A Galaxy of Possibility: Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite

uninet writes "Our last consideration of Mandrake Linux was early this year when my colleague Eduardo Sanchez thoroughly reviewed Mandrake 9.0. In that review, Sanchez noted the numerous advances made in 9.0, but also reported some serious flaws that somewhat limited his enthusiasm. With that considered, we were anxious to find out if 9.1 could again return Mandrake to the amazing quality achieved in release 8.2. See what we found (including a look at features exclusive to the ProSuite edition)."

Comments

A little late?

[OctaneZ]

Well seeing as Mandrake is in freeze for 9.2 gold (rc1 is out), isn't this a bit late?

Linux Mandrake 9.1 Guide

[mandrakewilson]

http://mandrakeuser.cjb.net

New web site up on how to set up mandrake 9.1 to ease the configuration pains of the new linux user. Written and catered for the moderate computer user. It covers how to get and install mandrake and add in most of the needed applications. Covers most of the major software included in the distribution, other freely available applications, newbie command line tutorial, how to handle some common and annoying bugs peculiar to each application.
This HOWTO is my first contribution community, and since I found newbie documentation wanting, I wrote one myself. It is for the impatient user who wants to reduce their startup time, and would apply to other distributions and mandrake versions as well.

Written from a user's point of view, it covers how to get and install Mandrake, add in most of the needed applications, a newbie command line tutorial, and how to handle some peculiar bugs to each application. This guide might spare you a lot of googling for answers as it's all placed on one convenient website.
PART I
1. Introduction
2. Indispensable Tools for the Linux User
3. Useful links

PART II - Mandrake Installation
1. Getting Mandrake 9.1
2. Installing Mandrake 9.1
3. Going through the install sequence
4. Using Mandrake
5. Nice things to add easily
6. Configuration with Mandrake Control Center
7. Configuration with Gnome Control Center
8. Important Configuration of Menus and MIME Types
9. More Advanced Configuration

PART III - Linux Shell and Apps
1. Navigating around terminal
2. Shells -- bash, csh, rsh, sh
3. Environments and Paths
4. File Permissions
5. Editing files
6. Linking
7. Finding Files
8. Using grep
9. Basic bash scripts knowledge
10. Running Remote X applications
11. Mounting Remote File Systems
12. Language setup for man pages
13. Handling Print Jobs

PART IV - Software Packages
1. What are packages?
2. Specifying Sources For Online Downloading - Mandrake Mirrors, Texstar, PLF
3. Packages to be installed from Mandrake CDs - Mesa, mplayer, Timidity, pan, gaim, mozplugger
4. Packages to install from Texstar - Macromedia Flash, nano, Real Player
5. Mplayer and Codecs
6. Other essential packages- Open Office, Sun Java, Adobe Acrobat 5, BitTorrent
7. Setting up SMB share for Windows
8. Using vncserver for remote desktop applications
9. File Sharing - p2p networks - Limewire, edonkey, lmule
10. Running M$ Office under Linux.
11. Games - SNES, MAME, WineX

PART V - Advanced FAQ
1. How do I get DRI 3D acceleration to work?
2. Mandrake Fonts Deuglification and Anti-aliasing
3. Email Clients and Web Browsers (Handling mailto: and http:)
4. Full Mozilla Plugins Configuration (Quicktime, Java, Flash, Mplayer)
5. Konquerer Plugins Configuration
6. X Windows xmatrix screensaver
7. How to adjust the sound volume permanently

#1: Mandrake consistently number 1 in userland

[sniggly]

According to most polls including the one on open for business mandrake is the most widely used distribution. Throughout the years Mandrake has gained the reputation of being a consumer oriented, fun & easy Linux. Even where RedHat, SuSe and other distro's have caught up with mandrake in user friendliness the perception persists.

I run mandrake on a ti powerbook g4 (apple) and the support from the mandrake ppc community is excellent. (Stew Benedict deserves mentioning). Mandrake PPC is on a slower (annual) release cycle.

I hope mandrake can stay the most popular linux distribution, it earned it through dedication to user friendliness and keeping to the spirit of open source arguably better than RedHat and SuSe.

Re:Is It Worth Jumping To? Yes!

[joestar]

Besides its installer, there are two things that, in my opinion, make Mandrake a great distro compared to Red Hat:

1) its calpability to install/uninstall software easily with the urpmi tools, from multiple sources - for instance, just type (or use the rpmdrake app): urpmi the_app_I_need and urpmi will automatically search for the other packages needed for this app (dependencies) and install them if you accept. The power of this tool is that if you added a FTP source (or multiple FTP sources) in addition to your DVD source for insta,ce, it will look for the missing libs/missing apps in all these sources. This is very convenient.

2) the Mandrake Club applications sources (60,000 packages!) which can be added to the URPMI sources. It provides many many many apps, including most common commercial software (FlashPlayer...). Just select an app in the list (or use the search utility), click on install and it downloads and installs the app. This is powerful actually.

Additionnally, using the "PLF" (plf.zarb.org) source of apps (unofficial) just provides direct download and install access to all codecs needed to play all videos formats (AVI, MOV...) under Xine and other video-players for instance... Maybe not very legal, but convenient for the least.