Mandrake 9.2 Initial Review

joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.2 was released yesterday, and a first review is already available at ofb.biz! It focuses on the new desktop-oriented Mandrake 9.2 flavor, the Discovery, a 2-CD office/multimedia product for beginners which comes without any server capability. It seems that a new competitor to Windows is born, and according to Tim Butler, 'Another key to making a distribution novice friendly is insuring that everything works out of the box, and Mandrake Linux 9.2 succeeds there.(...) To the best of my knowledge the only other distribution presently including the Radeon drivers from ATI is Lindows.' Waiting for reviews of 'real' Mandrake 9.2 products (PowerPack, Corporate Server...), this review is nevertheless quite comprehensive and very interesting reading, and this new Mandrake Discovery thing should do well with the public, at least as an office desktop affordable solution in corporations."

Comments

Discovery.

[ideatrack]

I like the look of this Discovery package, if it lives up to it's promise.

The main thing putting most everyday users off Linux (arguably the people who need it most, just look at the reaaction to Blaster) is how to learn it. XP is dayglo and simple, that's why people use it.

If Discovery is attractive, easy, and comes with a nice little introduction to get started, that's got to be a good thing.

Re:Discovery.

[essreenim]

Yes, I aggree with you completely. It's a positive high level step. People like a warm interface, and it's also modest in a way, almost saying: "This is simple to use, just click here - modestly hiding all the technical sub-level. I could show off but I won't". The beuty of this of course is that a user can learn about the OS - as there are command line options..." I believe the future of linux is for it to be an extremeny cutomiseable OS - BUT, also easily customiseable and allow the possibility for radical customization - something which would be impossible with non open souece OS's, likw Windows etc.

Re:Discovery.

[garett_spencley]

XP is the "latest greatest", and it's down right stable compared to 9x/ME.

Simplicity has nothing to do with anything. XP really isn't that simple to use, at least compared to MacOS, yet Windows still has the majority of the market share.

There a few reasons people use Windows:

1) It came with their computer.
2) They have no reason to change.
3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works.

I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.

Even if Linux is a million times faster and a million times more stable and has a replacement application for every common windows app if you take away that one little piece of convenience you may as well forget it.

KDE and Gnome are very windows-like and any person who's been using a Windows computer for more than a year will pick up how to use those two desktops with very little effort. I'm even reminded of a recent article published here on /. about a non-biased study which claimed that KDE is pretty much just as easy to use as XP.

Yet why change? What's the problem exactly that Linux is supposedly able to fix? Stability? I'm running XP right now and I've had more hardware issues than software.

The only thing I can really think of that Linux offers over XP, for non-tech users, is security and the ammount of free (as in cash, not beer) software that's available for it.

I work professionally as a UNIX admin right now. I deal mainly with Linux boxes, though we have some Solaris. I used to use Linux exclusively on my desktop, and to this day I wouldn't dream of using a non *nix OS at work. I can think of millions of advantages that Linux has over windows for coders, web developers, sysadmins and anyone who's really techie and likes to hack at their computer. .. but for people who just want to check their e-mail, surf the web, look at pictures of their grand children, listen to mp3s etc. I can't really think of any reason to justify them switching to Linux. No matter how easy it is to use.

Now don't get me wrong. There are hidden costs to using Windows, such as MS licensing, the MS tax etc. Considering that I do look forward to the day when Linux is installed on every new desktop PC being pushed out of Future Shop and when every single device will work on Linux out of the box, ditto for games and apps. But until then I just can't see recommending Linux to anyone but my techie friends.

- Garett

Re:Discovery.

[Overly Critical Guy]

XP really isn't that simple to use, at least compared to MacOS, yet Windows still has the majority of the market share.

Slashbots LOVE to say Windows isn't easy to use, and then they never explain why.

Sorry, it really is easy to use.

Re:Discovery.

[blinder]

Considering that I do look forward to the day when Linux is installed on every new desktop PC

This isn't a troll... I promise... just an honest question I'm curious about. Wouldn't this create another monoculture? I mean, its pretty obvious the pitfalls and dangers involved with monocultures... this too would be the same, just different flavor... right?

What I'd like to see is a more diverse OS field... where no one OS dominates. Yeah interoperability would be a concern, but less skewed distribution of Windows and a more even distribution of MacOS, Linux... BSD's, BeOS's... whatever. I know... total freekin pipe dream... but in terms of security. Things would be much better, where a script kiddie couldn't take down 80% of anything with one well written worm.

Re:Discovery.

[oscarm]

I can't really think of any reason to justify them switching to Linux. No matter how easy it is to use.

How bout not being subject to the windows worm/virus/exploit of the week or susceptible to spyware/malware being installed without your consent? The activities you listed are pretty much all my sister uses her PC for day to day. After the 3rd reinstall of windows on her pc in one year, I convinced her to try out Mandrake (8.1 at the time) and she hasn't looked back since.

Re:Discovery.

[pmz]

You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works... ... 60% of the time.

DLL Hell and a no-name audio card with a auto-configured IRQ conflict will make bald men even balder, young women turn into Pug-faced hags, and kids turn inside out spilling their Speghetti-o's all over dad's new desk.

Windows actually doens't work very well at all even on OEM computers from Dell, Gateway, etc. The problem is that so many people are in denial about it, which is only encouraged by their OEMs similing and looking happy in spite of the spiked Microshaft mounted squarely in the center of their chair.

The mass denial about Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer is literally an example of cult psychology on a golbal scale.

I'm glad Microsoft will be a niche company in less than ten years. Perhaps five. For people even in denial about this, I have this advice: adapt or fall into the pit with them.

Re:Discovery.

[cK-Gunslinger]

A lot of good points there. Most Linux people would probably be suprised to know the number of PC users who would base their entire hardware/OS/software purchase on the basis of "Will it run my copy of "101 Shareware Games for Windows" that I got for $4.96 at Wal-Mart last year?" Do you know how many people out there are running Windows ME, simply because they purchased a new PC at the wrong time?

Now, as for free software for Windows, my entire PC is based on free software, except for WindowsXP and Photoshop. I run Firebird, Thunderbird, Irfan View, AVG, Filezilla, Open Office, AdAware, Kerio, CDex, Audacity, Winamp, Dev-C++ w/MinGW, Trillian etc. I can't remember the last time I actually paid for Windows software (and I only use a very minimum of warez.) I even have a nice CD that I use to install all these apps and more on new Windows PCs I build for family/friends.

Average PC users really have no need for Linux right now. I love Linux and want it to thrive, but I think that only way for it to advance on the desktop is for MS to keep screwing up and pissing people off.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a real possibility that even if there were a lot of diverse computing platforms that the strive for interoperability would make worms more interoperable too.

I could easily see, for example, mozilla as the de facto standard browser across all platforms (luckily we also have KHTML). If there was a security problem with the code it would be a major problem (just as it is for IE today).

The main source of strength is not from a hetrogenous environment, but from an open one, where people can identify and fix flaws before they become out of hand.

Re:Discovery.

[jonadab]

> I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to
> any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer,
> digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the
> cd-rom and presto! it just works.

Your experience has been remarkably different from my experience. In my
experience, it's like this:

Windows:
1. Buy hardware, first checking to make sure it has a Windows XP logo
on it, because if it's got the old Win98 logo you just don't know if
it'll work.
2. Plug it in, put in the CD, and install the drivers.
3. Try to use it, and find that it doesn't work.
4. Uninstall the drivers, re-read the install instructions, and then
reinstall the drivers. Reboot several times. Swear, if you're the
sort of person who swears.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 for about two and a half days.
6. Magically, the hardware works! Go into System Restore and make darn
sure you have a restore point, labelled as WORKING, because you never
want to repeat this again, EVER.
7. The next day you discover that some other random thing has stopped
working now. But that's okay; with System Restore you can switch
back and forth between your two restore points whenever you need to
have the one thing or the other thing working. Easy!
Mandrake:
1. Before you buy the thing, you google for reviews that mention Linux,
just to be sure it'll work.
2. Buy it.
3. Plug it in.
4. Turn it on.
5. HardDrake will configure it for you.
There is no driver CD to fool with.
6. The hardware works.
7. The next day, everything else that worked before still works.

Sure, step 1 is easier for Windows. But Step 1 by itself isn't enough.

Re:Discovery.

[ideatrack]

This is more the reason I was aiming for. I gave my mum my old Windows 2000 PC, and because she just uses it for e-mails on a dial up, she's still on SP3, and so a little open. Yeah she has a firewall etc, but I still had to talk her through patching, for example, the holes so she didn't get the blaster worm etc just in case.

While I agree there are other areas to overcome before something like Linux is adopted in the same manner as Windows, I'd love to just install a simple version of Linux (but not Lindows) and leave her be. It'd do all that she wants, she'd probably even understand it more, but it's the changes which would throw her. If these are eased, then it's one more user across and (for want of a better word) safe. Maybe now I can do this without a lot of calls...

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the exact same things people said about Apple when they were #1. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Re:Discovery.

[Fabio Dias]

You say

I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.

but then you say

Stability? I'm running XP right now and I've had more hardware issues than software.

It seems your definition of "just works" is different from most peoples' definition.

Re:Discovery.

[NamShubCMX]

The main difference, I think, is that you are in control of your OS. If you want, you can change any part of the source you don't like, re-compile, and there you go, features you needed.

Of course, this isn't simple like that, but still, it is *possible*

This means that the "monoculture" doesn't really exist. Everyone can change configuration, default apps etc as they please, because they're in power of their system. I often read that having many choices (many kernels, many WM/DE, many apps that do the same things, etc...) is "hurting linux adoption on the desktop". I won't argue this, I let you be the judge, but one thing is sure, it eliminates the "monoculture" effect.

With windows, you're pretty much stuck with windows, and what Microsoft thought was best for their software / their shareholders / their clients / their bank account. Yes, windows can be configured in many ways, but you are not in *total* control of your system. Microsoft is.

Therefore, if 100% of the computers would run on GNU/Linux, I don't think it would be as bad as 100% running on Windows (or Mac OS, or any closed-source, proprietary OS) because even though you can install a distribution and be happy with it, you could always build it yourself, change what you want. When you need a feature, you *can* add it...

Anyway I think my point was made by now :P

Re:Discovery.

[bmj]

DLL Hell and a no-name audio card with a auto-configured IRQ conflict will make bald men even balder, young women turn into Pug-faced hags, and kids turn inside out spilling their Speghetti-o's all over dad's new desk.

True, but my experiences with Linux have shortened my life by at least ten years. And before you say "oh you're just some n00b that picked up RedHat", let me say I've been using Linux nearly exclusively on my work desktop for three years. Two of my three machines at home also have some distro of Linux installed (the third machine is OS X). When I started new job this year, it took me three days and two sound cards to be able to listen to mp3s. I can't watch a single digital video (regardless of format), and I've spent days hacking with mPlayer, etc. And I don't dare plug by digital camera into one of the Linux machines at home.

Now, this isn't a troll. I use Linux by choice, and for development work and generally desktop stuff, it's great. And I enjoy being able to hack around the machine a bit to get things working. But to think that Linux is ready to displace Windows or OS X on the average user's desktop is wishful thinking.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now don't get me wrong. There are hidden costs to using Windows, such as MS licensing, the MS tax etc. Considering that I do look forward to the day when Linux is installed on every new desktop PC being pushed out of Future Shop and when every single device will work on Linux out of the box, ditto for games and apps. But until then I just can't see recommending Linux to anyone but my techie friends.

Don't assume that "ease of use" has anything to do with ultimate victory here. Macs were much easier to use, more stable, and superior in a number of ways to PCs running early versions of MS-Windows. Look who won anyway.

Don't underestimate the value of mindshare.

As for your opinion of Linux as not being ready for the masses, you are entitled to your opinion, but I strongly disagree with it. There are numerous easy-to-use Linux distros out now. Lindows (bottom denominator), Lycoris/LX, Xandros, Mandrake Discovery 9.2, and yes even Redhat 9 are all easy to install, come with numerous useful defaults, and are no more difficult for the novice user to adjust to than Windows XP. The upcoming SUSE distro is getting darn good previews for its ease of use as well.

Personally, I think that the non-U.S. desktop distros will have an advantage because they can afford to ignore U.S. intellectual property issues (Redhat was a victim there.) Additionally, they seem to have an easier time with market penetration overseas. MS is getting dumped in foreign markets where its arrogance has offended local authorities who no longer believe that they are required to submit to a monopoly in order to get work done.

Yes, when you see more Linux shipped as a default install with new computers, or at least as an option, with proper marketing to make it attractive to end users, Linux will start to become more ubiquitous and you will start to see the entire concept of how the software business works change from one that is property-based to one that is service-based. So you certainly have a point. But you shouldn't discourage "non-techie" friends from trying it. They are no more likely to screw up than under Windows XP (which, by the way, I do not find to be nearly as stable as you do apparently) and they might find that they really do like the options it gives them. Heck, now that Redhat isn't doing their traditional desktop distro, I'm tempted to try Gentoo just because their packaging approach seems to neat. And I am a lawyer, not a "techie". I might try SUSE again too.

Re:Discovery.

[Cipster]

Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.
My wife's laptop's modem stopped workng for no good reason. My guess is the configuration became corrupted). I tried reinstalling the driver, restoring to earlier points etc. Nothing helped. I narrowed it down to a registry problem. The problem is I can't edit binary very well. If it was linux I could modify a text file and it would probaby work again.

Re:Discovery.

[Bombcar]

What Linux are you running? I've been using Mandrake 9.1 ever since Microsoft Service Pack 4 ate my Windows 2000 install (STOP ERROR), and my digicam on USB works fine, and I can watch movies with xine and play MP3s quite nicely.

Of course, I have a pretty new MSI ULTRA board, so maybe that has something to do with it.

(I really want to go to Gentoo, but it works, so why fiddle.)

Also, how easy is it to upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2?

Re:Discovery.

[yomegaman]

DLL hell? IRQ conflicts? These are problems that were solved many years ago. Are you going to complain about the 640k limit next?

How much do you have in your short position on Microsoft, since you're so convinced they're going downhill? Did you invest your entire allowance?

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, I didn't fully realize how much oss I had running on my windows pc until I read that. Besides that though, what is AVG? That's the only one I haven't heard of and don't use.

Re:Discovery.

[WindBourne]

but for people who just want to check their e-mail, surf the web, look at pictures of their grand children, listen to mp3s etc. I can't really think of any reason to justify them switching to Linux. No matter how easy it is to use.

My neighbor was using XP up until last week. At that time, their daughter came over and asked me to fix it (kinda low as I do not do windows). After looking at it and seeing how things were going (all sorts of problems, seem to have several spyware on it and extra ports were opened; obvious major infection), I suggested Linux to them. They said that other friends had tried it, but they were not sure of it. So I showed them my system. It was an easy sell. I installed it and just heard back yesterday. No more pop-ups. They can not seem to get to the porno anymore. They love the kids games, but miss the windows games (if they do not port, they will be irrelivant soon). Squid, squid guard, and spam assasign are doing their jobs. What is missing is the ability to control when somebody can use the net and when not. I have been thinking about how to do it.
Mandrake 9.2 seems to be in the right direction. Now, they need to keep tweaking it. In particular, have it geared towards the home with auto networking, distributed password/homes, etc. Another thing would be more kids games.
Mandrake (and others) will do just fine.

Re:Discovery.

[bmj]

What Linux are you running?

RedHat 8 at work, Mandrake 9.2b1 and Mandrake 9.1 at home. I'm sure my digicam _might_ work, but why mess with a good thing (OS X and iPhoto)? Like I said, I've played around with xine and mPlayer with no success. But it's also not been so critical for me to be able to watch video at work (and at home I've got the Mac).

Also, how easy is it to upgrade from 9.1 to 9.2?

I did an upgrade to 9.2b1 pretty easily, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you haven't seen an OEM system since your mom bought you a Compaq Presario in 1997.

Re:Discovery.

[pmz]

These are problems that were solved many years ago.

Are you really sure about this? Windows is built like a land fill. They just keep piling it on.

How much do you have in your short position on Microsoft...

My only stock interest in Microsoft is not due to my choice but that of Standard & Poors (i.e., an index fund). I don't know enough about the market to short stocks as an investment strategy.

Re:Discovery.

[berzerke]

...You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works...

Well, almost. Just the other day I was working on an XP machine where the video just wouldn't work right (the customer bought the card at best buy). Finally I check the web and lo and behold, it isn't listed as compatible according to the M$ website. No wonder it didn't work (and yes, I did try to make it work).

I will admit that hardware support in Windows is far better than Linux, but even Windows isn't perfect. And most of the Linux support problems are due to the manufacturers either not releasing Linux drivers or specs so someone can write the driver.

...There are hidden costs to using Windows, such as MS licensing, the MS tax etc...

And let's not forget vendor lock in. What's the price tag on that??? And the BSA audit raids. While home users have little to worry about, businesses have much to be concerned about.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.

I've been using WinXP since the pre-release and have never had the problems you mentioned. In the past several years I've always had a Linux partition around to play with and have experienced more hardware lockups, application crashes, and kernel panics than I can count.

And when Linux won't boot because the system hasn't been shut down properly, it isn't any easier to fix than a Windows registry disaster.

Now don't get me wrong. I do like Linux a lot. But there are in fact real problems that need to be dealt with. And the sooner people realize that, the sooner it will get fixed. Instead of making lame excuses about how unstable XP is, (because the fact of the matter is 95% of the people are using some variation of Windows and it's working just fine for the most of them), so instead of making excuses and posting empty prattle on Slashdot, why not wake up, face the truth, and either help out with code (if you're capable), or start posting positive messages so would-be Linux users won't be so turned off by elitist dicks.

Re:Discovery.

[pmz]

I'm guessing you haven't seen an OEM system since your mom bought you a Compaq Presario in 1997.

I guess the new Win XP machine a friend of mine got doesn't count, where McAffe won't work worth a damn and Blaster took the machine out before a person could say "What a POS."

Microsoft is doing practically nothing to protect their customers. It's like Ford putting a blasting cap into their gas tanks, just because.

The only-stupid-people-don't-patch excuse doesn't work, when there are literally hundreds or thousands of unknown exploitable bugs in Windows, Outlook, IE, etc. One only needs a statistical argument here (a bug per thousand lines...100 million LOC...you do the math). Releasing four patches a week is only lip service to a problem bigger than the Hoover Dam.

Microsoft will either renew themselves or evolution will take them out. My bet is on natural selection rather than their ability to suddenly become modest and revamp their work force of tens of thousands of people and years of counter-intuitive hiring and cultural indoctrination.

Re:Discovery.

[Feztaa]

What company owns Linux?

There isn't one. That's why a Linux "monoculture" would be better than the current Windows monoculture, because it wouldn't be. You'd have Mandrake boxes, RedHat boxes, SuSE boxes, Slackware boxes, Debian boxes, Gentoo boxes, and the millions of other distributions.

The important point is that they'd all be different, they'd have better firewalls, and they'd all be running less crappy software than on any given Windows box.

Re:Discovery.

[ywl]

Hmm... Tell me why the menu item to change the network identity of a computer is hidden under three different places in Win 98, W2K and Win XP.

Tell me why one of my W2K take half an hour to get the computer list from the master browser, while the *exact* image of the system (except for computer name) take less than 2 minutes.

Also, tell me how Window Explorer suddenly stopped working on one of my W2K box and I had to reinstall the whole system.

Windows is easy to use when nothing goes wrong. But after NT, the system has become so complicated and powerful (which is not necessarily a bad thing) that saying it can be easy to use is totally misleading.

Re:Discovery.

[msimm]

Even if Linux is a million times faster and a million times more stable and has a replacement application for every common windows app if you take away that one little piece of convenience you may as well forget it.

I understand your point, but I think its wrong. I think there's a critical point at which if Linux distro's could achieve performance and stability that far out pased their Windows counter-point they would take the market. Not that its going to happen, just for the sake of arguement.

I think technical merit is one of the areas Linux distros still may shine and leveraging their 'openness' in this regard is one way they might gain a decent advantage.

So maybe not out perform in a stability (like they did with W98), speed or tasking sense. But by leveraging those things that make them different, as in an open and technical sense. Not that I can think of many existing examples (Gentoo's portage system? But Windows users wont really care about that..).

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.

Is it possible that you're so blinded by your hatred for Microsoft that you willingly accept the problems that Linux has as if they don't exist? And that you seek out every flaw, major or minor, with Windows and blow it up as big as possible so you can feel better about your decision to use Linux when you know full well it does have issues that are every bit as problematic?

Here is a paper you might be interested in reading.

Re:Discovery.

[Haeleth]

> Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong. But if the registry gets corrupted or some strange hardware problem crops up there is no way to fix it.

True. I believe Windows machines also have a very poor record on recovering from being hit by meteorites.

Windows' registry getting corrupted is an extremely rare event, indeed one I've never seen; on the whole Windows chugs along very nicely without you having to worry about the registry. Linux, on the other hand, has historically relied on editing configuration files to such an extent that it's been jolly difficult *not* to screw something up terminally if you're not an expert. My experience in the past of Mandrake has been that their configuration tools merely automate the screwing-up for you, but I admit I haven't tried any recent versions...

Re:Discovery.

[Eric Damron]

Like you said, most people just want to pick up email and surf the web and do a few other simple tasks. After paying Microsoft 90 bucks + for that I would have to agree that it would be hard to justify "switching" from an OS that is already on your PC. Well except that with Microsoft you have the constant worry of being hacked.

However that aside it is worth considering Linux on a new box. Linux handles ALL of the tasks most users want to do. The problem is that Microsoft has in the past and probably still does use strong arm tactics to force OEMs to include Windows with every new PC.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when Linux won't boot because the system hasn't been shut down properly, it isn't any easier to fix than a Windows registry disaster.

Does that actually happen -- ever? I can't remember anyone complaining about that, and haven't experienced it myself in the past 6~ years. The only time I have trouble is when I custom compile a kernel and don't have a backup...something I haven't done in years. Now if I goof up, I use the last known best kernel and try again.

OTOH...the registry in Windows: it is editable even if you need to mount the drive and move it to another system. The biggest pain is finding the part to nuke and what to reinstall or fix. The wipe-and-reinstall routine is often easier, though by no means the only option.

Re:Discovery.

[cK-Gunslinger]

AVG Anti-Virus

Nice, free anti-virus software with frequent updates, schedulability(sp?), etc.

Re:Discovery.

[festers]

I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.

I don't know what fantasy world you are living in, but Windows products just don't work like that. I've brought many products home that just_didn't_work until I spent 3-4 hrs troubleshooting, downloading drivers, etc. My latest nightmare was trying to get a Creative SBlive Platinum installed correctly. And I've been doing this for years. Bleh.

And if you had read the article you would have seen that Mandrake DID just work with everthing, all autodetected and installed. When I reinstall Windows XP I have to spend at least 30 mins afterward downloading and installing device drivers. Fun!

Re:Discovery.

[Slime-dogg]

I would mainly agree, with exception of the 802.11G wireless cards. There are no linux drivers for the (is it broadcom?) chip, and there's been absolutely no news of there being one. It is really frustrating that I need to route my linux machine through a windows machine, in order for it to get to the 'G network.

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

DLL Hell and a no-name audio card with a auto-configured IRQ conflict will make bald men even balder, young women turn into Pug-faced hags, and kids turn inside out spilling their Speghetti-o's all over dad's new desk.

Are you trying to be funny? Or are you just stupid?

Nothing you mentioned is valid. And even if it was, how is it any worse than buying hardware for Linux?

Research the product you want to buy to make sure it "works" with Linux. 2 or 3 weeks later when you find hardware that "works" (meaning Linux can see it, although 50% of the functionality is removed), you go out and buy it. You bring it home, plug it in. Nothing. You find out your kernel doesn't have support included for the hardware you bought. So you recompile the kernel. Reboot. Several hours go by of tinkering with config files and boot options. Then you spend another 2 or 3 hours on newsgroups and Linux help sites and find out that your kernel version doesn't have support for the product even though it claims to. So you get a patch. Recompile the kernel. Reboot. Kernel panic. Reboot again back to the old safe kernel. Fix the problem. Reboot. Kernel panic. Reboot. Fix the problem. Reboot. No kernel panic this time. Woohoo! modprobe ModuleName. Some obscure meaningless message. More research. More newsgroup searches. You find 150 people describing the exact same problem you are having. But unfortunatley no one seems to know the answer. You reboot again just for good measure hoping against hope it will magically fix the problem. It doesn't, of course. After a 30 hour marathon in front of the computer to get your device working, you fall over on the floor and pass out. 12 hours later you wake up feeling like death has sucked out your soul, but get back to work anyway. Another 8 or 10 hours goes by. By now you've downloaded 50MB worth of libraries, source code, drivers, scan tools, etc... and installed it on your system. God only knows where. You feel like you need to format and re-install just to clean up your system now. A dozen or so reboots, and kernel compilations later you decide the device might be defective. So you reboot and select your WinXP partition to verify that device is physically bad.

"Found New Hardware -- Would you like to install it?"

"Yes" ...... ......

"Your hardware is now ready to use!"

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear you a trolling, but the parent is in fact correct. Windows is not fixed, it is reinstalled. This costs our it department a _lot_ of time. If you are experienced, fixing things in linux cost comparably less time. Nothing to do with psychology. It is just to dumbed down to fix.
That's neither good, nor bad, just a fact.

Re:Discovery.

[tjwhaynes]

Windows' registry getting corrupted is an extremely rare event, indeed one I've never seen; on the whole Windows chugs along very nicely without you having to worry about the registry.

Well thats lucky for you. I've seen two Windows boxes die from registry corruption and my Win 98SE box has lost track of most of the software installed on it as a result of a problem with the registry.

Linux, on the other hand, has historically relied on editing configuration files to such an extent that it's been jolly difficult *not* to screw something up terminally if you're not an expert.

At least I can seperate out each problem by config file and fix each in turn. Say networking is broken - check the ifcfg-ethX files. Fonts aren't being found - check /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. Sound card doesn't work - probably a bad line in /etc/modules.conf. At least I have some hope of working through the issues with Linux. With a corrupted windows registry you are sweet out of luck.

My experience in the past of Mandrake has been that their configuration tools merely automate the screwing-up for you, but I admit I haven't tried any recent versions...

I've not had any problems with the Mandrake utilities - given that I run the Cooker distro rather than the stable releases, I view that as a good sign. And even IF the utilities futz it up, I can still either edit the file by hand, restore the original configuration from the RPMs or go pick up another tool to try and fix it (Gnome Setup Tools spring immediately to mind).

I would wager it is easier to learn about every possible configuration file in a standard Linux distro than it is to repair a corrupted Windows registry.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

you can update even with urpmi, just add the 9.2 mirrors as a media source (delete old media first). See plf.zarb.org/~nanardon

Re:Discovery.

[pmz]

Nothing you mentioned is valid. And even if it was, how is it any worse than buying hardware for Linux?

1) it is valid
2) yes, Windows is generally no better than Linux, except, perhaps, in it's root-by-default ease of destruction.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

haha
both your posts are stupid.
They are both individual experiences, worth nothing on the whole.
It is inherent to the current system of hard/software that things go wrong. On _both_ systems. An exception perhaps is MacOs, although I own an ibook, I do not think mac is the solution to all problems either.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

...You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.

If it "just works" why in the hell did you have to put in a cd-rom? Seriously, I can't understand people who can't see the stupidity in that statement. Someone did the work. That work could just as easily been for Linux, Mac, BSD, hell even Amiga! Your view is fine if you accept mediocrity as the price for being easy. Hell, if everyone accepted your premise, XP would have never come about, because after all "I just put in a floppy, and voila, it just works on my MSDOS system."

Re:Discovery.

[ccp]

Both the troll and you are confusing the issue:

Who cares about what OS every moron out there is using?
Computing is obviously forking in two very definite camps: those that know nothing and don't want to learn, and the rest of us.

I'm no UNIX guru by any means, but i've using computers for work and fun since 1985. I've been dual booting since Mandrake 7.0, the first distro that autoinstalled in my machine with no problems.

Three monts ago, I erased the Windows partition and went Mandrake 9.1 cold turkey. You know, I miss nothing! Nothing at all! That's how good Mandrake is now.

I'm downloading Texstar's KDE 3.1.4 right now, from GUI. Never opened a terminal window. Far easier that tweaking DOS config.sys and autoexec.bat ever was, and we did it for playing games.

I don't see the need for dumbing down the Linux experience.

Cheers,

Re:Discovery.

[pmz]

The only-stupid-people-don't-patch excuse doesn't work, when there are literally hundreds or thousands of unknown exploitable bugs in Windows, Outlook, IE, etc. One only needs a statistical argument here (a bug per thousand lines...100 million LOC...you do the math). Releasing four patches a week is only lip service to a problem bigger than the Hoover Dam.

Perhaps Slashdot could use line-item moderation? The above argument is obvious to anyone with programming experience.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all fuck windows
second

Re:Discovery.

[garett_spencley]

Yes but it's safe to say that Mandrake 9.2 is newer software than the hardware it has been installed on.

My point is that in 2 years or so new devices will come out and those devices will come with cds that include windows drivers, not linux drivers. Maybe things don't "just work" all the time in windows but having a cd-rom with drivers that are supposed to work, or work sometimes, is a hell of a lot better than having no drivers at all and having to download the latest kernel, recompile, reboot, modprobe this and that etc.

- Garett

Re:Discovery.

[giblfiz]

Reason #1 is the kicker. It came with there computer which gives it a great deal of inerta.

The thing is that linux is free-as-in-beer. At some point a few major distributors are going to start selling systems with mandrake or some other distro for ~$100 less. Then joe pennypincher is going to grab that instead, and it will be linux that comes with the computer, not windows.

Free-as-in-Beer. They will come because of free as in beer.

Re:Discovery.

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Actually, the poster said "compared to MacOS", and its general wisdom even outside Slashdot that the poster would be correct. General wisdom might not be correct, but its up to the person arguing against it (you) to explain why.

Re:Discovery.

[sniggly]

The only-stupid-people-don't-patch excuse doesn't work, when there are literally hundreds or thousands of unknown exploitable bugs in Windows...

I've been using linux since the redhat 5.x series and year by year more vulns and exploits are discovered. I felt like a microsoft drone when I had to patch openssh twice within the same (last) month. I've had to patch mysql a few times... True enough I really don't have to patch a lot compared to admins who admin win2k/xp but I bet my kmail email client has a few holes not to mention all the other stuff I run on linux. As it gets more popular more holes are uncovered and more patching needs to be done.

No matter what OS you run you have to patch asap. If you don't you are at the mercy of people who will hijack and use your resources for distributed computing or worse. That happens to a lot of linux machines as well.

It does amaze me that MS is not going to release an MSIE until longhorn comes out, that theyre not going to fix the stupid css layout problems they have, that theyre not hot on fixing the known vulns in MSIE. That theyre not going to implement popup blocking or tabbed browsing.. Most people will continue to use MSIE anyway and they (MS) know it. It's broken, so why fix it? :)

Yeah people generally are stupid and don't patch, dont download mozilla-firebird, don't use linux. Even if they used rh9 they wouldn't use up2date or would let their demo account expire.

I don't see that MS has a future really in the long term as an OS & Office company. They won't be able to compete. So while I pretty much agree with everything you said people probably won't look after their OS security until the OS will simply patch without being asked.

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

I fear you a trolling...

If I were trolling, I would have posted as an Anonymous Coward.

Re:Discovery.

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works.

This needs to be amended--everything NEW just works. But dig out a sound card from four years ago or a SCSI hard drive or anything consumers are likely to have but not likely to buy in Best Buy tomorrow afternoon, and Linux support tends to be superior, albeit requiring a lot more effort. It takes longer for something to be supported by Linux, but once it is supported, it tends to be supported forever--whereas each new Microsoft OS tends to lose a good chunk of hardware compatibility from previous versions--all that matters to Microsoft is new hardware. But really, this whole argument is too skewed towards an American perspective (at least i think so, and I'm American too.) Microsoft is a national security risk to any government other than the united states. It is a risk to proprietary information to all corporations outside America. All over the world the credibility of american institutions is fading-- American finance, American journalism, American diplomacy, American intelligence--no one trusts any of it anymore. American software will be next, and Microsoft will have to be satisified selling outrageously priced monopoly products for America only.

Re:Discovery.

[WindBourne]

I don't see the need for dumbing down the Linux experience.

It is not confusing the issue. My neighbors are incapable of handling XP or Linux correctly. That does mean that they are dumb, they just do not understand computers. There is a strong need for a system that was built for the home use. MS is far cry from it as are numerous distros. Mandrake comes very close and I would suspect several others do as well. But mroe needs to be done to make it easier to use.
BTW, texstar has some great stuff. That is what I am using on my main development system. The system that I use for doing kernel and gui development.

Re:Discovery.

[Curtman]

I once worked with a guy who claimed that happened. What actually happened at boot was he was told to run fsck manually on a partition with no switches or arguments. I'd agree my grandma probably would have a hard time grokking that into 'fsck /dev/hda2', but I'd still prefer that message to:

Windows protection error. You must restart your computer.

Which I have seen on several occasions, And BTW, restarting never fixes that. The only resolution to that one seems to be reinstallation.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

XP is not easy to use. You have to pound your head repeatedly until you are so dull that you will accept their license. Admittedly, some people may be so dull already that they will accept it right off. But, I expect more of Slashdot readers.

Good day

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what your OSS stands for, but mine requires that source code is available. And free means I have rights granted by its license. Otherwise its just shareware.

Re:Discovery.

[swv3752]

I had the exact opposite problem. HP printer connected through USB. In Mandrake (some aold version from over a year ago), it took a couple of clicks in PrinterDrake to install. No fuss, no mess, as easy it one could imagine. One could hardly ask for a more pleasurable experience that does not involve alcohol, drugs, and/or sex.

Now in Windows, I made the horrible mistake of leaving the printer connected. Most hardware on most OS's, you connect the hardware then instal drivers. But some idiotic HP engineer thought it would be funny to design thier drivers so that if you do not connect the printer halfway through the driver install, it will not work. I guess they were trying to top the Low created by ATI. After finally editing the registry to show ghost devices, I was able to yank the misconfigured printer driver out of Device Manager and get it installed. My POS Acer Prisa scanner will actually make tolerable images in Linux, good luck getting anything better than a bad photocopy in Windows.

The only thing I would need to recompile my kernel for to get working fully, is my 8-in-1 card reader. Apparently there is some scsi option I need to enable to use anything besides the compact flash reader. As I primarily got it to read CF and the other things were a bonus, I am not in a big rush to recompile.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats debatable too. Take any particular network card off the bonepile, plug it in, and at least half the time you'll find yourself in the situation where you need to get on the net to retrieve the drivers in order to be able to get on the net. I've never even seen a card that Knoppix doesn't detect and configure.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Mandrake...

Mandrake? hahahaha... How pathetic. Install a real distro and get back with us chief.

Re:Discovery.

[mic256]

I have been using Linux for five years (dual boot with Windows) and I have never in my life compiled the kernel. Frankly I have no idea how to do this and I don't know why I should bother.

I had (have) used two printers, three computers, all with different video cards, different sound cards. I used modems (winmodems were not supported and I didn't bother, bought normal one and it worked. I had to compile the drivers though - two or three commands). Now I use a DSL and it works. What you talk about was true like five years ago - I remember I asked a geek friend then how do I install a sound card. He talked about compiling the kernel and I laughed him off. Now it's all auto. The only thing that I have to configure using text mode now is the DSL (I don't know why visual setup doesn't work with this one, the text was no brainer though) and 3d video accelerator (it compiles some kind of interfaces, but it does it on itself and I have to modify the XFree86 config file, but it's easy as well). 2d is auto of course.

Windows XP has it's issues as well. Like I played with a network manager and it messed up the DSL. I forgot about it and we had fun after my brother phoned the ISP:
They: (having exhausted all configuration issues they came up with): someone must have hacked your computer and your account was disabled. It happens very seldom (the guy on the other side seemed excited). You are assigned case no X354yZ. Phone tommorrow and give the no, we will tell if it is fixed.
My brother: But it works under Linux
They: 3 minutes silence

Re:Discovery.

[Lumpy]

XP is the "latest greatest", and it's down right stable compared to 9x/ME

the local crazy guy that roams the streets is downright stable compared to 9x/Me...

that is not saying much.

But, W2K is MORE stable than XP. I seethat every day. same hardware 5 XP machines the rest W2K. i almost never touch the W2K machines except for my weekly patches... the XP machines "wig out" on a regular basis and need more reboots or reinstalling the SP1.

Re:Discovery.

[ccp]

As I see it, we are more or less in agreement, but differing about the meaning of dumbing down. English not being my first language, I'm assuming it's my fault.

I don't think of myself as dumb, but there are lots and lots of fields I know very little about. If I were to ask the experts to simplify the field so I understand it, not considering how they cheapen the experience, or distort the matter in question, I'd say they were dumbing down the issue to my level. I don't know if this is the correct usage, but that's what I meant.

Back to Mandrake: the Linux experience, in order to be enjoyed, implies accepting some complexity. In fact, it's half the fun!

My wife isn't dumb either, but she just uses the computer: word processor, e-mail, that's it. I have a user configured for her, dumbed it down if you will, but for her it's just a Windows that doesn't crash.

Maybe she should be using Lindows.

Cheers,

Re:Discovery.

[Archie Steel]

Which piece of hardware gave you so much trouble? I'm curious, because in my 2 years of using Linux I've never had any problem using any piece of hardware. I installed Mandrake Linux, it detected all of my hardware on the first pass - even connected itself to the Internet for security updates once I put it the gateway's IP.

Hardware compatibility is a shrinking problem. 99% of computer hardware now works with Linux distros out of the box (with the notorious exception of Winmodems). The only additional step is installing proprietary drivers for NVIDIA cards (although the 2D works with the nv driver that comes with the distros) - but that's ridiculously easy, requiring you to run a script found on the NVIDIA site.

I haven't installed new hardware on WinXP yet, but I can already tell you that adding new hardware is as easy - if not easier - on a modern Linux distribution such as Mandrake 9.X

Re:Discovery.

[Lumpy]

2 or 3 weeks later when you find hardware that "works" (meaning Linux can see it, although 50% of the functionality is removed), you go out and buy it.

how you got anything but a troll rating I don't know.

First you are making more of a stupid comment than the person you quoted.

finding linux compatable hardware is EASY. it takes doing something that you don't want to do... Think and use your brain. I can find most anything hardware wise I want at a best buy or compusa that works great with linux and usually with 100% functionality.

Second. EVERYTHING I have bought over the past 3 months I plug it in and it is installed upon BOOT. nothing needed go digging through cryptic config files... again a pure FUD statement.

Why dont you actually try linux instead of making crap up.

try getting a damned device driver out of windows. where it thinks it has the right driver already and simply uses that one instead of letting you install the right one.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

..Reboot...Reboot...Reboot...Reboot...Reboot... Reboot...reboot...reboots...

Is that you, bill? Sure does sound like a windows session.

Re:Discovery.

[Sporkinum]

I think it is very dependant on what hardware you have. I tried several times to get X on mandrake 9.1 to work. I about gave up, but after spending a large amount of time, I found out that you can't have anything plugged into the svideo port on a radeon 8500 as X doesn't know what to do with it, and won't let it start. Also during install, don't tell it you have a scroll wheel on your logitech mouse for god's sake. The pointer goes crazy. I didn't know that radeon 8500's and logitech mice were "unusual" equipment. Not to mention that it won't work with my intel webcam.. another "off" brand item.

On the otherhand, I have Mandrake installed on my wife's i810 based system and everyhting works great. Go figure..

Re:Discovery.

[nolife]

Maybe it is what you are used to and what you have worked on in the past. The other day I was setting up a W2K server for the sole purpose to be a DHCP server on a vlan isolated from our corporate network for non emplyees to use for internet access. Easy enough, I click around and recognize some parameters and about 5 minutes later it is up and running. Problem though, the machine has two eth interfaces, one is for off network access and the other on the main network. I could NOT find out how to verify and/or configure the DHCP server to only work on the non corporate side, I saw no clickable options for that anywhere, I could not find anything that referenced different interfaces in the registry for the DHCP server or in the network properties. I don't know how to verify that I'm not attempting to route packets between the two networks. For the Linux machines I could set this up and verify the operation via the CLI by modifying 2 of 3 config files in about 2 minutes and be done. I'm sure there are W2K admins that can do the same with Windows in a few minutes also. The point being. Windows was not naturally easy to use for everyone and every task! When I do something new or different in Linux I always have command --help, man command, and usually a quick and dirty readme that describes 95% of the functionality needed along with 1 or 2 config files that are not hard to find or modify to my liking. I can search google for "dhcpcd eth1" and get a result on the first page.

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

Windows XP has it's issues as well.

Oh, absolutely! I'm not insinuating that XP is the end all, be all in Operating Systems. I use Linux pretty much exclusively for my Desktop computing needs. But the difference between myself and *a lot* of Slashdot posters is that I recognize that things on the Linux side could be better.

You said - "what you talk about was true like five years ago" ... That's partly true. It is better, but it's still not where it could be. And it's not where it *would* be if it weren't for elitist zealots holding things up by proclaiming Linux perfection. Every time something new and great happens they come flying out of the wood works praising Linus and how great and wonderful everything is. But if you suggest something that isn't there yet, everyone dismisses it as unnecessary worthless bloat. "RTFM!", "Go play solitaire", "Grab the source code and fix it yourself", and so on are the general sentiments that are slowing down the progress.

I don't know about you, but I have better things to do with my time than resolving dependecy problems and downloading libraries. And I'm talking about last night, not 5 years ago.

I can guess the response. "Install Debian" ... OK - that might be alright for me. But are you really going to recommend Debian to the average Windows convert? If Linux is going to achieve "World Domination", things have to be usable for the masses.

Re:Discovery.

[JCholewa]

> "Found New Hardware -- Would you like to install it?"
> "Yes" ...... ......
> "Your hardware is now ready to use!"

Hah?

I had a USB HP CD-Writer. There were no Windows 2000 drivers for the first year of its life. During that time, Mandrake (8.x, I think) was able to recognize it, though you had to edit a text file to add a line (something like "load usb2scsi").

Eventually, Windows 2000 drivers came out for the device. Upon installation, the drivers worked. But the next time I did a Windows Update, a plug-in for Windows Media Player was installed that conflicted with the drivers and *wiped out* every CD drive entry from my system. I couldn't access them from explorer.exe or cmd.exe or anywhere else, for that matter. Heck, the conflict effected *both* my USB burner and my regular CD drive.

Around the time that these drivers came out, I installed a newer version of Mandrake, which autodetected everything perfectly, without requiring any clicks from me.

Eventually, I figured the Win2k problem out and got rid of that stupid wmplayer plugin. So *eventually*, Windows 2000 got to the "just works" stage. Of course, the Win2k drivers in *practice* lead to massive overburns unless I closed *every* single other program running. The Mandrake drivers allowed me to burn stuff even while running parchive and rar (both high cpu utilization apps) on large files and downloading large files at high speeds and printing stuff through USB.

"Just works", my ass. The only hardware I've used that worked perfectly in Windows 2000 but required a hassle in Mandrake was my Gyration Cordless Optical Mouse. To get that working, I had to add a line or two somewhere in /etc/* and a few lines in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 .

My Hauppauge WinTV card just worked in Linux. It was a nightmare in Win2k. My 5.1 sound card just worked in Linux, but I had to use Linux to identify the card so that I could find the drivers online for Win2k.

Usually, the hardware installation experience between Windows and Linux are the same. Linux is better with autodetection, but there can be trouble if it doesn't detect it and have built-in drivers. Windows usually doesn't rely on autodetection, but if you know what you're working with, you can download the drivers somewhere.

And I have never, ever needed to recompile a kernel to install something. I don't even know what a "kernel panic" is, though it probably involves the screen turning blue and listing the current cpu registers.

--
-JC

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Specs... that reminds me of a time 10 or 11 years ago when I looked in my Soundblaster manuals hoping to find programming specs. No luck.

Ah, to be young and naive again.

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

Which piece of hardware gave you so much trouble?

I highly doubt you're looking for a real answer. Usually those "state an example" comments are nothing more than an attempt to have the last word at the parent's expense. But since you asked, I'll just copy and paste my response to another post because it applys here. (Make adjustments in the tone of the response since it was directed at another person and not you.)

That was true for my USB FM Radio reciever. It worked under Linux no questions asked. Under Windows, it was a chore originally. But that was a single exception. Read on...

Video card - Getting my tripple-head Matrox Parhelia video card to work under Linux was a nightmare. And when I did get it to work, I learned that I had to use analog for all 3 monitors because the Linux driver didn't support digital mode. Major suck!

My network card - uneventful on both Windows and Linux. Same thing for my soundcard and CD-ROM reader.. They just work.

My Printer - use to be a hassle in Linux but CUPS has made it a snap. I would even argue that it's easier in Linux to get my printer working. However, there is some loss of options on the Linux side.

My scanner - Windows all the way. Major headache in Linux. And the functionality is greatly reduced in Linux.

My webcam - Windows again. It didn't work at all in Linux until fairly recently. And the functionality is so far reduced that it's not even worth having on my system in Linux.

My digital camera - Windows again. It just works. I have been able to get it mounted in Linux in the past by recompiling my kernel and adding additional modules. But even then it's not very user friendly. None of the programs I have tried can see the camera. I have to mount and unmount it manually. (I'm open for ideas for Digital Camera programs though.) Fortunately I don't take a lot of pictures so I just get my pictures when I'm in Windows.

My external Firewire hard-drives - Windows again. They don't work at all in Linux. After hours of screwing with the kernel, reading newsgroups, looking for help on help sites, and so on, I haven't been able to get them to mount. (And when asking for help with a Linux problem, you usually just get a response like RTFM - even after you have clearly demonstrated the extent to which you have gone to figure the problem out on your own.) I'm looking forward to the 2.6 kernel hoping it will resolve this problem.

Digital Video Camera - Forget about it in Linux. It's a firewire camera. Hoping the 2.6 kernel will have better firewire support.

My USB mouse - In Windows it works just fine. In Linux I had to change an option in my BIOS to get Linux to recognize it. No big deal, but I don't understand why Windows sees the mouse without changing a BIOS option and Linux can't? And now that Linux can see it, the extra buttons don't work. This is an acceptable loss though. But still goes to show that things could be improved.

CDRW - I'm leaning towards Windows on this one. The software I've used in Linux is akward but it does work, usually.

Re:Discovery.

[nmos]

Well it certianly COULD work out that badly under Linux and be a piece of cake under Windows but the opposite is true sometimes as well, especially when replacing one product with a newer model. For example, with Linux replacing an old CD writer with a new one is just a matter of unplugging the old one and plugging in the new. No drivers or special software need to be installed, it just works. With Windows half the time the software for the old burner won't work with the new one and cannot be removed cleanly but still manages to conflict with the new software (thanks Roxio). Before you say this is a rare exception, I deal with a lot of hardware and I've seen it also with scanners, cameras, printers and even wireless network cards. One of my customers has a couple of employees who travel between different offices and they have never ending problems with their printers. Every printer they plug in wants to install it's own special usb or parallel drivers and conflicts with the others. They all also like to install background utilities that flip out whenever they connect to one of the other printers. I can use all of their printers in all of their offices by changing a single line in just one config file (and I could easily make that a click on an icon sort of thing if I wanted to).

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

finding linux compatable hardware is EASY. it takes doing something that you don't want to do... Think and use your brain.

An elitist? A Zealot? Or are you just a jerk?

Why dont you actually try linux instead of making crap up.

Been tinkering with Linux since August, 1996. Try again sport.

I can find most anything hardware wise I want at a best buy or compusa that works great with linux and usually with 100% functionality.

Bah - I'll just copy and paste from another post. 3rd time ...

That was true for my USB FM Radio reciever. It worked under Linux no questions asked. Under Windows, it was a chore originally. But that was a single exception. Read on...

Video card - Getting my tripple-head Matrox Parhelia video card to work under Linux was a nightmare. And when I did get it to work, I learned that I had to use analog for all 3 monitors because the Linux driver didn't support digital mode. Major suck!

My network card - uneventful on both Windows and Linux. Same thing for my soundcard and CD-ROM reader.. They just work.

My Printer - use to be a hassle in Linux but CUPS has made it a snap. I would even argue that it's easier in Linux to get my printer working. However, there is some loss of options on the Linux side.

My scanner - Windows all the way. Major headache in Linux. And the functionality is greatly reduced in Linux.

My webcam - Windows again. It didn't work at all in Linux until fairly recently. And the functionality is so far reduced that it's not even worth having on my system in Linux.

My digital camera - Windows again. It just works. I have been able to get it mounted in Linux in the past by recompiling my kernel and adding additional modules. But even then it's not very user friendly. None of the programs I have tried can see the camera. I have to mount and unmount it manually. (I'm open for ideas for Digital Camera programs though.) Fortunately I don't take a lot of pictures so I just get my pictures when I'm in Windows.

My external Firewire hard-drives - Windows again. They don't work at all in Linux. After hours of screwing with the kernel, reading newsgroups, looking for help on help sites, and so on, I haven't been able to get them to mount. (And when asking for help with a Linux problem, you usually just get a response like RTFM - even after you have clearly demonstrated the extent to which you have gone to figure the problem out on your own.) I'm looking forward to the 2.6 kernel hoping it will resolve this problem.

Digital Video Camera - Forget about it in Linux. It's a firewire camera. Hoping the 2.6 kernel will have better firewire support.

My USB mouse - In Windows it works just fine. In Linux I had to change an option in my BIOS to get Linux to recognize it. No big deal, but I don't understand why Windows sees the mouse without changing a BIOS option and Linux can't? And now that Linux can see it, the extra buttons don't work. This is an acceptable loss though. But still goes to show that things could be improved.

CDRW - I'm leaning towards Windows on this one. The software I've used in Linux is akward but it does work, usually.

------

Let me guess - the problem isn't Linux. The problem is the hardware I'm using right? If it doesn't work well under Linux then it's not important, right?

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

Well it certianly COULD work out that badly under Linux and be a piece of cake under Windows but the opposite is true sometimes as well,

Absolutely. *Sometimes* it could work out just the opposite. (See my other posts about my USB FM Radio adapter.)

So I'll just agree with you right there and leave it at that. With just this left to say. I've never said Windows was perfect. I don't understand the attitude of so many of the other posters (not you). If a person indicates that Windows has anything good going for it, or that Linux could be improved in one way or another, everyone comes down on them. Sad, truly it is.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Linux is like this - it happned to me as well. Drivers in question were ata66 and ata100..
And when I booted FreeBSD instead - it recognized
hardware and booted with no problem.

Re:Discovery.

[carlmenezes]

Let me give you two simple reasons for switching from Windows to Linux :

1) Privacy :
Just how secure do you think your information is on a Windows PC with just about every other app contacting some server or the other with updates, with your Windows box trying it's best to get you to let it "automatically manage updates", added to which is Microsoft's reputation as far as privacy is concerned?
That is why I prefer Open Source. It's much easier for me to trust an application that, even though I may not be able to examine the code and check, there are others who are and if they say it's safe, well that's good enough for me since there is no single enttity controlling them.

2) Legality:
Sure, Windows comes on every new box. But just how much comes with Windows? Notepad, Wordpad, a calculator, WMP, and Windows Movie maker. Notepad is hardly useful. Wordpad just a little more so. WMP and WMM try their best to get you to save in the wma and wmv formats - how about just letting me choose the format I want ?. So, now you need an Office suite. How many of you Windows enthusiasts have actually paid for the software you use? Have you paid for Office, PhotoShop, 3DSMax, TrueSpace, Premiere, Visual Studio, DreamWeaver, Flash, a good text editor, etc etc? I guess not because then your costs will run into several thousands and you don't want to spend THAT much now do you? So you crack the software and use it and then gloat. How much time did it take you to get all that stuff installed, all the reboots included? A few days maybe?

Do a standard install of any Linux distro out there and I'm sure even you will appreciate the wide variety of apps that let you run them out of the box. And it's free. No cracking involved. Perfectly legal. Just the product of people donating their time and money to help others. They may not be as good as commercial products in many cases but they're good enough for me because I can still get my work done and I don't need to spend additional time getting stuff installed just to bring my comp to a certain degree of usability.

And then you gripe about the freeware that's available for Linux and it's driver support? Give it a little time people! It's really surprising the speed at which hardware support has evolved for Linux.

It also gives me peace of mind knowing that the software I'm using was written by individuals who have donated a lot of time, money and effort into developing something and then sharing it for free just so others can enjoy it too - without any ulterior motives in mind about "tying the customer to the product".

I personally do not mind waiting a bit as long as I know that my privacy is protected and that I am not breaking the law in any way. That is what is the most important for me and that is why I use Linux.

Can you say the same for Windows? Or is it that you just don't care?

Re:Discovery.

[DashEvil]

That has nothing to do with the OS, and everything to do with corporate driver support.

Re:Discovery.

[tigga]

exception of the 802.11G wireless cards. There are no Linux drivers

Take a look here - it's a driver for Atheros chipset:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi

Here you may search for adapters with that chipset:
http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adap ters.html

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you installed Windows 98? What about 98SE? What about Windows ME (which Microsoft still supports as 'current' software). They are awful. Impossible. Truly a stomach-turning experience. If Windows ME was 'ready for the desktop' (And I think you're the sort of person who would argue that yes, it was), then any modern Linux distribution is ready and over-prepared!
Linux is as ready for any desktop as Windows will ever be; anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant or deliberately obfuscating.

Re:Discovery.

[dubstar]

3) Everything imaginable, just, plain, works. I'll elaborate on point #3. Devices, apps, games etc. You can walk in to any Staples or Best Buy and pick up any piece of software or any printer, digital camera, mp3 player etc. bring it home, plug it in, insert the cd-rom and presto! it just works.

And here I did 3 years of tech support calls for NOTHING, I could have just told them - it just, plain, works!

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant or deliberately obfuscating.

Says the Anonymouse Coward

Re:Discovery.

[Slime-dogg]

I was more referring to the Broadcom chip, as I stated in the original post. Thanks for the link though.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

One could hardly ask for a more pleasurable experience that does not involve alcohol, drugs, and/or sex.

Alcohol *is* a drug.

Re:Discovery.

[spoco2]

These are problems that were solved many years ago.

Are you really sure about this? Windows is built like a land fill. They just keep piling it on.

Um... well I for one haven't had any sort of IRQ conflict of any sort for... man I can't remember how long, years in any case... Geeze you are one bitter person... do you think that Linux doesn't carry legacy stuff around as well? Plus Windows dropped its Win9x lineage with Windows 2K...

Re:Discovery.

[scrote-ma-hote]

Heh. That's what I like about my mum. She's IT Manager for the branch of the company where she works. She administers *nix, Novell and MS OS's all day long. She tells me when to patch my machines long before slashdot.

Re:Discovery.

[angle_mark]

So true! But for some reason I still use Linux over Windows. Glutton for punishment I guess ;-)

Re:Discovery.

[KeithManning]

The only thing I would need to recompile my kernel for to get working fully, is my 8-in-1 card reader. Apparently there is some scsi option I need to enable to use anything besides the compact flash reader.

Which option is it? I've been trying to get a USB 5-in-1 card reader to work but it just keeps saying "read mode is not allowed" or something like that.

-Keith

Re:Discovery.

[Felis Rex]

Microsoft is a national security risk to any government other than the united states.

Correction: Microsoft is a national security risk to every government including the united states.

Re:Discovery.

[blixel]

So true! But for some reason I still use Linux over Windows. Glutton for punishment I guess ;-)

I use it too. There are a lot of benefits. But God forbid that someone should point out something that could be improved. Oh my.

Re:Discovery.

[websaber]

I'm sorry I disagree. I use to use mandrake but I switched to red hat after I read on the mandrake website that they don't care how the OS looks because users want to customize their own desktops anyway. When I look at OSX it literally takes my breath away. Even XP in decent in a Telatubby sort of way. The two things really holding Linux back are looks (yes they do matter) and configuration tools, adding windows shares to red hat still basically needs script editing forget about Sendmail.

Re:Discovery.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Well it's easy to use until something goes wrong.

Welcome to true-for-everything land.

Re:Discovery.

[ashtonb]

Sorry, it really is easy to use.

Try telling that to my mother.

Or two-thirds of the users on my network.

Windows is NOT easy to use (or learn), especially for normal people with serious jobs to do.

Re:Discovery.

[Hooded One]

They don't care about how the desktop looks? Then why'd they take the time to develop Galaxy so users don't have to suffer Keramik in KDE, and so that QT and GTK apps look similar, and look good?

Seriously, Galaxy is one of the nicest default UIs I've seen on an OS.

Of course, I've moved to SuSE because I like the KDE focus, but Mandrake is still quite nice.

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

in other words you just said...nothing

thanks fp, go to hell

Re:Discovery.

[Hooded One]

Why hello troll, I guess you didn't happen to notice that this is an article *about* Mandrake, now did you?

Mandrake is a perfectly decent distro, that is in no way lacking in capabilities compared to others. Just because it actually is *usable* by people who don't feel like hand-configuring doesn't impair it.

Re:Discovery.

[pndiku]

Guess you've never had a corrupted RPM repository. /var/lib/rpm/ went belly-up on me just yesterday. Much as I had all my software, I couldn't add/remove anything (for an apt4rpm user this is _most_ crucial!). So, off to the store for my SuSE 8.2 cds and a time-wasting re-install. Be glad if your distro doesn't use RPMs!

Re:Discovery.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but how in the hell can you not get mplayer to work properly? Go to Easy Urpmi and add the plf source. Then "urpmi mplayer". It's that simple... I have no idea what your problem could be. Do you have a wacky video card? Even the default mplayer that comes with Mandrake will play nearly everything but wmf and rm files. Oh I see, you're using RH8 for some reason. Just toss MDK 9.1 on that box and quit your bitching. RH is fine for a server but since all you seem to want to do at "work" is listen to mp3s, watch video, and no doubt read /. then you should use a desktop distro like Mandrake.

Re:Discovery.

[swv3752]

Multi scsi id I think. I ave bookmarked at home, but I think it was on the kernel mailing list.

Re:Discovery.

[Archie Steel]

I highly doubt you're looking for a real answer.

No, really, I am. I've never had any hardware trouble under Linux, but that doesn't mean that others haven't. I'm always curious to hear about it, and it's also a good indication of what not to buy - at least not yet.

tripple-head Matrox Parhelia video card

That's a major bummer. Although, in this case, one can hardly blame Linux - Matrox has had a driver for the Parhelia since September 2002 (at least that's when they announced it on their web site), but if it doesn't support digital output, then clearly they did a shoddy job.

My Printer - there is some loss of options on the Linux side.

I've noticed this as well, although, to tell you the truth, most of these options were redundant with options from the actual printing app or KDE printing engine. I've heard that Epson now has their own drivers for Linux - I'd be curious to see if they have as many options for Linux as for Windows.

My scanner - Windows all the way. Major headache in Linux. And the functionality is greatly reduced in Linux.

This used to be a hassle, but in the latest Mandrake they have an utility to configure this. My own scanner - a HP 2100c - works great, but then I first checked out compatibility lists before buying it. Again, Epson is leading the way: their scanner drivers are quite good. On the app side, QuiteInsane for KDE is great!

webcam[...]digital camera[...]Digital Video Camera

This seems to be the biggest problem people still have with Linux - although, as far as digital cameras are concerned, so far all the ones I've tried (3 in all) have worked. Just plug them in the USB port and an icon appears automatically on the desktop. Again, this seems to be a case of "see if it's supported before you buy." What model is yours? On the app side I've used GPhoto so far, but since now I'm on KDE I should look at an equivalent KDE app.

Firewire

This is a bummer for me, as I'm currently considering to buy a Firewire card. Fortunately, the world seems to be moving towards USB 2.0 instead, but still, I hope they improve Firewire support.

USB Mouse

Strange, my Logitech USB mouse has never given me any problems. You mention multiple buttons - are you talking about a 5-button mouse? Never tried one of those. At least you found a way to get it to work, but you're right, it should be improved. You should report this to the USB kernel people.

CDRW

Since the hardware seems to work (and it should, this is not usually a problem), then I suggest you switch to K3B for your cd-burning program. It simply is the best cd-burning front-end on any platform, period. It is both featureful and easy-to-use, and now supports DVD writing.

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Bright side is, hardware support continues improving at a rapid pace, especially now that some companies (Epson, Samsung) supply their own drivers for their products. Now, if they can get Firewire to work properly, this will be a major advance.

And when asking for help with a Linux problem, you usually just get a response like RTFM - even after you have clearly demonstrated the extent to which you have gone to figure the problem out on your own.

I disagree - maybe it's the way you approach people. You first message to which I replied, for example, was quite arrogant. If you go in with that kind of attitude of course you'll be told to RTFM (and possibly to FO). Personally, in two years of tinkering with Linux, I've never been told to Read The Friendly Manual. Not once. On the contrary, I've found people eager to help and usually I solved my problems quickly thanks to their advice. Perhaps you've just been unlucky (or perhaps you're exaggerating), but may I suggest a gentler approach next time? You'll find it works wonders.

Peace.

Re:Discovery.

[jonadab]

> I would mainly agree, with exception of the 802.11G wireless cards.

Those I will freely admit I know nothing about. All my networks are 10/100
wired Ethernet, cat5 or better. (Well, there's also the DEC net at work, which
is cat4, but as far as Linux is concerned that's just a serial port, and the
giscom thingydoo in dosemu is the only thing that talks to it.) (There's
also my dialup connection to my ISP at home, but PPP is well supported.)

I did note that with Linux the first step is to check reviews before you buy
and get hardware that's said to work with Linux, and that this particular step
is easier with Windows. Just about any hardware, *theoretically*, can be made
to work with Windows. Though with USB it often requires sacrificing goats.

Re:Discovery.

[charlescpc]

I'm a newbie to Linux. I installed 9.1 and then upgraded to 9.2. I'm trying to get the hang of Linux but it's not easy. After reading some of the discussion I will have to agree that windows XP is so much easier to use and almost everything works. With Linux 9.2 I don't have any way to use my dvd drive to play a dvd. I have heard that you have to download a bunch of codecs to make the applications work, but I have yet to get it going. I cannot get the tux game to work. It doesn't seem to like my nvidia card. - no problems with windows. During the install it loaded the wrong sound driver for my soundblaster live card. The funny thing version 9.0 loaded the correct driver and 9.1 and 9.2 both load the wrong driver. 9.2 elimated a lot of programs that I liked that came with 9.1. Korganizer/ file manager that you logged in with root privileges/ and terminal program that let you log in with root privileges. When I go to log off and restart the system sometimes I have the option to pick which operating system I want to reboot to. Other times I just have the option to Halt. I haven't figured that one out yet. Now when it boots up it lost the splash screen and just displays character which is no biggie. The devices I have had a problem with I still have a problem with. No new drivers for them. HP scanner 2300c/ Nvidia geforce 400 DVD Cdrom still won't work. My web cam won't work My digital camera won't work in linux. Installing programs is such a pain in Linux. I have installed only one that ran with one command and that one was opera. Bottom line is hadly anything works in Linux and Linux software itself seems very buggy. I keep waiting for the day when I can stop dual booting XP and go to Linux as my main operating system. I think that will still be a few years off.

Re:Discovery.

[keithmorg]

Well, as an MCSE with 14 years of Microsoft technical support experience, I am changing because I am sick and tired of Microsoft. I am tired of their constant inability to provide good security except with their incessent patches, their holier than thou attitude when it comes to using their software (and the EULA makes sure that you know that it is their software and you are just using it with their permission)and the constant monitoring of your system or what you are doing with it...(have you really read the EULA for their Media Player Version 9? It gives them the right to track where you go and what you download on your system. Oops, I mean their system that they are letting you use.) I for one don't need software cops watching my every move. There is enough of that without Billy Boy putting in his 10 billion dollars worth. Most people don't even read the EULA's they agree to but once you do.....you would be surprised...and possibly violated. Since Mandrake Linux provides the software necessary to communicate with the Windows world I see no reason not to change.. And I like the interface/interfaces better. My last Linux machine had several users each with different desktop interfaces (Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, Afterstep) just so I could play with each one to discover the nuances in each (personally I like Gnome and Enlightenment from those experiments.) Yes, not everyone is a tech. All they need to do is pick one.

Worth purchasing?

[Sheetrock]

I assume most if not all of this will be available for download (via GPL) correct? Granted, with a few more advertisements and all... but even if you pay for it you get those right?

Re:Worth purchasing?

[MuParadigm]

The ISO's are not available for downloading yet, unless you're part of the Mandrake Club, but they should be available by the end of the October according to Mandrake's download page.

They will probably missing some proprietary drivers though. You can download most of them elsewhere, but if you want them to be part of the distribution, you'll need to buy it.

Re:Worth purchasing?

[TaranRampersad]

Yeah, they say the ISO will be available in late October. It's past the midway point of October as far as I can tell... doesn't that constitute late?

Re:Worth purchasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're already available via BitTorrent.

Re:Worth purchasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's past the midway point of October as far as I can tell... doesn't that constitute late?

So does 31 October 2003 at 11pm...

Geesh. Get a life, or pay up. You choose.

Re:Worth purchasing?

[jonadab]

> I assume most if not all of this will be available for download (via GPL)
> correct?

Yeah, if you want to mess with downloading a billion individual packages.
Later, after the mad rush dies down, they'll put up ISOs too, but even then,
unless you've got broadband, do you really want to spend ten days downloading
it all?

Re:Worth purchasing?

[Bombcar]

Sounds like we need hot 0-day Warez for Mandrake ISOs! If someone posts a link (bittorrent), I'll supply the 31337 NO_CD_CRACK I've just whipped up..... :D

Re:Worth purchasing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck would you need a no cd-crack for an operative system? Don't tell me Mandrake requires one to have its CD in when running?! It's things like this that make people despise Linux.

Re:Worth purchasing?

[wemmick]

Is there an installation option in the downloadable version to install and configure like this Discovery release?

I can see how the default "task-based menus" could be very useful for newbies.

Re:Worth purchasing?

[jonbryce]

Yes, torrent links are here

http://suprnova.gunny.org/torrents/444/MandrakeL in ux-9.2_disk1of3.i586.iso.torrent
http://www.jj-en terprise.biz/suprnova/torrents/444 /MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk2of3.i586.iso.torrent
http ://suprnova.lagalot.com/torrents/445/MandrakeL inux-9.2_disk3of3.i586.iso.torrent

Re:Worth purchasing?

[uninet]

Not the discovery edition, but the standard Download Edition. The discovery edition, like the PowerPack and ProSuite will not be available for a free download (following Mandrake's standard way of doing things).

Laptop

[darkmeridian]

Mandrake seems to be the best Linux OS for newbies and laptop users. On my Dell Latitude D800, Mandrake 9.1 worked perfectly. The new release betters support, but Mandrake isn't just a newbie release but also for laptop users.

Re:Laptop

[SCHecklerX]

I love mandrake too, but it is NOT perfect. The way it tries to update your fstab when inserting a flash disk pcmcia card, for example, sucked up all of the resources on my computer, forcing a reboot.

Another issue is the long list of file permissions that get changed in the /dev directories when a normal user logs in first on console. Probably not an issue with fast drives / cpu, but agonizing on hardware that isn't even all that old. I was able to fix this problem, but it took a lot of research to figure out exactly what the problem was in the first place.

Granted, this is an old Toshiba Libretto, but that kind of thing should not occur. After editing a few init scripts, everything worked fine, but out of the box, Mandrake was broken. A normal user would not have been able to fix these problems. Since I am not a member of the Mandrake club, I was not able to submit my feedback and script edits to them.

I will give credit to Mandrake for being the only distribution that I have tried that will actually install on the weird libretto (you lose your floppy drive after boot, b/c of the pcmcia drivers needed for it).

Re:Laptop

[ctour]

Knoppix is the best distro for newbies and laptop users, I used Mandrake 9.1 and it crashed almost every time on logout, Knoppix, booted from hard drive, did everything right and automatically set up my wifi card. Still, I might try it out.

Re:Laptop

[Dan-DAFC]

I like Mandrake but on my newish Toshiba Satellite laptop it doesn't install properly, ACPI issues I believe. I had to choose the alternative kernel to install 9.1 then use a rescue CD from an older version to boot it and build my own patched kernel, more effort than I would have liked.

I tried 9.2 RC2 and the problems were the same so, unless somebody knows otherwise, I doubt the final version will work either.

Re:Laptop

[arcanumas]

Mandrake seems to be the best Linux OS for newbies and laptop users.

I don't understand this. Why should we say that Mandrake is for newbiew. Do you mean that it is not good for someone experienced in Linux? If it works out of the box then it MUST be evil is that it?
There are some iritating things about Mandrake, yes (automounter anyone?) but i can not say that it is made for stupid users and does not allow the knowledgable user to do his work. I can install a Mandrake distro and have it running perfectly in much less than Windows or any other distro i have seen. (but i haven't seen them all)
I would like to hear someone come with a good explanation why Mandrake is a Newbie Distro. I have seen other distros and it all boils down to the same things. If you can do it in one you can do it in the other.

I am afraid that it is the same old thing. When something becomes popular the it must be evil right? If you are not using WeirdUnsusualAmazinglyBizzareDistroFromHell version 0.666 then you are not 31337 right?

Re:Laptop

[jvagner]

Up until recently, I switched between RH, Knoppix and Mandrake.

I'm done with RH and Knoppix (though I carry a Knoppix disc with me for good measure). Mandrake 9.2 RC2 is a wonderful experience and has been mostly stable for me (operationally it's stable -- the update Drake program has some problems but I'm assuming those will get fixed in the final release).

I heartily recommend the latest Mandrake. Good enough to send to my father, who's done with Windows hacks and viruses.

Re:Laptop

[sik0fewl]

I think you misunderstood what the poster meant. When he referred to Mandrake as a good newbie OS he was talking about how simple (and automatic) it is to set up the machine. Most Linux newbies don't want to fiddle with modprobe and configuration files trying to get their hardware devices to work, they just want them to work. With Mandrake, they do (for most things).

I use Mandrake and I think it's great. It's much easier (ie, mostly automatic) to set up and install than most of the other distros available. However, if you don't mind wasting time, you can always do the advanced install.

After installation is complete and the new user is using their Linux system, settings can easily be changed using Mandrake's control center(I think that's what they call it). However, if you don't like this, you can always edit configuration by hand (which I mostly do).

When the poster said Mandrake was a great newbie OS he wasn't implying that it's not a great poweruser OS (I think it's both).

Re:Laptop

[Dcnjoe60]

Since I am not a member of the Mandrake club, I was not able to submit my feedback and script edits to them.

The Mandrake developers hang out on the Mandrake Cooker list, not the club site. Also, bugzilla, for reporting bugs is available to anyone, too. Nothing stopped you from submitting your feedback and scripts to them but you.

Re:Laptop

[DrXym]

My experience (most recently with 9.1) is the opposite. The desktop is a dogs breakfast - cluttered menu full of Ks and Gs, duplicate K & G apps that do the same things, homegrown tools that get confused at the drop of a hat, painful support for PCMCIA and laptop networking, an awful updater and help nowhere to be found. I've grown to hate that updater, which will sit there for ten minutes over a modem not responding or painting at all while it downloads some package list. That was after spending ages trying to get devfs to show the modem that I knew was there so kppp would let me dial out on it.

I honestly do not believe anyone in Mandrake pays the slightest bit of attention to usability. Ten minutes with Mandrake would yield a list of significant and obvious improvements that could be made. It does not have to be this way. Red Hat shows you can produce a very slick desktop - if you try - and Mandrake really needs to learn this if they stand the remotest chance of attracting novice users.

Which is a shame. There is a lot under the surface to be proud of, but they absolutely have to clean up that desktop.

Mandrake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not support my Asus onboard gigabit ethernet, and the drivers won't install due to an IRQ conflict which windows has no problem with. Will this be fixed between 9.1 nad 9.2? Doubt it.

I'll save my blank CD. Maybe next time.

Re:Mandrake...

[Divide By Zero]

I put 9.2 on my machine last night. FTP install, and it detected and correctly configured the on-board NIC for the A7N8X-Deluxe from the floppy. It's not gigabit, but it got the job done - drivers installed, DHCP got an address correctly, negotiated the Mandrake firewall, the whole thing.

No need to spend a blank CD. Use the Network boot image on a floppy and give it a go. If it doesn't work, you're not out anything.

Re:Mandrake...

[Anonymous Coward]

can we say, you have no clue....

I'll bet $100.00 you have your bios set wrong.

again, linux os for people who know computers not the wannabe or "tinkerer"

stay with the childs OS and leave linux to us that actually know what we are doing.

Re:Mandrake...

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, IRQ conflicts happen at the hardware/BIOS level. Unless it's an actual error in the kernel that is only affecting you, I guarantee you don't have your IRQ settings correct in your BIOS. I don't think we can blame that on Linux, I think we need to blame that on end-user stupidity.

About 3 minutes...

[Ceadda]

From trying out Suse 9 pro. :) And kernel 2.6. Time to find out how it all compares?

Download the ISOs now, for free

[bconway]

Torrents of the GPL ISOs are availabe at http://suprnova.org/. Search the front page for "Mandrake" and you'll find them (their location has changed a few times, so I won't post direct links).

The more people that jump on, the faster it'll be, so spread the word. These are the download editions and legal under the GPL, of course. You can check the md5sums against those posted in the earlier Slashdot article comments.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrent links for the folks who don't want to wade through the site...

• Disk 1 of 3
• Disk 2 of 3
• Disk 3 of 3

I grabbed these off of This link

Yes those are all different domains, but they're all from the same site ... (the parent's url)

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

D'oh, didn't read the parent saying the links are changing. (only read as far as BT links are here)

Download at own risk then ...

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[smeat]

So some company works hard to make a distibution one of the best out there, and you can't have the decency to either pay them for their hard work, or wait two weeks to freeload.

Mandrake is one of the greatest supporters of free software, and I don't mean the software you can get without paying someone, I mean open source software. They only allow open source software in the main distibution and support many open source projects.

smeat!

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[bconway]

If they had a problem with it, they wouldn't have released GPLed ISOs. They're perfectly able to do what SuSE does, but they don't. You have no argument.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

the torrent for the second iso isn't working for me. hope it comes back online.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

The links in the grandparent post work fine.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think the moral line is? Seriously. I have paid for several boxed distros, but the upgraded releases come so frequently, that I often, also, download ISOs. I just can't keep paying for release 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6 etc etc.

Plus, I prefer to buy boxed software. My local store certainly doesn't carry every iteration, only sporadic ones. (Like, it might have 8.2 and 9.2, but not 9.0 or 9.1).

I feel very comfortable as to where I draw the line on this. I buy when I can. What do you think, does that meet your moral compass?

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[smeat]

Great let's reward companies for doing the right thing by stabbing them in the back, brilliant logic.

So they release the GPL ISOs, to a limited distribution channel, ie MandrakeClub. This is the reward that they get?

You can't wait two weeks until the general release happens? Or purchase a MandrakeClub subscription to legitimately download it early?

It makes no sense, you want to use Mandrake Linux, but you don't want the company to survive so you can continue using it?

Bunch of impatient freeloaders.

smeat!

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Redistribution of GPL software is both legal and encouraged. Mandrake doesn't have a problem with it, I don't see why you should. Don't tell me you're jealous because you paid for it and didn't want to?

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes no sense, you want to use Mandrake Linux, but you don't want the company to survive so you can continue using it?

Maybe some people want to test it before possibly buying. Maybe some of those people are also impatient. (Yes, I know that in reality majority of the downloaders don't fall into the first category.)

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[slux]

The idea of releasing the isos two weeks early to the club members was to give some kind of a benefit to those who've actually bothered to support the development of the Mandrake GNU/Linux distribution.

They could've gone the other way like SuSe and many others (Lindows, Xandros and so on) - make a small insignificant bit of their distribution non-free and let no-one download the isos, but they wanted to try something that would keep the whole distribution free, right according to the GNU philosophy.

They decided to trust that their club members would hold off distributing the isos just for the short time of two weeks. In my mind that would've been the decent thing to do. Limit the leeching a bit for a very limited time period and create a little incentive for actually giving something to the company that has done all the work.

Moderators, could you not mod this down?

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[smeat]

Maybe some people want to test it before possibly buying. Maybe some of those people are also impatient. (Yes, I know that in reality majority of the downloaders don't fall into the first category.)

Then wait two freakin weeks.

smeat!

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Slime-dogg]

Not to mention that chipping in to the club is cheap. I pitched in something like $50 a year ago, and I don't even use Mandrake. I did at one point, because I was trying out different distros, but I went with Gentoo.

I'll still chip in money when I can, mostly because I see Mandrake as being the learner's edition, and that the ease of use & install that they promote may help evangelize the Linux desktop. I would for Suse too, but I disagree with their distribution method... They have an ftp with the full install of their distro up, but you have to download every single file. It's very blah.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Issue9mm]

As long as you're getting the hot files off of torrent sites, then you aren't burdening the mandrake distribution servers one iota, and hence, are not affecting them in any way really.

At least the way I see it, the club membership is to support the bandwidth they have, and what you're really paying for isn't 0-day release time, but 0-day release time without 0-day server lag. This is the best of both worlds (I think).

-9mm-

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[bogie]

To all the people whining about people "stabbing Mandrake in the back". Get a clue already. Mandrake is free to do what they want with their commercial versions with proprietary addons. They simply legally and ethically can't do the same with the GPL vesion. Don't want to listen to me? Fine. Let's see what Mandrake themselves has to say on their 9.2 features page.

"Mandrake Linux 9.2 is a "100% Free Software" product. This means that everyone is granted the right to access the sources, modify and redistribute the software"

Sounds to me like an open and shut case. It will never be right in a million years for anyone to try and limit the distribution of GPL software. If you don't believe in that then your priorities are screwed up. These companies who pack up and then redistribute thousands of packages of OTHER peoples software simply have no right to ignore the license that goes along with it. Somehow I don't think the authors of Gnome or KDE or even the author of some package rarely used want to see their software being restricted in this way. If they had I'm sure there would be some clause saying "hey if you feel like it, feel free to restrict distribution if its in the interest of some company".

Mandrake knew what they were getting into when they decided to piggy back on the work of others to create their distro. If now they are somehow regretting the terms of the software they have adopted, then maybe they need to rethink the business they are in.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Jungle guy]

When Red Hat tried to do that, the editors were the first to publish the links to the torrent files. I don't see why there is such an outcry now that someone has did the same for Mandrake.

I, personally, have never paid for the Mandrake box (I live in Brazil, where S&H and taxes make the prices triple). However, I have bought a magazine for US$ 5 that has the three CDs of Mandrake 9.1 and I am seriously thinking of making it my main Linux distro.

It is obvious that these torrent files would appear: they are legal and, in the view of many, decent. If I were a member club of Mandrake, I wouldn't bother to get those isos on a torrent (I don't see the value it would bring to the community) and I am not going to use them to download 9.2 (I don't have MD5 sum files to feel confident). But I do not condone people that either upload or download 9.2 this way.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anonymous Coward]

They allow it, because they believe in the goodness of a human being. Which they also know is naive, but a worthy ideal. Just because you have freedom of speech, does not mean you should swear into everybodies face.

But ofcourse, this is probably lost on somebody with your ethical standards.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anontroll]

This is not M$ with billions of dollars to wallpaper their bathroom with. Mandrake is struggling to stay afloat and to put out products that are so good you can't wait even 2 weeks to download. Great things like Mandrake 9.2 only happen because of the support they receive from you and me. The only way these things will continue to grow and improve is if they are supported.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[slux]

Mandrake used bittorrent for their release as well to keep the load off their servers. This is *really* not what was the reason for the two-week exclusive release. If they were worried about bandwidth they would've distributed it to ftp mirrors all over the world just like with all previous Mandrake releases.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Brandybuck]

They decided to trust that their club members would hold off distributing the isos just for the short time of two weeks. In my mind that would've been the decent thing to do.

Yes, that would have been the decent thing to do. But it's still against the spirit of the GPL. The GPL legalese says you can't demand a user not distribute the ISO. The essense of the GPL implies that you shouldn't ask this either.

What if this wasn't Mandrake? What if this was Sun, or Apple or even Microsoft? What would the FSF say if Microsoft told there UNIX Services users "don't redistribute the stuff that came from GNU"? There isn't any clause in their EULA forbidding it, but they're still saying "don't do it". You know full well that the FSF would be all over them like flies on you-know-what.

p.s. Of course, I think you're mischaracterizing the Mandrake Club. My understanding was that they merely got immediate access to certain ftp repositories, and that they were never requested, however politely, to refrain from redistribution.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[madfgurtbn]

you can't have the decency to either pay them for their hard work, or wait two weeks to freeload.

I agree that it is a good idea to join the club or otherwise reward Mandrake financially for their fine efforts, but that doesn't mean it is impolite to set up or use a torrent. If you want to call it freeloading remember that Mandrake would not exist if they were not "freeloading" themselves.

I want Mandrake to succeed, but I think the best thing I can personally do to help them succeed is to use and help promote their software. Freeload yourself a couple iso's and then help your neighbor set up a dual boot box with 'em. I'll betcha Mandrake would be grateful.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Anontroll]

"Where do you think the moral line is? Seriously. I have paid for several boxed distros, but the upgraded releases come so frequently, that I often, also, download ISOs. I just can't keep paying for release 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6 etc etc." Looking at my calendar the moral line is pretty easy to visualize. I can clearly make it out at the end of october.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[BranMan]

Sorry Charlie,
That's the price you pay for GPL - Any customer can decide to redistribute it at any time, in any manner (consistant with the GPL of course). So if a club member decides to be magnanimous who are you to question it?

Besides, doesn't BitTorrent work BETTER the more people use it?

Me? I'm going to wait and buy the PowerPack edition.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[buchanmilne]

Mandrake is free to do what they want with their commercial versions with proprietary addons.

And they are free to do as they wish with the GPL version too. They don't have to make the sources available to anyone but paying customers. They don't have to make the binaries available either.

But they do.

They simply legally and ethically can't do the same with the GPL vesion.

Well, you can legally redistribute the GPL version, but that doesn't make it ethical (legality and ethics are very diffirent things ...).

It will never be right in a million years for anyone to try and limit the distribution of GPL software.

They didn't. But, they are trying to make money at this, while sticking to the spirit and the letter of open-source. It seems like you're the one sticking to the letter, but not the spirit. They also have a right to make money (the GPL does actually provide for this).

Somehow I don't think the authors of Gnome or KDE or even the author of some package rarely used want to see their software being restricted in this way.

I am quite sure two contributors to KDE and GNOME won't quite agree with you. I am sure Laurent Montel and Fred Crozat (both employed by Mandrakesoft to work mostly on KDE and GNOME respectively) would like to keep their jobs, so they can continue contributing to free software development.

Mandrake knew what they were getting into when they decided to piggy back on the work of others to create their distro. If now they are somehow regretting the terms of the software they have adopted, then maybe they need to rethink the business they are in.

I think they had hoped people would have some integrity, and respect their business plan.

But it seems they were too optimistic.

I guess it's not possible to make money on distributing open-source software (besides those you charge development licenses for as is the case with Qt and MySQL), because of people like you, who can't respect their business plan.

Would it really hurt you guys to wait two weeks? Is there some reason you can't use the FTP tree? If you need Mandrake so badly, what are you going to do in 6 months time if they don't survive to release 10.0? Distro-hop until you kill the next distributor, and all we are left with is Debian (who AFAIK don't fund any full-time KDE/GNOME/kernel developers - so Debian development will stagnate even further to 5 year release cycles) and Lindows, with Redhat only making money off Oracle/RHAS clients, and Gentoo which you can't really give a Windows newbie?

Sorry, but I can't respect you, or your motivations.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[Joe Tie.]

I don't think it's at all against the spirt of the gpl. You could get the source, or any of the files right from the start. Source code is what I think about when I hear gpl.

Re:Download the ISOs now, for free

[dubstar]

It has always been my understanding that it is in the best interests of MandrakeSoft to have this software reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they are 'club' members or not. The more people who use it and like it, the more people who are likely to support the company.

You should maybe keep in mind that just because some people do not want to join a 'club' to be the 'leet kid on the block who has Mandrake two weeks earlier than everyone else, does not mean they are not going to make a donation of some sort after they try it out and like it.

Also keep in mind that the only reason MandrakeSoft exists is because some people somewhere along the way decided to graciously release their software/code under the GPL.

GPL Snippets Follow:

"Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software..."

"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software."

So if you feel ripped off because other people are able to download for free what you have paid to download, perhaps you should think a bit harder about why you are giving your money to Mandrake - is it to support the company, or is it to be 'leet and impress all the linux chix?

KDE Problems

[Nasarius]

Is anyone else having problems with the KDE menu in Mandrake 9.2? In 9.1, everything worked fine. In 9.2, there's no "Run" option, and when I installed a package, half the menu entries were mysteriously deleted or moved around. I had this same problem when I tried out 9.2 RC2.

Re:KDE Problems

[neybar]

I had the same problem too. You can fix it by running menudrake. Choose "Menu Style", then choose a option, save and restart KDE and they will come back. I haven't figured out why it happened though.

Re:KDE Problems

[joestar]

It happened to me as well just after installation. But it didn't happen anymore after I rebooted the system once...

Re:KDE Problems

[oever]

In 9.2, there's no "Run" option.

alt-F2

most used shortcuts in KDE:
alt-tab: switch window
ctrl-F[1234]: switch desktop
shift-{left,right}: switch terminal in console
alt-F2: run command

Re:KDE Problems

[flez]

Yes. Same problem. I fixed by running MenuDrake and saving, but I also lost my shortcuts on the quicklaunch panel. Had to put those back manually.

Bug must've got away..

Re:KDE Problems

[CableModemSniper]

Ah yes, telling him the keyboard shortcut really fixes the problem of having broken menus.

Re:KDE Problems

[oever]

The 'run command' entry in the menu is not for the normal user, nor is the button to open a console. The fact that the button has been removed or replaced is probably a usability decision and not a bug.

Re:KDE Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

EVEN WORSE: I can't configure the menu with drag and drop! F***ing thing's broken. I've reported this bug a million billion times already too.

If it's any consolation, every other distro since the beginning of Linux has been broken in exactly the same way.

Re:KDE Problems

[wolfdvh]

I suspect something in the way KDE works when upgraded. I had a similar sounding thing happen when I upgraded a copy of Red Hat. The version where they replaced the K and the gnome footprint logos with the red hat caused an effect similar to what you describe. I was just playing with it so in the end it was easier to reinstall clean than to fix all the links.

PARENT POST IS A TROLL, HERE IS WHY

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=81697&cid=7174 536

Re:PARENT POST IS A TROLL, HERE IS WHY

[Anonymous Coward]

PARENT POST IS A TROLL

No shit, Sherlock. What was your first clue?

VMWare included?

[DaneelGiskard]

From their Features Page:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/92/dis covery

8. Compatibility: run MS-Windows and Mandrake Linux on the same computer

And next to that they show a screenshot of Windows XP running in a Window through VMWare.

If I wouldn't know better (a VMWare license costs around 300 bucks) I would assume that this is included in the Discovery Distribution (which costs 39 bucks) and I would be pretty pi**ed ...

But other than that it looks interesting :)

Re:VMWare included?

[Jellybob]

I was just thinking that... have they made a deal with the company to include some form of special addition with the Discovery edition?

Re:VMWare included?

[jd]

I think there are VMWare clones which run under Linux and which are free or cheap. (I certainly know there are remote desktop packages of various kinds.)

If they're merely running a freebie clone running under Linux, they're fine. That's also true, but maybe a little manipulative, if they've a time-limited demo version of the "real" VMWare running on Linux.

Re:VMWare included?

[abhikhurana]

IIRC, Mandrakesoft did make a deal with VmWare to provide a trial version of the software to club members. What I am not sure though is f it is included in the distro. I would rather doubt that. Maybe Wine is included?

Re:VMWare included?

[(H)elix1]

And next to that they show a screenshot of Windows XP running in a Window through VMWare.

If VMWare allows this distro as a 'supported' host, this is great news. One of my issues with VMWare on Linux is you even look funny at a kernel, it is not supported. Looks like they just added RH9 to the list. Bout time...

Re:VMWare included?

[Viol8]

I haven't used VMWare for ages so this probably doesn't apply anymore , but to use it indefinately at no cost all you had to do was
download a 30 day evaluation copy then when the license ran out , just reset your system clock to an appropriate date before you start it up
and then reset it back once it had booted. Wrap that up in a shell script and you're sorted. Ok that can cause probs for a few apps but in general I never had any issues and I
used a 30 day trial version of vmware for 2 years quite happily.

Re:VMWare included?

[ViolentGreen]

Wine seems to have been pulled out of some (if not all) distros. If I remember correctly, they don't care if you download it from their site but they don't seem to want it in distros. I suspect they are hoping to get more donations this way.

Re:VMWare included?

[TheRaven64]

Yes, the problem with doing this is that it's illegal. If you have a 30-day trail license for something, then you can use it for 30 days to try it out. After that you must stop using it, or buy the full version. That's like saying `You can get computers cheaply by just stealing them from your local computer shop, instead of buying them'*. If you like a piece of software then either pay for it, write your own version, or persuade someone else to write a free version. If, like RMS, you don't think that commercial software is ethical, then don't use it.

* Yes, I know that it's not quite the same, but in most countries both are illegal.

Re:VMWare included?

[Jellybob]

Nope... the screenshot definately featured a copy of VMWare running Windows XP (in French... I always enjoy seeing operating systems running in other langauages.)

Re:VMWare included?

[Creepy Crawler]

Bad analogy.

Setting the clock date to get by actually buying the product is similar to getting goods at a big store (with no restocking fee) and returning them right before the return expiration date.

An example of this is buying batteries, using them till they die and then returning them "cause they're bad".

Either way, both is ethically wrong to do and perhaps illegal. It's just "not right".

Re:VMWare included?

[kitzilla]

I'm sure the "running Windows and Mandrake" thing means the installer conveniently sets up dual-booting (which it does), but your point is well-taken. If I remember properly, Mandrake offers Win4Lin to Mandrake Club users at a discount. I've run VMware successfully under Mandrake 9.1, also. It's a great program.

Re:VMWare included?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine is perfectly happy to be (and is, actually) included with most distributions. Maybe you're thinking of WineX?

Re:VMWare included?

[jawtheshark]

in French... I always enjoy seeing operating systems running in other langauages.

As someone who has used both German, French, Dutch and Danish (which I don't even understand) operating systems, I can only tell you that you should be glad to only "see" them.

One major gripe I have is that everything changes. For example in a German Windows it's not "C:\Program Files" but "C:\Programme". I absolutely hate non-english OSes. Hey, Mac OS X is the only one doing it right: choose the lanuage you need, but don't change the system. (Linux might do that too, but I never bothered trying something else than english)

Oh, and not only OSes have this problem. Take for example Office. I recall that the Visual Basic in a certain version of Office was *translated*, resulting in the fact that you could not run a macro you wrote on a french Office in an english Office. Sad, sad, sad....

Re:VMWare included?

[El Cubano]

If VMWare allows this distro as a 'supported' host, this is great news. One of my issues with VMWare on Linux is you even look funny at a kernel, it is not supported. Looks like they just added RH9 to the list. Bout time...

Have you even tried installing on a different distro? I've tried under RH8, RH9 (both supported), Gentoo, Debian Stable, and Debian Unstable (none of those supported), and I have never had a single problem. Just install and compile/configure the kernel modules. Switch kernels? No problem. Reboot and run vmware-config.pl, and voila it works again.

Re:VMWare included?

[Bombcar]

Clickable http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/92/discovery

*Gleep*

Posted logged in so it will be seen, give me no mods

Re:VMWare included?

[hcuar]

Ok... Just checked... VMWare is included in the PowerPack. Which is $69 US dollars. Discovery Distribution doesn't appear to offer VMWare.

Re:VMWare included?

[scosol]

IIRC VMWare3 is now "free" for use-

VMWare4 (providing signifigant other abilities) is the premium paid version.

Look here: http://www.vmware.com/download/

Re:VMWare included?

[cornice]

As he said the screenshot shows VMWare Workstation on the Mdk desktop - not a dual boot option, not Win4Lin.

Re:VMWare included?

[(H)elix1]

Got it to work on RH9 when it first came out, but had issues getting it to work with my Gentoo box. (my bad) The newer version might fix that. Of course we can get it to work - just would like a bit more love when I paid $300 for it. God help you if you use a kernel that did not come with a distro and call support...

Re:VMWare included?

[Lumpy]

it says NOTHING about vmware 3.x being free for use.

it still requires an activation key.

Re:VMWare included?

[scosol]

Right- but I believe when you register for a key, for 3.x you can get a non-commercial free license or something.

Re:VMWare included?

[kitzilla]

I understood. I agree with him: it could be misleading.

Re:VMWare included?

[El Cubano]

God help you if you use a kernel that did not come with a distro and call support...

Really? I called them for support when I had a problem on my Debian box and the lady who I spoke with was very helpful. Near the beginning of the conversation she asked if I knew that Debian was not an officially supported distro. I told her that I understood, and it was surprisingly not an issue for the rest of the conversation. Maybe should try and get a different support tech ...

Re:VMWare included?

[Viol8]

"Yes, the problem with doing this is that it's illegal"

Actually its not, since the 30 day usage is not legally binding, at least not here in the UK. And to be honest even if it was illegal , I couldn't care less.

already

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont usually read the articles, but I love mandrake so I figured I might. How can the site be down already? Does anyone have a mirror of the article?

I might just...

[BrokenHalo]

let a curious friend try this out. I've been doing a bit of evangelising lately in a small way (non-geeks tend to roll their eyes if we push too hard).

I've already proved that my wife (a militant non-geek) can set up RedHat quite adequately. She reckons my Slackware setup is more reliable, but I don't really expect a newbie with no interest in computers to go down that path.

Mandrake is usually a breeze to get running, so anybody should be able to do it.

Re:I might just...

[TheRaven64]

Actually, in some ways Mandrake is too easy. I don't mean on the desktop (you can't make a desktop OS too easy), I mean on a server. I was recently talking to a guy who runs a Mandrake server for a small company, and he has very little clue about how his set-up actually works. He uses the GUI tools to control all of his services (which is not a bad thing, if you understand what's going on underneath, but if you don't can be a disaster), and had made some very bad choices about what to do (like running certain services as root).

Running a server well is not trivial, and making a difficult task look easy is not always a good idea. If he had been confronted with something that looked more complicated then he would have been forced to either read documentation and learn about what he was really doing, or employ someone else who already had.

Re:I might just...

[w42w42]

I think you've nailed the perfect target audience for Mandrake. I used to use Mandrake constantly, upgrading every cycle. I've since switched though, after becoming more familiar with Linux, do to the lack of new packages for older releases. It was my *only* peeve with Mandrake, growing increasingly frustrated after visiting the download site for some software package, and seeing downloads for multiple versions of large and small distros listed, with only the latest of Mandrake being supported.

Re:I might just...

[BrokenHalo]

Indeed. I ended up switching back to Slackware as a result of frustration resulting from attempting to keep even the most recent of versions current. I came to the conclusion that Mandrake's good (for the desktop) if you plan to never upgrade any components before buying or downloading the next release.

Hmmm.

[CFBMoo1]

If this release lives up to what the article says and more I hope it pulls the company out of the club thing and puts them better on their feet financially. Nows a good time to make a push with MS saying they won't release the new windows till around 2005 or 2006 if I remember right. Take the 9.2 ball and run.

"Boxed sets since 6.0. Keep up the good work." - CFBMoo1

Re:Hmmm.

[ElPresidente1972]

I never completely understood why people would join the Mandrake Club when their stock is hovering around 2.50 and would be a better buy...

goner!

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone get a chance to mirror the review? Looks like MySQL has pooped all over itself already.

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

FIRST LOOK: Mandrake Linux 9.2 Discovery Edition
By Timothy R. Butler
Editor-in-Chief, Open for Business
October 14, 2003, 12:45:03 EDT

It's official. By the time you read this, Mandrake Linux 9.2 will be available to Mandrake Club members around the world. Mandrake Linux 9.2 marks the first release from the "big 3" distributors in about six months. If you're wondering whether you should rush out and install it, read on for our first look at a distribution from the Fall 2003 distribution release cycle.

For the purposes of this brief preview of Mandrake Linux 9.2, we tested a copy of the new "Discovery Edition" provided to us by MandrakeSoft. The Discovery Edition replaced the "Standard Edition" offered in previous releases, but it isn't just a fancy new name - it's a desktop focused distribution intended especially for novices (although, we feel more advanced users may be pleased with the simplicity of the Discovery Edition as well).

First there is the installation. Now, if you've installed any of the major GNU/Linux distributions in recent times, you know that most are quite simple to install as is, and Mandrake Linux is no exception. Discovery Edition takes a page out of the LindowsOS and Windows XP installers, however, and makes the existing Mandrake installer even simpler by removing package selection. While many additional packages are included for installation later, should they be needed, Discovery Edition focuses on installing what the average user needs without making them sift through tons of unfamiliar programs.

Once booted, Discovery Edition includes another quickly apparent simplification - task based menus. While Mandrake usually includes task-based menus as an option in Menudrake, they wisely chose to make it the default in this edition, thus freeing the user to worry about what they want to do rather than how they want to do it. I found the menu layout very intuitive, making it a snap to find the programs I wanted for various tasks. The standard menus were also available as a submenu for those wanting a specific tool for the job.

Another key to making a distribution novice friendly is insuring that everything works out of the box, and Mandrake Linux 9.2 succeeds there. When the system was booted for the first time, we were surprised and delighted to find ATI's official FireGL driver for the Radeon 9700 video card was already installed. To the best of my knowledge the only other distribution presently including the Radeon drivers from ATI is Lindows.

Other hardware that has been problematic also was installed. Our Hewlett-Packard PSC 2210's photo card reader was automatically mounted and unmounted (with a convenient icon on the desktop) - making it as easy to access the compact flash card that we inserted as it was to access a CD. This puts Mandrake Linux further in the lead as far as Hewlett-Packard multifunction devices are concerned, since we are unaware of any other current distribution that even properly detects the PSC 2210, much less properly configures the photo card reader.

The only issue we had with the hardware was actually a non-issue - the master, speaker and PCM volume controls on the soundcard were muted. Admittedly I should have caught it, but I overlooked the PCM volume control in my haste. It would have been nice if the friendlier aumix had been preinstalled along with kmix (which gets absolutely obnoxiously large when used with a SoundBlaster Live), but if this is the worst we have to complain about, it isn't much.

Also included was the newly released OpenOffice.org 1.1, which just barely made the release cycle. With this release's much speedier startup times, using the suite is much more pleasant than before. OpenOffice's many new features perfectly complement the Discovery Edition's improvements in usability to make the distribution perfect for a Windows replacement on an office desktop with no fuss at all.

We were esp

Slackware 9.1 review

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody has bothered yet, so I'll post my review of the recently-released Slackware 9.1:

It works.

Re:Slackware 9.1 review

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. it doesn't work for me or any of the other peopel that would like to be able to use Linux to take advantage of all these great features you keep touting, but when manuals are written in such a way that only the person that wrote them understands them, adn MAN pages! F that those Man pages couldn't wipe the sweat off a dead mans bawls let alone teach, and yes people the key word is TEACH, i'll say it again because repition is key to learning TEACH people how to do a damn thing. It took me 3 days to figure out how to set up a cron job becasue i don't speak ancient computer dribble. Also in an OS that is so damn anal about case and punctuation you need to be specific about weather or not the '{','[', or '"' that you are using are part of the syntax need or just being used by teh author as part of some boscure personal literay license. Oh and the rat bastards that tell me to RTFM, FUCK YOU! i did read your FM and it amde no fucking sense to me which is why i am asking for a better explination. And if you are not going to take the time to explain in a way that leaves me with the understanding that i require, then don't fucking talk to me! your RTFM respons only servers to push me away, and like an earlier artical says, my XP is stable, simple, and just plain works with out any bizzaro voodoo rites or dependancies (whatever those are) or configurations. Look i grew up on DOS, i spend many an hour tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeez out the extra 2k of free mem so i could play the latest and greatest games of the time. I am no novice to configuration files, but when the help for the configuration is non existant then you can take your Linux and shove it up your ass, and when you are sitting on you foam doughnut cryiogn aobut why is windows more popular than my precious linux flavor of the week, i'll be the one standing over you pissing in you eyes laughing until you finally give in and kill yourself. then i will give one last smirk and move on to the next RTFM assface.

Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent review. Now that Mandrake is faster and more stable than Slackware, I can finally switch. I can't wait to use GUI tools for everything.

Re:My first Linux install. Success!

[Atticu5]

So many choices! games, office, mail server, web server, about 2 dozen choices flooded my screen. This is madness! So after carefully considerating my options
I decided to choose them all! I would be a Linux power-user to end all linux power-users!

Hahahaha! Mod parent up. Funniest thing I've read all week.

That page is an excelent example that...

[phre4k]

You should always make php-scripts die if the db fails:


Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 235 Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 235 Warning: mysql_free_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 491 Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283 Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 339

Re:That page is an excelent example that...

[Viol8]

Good to see all that talk of MySQL being ready for the heavy enterprise work was so accurate. *cough*.

Re:That page is an excelent example that...

[phre4k]

Well i guess that it is just a quention about using it right. Slashdot is also using Mysql and if it is good not enough for slashdot then it should be good enough for most sites.

Bingo!!

[abhikhurana]

Precisely. Atleast you run a dell. I run a no name laptop, made by a small Taiwanese company. Redhat and Suse have trouble with configuring the graphics card, even though its a Radeon derivate but with Mandrake, everything runs smooth as butter :-) Not to mention urpmi rocks, and supermount is really cool too. And to top it all, there is the community. I am a club memeber and no other company lets you have so much say in the final distro as mandrake does. It almost functions like a democracy. You vote for RPMs, you zourself package the RPMs, you vote for features which go in the release and you test the RPMs. So overall, Mandrake is atleast my top choice.

That was quick and painful...

[cK-Gunslinger]

Warning: mysql_select_db(): Too many connections in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 78

Warning: mysql_select_db(): A link to the server could not be established in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 78

Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/uninet/public_html/open/includes/sql_layer.p hp on line 283

Mandrake has, by far, always been my favorite distro. Its setup has always been rather painless (although I usually go through it about 3 times, to get everything how I want it from the start), and the configuration utilities have always been the least confusing (compared to RedHat and Slack) to me. I don't boot Linux too often anymore, just once in a while when a substantially new distro comes out so I can see the progress made. I think I might buy this one, once I get to read a review.

Hmm...this thing you call "floppy"....explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me more. I am curious about this thing you call "floppy".

Time to change domains...

[johnthorensen]

...to www.cfb.biz

5.274 minutes after being posted to slashdot, ofb.biz is now Closed for Business :)

-JT

Linux on Laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an hp ze4135 and i have yet to find a distrobution that works very well with it. I have gotten Redhat and Gentoo to work on it, how ever i have never found a distrobution that gets the pcmcia to work (802.11b card), battery level working, or one that i dont need to recompile the kernel (it kernel panics when i use usb as a module) although i dont mind recompiling the kernel, getting the pcmcia and battery levels to work is much hectic work with which i fail to succeed... if i use mandrake or suse will it set these thing up automatically?

Re:Linux on Laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery levels yes, pcmcia support yes, the particular 802.11b card you're using...it depends on the card. Google for the particular model you have and linux install. See if there are modules compatible with it, or if you have to do anything strange to get them to work. Usually, it doesn't take too long.

Wireless setup in mandrake is pretty easy though...you can do it all with the GUI on the mandrake control panel

Finally a distro I can recommend to non-geeks?

[keeg]

I haven't tried it yet, but if the installation is this easy, perhaps I have finally found a usable alternative for those of my friends who are technical enough to install windows (this should be just as easy), but are getting tired of doing it again and again...

All other problems linux posed to slightly-technical-but-not-geek, people have been solved with OpenOffice, kde/gnome, mozilla, gaim etc.

The only question is, have they manage to settle for ONE browser, ONE mail client and so forth? Joe User really doesn't need both konqueror and mozilla (names picked at random).

Anyway, kudos to Mandrake for taking the Linux desktop in the newbie-friendly direction

Re:Finally a distro I can recommend to non-geeks?

[neglige]

if the installation is this easy

I really think it's easy. I can do it ;)

have they manage to settle for ONE browser, ONE mail client and so forth?

You get what you install ;) If you want KDE, you get the Konqueror. Mozilla is extra, but default.

bittorrent

[mrsev]

Just to let people know that initialy there were problems for many users who had ISPs with transparent proxies and people being unable to get bittorrent to download the iso's. Lots of complaints on the mandrakeclub about this. This has since been resolved by mandrake and works fine. I have got to say that I now love bittorrent.

Mixed blessing

[Lane.exe]

I've always said that Mandrake would be the distro to cause MS users to seriously consider switching. I started my Linux oddysey on Mandrake (hell, I still use it!) and fully believe that it offers the widest spectrum of a Linux experience.

The average user can get it working right out of the box (or download). That's something you can't say for most Linux installs -- or even some Windows installs. The hardware support is phenomenal.

And the ease of use doesn't have to detract from its power -- Mandrake gives you plenty of choices, from a fully-loaded, app-laden KDE or Gnome interface to light, fast WMs like Fluxbox. And best of all, it's Linux, pure and simple, so that all our favorite apps are still there.

I originally switched away from Mandrake because of the poor package management they used to have, but the implementation of urpmi in 9.1 convinced me to scrap my Debian install for Mandrake. Package management is a breeze once you get your sources configured. It's still not as developed as apt, but at least it doesn't break things the way apt is wont to.

Mandrake is Linux's best hope for widespread adoption.

Re:Mixed blessing

[novakane007]

I started on Mandrake as well, but switched up to Debian for package management. Lately I've been using RH because it is the corporate standard. I'm not a fan of RedHat. I find it's desktop suite to be very limited, considering how bloated it is. I'd really like to see a distro that has the power of mandrake in the desktop department, but isn't 2-3 CDs big. I usually prefer network installs. Can mandrake be installed as an XP replacement for a non-techie, without taking up 2GB of HD with misc. software that will likely never be used?

Re:Mixed blessing

[Lane.exe]

Actually, it can. There is an option during the Mandrake install where it will let you go through and pick out exactly which software packages you want. If that sounds tedious (which it is, but hey... this is your computer we're talking about. She deserves your time!) you can install large "groups" of software, like editors, development programs, graphics, multimedia... so that Joe Schmoe can pick out KMail, Xine, XMMS, Mozilla and maybe Abiword, and go about his web-surfing, pr0n downloading, movie and music-filled computer experience, but I can go and fetch vi, the latest version of GCC, the Gimp and every little package I want.

Like I said... the "Discovery" package makes it simple for Windows-raised users to jump in to Linux. The problem is that Mandrake is going to been seen as the "wussy" distro or the "non power-user" distro and that's a shame, because it can be those types of distros if the user so desires. Mandrake's 2-3 disc install is deceiving, too. The third disc is the "international" disc, which is really nothing more than some language files and translators. All the apps come in discs 1 and 2. The overall install of Mandrake is surprisingly small, comparted to distros like Debian.

And I'm not sure if there is a network install feature for Mandrake yet, but I'll bring it up to the club. But if you're worried about Mandrake putting more 'ware than you want on there, don't.

Re:Mixed blessing

[the_ed_dawg]

Ironically enough, my new laptop installs Red Hat 9 better than Windows XP Professional. True story.

I got my IBM ThinkPad R40 about four weeks ago, so I could do my graduate research on it. I do most of my work in Linux, but some programs require a Windows platform. However, the first time I turned on the computer, it NTFS'ed my entire drive, making installing Linux a pain.

Since I go to a school with a pretty snazzy Microsoft student license agreement (and IBM opted for a 4GB backup partition rather than install CDs), I went down to the student union and got a copy of XP for $5. I repartitioned the drives and began the reinstall process. Windows failed to recognize my sound card, video card, USB, power features (it didn't even recognize it as a laptop), and most importantly, my Ethernet connection. I couldn't get online to download my drivers for all the other things that XP Pro couldn't find.

As for Red Hat, I popped in the CDs and ran the installer. Everything worked out of the box. :) How's that for hardware support? I used Linux to download my XP drivers. After that, I debated whether to keep Windows at all... and I wouldn't, if a Linux version for those pesky research tools were available.

9.2

[1eyedhive]

i've tried drake 9.1, RH8 and gentoo on my A7N8x-Dx board with a GeForce4, no joy cross the board, gonna grab the torrents for this thing asap.

Re:9.2

[publius1234]

There were a number very helpful online resources for getting the Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard to work in Linux. I know because I built a computer for my girlfriend with that motherboard (GeForce, too) and successfully installed Debian on it. It just took a little work getting the integrated dual ethernet working, but it's not impossible.

Secure!

[supabeast!]

"...which comes without any server capability."

No daemons listening, no remote overflows! Yummies!

Re:Secure!

[dpilot]

Not even sshd?

(or how about chrond/atd/sgifam or those other desktop daemons?)

How about programs that make the assumption that either port25 or /sbin/sendmail will be there for crash reporting?

Re:Secure!

[VivianC]

How about programs that make the assumption that either port25 or /sbin/sendmail will be there for crash reporting?

Crash reporting? Hello, McFly? This is LINUX we are talking about. Right?

Re:Secure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked (9.1) they were still opening

port 6000 when X was started...

Knoppix does it too.

Re:Secure!

[dpilot]

Yep, and applications still crash sometimes, too. I've even had the OS itself go poorly-responsive or even casters-up a few times in the past half-decade.

I'm not complainging about Linux reliability, but...

To deny the possibity of a crash is arrogant.

Re:Secure!

[supabeast!]

"Not even sshd?"
"How about programs that make the assumption that either port25 or /sbin/sendmail will be there for crash reporting?"

This is for desktop-only Linux newbies. They don't need ssh, and when programs crash, you can be pretty sure that they'll notice, and not need a report.

Re:Secure!

[dpilot]

The report wasn't for the user, I was thinking more of mailing some crash info to the developer, or at least save some info in an email that the user can simply forward to the developer. (The latter is probably more politically correct.)

Re:Secure!

[Compuser]

I think this is now patented by Microsoft. And I
aint kidding either.

Re:Secure!

[supabeast!]

Again, this stuff is for the clueless. These aren't people who are going to try communicating with a developer about a problem, because they don't have the skills, and probably don't even care. Mandrake is trying to bring Linux to the masses- the nerds are already there.

Re:Secure!

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a prick.

Experiences upgrading from Mandrake 9.1

[ccktech]

I just finished upgrading from 9.1 to 9.2 on a Dell 5100 laptop. Overall I like it better (fonts and speed are definitely better). It found the Dell truemobile 1150 card, but mucked up my lan settings. On the downside:

- it lost kmail and korganizer (I had to install these after the upgrade)

- the acpi seems to be partially installed (althought the modules are there I cannot get them to work)

- the run menu has disappeared

- I run oooqs and it interacted with OpenOffice 1.0 so I had to turn it off the first time I ran OO-1.1. After that I could turn it back on.

- Some other icons I had on my tool bar disappeared and I had to re-install them.

Overall, not as smooth as a Redhat 8 - 9 upgrade, but other than the ACPI, nothing too major to fix. Still not ready for the non-tech masses though.

cheers,

ccktech

Re:Experiences upgrading from Mandrake 9.1

[WindBourne]

Personally, I have found that upgrades never work well, now matter what the OS is. Instead, I always create 2 boots and 2 / on each systems. That way I can jump to a new version and still have a working fall-back system. I do wish that one of the distros would support that and use the old info to upgrade from.

Re:Experiences upgrading from Mandrake 9.1

[ccktech]

Until I did the redhat 8 - 9 upgrade I was in complete agreement with you. That upgrade worked perfectly even in a very complex situation (amd, lots of custom startup stuff). I was hoping that Mandrake would work as well, but it doesn't. I have everything working but tuxracer (something wrong with the video) and sound.

Re:Experiences upgrading from Mandrake 9.1

[Dcnjoe60]

To turn on the run command for your KDE menu, go to K-Menu==>Configuration==>Configure Your Desktop==>LookNFeel==>Panels and select the "Menus" tab. Then click the box that says "Show run command"

Joeb

Re:Experiences upgrading from Mandrake 9.1

[WindBourne]

the upgrade is nice,but it is is nicer to have a fall back system that works. It would also allow for conversion to a different distro. When you think about it, disk is cheap now (1 USD / gig), so allocating 5 g to an alternative system is pretty cheap.

First bug?

[xWeston]

If you insert the Mandrake 9.2 CD into your computer while in windows, the autorun program comes up and in the title bar it is labled Mandrake Linux 9.1

Seems easy enough to catch, but i guess no testers used windows ;)

out-of-the-boxness

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone offer testimonials on how Mandrake 9.2 has handled:

- NVidia
- winmodems
- obscure ibmcams (with normal hardware specs but altered id numbers)

yuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

I read all the great reviews of Mandrake 9.1 and bought it, only to have it set up a dependency that my flash card be present to boot (redhat never did that) and then after an pkg upgrade two weeks ago it refused to boot, hagding on "starting syslog..."

On the plus side, it recognized my USB camera right away while RedHat has no idea what it is.

If they ever fix the minor niggly issues it will be sweet, but I need something that will run for weeks or months without issues and mandrake 9.1 couldn't do it.

Re:yuck.

[Dcnjoe60]

" I read all the great reviews of Mandrake 9.1 and bought it, only to have it set up a dependency that my flash card be present to boot (redhat never did that)"

That's because in Redhat, you have to manually create the device, the mount point and edit the fstab by hand to get it recognize a flash card. To solve your problem needing the flash card installed to boot, change the "auto" to "noauto" in the fstab line.

Joeb

Somebody please explain this to me.

[stm2]

From the article:

While experienced users may prefer the more versatile packs, this is truly an ideal desktop distribution and shows that MandrakeSoft is getting better and better at recognizing the needs of enterprise and SOHO desktop users.

(I added the bold type).

The question is: In what aspect the Mandrake Linux distribution is "not versatile"? Even if you have a "no options" instalation, you could install everything you want later.
Is there something you CAN'T do on Mandrake due to it "lack of versatile"?

I think the default mode should be this "easy" mode, anyway experienced users should be able to switch to a more "versatile" mode. You could always install the needed program, you could use the CLI if the GUI is not your best friend.

Re:Somebody please explain this to me.

[uninet]

The ProSuite and PowerPack releases include a lot more software, so they are more versatile -- they can setup a good web server, work station for development, etc. Discovery Edition isn't intended for that. It is intended purely to be a normal desktop.

You can add the software, but the main point is not to expect Discovery Edition to replace your copy of Mandrake ProSuite for your web server, mail server, and C++ Programing workstation.

Attention to detail

[iantri]

I've noticed that in the review they commented that the volume on your soundcard is set to 0 by default. It's been like this since 9.0. I like Mandrake and all, but find the Linux distribution virtually unusable due to the tons of little bugs and quirks Mandrake has out of the box (for example, in 9.2 VNC dosen't work). Not to mention, I think this would be off-putting for new users.

What's the deal with this lack of attention to detail?

Re:Attention to detail

[red floyd]

What do you mean 9.0? It's been like that since at least 8.1!

OTOH, I think it's a great distro, once you get around that little quirk...

Re:Attention to detail

[pair-a-noyd]

Well, how about you fix it for us then?
You can contribute if you feel the need.

Or, you can just keep on using winbloz XP (Xtra Pussified) with it's playskool weebles interface.

And just in case you're feeling froggy, behold your wonder O$..
Microsoft warns of 4 new 'critical' Windows flaws

This message has been brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Linux Zealot. :)

Re:Attention to detail

[Chris Cook]

Muting the sound by default is not actually a mistake.

Different drivers and audio programs output at different levels, and so switching from windows to linux might result in blown speakers if the sound wasn't muted by default. (sometimes the driver developers find they can get more volume out of a sound card than the windows drivers allow, hence in a worst-case scenario you could spread parts of your speakers across your room).

It should probably be documented though, as many users may not know about this.

Re:Attention to detail

[RatBastard]

Gosh, I sure wish I was uber-cool like you! Nothing quite says "Sex God" like spelling Windows "winbloz"!

Son, pull your inflated and feculent head out of your ass and grep a clue. Nobody is impressed by your 'tude.

While you've got your cranium out of your colon, who about you fixing the problem? Or aren't you a programmer?

Re:Attention to detail

[buchanmilne]

I've noticed that in the review they commented that the volume on your soundcard is set to 0 by default.

This was still the case in 9.2rc2, but has been fixed for 9.2 final (I specifically tested this with latest cooker).


It's been like this since 9.0.


Actually, it's been like that since ALSA-0.9, but Mandrake has just been defaulting more cards to ALSA than most other distros (for good reason).


I like Mandrake and all, but find the Linux distribution virtually unusable due to the tons of little bugs and quirks Mandrake has out of the box (for example, in 9.2 VNC dosen't work).


I think you mean 9.1? Well, that was fixed quite soon after release (it was only fully identified after 9.1RC2 ...).


What's the deal with this lack of attention to detail?


You tell me! I tested cooker and 9.2RCs, and my bugs are fixed ...

Re:Attention to detail

[Anonymous Coward]

fully agree with the poster. Mandrake is by far the easiest to install distro, particularly if you're setting it up for non-tech users. BUT (speaking about mandrake 9.1 here, havn't played wiht 9.2 yet), if you look under the covers there's a bit of sloppiness there - example, look at the init scripts - many of these use bash specific features but don't specify the shell at the top of the script. If you change roots shell everything falls over.

Mandrake's brilliant, but frustrating.

Subscription program 30% off - bullshit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain what I'm doing wrong?:

Quote:
"
9.2 Mandrake Linux
POWERPACK
Subscription Program
SAVE 30% !
199 EUR

After clickin on this link:
""
By entering the PowerPack Subscription Program today, you will get your 9.2 version box and receive the complete set of CDs for the two next versions when they become available.
""
"

Quote2:
"9.2 Mandrake Linux
POWERPACK
69 EUR
"

I don't seem to get it: 3x69=207, (1-199/207)*100=4, 4%!=30%, right? :-)

Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing?

[SilentStrike]

Has anyone used the NTFS partition resizing tool? Is it reliable? Does it work with XP partitions as well as Windows 2000?

I run a LUG at my local university, and while I wouldn't run Mandrake for real on my machine (been running gentoo for awhile, just started playing with slack 9.1, I am more of a power-user type.) If Mandrake makes it easy for someone to go from an single partitioned XP machine to a dual booting one, I'd try to push it pretty hard around the university to interested but inexperienced with linux students.

Direct links for those who want them

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake 9.2 Disk 1 of 3
Mandrake 9.2 Disk 2 of 3
Mandrake 9.2 Disk 3 of 3

MD5SUMS are as follows:
40c8812dce7b9f8fb0a3b364af62b974 MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk1of3.i586.iso
e07fe7b1474eb 3ba35cac3dfd479777e MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk2of3.i586.iso
2b6ffc5957533 c927f14197ec99a0372 MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk3of3.i586.iso

I wouldn't trust me either, so do your own research on these md5sums.

Downloading without joining mdkclub

[Interruach]

He does have a point - just not a legal one.
His point was about decency.
You might have a right to free speech 24/7, but the decent thing to do is stop now and again and let other people say things.
You might have a right to own and drive a car, but it would be considered rude to park it outside someone else's house revving the engine from 9pm to 6am every day.
The point is, whatever the legality, it's impolite. If you're happy being rude, there's nothing anyone can do, that doesn't mean there isn't an argument.

Re:Downloading without joining mdkclub

[Jahf]

Why doesn't someone find out what Mandrake thinks about this? They may be perfectly happy to have their software get out now without having to pay any of the bandwidth costs.

Re:Downloading without joining mdkclub

[Mr. McGibby]

i'm sure that bandwidth isn't their only cost.

Desktops are "real"

[fmaxwell]

Waiting for reviews of 'real' Mandrake 9.2 products (PowerPack, Corporate Server...)

It's that kind of elitist attitude that keeps Microsoft happily selling countless copies of Windows XP while Linux venders have to beg for donations. 99.99% of users don't need to run their own web server, FTP server, SMTP server, Telnet server, or SSH server. They use their computers for web browsing, games, e-mail, word processing, and maybe doing their taxes. They wouldn't know how to configure USENET news servers if their lives depended on it.

To look down on an OS release solely because it isn't configured for a server role is silly. And it's counterproductive. Do you think that Microsoft would sooner give up server OS sales or desktop OS sales?

A desktop product is no less "real" than is a server product. It's just an OS for a different audience. If we want to see Linux prosper, it has to get a real foothold on the desktop and, for that reason, this release is far more important than the "real" releases to which you referred.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[mblase]

Do you think that Microsoft would sooner give up server OS sales or desktop OS sales?

Consumer desktop or business workstation? If you mean consumer, then yes, they'd rather give that up and keep their business customers without any question. Corporate sales are where the most money is.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[Anonymous Coward]

Both that you mentioned are "desktop OS" sales, so I don't understand what your point is pointed at.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[fmaxwell]

Consumer desktop or business workstation?

What are you talking about? I asked if they would rather give up "server OS sales or desktop OS sales." A "consumer desktop" and a "business workstation" are still desktop OS sales, so what is your point?

Re:Desktops are "real"

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider myself a computer expert. I have been around computer ever since Apple IIx or IBM PCjr. I even used Mac and Unix for a while and have been thinking about trying out Linux. I am no stranger to OS installation, HD partitioning, building computer from spare parts, etc.

I read the articles on here and pretty much understand what being said, except for the casual throwing around of terms/programs that are totally meaningless to me. This is like a flash back to the good old day of pre-Windows era.

All this ramble just to point out that Linux is still has a long way to go before you would see one on everybody's desktop. Why? Because it is not pre-installed on a new computer! Don't count on the ordinary users to go out and buy a Linux OS package to install on their computers after they have already spend a fortune for the system!!!

So until Dell, Gateways, IBM, etc. have suddenly replaced Windows with Linux on all their machines or at least offering Linux as the lower cost alternative OS to the mass, Linux would always be a toy for the like of you and me.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[fmaxwell]

So until Dell, Gateways, IBM, etc. have suddenly replaced Windows with Linux on all their machines or at least offering Linux as the lower cost alternative OS to the mass, Linux would always be a toy for the like of you and me.

Linux won't get offered pre-installed by the big boys until it is a viable alternative. That means that it must seamlessly deal with plug-and-play peripherals. There must be a way that the average user can easily install software that they purchase at Best Buy. The Linux community will need to standardize on a single windows manager (KDE, Gnome, etc. -- pick one and abandon the others), one web browser, one multimedia player, one command shell, etc. The list goes on and on.

Windows works because it is standardized. Companies can write manuals complete with screenshots. Tech support people can be given scripts, knowing the every installation of Windows will have a "Start" button, Windows Explorer, the same control panel apps, etc. I knew someone who had to support commercial software written for Linux. He said that it was a nightmare due to the lack of standardization between distributions. They could not even include screenshots online or in manuals because they didn't know which Windows manager that their customer would be using. Much of his job was spent trying to determine which version and distro each of the users was running when they called in.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[Brandybuck]

Do you even use Windows? Here's what Windows needs to do if it wants to be a viable operating system:

1) It must seamlessly deal with plug-and-pray peripherals. I sold my old computer last month. Yesterday he called up complaining that the video and audio cards weren't being recognized by the Windows 2000 he installed. Thing is, Win2K out of the box doesn't support the Soundblaster 128PCI or Matrox G450+ out of the box. You still need to specifically install the manufacturer supplied drivers to get them to work. A friend of mine upgraded to WinXP, then found that no WinXP drivers existed for his all-in-one printer-scanner-copier. Not from Microsoft, not from the manufacturer, no where.

2) There must be a way that the average user can easily install software that they purchase at Best Buy. There's an easy way to install Linux software on Linux. But no way to install Linux software on Windows. Or Mac software on Windows. Face it, Windows won't run every piece of shrink-wrapped software available at Best Buy.

3) Microsoft needs to standardize on one single look. It's simply too damned confusing between the new XP menus and the old classic menus. And Microsoft needs to firmly and forcefully halt OEMs from bundling non-Microsoft software with their computers. No more WinAmp preinstalled! No more Quicktime preinstalled. No more McAfee, Symantic or AVG preinstalled. End the confusion!

Re:Desktops are "real"

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Personally, I see a future where most of the world uses Linux or some free-ish descendant of Linux, but America remains stays dominated by Microsoft. Right now, the biggest reason to switch to Linux for you desktop is because you don't like Microsoft. And while Americans love to gripe about Microsoft, these gripes are never enough to overcome the network effects of switching.

On the other hand, outside America dependence on Microsoft is a major national security risk. Who caN SAy what backdoors are required by the United States to exist in Windows? Imagine how Americans would feel about Microsoft if it's headquarters were in, say, Germany? There are simply too many reasons for foreigners to oppose Microsoft for any obstacle to Linux adoption not to be passed.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[fmaxwell]

Do you even use Windows? Here's what Windows needs to do if it wants to be a viable operating system:

Have you ever seen the installed base of Windows? It is obviously the most viable desktop OS out there.

1) It must seamlessly deal with plug-and-pray peripherals. I sold my old computer last month. Yesterday he called up complaining that the video and audio cards weren't being recognized by the Windows 2000 he installed. Thing is, Win2K out of the box doesn't support the Soundblaster 128PCI or Matrox G450+ out of the box.

So what does that have to do with seamlessly supporting plug and play peripherals? I plugged my Archos Jukebox into my Windows machine and it said "put in the driver disk." Here's a post from a Linux user:

spellbound1016 (TechnicalUser) Sep 26, 2003
I am having trouble connecting my archos jukebox studio 10 to my RedHat 9 box via a usb connection. I double-checked my kernel and I compiled usb into the kernel. If you can direct me to a FAQ or link that would be great

I plugged it in. He recompiled his kernel (and it still doesn't work).

2) There must be a way that the average user can easily install software that they purchase at Best Buy.

Have you EVER installed software? On the average Windows box, you put the CD in and a dialog box pops up offering to install it. Is that too complicated for you?

There's an easy way to install Linux software on Linux.

That is absolute bullshit. What's the standard way to install a Linux app? YaST? DPKG? KPackage? Text-based RPM? Lindow's Click-N-Run?

3) Microsoft needs to standardize on one single look. It's simply too damned confusing between the new XP menus and the old classic menus.

Really? You find them confusing? Wow!

And Microsoft needs to firmly and forcefully halt OEMs from bundling non-Microsoft software with their computers. No more WinAmp preinstalled! No more Quicktime preinstalled. No more McAfee, Symantic or AVG preinstalled. End the confusion!

Does WinAmp keep someone from running Windows Media Player? Does Quicktime? No. A vendor can tell a customer to go to Programs and start Windows Media player without having to worry about whether it's there or not. Do anti-virus programs change the name of the Control Panel app used to configure the network, mouse, keyboard, or display? No. So it's not even analogous.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[Brandybuck]

I was merely pointing out that Windows is not the perfect OS that many of you think it is. Everytime some distro comes out there are dozens of posts here saying "Linux cannot win until..." and then proceed to name stuff that Windows does not do well, or doesn't do at all.

On the average Windows box, you put the CD in and a dialog box pops up offering to install it. Is that too complicated for you?

Did you actually read my post? The common claim is that for Linux to win, it must be able to run all of the software on the store shelves. But Windows cannot do this. You cannot buy a piece of Macintosh software at Best Buy and successfully install it on Windows. I thought that was obvious!

On the other hand, I've never had a problem installing *shrink-wrap* Linux software under Linux. Of course you're going to have problems installing Windows software on Linux, just as you would have installing Linux software on Windows.

What's the standard way to install a Linux app?

If it's something you downloaded off the net, then there's no standard way. This is similar to Windows programs downloaded off the net. Sometimes they're executable installers. Sometimes they're zip files that have an installer in them. Sometimes they're zip files that just have a README saying where to move everything (ugh).

But shrink-wrapped software is a different story. This is commmercial software that the distributors have made installable in standard ways. For Windows this means an autorun file on the CD the launches the installer. For Linux software this means there will be an install script of executable that installs the software.

This isn't about RPM vs DEB vs portage or any of that nonsense. You don't get that mess when you buy shrink-wrapped Linux software. Underneath it may still be an RPM file, but even if it is, there's an installation script so you don't have to worry about it.

This observation is based on direct first hand knowledge of shrink-wrapped Linux software that includes CivCTP, SimCity3K, Opera and StarOffice.

Really? You find them confusing? Wow!

No, I don't find the two different menu styles in WinXP to be confusing. But NEITHER do I find the KDE vs GNOME confusing, or even FOX vs FLTK widget sets confusing.

The common complaint against Linux is that there must be one mandatory desktop and widget set, or it will fail. This is bullshit. Windows has a Win9x widget set, a WinXP widget set and a .NET widget set, and no one bitches about it. WinAmp doesn't look like MediaPlayer doesn't look like Quicktime, but no one bitches about it.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[fmaxwell]

I was merely pointing out that Windows is not the perfect OS that many of you think it is.

Don't include me in that list. I just believe that Windows sucks the least for the average user.

The common claim is that for Linux to win, it must be able to run all of the software on the store shelves.

However, that was not my claim. I just believe that there has to be a reasonably rich set of titles available for Linux. It must include everything from games to tax preparation software. It's not there yet and it won't be until one basic version of a title runs on every modern Linux distro.

You don't get that mess when you buy shrink-wrapped Linux software. Underneath it may still be an RPM file, but even if it is, there's an installation script so you don't have to worry about it.

Speaking as someone who has dealt with standard installation scripts under Linux that have blown up, I'd say that it has a good ways to go.

The common complaint against Linux is that there must be one mandatory desktop and widget set, or it will fail. This is bullshit.

Manuals require screen shots. Installation documents require screen shots. Tech support people need to be given support scripts (click this icon, click this menu, etc.). When ten Linux distros each have a different tool to do the same thing, it's a support nightmare. Multiply that times the number of window managers available and it's really ugly. Add on the complexity of the different installation models... I think you see where that is going.

There are basically two desktop versions of Windows with slight variations on a theme. There's Windows 98/ME and there's Windows 2000/XP. XP is really not some brave new venture. It's hardly more than a "theme" for the GUI. Now compare that to the Linux world and you'll see a world of difference from a support standpoint.

By the way, I'm not "anti-Linux". In fact, I think that it's a damned impressive accomplishment and one that I've set up in corporate environments on multiple occasions. But neither am I blind to its flaws.

Re:Desktops are "real"

[Brandybuck]

I just believe that there has to be a reasonably rich set of titles available for Linux. It must include everything from games to tax preparation software.

I agree. Linux isn't going to get accepted by the mainstream consumer until they have a shrink-wrapped commercial package for everything they currently use. Unfortunately, many Linux users don't like paying for software. How many people have purchased StarOffice for Linux as opposed to downloading free-beer OpenOffice?

RE: suse9-not available

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't seem like anyone is selling it yet and it's not available for download. Where did you find yours. I need to move to a new distro SOON! I'd rather it be SuSE, but they're not impressing me with their responsiveness to my queries.

Re:My review

[TheRaven64]

GNU is actually quite bloated if you install all of it. How many people need Lillypond (a musical typesetting package), for example? Well, okay, me, but only counting normal users.

And don't forget that not everything is GNU. Gnome (GNU) requires some kind of X server, and I don't believe that the GNU project has created one (XFree86 is not GNU). If you just mean the command line GNU utils (the equivalent of what would be the base system in a *BSD install) then you don't get very much. In fact, perhaps you should try one of the BSDs, which maintain a clear separation between the base system (i.e. the kernel and a few other command line tools needed to boot to a shell) and the ports/packages, where applications live.

Or perhaps you should look at the LFS page, and roll your own system. Oh, and don't forget that while GNU's Not UNIX, GNU's not Linux either. GNU supports NetBSD and Hurd kernels as well.

Radeon Drivers

[DuckWing]

I don't know where this dude has been, but several other (debian based) distros have been including Radeon Drivers for a while. Libranet & Xandros Linux.

Re:Radeon Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Libranet & Xandros Linux.

who? what?

Re:Radeon Drivers

[DuckWing]

both Libranet and Xandros have had ATI Radeon drivers for a while. ELX May also have had ATI Radeon drivers but I'm not 100% sure on that. So to say that Mandrake is the only Linux distro to ship with them is hogwash!

Re:Radeon Drivers

[uninet]

Xandros has the ATI proprietary Radeon drivers or the XFree86 ones that are non-accelerated? The last time I spoke with an ATI rep, only Lindows was authorized to include them (that's been a few months, but I don't believe either Libranet or Xandros have had a release since then).

- Tim

Windows is NOT really a lot more simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's principal advantages are (1) the fact that lots of people have had more than 5 years of practice in learning its intricacies; and (2) everyone has neighbors and kids who use it and can help with problems.

IMHO, Apple OS is easier to learn and use. Linux adds to its intimidation factor by offering a lot of choices which don't happen on Windows (e.g., KDE or Gnome, Konqueror or Mozilla or Galeon or Opera, Apache 1.3 or Apache 2.0, etc.).

For me, having used MDK and Windows for several years, there's nothing as scary as swimming around with Regedit. My first Linux install made me nervous with all of the choices, but after a little bit of use, I've become very comfortable with it. I use MDK for just about everything (including this post), and I'm downloading my 9.2 ISO's right now.

ATI in-box, how about nVidia?

[dpilot]

It's good that the FireGL drivers are in the box. The next questions are:

How about nVidia drivers, are they in-the-box?
Is this stuff in the downloadable ISOs?

What kernel is used? Support for nForce2 has really picked up on recent kernels. (post 2.4.20)

(Another A7N8X Dlx owner with ATI video)

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used it twice with two different Windows 2000 Machines w/Mandrake 9.1 booting from CD. My home machine worked fine; resized the partition and everything was keen. My Dell at work didn't work at all, and got completely hosed. I think this had to do more with the fact that my work machine had intially two partitions; C; being FAT & E: being NTFS, this is where windows was installed, and that lead to the hosing. Once the partition is resized, it has to be verified by Windows's chkdsk, and due to the stupid way my work machine was set up (boot from FAT, handoff to NTFS on another partition) Windows, post boot, couldn't run chkdsk on the second partition, and got hosed. My home computer, that had two NTFS partitions, and booted from the first partition, resized without error. So it should work perfectly for someone with a single partition machine. just as they say, backup prior to using this tool!

Re:Discovery/COST.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you aren't concerned about cost, then Windows is the way to go. However, Mandrake is dead simple for an office user to learn. Think of the cost savings just opening and editing .doc, .xls, and .ppt files. That will cost you $350 plus the time to install MSOffice. Creating PDF files? That will be $300 plus the time to install Acrobate standard. How about opeing a .tiff file and editing it and converting it to compressed jpeg? That's $650 plus the time to install Photoshop. Mandrake is $40 and has applications to do all those things pre-installed.

Development?

[alexandre]

Can these 3 CDs be used to program? (does it include gcc and all? and ssh server etc...?)

Re:Development?

[Apostata]

Generally, yes. The Power Pack includes some Java authoring tools et al, but the vanilla 3-CD download comes with gcc KDevelop and other standard goodies (and sshd).

Re:Development?

[wolfdvh]

Yes, ssh server, gcc and all.

MOD PARENT DOWN! WORST KARMA WHORE EVER!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

impatient freeloaders... just why can't you give mandrake a chance and wait two weeks? you're the worst karma whore i've every seen!!!

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! WORST KARMA WHORE EVER!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fag.

Um...No

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no ads in the version you buy from the store. Mandrake has two different types of releases: the Download edition and the Storebought edition (not sure what the official name is). The download edition, has ads targeted towards techy people (You probably won't see ads for Matchmaker or something like that there), and you'll see some bookmarks in mozilla and other browsers that come with mandrake. The Storebought edition has no ads whatsoever.

It's also about file format

[CaptainFrito]

Sharing data files between application classes and implementations is, IMHO, the biggest reason for perpetuating M$'s stranglehold on the marketplace and they know it.

The single most effective way to break the M$ juggernaut is to pass legislation -- in all jurisdictions -- that user data is owned by its creator -- the application's user -- and that the entire format and decoding techniques must be fully and openly disclosed to the public and NO proprietary (e.g, DMCA protected) methods can be used to obscure contents or prevent its decoding.

At which point I am quite sure keystrokes and UI look-and-feel and other silly what-not will be profoundly irrelevant.

It's the simple menu

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two different versions of menus in KDE, simple and the normal one. For some reason, the simple menu is used after install of new packages; it's a known problem, should be an update to fix it soon.

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[wolrahnaes]

It worked for me. Drake 9.0 resized my WinXP Pro NTFS partition with no problems. I also recently (yesterday) used ntfsrezise on a Win2K Pro NTFS partition off of a LNX-BBC Live CD with no problems. As long as the drive has been defragged, I have never seen a problem with NTFS resizing.

Legal but unethical

[Idou]

"These are the download editions and legal under the GPL, of course."

I love how you all bitch and complain about EULA's and locked down programs, but when a company that behaves closest to your ideals tries to get more people to support it financially as it struggles to break even, you can't event wait 3 freaken days to freeload?

Sorry guys, but what you think is insightful is really shortsighted and self-destructive.

-1 flamebait/offtopic (poster made me think about my actions)

Re:Legal but unethical

[Anonymous Coward]

What sort of crack are you smoking? The GPL ideals allow for free distribution to all. What's going on here is exactly what those ideals are.

Re:Legal but unethical

[Idou]

First of all, why are you posting as an Anon if you really believe that such behavior is ethical?

Yes, EVERYTHING is GPLed. That includes the installer and all the distro specific tools, as well. How many other distro companies even GPL the very tools that make there distro unique!?

And how can they afford to do that? They have club members who financially support the distro. And why do people become club members? Because of certain benefits, LIKE BEING ABLE TO DOWNLOAD THE ISO BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE.

Say what you like, but it comes down to you being just as gready and unethical as the average PHB. The only difference is you weren't smart enough to become a PHB.

Oh well, I suppose your own miserable life is enough punishment. Enjoy 9.2, it really is a good distro, no thanks to you. . .

Re:Legal but unethical

[sethadam1]

Stop being a baby about this. This is the problem with too many open source advocates, you create a license that permits certain actions, and then get upset because people take advantage of said actions.

Anyway, how does me waiting to download 9.2 benefit Mandrake? They distributed their stuff over BitTorrent - it's not even like it's their bandwidth anymore! It's clear you don't understand free software and you don't understand the enterprise.

Re:Legal but unethical

[dougnaka]

Mandrake CHOSE to contribute to the GPL party, and they know the rules. Downloading their stuff for free is in NO WAY unethical. Maybe not donating if you use their desktop isn't very nice, but unethical? Please. Installing pirated versions of M$ Office is UNETHICAL, and ILLEGAL. Participating in an Open Source community the way you're meant to is completely ETHICAL, and should be encouraged.

I download every version of Mandrake in hopes it can be good, or I can recommend it to a friend. I've done so since Mandrake was a RedHat knock off. I run 0 computers Mandrake Linux 24x7. So I dot not donate. If I get 9.2 and it's good I think I'll talk my dad into running it, and get him to join the Mandrake club. I do donate the Gentoo, and other open source products that I use.

Re:Legal but unethical

[Idou]

I am not complaining about people downloading the distro without donating. I am complaining about people setting up bittorrents two days after the distro is released for club members only (A week would be fine, but 48 hours is just poor manners).

Looking forward to having a coherent discussion with you when you learn to read and retain the accurate information what you have just read. . .

Re:Legal but unethical

[Idou]

"Stop being a baby about this."

Being a baby about this is neither illegal nor unethical so I intend to continue.

"It's clear you don't understand free software and you don't understand the enterprise."

Yikes, you just tested me!? That's not fair! Wait, I didn't even know WHICH enterprise you were testing me on. Shucks . . .

Moderators, if you read this far, you have much too much time on your hands. . . I admire you.

Re:Legal but unethical

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about the licence. It is about being a nice person.

Re:Legal but unethical

[ccp]

Idou, I know I'm being trolled, but what the hell...

You don't seem to know anything about either Mandrake nor bittorrents.

Cheers,

Re:Legal but unethical

[dougnaka]

I disagree completely.

It's GPL'd free software. Your 1 week is polite vs. 2 days is unethical bullcrap just doesn't fly. I am disappointed in Mandrake for holding back themselves and their users by this 2 week "early" download for club members. If it was like the days of old when the bandwidth used was theirs, and was killed by everyone trying to download from them, then fine, limit it. That makes sense to me. But if it's bittorrent where more people makes more download speed for everyone, who does this help?
If I am a club member and I download it, and burn cd's for everyone in my office, is that also "rude"? Should I have waited 7 days? Is this some biblical time reference that I'm just missing here? What does the 7 day time window you're asking for give anyone?

I'm very interested in hearing some kind of logical reason as to why 2 days is "rude" and 1 week is not, so please don't let me down.
Coherence is overrated.

Re:Legal but unethical

[bconway]

Being a baby about this is neither illegal nor unethical so I intend to continue.

Neither is downloading and distributing GPL software, and I intend to do likewise. This is the true spirit of the GPL, it saddens me that you are unable to see this.

Re:Legal but unethical

[Saeger]

And why do people become club members? Because of certain benefits, LIKE BEING ABLE TO DOWNLOAD THE ISO BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE.

So, you're saying that BRAGGING RIGHTS is the reason you became a club member? Running a new Mandrake release two weeks before everyone else is your incentive to send dollars Mandrakes way? That's a sincerely fucked up attitude.

People become club members because they WANT to support an OSS company, REGARDLESS of any artificial scarcity in the distribution of GPL'd software...

--

Re:Legal but unethical

[Idou]

"I am disappointed in Mandrake for holding back themselves and their users by this 2 week "early" download for club members."

Yeah, I am really disappointed you're not paying my slashdot subscription, cause I went to all the trouble to read your post . . . wtf (w = where) do you get the idea that Mandrake OWES its non-contributing users ANYTHING!?

And they are holding back themselves by trying to generate more revenue!? Man, move out of your parents basement and learn how the world is . . .

"Coherence is overrated."

It is obvious you believe that, no reason to state it. You got things pretty bass ackwards there . . . Glad I had this opportunity to see how true freeloaders think.

Re:Legal but unethical

[Idou]

Guy releases under the GPL - true spirit of the GPL
University site mirror website - true spirit of the GPL
Volunteer installs software at underpriveledged school - true spirit of the GPL
Punk creates bittorrent 2 days after "members only release" 'cause its gpl and couldn't wait any longer - you ain't going to win any noble prizes . . . .

Look, it is a moot point. Next time Mandrake will release the tool under an exclusive license for two weeks.

Yeah . . . you really are contributing to wider use of the GPL by "acting in it its spirit".

Short-sighted prick.

works out of the box?

[jejones]

Another key to making a distribution novice friendly is insuring that everything works out of the box, and Mandrake Linux 9.2 succeeds there.

...unless you have an ATI All-in-Wonder, which isn't set up to allow xawtv et al. to work. Is there any distribution that will do this? (Maybe not, though I'd love to hear of any that do; KNOPPIX, which is famed for its hardware detection, doesn't.)

Re:works out of the box?

[digitalhermit]

I had a similar problem with an All-in-Wonder 128. Here's a link that shows how to rebuild that RPM:

http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/expert/2003-02 /m sg02648.php

Re:works out of the box?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that most of the AIW cards don't even work in windows (I have three laying around from various users I've upgraded DIDN'T immeadiately take a hammer to the card). I have managed to get these card to werk in linux more often than windows, thanks to great work of the GATOs peeps. I must admit I haven't tryied a radeon based one yet, but the 128 based one I have in my TV linux box werks in linux but NOT in any windows except 98 (and I haven't ran that since 98).

*shrugs* Best bet for TV on a PC? brooktree (happaugs linux support is awsome).

Multiple Montitors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that it installed their ATI 9700 drivers right off the bat. Does it then allow for dual monitors I wonder?

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone used the NTFS partition resizing tool? Is it reliable?

It's worked fine on the two Windows 2000 machines I've used it on. Pretty sweet.

I wouldn't run Mandrake for real on my machine (been running gentoo for awhile, just started playing with slack 9.1, I am more of a power-user type.)

So what exactly is incompatible between using an RPM-based distro and being a "power user"? I'm really unimpressed by so-called "power users" who claim that the only way to really use their system is to compile every single package themselves. I always thought a power user was someone who actually USES the system, instead of spending all his time tweaking and primping it.

"Woo-hoo! After 3 days of fiddling and compiling, I gained a 2.1% performance boost!" Grow up.

I call bullshit

[sethadam1]

Free software is a different game than commercial software. You have to know going in, as Mandrake does (or should), that when you play with open source licenses you will have a large number of freebies. Microsoft has them too - they overlook a lot of pirating so that people use their stuff and get the word out.

Mandrake released their ISOs under the GPL. Because of that, there's no such thing as "short sighted and self-destructive." You're very plainly wrong about this - and everyone, including Mandrake themselves knows this. If I WROTE program they are now selling in their boxed versions for which I receive no compensation, am I still wrong to download and use Mandrake 9.2?

People, don't punish yourselves to "feel even." If you want Mandrake, download the ISO torrents. If you want to be a good citizen, please join the club or make a donation or buy it. Either way, don't feel guilty. That's what makes it FREE SOFTWARE.

Re:I call bullshit

[berzerke]

...Microsoft has them too - they overlook a lot of pirating so that people use their stuff and get the word out...

I agree. In many ways, pirating is actually M$'s best friend. Lots of people I've offered OpenOffice too, say "No, I just borrow my friend's copy of M$ Office." If M$ could come up with a way to prevent pirating of MS Office 97 and up, OpenOffice's market share would shoot through the roof. And it looks M$ is trying to stop home pirating with manditory activation. Feels funny to say it, but in this, I wish M$ the best of luck.

Re:"Newbie" Distros

[Divide By Zero]

I definitely agree with you.

I think people equate "newbie distro" with "crippled" or "unsuitable for the power user". I think a newbie distro can still be useful to somebody who knows what he's doing.

I'm a Solaris admin by day, and by night, I don't want to have to WORRY about it. Sure, I -could- invest the time in getting some crufty complex distro running, but I don't want to. I'm not obsessive-compulsive about programs on the system I won't ever use, so I let Mandrake install them. If I need something, I can put it on. Pull down the RPM or build it from source. It's not like it's not supported.

At the end of the day, if it's Linux, it's running the Linux kernel and you can do what you want on it. It's just a question of what other junk comes with it. I happen to like the junk Mandrake includes, especially their installer. I can click through most of the default options and have a functional system up in the time it takes the package to install, and still watch hockey in the background.

If you (in the general sense, not you-the-author-of-the-parent-post) derive your geek-self-esteem by doing more work to make your computer run than I do, more power to you. I'll spend the time doing something else, and you can be the bigger geek.

Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you need is an advanced operating system for your desktop, why bother with this junk? Right now, you can go out and pick yourself up an G5, which is the fastest PC hardware money can buy, and run OS X on it, which is the most advanced operating system money (or, in Linux's case, no money) can buy. Let's see, its got the power of Apple behind it, it's got a better UI than Mandrake, more applications than Mandrake, and to top it all off it runs on faster hardware than anything available for Mandrake. Again, I must ask, why not move out of your parents basement, get a life, and get an Apple? Oh right, it's because you are a Linux user, and you are used to 5 day installs and GUI inconsistency and no support and ugly, limited, applications. Too bad for you, I guess.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess you didn't get your daily dose of slashdot yesterday. single-cu Athlon 64 FX beats dual-cpu G5 computers in every test except photoshop. The G5's reign as "fastest desktop machine" is over.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right. Even if the Athlon comes close to the speed of the G5 (a highly questionable claim), that still doesn't make up for the pathetic selection of operating systems available for x86 cpu's. What use is speed when your OS is crap?

Re:Why bother?

[ChaoticLimbs]

You are such a whore.

You all..

[msimm]

Well, I'm sure most of us aren't responsible for this. There are some shmucks. The problem would be if Mandrake decided not to continue with prereleases for members because of some short sighted a$$holes. Or the power pack. I thought this was a great idea, but circumventing it might not be a good thing.

Just Plain Works?

[ratboy666]

No it doesn't... Go get a Aviator 900Mhz wireless device, or a D-Link DMP-90 and plug that into your shiny Windows XP. What about NVidia drivers? How about mother-board specific sound drivers?

I have HAD it with people telling me that "driver support is better with Windows". It isn't. Linux supports more devices out of the box. Linux supports more architectures out of the box.

If I here that piece of revisionist crap one more time, I'll have to strangle the perp. Windows may be good for something, but it sure isn't device support. Because drivers under Windows are generally closed source, the drivers live just as long as the maintainers have interest in keeping the device alive. If the company goes out of business, or the product is obsoleted - tough luck.

If the driver is open-sourced (as most Linux drivers are), the product can be supported until the last piece of hardware dies.

Re:Just Plain Works?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you nuts it took 2 years for my original radeon to be able to handle 3d games under linux thats how lousy hardware support is under linux. My digital camera wont work with Mandrake 9.1 and I had to wait 6 months after I bought a netgear wireless card for it to get have linux support it worked from day 1 under windows.

Re:Just Plain Works?

[killerkalamari]

The major difference between driver support for Linux and Windows is that Linux drivers are based on people reverse-engineering a driver or building from a spec (if available), Windows drivers are supplied with the hardware device. Also, from what I've gathered Linux changes its driver specs constantly, so the driver that once worked no longer works.

I'd love to switch to Linux, right now. I'm tired of living in fear of the next exploit that will come along and clean me out, but even worse, since I'm running 98, I know that eventually I won't get drivers with new hardware anymore. I'll be in the same boat as Linux users, but I will be even worse off. Linux driver support should rise in the future, while 98 will almost certainly continue falling, so I want to be in on the Linux future.

But, I can't enjoy Linux right now, unless the experience were limited to monitor, mouse, and keyboard. My Turtle Beach sound card doesn't work (there are drivers for the sound chip, but not for the card, doesn't work, and what about the sound canvas MPU-401 daughterboard?). Serial port scanner that came with Windows 3.1 era drivers? Yeah right. ROM burner from the 80's with a DOS program to run it?, light pen? Dream on. There are drivers for my TV card, because it uses a standard chip and board, cool. But, I can't read DVD's or burn CD's (only one drive detected as a plain CD-ROM).

Now don't get me wrong. Windows drivers are not standardized by any stretch of the imagination. Every manufacturer seems to have their own idea of how to implement, install, etc, a driver, a real nightmare in that respect. But I've seen a tremendous amount of backwards compatibility as far as Windows is concerned. I can use Windows 3.1 drivers (or even in some cases MS-DOS drivers) in 98. If nothing newer is available, that means I am still up and running. But, new specs are out for XP, so my driver days are limited. Most drivers today are going to be written with XP in mind, and 9x as an afterthought, if included at all.

I'm sure I can eventually find all the software I need for Linux, or run it on Wine, but unless I want to abandon my hardware, dual-boot, or try to reverse engineer it I won't ever get most of this hardware working.

I think the most sensible thing to do would be to buy new hardware that is Linux compatible. That time has not yet arrived. I'm still hopeful for the day when manufacturers give a choice of drivers: Windows, Mac, *Linux*. They need to hurry up so I can get off this sinking ship of an OS to POSIX enduced bliss.

calamari

Re:Just Plain Works?

[nmos]

I don't think I've ever seen a ROM burner from the 80's much less one that still works (typical lifespan is about 2-4 years) but any IDE or SCSI rom burner or DVD should work just fine, you don't need any special drivers and it doesn't need to be "detected" as anything special. Likewise with the parallel scanner (it can't really be serial) the floressant(sp) bulb HAS to be on the verge of dieing by now so maybe when you replace it you can get a Linux compatable one. Locally used (and Linux compatable) scsi scanners are available for under $25 so I wouldn't let that stop you. I can't really help with the sound card except to suggest you check out the Alsa drivers if you havn't already.

MOD PARENT UP

[B1ackDragon]

I usually hate posts that have subject lines like this, but I'd really like to know the answer to this one as well. I'm in a LUG at our local Univ. too, and this does sound like a good idea. PartionMagic is fun and all, but if this comes with an analogue...

Karma ho - Foe..

[msimm]

Well, at least it's a reason to put someone on the foe list, finally. I am of course nonplused by his reasoning. Eight grade. Freebsd troll?

Incisive review...

[rtv]

From the article: [W]e are already quite sure that this release could potentially be one of the best ever from the MandrakeSoft team.

Already? You reached that firm conclusion so quickly?

Obligatory Gentoo...

[MarcQuadra]

Hey!

Gentoo is great on laptops too!

It only took me three days to get PCMCIA working, two more to get the kernel patched so my fan works, and 36 hours to compile OpenOffice!

--

Just kidding, it was rough the first time around, but I'm that much smarter now; I knew what I was getting into.

Re:Obligatory Gentoo...

[Nucleon500]

It only took me three days to get PCMCIA working, two more to get the kernel patched so my fan works, and 36 hours to compile OpenOffice!

It's a good thing you fixed your fan before compiling OpenOffice.

DMCA ALERT!!

[Stevyn]

you just told people how to circumvent something having to do with a computer! That's in violation of the DMCA. VMware's stock (I know they're private, humor?) just went down .004% and cost them millions which you must pay back.

underrated. clueless moderator

[merriam]

"Score:0, Troll"

jonadab is not a troll, and is clearly not trolling here.

Re:underrated. clueless moderator

[IANAAC]

I really wish we could actually see who does the moderating, full name. I would think that would pressure whoever is moderating to put a bit more thought into what they were doing, since their name is attached for the world to see.

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[paraleet]

Woo! lets get the flame machine into full gear. I use gentoo not because i (admittedly do) get a 2.1% performance boost, but because the emerge system kicks ass. it really does. i thought i'd never leave FBSD's ports system, but then i met emerge. it's got like every friggin ap & lib i'd ever need, plus with a single command line switch i can compile straight into my own binary tarballs, which reside on my nfs server. it's so simple to export the packages dir to any new machines i need to install on. it's like having my own copy of the Redhat rpm tree with binaries that actually work... no matter what deps they have. the real power in gentoo comes from it's fusion of RPM, APT, and Ports. not the 2.1% (or whatever) performance boost. if you ask me, it's about time someone released a "Grown up" package generation/installation/management system. Ports is capable of getting the job done, APT sucks because of it's poor support for very new packages, and i won't touch RPM with a 5 foot pole. emerge wipes the floor with all three at the same time. i can see how compilation time would discourage some users from emerge. but honestly, i've been using *nix for quite awhile now, and the only thing that gets close to being as convienent as emerge is Ports. if you really do hate gentoo that much, at least do yourself a favor and run FBSD.

There are two types of power users: ones with a purpose and ones without. the ones without are the ones bragging about their 2.1% performance increase. they aren't are the ones smugly installing a new linux system w/ 350+ (including gnome/kde) custom compiled apps with only a few shell commands & an nfs server in an hour or two. hehehe. real powerusing means getting down to business faster & easier than any other way (notice faster implies no 3 day configuration/compilation times). and when getting down to business requires the absolute latest, secure versions of a shitload of software, you can't beat emerge (when properly used).

Note: i'm not trying to say gentoo is better, but don't mistake every gentoo user as a 14 year old looking for that extra 2.1% :P to each his own, and certainly there are cases where i'm sure the likes of APT and RPM whoop emerge's ass. i just haven't seen any yet...

Ok

[Idou]

I guess Mandrake will just have to implement some kind of copyright that changes over time. Host a bittorent of their installer and configuration tools before such a such a date and be guilty of copyright infringement. Wait until after the date (like a whole freaking WEEK after the release to members), no problem.

Sorry, but a lot of ideals depend on moderation and balance. For instance, I believe a woman should have control over her own body, so I consider myself pro-choice. However, if I hear about someone having 20 abortions, I would seriously consider voting for laws that would take SOME legal power away from women in certain situations. No ideal makes sense without moderation.

Had you waited, say, a WEEK to start hosting bittorrents of 9.2, I wouldn't have had a problem, even if Mandrake hadn't given its blessing. However, doing it this early is simply a sign of very poor character and the inability to comprehend the bigger picture.

Look at it this way . . . I can legally download a GPL package and then go into IRC channels and demand and order someone to explain how I can use it, write the author and tell him/her how stupid s/he is for not making it easier to install, and go out of my way to cause trouble for the community. It is perfectly legal, yet if enough people were like that the law would no longer matter because Open Source would cease to exist.

Open Source is great because its existence proves that even though the world is messed up and full of greedy, self-serving ingrates, there are enough thoughtful, selfless, and talented individuals out there that the system works. I no longer believe it is a question whether or not Open Source is viable. I believe the only question that matters is which group we want to belong to.

Re:Ok

[Issue9mm]

I don't see what you're complaining about. Mandrake offers it to paying customers first to minimize the bandwidth drain on their servers, and maximize the bandwidth available for new releases to paying customers.

Hosting said files off of their servers in no way impedes that goal, and still allows paying customers to get their stuff at top bandwidth rates.

Why exactly are you complaining? It's free software, it's meant to be given away. It isn't free for a limited time, and it isn't going to self-destruct... nor should it be withheld arbitrarily.

-9mm-

Re:"Newbie" Distros

[woobieman29]

Parent and grandparent posts have hit the proverbial nail right on the head. Mandrake has always been very easy to setup, and out of the box it is an extremely useful distro. Remember, just because you have the pretty Drak UI tools to do the admin stuff does not mean that you have to use them. If you pull back the covers you realize that it's still JUST A LINUX BOX, and you can manually edit config files if you wish. Mandrake just gives you the option to take the easy route, if you wish to. If you haven't tried Mandrake in a while, it's work trying for the hardware detection/setup alone. I haven't seen another distro that does a better job of this yet (excepting Knoppix - it seems to be pretty good too), and I've tried all the majors.

Re: suse9-not available

[ahillen]

Doesn't seem like anyone is selling it yet and it's not available for download. Where did you find yours.

At least the German version is officially out since yesterday and sold in Germany,Austria,Switzerland. www.suse.com says Oct. 24th for the English version... The FTP install version will make it to the servers with some delay, as usual.

Slapped Down!

[Bombcar]

Wow! Nothing says "bitch slap!" as much as someone with a UID over half a million being whipped around by a RatBastard with a UID of 3 digits!

*Bows before the Low UID Overlord*

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[SilentStrike]

I think more benefit comes from knowing what is running on this system. It's much easier to build a minimal system when you start from little, and then take away extra cruft, than it is to start with a lot, and then take away lots of cruft.

There is nothing wrong with just taking defaults, trading bloat for ease, it's just not what I want to do.

What about family?

[Idou]

I live far, far away from all my family members, and the majority of my family is running Linux. Why? Because the computers I gave to them had linux (Mandrake) on them.

If you are using Linux on your desktop, think about becoming your family's Admin. I used to hate going over to my parent's house and being sat in front of the computer and told to fix it (boot into safe mode, delete temp file, scan disk, defrag disk, dread coming to visit a couple months later), so I bought them a new Linux computer ($200). I no longer have to fix ANYTHING. And I can remotely add the things they think are useful, later.

Sure, everything wasn't 100% smooth, but buying the computer usually buys you a lot of slack (and it gives them something to brag to their friends about . . .). Also, everyone overall is better off since Linux is really a better operating system for its TCO, if fully administered (let the flames begin, but come on . . . all Windows favoring TCO's point to Linux "big" training cost).

If I offended any users of other OS's, I am truly sorry. This was targeted at fellow Linux users only.

Re:My first Linux install. Success!

[fyrie]

Yup funny as hell. Kinda reminds me of the first time I tried linux with Mandrake 7(.2?).

Disovery Pack includes VM ware ?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/92/discovery

$300 software included with linux for under $40

is this for real or just misleading advertising?

well said, but...

[sethadam1]

Your response is basically sound, but we'll have to agree to disagree on one point.

Waiting a week is pointless. I have in no way hurt anyone at all, emotionally or financially. I'll I've done is taken the exclusivity away from the club members, which, really, is little more than bragging rights, which I don't care for or about.

I agree that exercising rights is different from guaranteeing them, and your abortion example is a good one, but while the war is a common cause, this battle is not. Offering a free download of something that is free is not a problem in my eyes under any circumstance. Mandrake needs a better plan than early access to ISOs if they want to secure capital.

It would be nice to have everything work with balance and moderation. Maybe I'm bittered by the real world, but I'll tell you flat out: it doesn't work that way. People, en masse, are not reliable and can be counted on to fuck up the most trivial of things. That's why software has to be so idiot-proof. So my a "very poor character" and "inability to comprehend the bigger picture" are based more on experience than theory. Time to come up with a better plan than reliance on honesty or self-moderation.

Re:well said, but...

[mickwd]

"I'll [All?] I've done is taken the exclusivity away from the club members"

That sounds like you've taken away something of value, something people would be prepared to pay for, especially by deliberately publicising the downloads on Slashdot.

"I have in no way hurt anyone at all, ..... financially."

Apart from the Mandrake club, which is helping to keep Mandrake in existence.

"Maybe I'm bittered by the real world, but I'll tell you flat out: it doesn't work that way"

Of course, you're more privileged than the rest of us to live in the real world. I mean, it's not like any of the rest of us live there.

"Time to come up with a better plan than reliance on honesty or self-moderation."

.....because, sadly, there are people like you in the world.

Re:well said, but...

[swv3752]

So because some people are assholes it is ok for you to be an asshole?

People like you are the reason we have so many problems in the world.

Re:well said, but...

[WNight]

If the only reason something has value for you is that I don't have it, you're the jackass.

What the hell are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right, you know. Prove him wrong, or else you are just trying to be cute.

Sorry, I assumed everyone knew . . .

[Idou]

Mandrake used bittorrent this time, so the club members were supplying their own bandwidth.

Mandrake released first to club members to reinforce the value of the membership. As a club member I support this since it also means a certain number of people will decide to join the club just to download early (100 or so people did become members for that reason, only to be disappointed that they could have waited a day to get the download for free). More members means a better distro and a better member site.

You are right, I am going to talk to Mandrake about implementing an exclusive copyright on the installer and configuration tools for a limitted time and then releasing those under the GPL AFTER the club members have all had a chance to download the distro first. I suppose this problem will be resolved by the next release (there are simply too many hardcore freeloaders to get around this).

Re:Sorry, I assumed everyone knew . . .

[sethadam1]

" I am going to talk to Mandrake about implementing an exclusive copyright on the installer and configuration tools for a limitted time and then releasing those under the GPL AFTER the club members have all had a chance to download the distro first."

I think that is a FANTASTIC idea. Until then, though, this thread is pretty much dead. No one is wrong to download at all - but we may be a little impatient.

Re:Broadcom chip set

[Slayer]

It might be good news for you that something's being done about this. Linksys produced a router based on linux which used the Broadcom chip set, but "unfortunately" forgot about the GPL when they shipped their product. Now they are in legal deep sh*t and will most likely have to provide the sources to the driver.

Two conclusions:
1. Broadcom sucks rocks for not providing driver specs
2. We'll get them anyway thanks to Linksys's dumbness.

Re:Attention to WIGGLE YOUR BIG TOE

[Anonymous Coward]

remember: backdoors are just bugs when someone discovers them. :) happy patch day!

Re:Just what the fuck?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, if you believe in something that can't be explained scientifically then that is a sign of a low IQ. Since you believe in god I would have to say your intelligence is apparently sub-par. Fag!

So what is Discovery

[Compuser]

I guess I am one of their target market. I have
more than 3 years of Linux usage under my belt but
I don't need any server functionality. I do need
LaTeX, office suite, various network protocol
clients, multimedia apps and config tools. Does
anyone have a list of what is included with
Discovery. Also, since it doesn't ask what to
install by default, what does it install by default?
What ports are open by default, what deamons run
by default etc? This "review" wasn't helpful, so
can someone fill the gap.

My (very) quick perception after installation

[Leomania]

I've got an hour or so into my Mandrake 9.2 PowerPack installation. I had a number of things to do to make the dual-boot with Win2K work like I wanted, but everything is up and running now.

I've run Gnome in 9.2 so far. All of the applications I have tried work rather well. Sound works on the AC97 codec on-board, but playing Mp3 through XMMS gives some strange noises every 30 seconds or so... not sure what that's related to. I hate AC97 codecs under any OS, anyway.

I've seen Ximian XD2 running on RedHat 9.0, and I'm here to tell you it's BEAUTIFUL. Looking at Mandrake 9.2, it looks pretty good as well but to my eye isn't quite as polished as XD2. The fonts look very good in all of the main applications - Galeon, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution. I don't know if they're using Xft under the hood or not but it certainly looks like it. Much better than in the past where getting any FreeType-compiled apps or anti-aliasing turned on required more hunting than I thought reasonable.

I didn't set up a printer this time as I have a new printer without a CUPS driver (and of course I never opened up a manual to see what emulation modes the printer supports) but that's worked for the last five releases so I'd assume it still works in 9.2.

I've been a Mandrake user/fan for a long time, and what I see looks as good or better than I would have expected. I will be using it on one of my systems at home for most of the things I do as I can be very comfortable and productive with it.

However, if the distro was installed on a new PC, I think the issue that the "average user" would run into is exactly what one poster mentioned; buy a new piece of hardware, especially a peripheral like a printer, and setting it up would potentially be rather difficult. The Windows installers often take care of all driver installation for you, so you never need to think about it. Even if there is a driver for say, a printer, using the Mandrake configuration tool can be a bit daunting to the uninitiated. But it's better than messing with the underlying config files, no doubt about that in my mind.

Anyway, the look & feel is very good and the PowerPack offers much better usability out of the box (okay, so I didn't get a box with my download) than previous releases. The point tools are getting to be VERY good, IMO.

Good job, Mandrake.

- Leo

Re:My (very) quick perception after installation

[RPoet]

Sound works on the AC97 codec on-board, but playing Mp3 through XMMS gives some strange noises every 30 seconds or so... not sure what that's related to.

I get the same thing here, on my onboard AC97 while playing in xmms. So far I can't reproduce in mpg123. Do tell if you've found a solution.

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[shibashaba]

The only computer I've tried it on it wouldn't work because the drive was too fragmented(and of course windows defragmenter wouldn't get all of it).

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[Kludge]

it's got like every friggin ap & lib i'd ever need, plus with a single command line switch i can compile straight into my own binary tarballs, which reside on my nfs server. it's so simple to export the packages dir to any new machines i need to install on. it's like having my own copy of the Redhat rpm tree with binaries that actually work... no matter what deps they have.

With rpm, you just grab source rpms, build them, and you have your custom binary rpms with all the right deps. Same thing -- if you actually want to take the time.

Real power users are the ones throw a server distn of RedHat onto a computer in 15 minutes and have it jamming out 75MB/s over NFS 5 minutes later.

RUN option

[BigRedFish]

Weird they'd take Kicker/Run out. Oh well, it was highly redundant, there are only umpteen other ways to get a run-command dialog in KDE. Quick workarounds:

Right-click somewhere on your KDE panel.

From the pop-up, select Panel Menu/Add/Applet/Application Launcher.

There ya go. Run-command is always available on the panel now. Even better, make a child panel (right-click panel, then Add/Extension/Child_Panel) and add the App Launcher to that, then you can hide it when you don't need it, and it's only one click away when you do. Or remove the windows-ish taskbar (what a space-wasting design) and add a KasBar extension to the panel instead - it's more useful, more configurable, conveys more info, and is far more frugal with screen space. The space you save can hold the app launcher.

On a fast machine (even my P3-500 is fast enough), it's actually quicker and fewer clicks just to hit the 'Shell' icon and get a command line. Faster than Kicker/Run_command, enter command in pop-up dialog, then enter or OK.

Still a silly thing to take out - if it's missing from the Kicker I guess that means right-click on desktop, choose Run_command... from popup won't be there anymore. Silly silly silly. Maybe it's just to avoid scaring n00bs? I wonder if the full-version of 9.2 still has all the old menu options?

"works for me"

[timothy]

blixel:

Mileage varies, as the saying goes.

I've found a lot of devices don't work well with Windows, or work only after extensive futzing with options and opaque configuration playing-around. This is largely out of my own ignorance, since I don't see / touch Microsoft Windows machines very often -- but that argues against the "just works" myth. I'm calling it a myth, anyhow!

On visits to my dad's place (his computers have Windows) I have found that much of his hardware does not like the drivers (supplied in the box, labeled as appropriate for the versions of Windows on his computers) supplied with it. For instance: his very common wireless ethernet card (a Linksys) refuses to work on either of two Windows laptops, despite happy-seeming driver installation process. (It even reports good *signal* but does not seem to pass packets. Probably a Windows guru, or the average middle school kid, could fix what me and my electrical-engineer dad can't, but hey.)

Solution? (Not really a solution for him, but interesting anyhow.) Pop in Knoppix, and the wireless card works. On one of his laptops, the internal ethernet flakes out frequenly with Windows, is rock-solid under Knoppix.

Am I a computer idiot? Well, Yeah, I guess so, wish I could lie about it. Most computer interfaces are poorly designed and anti-intuitive, IMO, and most manuals are worse :)

But *for hardware that it works with*, Linux in any of its recent manifestations seems to work more smoothly than Windows past or present. That means popping in an ethernet card doesn't mean installing a driver (though there are exceptions, esp. for I think it's NForce motherboards where on-board ethernet doesn't work without special driver), and CD-Rom drives too pretty much *just work*, no special drivers there either.

There are a lot of areas where Linux hardware support is still poor, but unless you're trolling (vs. just frustrated with Linux, the way I get frustrated with Windows every time I cross its path), I think your description of woe leading to "a dozen or so reboots, and kernel compilations later you decide the device might be defective" is over the top.

And if you are trolling, my fingers thank you for the exercise on this lovely day.

timothy

Re:"works for me"

[blixel]

Mileage varies, as the saying goes.

Yup.

I've found a lot of devices don't work well with Windows, or work only after extensive futzing with options and opaque configuration playing-around.

That was true for my USB FM Radio reciever. It worked under Linux no questions asked. Under Windows, it was a chore originally. But that was a single exception. Read on...

Video card - Getting my tripple-head Matrox Parhelia video card to work under Linux was a nightmare. And when I did get it to work, I learned that I had to use analog for all 3 monitors because the Linux driver didn't support digital mode. Major suck!

My network card - uneventful on both Windows and Linux. Same thing for my soundcard and CD-ROM reader.. They just work.

My Printer - use to be a hassle in Linux but CUPS has made it a snap. I would even argue that it's easier in Linux to get my printer working. However, there is some loss of options on the Linux side.

My scanner - Windows all the way. Major headache in Linux. And the functionality is greatly reduced in Linux.

My webcam - Windows again. It didn't work at all in Linux until fairly recently. And the functionality is so far reduced that it's not even worth having on my system in Linux.

My digital camera - Windows again. It just works. I have been able to get it mounted in Linux in the past by recompiling my kernel and adding additional modules. But even then it's not very user friendly. None of the programs I have tried can see the camera. I have to mount and unmount it manually. (I'm open for ideas for Digital Camera programs though.) Fortunately I don't take a lot of pictures so I just get my pictures when I'm in Windows.

My external Firewire hard-drives - Windows again. They don't work at all in Linux. After hours of screwing with the kernel, reading newsgroups, looking for help on help sites, and so on, I haven't been able to get them to mount. (And when asking for help with a Linux problem, you usually just get a response like RTFM - even after you have clearly demonstrated the extent to which you have gone to figure the problem out on your own.) I'm looking forward to the 2.6 kernel hoping it will resolve this problem.

Digital Video Camera - Forget about it in Linux. It's a firewire camera. Hoping the 2.6 kernel will have better firewire support.

My USB mouse - In Windows it works just fine. In Linux I had to change an option in my BIOS to get Linux to recognize it. No big deal, but I don't understand why Windows sees the mouse without changing a BIOS option and Linux can't? And now that Linux can see it, the extra buttons don't work. This is an acceptable loss though. But still goes to show that things could be improved.

CDRW - I'm leaning towards Windows on this one. The software I've used in Linux is akward but it does work, usually.

On visits to my dad's place (his computers have Windows) I have found that much of his hardware does not like the drivers (supplied in the box, labeled as appropriate for the versions of Windows on his computers) supplied with it.

I don't doubt that you would have problems with the wireless card, but I find it very unlikely that "much of his hardware" is problematic in Windows. Unless you're using Mac hardware on a Windows machine? Then it could be a problem I suppose.

Solution? (Not really a solution for him, but interesting anyhow.) Pop in Knoppix, and the wireless card works. On one of his laptops, the internal ethernet flakes out frequenly with Windows, is rock-solid under Knoppix.

My laptop works fine under XP, including the wireless card. Pop in a Knoppix CD and the external USB mouse doesn't work and it can't find the wireless card. Otherwise Knoppix is really cool. I use it frequently for fun.

Posting NYTimes articles to ./

[sacrilicious]

They decided to trust that their club members would hold off distributing the isos just for the short time of two weeks. In my mind that would've been the decent thing to do. Limit the leeching a bit for a very limited time period and create a little incentive for actually giving something to the company that has done all the work.

The next main level comment after the above that I read was the not-unusual posting of a NYTimes article, for the sake of avoiding registration at said site. I wonder if there's some interesting framework to see both that practice and the activity of torrenting Mandrake ISOs early. Similarities and differences. Mandrake club members pay with money, NYTimes registrants pay with information. Mandrake eventually releases the ISOs to the public, NYTimes sorta does via archive links. Thoughts anyone?

Re:Posting NYTimes articles to ./

[Anonymous Coward]

BitTorrent users pay with upload bandwidth (and a LOT of it).

mandrake 9.2 and my Dell inspiron 8200

[NewComX2]

what a complete nightmare, first I discover, that I now have to register with Dell.com and give them my computers "system tag" if I want to download Bios and driver updates, and then once I get the bios update, I find out..... YOU NEED WINDOWS XP TO UPGRADE THE BIOS WTF OMGWTF OMG. very frustrating, im only updating the bios because I cant seem to get mandrake to install, and im out of ideas, and then ohhh dell.com ohhhh Dell.coM! how I hate you!!!!! Someone start a rally! bring down dell.com and there windows xp needin bios to updatea gaengajNj! GRRRRR!

Whatever...

[sethadam1]

The ISO is free software, you condescending dimwit. Period.

Anyone trying to convince you otherwise has put one over on you, which I don't imagine is that hard. No one is "being an asshole" for sharing this software.

Nforce2 board?

[buchanmilne]

It would help if you posted specifics ... but is that an NForce2-based board? If so, install 9.2, but be sure to grab the current tmb-kernel from contrib (kernel-tmb-2.4.22.12tmb IIRC), which has just fixed ACPI on the NForce2.

you're a schmuck

[Anonymous Coward]

only on /. can you find short sighted fucksticks who think sharing open source software is somehow a crime against humanity. you are a complete asshat.

Browser Plugins

[Anonymous Coward]

What leap of techonology is it going to take for browser plugins to work properly on platforms other than windows. On every OS I've used other than Windows (OSX/Linux), I've been unable to view some form of online content.. especially streaming video formats like quicktime or realaudio (after installing the correct plugin). I refuse to spend hours searching for how-to's on how to configure them properly. I would say that this probably the biggest thing stopping me from using an alternative OS on my home computer.

Re:Browser Plugins

[ChaoticLimbs]

It's okay. You can say 'p0rn' on slashdot. We won't think less of you. BTW- the porn site likes windows better too, because he can hijack your machine as soon as you visit his page. Popup windows anyone?

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[Lomara]

When I dropped Mandrake 9.1 onto this Dell Inspiron 5100 notebook installed with XP home, the resize tool worked flawlessly. Previous scandisk/defrag warnings apply.

How about a virus checker?

[spoco2]

I mean, really... a self updating virus checker (and yes, free ones like AVG) is all that's really required here... set it up to check e-mail, websites and files automatically, and they're really quite safe.

Re:"works for me" ymmv indeed

[timothy]

"I don't doubt that you would have problems with the wireless card, but I find it very unlikely that "much of his hardware" is problematic in Windows. Unless you're using Mac hardware on a Windows machine? Then it could be a problem I suppose."

The things that would not work without major hassle:

- Minolta/QMS color laser printer (now a big heavy paperweight, I think) -- whether the fault is with Windows (as Minolta says) or with Minolta/QMS's drivers, nobody knows, which has a spooler that seems to corrupt itself with every page printed.I have not tried it with recent CUPS, but that is supposed to support it well.

- HP CD-writer (under Windows 98SE; perhaps it works great in XP), and a Teac CD writer for which Teac has since removed the drivers from its site (or buried them), because it's a few years old. Eventually, we got working -- but both of them work out of the box with cdrecord and its various GUIs.

- DLink combo 56K/ethernet PCMCIA card. Eventually got (only) the modem side to work, though the control panel claims to recognize both parts. It just seems whimsical :)

I have no doubt that someone skilled in the art could get all of these things working, but (and this is a frustrating pain esp. with the networking cards) they generally require a driver not currently loaded on the system, whereas ("bloatware" deluxe ;)) Knoppix, Red Hat and Mandrake generally find and use them without needing a driver disk. (And since the driver disk for the combo card is long gone, years ago, this is important ;))

Note that I am able to break computers by my mere presence, though ... the last time I spent much time with Windows, I was installing Windows 98. The install (the install!) hung repeatedly, took about 5 go-throughs before it decided to actually complete. Maybe it was the hardware in that case.

timothy

Mandrake 9.2 Rox ;). Better than Debian!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just installed it, and it is a lot easier than the Famous SuSE 8.0 (the first KDE 3 distro). First of all, the command line is hidden very well. This means so much for the average user. No xterm's are installed by default, and the run program dialog is disabled. Mandrake shows that a command line free Linux is possible, and is making it a reality, even if it has to drag the geeks screaming out of emacs and vim (because Kwrite is so much easier to use!). I for one will not be using it again, because Mandrake has removed all reason for me to use it.

It's already excellent hardware dectection has improved once more, EVERYTHING (even my obscureist hardware) "just works".

The new graphical boot is really slick. The previous ones told me that everything is supposed to be [ ok ], but I didn't know what the hell is supposed to be [ ok ]! So thats good too.

The faster, more reliable OpenOffice 1.1 is included too! No more waiting for ages for it to load. This is probably the most important thing of all!

Good selection of games, with games like TuxRacer, Amergnatron, Chromuim, LBreakout, FrozenBubble and more. Theres always wine as well for your DirectX games.

It now has the totem media player, which is based off the Xine Media player. Simple, no frills interface that does what its supposed to do, play video files, and do it well!

Overall, i think Mandrake 9.2 is the easiest, yet most powerful Linux distro yet. It will defenatley gain new users, as well as swiping users from other Distros! Slackware and Debian users will really appreciate the Simplicty and the package management (the urpmi package manager is very powerful, and unlike apt-get it uses the RPM format, which is required for LSB compliance.) So stop punishing yourself with the command line, and come into the cozy GUI. This is the Linux I'll be giving to my mum, my freinds and to the masses. This is the true power of opensource, with the power to harness it!

I am not saying it is perfect either

[mic256]

Just today I was writing a C++ program for a contest, and came to the conclusion, that it would be nice if any IDE for Linux had decent debugger. KDevelop 2.1 had problems with a console app and eclipse is notoriously difficult to configure under Linux.
But such problems are something completely different than compiling the kernel. Linux will achieve "World Domination" not if it will have this or that feature, but if it can innovate faster than proprietary software. Given it is behind, much faster.
As for your problem, try Synaptic. In Add/Remove programs under Red Hat 9 it is System / Popular programs / Synaptic (or similar - I use a local version).
Is it a gui frontend for apt-rpm. Point and click - you might tell me, if you feel satisfied.

Re:I am not saying it is perfect either

[blixel]

I'll look around for apt-rpm and give it a try.

It wasn't in Add/Remove programs where you said. (And I'm using RH9)

Under System there are 3 options. Admin Tools, System Tools, and Printing Support. In Admin Tools there are 10 redhat-config-* packages and 1 authconfig-gtk package. It's not in System tools either, and obvioulsy not in Printing Support.

It might be in one of the other menus but I can find it faster by doing a search online and I'll get the latest version that way anyway.

Re:I am not saying it is perfect either

[Anonymous Coward]

As for your problem, try Synaptic. In Add/Remove programs under Red Hat 9 it is System / Popular programs / Synaptic

You forgot the initial steps. First make sure you are running Debian or Redhat. If you are running Debian do an 'apt-get synaptic' if you don't already have it. If you are running Redhat go out and get apt-rpm, then install Synaptic, then use Synaptic.

Since this is a Mandrake story lets try and fix this problem the proper way - Use Mandrake. Open the program menu > Configuration > Packaging > Install Software/Remove Software, and install or remove software. Then laugh at the Redhat users who have to go out and use apt-rpm in order to have a decent system. Do not forget to laugh at the other crazy Redhat quirks as well, (you have to do something to play mp3s?! What's with Bluecurve and those lame menu names? And you guys are only on 9.0? Ha!).

You prefer proprietary software???

[buchanmilne]

I think that is a FANTASTIC idea.

OK, so you mean that you actually *prefer* using free-beer proprietary software over free-speech software?

I think you're using the wrong distro, the next SuSE release is out quite soon I hear ...

If Mandrake was a woman...

[f0rt0r]

...I would marry it. It was my second Linux distro, and the one I decided to stick with. I just loaded Mandrake 9.1 4 weeks ago, so it may be a while before I try 9.2 out. However, the way my Redhat 9.0
box is acting, I may be loading Mandrake 9.2 sooner than I planned...

Sadly...

[sbszine]

It's a duck. A male duck.

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[g4sy]

just a note... ntfsresize is a great utility, it worked for me and it'll work for you. I just wish that redhat would get their head out of (insert bad place here) and either include it or support a mirging of parted and ntfsresize

Some will say that they couldn't do it because the windows defrag didn't do a good enough job. Yes it will do a good enough job. You may need to do it twice, and you need to understand that you can't make the new partition bigger than the last speck of data on the disk. As long as do do it consciously (don't resize under the influence (RUI)

Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

>Also, tell me how Window Explorer suddenly stopped working on one of my W2K box and I had
to reinstall the whole system

Because you did not make a ghost image of the fresh system. If you did not want to buy Ghost, you could have used "ghost for linux"-partimage, which is free

Re:Answer

[kpellegr]

"ghost for Linux"? You mean: cat /dev/hda1 > my.img

Re:Any experience with the NTFS partition resizing

[Trejkaz]

2.1%? The performance tests were showing a little more than 2.1%.

An alternative to BT is available.

[anakin357]

ed2k://|file|MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk1of3.i586.iso|6 83642880|96828148504356C7804D1FF64EC02205|/
ed2k: //|file|MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk2of3.i586.iso|7 31797504|1A294F3B3BF27EFB20E0705B2B50470D|/
ed2k: //|file|MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk3of3.i586.iso|7 28948736|2D6F7CD025E67ACBEE226317DBFE0B2A|/

Just remove the spaces in the links.

Aurox

[mic256]

It might because I use a Red Hat 9 based distro called Aurox.

Re:Aurox

[blixel]

I found synaptic by doing a google search. The interface looks real promising. If it works as well as apt-get does in Debian then it will be a wonderful tool. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Ghost is not the Answer

[Abreu]

Using Ghost images is equivalent to reinstalling, there's no way to fix Windows Explorer when it goes bad.

Re:Hmmm. Oppty to 'catch up'...wait..

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft waiting to 2006. What is thier game?
Could be:
1. Maybe the public will beg to be screwed again...and royally this time ...and they will
relent and shaft us with it in 2004;
2. Or maybe micro$ are waiting for a new 'legal'framework that makes free software
basically illegal...legislation of 'trusteed computing' (you are called irresponsible to own
a computer and must be 'licensed', bonded, and
have your computer AND operating system
'registered' and 'taxed' every year like a car.
Maybe charge you for 'liability insurance' as
well. Cant wait for to see who would be in
the 'assigned risk' category, or what the fine
would be for operating under the influence
of linux;
3.They got spooked by the reaction in the
rest of the world as free countries like Russia
and India and Isreal and Germany have embraced
Linux while telling greedy heartless microsofters
to go to h#$%. So now they are soft pedalling
until they can buy more international politicians
like they did in the totalitarian (homeland
security and DMCA) U(SSR)SA.

Recovery of busted RPM databases.

[tjwhaynes]

Guess you've never had a corrupted RPM repository. /var/lib/rpm/ went belly-up on me just yesterday. Much as I had all my software, I couldn't add/remove anything (for an apt4rpm user this is _most_ crucial!). So, off to the store for my SuSE 8.2 cds and a time-wasting re-install. Be glad if your distro doesn't use RPMs!

Why didn't you do an RPM database rebuild? Corrupted RPM databases are not unknown and the architecture for RPMs allows the database to be rebuilt. All dependencies are doubly linked back and forwards in the database so even fairly major corruption can be rectified.

cd /var/lib/rpm
rm -f __db.00?
rpm --rebuilddb

would have saved you a ton of problems. The only other point to make here is that apparent hangs querying the RPM database are normally the result of a hung application holding locks on the database. Look through the list of open files for locks on the Packages file in /var/lib/rpm.

lsof | grep /var/lib/rpm/Packages

kill -9 any process id (second column) that matches. If I caught you before your reinstall, so much the better.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Bittorrent do

[tim_mw]

If you are a mandrake club member and have trouble with the bittorrent downloads and want mandrake to provide a proper ISO image download, please sign the petition on http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mdkiso/