Review Mandrake Linux 9.1 Power Pack Edition

An anonymous reader sent us linkage to an overview of the new Mandrake 9.1. Many screenshots, as well as compliments for the latest KDE revision. Worth a glance if you're not already running Debian.

Comments

But...

[Gortbusters.org]

I'm not already running Debian, I'm running RedHat... is it still worth my time?!?

Status of Mandrake?

[afroginthevalley]

What is the legal and financial status of Mandrake now? Are they recovering?

Seems thin...

[ElGuapoGolf]

I dunno if I would have made this review a story on slashdot... the review it self seems really thin, doesn't mention anywhere that I saw (and if I missed it, my bad) the specifics (kernel revision, glibc version). It doesn't talk much about X at all (but then it was only tested on ATI so we wouldn't know if the NVidia drivers were included).

Anyhow, in case anybody is wondering, Mandrake includes...

Kernel 2.4.21
XFree86 4.3.0
Glibc 2.3.1
GCC 3.2.2

The Kernel 2.4.21 is a neat trick. Last I checked 2.4.20 was the current stable version.

Re:Seems thin...

[eggcozy]

'I dunno if I would have made this review a story on slashdot... the review it self seems really thin, doesn't mention' ... 'kernel revision' ... 'glibc version' ...

Not all people who read slashdot are linux geeks. From the article ... "This article isn't so much of a review as it is my experience installing and using it"

This is exactly the type of "review" that I am interested in. Is the distro easy to deal with? What are problems I might run into? Is it easy enough to transition to so I can recommend it to my father or friends? The reviewer covers those questions to an extent and comes up with some decent gripes/requests.

Re:Seems thin...

[ElGuapoGolf]

I dunno... it seems kind of important to me.

When you see a windows review, you know by virtue of the name which version of the "windows kernel" you're dealing with.

If you look at hardware reviews for computer systems, they *always* mention the OS + revision level (Windows 2000 + SP3).

Putting that kind of information into a "products specs" table would hurt nobody and help quite a few people.

The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[Gortbusters.org]

The Rant

Part I

My biggest gripe isn't so much with Mandrake as it is with Linux developers as a whole. First, can we PLEASE start naming things in a moderately descriptive way? Names like grip, alsa, chbg, gimp, mozilla, k3b. Huh? Great programs all, but do you have any idea what they do by their names? Second, installing apps is still far too complicated. Yes it's much easier with a RPM based distro and in particular with Mandrake 9.1 but...Lets see if we can't load EVERYTHING a program needs to operate into that RPM. I've only been at this 5 months and if I see one more "lib" file I think I may go postal. Just load it for crying out loud. Also, just once I would love to have an app install with every add-on available. If you're worried about bloat then have a "minimum" and "full" install. I'm absolutely convinced that this is the #1 reason for people leaving Linux before they even really get started.

I really wish we could do away with having to find various sites to download updates or additions. I would like to see Mandrake Update act more like Windows Update. I don't care where I download them from, just auto configure that by asking me where I am. Then download the files and skip listing the lib/perl/whatever. Just download it and install it with everything it needs.

Networking in a Windows environment still isn't easy although this go round Mandrake installs everything you need to do it by default. I would suggest some sort of "wizard" to walk someone through the set up. It would go something like: "Do you want to network this computer to Windows machines?", "What is your windows workgroup/domain name?", "Please enter the Windows user name and password." etc...

Part II

I have become a Linux fan and would dearly love people to switch to it but I'm a little tired of hearing the lies told by some in the Linux community. When someone who knows better hears those lies it tunes them out to the rest of their argument. Some points:

1 - I've built dozens and dozens of computers with custom installations of XP and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen it crash.

2 - I've got an XP box in this room that's been running for several weeks, maybe months without a reboot (it's been so long I've lost track).

3 - I've seen no evidence that desktop Linux distros are more secure than Windows. Check the sites that cover Linux security, bugs, and updates a little more often. Sure, they don't get hit by viruses as much but I believe that's mainly due to the fact that the viruses are written for Windows. When Linux gets a 30% market share and people start writing viruses for them, then we'll talk. I think Linux developers are discovering that the more any OS can do, the larger the chance for security holes.

Windows XP is, at its core, a great OS. It's the garbage that MS has done to it that has turned me against it. Product activations, phoning home, and invasive EULA's have all taken their toll on me. For me, it all comes down to the fact that it's my computer and I'll do what I please with it. What I do with it and what I have in/on it is none of MS's, or anyone else's business. That, along with the fact that Linux is more "tweakable" and has a lower total cost of ownership is the Linux advantage.

Rant Off

My whining aside I really love using Mandrake Linux 9.1. Why else would I load it on 3 of my computers?. Mandrake Linux is easier to use, more powerful, and more compatible than ever. While offering a great computing experience now, it also portends of an exciting future for Linux and Mandrake Linux. I now feel comfortable recommending Mandrake Linux to anyone and everyone willing to put a little effort into learning a new OS.

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[OpCode42]

Heh, and this got a "Troll" moderation.

This is actually the third page of the review! Goddammit, read the article if you're going to moderate comments on it!

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[baywulf]

First, can software publishers PLEASE start naming things in a moderately descriptive way? Names like Acrobat, Flash, Quicktime, Excel. Huh? Great programs all, but do you have any idea what they do by their names? Does Acrobat have anything to do with the circus? Does Flash have anything to do with a camera?

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see if we can't load EVERYTHING a program needs to operate into that RPM. I've only been at this 5 months and if I see one more "lib" file I think I may go postal.

It seems that a lot of developers are over exited when it comes to shared libraries. In the past everything would be statically linked. This obviously caused problems, as everything had to be rebuilt if the library changed. So shared libraries were added to Unix. Now the library and the application can be seperate objects and one can be changed without rebuilding the other. Great!

The problem is that when developers got hold of shared libraries, they started to use them for everything. Even when the library in question was unlikely to be shared, or when their code required a very specific version of the library, it would still be built as a shared library. Why? Because shared libraries are great! Now we have the problem that even the simpleist of applications generally require two or three libraries, and those libraries may require other libraries.

Developers need to learn when to use static linking (The code requires a very specific version of the library, the library in question is unlikely to be used by any other application, or the library is as small or the same size as the application itself and plugins) and when to use shared libraries (The library is "core" to the system, is designed to be used by many applications, will be used by many applications, it is a large library supplied by a third party)

Not that this will ever happen. I know I'm a dreamer though.

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[paradesign]

at least theyre words, much better than the cryptic alphanumerics of Linux. Also programs with 'real' names are more memorable, im more willing to remember 'photo downloader' than phDl and its associated libs. Not every program suffers from this either, but a significant number do, and it makes it scary to a new user. Things are getting better, but not by much, check the freshmeat listing if you want an example. but if the program works, i could care less what its called.

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

hmmmm...

Turbo CD Ripper / Grip
Photoshop / GIMP
Internet Explorer / Mozilla
Easy CD Creator / Eroaster
Windows Media Player / XMMS
Etc Etc........

If you can honestly say that Windows apps are no less intuitively named than their Open Source clones,
you are obviously blinded by zealotry.

Sad.....

Re:The chilling conclusion (author's rant)

[cowbutt]

Can you name any examples of applications that use shared libraries, but which the libraries aren't shared?

I can only think of drip at the moment.

The underlying problem is poorly specified packages (and I know some of my own fall into this category).

When building a binary rpm, RPM (the tool) will automatically detect shared libraries used by binaries and add dependencies accordingly (e.g. libasound.so.2). There's nothing to stop the package creator manually adding more informative package dependencies (e.g. Requires: alsa-lib >= 0.9.2) for the benefit of users installing their package. Red Hat are fairly good at this, and Matthias Saou of freshrpms.net fame is even better, IMHO. But a lot of third-party packagers aren't so dilligent. Adding manual dependencies also makes it easier for automatic dependency resolution tools (and this is why Debian's package management works well, rather than the technology!)

There's also nothing stopping a packager from creating an install.sh that rpm -Uvh's all the packages it needs. I seem to recall that CheckPoint do this with FireWall-1 for RH Linux.

--

What I would have liked to see....

[Bowie J. Poag]

...is Mandrake adopt/keep close to RH's BlueCurve idea. Once the Linux desktop starts having a consistant appearance to it, we'll get closer and closer to having a universal theme standard.

Universal theme standard = Easier job for guys like me, and application developers who've been waiting for the dust to settle before moving their apps to the platform.

Re:What I would have liked to see....

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, I think they're a little less comprehensive than BlueCurve was (bluecurve is an entire rebranding of red hat linux basically), but Mandrake does ship with a unified widget theme, called Galaxy.

So basically you can use GTK or Qt and things will look consistant. If you use GTK you can use the themed stock artwork for extra consistancy, if you use Qt AFAIK you must link against KDE to get that.

flame bait

[j4ck50n]

"...Worth a glance if you're not already running Debian"

Mandrake 9.1 is not all that bad...

[Alan]

I've been a gentoo guy for a while now, but at my last job I decided to try one of the "end user" distros and as the other guy was running it, I chose mandrake (the 9.1 beta at that time).

I have to admit, it was very nice to not have to do anything to get things set up. Things just worked, be it the mouse, the display, the printer setup (which autoprobed the network and presented me with a list of printers and other cups servers on the network), etc. Hardware autodetection was great, and the install was the "insert cd, click, click, click, wait for 20 min, reboot" type, which the only thing I did different by default was not install kde (I like gnome, and at the time I wanted to be up as quickly as possible, without having to wait for two full desktops to load from CD.

The included tools worked very well, but they didn't seem as "integrated" as in redhat 9 (which I'm using at the place I am now). They worked great, and all had the same look, but there is definately something to be said for bluecurve and it's ability to make everything look like it works together.

I didn't get the chance to try out the windows partition resizing or ability to install in a dual boot situation.

All in all something I'd definately try again, and will (and have) recommended to friends.

Re:Mandrake 9.1 is not all that bad...

[mahdi13]

The Windows partitioning/resizing tool with Mandrake 9.1 is excellent. I used it to resize the WindowsXP partition on my laptop...and then loaded Red Hat 9 on the space I made available =)

Mandrake seems to "candy coated" for my tastes and half the tools did not work for me, I have a lot more experiance with Red Hat and it fits my desktop tastes better...then there's Gentoo using Fluxbox, but that's another story ;-)

Linux more secure?

[airuck]

From the article:
I've seen no evidence that desktop Linux distros are more secure than Windows

Well then, here is some required reading: Why not microsoft

Mandrake says...

[SuperBanana]

"I'm not dead!"

"Oh, yes you are."

"I think I'll release another version..."

"Come on now, you're not fooling anyone"

"I feel...happy..."

Not an article

[palad1]

Many screenshots, as well as compliments for the latest KDE revision.

Far too many compliments, far too few explanations.

So you like your music? As I discovered with 9.0, music sounds much better in Mandrake than in Windows. [bunch of xmms screenshots]

Sounds like a CNet review to me.

There's nothing there to see, move along citizen, get back to work, the computer is your friend.

Re:Typo

[Lxy]

Since you've missed the obvious, let me explain. If you're running Debian, you probably have enough geek blood that shiny new things like Mandrake and Redhat releases go unnoticed. Who cares what version oif KDE it ships with, if a Debian user wants a shiny new version of KDE, the Debian user fires up apt and gets it. Who cares how sleek the installer is, my system is tweaked. Why would I want to re-install?

Simply put, if you're a Debian user, you probably won't use this. For anything. This is not to say that one distro is better, certainly both Debian and Mandrake have their merits. All of this, however, doesn't excuse the editor from flashing his Debian-using ego around.

A useful review, only for home users

[jvmatthe]

If you're a home user, then this seems like a review you'll find useful.

For serious users who use a computer to get work done, this review is fluff. Maybe I'm just getting more exacting with old age, but when I read a review of a new OS, I don't want to hear about the MP3 player and the neat program you found to change your desktop wallpaper. I want to know if it comes with good development tools, an interface that is uncluttered and easy to navigate without a mouse, documentation for everything installed, and easy tools to administer services I might need. If I'm going to be dealing with documents, I'm going to want to know not if KOffice is cool but whether it will handle serious .doc files sent to me by colleagues. And finally I'd want to know how easy it is to keep the system secure and updated with the latest fixes.

Didn't see a whole lot of that in this review, but I'm sure it helped someone decide to try Mandrake.

packaging

[dollargonzo]

i just *love* the guy's rant about packaging and downloading necessary files. sure i think you all know where this is going, but this shameless plug is no longer so shameless, especially with headline including you know what. yes, you need to go find RPMs on websites with various mirrors. yes, you need to install all the required libs, etc. i find it quite interesting that he says that mandrake comes with everything you will ever need. why is this a good thing? perhaps because getting new stuff (the largest interaction with the distribution you will have) might not be so terribly easy. i think the solution is obvious

i would sign this "The Debian Troll" but i don't think that is necessary

Re:packaging

[IamTheRealMike]

That's not an obvious solution to me. I use Red Hat, despite the lack of huge apt repositories, and I'm not stupid. The fact is that a model in which you attempt to centrally package every piece of software your users could ever need has been tried, it was a cool idea, but it seems broken to me.

Perhaps if the Debian teams spent less time on packaging everything (and managing all the interactions) and more time on the distro itself, it might have things like graphical installers, unified themes and all the other things that Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE are doing. Yes, that sounds like a troll, maybe it is but the parent was just as bad.

I mean really, the whole situation is just absurd. You shouldn't need to decide which distro to use on the basis of how easy it is to install things. Period.

Mi revoow ov ManDrake

[jocks]

Hello everybody, I don't understand what I am talking about. I bought Mandrake and the frontend was very shiny. The commands were hard to understand. I think Windows XP is better 'cos it is more secure and more reliable. It came in a box wiv a manual.

Next week I will be revoowing different types of hot oats.

How the hell did that review make slashdot?

Mandrake is doing well nowadays...

[joestar]

It seems that they are doing much better since their latest Mandrake 9.1 was very warmly welcomed by users. In addition, their new business model based on Club subscription is certainly the best idea a Free Software company ever had to make money with Linux! On the users' side, the Club is a great tool to get and install - with one click - all the neat stuff that isn't available for free or difficult to find (such as RealPlayer, Flash player, many hardware drivers...).

I installed Mandrake 9.1 on many different machines and it's clear that it's their best distribution so far: I had extremely few glitches, and everything installed and auto-configured very quickly. In addition, their new desktop is very slick, in particular under KDE, with anti-aliasing everywhere, new icons (created by Everaldo, the designer of the new KDE icons) and so on...

I'm warmly recommending Mandrake 9.1 to all my friend and at work, because I found it very much more stable (less bugs) than Red Hat, especially on the desktop side (I found the X Window provided with Red Hat to be particularly unstable). When compared to Debian, it's really the same Free Software world and spirit, with 2 years of advance and a great desktop by default (yes CmdrTaco!!!). And I won't annoy you with supermount and other dynamic desktop options that made my life (and some friends') Microsoft-free for two years now...

By the way (1): it seems that Mandrake is also doing well at Download.com (look in the Linux section for you dudes who aren't under Linux). Much more than Red Hat and Suse actually.

By the way (2): the MandrakeStore has deeply improved since Mandrake 9.0 and I received my Mandrake pack pre-order in time.

Re:Mandrake is doing well nowadays...

[hoop33]

I'm warmly recommending Mandrake 9.1 to all my friend . . .

At first I assumed you'd made a typo and meant "friends," but then I realized this was Slashdot ;-)

Re:Mandrake is doing well nowadays...

[joestar]

The Mandrake Download Edition provides only Free Software applications, and all Mandrakesoft developments are released under the GPL. Anyway, buyers of Mandrake packs and club subscribers can access many non-Free Software applications such as Opera for instance.

Re:Mandrake is doing well nowadays...

[praedor]

I use Mandrake exclusively now, having moved from Redhat when Mandrake first came along simply for the 586.rpm optimizations (which don't mean squat-all now, really). Each released version has been alternatively crappy/buggy and mostly good. 9.0 sucked, 9.1 is quite nice. I buy each version because I wish to keep them going and I am a MandrakeClub member - and a member of the mandrake expert mailing list.

From traffic/responses on the Mandrake mailing list and the email alerts from MandrakeSoft that I get, I would say that Mandrake is doing better but is not out of the hotseat yet. In order to head towards solvency and continued existence, they have had to toss developers - leaving them shorthanded in many respects. They are not recovering $$ from MandrakeClub to a great extent. They MUST obtain real sales of product to make the bulk of their money. MandrakeClub is merely supplemental income to help offset the losses. Thus, their business model is similar to Redhat's though not as well entrenched as yet. They need big ticket sales of support contracts and business server contracts to make big money as selling retail desktop packages doesn't make money for linux distros. I think MandrakeSoft is still open for new ideas to generate needed cash and are not, by any means, out of the woods yet.

They seem to have a reasonably close relationship with WineX so perhaps they can leverage that to help promote a gamer's linux for additional sales. What they really need is for the French government, ala the growing segments of the German government wrt SUSE, to start going to Mandrake for big government contracts in place of M$. Also, to my thinking, the distro that can break into the wireless networking world (802.11b and 802.11g) so that their distro works out of the box with most cards/devices will be a big winner. Wireless is just about the weakest area for linux in existence. No opensource drivers (nor any commercial binary drivers) for ANY 802.11g devices and only scattershot compatibility with 802.11b devices - and a major pain to setup wireless networking once the device is working in comparison to the Mac and Windoze.

Fix wireless with contracts to various device producers and you have a real futureproof winner.

Re:Mandrake is doing well nowadays...

[jonadab]

Not exactly. They understand the value of open-source software and
prefer it, and I have heard that they release all of the stuff they
develop (such as the excellent harddrake and printerdrake) under
open-source licenses, but they do include some things Debian does
not, so their policies are apparently not 100% the same. Also, some
of the non-download editions of Mandrake include some proprietary
commericial software bundled; Debian as a matter of policy does not
have any special non-download editions with value-added software
bundles. (If this bothers you about Mandrake, you can just get the
download edition, which has no such bundles -- though the third CD
does have some freely-distributable software that doesn't qualify
under everyone's definition of free, but I was under the impression
that Debian has a non-free section as well, so that may be neither
here nor there.)

Maaann...

[Frederique Coq-Bloqu]

I remember the good old days when Linux was difficult to set up. You've changed maaan!

terrible music

[zhrike]

Screenshot.

My god. That's some terrible shit right there.
It's a snapshot of eighties cheesy metal.

And what is that Metallica doing there?

"Two of these things are not like the other...la la la la laaaa."

Effusive WinXP praise misplaced

[Shinzaburo]

I've got a five year-old PC that is due for replacement around the time Half-Life 2 rolls around, and I'm pretty sure Mandrake will be the distro that's installed on the old box. Being a complete Linux newbie myself, it was nice to read a review of Mandrake by a (relatively) new Linux user.

The conclusions bring up some good points, echoing many of the frustrations that non-propellerheads have come across when using Linux as a desktop operating system. But I thought the enthusiastic praise for Windows XP was a bit overdone. WinXP has its strong points relative to Linux, but stability is not one of them. While the author may find XP stable enough, I've gotten it to spontaneously reboot itself more times than I care to count. With its bazillion lines of code, XP is butting up against one of the tenets of chaos theory (complex systems tend to break down easily), and it looks like it may get worse before it gets better.

I'm looking forward to installing Mandrake on the old machine so I can draw my own comparative conclusions, but I don't think I'll be missing XP much. Especially with the Mac OS X box nearby that is my primary system. =)

ATI Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

9.1 comes with XFree86 4.3 so those of you with Radeon cards who want to use the vendor drivers will have to downgrade. Oh and they don't provide the 4.2 packages on the CD's...

Only 2 distros

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

There are only 2 distros in Taco's eyes, I guess. Mandrake and Debian. Oh wait, he runs OSX...

the viruses in the chilling conclusion

[Maimun]

Viruses are not written for Windows,
this is an imprecise statement.
Viruses are written for the default
Windows MUA. It (allegedly, I don't
use 'doze) tries to "make things easy"
and interprets (part of) the email
as programs. And it also (allegedly ...)
runs external applications over
attachments wihout (much) notification.
I mean, come on, there are certainly
more basic mailers under Windows that
don't know about the scripts, html and
don't run extarnal apps automatically.
Trying to infect through such a mailer
would be an excercise in futility.

This may not be true *if* the recent
Windows'es have gotten so integrated
that emails are handled by the core
of the OS :)

In addition, many Windows users work as
administrators, or still use 97/ME which
don't offer protection, so the damage
is potentially unlimited.

So, the viruses/worms exploit weaknesses
in the system. When someone says "they
infect X because they are written for X",
there is an implication that anything
can be infected, if someone competent
enough wanted to. This is clearly wrong.

Still TMG

[b-baggins]

Still TMG (Too Much Geek) in the interface. Prime example: Mount point information in the drive names on the desktop. This information should be hidden in an info or properties dialog. It's only needed for power users and is intimidating to the mainstream user Linux is supposedly shooting for.

My gut feeling, though, is that this info is put in the drive description on the desktop because you'll still be required to drop to the command line too much and need to have it right there at your fingertips.

Sorry....subjective.

[msimm]

While the author may find XP stable enough, I've gotten it to spontaneously reboot itself more times than I care to count.

I appreciate your frustration but I think the author is right. Your reboots could be caused by a number of problems, not necissarily the fault of Microsoft.

I think its important that we dont just blindly bash MS or we lose focus. XP does seem to be more stable and this is a good thing for those who are stuck (or happy) using it.

I've been using Linux for about 4 years now and I *do* experience crashes. Usually lockups associated with my graphics card (closed source NVidia drivers), but it could be my hardware.

A lot a variables in a working computer and its easy to blame Microsoft. But we don't really gain anything, especially if its unfounded.

Author's Statement About Linux Security vs Windows

[SilentMajority]

Author: "I've seen no evidence that desktop Linux distros are more secure than Windows. Check the sites that cover Linux security, bugs, and updates a little more often. Sure, they don't get hit by viruses as much but I believe that's mainly due to the fact that the viruses are written for Windows. When Linux gets a 30% market share and people start writing viruses for them, then we'll talk." Security problems don't require virus writers and marketshare isn't the cause of problems either. For example, Apache web server has a greater marketshare than IIS but the number of vulnerabilities is SUBSTANTIALLY lower. Granted, we're not talking about a "desktop distro" but this illustrates the flawed logic behind his statement.

About consistent look ..

[ciupman]

... and to everyone who is always talking about it i just say .. bah .. IT'S NOT THE DAMN LOOK IT MATTERS ... It's the damn consistent API ..

Any linux programmer just keeps asking the same thing to itself ..

"Will i use GNOME/GTK? Will i use QT/KDE? What will prevail?"

I'm sick of having to recompile piles of diferent libs because aplication "A" uses QT 3.xx and then it's new version already uses QT 4.xx that completely deprecates it's previous version API..

Damnit .. there are 5 year old aplications that still run in new windows versions .. talking about compatibility .. (and don't talk to me about dos because i can still run many dos games in my winXP box.. )

Linux doesn't need a consistent look .. linux needs a stable and unified framework .. I know that this might lead to stupid "wars" between gnome and kde groupies .. but for linux to advance we have to choose .. advanced studies must be made to know wich one of the API is really the more stable, faster and 100% free (hi there QT !!), and not things like "Kde/Gnome is better because it is ... bla bla bla". 100% efforts should be directed towards a unique API!!!

Re:hmmm

[EvilAlien]

Ya, I think I missed the memo. Are we all supposed to hold Debian up as the One True Linux? I thought Slackware was the distro we were all supposed to mindlessly acknowledge as the most l33t.

Are we also supposed to chant "Mandrake is for newbies, Mandrake is about Ease-of-Use" repeatedly, or has it finally become fashionable to recognize their ties with clueful things like Bastille, Prelude, and other security-related projects?. Sorry, I'm a little behind on my groupthink ;)

Linux is what you make of it, any distribution can be installed and configured to promote ease-of-use, security, maximum customization, and fine-grained control.

Comparing RedHat 9, Mandrake 9.1, and SuSE 8.2

[buggered]

I have been comparing these three distro's (and Lindows 3.0) on two different machines for the last few weeks. And from the experiences I have had, Mandrake 9.1 has worked the best. One of the machines (a WalMart.com/Microtel/Lindows box) would not install RedHat 9 (RedHat 8.0 would) because the VIA processor caused some test to fail. On the other machine (a Shuttle BareBones system) I had a terrible time installing SuSE (oddly enough SuSE 8.1 would install fine). Mandrake 9.1 installed on both machines without a hitch.

I could use my Epson Printer, Scanner, and digital camera on the Mandrake 9.1 without any messing around. But (after I finally got the SuSE installed) I could not get the scanner to work. I thought I would install the Kooka program but it was nowhere to be found.

However, one of the things I don't like about Mandrake is that they put 'mdk' in all of the RPM names. That has proven to be some grief in the past.

I should also note that I have tried Debian on the BareBones machine and could never get X windows to work. I also had Gentoo running on it for months and really liked Gentoo. I like both Debian and Gentoo a LOT better for keeping things up to date than RPM's. But I have had lots of trouble with them when setting up audio and video cards, scanners, cameras, printers, etc. For example (and the reason I took Gentoo off of the BareBones system) when I added a printer with Gentoo, it turned out I would have had to re-compile the kernel, figured out what modules, and so on. Admittedly I would have learned a lot more doing it that way, but sometimes (for mental health reasons) I just want to plug something in and have it work. No fuss no muss.

Anyway when (if?) I get my review done it will be at http://www.qrwsoftware.com/rants/shootout.html.

Re:Maybe

[kitzilla]

I forgot to lock out my Mandrake 9.1 desktop a couple weekends ago. Returned to find two of my kids--ages 11 and 4--camped out on my computer and playing Frozen Bubble.

They'd figured out how to navigate Mandrake on their own--not too bad, considering I have it set up sorta Mac-style. The 11-year-old asked to browse the Internet, and did so without my instruction. Now they want a Linux box of their own.

So, yes, Mandrake 9.1 is easy enough for pretty much everyone. It installs almost completely configured, with well thought-out unified menus, full mp3 support, terrific fonts, and their slick-looking Galaxy desktop theme. KDE runs noticably faster under MDK than RH9. And it's nice being able to install Windowmaker, IceWM, Blackbox, and Enlightenment right off the install CDs. Each desktop's menu is preconfigured, too. Easy.

Hope Mandrake makes it. I certainly prefer their current release to Red Hat.