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Fedora, SuSE And Mandrake Compared
gmuslera writes "This weekend 2 comparisions were made between latest Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake Linux distributions. The first one was done by FlexBeta and in general goes deep, done by people that seem to know Linux, and good around its 9 pages. The later one was done by The Washington Post (yahoo news link) and shows another view of those 3 distributions, from someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know enough about it. In what of those extremes are the average new user experience with those distributions?" Update: 07/06 01:01 GMT by T : Note that long-time Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegaroro doesn't seem to dislike Linux -- far from it; he's just writing what he sees as truth.
several of the gripes the reviewer mentioned about fedora can be solved by the following:
/etc/sysconfig/init
/usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash.png
/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser -s true
# get rid of the graphical boot in fedora
edit the
GRAPHICAL=no
# change your gnome splash screen
replace
# reset nautilus to default browsing
gconftool-2 -t bool
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hello--I used Mandrake exclusively for a couple of years on a Dell Laptop. It was the easiest system to install & use.
However, I wanted to learn Linux more, so I'm trying Gentoo & Debian. I like Gentoo's "from scratch" installation & that I can choose each item. However, emerging sucks--if I need to get something done but need new software, it's a pain in the ass to compile every freakin' program & dependency. I don't have time to sit around & wait for the process to complete.
Debian on the other hand didn't let me choose my kernals or bootloader. Thus, I was stuck with 2.4.x + Grub as the default. What's more, without a working network connection, Sarge's installer froze at the point where the installer tries to download security updates. How crappy!
I want Gentoo's choices with Debian's precompiled packages (Portage apparently gives you the choice to use precompiled packages but I cannot access them without a network card.)
Mandrake was by far the easiest to use but I didn't learn anything in the process.
OS X is great but makes me feel guilty because I love KDE & IMHO, OS X is not all that compared to KDE/Linux. Konqueror by itself makes KDE absolutely amazing. But OS X works & is really really awesome if you're not comfortable with Linux or are used to Windows. It can do some amazing things.
For the Windows user, one might tend to gravitate toward Mandrake for preconfiguration. Some say it's too dumbed down.
For the tinkerer, one might tend to gravitate toward Fedora for ease of use and configurability. Some say it's buggy.
For the admin, one might find that Suse fills their need for control and power. I can't comment too much on Suse, I only know one person who runs it.
These 3 distros don't even scratch the surface of what's out there. I'll elaborate on a few other distros.
Gentoo, Slackware & Debian: For those who wish to learn by doing. These distros do very little to automate your installation and configuration.
Be prepared to read man pages, how-to's, and write config files.
Slax, Knoppix and a number of other Live CD distributions: For those who want it running NOW.
These distros are running from boot with little configuration thanks to hardware detection and automatic module loading.
LFS (Linux From Scratch): For those who want intimate knowledge of the inner workings of their system.
This distro takes much time to get running....and...it's not really a distro as much as a set of basic instructions.
As I stated in the subject, there are a number of distributions to suit your level of expertise and style of system administration. When choosing a distro, be aware of the available support options and understand that Linux is (for the most part) a 'help yourself' kind of Operating System. In some cases you can pay a support team to assist you, but in most cases you should expect little direct (one on one) assistance.
My suggestion.....if you've got a buddy who's a Gentoo guru, you should run Gentoo because you've got a support system and someone to mentor you.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Here's a free linux kit from SuSe... http://www.novell.com/community/linux/order.php
One thing that doesn't seem to be discussed in these reviews is updates. If you want a truly free distro, then (Fedora, Debian, Slackware) are what you want. Mandrake and Suse charge extra for update services and/or disc iso images. Fedora is the only one of the three that offers free system updates (via up2date). The up2date utility was broken on Core 1, but it seems to be working on Core 2.
I installed Mandrake 10.0 Official on one of my systems, only to discover that system updates cost extra. Also, the free downloadable iso images for Mandrake only contain 3 of the 4 discs. I was really annoyed when I found out that xdvi was on the 4th disc! I think Mandrake is a very nice distro if you are willing to pay extra for the update service and the 4th disc.
From the Post:
The better solution is the smart package-installer Fedora employs; its "yum" utility fetches a program from an online archive, resolves dependency issues and sets it up with one command. It's a clever system. Except -- duh -- there's no graphical front-end to it, forcing users to use a text-only, command-line interface.
Cobind has a GUI
This is a grapical partition editor that is shipped with several distros.
It allows you to resize/move/delete/create/etc, as one would expect.
I dont have a list, but i know that it comes with Mepis, and a couple of 'rescue-distros'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
On top of that, he's also wrong. Mandrake and SuSe (afair) ship with ntfsresize. Provided that no ugly accidents happen, you only need a defrag before starting the installation.
Check reviews on google, it's not too difficult. Please be more self sufficient. Not for yourself, but for all the people who you probably keep asking for help. "Is rpm revolutions per minute?" "I hope Linux has a Windows Update." ect
I however, am currently (yes, this second) installing BeOS on my laptop (or craptop, as I call it). You just have to ask yourself what you want to do with your computer, and pick and choose the OS, software from there. For me, aim, simple web browsing, and word fuctionality are sufficient for my craptop: Thus, Abiword, BeAIM, and Mozilla are all I'll be using on this P166MMX w/40MB, 2gigs.
Context makes him sound reasonably informed. You sir, are either trolling, or functionally illiterate.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It was right here. The Washington Post and FlexBeta have just been playing catchup with my journal.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Don't know about SUSE, but I've had much better luck with winmodems on Slackware than I ever did on Windows 2000 or XP.
The Farewell Tour II
Maybe when more hardware vendors get on board and release open drivers....
As I've posted before, it's often not the vendors that are the problem. Hint, hint. See the discussion about "Linux's Achilles Heel." Soundblaster drivers were released by Creative. Even completely open source ones. Support is intermittent at best, even with new, current distros. Pushing the problem off onto the vendors not releasing drivers is no excuse for a lot of Linux's problems - modern, newbie-oriented distros tend to junk up the sound detection anyways, even with very common and not even cutting edge released yesterday stuff - good Intel mobo, not too many peripherals, stuff that should (and generally does, but still far less than 100%) work.
The latest post-Community version of MDK 10.0 (Standard?) caught my card correctly this time, which is rare lately. It used to work more often, then it quit for years....now it seems to work. My sound card hasn't changed. The drivers were released open source.
I'm rooting (no pun intended) for Linux, but it's still flaky to install, and the corrective actions for a newbie are rather convoluted and unfriendly. They're still a lot of work (as you point out) for someone who sort of knows what they're doing.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Here is the answer to the question you almost asked:
http://rpm.pbone.net/
Let me start this post by saying I have been an exclusive Linux user since 1996, back in the old 1.3 days, with Slackware. I have more or less only been a "RedHat Man". It works on my workstations at work, it works at home. Now recently I got a new Athlon 64 and so of course wanted to run 64 bit Linux on it, right? We ran into so many problems with (or so we attributed) Fedora 1 x86_64 that we decided to install Fedora x86 instead. Well, guess what, same problems. Finally we got everything working, but it took a while, and this is by someone who generally knows what he's doing with Linux.
Now, just a few days ago, I was looking to upgrade my RedHat 9 box to Fedora. I decided to try Fedora 2 (it's got to be good, right). Wrong! It took 4 solid hours to get a clean install. It crapped out numerous times when installing specific rpm's (openoffice for one), and then a mesage would come up and say something to the effect of "OpenOffice won't install, so aborting entire installation." So, off you go from scratch again, only to have another problem pop up. No kidding, 4 hours installing Fedora 2 from scratch.
Don't try a custom installation it will crap out. Don't try a typical Home installation, it will crap out. Don't try a typical server installation, it will crap out. And never at the same point.
I am still a diehard Linux user and appreciate all the effort the Fedora community has put into their distro, but man guys, test it out first! It's seriously put me off Fedora 3 in the future.
I'm one of those who has decided to "roll my own" remaster, based on Knoppix. I like the live CD idea, and since I have 256 MB of ram, I "knoppix toram" at bootup, then I can remove the CD, and play a music CD, for instance. I'm posting this as informational, so new users can see what we linux folks can do. Here is my Getting Started Guide.
I have not decided to distribute this remaster at this time, I'm just having fun with it for now.
That really depends on your source. There are various places you can point yast to as an "installation source" and it will pick up the new packages in their software installer. Such as the supplementary apps folder on their ftp server for gnome apps and this folder for kde apps and this folder for misc. apps. (please use a mirror!)
Slightly older manual for Mandrake. Definately written for some one converting from MS Windows with things like "Where is my Start Menu?".
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I'd heartily agree...Mandrake was pretty in a gui standoint, Suse was a stunner from a management standpoint - everything worked, looked and acted the same _even in text mode_
(Which is important if you're setting up an ids box that doesn't need X or open office or Mozilla, etc.)
I haven't tried Fedora, but my experience with Redhat sucked. Management tools all over the map, sometimes they configured things, sometimes they didn't. (Wireless was a biggie that stood out as not quite all there.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Regarding the "Linux, Still an Awkward Alternative". article:
He should point out that Mandrake is free, if you want to download it. I have distributed literally thousands of copies. The article seems to imply that you have to buy it and compares the cost to MS-Windows.
Mandrake Move is the same concept as SuSe live, and you can download that for free, also.
I have installed Mandrake 10 on perhaps 10 different types of machines so far. Not once did it fail to "graphical system configure a graphical interface automatically".
He said " Unfortunately, to install any of these versions without wiping out most Windows installations, you'll need to buy a third-party program to partition your hard drive." That is just completely false. Mandrake will non-destructively repartition any MS-Windows partition.
He should clarify on "None supported the laptops' modems" to the readers that none of the modern laptops include real modems, only "win" modems which are proprietary and designed to work only with MS-Windows. Even so, 80% of them can be made to work under Linux, but it is not a super-easy task.
He also said this: " That brings up Linux's biggest embarrassment: software installation. Outside of core system updates (ably handled by each distribution's auto-update software), my attempts to add new programs were routinely stymied by the chancy availability of prepackaged downloads and "dependency" issues, in which the installation failed because the computer lacked needed library files." Dependency problems do not occur with any of the many thousands of software packages included in Mandrake 10.... only when you download generic packages off the web.
And this: "The better solution is the smart package-installer Fedora employs; its "yum" utility fetches a program from an online archive, resolves dependency issues and sets it up with one command." Both SuSe and Mandrake can do the exact same thing. Mandrake, for example, uses urpmi. If you set up a software mirror, you will be presented with a graphical point-and-click interface. Installing any package is just a click.
He is wrong to say that installation must be done from the command line. In SuSe, when clicking on an rpm file using Konqueror, a page with a description of the RPM wil come up and there will be a button saying "Install with Yast2". Click on the button, and the package is installed if there are no dependency issues. If there are dependecy or package conflict issues, Yast2 wil point it out. I am a laptop user, and have installed SuSe on several laptops. As far as the hardware, SuSe has picked up all my hardware, so long as it is a new distro and the hardware has been out for six months. I've yet to have the same exprience using MS Windows. With MS Windows, you have to hunt down for the drivers on the web. In the end, though, it is the responsibility of the hardware vendors to provide the drivers. You cannot possibly expect a distribution to write drivers for every single piece of hardware out there. It is neither fair not logistically possible.
I should have known from my overflowing inbox that my story had gotten posted on Slashdot...
Well, after reading all 118 e-mails to date and re-reading the column itself, I'd like to address the questions that have come up about it. I'll start by addressing the contention that I am some sort of shill for Microsoft: Please read a few of my recent columns and tell me if you think I'm doing any favors to the good people in Redmond.
Second, the "why didn't you cover distribution X, Y and Z?" question. Since there are only so many hours in the day, I decided I'd only look at distros using the 2.6 kernel; I'd also only look at the distributions readers might already recognize--either by seeing them for sale in computer stores, or by seeing books about them in bookstores.
Third, my comment about NTFS disk partitioning. Throw all the rotten tomatoes at me that you want, because I got this wrong; SuSE and Mandrake can resize NTFS partitions, although Fedora and many other distros cannot. (Granted, there are apparently a few bugs in their implentation of this, but still...)
Fourth, the "what's so hard about using the command line?" gripe. Command-line interfaces have gone out of style in consumer operating systems for Very Sound Reasons. They're not remotely "discoverable"--unlike a row of menus or toolbar icons, a blank command-line prompt has no way of telling you what you *can* do. They're unforgiving--one typo in the command and it won't work.
Fifth, my complaints about the problems of installing software in Linux: The results I reported came from my attempts to install software as most Windows refugees might: by downloading fairly well-known applications (for instance, Firefox and AbiWord) and double-clicking them once they had landed on my desktop.
I went on to note that there are automated package-installers, then focused on Fedora's in particular (I did give Cobind's YumGUI a whirl too, but since that's a) in beta and b) not included with Fedora, I can't consider that the answer). I could have discussed Mandrake's rpmDrake instead, in which case I would have criticized the way it's buried four menus deep (will any new user even think to look under the "Packaging" sub-menu?). I also could have used SuSE's YAST2 as an example, in which case I would have had to note how this was smart enough to alert me of dependency issues while installing downloaded SuSE RPMs, but not smart enough to fix them automatically.
If anybody's actually read this far, I'd add that my goal in this column was to try to assess these three releases not as a Linux expert might find them, but as somebody moving from Windows might find them. I.e., the vast bulk of the potential user base.
I personally found all three of these distributions quite usable once set up properly--certainly much more so than the versions of SuSE, Mandrake and Lycoris that I reviewed two years ago, or the Red Hat release I tried out in late 2002--but that doesn't mean that, say, my brother or my mom would put up with the initial setup work. And I'd be lying to readers if I didn't tell them that.
See this.
Is it reliable?
Yes, it is reliable. Since July of 2002, when ntfsresize became publicly available, there were countless success reports for both enlarging and shrinking Windows XP/2000/NT4, Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn NTFS filesystems on both workstation and server versions (Home, Professional, Server, Advanced Server). No destroyed filesystem was reported who followed the instructions correctly.
What the hell are all those MIT_MAGIC_COOKIE-1 errors that I'm getting from my Xserver?!?
That is usually caused by a process running as some user trying to create a window on an X Server owned by another user. Either make sure that they both run as the same user, or use xauth to fix it (ie xauth list, then xauth add [blah]).
He says in his piece you have to buy a third-party partition manager to install any of these distros in a dual-boot configuration.
This may have been true five years ago - it's not now. Mandrake at least can resize even NTFS partitions during the install.
Which means his article is about as accurate as Bush's next statement about "WMDs".
He also drags up the notion that installing Linux is a nightmare of unsupported hardware - which is also no longer true (in most cases).
It's just more bullshit FUD.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I installed SuSE 9.1 professional 64bit yesterday on my AMD64. It worked like a charm...
It detected my SATA controller and HDD in the blink of an eye. (WD on a Promise controller of my Asus K8V mobo)
Konqueror has a flash plugin installed out of the box. This is supposed to be a big issue on 64bit distro's, but SuSE manages this just fine.
I installed the nVidia driver update through Yast and reconfigured X (also trough Yast - SaX) with 3d acceleration without a problem. Tried out UT2004 (bought the SE DVD) and this runs very smooth.
Though I have not tried any other 64bit distro, I strongly doubt they'll be as easy to set up as SuSE 9.1 is.
Now if i could just get my eMagic MT4 USB MIDI Hub to work i could finally get rid of my Win XP installation... but i won't see this happening very soon.
Anyway; Nice Work SuSE!
Okay I tried Fedora 2 as soon as it got released and all I can say about it is that I was disappointed. The kernel upgrade via rpm permanently out-of-synced my clock, and in general the distribution was very sluggish even on my P4-1.6 GHz 768 MB laptop. The default GNOME 2.6 included with Fedora 2 still needs lots of refinement and even basic menu editing is made inaccessible to the users by fedora 2 folks apparently due to some bug with GNOME menu. So right now KDE seems to be the only way to go, and that is having first cleaned up the horrile customization done to it Fedora 2 people. There is XFCE 4.0.5 lightweight desktop environment included in the installation disks but not in the anaconda installer. How could they have forgotten to include this? XFCE is a very good alternative over GNOME and KDE especially on old hardware. I haven't tried Suse or Mandrake because I am myself a Slackware fan and very satisfied with it. The recently released Slackware 10 is excellent and after a bit of compilation, installation (kernel, mplayer, kermit, openoffice, etc...), and customization it stands out to be a pretty solid linux distro.