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

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.

[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.