Linux Mandrake 6.0 Released

The Linux Mandrake team has released version 6.0 of their award-winning distribution. The new release includes software so new it's almost scary - kernel 2.2.9, KDE 1.1.1, and even GNOME 1.0.9. To go along with the new version, the guys have also redone their web page. Comments?

Comments

RedHat 6.0 screwed up KDE a bit

[Jacco de Leeuw]

I have been using Mandrake 5.3 for a while, and was delighted to hear that RedHat was going to include KDE in RedHat 6.0. I assumed that RedHat was going to take notice of the usability enhancements of Mandrake but I must say I was a bit disappointed when I installed RH6.0. It's still a great server distribution (I make my living with it ;-) but for the beginning user, I like Mandrake better. For instance:

- Everyone using KDE should run Appfinder after installation. Point is, RedHat *broke* the Appfinder.

- KDE 1.1.1 instead of a prerelease

- More KDE apps and toys bundled.

- More icons on the desktop, such as Netscape, GIMP, CD-ROM, floppy etc. Nicer backgrounds ;-)

- With Mandrake, if you click on the CD-ROM or floppy as a normal user, it gets mounted automagically. I have a hard time explaining new users why they have to edit /etc/fstab to make this work under RH6.0

- Mandrake distributes ISO images. I screwed up a CD-R while making a bootable RH 6.0 image. (I wanted to add KDE 1.1.1, various contrib junk and crypto stuff from ftp.replay.com). My own fault, of course, but still, CD(-image)s are a boon for new users.

Re:Why? - Fresher, Less buggy

[IQ]

They moved /opt (where KDE is located) off / and into /usr. I like this. (DISCLAIMER: I have not installed RH6. However, earlier mariner/venus Mandrake betas had /opt in /.) Keeps / small and tame. I followed it in beta, installed it 8 or 10 times in the last week. Mostly it is Current. 229 is nice & fast. Lots of RH6 bug fixes rolled into it. Full install puts 1148 Megs in my /usr. / was around 28 - 33M and I keep /var in a separate partition.

It became popular prior to RH6 because it was RH +KDE. It has worked well. I am running it on my Thinkpad 600 and on a K6/200/Abit IT5H. Installing Linux on the Thinkpad has been a bit of a chore but RH seems to have figured it out.

The install took less than 20 minutes not including Sound config...

...TGIF!

Re:Optimized UDMA drivers ??

[vherva]

Perhaps it means this:

[http://www.linux.com/tuneup/articles/19990518/2 5/]



2x performance increases have been reported on massive disk I/O
operations (like cloning disks) by setting the IDE drivers to use DMA
and 32-bit transfers. The kernel seems to use more conservative
settings unless told otherwise.

The commands are

# /sbin/hdparm -c 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

to use 32-bit I/O over the PCI bus. (The hdparm(8) manpage says that
you may need to use -c 3 for some chipsets.)

Use:

# /sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

to enable DMA. This may depend on support for your motherboard
chipset being compiled into your kernel.

You can test the results of your changes by running hdparm in
performance test mode:

# /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

When you've found the optimal settings, you should consider doing a

# /sbin/hdparm -k 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

to keep these settings across an IDE reset. I've seen the kernel reset
the IDE controller occasionally and if you don't set -k 1, the other
settings will be reset to defaults and you'll lose all your performance
gains.

The -m option can be used to change the number of sectors transferred
on each interrupt. You may get additional gains by tweaking this, but it
didn't do anything for me.

Author: Kenn Humborg (Obtained from TuneLinux.com)

Mandrake 6

[Nichen]

After testing out several other Linux distros, I have to say that I was most pleased with Mandrake in getting a system setup properly (haven't tried out Debian yet, and Mandrake 6 will probably make me hold off on that now). From the information on their website on the new release, I think that Mandrake will continue to reside on my computer. It's really nice to find a distro that caters to people like me that just want to use Linux, not hack into it (although that's probably the fun in using Linux for most). Eh, the Festen release made me stay in Linux much more than Windows, and it will be interesting to see the effect Venus will have on me once I install it. Kudos to the Linux Mandrake team.