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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.
I've been using Linux (almost exclusively) for probably 8 or 9 years now. I set out to install Mandrake 10 on my new network last week (old thinkpad laptop and new shuttle MB). It took me several days and lots of "ifup" hacking to get my Netgear WG511 wireles card finally working. (It still causes a 60s pause during bootup, but I'm happy that it works)
I still can't get xdmcp to work right. What the hell are all those MIT_MAGIC_COOKIE-1 errors that I'm getting from my Xserver?!?
Linux is great and all, but it requires more persistance than most people have. I think that Washington Post fellow struck the correct tone. Linux still isn't for everyone. Maybe when more hardware vendors get on board and release open drivers....
From the Post:
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.
Which is, of course, wrong. Using parted and a graphical frontend like QTparted, you can easily resize partitions. The last SUSE install I helped out with had a partition resizer during the install. Did they take this feature out?
Let me begin this with the disclaimer that I am fairly new to Linux. I can do all of the basic stuff fairly well, but when it comes to having to hack out wierd stuff that doesn't work right off the bat, I'm...well, deficient.
/dev/sda1 to /mnt/jump and I'm all set. But for some reason Mandrake doesn't set up an sda1 and I'm too newbed to know how to fix that myself.
Anyway, my first choice for Linux is definitely Mandrake. The interface is beautiful, fast and easy and it runs stable (I've had some stability problems with Fedora) all of the time. So why don't I used it? Well, first of all, Mandrake HATES my trackball mice. I have two of them, one from Logitech and one from some other company I can't remember. Anyway, both the mandrake install and mandrake itself refuse to recognize these mice. That wasn't too too bad, I can handle using the regular kind of mouse. But then came the USB problem. No distribution of Mandrake that I have tried up to and including 10.0 liked my USB flash drive. On Fedora I just mount
The final thing I have against Mandrake is its configuration tools. Fedora comes with a nice set of tools to configure all of the stuff I want to use / customize and it always works. Mandrake's on the other hand, have a bad habit of reverting to the settings it liked without even trying my new ones.
I'm running Fedora 2 right now and it works fairly well and does all of the stuff I need it too (it's much better than Fedora 1 for reliability IMHO), but as soon as Mandrake gets to liking my trackballs and jumpdrives I will have no hesitation in switching over.
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Oh God NO!!!! Anything but the command line. I need pretty pictures and maybe a dancing paper clip thingy. It's too much to remember a few commands.
It's not so much a need as a preference. Can new users *really* be bothered to learn how to use the command line? No. Should all users have to drop to command line? I don't buy it. Does lack of command-line use make an Operating System inferior?
No, look at how Apple do it. Most 'new users' WANT their bright shiny GUI interface and won't want to dig under the hood to get things working. I'd say the need to drop to command line a lot is the main reason a lot of people don't switch to Linux (probably second after it's inability to run games without the likes of Wine or WineX). The command line looks daunting to new users. Big shiny buttons that tell you exactly what they do look easy. First appearances count for a lot, as does ease of use. command-line does not look easy-to-use. Be it an installer, a program or the whole OS, if it looks easy to use, if it is easy to use, a lot of people will use it. A lot of people dont care about the technical details and 'getting to know their computer', they just want a quick and easy way to get everything done so they can do their work (or play). Just ask the guys at Apple.
Oh, and leave Clippy alone, Clippy is your fr... OK, I concede that one, Clippy is a bastard.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.