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First Mandrake 9.1 Review Out
icantblvitsnotbutter writes "With Mandrake Linux 9.1 right around the corner, it's OSNews first out of the gates with a review of this desktop-oriented distro's latest release. The review is actually pretty bland, skimming the surface to linger on some of Eugenia's pet peeves. Having used 9.1 in a production environment since beta 3, I can say that the improvements to the installation and the signature Mandrake tools are much-appreciated. Don't forget that Mandrake Club members get their own set of mirrors, as well as being eligible for extras like the voting process that selected the packages for the 9.1 release." Update: 03/25 18:29 GMT by T : anyweb also points out a review of Red Hat Linux 9 on the same site, writing "an informative article -- well I had to say that, I wrote it ;-)"
They are in bankruptcy court. Bankrupt != out of business.
Redhat announced tday it would skip the 9.0 release and go right to 9.1
he's referencing this article. I think it's funny and ontopic...
Installation
.doc files that one word processor can read, but the other can't, so I need to have all three installed to check out which one does each time). Mozilla 1.3 and Gaim 0.59.8 come pre-installed along with a large number of other applications, including mySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, Samba, a large number of 2D/3D games, XFree86 4.3, XMMS, Xine, Quanta, BlueFish 0.9 etc. In the third CD I found "closed" applications included, like Java, Opera, RealPlay 8, AcroRead and more. Java applets work perfectly on Mozilla, but they would load and then not run on the distro's main browser, Konqueror (yes, Java was activated on Konq's prefs). As for Opera 6.12, it would crash on every page that it had java in it.
The installation has been completely revamped. It looks good and its interface is cleaner with fewer steps required by the user (however, the power is still there if you need it, hidden under some 'advanced' buttons on in the 'Summary' screen). I also liked the little 4-option menu asking you how to proceed with the installation regarding partitions, I found it intuitive, clean and better than the competition's. The only things the user needs to do is pick the language, keyboard, mouse, hard drive/partition and the package family and fire away the package installation. After the packages are installed, the user is asked to add a new user and choose the root password. Before the rebooting there is a summary screen, very similar to the one found in SuSE's installation where the user there can do some more advanced configuration (e.g. configure the ethernet card, printer, sound card and monitor) or leave it as-is (autodetect) and reboot the machine to enjoy Mandrake 9.1. I don't have major complaints about the installation procedure, except maybe a single bug I encountered: the installation would pick the audigy() driver for my first generation SBLive! instead of the emu10k() driver, and it would not turn on ALSA on boot by default. I installed Mandrake 9.1 twice and both times the same problem happened, I had no sound at all, until I turned on ALSA and picked the emu10k() driver manually (older versions of Mandrake didn't have problem with this card).
Using the System
Mandrake's kind of slow to boot as it loads a large number of services by default, but that's configurable via Mandrake's control center. KDE 3.1.0 is the main desktop environment, as always. But this time, we get a Mandrake with a... twist. The default widget theme and window manager theme is now original and applies to both Gnome and KDE (in the same way Red Hat did with BlueCurve). The new theme set is called "Galaxy" and it is indeed very cute, especially its widget set. While I still personally like better the BlueCurve window manager theme for its clearly defined buttons (something that Galaxy lacks and can be a problem to users who need more accessibility), Mandrake's widget-set theme is probably the best found today on any Linux. Detailed, clean, with soft on-mouse-over effects that don't distract. Additionally, new icons made their appearance in this release. I do feel that MandrakeSoft has put a real effort in this release in both the usability and looks of their product.
The "What to Do->" menu is not there anymore, but the annoying "Terminals" menu in the root Kmenu which lists 5-6 different... terminals is still there (that's obsolete and geeky, in my humble opinion). KOffice, OpenOffice 1.02 and Gnumeric are also there, but there is no AbiWord (sometimes I get
Using the System II, Conclusion
It was a positive surprise to see Gnome 'taken care of' by MandrakeSoft, as now its default setup is not the Gnome default, but a panel that resembles KDE's (and the other way around of course). The menus are the same as in KDE, and MandrakeSoft has included a utility to edit the menus of Gnome, KDE and WindowMaker. Enlightenment, IceWM and Blackbox also come with Mandrake Linux 9.1 (I would like to see a stable version of XFCE 4.x included in the next Mandrake as well).
The Mandrake Contr
On their website there is now a link to all the 9.1 features, it's on http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/9.1/features/
The best of all with this new release, in my opinion, is that the level of quality is very high. I couldn't find any bug yet - Mandrake improved much in the debuging area as well!
Great to see such a great product - it's really _the_ event in the Linux world...
One of the reasons that release candidates and beta releases exist are to get copies of the software that a company will release into the hands of reporters and reviewers. The expectation is that there will not be significant changes between the softare being reviewed and what ends up in customer's hands.
Strange as it may seem, a lot of people put beta software into production environments. Then again, I understand there are people who use "Windows", knowing that the software is considered to have some rather well known holes, and the company that maintains it has been known to re-introduce holes when patching others.
While the software developers recomend against using beta, or even release candidate software in a production environment, if your production environment needs something that is in that release, you may decide to run with it, and work around the bugs.
One example of a feature that may be enough to move to RC3 of Mandrake 9.1 is the fact that 9.0 would not properly support some tablets, yet 9.1 RC3 does. In my case 9.0 would not support a Wacom Graphire 2, but both rc2 and rc3 of 9.1 have.
If you are a graphic artist, I suspect that this would be a deciding point.
Then again, that's just my opinion. I may be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
I discovered Arson just a few weeks ago and I have been very pleased with it. It is a KDE app and its interface is much more user friendly than that of X-CD-Roast. It handles data, audio, and video cd's. Check out http://arson.sourceforge.net
But using Mandrake to learn Linux? I don't think so.
Sorry, but I don't agree. Nothing is holding you back from learning on Mandrake. There are people who start messing with their system, installing software from source, editing initscripts. Sometimes (often) it breaks, but it's possible to view that as a learning experience, at least that seems to be their motivation.
I learned Linux on Mandrake (I used Suse for a year before Mandrake), and it felt really good to dive into it, everything seemed at the right place. You can still compile your own kernel, compile things from source, or learn how to build rpms. Tweak different settings, etc.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
you obviously haven't been a victim of emerge/ebuild hell. gentoo is a great idea that needs a little maturity (read: robust package management).
;) ), but so does portage. the fact is that all these other systems have more testing behind thier binary packages which makes them more stable and more useable. these other systems also have more testing/engineering behind them to make them more robust. mainly problems arrise from these systems when users go to install packages outside of the officially released and supported packages.
wanna get the latest version of kde? well, sorry you're going to need the latest version of xfree (kde doesn't really have much hooks at all in xfree let alone having 3.1.1 needing a uber-modern version of xfree. xfree 4.3 on the other hand has BUSTED fonts in gentoo).
emerge is nice and fun. it's still a toy until it gets extremely more robust management. a user should be able to "lock" certain config files, while leaving others for the system to handle. better yet, the package management system should know if i've changed a config file, other wise it can handle it.
YAST/rpm/apt-get may have their issues (ok deb users will claim that apt doesn't have issues
untill i can easily get my printer/webcam/scanner/video acceleration/audio/etc working nicely under gentoo, it's time to find something stable. i said that a few months back and tried RH 8.0. at the time that was worse than the gentoo that i had (at least i could print from RH). so finally, i gave up and installed win98 so i could use my devices when i wasn't surfing the net.
Did you even bother to read the article? Or did you just read the slashdot summary and take that as gospel?
Because the thing is, if you had bothered to read the article, you'd have found that her review is really very favorable to Mandrake 9.1. Here's some direct quotes from her conclusion:
"With this release I see a very serious and very respectable effort from MandrakeSoft to create a better Mandrake Linux. It is just obvious that this is not 'just another release', it really feels that it had extra care ...."
"I would urge everyone to download Mandrake 9.1 and give it a go when it is released. It is a worthy distribution and especially this version is a sincere effort from MandrakeSoft to create something better and competitive ...."
And there's heaps more praise in the article. She also discusses hardware detection and the speed and usability of the system (two of your other uninformed criticisms, as I recall) and she doesn't (AFAICS) try to start a flame war over window managers.
Yes, she does point out some problems with the distro. But do you seriously expect a reviewer to give unconditional praise to a product?? Gee, I mean, I could just read what Mandrake's web site says about 9.1 if I wanted that! What's wrong with some constructive criticism?
(and FWIW, I've used Mandrake as my main distro since 2000 (I also play around with crux linux when I don't want bloat :) and have generally found it to be the best of the major distros)