change the name to S90mysql and you should be good to go.

Re:My Personal Experience

[nzhavok]

In regard to the mysql problem, it seems that mandrake has kill commands for mysql at runlevel 3 and 5.

If you change these to start it will probably work, also depending on your security level you may have to use chkconfig to enable it. e.g. use
chkconfig --list
to see if it's enabled or not and to enable it
chkconfig --add mysql

Now if only I could work out the iptables rules to get samba working at security level 4 I'd be happy...

Thank you, MandrakeSoft

[EdlinUser]

I fell in love with Mandrake at 7.0. It seemed like they were just the distro I wanted. They have remained that way; I gave them $60 because I love them. My take on 9.0 after 2 weeks of using the download edition:
Fast set up (Insert CD.....get WEB)
The first Mandrake since 7.1 that detected and setup everything.(tho I still miss the Photon theme.)
It's noticeably faster than 8.2
It has some fun games.
The control center is a great config tool.
I've heard other distro's don't have supermount. Tough for y'all.
No problems so far; and if I find any I forgive MandrakeSoft in advance. ;-)

Wait for Mandrake #.1 or .2

[TheJZA]

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.

Re:The good ole Mandrake..

[rdean400]

They used to do that repackaging thing, but nowadays, they're more like a fork. They'll try to maintain RedHat compatibility, but they're not simply repackaging RedHat anymore. They're more like a fork.

Linux "journalism" sucks

[InodoroPereyra]

I got sickened reading this article. It is plain biased. Period.You see, most Linux Sites root for some Distro or Desktop environment. And what is worst, they flame the rest of the Desktops/Distros. This is plain childish and unprofessional. The reviewer is attacking Mandrake constantly through her "review". Look at her conclusion for one example:

Mandrake 9 seems to be a bit out of focus. The OS itself has no clear focus of what it wants to operate as. A Server? Desktop? Workstation? All? No one really knows what the actual market of Mandrake is.

And she goes on but I already feel like vomiting.

You know where I go to read reviews ?. Slashdot, users comments. You get real smart people telling you their real stories. People who really know what they are talking about and have no reason to bias one way or the other. And the good reviews get modded up. Peer review. I just don't understand however why this "review" in OS news was posted in slashdot, especially since the submitter of the story is clearly trolling .

On the Issue of Mandrake 9.0 . I installed it in three machines: home desktop, laptop, office workstation. It all went fantastic, and I have never ever been happier with a distro. It is saving me lots of time in administration, it is pleasant to use, I just love it. Almost everything works out of the box. It autodetected local and network harware, I crossed mounted disks through NFS, etc, all without effort from the Control Center. Software Installs and upgrades are a pleasure with the RPM front end. Simply outstanding. But you see, I don't need to flame or trash or bitch other distros to simply state that I became a happy Mandrake user.

It would have been much more productive for slashdot to post a pointer to the several "first impression" reviews of Mandrake 9.0 on the net, which are much more balanced than the one in OS news (see distrowatch.com section Mandrake), and encourage people to write their own reviews. I have lots of cool stuff to say about Mandrake 9.0, but I ended up biting for the troll. Oh well :-(

Reporting bugs...a challenge

[Air-conditioned cowh]

When Mandrake set up hurdles for reporting bugs my first though was, "well, if they don't want to hear about them, they ain't gonna find them, they ain't gonna fix them!".

This was an effort to cut down on people reporting non-bugs and taking up valuable resorces, apparently.

It took me a lot of searching throught their website to find the bugzilla and even more effort to be granted posting rights.

There are about 400 bugs in the bugzilla last I checked. I would have expected thousands for an operation this size. Mozilla has thousands because they actually welcome bug reports. If I report one it is usually checked within a few days as real/imaginary/dup etc. and most important, Mozilla is rock solid.

Perhaps spending valuable resources sifting through thousands of bugs for just a few real ones is actually quite a useful part of quality control.

...Laughing...

[Dave_bsr]

"...instead of the Retard install button..."

That made me laugh. I don't even know why Mandrake doesn't just make everyone learn a bit on install. Oh well, not my distro - I don't own MDsoft. But - I can say that if you have any idea about what you are doing, hit the expert button on Mandrake. It makes things clearer, function better. And being able to do individual package selection is nice.

Personally, I'm getting sick of the "do the dummy thing: next-next-next-next" install/reviews. Put some time into it, please - let us know what Mandrake/RH/Suse/Debian is like when you really work on it. And I know, I know, she talked to Mandrake about her problems. I just wanted a bit more than "the default them sucked. bla." Maybe check out the other, cooler themes? suggest going to the plf and getting some nicer themes??? Just a thought.

You can send me your DVD!

[Dave_bsr]

You can send me your dvd, if you don't want it. I'll pay shipping. The OpenGL drivers you got worked fine for me - did you (re)compile them, because MD uses GCC 3, and not 2.X - binary incompatibility there dude. Sorry...

My experiences

[nzhavok]

After moving to Germany I found I wasn't using my P166 box which was previously my net gateway, I decided to upgrade it from mandrake 7.2 thru 9. The main reason for the upgrade was to get a later version of PHP for my web dev work, one which didn't need a recompile for session.use_trans_sid but thats another story...

• The Upgrade
• did not cleanly upgrade from Mandrake 7.2
  

apart from removing MySQL *sniff* it seemed to break quite a few confs. This wasn't really this surprisong as I didn't expect it to work in the first place.

So I decided to install this, now I only ssh into this box and it has no monitor / keyboard / mouse. Since moving country I didn't even have a mouse serial mouse for the box...

• The install
• It's frigging impossible to change the filesystem options in the graphical install withput a mouse. The tab order just doesn't bloody work.
  
• The text install didn't let me select the packages, and yes I used an expert install.
  
• I now have a box which will only be used for apache which a full X/kde/gnome install which is completly useless to me.
  
• the secuity features of level 4 "server" prevent apache from reading users home dirs!
  
• I *still* can't get samba working (then again this is my first encounter with iptables over ipchains)
  

And before anyone comments that mandrake is a desktop OS balh blah blah if I'm going to use it for a server, blah blah blah, the disks were here when no others were :)

BTW German keyboards suck "QWERTZ" WTF is up with that? (ALT GR)Q to get @, jesus!!

Deno said they DO exist

[Dave_bsr]

Deno posted about this on the Mandrake Forums. They exist, they are not supported, and available to club members only (and non-club members, if a club member distributes them, they are GPL'd, as all MD software). Good luck, anyone finding them.

$60

[Dave_bsr]

Go here. Browse. Smile - your cd burner is $54. Free shipping, plus a 10 free cd's. 40x speed burner.

Newegg has the best service of any place online. My last order, I ordered it this past monday, I got it wednesday.

I don't work for Newegg. They don't pay me anything.

Compile your own

[Dave_bsr]

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.

*sarcasm*

[Dave_bsr]

#start sarcasm

No dude. Only up Distro numbers when you switch to a new major kernel number. ONLY then. Otherwise you are just fake.

#stop sarcasm

yeah. don't forget new Mozilla from 8.2, and OpenOffice 1, and completely new Mandrake Control Center, and msec, and ... and ...

I don't catch it...

[Ektanoor]

Well I am probably on my 6th Mandrake 9 install, 3 of them fresh from start. I used mouse, no mouse and text only. Yes, Mandrake has serious drawbacks on its install procedures, some of them quite stupid, ex. I had one machine where I had to force a fresh install because the install script had a bug related to listing RAID devices.

However...

I don't get why this guy had pains on installing XFS on root. Well, either Matrix is having me in full force or I have installed XFS on root in all machines. One of them starts from SCSI, one starts from plain dumb IDE and others have UDMA-66 and UDMA-100.

Besides, his troubles with mice seems that he is a cat that doesn't try hard. All wheel mice have a problem with Mandrake. When one starts rolling the wheel, the cursor goes crazy (even with MS wheeled mouse). However a few runs up and down and the thing comes back to normal in most mice. This problem is endemic to Mandrake, it was there since they started this wheel test. So, I suspect that this guy made his first install in his life...

Frankly this critic looks much like FUD to me. Yes, Mandrake has problems and this guy seems to have restricted his look only to them. However, he seems to have forgotten that the new Mandrake has some great things like enhanced security, a more wheighted level of apps, OpenOffice from start and several more things.

Mandrake 9.0 stopped my Win 98 SE from booting

[rklrkl]

I have an 80GB hard drive - one of its partitions was 38GB and had Win XP Home Edition on it, which I decided to split into 2 partitions - 19GB for Win 98 SE (which I installed after much struggling - it's quite tricky to go from an NTFS Win XP to FAT32 Win 98 SE, believe you me) and 19GB for Mandrake 9.0.

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 ?

Re:catched up ??

[AppyPappy]

Now thar ain't nuthin wrong with sayin "catched up". Why juss the other day, I had to git catched up with the pigs when they got out the house. Catched up is a specially good way of speaking and I should know cause I'uns went to college.

Well, UVA anyway.

I agree...

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Re:I agree...

[rnd()]

RedHat 8 and Mandrake 9 both shipped with GCC 3.2 which is BROKEN! This is a problem, in my opinion. I'm not sure about the latest SuSE.

As for the DMA/harddrive settings, if you perform an Expert install it allows you to choose whether or not you want to use the 'risky' hdparm flags.

As for me, I prefer to use just the KDE/Gnome apps and stick with one of the smaller & lighter window managers such as IceWM or WindowMaker.

RH hanging on installation

[Andy Dodd]

Which motherboard chipset do you have?

Some Intel chipsets (Triton/Natoma, aka PIIXn) have broken UDMA support. If you enable UDMA on your HD/CDROM, your system WILL crash within a few minutes, esp. with heavy HD usage.

I had this problem with RH7.3 on my old laptop - But Mandrake 8.2 wasn't much better. While the installer doesn't use DMA, it turned on UDMA as soon as it was done, resulting in a system just as unstable as the RH installer.

You have to go into the config files and specifically force one of the multiword DMA modes, which does work.

The order of things.

[Andy Dodd]

In order from the distro that holds back the most for testing and the one that pushes the bar too far:
Debian - Seems to be eternally trapped in testing. :) Also, sometimes the QC can go TOO far, as another reply to your post on issues with php4 and other packages mentions
RedHat - Middle ground. Reasonably modern, pretty good QC
Mandrake - While they have the "bleeding edge", every Mandrake install I've used has felt unpolished. BOTH have had serious hardware compatibility problems. To Mandrake's credit, RedHat had similar problems in one case (Broken UDMA support on my mobo chipser), but in another case, Mandrake tried to "optimize" the hard drives at bootup, resulting in the system freezing. RedHat happily ran for months on end on the same machine.

I trust this review as far as I can kick it.

[109 97 116 116]

And my monitor is 80 pounds... Doesn't kick well.

First, if someone has 8 other OS's don't you think at least one of them would have been another Linux distro and therefore the shot about Mandrake not supporting his camera either would have been already known, or he would know the RPM's existed to get the thing to work?

Also, since when does the average internet user use 800x600 ?! This is clearly not the case. I do but thats only because I have a small 14" piece of crap monitor that only supports 800x600.

Personally I find the partitioning tool very intuitive. What's more simple that selecting the drive to work with on a tab, and clicking create and sliding a slider to make the partition the size you wish? I guess he prefers FDISK...

Also, the mouse config tool works fine for me every time. I can't find fault in his review there, since it is possible he had problems for whatever reason.

The update packages part of the install works just fine if you include all the necessary information. At least on a dialup. He doesn't say that he did his best on configuring his internet connection so that this feature would work properly.

On the XFS issue he raises, I could swear that I have all my partitions as XFS with no /boot and it works fine. I could be wrong.

Re:It's still a beta

[perlyking]

odd. Nautilus works fine for me, and I like it. UT2003 (both the demo and full version) worked fine.
I'm not saying there are no bugs, only it seems to vary a lot based on how its set up. I guess windows is the same though as far as that goes.
There were definately too many bugs in this, to the extent that it makes a stable OS look unstable.

Best Install Ever....After that the most bugs ever

[SomeOtherGuy]

I have been a HUGE Mandrake fan for a long time. I always choose to install it on machines I am to lazy to configure manually. This being said -- after a wonderful install -- I have had all sorts of "weird" things happen. The biggest 2 being issues I am sure may be attributed to my video card setup and the Frankenstein stuff going with the AA Fonts and other issues. (Matrox G450 Dual + Xinerama). I had the same problems the reviewer had with various apps trying to spin my CDROM into submission for no obvious reason. Control panel apps that take 2 minutes to start. Etc. Etc. I think maybe I will give the new RedHat a shot -- I have not used RedHat since Mandrake appeared on the scene.

Internationalization aspects not mentioned

[Taz4Linux]

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

This is what I run..

[Maeryk]

Adressing point by point:

I think its ridiculous to claim the installer looks "dated".. if it works, and its graphical, why does it matter? Has ANYONE here ever worried about their distro looking "dated"?

I have never EVER had a problem with Mandrake (since 5) and a wheel mouse.. and I have used bus, ps/2, and USB. I have had far more problems with my redhat box and mice. (Including having them dissapear for no real reason).

On "expert" you get a basic disk druid looking partitioning wizard.. it is the easiest one I have ever used. Maybe IM weird, but I found it simple, very quick, and quite intutitive. (It looks (to me, anyway) a lot like the 2K disk wizards).

Yes, it boots a lot of things by default.. but it TELLS you what it is going to boot, and then lets you turn them off if you dont want to, and custom edit your "security" runlevel.

I like it.. and Im *SO* freaking tired of hearing reviewers say "This distro sucks, because the default colors in K are ugly". Who cares? With as easy as it is in K to change your colors and background and themes, what does it matter? Does anyone really run the default schemes anyway?

(Not that I care, Im a windowmaker/blackbox guy..) but I'm very happy with the unified menus in both.. and someone previously said the menus arent laid out intuitively.. Umm.. how "non intuitive" is "networking" "configuration" "applications"?

Seems more intuitive than WIndows, to me.

Maeryk

Expert install and hdparm flags.

[Andy Dodd]

I think it would be safe to say that risky hdparm flags should be an option ENABLED by an expert install, not DISABLED only in an expert install (i.e. on by default).