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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."
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.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
From their Features Page:s covery
...
:)
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/92/di
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
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.
IAALS.
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.
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
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
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).
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
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).
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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
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