Slashdot Mirror
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..."
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...
smd4985
"catched?" Do forks need to fly in you eyes before you edit?
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?
The surgeon general has determined that Windows may be hazardous to your wallet.
...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.
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:)
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.
XML causes global warming.
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
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
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 :-)
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
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.
Haven't had a lot of time to play with M9.0, but if it isn't ready for primetime, M10 will be.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
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.
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?
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
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
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.
Yeah, well YellowDog found my cat. Mandrake did not!
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.
>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
Lets see, new gcc, new glibc, new KDE and GNOME. yeah i think this deserves a new major release number.
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.
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.
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
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 :-(
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.
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...
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!!
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
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?
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.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
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