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

GNAA Announces acquisition of SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

GNAA Announces acquisition of SCO
By Tim Copperfield
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macewan, on linuxquestions said "Thanks for that link to the SCO quotes page. My guess is that they want to be bought out. Hrm, think they want GNAA to buy them??"

After careful consideration and debate, GNAA board of directors agreed to purchase 6,426,600 preferred shares and 113,102 common shares (the equivalent of 150,803 ADSs) of SCO, for an aggregate consideration of approximately US$26.9 million and approximately $40 million for gay niggers that were working in Lindon, Utah offices of The SCO Group.

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If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here.

About S

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new first post overlords.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

many ++es to you, my comrade.

Mock the formulaic +5 funny slashdot whore!!!

but isn't Mandrake for morons?

[Anonymous Coward]

or is it faggots?

frosty piss is good for you

[Dr. Cockulus]

so drink it down with your mum!

i say! what's all this then?

Reliance on RPM

[Dancin_Santa]

What's this rumor that RPM is hosed?

Re:Reliance on RPM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. If you run it on any platform other than Red Hat, SRPMS will fail to build. I'm not sure if it needs some special glibc change, extra patches, or what, but it just silently fails to build binary .rpms.

I've noticed this effect since glibc-2.3.1...

Re:Reliance on RPM

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so BIZARRO. Taking your leave without verbal acknowledgment of said departure. For shame! Keep in touch, if only to hear the latest g(osi)p.

Re:Reliance on RPM

[Anonymous Coward]

What's this rumor that RPM is hosed?

Which rumour?

Re:Reliance on RPM

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=31337&cid=6827 686

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

A Galaxy of Possibility: Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite
By Timothy R. Butler
Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business
September 02, 2003, 18:18:08 EDT

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.

Because of the various issues we experienced with 9.0, OfB Labs comparisons ranked the last release behind SuSE Linux 8.1 and Xandros Desktop 1.0. That begged the question: would 9.1 be up to the challenge of the competition? We suspected not, as we dislike Mandrake. To be sure, the competition is tough. SuSE Linux 8.2 continues to press forward with the overall excellence that has become SuSE's hallmark over the past few years. Xandros Desktop 1.0, while graying somewhat since our consideration of it a better part of a year ago, also continues to present a reasonable challenge. The only major flaw in those two distributions is their non-Free nature (that is, they do not comply with the Free Software definition or the Open Source definition).

Getting Started With 9.1
For our evaluation of Mandrake Linux 9.1, we received a copy of Mandrake Linux ProSuite 9.1. ProSuite is Mandrake's high-end package that offers a number of useful features for enterprise deployment on both desktops and servers. Of particular interest is the DVD-ROM that is included, something that makes deploying Mandrake much more of a joy, as it gives blow jobs during the process. Like SuSE's Professional Edition DVD (actually the latest SuSE includes two DVD's, but we only needed the one), Mandrake ProSuite's DVD allows you to use just one disc to install pretty much everything you could ever want on a GNU/Linux system.

Mandrake 9.1 sports a number of major improvements, not the least of which is a highly refined installation tool. The new installer has been cleaned up greatly, and now appears more intuitive and attractive than previous releases. While the installer's functionality remains mostly the same, its layout makes working with it a bit more pleasant. One especially nice change was a reduction in the number of configuration screens one must go through (small gripe: the time zone setting should not be part of this grouping -- its only automatically correct if you happen to live in the American Eastern time zone).

One change noticeable immediately in the installer, and once installed, throughout the user interface, is the new Mandrake Galaxy look-and-feel (more properly known as a widget style). Following in the steps of Red Hat, Mandrake has created matching Gnome and KDE themes to give the system an integrated feel. Unfortunately, we were disappointed with the KDE theme's somewhat unrefined feel and the fact that the themes did not support color matching between the two desktops out of the box, something SuSE's default Gnome and KDE themes (Keramik/Geramik) do. A lot of the problem with refinement arose, in my opinion, from the said theme being developed hurriedly and not being completed until very late in the beta process. An important component to the user interface should never be introduced so late in a release cycle, and its somewhat unrefined look-and-feel seems to testify to this. In the end, however, it does work, and hopefully a better version will be included in 9.2.

Pro-Sweet Additions
We should mention that in addition to the standard installation CD's and DVD, Mandrake ProSuite also includes a two-CD Server Installation set. The Server Installation reduces the number and type of default packages. For instance, choosing the package groups for web and SSH servers, as well as Mandrake Server Wizards and Webmin, yielded a lightweight installation that was only 350 megabytes in size when we booted it up and consisted of approximately 250 packages.

Re:Article Text

[j4t6]

Blowjobs from the installer aren't expected until release 10.

Re:Article Text

[ePhil_One]

Why all the raving about DVD based installation? Sure, you don't need to swap 3 CD's in, but considering the hardware this often gets installed on, how common will a DVD player be?

Personally, one of the first things I do is build the NFS share so I can do net installs on everything, update packages, etc. Not to mention its usually a pretty fast way to install

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of the various issues we experienced with 9.0, OfB Labs comparisons ranked the last release behind SuSE Linux 8.1 and Xandros Desktop 1.0. That begged the question: would 9.1 be up to the challenge of the competition?

Dammit, that's not what "begging the question" means.

Re:Article Text

[VisorGuy]

Why all the raving about DVD based installation? Sure, you don't need to swap 3 CD's

Actually, it's 1 DVD instead of 8 CDs.

Re:Article Text

[uninet]

Despite the fact that this article appears to copy the text of my article, it has been modified to include one or more offensive remarks. Please read the original instead.

Re:Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but this post was completely ONTOPIC if you read the text of the parent (which was funny as hell).

P

Re:Article Text

[iantri]

Please don't be a grammar-nazi. If everyone says "begging the question" means provokes one to ask the question, then that's what it means, regardless of whether or not it is defined like this.

GNAA, dammit, GNAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Respect your GNAA brethren, for they will assrape you into submission. Big black cocks are made for white geeks.

Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[winkydink]

Other than the fact that is has a neato-keeno wizard to do some configuration chores, the article does little to explain how Mandrake is different or why it is a better choice.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[Dancin_Santa]

Also, it is reviewing the Pro version, so the average user buying or downloading the non-Pro version really doesn't have much idea what to expect as far as app support goes.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[homer_ca]

Although he only hints at it in the first paragraph, IMHO the #1 improvement over Mandrake 9.0 is the bugfixes. 9.0 looked great but it had all kinds of wierd freezes, CDROM supermount bugginess and devices not being detected. I installed 9.1 and everything just works.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[Capsaicin]

Indeed! Not so much as a mention of what kernel version (specfically if it is up to RedHat9 in terms of hyperthreading support). Seems likes the author attaches a bit too much importance to the eye-candy side of things to me.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[uninet]

I thought it was pretty clear, although perhaps not, that this was part one of a two part series. Specifications, speed tests, etc. will be in the second, more technical portion.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[jallen02]

From the article:
Not surprisingly, specification wise Mandrake Linux 9.1 is pretty much on par with the rest of the industry. For those of you wanting a few details, the following are included: Linux version 2.4.21, glibc 2.3.1, XFree86 4.3, KDE 3.1.0, and Gnome 2.2.0. In other words, pretty much everything is similar to the other distributions that came out this spring.
Jeremy

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[rifter]

Other than the fact that is has a neato-keeno wizard to do some configuration chores, the article does little to explain how Mandrake is different or why it is a better choice.

They said it comes with a cute Gnome and KDE Theme that are almost the same except the colours are off. BUy it now for only $199! :)

I agree, this article told us absolutely nothing about Mandrake 9.1 or why it is any better. Personally, I think Mandrake has a long way to go. They are supposed to be the Linux flagship for the desktop, but they have not gotten any closer or come up with anything since Mandrake 6 or so. Also there is the troubling reliance on RPM which needs to come to an end. e need a better system for installing apps on Linux that is superior to any other in ease-of use to get anywhere.

For me, the source-based distributions' install processes are the easiest and best ever, but the problem there is you need broadband, horsepower (in terms of large memory, disk and cpu dedicated just to installing software), and time to deal with this. Plus, if the source files become unavailable, you are hosed. (this last is a *very* common problem. Many/most projects only keep the source for the very latest point-release on their ftp sites, and even mirrors tend to follow suit.)

So probably for Joe Sixpack we will have to have binary packaging systems, which brings us back to the old problem again. And sadly we have not yet got there as far as dealing with packaging systems properly in Linux.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I'm pretty disappointed in slashdot readers lately. I have to wonder if some of you even read the articles. It's getting as bad as alt.newsgroups!

The article was hardly content free. It may not have met *your* needs, but that's another issue altogether. From the perspective of someone running an IT department with 250+ systems (mostly servers), it was a useful intro to a distribution I haven't seriously considered before. Would I like more? Sure. But it was a decent start.

Someone whined it didn't include a kernel version. That person *really* need to learn to read.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[winkydink]

I read the article. Not once, but three times before posting. My initial comment still stands. The article does little/nothing to explain how Mandrake is different or why it is better.

I'm really happy you run an IT department with 250 systems. I've run an IT department with 250 people. What's your point?

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[Capsaicin]

Woops! And I read the article too, apparently my comprehension could be a little better :/

Mandrake 9.1

[Frame Rate Fury]

Although Mandrake was never my favorite distro, I will take a look at it, ya never know, it might be promising

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[Meat Blaster]

One of the things that bothers me is that systems based on RPM don't seem that stable. They install fine, but upgrades always break things, and the upgrade process is different for each distribution.

I wish Linux would standardize on a decent packaging format for binaries and source, much as the Windows world has with .ZIP, and we could put a stake through the heart of this everybody does it different crap. Mandrake would otherwise be almost perfect to introduce people who have only used Windows to Linux... although for serious development and other usage I'd still lean towards Gentoo.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[CableModemSniper]

much as the windows world has zip? How can you compare rpm and zip? rpm = packaging system, zip = archive / compression format. It would be better to compare rpm with MSI.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

much as the Windows world has with .ZIP

Wait.. ZIP? Perhaps you mean MSI's and merge modules and all that fun stuff. I don't know much about software distribution, but I do know that ZIP doesn't have much to do with it. :)

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[molarmass192]

Well, the big 3 RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake are all standardized on RPM. It's the non-commercial niche distros like Debian and Gentoo that choose not to use vanilla RPM. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's how innovation happens, but it really negates the "everybody does it different" argument. RPM is "good enough" and it does the job 95% of the time. A far more important goal I think is the LSB which could eventually lead to a single common x86 Linux RPM for all distros, now that would be an accomplishment. The problem there is that the further you stray from kernel land, the greater the disagreements on how things "should be".

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[blitzoid]

From extensive personal experience, RPMs are not 'Good enough'. If you don't use official packages or something like YUM to install them, they constantly don't break. I can't remember the number of times I've had to deal with packes that say 'Package A needs Package B to install', only to find out that Package B needs package A to install. Even solutions to these problems don't really work ("Install them both at the same time, they'll recognize each other.").

Then again, this is just my personal experience. The last time I even bothered with RPMs was RH9, and the only way I could get anything to work was by using YUM.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[Anonymous Coward]

urpmi handles all of this in mandrake.

just type 'urpmi $packagename' and it figures out the dependencies, downloads them from the proper source, and installs them in the right order.

It really could not be any easier.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, for that purpose Microsoft has standardized on .CAB, which is their proprietary archiving format for system file delivery.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[blitzoid]

I agree that it's easy to do it that way, and YUM is similar to that, it downloads and installs the package and dependancies. Web-based install apps like that usually work great (Debian, Gentoo, and BSD are all examples.). However, you can't rely on the web all the time, which is the main problem. Sure it's easier to use a script which finds, downloads, and installs the app, but what if you don't have net access for some reason?

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[Anonymous Coward]

but what if you don't have net access for some reason?

Then it's time to read a book. Seriously though, how did you get the RPM if you didn't have net? Anything on an old install cd would be...old.

P

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[shibashaba]

urpmi will also be able to figure out the dependencies if the rpm just has the filenames for the dependancies, I've installed a lot of rpms meant for other systems like this. I doesn't work if they put in the name of a package since it'll probably be different than what mandrake goes by. I know both urpmi and gentoo work just fine with local mirrors whether its a cd or hard drive. All urpmi needs is a file somewhere. I'm sure debian and bsd can be set up the same way but I've never used them to know for sure.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[molarmass192]

Yeah but those dependencies aren't "breakages", they're just cyclic dependencies. I see your point though about it being a source of frustration. I've never had a problem specifying both packages in a single rpm command (rpm -Uvh a.rpm b.rpm) but your average Lindows user wouldn't know this.

If you want to bring up beefs with RPM, my primary beef is with the rpm database. I understand the need for it but the fact that it's binary instead of XML is a disadvantage because it's relatively easy to corrupt it (ie. aborted installs). I'd like to see a simple XML layout that could be massaged back into a usable form manually.

To go off topic, what are others' takes on the Loki installer? I don't think it dealt with dependencies either (not sure on that) but it had a really slick update mechanism and was Win-like in nature. Since it's fully open source, it should be possible to form a distro around it.

I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

But... if someone wants to make a fork, call it Womandrake, and includes lots of hot chicks throughout, I'll be there in a minute.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[killthiskid]

mmmmmmm, womandrake... glrargharhghah....

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

Womandrake? What, do you want they to relieve you of your money? You could just flush it down the toilet and accomplish the same thing.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been done.

Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

Make that Womyndrake. Gotta stay radical-lesbo-PC.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound more like the type to flock to Mangander.

Don't forget to tip your waitress.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[God! Awful 2]

Hmm... makes sense. And then, instead of Mandake ProSuite, we can have Womandrake ProStitute.

(That's how I read it as I was scrolling past anyway.)

-a

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[rifter]

Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.

Sadly, Lesbian GNU/Linux appears to be a hoax, like mslinux and Jesux. It is too bad. I think the porn-get is something that could be worked on. There are some apps in sourceforge to help get porn, but really this is something that has not been properly refined. I think it would be neat to work on some Free Software that grabs Free Porn from the net and maybe even displays it or launches the requisite apps. It shoudl be cross-platform, too.

Just think, if Joe Sixpack downloads this easy porn getter software from C|net for his XP box, and sees it is Free Software with a GPL License and works on Linux, he gets introduced to these concepts and maybe when he is done looking at porn he will check them out, too. Unless he just takes a nap. ;)

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I've always wanted to see "Red Hot Linux".... the red hat could be replaced with a hot chick, also wearing a red hat....

Also, the /pub directory could be preloaded with images contributed by Linux users (now that would be SCARY) :)

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Near the end, they talk about how they removed 10% of the suckiness. They still have a long way to go, but at least there is some inprovement.

oh, ProSuite!!!

[chochos]

I swear I read "mandrake prostitute", and I thought this was the daily SCO story.

Although, the "world of possibilities" wouldn't have made much sense...

Pro Sweet

[Hilleh]

I'm glad we have such a professional Sweet of software availiable to the users. This is so Suite!

A little late?

[OctaneZ]

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

Re:A little late?

[uninet]

As I reported in the article, Mandrake 9.2 ProSuite won't be out for sometime still, thus the rationale for the article still being valid.

you're confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo is the one for morons and faggots.

eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

And speaking of server wizards ("drakwizard"), that's another feature we really appreciate with Mandrake. Mandrake's server wizards help to ease the setup of server processes on the system. These easy-to-use step-by-step tools make the initial setup of a web, DNS, DHCP, Windows file sharing (Samba) and other useful servers a painless task. We were able to configure the included Apache web server in just a few moments.

Keep this up and Linux might be just as easy to use as Windows. Having everything come on one DVD is a nice touch too - something I wish would catch on more since DVD-Roms are almost standard these days. No mention of the price though (anyone who says $699 gets an automatic -1, Cliche :)

Re:eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

No mention of the price though

Oops, says it's not even out yet. Anyhow, it's $345 for:


By entering the ProSuite Subscription Program today, you will get your 9.1 version box and receive the complete set of CDs for the two next versions when they become available.

This is an excellent opportunity to stay in touch with the latest versions of the Mandrake Linux ProSuite Edition !

Support:
Support included with 9.1 version only:
Support coverage, please see the 9.1 Mandrake Linux Prosuite description

Offer details:
One 9.1 ProSuite Edition boxed product including:
- 8 CDs
- 1 DVD (Workstation DVD)
- 1 Quick Installation Guide
- 1 User Manual
PLUS:
- one complete set of ProSuite CDs of the next two versions as soon as they are released.

(found at http://www.mandrakestore.com)

Re:eeek

[Lumpy]

Having everything come on one DVD is a nice touch too - something I wish would catch on more since DVD-Roms are almost standard these days.

not in corperate.

you have to pull teeth to get a DVD drive in a desktop... Laptops are easier, but not much.

corperate does not want drones using dvd at all, the added cost is not even existant anymore but for some reason at the deployment center when I order machines, dvd drives are a "written request item" still.

It may be the norm for you, but corperate wise, it is not.... not yet anyways...

Re:eeek

[VisorGuy]

Maybe that's why it comes with 8 CDs as well as the DVD?

Re:eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

All the new IBM stuff we are using at my company is coming with DVD-Roms.

In any case, check my other post above - it comes with cds and dvd, so we're both happy :)

Re:eeek

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the articles before posting! The article says right in it that the price is $199 and includes the DVD.

Re:eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Oops, my bad. Didn't mean to perpetuate the myth that Slashdot posters don't read the articles. My eyes skipped over that twice when I went looking for the price.

I went to Mandrakestore.com instead. But there they say $350, so someone must be confused somewhere anyway...

Re:eeek

[skwirlmaster]

Wow... $350? I mean thats more than windows, albeit not more than windows and office combined... and I know its $350 better spent (Linux Package vs. MS Package not Mandrake specifically). I also know its free as in speech, not beer. I'm just a little shocked. This is for the deluxe desktop user right, seem a little pricey. Does it come with a mandrake club subscription?

Re:eeek

[IANAAC]

I used to use Mandrake exclusively for desktops and laptops. But at the company where I work, RedHat (7.2-7.3 for servers and 8.0-9.0 for desktops) is pretty much the standard (for Linux boxes, of course). But I have to say, I've become somewhat of a RedHat convert. I'll tell you why. The interface is cohesive throughout. Maybe I'm just not used to running a pure KDE or a pure Gnome desktop anymore, but everything just works with RH. My most recent experience with Mandrake 9.0 was just a couple of weeks ago. I purchased a new wide-screen laptop - Emachine M5310. Fantastic laptop, BTW. So I decided to give Mandrake another spin. The screen/monitor resolution for wide-screen was detected and configured automatically. Very nice. Power management, of course, was not, since the machine won't do apm. The mouse has this neat little scroll ribbon that didn't work. Couldn't for the life of me get it to work in Mandrake. So then I pulled out RH 9.0. Video would not work out of the box. I had to download new radeon drivers and change a line in /etc/XFree86Config. Then it worked nicely. I still had the power management issue in RH (why, oh why do distros not ship with APCI?). So one of these days I'll recompile. The mouse/ribbon worked out of the box. The other thing that just worked in RH, but didn't in Mandrake was the USB hub - the laptop has three USB ports as well as firewire. Mandrake would give all sorts of IRQ conflicts with the USB ports and wouldn't recognize the firewire port. RH got them all (well, the first time the laptop was booted fully in RH, kudzu came up and asked to configure firewire). Overall, I have to say that at this point I prefer RH9.0. I know, you either love BlueCurve or hate it. I guess I've just gotten used to it. I really, really wanted to like Mandrake more, but RH just is a tighter package. There are, of course, other things that don't work in either distro on this particular laptop, but I think RH has made greater gains for the desktop.

Re:eeek

[rusty0101]

My most recent experience with Mandrake 9.0 was just a couple of weeks ago.

Just out of my own curiosity, did you choose 9.0 because you happened to have a couple of year old CDs lying around with it already on them, or did you go out of your way to get a year old distribution off of an out of date mirror? I only ask because 9.1 has been out for over six months, and would be at least as easy to download and burn images of.

I don't know that 9.1 would have addressed all of the issues that you ran into with 9.0. Then again, neither do you.

-Rusty

Re:eeek

[HiThere]

You *did* note that that was a subscription price?

That's not the price of one copy. The price for one copy of the ProSuite is $129 (+ tax & handling).

Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[anonymous coword]

I'm currently running Mandrake Cooker and its coming on nicely over the last few weeks. Some things to look forward to is the new Gnome 2.4 desktop (along with loads of new apps), Kernel 2.4.22 (and an optional 2.6-test kernel for the adventureous!), KDE 3.1.3, which is now very stable. If you like gnome, but don't like Redhat's version, then Mandrake 9.2 is for you!

It's also very stable, unlike my experiance of 8.1!

Re:Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[kosmosik]

Speaking about their (MDK) new up-coming distro - will they include OpenOffice.org 1.1 to final release. OOo should be ready till then, and if we are talking about desktop for me it's one of most important Linux (in general OSS/FS) software piece. Even more important then new GNOME or KDE. They should include it or wait some time and then include it. If, they don't that will turnout that Mandrake 9.2 will be the distro without new OOo and all the others wich do have OOo will be the ones with OOo. If you know what i mean. :-)

Re:Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.. in the M-club they've been saying they are gonna wait for KDE 3.2 (few months) and OO 1.1 (few months)

Re:Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[JanneM]

How has Mandrake treated Gnome? Is it good?

I tried SuSE on a spare machine a while ago, and their Gnome support was, well, lackluster. They had somehow managed to make it slower and buggier than the release it was based on, whereas Redhat's Gnome version always has a bit of added spit and polish, making it even slightly better than the official release.

Re:Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been updating cooker rpms so fast on the mirrors the past 2 weeks that it has been ridiculous! And practically a new kernel every day. Thank goodness for DSL!

8.* and even 9.*, they always jack something up on the final CDs, though the 9's were better. I hope they get most everything right this time!

Re:Mandrake 9.2 coming out soon!

[HiThere]

I've never noticed any problem with Gnome, but it's not what I usually use, and it's not Mandrake's focus. (Part of the way they differentiated themselves from Red Hat originally was by using KDE rather than Gnome.)

I think that their Gnome may be closer to a stock version than Red Hat's, but it's more likely to include cutting edge versions. Sometimes bleeding edge.

I found 9.1 to be much better than the 8.x versions, which tended to suffer from QA problems.

Where's the beef?!

[wfberg]

Eduardo Sanchez will return to provide another thorough review of the base Mandrake Linux system. His review will consider, in depth, installation, administration, usage, and performance of Mandrake Linux 9.1.

OK. So there IS no beef? I thought that was supposed to be a spoon.

(Wasted another good, what, 3 minutes of my life RTFA - those kids should take classes and learn about paragraphs, beginnings, middles and endings.)

OMFG!!!1

[Anonymous Coward]

I got the first reply to the first post. I am so excited! This is the second-happiest day in my life - right after when Rob Malda proposed to me.

Mandrake Linux est gai!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seulement le Francais pourrait ecrire un tel morceau de merde de chevre!

A serious review?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of particular interest is the DVD-ROM that is included, something that makes deploying Mandrake much more of a joy, as it gives blow jobs during the process.

And we are supposed to regard this as a serious review by someone whose title is "Editor in Chief"?

Perhaps the rest of the review was meaningful, but after reading the above three times to make sure that it really did say what I thought it said, I didn't see much point in reading any more of the review.

Re:A serious review?

[uninet]

That is not stated in the text of my review. Someone has changed the text of my quote, quite offensively I might add.

Re:A serious review?

[L7_]

Thats the new way to troll slashdot ...

Post the entire text of the article with a slight change in every other paragraph or so, just to make it look like a valid copy+paste at first glance. Yet the obvious statments like the 'blow job' one will get through if the moderators don't read the text carefully enough.

It is a serious review if you follow the link and not use the (now -1) anonymous article post.

Re:A serious review?

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome to slashdot.

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

Re:Linux Mandrake 9.1 Guide

[sewagemaster]

since these are all common tasks, it might be a good idea for them to write/script these tools.

would be nice if these scripts are distro-independent too

Re:Linux Mandrake 9.1 Guide

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent down! kama whore crack ho biatch! scat sex playah mutha fuka!

Just great, francophonic moderators!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Just great, francophonic moderators!

[Anonymous Coward]

either that or they just snap-reacted to the "est gai!" part of the title. I can't imagine too many spotty nerds living in their parents basements to actually know any French.

Maybe a couple, but then again, they probably also know Esperanto and Klingon.

You completely inhale the pastes in crust

[Anonymous Coward]

It has come to my attention that you completely inhale the pastes in crust. Read on for more about this fascinating topic.

The world went into shock a few weeks ago when goatse.info reported the results of a study which concluded that inhaling paste is a very dangerous pastime, one that no one is advised to take up. Eventually, everyone adapted to the new state of affairs and began inhaling other things. Almost everyone, that is. But not you! According to my records, you still inhale paste!

Why?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!

You moron, you idiot, you imbecile, you gay nigger ! Arg! You make me so fucking sick! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

people at the site now

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are currently, 1138 guest(s) and 1 member(s) that are online."

So how did we end up with user ID's of 700K+ when theres 1200 people actually reading the article?

Oh thats right - no one here reads the articles... my bad.

But the question we all want to ask.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they fixed the filedialog yet?

Re:But the question we all want to ask.

[sniggly]

troll... The KDE file dialogue allows you to open files from ftp, sftp, http, https, smb (windows networking), local file system and many other sources seamlessly into its applications (like the excellent Kate (programmer) editor or the award winning quanta html/php editor. (Or konqueror, the browser/file manager)

Just go to file -> open -> bookmarks (or enter the sftp://user@host address)

Kde's file dialogue doesn't need fixing :) Gnome's works fine but misses this flexibility.

Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, and I'm looking forward to 9.2, but why does Windows seem "snappier" than Linux? Applications launch quicker, switching windows is faster, actions (such as in OOo) execute faster.

Just an average user wondering why that is so...

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[fault0]

Because of XFree86's poor scheduler.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[agrippa_cash]

As I understand it, Windows libraries are already mapped to each other. Conversely, a linux program has to follow a chain of dependant libraries and load them. You can prelink libraries to save time, however all of the libraries on your machine may have to be compiled locally to do that (cue for better informed response... HERE). This is certainly part of the reason. I would wildly guess that X11 is another part and maybe OOo for windows doesn't use GCC, but another more optimized compiler.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, Windows libraries are already mapped to each other.

No, you don't understand it. WTF does "mapped to each other" mean? Is this your little conspiracy theory on why Windows is better? Well, it sucks.

The reason why Linux is so goddamn slow is because it's trying to be a desktop OS with a GUI that was designed 30 years ago for the client/server environment. Of course nobody admits that, but that's the simple reason. Everybody and their mom is trying to beat the horse into running faster and they haven't realized it died a couple of years ago.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[man_ls]

Mapped to each other = the links, common runtime functions, common dialog box functions, etc. are loaded at *os start* and are available in memory to call for applications...Hence, it loads a bit faster initially.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[Deusy]

Because of XFree86's poor scheduler.

That's a load of crap and you know it - or at least if you don't know it, you don't know much.

XFree is nothing to do with the slowness of your average Linux desktop. In fact, XFree is possibly one of the best components of the Linux desktop experience.

Quite often, it can just be using something as large as Gnome or KDE - usually what people compare Windows to. Fire up fluxbox or waimea or another window manager instead of your Gnome/KDE and you'll often have a zippier, snappier desktop.

Applications being slow to launch comes down to a lack of refinement of application code. For instance, fire up Evolution. It loads in a couple of seconds - far faster than Outlook in it's native Windows. But then fire up the Gnome Calculator - it takes nearly twice as long as Evolution! That's because a lot more attention and focus is placed on Evolution, especially with it having commercial sponsor - Ximian. All of Gnome's apps could launch as quickly or more quickly than Evolution, there just hasn't been the manpower of the attention to detail to make them load up quickly. Another good example is Gnumeric which has a near-instant launch time.

Perhaps Gnome / KDE should dedicate a release phase to making their desktop applications more efficient. (Yeah, right, like that'd happen.)

Other issues with not being snappy, or the desktop slowing under IO or CPU load are down to 1) a crap video card / machine, 2) a crap connection from which you access your XServer (think modem) or 3) the Linux kernel itself.

I'm a Linux advocate, but I have to take my hat of to FreeBSD on (3) because it has had decent process / IO scheduling for quite some years. I hear a lot of good things about XFree under FreeBSD and it felt very smooth on the one occasion I tried it. A lot of hoo haa about Linux 2.6 is the new scheduling concepts that do indeed solve a lot of these problems, but the reality is that it's about time! If anything, until 2.6, Linux has been somewhat overrated at times.

Any performance problems are not XFree related. Just get over it, we can't keep making XFree a scape goat when it's not even an accessory to the crime in question, let alone the culprit.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[Anonymous Coward]

XFree86 is part of the problem my friend. KDE and Gnome are not anymore bloated than windows and even fluxbox et.al. don't respond to mouse movements or repaint at the rate of windows. XFree86 isn't garbage by any means but it is an accomplice to the problem despite your propaganda.

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you completely, there are many good things about XFree86 but also a lot of bad things.

To be honest, I'm quite happy with it nowadays but if you go back a few years and remember what XFree used to be like then I'm sure most people have a lot of nasty things to say. Granted, I don't know much about XFree86 on the code level but one thing I would like to see is some sort of widget framework that loads Gtk+ and Qt toolkits as modules directly into XFree86 rather than having the widget toolkits linked to our applications. It could quite possibly open many doors for optimization and desktop consistency. i.e. If we could dictate what widget module XFree86 would use to render our applications then we could have a KDE desktop completely rendered by Gtk+ or perhaps a Gnome desktop by Qt. Wouldn't something like that save us all a lot of headaches and make efforts like Galaxy and Bluecurve redundant?

We can all agree that it is the widget toolkits that break the consistency now can't we? Linux desktops would give a much better impression in the commercial arena if it was more consistent, it just looks more professional, period. it is exactly why RedHat created bluecurve and Mandrake gave us Galaxy. If XFree86 as the core component on pretty much all *NIX desktops was changed to handle that part, things would get a lot better I think.

I would be really interested in any opinions on why something like this wouldn't work?

Re:Why does windows seem "snappier"?

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually, the guy is partly right. XFree has a tendancy to starve apps of scheduler cycles inside the X server at just the wrong moment, making especially opaque moves and resizes feel laggy.

Toolkits being slow to process Expose events doesn't help either, but this is more due to the increased visual complexity we've seen recently (antialiasing, unicode support, better themes etc).

Is It Worth Jumping To?

[Eberlin]

Anyone know if this is the same Mandrake distro available in the Linuxworld Magazine DVD-ROM? If not, what is/isn't included?

I'm currently using Redhat 9 on an Inspiron 5100 but that whole no MP3 and DVD support thing along with KDE cripplage bugs. I know there's downloadable stuff to get mp3 and DeCSS going but how 'bout out of the box? (anyone know how to get noatun on a RH9 to play mp3s?)

Lastly, I guess, is -- would anyone recommend a jump from RH9 to MDK 9.1? Are the updates easier? Does one have to fill in a survey to get free updates? Is MDK truly a company that is committed to KDE and won't Bluecurve it for me?

Re:Is It Worth Jumping To?

[theshowmecanuck]

Personally, I'd say if they either got rid of their pain in the ass security application (msec... should be m-suck... sorry, I digress), or allowed you to totally turn it off, I would say go for it, it's a pretty good distro. But if they still have it set up where you have to use their security thing, then I will avoid this distro like the plague. Don't get me wrong, I really really like security. But I have my own firewall scripts and monitoring. I don't want their stuff running and messing around with my set up. Ya, I can probably stip out their security scripts if I wanted to, but it is such a pain in the ass I don't bother. A shame because I prefer Mandrake slightly over Redhat. But not enough to use it until they fix this.

I agree with everyone who says Mandrake's package manager kicks the snot out of Redhat's rpm manager. rpm and Redhat's GUI front end to it (especially the GUI front end) suck donkey dongs (and slurp doing it... do I have a theme going here?). So I just use APT. I would say it along with 'Synaptic' works as good as the Mandrake package manager.

But if you really want to know. I'd say download the free version yourself. See if you like that, and then purchase the pro version if you want everything already set up. Or just keep going with the free version and do it yourself.

On the purchase thing... I think every now and again we should all purchase a copy of one distro or another, just as a financial vote of confidence to keep the diversity alive... that's just me though. I last paid for Mandrake 8 Pro (for the record!) P

My CDN$.028

BillR

Subtly altered text Troll, in case of SDing!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Galaxy of Possibility Part 1: Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite
By Timothy R. Butler
Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business
September 02, 2003, 18:18:08 EDT

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.

Because of the various issues we experienced with 9.0, OfB Labs comparisons ranked the last release behind SuSE Linux 8.1 and Xandros Desktop 1.0. That begged the question: would 9.1 be up to the challenge of the competition? To be sure, the competition is tough. SuSE Linux 8.2 continues to press forward with the overall excellence that has become SuSE's hallmark over the past few years. Xandros Desktop 1.0, while graying somewhat since our consideration of it a better part of a year ago, also continues to present a reasonable challenge. The only major flaw in those two distributions is their non-Free nature (that is, they do not comply with the Free Software definition or the Open Source definition).

Getting Started With 9.1
For our evaluation of Mandrake Linux 9.1, we received a copy of Mandrake Linux ProSuite 9.1. ProSuite is Mandrake's high-end package that offers a number of useful features for enterprise deployment on both desktops and servers. Of particular interest is the DVD-ROM that is included, something that makes deploying Mandrake much more of a joy. Like SuSE's Professional Edition DVD (actually the latest SuSE includes two DVD's, but we only needed the one), Mandrake ProSuite's DVD allows you to use just one disc to install pretty much everything you could ever want on a GNU/Linux system.

Mandrake 9.1 sports a number of major improvements, not the least of which is a highly refined installation tool. The new installer has been cleaned up greatly, and now appears more intuitive and attractive than previous releases. While the installer's functionality remains mostly the same, its layout makes working with it a bit more pleasant. One especially nice change was a reduction in the number of configuration screens one must go through (small gripe: the time zone setting should not be part of this grouping -- its only automatically correct if you happen to live in the American Eastern time zone).

One change noticeable immediately in the installer, and once installed, throughout the user interface, is the new Mandrake Galaxy look-and-feel (more properly known as a widget style). Following in the steps of Red Hat, Mandrake has created matching Gnome and KDE themes to give the system an integrated feel. Unfortunately, we were disappointed with the KDE theme's somewhat unrefined feel and the fact that the themes did not support color matching between the two desktops out of the box, something SuSE's default Gnome and KDE themes (Keramik/Geramik) do. A lot of the problem with refinement arose, in my opinion, from the said theme being developed hurriedly and not being completed until very late in the beta process. An important component to the user interface should never be introduced so late in a release cycle, and its somewhat unrefined look-and-feel seems to testify to this. In the end, however, it does work, and hopefully a better version will be included in 9.2.

Pro-Sweet Additions
We should mention that in addition to the standard installation CD's and DVD, Mandrake ProSuite also includes a two-CD Server Installation set. The Server Installation reduces the number and type of default packages. For instance, choosing the package groups for web and SSH servers, as well as Mandrake Server Wizards and Webmin, yielded a lightweight installation that was only 350 megabytes in size when we booted it up and consisted of approximately 250 packages. This configuration left out almost all GUI components other than X11, IceWM an

Fuck the French

[Nix0n]

Mandrake is a shithole distribution. Use a real man's distro, such as RedHat. At least when you're told to RTFM you're not overwhelmed by the stench of rotting cheese, bad wine, and the body odor of an unshowered Frenchman.

Mandrake ProSuite 9.1 also awarded by InfoWorld!

[joestar]

InfoWorld recently compared Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Turbolinux for a use inside a corporate environment. The result was that the 4 all products were excellent, but the Mandrake Prosuite 9.1 ranked first with the best overall note. Additionnally the ProSuite is by far the less expensive product (around $200). You'll find this 3-page article at InfoWorld. And the Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite is available for purchase directly from MandrakeSoft at MandrakeStore (Mandrake Club Members usually get rebates on most Mandrake products).

#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.

Mandrake on the fly

[kgbspy]

I upgraded (yes, upgraded) my RedHat distro to Mandrake 9 on my Thinkpad this morning in the car on the way to work. Yes, it really was that easy, and sitting in traffic has never been so enjoyable.

It picked up the Thinkpad's cs46xx soundcard, allowed xfree to run in 11x8, and although it skipped past installing the bootloader without giving me any say in the matter (installing lilo straight to my MBR instead of putting grub on the Linux boot partition, like I would have preferred), it didn't completely destroy my MBR and refuse to boot my XP NTFS partition like RedHat did.

The whole install was incredibly quick, even on a P2 366 - all in all about 30 minutes, finishing just as I pulled into the office. On the down side, the installation procedures are a little more inflexible than that of RedHat or SuSE, and KDE 3.1 seems to be broken(?).

On the whole, after a couple of hours of tooling about, it seems to be an excellent release.

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it ever occur to you how dangerous this was? Not just for your own saftey but for those around you. You need to realize that driving a car is a dangerous endeavour and your lack of attention to the task of driving could kill people. It's like firing a gun into a crowd as opposed to taking aim and concentrating...

So pay more attention to the road.

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[DJCouchyCouch]

Isn't that, oh I donno, really freakin' dangerous? :)

DJCC

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[corkhead0]

I hope there are lots of red lights on the way to your work... (so you were clicking away while you were stopped)

You maniac!

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[kgbspy]

Damn straight.

But it's also a good indication of:

a) how slow the early morning traffic moves in my neck of the woods (ie, not at all)

and b) how easy it is to install Linux (and in particular, Mandrake) these days

Actually, the only OS that I've found that was easier and faster to install was AIX. Oh, and maybe MS DOS...

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[Anonymous Coward]

NEWS FLASH: you're a loser. oh wait, you already knew that!

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[mrd_yaddayadda]

On the down side, the installation procedures are a little more inflexible than that of RedHat or SuSE, and KDE 3.1 seems to be broken(?). On the whole, after a couple of hours of tooling about, it seems to be an excellent release.

This kind of thing staggers me. How on earth can you say a release is "excellent" when something as fundamental to it's use as one of the main desktop environments is "broken"!

This kind of comment seems to come from Linuxophiles a lot and it baffles the crap out of me...

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[kgbspy]

That really depends on what you're using it for - I don't depend heavily on the X-Windows side of Linux. Most of what I use it for is done in ssh/lynx/etc, or its capacities as an excellent server that I can access remotely, and as such I don't mind whether my desktop environment is KDE, Gnome, IceWM, or whatever, just so long as it's there if I ever need it. I would hardly say that it's fundamental to my use of Linux. If KDE doesn't work, I'll switch to Gnome. Doesn't bother me a mite at all, so as far as my needs are concerned, it's an excellent release (in retrospect, I should have made that a little clearer in my original comments).

It's worth me mentioning that after a bit more messing around with Mandrake, the Gnome environment seems to be suffering from the same problems as KDE, so perhaps there's an underlying XFree issue (although Windowmaker worked without any problems...); either with my setup or the distro I'm yet to work out. But out of the box, to suit my needs, the whole thing comes up pretty nicely.

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[jigyasubalak]

So you installed a silly Linux distro on your way to work..duh?
I work-out on the slightly modded-up rowing machine, give myself a sponge bath, change into fresh clothes, make myself a breakfast(the usual ham, bacon and eggs with the sunny-side up), every day while I drive myself to work.
This is what you do when you commute to another country, everyday, for work.

Re:Mandrake on the fly

[Idarubicin]

I upgraded (yes, upgraded) my RedHat distro to Mandrake 9 on my Thinkpad this morning in the car on the way to work. Yes, it really was that easy, and sitting in traffic has never been so enjoyable.

A lot of other replies in this thread assume that the parent poster was installing Mandrake while driving. If so, he probably should be concentrating more on the road. Before anyone else chimes in with condemnation, consider this--maybe the guy carpools. Maybe he commutes in with his wife. Maybe he is a slug. In other words, maybe he was a passenger. Slashdotters seem generally pro-environment--why is it so hard to conceive of a vehicle that actually has more than one occupant?

Easy to use

[ShieldW0lf]

I've tried so many linux distros over the past couple of years, trying to get a good workstation and a good server set up here. And after dealing with so many badly-implemented wizards and guis, the easiest one (hell, the only one) to get working and keep working was Debian.

Those guis and wizards need to be FLAWLESS. If the are not, you'll need to go to the command line and config files anyways, and those GUIs will just obfuscate you from what you need to do.

Mandrake, which is supposed to be among the easiest, was a nightmare to configure properly by comparison, because when the wizard fucks up (which it did numerous times), you don't have a clue what to do with the damned thing.

Now if only I could get eRServer in the stable tree, I'd be set...

Re:Easy to use

[Anti-HanzoSan]

Those guis and wizards need to be FLAWLESS. If the are not, you'll need to go to the command line and config files anyways, and those GUIs will just obfuscate you from what you need to do.

Mandrake, which is supposed to be among the easiest, was a nightmare to configure properly by comparison, because when the wizard fucks up (which it did numerous times), you don't have a clue what to do with the damned thing.

You got that right. Particularly broken is the DrakeConnect wizard. That one sure needs a lot of work! Not only does it install a broken configuration, the arrangement of the scripts it modifies is so obfuscated it took me several hours to track down what it did and straighten it out.

For all that, most of their wizards work pretty well. But you're right - if they're going to provide wizards, they can't just work some of the time. They have to work every time. If it's going to leave a mess more often than it's going to configure your system properly, what's the use in having the wizard at all? It's easier to modify the text files yourself than it is trying to figure out what the wizard broke.

Re:Easy to use

[sgtrock]

I don't mind wizards at all. I'm a fan of Mandrake, myself. However, I will stipulate that when a Mandrake wizard goes south it's tough to figure out what it did.

This whole problem wouldn't be an issue if the wizards just LOGGED what they did. Say, under /var/log someplace where logs belong.

Re:Easy to use

[iantri]

Amen. I tried to use my dial-up connection with Mandrake. It was so screwed up I just installed wvdial.

Red Hat has this problem too, though. Using it's Network Configuration tool to configure my dial-up connection, it worked, but for some reason I was expected to go into the Network Configuration tool everytime I wanted to dial-up. I went to use KPPP, but discovered it wasn't installed. Neither was wvdial. Nor anything else. I downloaded a wvdial rpm from another machine and installed it to get online.

What I would like to see in Mandrake's wizards are a better display control (offers little to no choice regarding resolution/refresh rate) and a font installer that make sense and works properly all the time.

mount network dvd

[sniggly]

would be nice to have a bootdisk (CD) that can mount the DVD from over the network

hint hint :)

What kind of review *is* this?

[Jerk City Troll]

What kind of self-respecting Linux distribution review lacks screen shots of the installer, package manager, default desktop, and some web browser.

Clearly this review is inferior. I suggest we find someone else to do it right!

OfB has review Mandrake 9.1...

[Dhraakellian]

Story at 11

Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else read that as:
"A Galaxy of Possibility: Mandrake 9.1 ProStitute"
Had to do a double take...

Agreed

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Agreed. Here's something crazy... How about TESTING the phone support? How about going step by step on a couple of implementations (SAMBA, Squid, Apache) a SOHO may implement? Shit, how about load testing? Stability? Building a home-brewed WAP w/ authentication? Something.. Sheeesh.

You're no fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the fact that this article appears to copy the text of my article, it has been modified to include one or more offensive remarks. Please read the original instead.

Come on, all this is is a moderator test. Let's have some fun at the morons' expense.

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.

enough already

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit, that's not what "begging the question" means.

And still, despite your persistent efforts, NO ONE FUCKING CARES. I would contend that's exactly what begging the question means, as it's an idiom and that's the most common usage. So get a fucking life and stop correcting misspellings, grammar, and malapropisms on slashdot.

Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to be interested in your so-called 'review'? Who are you? Nobody, that's who.

GNAA II

[Anonymous Coward]

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` _______________________________________________'
-posted by GNAA member Penisbird

prostitute

[gears5665]

am I the only one that thinks "Prosuite" looks way too much like "Prostitute"?

Re:prostitute

[Goldberg's Pants]

Yes.

Re:prostitute

[Salsaman]

Actually I read it that way at first. I was thinking 'cool, now that's a good way to increase Linux use'. - you order a boxed copy of Mandrake, and it is hand delivered by a hooker.

I like Mandrake.... but....

[Dalroth]

I like Mandrake a lot. We're currently running 9.0 and 9.1 on a few of our machines, but we're slowly moving over to Debian based distros. I'll give you a quick run down of why.

1. We're sick of RPM. We've hard RPM break on a few machines already (I think the RPM database becomes corrupted if I remember correctly). Needless to say, it's hard to upgrade your machine when your package manager goes kaput. APT/debs are SO much easier to deal with anyway.

2. Too much crap! Literally, Mandrake has TOO MUCH crap these days. I know Debian is hardly innocent, but the dependency train for whatever reason seems to be much more palatable when using Debian as opposed to Mandrake. Maybe it's all the package/package-dev combo packs that the Mandrake/RedHat people like, I'm not entirely sure. It's just too much honestly. Let me install mySQL and be done with it.

3. The big reason (for me personally), the Mandrake security model is totally whack. Once upon a time, Mandrake used to just run a nightly script which would email an audit of your system to the Administrator letting you know what was wrong. That's all it did, and that was nice. Now there's a set of different (horribly documented) security models that have all sorts of (horribly documented) behavior. I don't mind the security model idea, what I do mind is my system doing things for me (such as changing file permissions) without being explicitly told when and why this is going to happen. This has caused major problems for us on a few occasions and it's simply unacceptable. Maybe we haven't looked in the right place for the documentation, but I've tried to find it in the past with little success. I should have to go reading scripts to find this out.

What I've found is that with Debian I have a much better idea what's going on inside our systems. There are no surprises, things so far just straight up work the way we expect them to. We're competent programmers and system administrators, so this is great for us. If I were a newbie, I would definitely still recommend Mandrake. Whatever the security scripts are doing, it IS making the system more secure, but sometimes you don't want that.

If I wanted Mandrake to do one thing (short of switching to .debs) to get me back on the Mandrake train: Please explain in absolutely explicit detail the difference between your security modes. You *HAVE* to do this during the install process as well. If I'm rebuilding my firewall, for instance, I don't have the option to go out to the internet to find out what these things mean. This is a very important critical decision that should not be taken lightly. The only way we can properly make that decision is if the knowlege is made available to us when we need it most.

Bryan

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[Graabein]

Sounds like what you really want is FreeBSD. Seriously, give it a try, you'll love the ports collection and the easily available documentation.

As for your gripe about the security setting: If in doubt, just select "standard", the default setting. After you have finished installing the system, log on and fire up Mandrake Control Center. You can change the security level there and also exercise fine grained control over each level. The install program really should tell you this though, so you don't sweat over it.

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[shibashaba]

The program thats changing your file permissions is msec. You can change the directories and files it works on in the control panel. I'm pretty sure theres an option in the security settings to adjust when it runs. Now for the bad news both of them seem broken in 9.1 and in 9.0 I couldn't change more than one thing at a time without it breaking.

9.1 seems to be a lot buggier in than either 9.0 or 8.2. I really hope 9.2 doesn't have these kinds of problems.

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[InodoroPereyra]

I really think you haven't discovered the great advantages of urpmi, rpmdrake et al.:

1. We're sick of RPM. We've hard RPM break on a few machines already (I think the RPM database becomes corrupted if I remember correctly). Needless to say, it's hard to upgrade your machine when your package manager goes kaput. APT/debs are SO much easier to deal with anyway.

Allright, I never had such a problem, and I used RPM based distros for years (RedHat and now Mandrake). Most problems that I saw reported in mailing lists about RPM going belly up are user problems: using --force to force installation, messing with the database, using experimental or third party packages, etc. If you stick to your distro you are most likely ok. Plus, there are tools to rebuild databases. Oh, and I've seen problems with debian database too (disclaimer: I love the debian project)

2. Too much crap! Literally, Mandrake has TOO MUCH crap these days. I know Debian is hardly innocent, but the dependency train for whatever reason seems to be much more palatable when using Debian as opposed to Mandrake. Maybe it's all the package/package-dev combo packs that the Mandrake/RedHat people like, I'm not entirely sure. It's just too much honestly. Let me install mySQL and be done with it.

This is called granularity, and it is not a problem if you use a front-end to RPM, such as urpmi. Simply fire up the mandrake control center, then Software Manager, search for mySQL and you'll see a few packages. Click on what you think you need, and the software manager will select for you the packages required by dependencies. It is that easy. Separating _dev_ packages from the binaries is great. That allows for a minimal install for people who don't care about compiling stuff. What's wrong with it ?

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[Anonymous Coward]

your argument about rpm is silly.
debs can break as well. You just failed to rebuild the database, which is easy.
apt is similar in fucntionality to mandrake urpmi. I like both, but neither is better than the other.

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[HiThere]

You have some points, but you have clearly never tried to use their updater on a slow machine. Even on a fast machine it's a slow process. On a slow machine, it can take literally minutes to do a screen redraw. I don't really understand why. It doesn't appear to be doing as much as Synaptic does, but it is really quite significantly slower. As least as much slower, proportionally, as Synaptic is over apt-get.

Personally, the only trouble I've had with the Mandrake Updater in the 9.x series is the speed. Otherwise it's nearly as good as Synaptic. And there appear to be many more mirrors for Mandrake. OTOH, I've rarely gone looking for mirrors for Debian. Also the status information being displayed doesn't seem to be as helpful. If apt-get can't access a site, I can tell from the status, and decide to abort the process. On the Mandrake Updater, I can't really tell what's happening. And it's not clear when or how it's safe to abort things.

Upgrading

[prashantp76]

Interesting reviews, but ...
I for one am tired of seeing a new distribution every 6 months from Mandrake and RedHat.

My problem is upgrading - the distributions support it, but basically end up reinstalling the whole system. I'd rather they only came out with one major release per year, which was very stable and easily upgradeable.

I don't care if it doesn't ship with the latest and greatest KDE and kernel!

Re:Upgrading

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! Then don't upgrade!

I moved from SuSE 8.0 to Mandrake 8.2 and was very pleased with MDK 8.2. MDK 9.0 wouldn't even install on my box, nor on several others that I tried it on. I almost left MDK but decided to try MDK 9.1 I'm glad I stayed. MDK 9.1 is an awesome release.

I know that I will be sticking with MDK 9.1 through the end of this year and maybe longer. This will represent a change for me because in the past I always updated with every release of the distro I was running. MDK 9.1 is so good on my box that I will stick with it and bypass an upgrade or two.

Re:Upgrading

[mrd_yaddayadda]

I for one am tired of seeing a new distribution every 6 months from Mandrake and RedHat.

And I am on the flip side and think they need to keep it up. I want to be set free from the mire of Microsoft and Linux is getting closer to useable as far as I'm concerned with each iteration from the main vendors. (With some backsteps along the way)

I want them to keep working on it until I am happy with it. And then I can simply not upgrade. You could do the same if you're happy with the one you have.

Re:Upgrading

[salmacis2]

Huh? Simple answer - just upgrade every other release.

Down with France!

[Jack Comics]

Patriotic Americans and other good people who value democracy should be sending a strong message to France that their intolerance and hypocrisy will not be tolerated, by boycotting French goods. This includes Mandrake. If you are looking for computer operating systems, I wholeheartedly recommend Red Hat, a Linux distribution made in America and supported by freedom lovers everywhere. If you support and/or use Mandrake, as well as other French goods, you are sending the wrong message to France that we as good, freedom loving people, will tolerate French injustice and hypocrisy. So do the right thing and help boycott French goods. For more information on the French boycott, see here, and here.

Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject says it all. When a linux distro actually supports a wireless card out of the box, then Billy G. can worry. In the meantime, there is no competition for the desktop.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Cobratek]

hrm ... wireless out of the box ...
Slackware Debian Mandrake AND RedHat were ALL working "out of the box" for my wireless nic.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[IANAAC]

Both Mandrake and RH were able to handle my wireless card(s) out of the box - Cisco Aironet and Linksys. If you're talking internal wireless (such as broadcom, etc) then yes, you'll have problems. - just as you would doing a full install of Win2K/XP.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[antiMStroll]

Buy a Zaurus. It does this effortlessly, WEP included.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[planarian]

I found it much easier to set up a wirless home network with Xandros (a debian-basted distro) than with Windows XP.And I'm a linux noob.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Anonymous Coward]

On my dual-boot laptop, getting my wireless adapter working with Mandrake took about 5 mins and was simple and intuitive.

Booted in WinXP, with the driver supplied by the adapter vendor, it took nearer 30 minutes and 4 goes at installing the driver (it looked like it had worked, but hadn't actually done the install). I then spent a couple of hours trying to get the card working with my AP and gave up.

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an HP (Pavillion XT155) and a Linksys wireless (WPC11-v3) and RH 9.0 didn't see it. Knoppix doesn't see it...

After much hair pulling, kernel compiling, driver tweaking, etc, the RH can see the card but will not associate with an AP (no WEP).

Maybe it's just me... :)

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget wireless, I had to restart the DNS and DHCP client services on Windows a dozen times before it got an IP address after connecting the cable modem. Sad day if this happens to Joe Sixpack who uses the modem. The guy who came to deliver the modem was completely mystified. No such problems with Mandrake..

Re:Give me wireless out of the box or Windows will

[Anonymous Coward]

what Karma krap...

Every pro-linux post in this thread got modded up. Every post suggesting that linux needs some work in this area was ignored.

Ignoring the problems doesn't solve them. The linux desktop sucks because of this for most users. See the problems. Talk about them. Air them. Fix them.

Suggestion - Security

[thentil]

You ought to at least have a link to security concerns in there, especially for those who are on permanent connections...

Why?

[lilricky]

This story is about news of a review that doesnt exist yet? Ok........

Re:I like Mandrake.... but (a Mac viewpoint)

[King_TJ]

I can certainly tell you that when I tried to recycle an older Powermac 7600 system as a Linux-based web and file server, I had much better results using Debian than Mandrake for PPC.

I know most people on here probably never bothered with the PPC versions of these distros - but for those who do, it seems like the distros that support PPC do it as almost an afterthought.

With Mandrake for PPC, I couldn't even get a working X environment (and I was simply trying to use the built-in video Apple supplies on all of these PowerMac 7600's).

I finally figured out it was a fairly simple matter of choosing the right video driver for X, followed by leaving one of the video setup questions blank/unanswered (where it wants to know which PCI slot the video device is installed in). In Debian though, I didn't have automatic setup tools promising to get it working and screwing things up. It was straight to the point, with simple text prompts - so errors were clearly just my own mistakes or lack of knowledge what to key in.

apt-get

[Anonymous Coward]

sure would be nice if Mandrake would use apt-get like Debian. That works good. I've been installing Firestarter firewall on Debian and Mandrake & Redhat, and it's easier to do in Debian with apt-get.

I'm using Mandrake 8 now, and the one thing I like about it over Redhat 7.1 is the ability to get the "Windows Fonts" out of your /dev/hda1 or wherever your Windows 98 is located. Then, once you do that, Mandrake looks as nice as Debian 2.2, and a lot better than Redhat. Don't know about the fonts in Redhat 9, I need "equipment upgrade" to install$$ it. Only have 586's around here.

Re:apt-get

[Anonymous Coward]

Just do a "urpmi firestarter" after you add the contrib source with a "urpmi.addmedia". Then the installation is just as easily done as an apt-get. Menu entry and all. Although I don't know about any urpmi mirrors for 8.0... so unless they are out there somewhere you'll have to use 8.2... which AFAIK is a bugfix release anyway.

Walmart PC's with SuSE Linux!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one for $298.00. I know this is off topic, but hey, I'm posting this on a pc running Mandrake!

Anyway, imagine Walmart selling something besides Lindows, Lycoris, Win XP Home, or "No OS" equipped PC's.!

Of course we all have loads of OS's sitting around, and would opt for the one without an OS, partition the HDD, and put 'em all on it! That's what I'd do...

But I don't do XP then, for obvious (product activation) reasons.

Hooray!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Poor and Miserable Unite!

Having to buy a new MB every few months is ridiculous!

My old KDE will do just fine on my 586! Fine, I say!

Mandrake 9.1 has a few shortcomings

[ByteEnable]

I found that ZeroConfig would not work on my Dell Latitude (Laptop). ZeroConfig worked on my Desktop though with Mandrake 9.1. However, another extremely annoying feature was that you if set your desktop to "double click", konqueror would not obey the rule when set to "Detailed List View", it would still use the single click. So, I'm backed to good ole reliable redhat 9. Byte

Re:I like Mandrake.... but (a Mac viewpoint)

[MsGeek]

I can certainly tell you that when I tried to recycle an older Powermac 7600 system as a Linux-based web and file server, I had much better results using Debian than Mandrake for PPC.

The Dog is your friend. Moof! Did an install on a Wallstreet PowerBook last Saturday, and after a little fiddling it was smooth sailing.

However, Debian PPC is good for older PPC Macs that Yellow Dog Linux won't run on. And of course, there is Debian 68K. There will NEVER be a Yellow Dog 68K.

oh no!

[austad]

but also reported some serious flaws that somewhat limited his enthusiasm.

How dare he mention the bad points of linux! Dirty, dirty Sanchez...

Mandrake is a nice distribution

[CooCooCaChoo]

I am running it on a box here (at home) and it is very polished, however, with that being said, having a nice operationg system isn't necessarily going to win converts.

Guaranteed my Karma will fall through the floor and I'll be labelled the ultimate Anti-Christ, however, Mandrake can make the operating system as pretty as they want, but, if the big name vendor software titles just aren't there, people aren't going to move over.

I've chatted to other Mac (being one myself) users and most would be more than happy to move to Linux/x86 without any hesitation, however, they need the likes of Photoshop, Studio MX, Quark etc etc for their day-to-day work.

Same goes for any other vendor. These vendors can keep tweaking, twirling and dolling their operating system up for eternity but it isn't going to change the fact that there is a lack of high profile ISV's and IHV's for the desktop.

Re:Mandrake is a nice distribution

[KingOfBLASH]

I've chatted to other Mac (being one myself) users and most would be more than happy to move to Linux/x86 without any hesitation, however, they need the likes of Photoshop, Studio MX, Quark etc etc for their day-to-day work.

You really should check out the Mandrake Linux 9.1. Power PC Distribution. It includes support to run Mac Applications on Linux in an X Window at Native Speed.. It's called Mac on Linux and would let you get the big name support you so desire while running Linux on a Mac.

Re:Mandrake is a nice distribution

[CooCooCaChoo]

True, however, the reason for running Linux is the ability to have access to low cost x86 hardware with a rock solid operating system.

All things being equal, FreeBSD could easily step into this spot, however, from what I see, they are more concerned with the server space rather than tuning a version for the desktop, for example, "FreeBSD Desktop Edition", "Now with GUI installer and configuration tools!".

Most Mac users don't necessarily have issues with the x86 architecture but the lack of an OS, besides Windows, which gives them access to the titles they want.

Sure, they *could* run the software via vmware, but what is the point of that? they might was well use Windows fully.

You're absolutely right in that...

[IANAAC]

It would not have been any harder to download and burn 9.1 CDs. Consider this, however: the Mandrake 9.0 CDs were downloaded and burned well after the beginning of the year, yet 9.1 was not released. Do you really think it's realistic to assume users download and burn CDs more than once, maybe twice a year? I don't. Other posters have said that they consider the rapid release what you are of both Mandrake and RedHat is too much, and I tend to agree.
Honestly, how would you feel if you paid for software, only to be told to re-purchase the next version in less that one year's time? That's basically what you are proposing.
Again, you're absolutely right in that neither you nor I would know if 9.1 would have addressed the issues I ran into with 9.0. Where would you find that info? On Mandrake or RedHat's site? I don't think so. Both sites focus on GUI improvements, and not much else.
My original post was merely stating the differences between two different distributions, downloaded at approximately the same time.

Re:You're absolutely right in that...

[rusty0101]

I would think that it would be reasonable that when I choose to install an operating system, and compare it with another operating system that I would use the currently available software that is freely available.

Now I grant you that 9.0 is the current RH edition. however Mandrake 9.1 came out at approximately the same time. IIRC within a month of each other. A quick check to make sure, and RH9 was released March 31, Mandrake9.1 came out March 25th. Within a week of each other, and Mandrake 9.1 came out first.

Sounds like a sound plan to me. I think I will see how RedHat 6.1 stacks up against Mandrake 9.1. I think I have a copy of the CD's lying around here somewhere. If not I suppose I can order a copy from CheapBytes for a couple of bucks. If I don't like the way RH handles my Wacom USB tablet, or my USB keyboard or scoll mouse, well that's just too bad. If even CheapBytes doesn't have a copy that old, I am sure that they have something else a couple of versions out of date.

Honestly, how would you feel if you paid for software, only to be told to re-purchase the next version in less that one year's time? That's basically what you are proposing.

Really? I though I was proposing using the current version of the software to see if it supported the features that you need it to support. The software is in an environment where doing just that costs you the time to download the software three CD blanks, the temporary storage to keep the image of each CD on your hard drive as you are downloading and burning it, and the time to burn the CD's from the ISOs. You already have indicated you had the time to install and test the earlier edition, are you saying it's too much effort to see if the current version has the updates you need, even if they are not clearly indicated on the web site?

Ok.

-Rusty

Differences highlighted!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Because of the various issues we experienced with 9.0, OfB Labs comparisons ranked the last release behind SuSE Linux 8.1 and Xandros Desktop 1.0. That begged the question: would 9.1 be up to the challenge of the competition? We suspected not, as we dislike Mandrake. To be sure, the competition is tough. SuSE Linux 8.2 continues to press forward with the overall excellence that has become SuSE's hallmark over the past few years. Xandros Desktop 1.0, while graying somewhat since our consideration of it a better part of a year ago, also continues to present a reasonable challenge. The only major flaw in those two distributions is their non-Free nature (that is, they do not comply with the Free Software definition or the Open Source definition).

Getting Started With 9.1
For our evaluation of Mandrake Linux 9.1, we received a copy of Mandrake Linux ProSuite 9.1. ProSuite is Mandrake's high-end package that offers a number of useful features for enterprise deployment on both desktops and servers. Of particular interest is the DVD-ROM that is included, something that makes deploying Mandrake much more of a joy, as it gives blow jobs during the process. Like SuSE's Professional Edition DVD (actually the latest SuSE includes two DVD's, but we only needed the one), Mandrake ProSuite's DVD allows you to use just one disc to install pretty much everything you could ever want on a GNU/Linux system.

Mandrake 9.1 sports a number of major improvements, not the least of which is a highly refined installation tool. The new installer has been cleaned up greatly, and now appears more intuitive and attractive than previous releases. While the installer's functionality remains mostly the same, its layout makes working with it a bit more pleasant. One especially nice change was a reduction in the number of configuration screens one must go through (small gripe: the time zone setting should not be part of this grouping -- its only automatically correct if you happen to live in the American Eastern time zone).

One change noticeable immediately in the installer, and once installed, throughout the user interface, is the new Mandrake Galaxy look-and-feel (more properly known as a widget style). Following in the steps of Red Hat, Mandrake has created matching Gnome and KDE themes to give the system an integrated feel. Unfortunately, we were disappointed with the KDE theme's somewhat unrefined feel and the fact that the themes did not support color matching between the two desktops out of the box, something SuSE's default Gnome and KDE themes (Keramik/Geramik) do. A lot of the problem with refinement arose, in my opinion, from the said theme being developed hurriedly and not being completed until very late in the beta process. An important component to the user interface should never be introduced so late in a release cycle, and its somewhat unrefined look-and-feel seems to testify to this. In the end, however, it does work, and hopefully a better version will be included in 9.2.

Pro-Sweet Additions
We should mention that in addition to the standard installation CD's and DVD, Mandrake ProSuite also includes a two-CD Server Installation set. The Server Installation reduces the number and type of default packages. For instance, choosing the package groups for web and SSH servers, as well as Mandrake Server Wizards and Webmin, yielded a lightweight installation that was only 350 megabytes in size when we booted it up and consisted of approximately 250 packages. This configuration left out almost all GUI components other than X11, IceWM and GTK+ (for the Mandrake Server Wizar

Freud?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Mandrake 9.1 Prostitute...

FYI

[djeca]

Mandrake Update dumps status information to stdout - just run MandrakeUpdate from a root console. Alternatively, you can do the sensible non-GUI thing and run # urpmi --update --auto-select

I hate RPM with a passion

[linefeed0]

My Linux adventure started with RedHat 6 (ok, that's the first I adminned, I had accounts on slackware boxen back in '94)... and I was quite impressed with how far linux had come by that point.

Now that I'm used to debian, any RPM based distribution seems a bit rustic... not just in that "quaint old thing that time forgot" way, but more in that "roof is leaking and the toilet's in that shack out back" sort of way.

I'm used to installing security patches by ssh'ing into a system, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, wham, bam. My folks have a mandrake 8.1 box (for the UI and end-user support where mandrake is fantastic, since they never use the command-line) which needed the major ssh patch last year to avoid getting rooted. I assume the worst of it would be that they'd need to download it over a dialin and that would take forever. Boy, was I wrong.

The installation of the new ssh rpm's took longer than downloading them over a 56k modem. By a factor of 5 or so. I almost cancelled the install before it was done (which I'm glad I didn't, since that might have corrupted the rpm database). When that was all done, it still wasn't installed/configured correctly (my fault this time, but the package should have handled it), so the end result was no sshd until I was at their place and could fix it in person (since I need sshd to remotely fix their machine).

Fuck RPM. They've been through 4 major revisions and still can't get it right. I might be wrong about something here, but I've *never* had this problem with debian, ever. Debian upgrades always install quickly and smoothly for me.

You know you need more sleep when...

[nacturation]

you read the title as:

A Galaxy of Possibility: Mandrake 9.1 Prostitute