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Mandrake Linux... Not Dead Yet?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-download dept.

bloodeu writes "Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike, but this new release of Mandrake may hold many promising Linux users what they have been waiting for, like NTFS resizing(which is a first), Automatic Network config(zeroconf), Supermount, and many more. You can download the Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Here"

7 of 494 comments (clear)

  1. What's wrong with Mandrake? by swtaarrs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I tried it (9.0) for a few weeks and the only thing I didn't like was that wine wasn't installed/configured like in RedHat (7.3). Is this another case of some linux people hating a distro because it's too easy to use?

    1. Re:What's wrong with Mandrake? by Pike65 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Is this another case of some linux people hating a distro because it's too easy to use?

      Too right!

      If everyone learns how to use Linux then I lose my smug feeling of superiority.

      Seriously, does this seem like hypocrisy run rife? Everyone says they want the world to use Linux, but when someone produces a distro that is easy enough for Win users to use as a stepping stone to *cough* 'greater things', everyone mocks it for being too dumbed down.

      I wish some people would keep their attitudes in line with their principles . . .

      --
      "If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
    2. Re:What's wrong with Mandrake? by gregmac · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You see, what we REALLY want is for people to be self-sufficient, and able to figure things out for themselves.

      But the thing is, 98% of people use computers because they are a tool to get a job done. They don't CARE to become self-sufficient, they want it to work. Like it or not, it's a reality of the computing world.

      If your car broke, and you took it to a mechanic, and he refused to do any service on it - even though he knew exactly what was wrong - until you read the engineering spec manuals for all the parts he had to replace, how happy would you be?

      --
      Speak before you think
  2. attention, release candidate 1 ... by nicsterrr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's worth pointing out to anyone thinking of installing this as their main OS that this is an initial release candidate and is nowhere near prime time.. be warned unless you want to find and report bugs.

  3. WTF? by zulux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike

    Ok. I'm a Linux, more specifically a Unix "expert" and I can see nothing wrong with Mandrake:

    A easy to install, easy to use, full featured Linux desktop? How horrible! Oh the humanity! When will it stop!

    It's not like Mandrake Linux pissed in my Wheeties this morning.

    --

    Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

  4. Even if you don't *use* Mandrake ... by timothy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if you don't use Mandrake, you've probably benefited from the work they've put into "making the Linux desktop user friendly."

    (That's a category I'm in right now: I don't currently have any systems running Mandrake, but for about three years running -- until about a month ago -- I did.)

    - Mandrake concentrates on ease of install. Not that everyone's intuition is actually the same, goes the past-the-nipple argument, but Hey, Mandrake 6 did a lot better job with *my* intuition (and hardware) than did any of the contemporaries I can remember putting on.

    - Automount. Yes, it's come and gone strangely (back now?), but Automount is a very good thing. Try explaining to a Mac user the procedure of mounting a CD drive, or a simple %$#@ USB memory key thing.

    - Mandrake (afaik) was the first and so far only Linux distro to be sold as a standalone product in Walmart, and I bought several versions there (as the king of Swamp Castle says "... just to show 'em!"). Software specifics aside, this is another good reason to be grateful to Mandrake, whether you use their distro or not. Lindows was *not* the first Walmart-associated Linux :) [And I could be wrong -- perhaps they also had Red Hat, dunno.]

    Mandrake started to fade off my systems when I discovered how nice Red Hat 8 is, and then when I used Knoppix to convert some machines to Debian. (And since I need to reduce the number of machines floating around here, there are fewer computers with which I care to purely experiment.) However, I plan to try the 9.1 release candidate to see where it falls.

    Cheers,

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  5. Re:NTFS by Selanit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another thing worth pointing out about NTFS is that Mandrake is not the first Linux distribution with NTFS resizing support. Xandros had it when they announced their first official release a few months ago. I suspect that they used the same code as Mandrake, though I don't know. Xandros's PR pages claim that they were the first with that capability.

    I have no idea who to believe, and frankly I don't care who got their first; I'm just glad it's implemented. Now, if we could just get decent NTFS write support, we'd be in much better shape. Being able to read/write your Windows partition from Linux makes dual-booting much more tolerable. On at least one occasion, being able to write a FAT32 partition from Linux has saved my butt. (Windows was refusing to boot because some vital configuration files had gotten corrupted; I couldn't boot from floppy 'cause my disk drive was dead, but I was able to replace them from Linux -- disaster averted!)

    Not being able to do similar things with NTFS partitions is a significant drawback which may be discouraging some people from trying Linux out on their shiny new 2K/XP machine. I hope it gets worked out in the not-too-distant future.