MandrakeSoft released Linux Mandrake 9.0 about three weeks ago. How does this version compares to the also recent SuSE and Red Hat releases? MandrakeSoft sent us the Download Edition over for a review and here is what we think about it.
NOTE: MandrakeSoft had access to this article before publication (something that I do not normally do, but this time was at least the… moral thing to do) and they have confirmed or reproduced several of the bugs I am mentioning here.
Installation
Installation is very similar to what it used to be, not much has changed since the last time I tried version 8.0 last year and 9.0-Cooker last summer. It is pretty easy to install Mandrake, but I encountered problems (I used the expert mode, as Mandrake is installed on a PC with 8 more operating systems and I needed flexibility). Except that the actual UI in some of the installation modules is not great (e.g. the terribly un-intuitive partitioning tool, dated layout and UI), I had three main problems.
When the installation started it asked me what mouse I have, and it had automatically picked up the PS/2 model. But it did not pick up the wheel mouse option, because all my mice have a wheel. Clicking in the right option, it would make my mouse jumping like crazy all over the screen making the installation impossible to continue. I don’t see the point of providing such a mouse panel in the installation if Mandrake and Red Hat (yes, Red Hat has the same problem in their Gnome2 admin mouse panel, I tried 3 different mice, all have the same effect) and all the other distros are not able to fix the damned re-initialization code of the mice on the fly. I tried with three of my PS/2 mice I had around: 1 Logitech Cordless mouseman optical, a no-name optical and a normal Keytronic. Same effect.
(UPDATE: Please don’t send me emails that this can be tweaked afterwards. I very well know about how to allow wheel operations on my mice, back in the day I used to do it by directly editing my XF86Config file. This was not the point of my paragraph about the mice. The point is that the driver does something *unexpected* for the user, and from the usability point of view, is just not right.)
The second problem was that the installation wouldn’t tell me that the XFS option does not support booting. While I know that an XFS (root) / partition would require a /boot in ext2/3, most people don’t know this. MandrakeSoft replied that there should have been some warning messages, but I saw none. Even if they were there, the fact that they went completely unnoticed, should say something to their UI designer.
(UPDATE: Please note that I needed to put LILO on hdc4 and not on MBR, as I don’t want my BeOS bootman bootmanger to get overwritten by LILO. Apparently, XFS can boot a Linux only the bootmanager is installed on the MBR, some OSNews readers replied.)
But this is just a small detail, as I find the whole partitioning application terrible GUI-wise. I have talked about it here.
At the end of the installation, the Installer would ask me if I want to download some available patches. I said “yes” and it tried to contact some FTP site to download the updates. The update never took place because the operation timed out about 5 minutes later. Needless to say, I was not impressed.
The rest of the installation went well though, Mandrake successfully found and supported all my hardware (except later I found out that my 2-years old digital camera is not supported). One thing I like in the Mandrake installer is that you can configure your card to support 3D (as long there is DRI support for it).
The First Time Booting
Linux Mandrake 9 features a graphical LILO screen and it had successfully placed as default an SMP kernel for my dual Celeron 533 Mhz. Loading the OS takes a while, because Mandrake is loading by default a number of things (that I don’t necessarily need). You can always remove these startup entries from the Mandrake Control Center.
Something that I find annoying with this distribution is that authenticating is slow. Why the heck it takes a whole 3-4 seconds to authenticate my password in the command line (I don’t use any *DM), when loging in either as eugenia or as root? Mandrake Cooker also did the same. Mandrake 8.0 didn’t (on the same machine) and other distros I have here don’t do so either.
The Desktop
Mandrake uses KDE 3.0.3 as its default Desktop Environment, running on top of XFree86 4.2.1. Mandrake is using pretty much the default themes and colors of KDE 3.0.3, which looks dated and ugly at best. Even the default Gnome2 looks better than the default KDE. MandrakeSoft should realize that their two main competitors have made strides in making their desktops more delightful and nicer to the eye and the usability (while RH and SuSE are not even trying to compete to the desktop as straightful as MandrakeSoft is), while Mandrake is still the same old, same old. I had to change a lot of things to my desktop to make it look something that can moderately please me. The fact that you can change a lot of KDE’s aspects with some downloads is not the answer. Mandrake should have worked on the looks and the UI. I wonder if they do employ a UI designer, and if they do, if their developers actually listen to him/her.
MandrakeSoft replied to me that their customer research showed that businesses favor their default grey-ish UI, while home users customize everything on their own. Personally, I find hard to believe that businesses would not favor a better UI, while the home users won’t have to tweak everything after installation.
GNOME 2.0.2 is also installed and works well, ICEwm, BlackBox, Enlightenment and WindowMaker are also available. Unfortunately, WindowMaker is broken. It can’t find the file that includes its context desktop menu. After fixing a missing symlink in the /etc/ directory fixed WindowMaker too..
A number of other applications are broken on Mandrake 9. I found that a few apps just wouldn’t load (i.e. Everybuddy would segfault). Except these few apps, the rest of the applications do seem to work fine. In fact, I was happy from the overall stability of X and KDE.
The only thing MandrakeSoft has pretty much done in the desktop area is to re-arrange the Kmenu and add some Mandrake-specific options like this arcane “-> What to do?” menu. The idea of the “What to do” menu is good (similar to SuSE’s “work” menu), but the execution is absolutely poor (the option is “drowning” among other KDE menus and at the end of the day it just duplicates a bunch of options that are easier to find via the KMenu rather than the “-> What to do”).
Also, Mandrake has under the root menu an option called “Terminals”, which is a submenu where you can select from… 7 different terminals. Choice is good, but this is hardly a desktop-oriented design decision to have so many different terminals waiting for you to a root submenu.
Another potential problem is that the default Mandrake’s Kicker does not fit on a 800×600 screen, which is what most Internet users still use these days. KDE has the same problem, I asked for this to be fixed months ago, but it has yet to be considered by the KDE Project.
The Mandrake Control Center
First of all, why all the Mandrake utilities are written in GTK+ 1.x when the company ships KDE as the default DE? All their utilities look ugly and out of place on the default KDE environment. This Control Center is what mostly differentiates Mandrake from its competition and it should have received more care. The control center just doesn’t “blend” to the rest of the default Qt-based environment.
The control center includes tools for the booting process, monitor and graphics, TVCard, keyboard, mouse, printer and scanner. Also, Mandrake comes with a feature named “supermount” and you can define mount points for WebDAV, Samba, NFS and other local media (removable or not). I haven’t used most of the networking mount points as I don’t have any such need or facilities here to test them.
The “Network and Internet” center includes Networking setup wizard, proxy configuration and Internet Sharing. But the latter is as buggy and incomprehensible as most of the modules over there. Why the “Internet Sharing” utility never asked me to enter any CDs, but rather it said “installing – please wait” and it kept reading my empty DVD-drive? After killing the buggy module, I had to force umount on the DVD drive to free it from spinning itself to death.
The Security modules seem to work ok, and it is handy to find an easy to use Firewall application there.
MenuDrake seems to work without any easily visible bugs, and it allows you to edit the menus of KDE, Gnome, IceWM and Blackbox. However, updating the menu configuration (that is to delete or add a new item) can take up to 30-40 seconds. On Windows and BeOS this is instantenous. [MandrakeSoft says that it takes them only 4 seconds to do so, but it isn’t the case over here. And I got a fast IDE drive.]
Oh, wait, I take that back. I tried to add my /usr/bin/nano application to the KDE’s editors menu and I checked the “Open in a Terminal” option and nano just doesn’t load, neither any terminals are loading. The graphical apps I added worked fine, but this terminal-based one doesn’t.
I picked my timezone with the Mandrake’s tool, but KDE’s timezone doesn’t pick it up. Great integration. Not.
There is another option on the “System” panels called “Terminal”. I clicked it and it loads a full XTerm window. And then it removes the window manager from that xterm and 2 seconds later, it “embeds” it in the Control Center window. The way this is done, is just that: gross. An ugly hack, UI-wise and integration-wise.
The “Configure Users” module seems to work well.
My first attempt to use the Mandrake control Center ended in failure when the Font application tried to “leach” the fonts off my FAT32 partition. It obviously got confused because I have two Windows partitions, one FAT32 and one WinXP NTFS. Tried another approach (I used its “Advanced” button to specify from where to get the fonts exactly) and at last had my fonts installed on Mandrake. But the worst had yet to come.
Why, oh, why, does it take a full 1 to 2 minutes to load the following modules:
Graphics card detection, monitor, resolution, XServer configuration, RPMdrake (install/remove apps) and Mandrake Update. In fact, now that I am writing this, the Install Software module is also trying to read the empty DVD rom for available packages (never prompted me to put any CDs in the drive). It just feels that these modules are just frozen. They don’t even load a window to tell you that they are at least working on the background. The Software Sources Manager, is also whipping my poor empty DVD drive before it loads its small window after 3 minutes. The Installer for online updates also tried to read my empty DVD.
Two days later, after more than 20 emails back and forth with MandrakeSoft, we were able to find the problem about the CD-reading that resulted in many of the Drake utilities to take a long time to load. In fact, they found that this bug was submitted to their bug database by a number of other users. (Too bad that I was one of them, because I am among those who have to publish my experience online for people to read.)
After we fixed all these issues with the CD-reading, I was able to fully appreciate the Mandrake Control Center. It is not the best control center/panel in the world, but it does what most people will want it for. What I liked mostly is the fact that you can add sources to an app called “Sofrware Manager Sources” from other FTP, HTTP or internal network addresses and be able to download and automatically install additional software.
Other applications
Mandrake comes with quite a number of recent applications, OpenOffice.org (modified to look prettier), KOffice 1.2, a number of games (Frozen Bubble is so addictive – I’ve finished it :), Mozilla (much uglier and much slower because MandrakeSoft has enabled AA by default (not through XFT2 unfortunately)), PostgreSQL, mySQL, PHP, Apache, Gnumeric, Sketch and lots more. The choice is pretty good and it should be satisfying for most users.
If there are two good things to say about Mandrake 9 that would be its speed and stability. The choice of GCC 3.2 helps the overall speed of the system. I found Mandrake 9 to be faster than my Gentoo Linux 1.2 (which was specifically compiled for -march=i686 but with GCC 2.95.x).
Mandrake comes with kernel 2.4.19 and stability has been exceptional for me, for the most part. I generally have problems with X and KDE, but for the 1.5 weeks I am running Mandrake 9, I haven’t seen any major stability problems at all.
Conclusion
Mandrake 9 seems to be a bit out of focus. The OS itself has no clear focus of what it wants to operate as. A Server? Desktop? Workstation? All? No one really knows what the actual market of Mandrake is. The fact that is loading a lot of (useless for me) server stuff by default and also the fact that it tries to pinch itself as a desktop system at the same time, just doesn’t go well together.
Update: MandrakeSoft sent me the following:
“Our approach is very clear: although we know many “power” Linux users use Mandrake as a desktop machine (for replacing Windows), our target is clearly to provide a system that is a great choice to install Linux in enterprises.
For servers and desktops. Nowadays, when you install a server, you like it to be easy to configure graphically, you don’t want to learn all these configuration files. Mandrake is targeted to these people. Also, it’s very good to implement multiple desktop machines (workstations), with excellent networking capabilities. We want to provide the best Linux swiss-knife ever.”
So, Mandrake is trying to compete mostly at Red Hat’s and SuSE’s playground. However, Mandrake is regarded by most people as a desktop distribution for the home user, “my first Linux” kind of thing. The fact that the distribution includes so many games (with automatic support for 3D rendering), edutainment and a large number of multimedia apps, it really does not make it as clear as MandrakeSoft claims to be that they are aiming for the enterprise. To me, it mostly looks like MandrakeSoft wants to sell to the enterprise, but at the same time they seem to want to keep the community (and resulted free marketing) of the home users.
Overall, Mandrake 9.0 is an interesting distribution. But it is not the best out there, neither trouble-free. While Mandrake includes some GUI tools to help you with configuration, as a whole, I was more satisfied by the fresh offer and looks of Red Hat 8 and SuSE 8.1 than those of Mandrake 9.0. This is mostly because of Mandrake’s dated UI, problematic (for me) Control Center, while at times it just feels amateurish (e.g. when the control center’s modules are loading and you momentarily put another window on top of your module’s window, they don’t refresh their windows).
I truly hope that Mandrake 9.1 has all these issues fixed and bring a new, stronger Mandrake to compete with SuSE and Red Hat’s offerings. Mandrake has a strong community and some great developers behind it. I used Mandrake for years, on and off on this very machine, but for me, this hasn’t been the best release ever. In fact, not a lot have changed to Mandrake except the Control Center (which is nothing more but a “placeholder” for the GTK+ modules to “mount” under a common window. Most of these GTK+ modules exist from previous versions of Mandrake).
Times are changing, and Mandrake hasn’t changed much. Having an installer than is better than Slackware’s doesn’t automatically make you the killer distribution anymore. Heck, having a Control Center doesn’t make you the best either these days. It is the overall experience you get when you put all the pieces together. And this is what Mandrake 9.0 lacks today.
Installation: 7/10
Hardware Support: 8/10
Ease of use: 8/10
Features: 7/10
Credibility: 6/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 8/10 (UI responsiveness, latency, throughput)
Overall: 7.3 / 10
XFS / works just fine. I got a server with 2 xfs partitions & no ext2. Boots just fine..Of course I use grub, but didn’t they patch lilo to boot too?
All I know is that I did not create a /boot partition, but I relied on the / root partition to do the booting. I generally like XFS, so I picked XFS.
Next thing I knew is that Mandrake wouldn’t load. I re-installed with the default option after that. Mandrake uses LILO. I have no idea if they patched anything or not.
I was going to try 9.0 after succesful runs with 8.1 and 8.1, however, the 700 MB ISO’s prevented me from doing that. I simply could not burn them…period. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t work. cdrecord, adaptec, nero….no dice.
Oh well, after I tried for two days to get good burns I gave up and got Red Hat 8.0. Love it….except that it doesn’t have any useful multimedia stuff by default…easy enough to fix with a few downloads from freshrpms…but other than that I love it.
I think I’m done with Mandrake…at least untill they provide ISO’s at 650 MB again.
You dont have to burn them to disk to install from them. You can install from ISO files as well. But you have to boot off a floppy. I had the same problem. But wasnt going to waste my time downloading 2 distributions. You could also just open the ISO files and extract the contents and install from the harddrive. Makes it easy when you want to install other software form the distro,, but it does take a little space to store the isntalls.
There is a very subtle bug in mdk. It makes compiling a lot of c++ stuff downright impossible..They just added the bug to their final..wasnt in the betas
.
/lib/cpp link is b0rken..do ln -sf /etc/alternatives/cpp /lib/cpp to fix..
Basicly this makes gcc3.2 useless for compiling kde..it b0rks.
So poor suckers install gcc2.96(the evil one) and for some reason it compiles then..Anyway just my biggest annoyance with this release..a stupid stupid bug on their part…oh btw their network config tools suck, its a major pain to get eth0 to be internal nic or eth1 to be external..they just dont let you do that.
What is cool about mdk 9 is that when you use dhcpcd(or whatever it uses), it checkes whether the cable is plugged in first, and only then tries to get an ip….very useful feature.
Hy,
I’ve dlded the 3 CD’s of Mandrake 9.
I burnt the 2 CD’s with Easy CD Creator.
No problem to burn.
So, try to dlde again the ISO’s.
I had some trouble while installing : 3 rpm’s where bad, for KDE, so after installation, no KDE desktop running correctly.
I’m waiting for the box version…
>/lib/cpp link is b0rken..do ln -sf /etc/alternatives/cpp /lib/cpp to fix..
Wow, Taras!!! THAT WAS THE BUG we found that made my WindowMaker’s menu not to work! After manually creating that link, WindowMaker was up and running again!
Hahah. Nice, now the trivia question is what does windowmaker have in common with the c preprocessor.
Only the menus were broken. Not the whole windowmaker. When right clicking on the desktop, you would only see 5 very default options in the menu (e.g. xterm), not the usual long menu of Wmaker. And everytime Wmaker would load, it would give me an alert window saying that it couldn’t find the menu. After manually adding that link, Wmaker was fine.
Actually mdk boot floppies can find the iso files on hd, so you don’t have to extract it.
lol..I’m not allowed to post twice in 60 seconds. My typing skills might ddos the website
I have successfully booted systems with xfs on / for more than a year now. THere was not even a seperate /boot
So lilo (as well as grub of course) have supported booting from XFS for a great deal of time now.
It did not do it for me.
Does any Linux distribution in the whole world come even close to the ease of use and compatibility of Windows XP? More importantly, is there something any Linux distro does that Windows does *not*?
BeOS, despite all of its shortcomings, did offer more functionality than any other OS. The attribute indexes and live queries made finding stuff a breeze. I think that is the biggest problem in home computing today – sifting through 20 GB of crap just to find the file you want. Couldn’t something like this be achieved with XFS?
And why do distro makers feel the need to pack 5 CDs worth of stuff into their releases? Most of that junk is never going to be used anyway – like three different browsers? Who needs that? And all that crap in the KDE taskbar shouldn’t be there be default, either. Remember the KISS principle and use it.
Every Linux distro I have tried has aimed to be a Win98 clone and each of them has failed miserably. Why replicate what has been done (poorly)? If you Linux guys really want to beat MS, show me something that hasn’t been before. Until then, I am happy using Windows XP.
hmmm, didn’t know that. I think I’ll be sticking with Red Hat for a while though. It’s actually quite nice, and once I get apt & synaptic going….I think it will be hard to beat.
* doesn’t use Mandrake’s default background
* use a mix of Mandrake’s icons and Crystal icons. This is ugly and doesn’t show the real desktop
* show linuxconf which is not installed by default and says that the stupid Linuxconf window is a Mandrake bug. This untrue. It is a Linuxconf bug.
hmmm, didn’t know that. I think I’ll be sticking with Red Hat for a while though. It’s actually quite nice, and once I get apt & synaptic going….I think it will be hard to beat.
lycoris user <–lol @ lycoris part
Well mdk has a weak & somewhat buggy apt-get like thing called urpmi. But i preffer mdk cos it was my first distro that got me hooked
..and after 3 years of defiance in debian/gentoo..i’m back to mdk9 
Mandrake’s penchant for upping the major version number irritates me.
>doesn’t use Mandrake’s default background
Check the THIRD screenshot for the DEFAULT Mandrake at 800×600.
ALL the other shots are my changes, because as I CLEARLY said in the article, I had to waste lots of time to change the default look to something that pleases me.
>use a mix of Mandrake’s icons and Crystal icons
The real one is worse.
>show linuxconf which is not installed by defaul
What DOES that suppose to mean? LinuxConf is included in the CDs!
>and says that the stupid Linuxconf window is a Mandrake bug. This untrue. It is a Linuxconf bug.
From the VERY MOMENT Mandrake includes this application to their OS, this BECOMES Mandrake’s bug.
Do not think as a geek please. Think as a reviewer of A PRODUCT. The whole added value of Mandrake is to make sure that everything works well together. They are packagers and OS developer company. They have to make sure that everything WORKS well. Either that, or they should NOT ship that app.
Read here for more:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1842&offset=135&rows=150#…
And yes, I have already discussed these issues already with a MandrakeSoft’s representative.
It makes a brute force attack take much longer.
I would hesitate before doubting Mandrake’s research. A prettier UI does not equal a better UI. The two are completely independent. Most businesses are still using Windows 9x, NT, or at most Win2K. All of those are drab and grey, and undistracting. I think what’s worst about Mandrake isn’t so much the default look, but the default organization. The KMenu is unnecessarily Kluttered and the item names are far too long. Add to that all the crap on the desktop, and it’s no wonder people think Linux is ugly/unpolished.
>A prettier UI does not equal a better UI
Of course not. I agree with your comment.
Mandrake is no longer good as it used to be, when SuSE and RedHat found the market of friendly user as for desktop and business. Makdrake needs to learn how to change, instead being same as an old dog.
Password delay is _only_ good if you enter an _incorrect_ password. Otherwise it is a bug.
Mandrake upped the major number because it changed from gcc 2.9x to 3.2, so that’s reason enough.
> Makdrake needs to learn how to change, instead being same as an old dog.
Exactly!
>it changed from gcc 2.9x to 3.2, so that’s reason enough
SuSE did so too. They didn’t go from 8.0 to 9.0. Neither Gentoo did.
Red Hat did go from 7.3 to 8.0, but they had many more changes made to their OS.
jetexas, it depends on how you look at it. If you mean buying a PC with XP installed, then obviously Linux is more work because you (usually) have to install it yourself.
You have to check your hardware to make sure it’s compatible, so that is extra work.
But, beyond that, I have found that doing home/office type default installs of SuSE 8.1 and Red Hat 8, for example, leave me with a very well set up desktop with everything working with no problems and real ease of use.
In another direction, going the Lycoris and, yes, even the Lindows route can provide real ease of use.
Many OS News posters are people who like to tweak their systems, push the envelope, try things that ordinary users would never try. But, default installs of the Linux distributions I mentioned are very stable and easy to use.
Although you are seem to be a troll, I will try to take a stab and replying to this.
More importantly, is there something any Linux distro does that Windows does *not*?
I can tell you what Linxu doesn’t do. It doesn’t require that you submit a cryptic cd key, it doesn’t require you to register the machine with the company from where it came. It doesn’t lock you into on company’s vision of standards.
And why do distro makers feel the need to pack 5 CDs worth of stuff into their releases? Most of that junk is never going to be used anyway – like three different browsers? Who needs that? And all that crap in the KDE taskbar shouldn’t be there be default, either.
Once again, they allowing the individual to make the choice instead of some marketing rep. at the corporate office.
Every Linux distro I have tried has aimed to be a Win98 clone and each of them has failed miserably. Why replicate what has been done (poorly)?
It’s not really a clone of Win98. It was an attempt to align things. The prgrommers on the various desktop projects obvisouly thought somethings like the menu were a logical way to approach it. Also, Win98 was broken from the first release. Constant crashes with the BSOD. So the sentence should read, ‘Why replicate something that was done poorly in the first place?’.
Does anyone know where I can find the bluecurve theme? You guys are giving Mandrake more criticism tham what Red Hat recaived. I’m sure we can all just get rid of a bunch useless menu entries on K. Think about it.
mandrake installation does not even start on my computer because it can not identify ATI radeon 9700. Screen goes blank after perssing enter on the first screen.
Though I am not a linux user, but all I care about is GUI, which seems the same on all linux distribution for the past many years.
Navjit
>Does anyone know where I can find the bluecurve theme?
http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/
linux/distributions/mandrake/9.0/rpms/freecurve-artwork-0.47-1tex.i586 .rpm
>You guys are giving Mandrake more criticism tham what Red Hat received.
Yes, because Red Hat worked better. And SuSE received more critisism than Red Hat did, but less than Mandrake 9. Because SuSE worked better overall than Mandrake 9.
At least over here, on these machines.
The overall rating on the three reviews I did, reflect that very clearly.
>I’m sure we can all just get rid of a bunch useless menu entries on K.
If that was the only problem of Mandrake, I would have switched to it, full time.
As a long time Mandrake fan, I am very diappointed in 9.0. As Eugenia said, it feels dated, several thing are broken (Evolution won’t work right about 1/3 of the time — it won’t go to the Inbox and shows -1 emails).
The control center is nice, but the wireless scripts are broken. I have an orinoco card that Mandrake and kept wanting to load the wvlan_cs driver. There are even types of “orinoco” in some of the scripts. When I would finally get my wifi card working ok, I would click “OK” in the Network module of the control center and it would reset all my settings, which would crap out my card.
I like the company, and I like what they’ve done in the past, but after trying both RH 8.0 and SuSE 8.1, they’re now in third place.
>Does any Linux distribution in the whole world come even >close to the ease of use and compatibility of Windows XP? >More importantly, is there something any Linux distro does >that Windows does *not*?
I know you where trolling be heh i could not resist..
Windows XP vs Linux is like a Yugo compared to and Maybach
in this little and not even technical compare i assume
Linux is a distro like Debian, Slackware or RedHat.
Windows XP is not Open or Free, Linux is.
Windows XP is not real STABLE, Linux is.
Windows XP looks ugly, Linux CAN look even more ugly.
Windows XP is a a virus dream, Linux is its enemy.
Windows XP is a crackers dream, Linux is its enemy.
Windows XP is created by Microsoft, Linux is not.
Windows XP sends information to Microsoft, Linux does not
Linux can run in X or in terminal mode, Windows XP cannot.
Linux is fun, Windows XP is not.
Linux has a great mascot, Windows XP has not.
Linux is build-in lots of distros, Windows XP is not.
Linux has the biggest community, Windows XP has not.
Linux runs on mainframes, Windows XP does not.
LInux runs on wristwatches, Windows XP does not.
Linux get lots of simpaty, Windows XP get none.
Linux keeps on running, Windows XP does not.
Windows XP needs to reboot, Linux does not.
Windows XP has no webserver, Linux has.
Windows XP has no wordproccesor, Linux has.
Windows XP has not image editor, Linux has.
Windows XP has not terminal, Linux has.
Windows XP is only for home users, Linux is not.
etc…etc…
Why not try and actually use Linux or FreeBSD before making
such low-level and stupid comment?
Bas
Some of your paradigms are just personal opinions, or even wrong. Some of your wrong ones:
Windows XP is not real STABLE, Linux is.
Windows XP is a crackers dream, Linux is its enemy.
Windows XP is created by Microsoft, Linux is not (so???).
Linux is fun, Windows XP is not.
Linux is build-in lots of distros, Windows XP is not.(so???)
Linux has the biggest community, Windows XP has not.(so??? why do you need a community to use a PRODUCT? I am not in any community for my microwave brand)
Linux get lots of simpaty, Windows XP get none. (this is because people like you are trolling)
Linux keeps on running, Windows XP does not. (I crash Linux more than I crash my XP)
Windows XP has no webserver, Linux has.(oh yes, it does. My XP PRO does)
Windows XP has no wordproccesor, Linux has. (depends what the PACKAGER has put in there)
Windows XP has not image editor, Linux has. (depends what the PACKAGER has put in there)
Windows XP has not terminal, Linux has. (XP does have command line)
Windows XP is only for home users, Linux is not. (this is wrong. XP PRO is a workstation. .NET SErver and Win2k are the server products.)
What’s now Eugenia’s favorite, RedHat 8.0 or SuSE 8.1 (FTP version outstanding)?
And to counter balance your blinded zealotry:
WinXP has very good hardware compatibility. Linux has not.
Administrating and configurign the OS is easier on WinXP.
The UI of XP is way more integrated to the OS and to the different toolkits.
WindowsXP has way more software than Linux has.
WinXP has more games and better 3D compatibility.
WindowsXP supports a better office suite than Linux does.
> What’s now Eugenia’s favorite, RedHat 8.0 or SuSE 8.1?
I am inclining mostly on Red Hat 8. But very minorly. As you can see from the rating on their perspective reviews, Red Hat got overall a 7.9 and SuSE 7.8. The battle is still big among these two. Mandrake is third IMO.
I imagine that Mandrake didn’t use QT because it is not free software. Gtk lisencing just makes it less of a headache.
So you don’t like Mandrake. It’s plain to see but do we have to turn this into a religious war? We have a bigger threat from Redmond to be squabbling amongst ourselves. You may not like Mandrake 9.0 but I do. I think it is their best release yet. I had NO troubles on installation or usage.
-The default KDE looks nice and clean feel to it.
-Menues are not confusing, but laid out in a logical format.
-Mandrake Control Centre is well laid out and the improvements to Software Management make things clearer and more straight forward than previous versions.
-Mandrake actually recognized my GForce card during installation. Although it didn’t install the binary drivers, I did not have to modify the XF86Config-4 file by hand because XFdrake generates it properly.
-The programs I installed work (I installed everything but the server specific packages) and I have had no trouble with them (admittedly I have not tried all of them but the most important, desktop publishing, drawing, DVD viewing, music, photo editing, scanner, printer, finances, etc… have given me no trouble.).
Mandrake 9.0 is as user friendly as you can get. At some point the user has to take response ability for their actions. So for all of you out there who dislike Mandrake, choose a different Disto, there are plenty. Incidentally, I once tried SUSE 7.3 during the MDK 8.1 fiasco and found supermount was not included in the default installation. Does it include it now? Does Red Hat? This is a big deal if you want to appeal to the desktop user because the vast majority do not want to manually mount their CD’s. Mandrake provides a consistent, predictable, and boring feel, which if you are trying to get any real work done is a plus.
There is not need to reinvent itself every year or so (like some distributions) because everything that is needed, is right in those friendly CD’s. Is Mandrake geared for servers? Yes. Is Mandrake geared for the Enterprise? Yes. Is Mandrake geared for the Desktop? Yes. What makes the difference is the packages you put into the system, not the label on the box it came from. From that perspective, Mandrake has it right.
>WinXP has very good hardware compatibility. Linux has not.
Wrong. its hardware support is mostly build on 3th party drivers.
>Administrating and configurign the OS is easier on WinXP.
Really? I fully disagree.
>The UI of XP is way more integrated to the OS and to the >different toolkits.
Luckely that is not the case with Linux
>WindowsXP has way more software than Linux has.
Agree.
>WinXP has more games and better 3D compatibility.
Hollywood disagrees.
>WindowsXP supports a better office suite than Linux does.
I dont think MS Office is etterthat OpenOffice anyway Crossover also runs MS Office.
More points?
Bas
>So you don’t like Mandrake.
I don’t like this particular version, no. It just did not work well for me.
Things have changed in the landscape of Linux. Mandrake 8.0 was great, but it is not April 2001 anymore. Red Hat and SuSE now offer what Mandrake used to offer last year, when Mandrake was “the” distro. In some areas, RH and SuSE are offering even more, in some areas less. The problem here is that Mandrake does not realize that times are changing, and Mandrake Linux should change as well. A change to a more modern OS.
And they should also realize WHO are their competitors: Red Hat or Windows? Judging from their actions and their OS, they only seem interested in keeping the current userbase, not expanding it. They should think out of the box and offer a better experience for Mandrake 9.1.
Well said Wanker…
Eugenia, I think over time Mandrake will get to where we want it to be. All we need to is give it some time.
Please don’t blame Mandrake for bugs in gtk,qt,gnome,kde or ‘what is not perfect’ parts.
Mandrake, Suse, Redhat … are just trying to make a “linux package” alias a distribution.
A linux system is nothing more than packaged “free software”, it’s not a product, even if big companies are trying to fix the problems/bugs in order to make it works better. Don’t blame linux distributors / packager about bugs, it’s mainly the fault of the developper of the apps themself.
But you know what? These developpers are just creating ,for free, code named “free software” and they really don’t care about what you think; they are not creating a product but apps they like to create and improve as they want.
It’s a strange world, no?
Regards,
Guillaume
>Some of your paradigms are just personal opinions, or even >wrong. Some of your wrong ones:
No not wrong ones, you find them wrong that is something different.
>Windows XP is not real STABLE, Linux is.
Windows XP is not stable! period!
>Windows XP is a crackers dream, Linux is its enemy.
read the security boards..
>Windows XP is created by Microsoft, Linux is not (so???).
Lets say Microsoft is not really famous for its good/quality
product but off course you disagree.
>Linux is fun, Windows XP is not.
Linux is more fun than Windows XP as an OS.
>Linux is build-in lots of distros, Windows XP is >not.(so???)
So? that means you have choice…i like choosing
>Linux has the biggest community, Windows XP has not.(so??? >why do you need a community to use a PRODUCT? I am not in >any community for my microwave brand)
Easy but bad point..you will get to know the importance of a community once you are an developer. I forgive you.
>Linux get lots of simpaty, Windows XP get none. (this is >because people like you are trolling)
I am not trolling somebody asked me to give a few points i did..Microsoft is evil period.
>Linux keeps on running, Windows XP does not. (I crash Linux >more than I crash my XP)
Thats why you use Windwos XP because you do not really understand Unix. Believe me Linux is far more stable than Windows!
Windows XP has no webserver, Linux has.(oh yes, it does. My XP PRO does)
Sure keep on dreaming..
Windows XP has no wordproccesor, Linux has. (depends what the PACKAGER has put in there)
So?
Windows XP has not image editor, Linux has. (depends what the PACKAGER has put in there)
So?
Windows XP has not terminal, Linux has. (XP does have command line)
Terminal is not a command line..
Windows XP is only for home users, Linux is not. (this is wrong. XP PRO is a workstation. .NET SErver and Win2k are the server products.)
We where comparing Windwos XP and Linux why talk about
wk2 and crash.NET?
Bas
Bas, we better stop this kind of OT discussion. This is not a Linux Vs Windows news item, it is a review of Mandrake Linux, specifically. You will need to specifically compare Mandrake to XP if you want, not generic stuff please. Not on this story.
>Please don’t blame Mandrake for bugs in gtk,qt,gnome,kde or ‘what is not perfect’ parts.
I am sorry, it does not work that way in the consumer world.
>Mandrake, Suse, Redhat … are just trying to make a “linux package” alias a distribution.
No, these companies are pitching themselves as OS companies. Hence, the critisism.
> I imagine that Mandrake didn’t use QT because it is not
> free software.
The reason why Mandrake’s developers used a Perl binding for GTK+ for their Control Center GUI has been already posted multiple times on other Mandrake threads on this fine news site here. It had nothing to do with any license stuff but rather with the knowledge and personal preferences of the developers as with the existence of a usable perl binding for the choosen GUI toolkit (Qt had none at that time).
Also note that the free version of Qt is licensed under the QPL and GPL and thus meets the “free software” definition from the FSF.
Cheers,
A.
Eugenia,
I agree but its good to compare and look at the weakness of an OS i am a Linux/FreeBSD only user and i am sure i will miss all the neat and nifty features Windows XP and Mac OS offer.
But i am sure its the other way around also..
Anyway Mandrake is aming at places i will rather not go..
Bas
picked from various comments:
> WinXP has very good hardware compatibility. Linux has not.
Wrong. MS doesn’t write most of hardware drivers, it’s the hardware’s manufacturers who write the drivers (unlike on Linux).
> Administrating and configurign the OS is easier on WinXP.
A small fraction of Windows is configurable and administrable. This is much more a drawback than Linux mere texte files configuration is. With Linux you can _really_ administrate your computer, that’s an essential point.
> I crash Linux more than I crash my XP
Linux as a kernel (what it really is) is much more stable than its windows counterpart. If your point is about a whole OS environement, then pick up a well-built distribution like Debian and u gonna notice how Linux can be good and reliable (remember as Linux is open source, it can be made terrible or terrific).
Debian GNU/linux is a terrific Linux distribution, until you haven’t used it, you can’t really judge what this whole Linux thing is. Installation and configuration is maybe mostly done manually, but at least it rocks without a doubt.
I have this little laptop, a PII 223mhz. Its a great (if heavy) little workhorse. I dual boot it into Win2k and a linux distro. I have tried to put Redhat 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 on this laptop and frankly the speed was unuseable.
I have 192 megs of RAM in this machine, but I find redhat hitting the disk a bunch. So when MDK 9 was available I decided to install it to get the very noticeable speed increase. When I got the laptop it had MDK 8.0 on it. I quickly changed it to the Redhat of the day. It was impossible to use.
I almost gave up on the laptop (not being a big fan of MDK anyway) but I installed Win2k on it. The laptop sprang to life.
So anyway, I had to reinstall MDK 9.0 yesterday because it was having trouble with a new orinoco. The install was fine, everything was great. But this morning, KDE segfaults on startup, I get no other choices for windows manangers once I get to KDM, and if I log into default, I get a term and a black screen.
I reinstalled all the X and KDE packages to no avail. I am ready to go back to Redhat, but I need some tips on how to speed that dang thing up so it works on my laptop. As stated, it is impossible to use.
Gentoo of course would be sweet, but I dont have all the time to have the damn thing compile on that machine.
Any tips on Redhat?
“>Linux keeps on running, Windows XP does not. (I crash
Linux >more than I crash my XP)
Thats why you use Windwos XP because you do not really understand Unix. Believe me Linux is far more stable than Windows!”
Well, I suppose if you can’t run Windows XP without crashing it (as many, many people do), then I think it is also fair to assume that you don’t understand Windows either. When I installed Mandrake 9 and tried to run a game and had the whole screen go blank (no amount of CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE did anything to save it), what’s there to understand? It crashed and required resetting, plain and simple. That has NEVER EVER happend to me in Win2k or WinXP. So you can talk all day about how stable Linux is until you’re blue in the face, but it really all comes down to what you do with an OS that depends on how stable it is. For example, I can run a few Windows apps (not even at the same time) using Wine and bring XFree to its knees in a very short amount of time.
You might argue that the Linux KERNEL is more stable, but who the hell (besides programmers) uses just the kernel?
“I am a Linux/FreeBSD only user and i am sure i will miss all the neat and nifty features Windows XP and Mac OS offer.”
Yes, and the fact that you’re a Linux/FreeBSD only user is quite evident, as you obviously have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
(Eugenia, sorry for going OT again, but I couldn’t resist!)
Jay said:
>jetexas, it depends on how you look at it. If you mean >buying a PC with XP installed, then obviously Linux is more >work because you (usually) have to install it yourself.
>You have to check your hardware to make sure it’s >compatible, so that is extra work.
>But, beyond that, I have found that doing home/office type >default installs of SuSE 8.1 and Red Hat 8, for example, >leave me with a very well set up desktop with everything >working with no problems and real ease of use.
I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate here. I bought XP because ME was so bad, so I had to install it from (one) CD. Basically the CD booted up, installed XP and I was good to go in about half an hour. The last Lycoris install I tried made me manually repartition the HD including a swap partition and I also had to select the monitor I was using. All of these things were handled automagically by XP. But, if Linux offers no tangible advantages over XP (which is usually preinstalled), why should I go through all that trouble in the first place?
Please stop being off topic. Any more such XP Vs Linux comments will get you moderated down. No other replies on the matter please. This is not the right story to discuss these issues.
“Debian GNU/linux is a terrific Linux distribution, until you haven’t used it, you can’t really judge what this whole Linux thing is. Installation and configuration is maybe mostly done manually, but at least it rocks without a doubt.”
So essentially what you’re saying is that in order to make Linux stable, I have to grab an outdated distro and install/configure mostly everything manually? Yeah, ok … where do I sign up *pffffffffft*
Sorry Eugenia, didn’t see your last post until after I had finished mine
I’ve played with the newer versions of Both Mandrake and Redhat. I run a dedicated server for web hosting. Its nothing big, just for my clan web sites and personal web sites (I use the web sites to host wedding pictures for clients). I wanted to upgrade for the newer features. I upgraded from RH 7.3. However in the upgrade on both versions, they DO NOT include Apacheconf. I use this app to setup my virtual hosts and configure Apache. While I lost this app, I was hoping the claims of “easier to use and modify” would be more apparent. I couldn’t find Apacheconf, nor did I find any good substitutes for it. In the new version of Mandrake, the control center makes things easier, but it doesn’t go far enough. simply turning on the web for internet or intranet doesn’t cut it. I ended up going back to RH 7.3
When are the linux Distros going to learn, you need to make it easier for the end users!
So essentially what you’re saying is that in order to make Linux stable, I have to grab an outdated distro and install/configure mostly everything manually? Yeah, ok … where do I sign up *pffffffffft*
Well, if i answer you, I’ll be moderated down as my post is gonna be off topic (which is true). There’s also other reasons not to respond… I’m not sure according your comment that you can evaluate them… sorry
In the few times I have read reviews here, I have only ever been disappointed by the reviews. The intuitiveness of this site is worse than any piece of software they have reviewed here. First, I would like a preview button .Yes, different sites do different things different ways. You don’t use a standard blog (nuke clone, slash clone etc) so I have no way of knowing how my post will come out until it’s up. Then, how about threading? There are hundreds of blogs out there that support threading (even ZDNet does). Anyway, I will make do with the limitations of your site for the moment, to see if it gets any better (which it seems you are incapable of doing with an OS ;-)).
1)XFS
YOU chose to do an expert install. This means you should be able to do things like decide whether the features available in XFS are worth the possible complication. There is a warning for XFS, which is that you should not install LILO (doesn’t matter where your /boot is, it’s where LILO gets installed to that matters) on an XFS partition. There is and never will be patch for this (unless you convince SGI to cease support for IRIX disks under linux).
2)Wheel mouse.
Some common PS2 wheel mice have problems, which is why the instructions on the screen at this stage tell you to scroll your mouse wheel. Did you???? When I have such a mouse, scolling the wheel immediately gets it working right.
3)diskdrake
Funny, other *commercial* *proprietary* software uses a very similar interface. I am talking about Partition Magic, and Windows NT Disk Manager, Windows 2000 Disk Management etc. I have never had problems understanding diskdrake (except during a text mode install …). Your comments on it are ridiculous (ok, so the labels on the tabs could maybe be changed, but for anyone who knows what hdX means, it’s more efficient than “First disk on primary IDE channel”, which probably wouldn’t help a non-technical user much either).
4)Booting
You’re the one who installed the software (you did an expert install, remember?). You were given an opportunity to disable it. Did you?
5)Only time I have seen Mandrake take a while to authenticate is when I have set it up with LDAP. Don’t have any ideas here.
6)Default theme
I really don’t see how a theme makes a better UI. In some respects less eye candy is better, I find Mandrake’s theme quite a bit snappier than something like keramik or liquid. And I don’t think corporate users will be limited by what any distro uses. We are standardising our linux desktops on qnix, we have a whole bunch of custom stuff (nfs mounts, custom configs, boot themes, login manager backgrounds) which we deploy via our configuration RPM (which also sets up automatic updates etc), and one of the things we do is standradise the theme.
There is more to desktop functionality than a good default theme.
7)Menu
No, Mandrake hasn’t *just* reorganised the menu, they have made a consistent menu across the board (ie all WMs) containing all possible programs (not a subset), but along the lines of Redhat’s bastardised limited menu, have a menu where people can find the best-of-breed tools. Many people have commented that this is a good feature, and makes Mandrake easier to use …
8)You problems with control center were I assume mostly due to supermount. Supermount worked quite well in RC2 (IIRC), but there was one small bug. That bugfix caused some problems, and currently a lot of people suggest not using supermount. You would have had better success if you had had any CD/DVD in your drive …
9)/lib/cpp issue
It seems there are some small issues with the alternatives system, and some of these bugs were reported too late (post-RC3 IIRC) to get fixed. Most cooker users didn’t notice, and some of them only appear after an upgrade. Without knowing what you installed originally, I can’t guess what went wrong.
10)Focus
Many people seem to think that because Mandrake is a desktop-targeted distro that that is the only target. You may have noticed, but Mandrake is growing very fast as a web server. Mandrake probably has the best samba support around (including ACLs out-the-box on ext2/ext3/XFS partitions). All the software? Well, someone (often not Mandrakesoft employees) took the time to either request it or package it, so it must be of use to someone, probably a paying customer.
11)GTK tools
People seem to miss the following facts:
-Qt is much larger than GTK, do you really want to have to install 50MB extra libraries so you can run a graphical config tool on a server? GTK is smaller, and a lot of it’s libraries are required by other apps, like linuxconf and many others.
-Mandrake writes mostly in perl, and there are good mature bindings for GTK, while the Qt ones are not really stable. Give them good Qt perl bindings, and maybe they will switch.
-There are 11 desktops/WMs available in Mandrake. 1 uses Qt. Quite a few use GTK.
-GTK starts up much faster than Qt, so someone using a non-Qt non-GTK desktop will find GTK stuff more responsive.
12)Lack of review of any of the other features.
I would have expected an “expert” reviewer to notice some of the new features. Like the possibility to join a windows domain during installation (along with other choices for local files, LDAP, Kerberos etc). Or how about the terminal server (if you know it exists).
So, it seems there were really only two bugs of real significance here, supermount, and the alternatives (oh yes, licq also, which the maintainer uses fine, but also very late bug reports showed there were problems).
Maybe you should give Mandrake a few more days, and consider it then ….
IMHO, there is no perfect OS, but Mandrake really creates a good distro. Things that will take you (post-install) many days to set up with another distro will take you almost no time with Mandrake.
>Then, how about threading?
It is my design decision to not support threading. I wanted to add it, and lots of people emailed me asking me to NOT to. So, I will leave it as is.
>Anyway, I will make do with the limitations of your site for the moment
The preview button is something I considered doing. For the next version of the forum, not this one.
>In the few times I have read reviews here, I have only ever been disappointed by the reviews.
You mean the Linux reviews? Maybe because Linux is not ready to compete with OSX and XP. Just maybe.
>There is more to desktop functionality than a good default theme.
Nobody said the opposite.
>Like the possibility to join a windows domain during installation (along with other choices for local files, LDAP, Kerberos etc).
I don’t do any of that crap here. Our main server is a FreeBSD one, and I exchange files between machines via FTP. It works for me.
>No, Mandrake hasn’t *just* reorganised the menu, they have made a consistent menu across the board
The same menu across WMs, yes. Consistent and nice? Hell No.
>You problems with control center were I assume mostly due to supermount.
I don’t care what it was. The whole point is that there IS a problem.
> Diskdrake. Funny, other *commercial* *proprietary* software uses a very similar interface.
Too bad for them too.
>There is a warning for XFS, which is that you should not install LILO
>which is why the instructions on the screen at this stage tell you to scroll your mouse wheel.
So, you are telling me that everytime one has to install this OS, HAS to read the instructions at the bottom of the screen, for each and every step? I am sorry, but this is _stupid_.
The reason I chose Expert because I HAD TO. I wanted MAndrake to install itself to a prearranged partition and to NOT overwrite my bootloader. These TWO options I needed, were not available via an Advanced button during the Standard installation mode. I NEEDED these two features.
> I am sorry, but this is _stupid_.
Installers should be bug-free and intuitive enough. Personally, the BEST installer I have used under Linux so far, is Xandros’ installer, based on Corel’s.
And yes, it should be like that on the Expert Mode as well. Because if “expert users” are the ones who can go around bugs and bad interfaces, does NOT make this very interface any better.
I liked your review. In my opinion Mandrake 9.0 is just beta software.
>>Like the possibility to join a windows domain during installation (along with other choices for local files, LDAP, Kerberos etc).
>I don’t do any of that crap here. Our main server is a FreeBSD one, and I exchange files between machines via FTP. It works for me.
OK, so you’re telling me that integration into a windows enterprise network is crap???
Mandrake is aimed at the corporate desktop (and the server). One of the ways of getting there is by integrating with windows networks.
You can give Mandrake 9.0 to an MCSE, and tell him to join it to his multi-domain windows/Active Directory-based network, and anyone with a domain account will be able to log in after reboot.
Say you don’t want it to be a desktop, it can be a file/print server, authenticating domain users *with no extra setup*. Or, providing a secure web server to people in the company.
OK, so this happens to be one of my favourite features, but I can’t see how you can displace MS on the server or the desktop without making them obsolete by undercutting their own technology.
And I don’t think displacing MS (whether on the desktop or the server) is crap. And RH 8.0 and SuSE 8.1 can’t do it. Mandrake 9.0 can.
IMHO, this one feature is worth more than slightly better fonts and a theme. I see people on the samba mailing list every day who are trying to manually do this with RH or SuSE, and they take days to do what takes a few minutes in the Mandrake install.
One of my buddies and I downloaded Mandrake Linux 9.0 the first day it became available for download! Not bad, once I finished modifying everything to my tastes. Anyhow I’m gonna try out Xandros Linux (www.xandros.net) when it comes out later this month. The screenshots I’ve seen are quite impressive, and Corel had already fixed most of the problems Eugenia Loli-Queru wrote about (Xandros Linux is based on Corel Linux 3.0, in case you folks don’t know…).
>OK, so you’re telling me that integration into a windows enterprise network is crap???
No, I am telling you that *I* DON’T have any use for it, neither I have such facilities to test here. Most people don’t anyway. OSNews is not a company with a big Windows network to test such things. Our only server (serving as a gateway) here is a lowly AMD K6 running FreeBSD.
QT has been free for a year or more now, Mark
She is just so damn picky. I always get the feeling that she would be so critical at the dinner table that you’d never want to make her food again. Besides that, the spelling sucks. PLEASE, use kdict or dictionary.com
“Unoticed” is not a word.
http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=unnoticed&r=2
>She is just so damn picky
When it comes to OSes, yes, I am.
>she would be so critical at the dinner table
Not really.
>Besides that, the spelling sucks
I DON’T care.
I have installed Mandrake 9 and my G550 works only in default what mandrake is selected , which is 1024 by 768, I cannot adjust it to 1280 by 1024, it just go blank, even if I adjust it manually. This have been like this since 8.2 and still haven’t fixed. When it come to desktop its usual default by what Kde’s default. Mandrake looks good only if you install
Textars rpm thems for Kde. It is very slow in start-up and accessing the file system especially if there is a disc in the cdrom drive.
I’m quite surprised how this review turned out. I’m really fond of this site and I keep coming back for the last couple of years, but I never saw Eugenia so unprofessional like this time. Here are just a few inconsistencies:
When you choose expert install, you should forget about writing as a normal user experience. You are warned that choosing expert means you know what you’re doing.
If you want to write as a normal user, you should give Mandrake a fair go and use clean hard drive just like you did with RH and SuSE.
I don’t want to go into “RH tools are better than Mandrake’s” debate because that’s your opinion and I respect that. I don’t want to argue about your problems (I believe they are real),it’s just that the tone of the review was just plain mean.
The thing is I think that for some reason Mandrake was not reviewed the way RH, Xandros or SuSE were. Maybe you expected more or maybe not, but I know you could have done it better.
My take on mandrake 9: This is just another distro created to appeal one group of users. It is never meant to be one distribution for all and you knew that before writing this review. It seems to me that if distribution is not ready to be on the desktop (in your opinion) it’s bad. That’s not true. This is OS related site and every OS should be reviewed accordingly. What would your review of FreeBSD looked like? “That default black (console) look is just ugly”
From my personal experience with Mdk 9.0 so far is that, DAMN is it fast. After mucking around with various flavors of linux for awhile, it’s quite a speed demon. I had Gentoo installed on this same partition compiled with all the right cflags, etc.. and it’s nowhere near as snappy. IMHO, that is what Mandrake brings to the table in this round of releases. Unfortunatly, that’s about it. The included apps mandrake release behave just like they should, it’s just that their additions seem not quite ready for prime time.
Like the damn CD access Eugenia had. Take a look at your /mnt directory, access.. try to install a new rpm, acess… Like a previous poster said it’s because of their ‘supermount’ kernel patch and you can fix it by turning it off, but it’s still amazing this slipped by them.
Also I’ve had random crashes in some tools, notably when trying to change boot loaders. I go to Mandrake control center, boot, then change the boot loader. This will bring me to the screen where you can change what the boot menu points to. Every time I modify one, the darn screen will dissapear and I get stuck with nowhere to go. Did it change anything? Can I boot it? Kindy off a scary position to get stuck in.
The NFS auto search has never found my Redhat NFS export on another computer, and there’s no way in that tool to type in an address of the server and pick some options to add to fstab. It either auto finds it or you do it manually. I hope you know how to do it manually
The default fonts are, exscuse my french, ASS. And I don’t think I know enough french to be able to explain how the default Mozilla fonts look like 😉 I’ve fixed them and I’ve got a purty desktop niw, but anyone straight off the street looking at this distro will be running scared after spending a little time with it.
Just a couple of differences in opinion with the review though. The diskdrake (partition manager) IMO is pretty good. Easy to navigate and use. Point on a partition, or empty partition, and you get a nice little menu list of what to do with it. It lets you resize even. I can use it as well as partition magic, it’s about as good as you can get on linux that I’ve seen so far.
And the what to do menu is laid out pretty well. Whats so bad about— What to do–>Admin, Enjoy music and vid, read documentation, etc.. and easy Redhat’ish lists afterwards. Great for doing some common tasks that you aren’t sure about where to go to do. The menu’s are the least of the faults in Mandrake, they’re setup pretty well.
All in all, my experience has been that’s it’s snappy as hell, but quirky and by default ugly. It’s fast enough though to justify me spending the time to fix it and use it as my primary OS. Apt-Get and synaptic and Tex’s RPMS and knowledge of how to stuff by hand and you’ll be good to go (no much of a ringing endorsement eh?).
Good review Eugenia, but I wish you laid into them a little more about the general bugginess of their apps
>I never saw Eugenia so unprofessional like this time.
My review was the same as always.
> Mandrake was not reviewed the way RH, Xandros or SuSE were.
OH, YES IT WAS. And it screwed up on my machine on bugs that other users have CONFIRMED (MandrakeSoft told me that the control center bug is confirmed by others too).
EVANGELISM is NOT the reviewers problem. It is the fact and a review is nothing more but a written presentation of an EXPERIENCE. I have nothing against any of these companies. I write WHAT I SEE.
This is a negative review of a fine ditribution and I find myself torn between a like of your honesty and and a dislike of your forcing this OS to conform to your obviously nonstandard configuration. Most of the things you are so negative about are personal opinions and shouldn’t enter into a review. The fact that you, personaly, don’t care for Mandrakes choice of theme shouldn’t enter into this review unless you found that you were unable to change it. Your obvious misconfiguration of the default desktop environment has lead to these ugly screenshots posted on this site and should be considered a laughable attempt to skew the readers perseption. I would suggest that you let the readers descide if the default desktop is ugly by showing it to them. Your choice of blasting Mandrakes configuration modules is pretty peculiar as Mandrakes tools all start with Drak* and the tool your using is linuxconfig. Maybe you should do a review of linuxconfig instead of Mandrake as that’s what seems more important to you.
I guess anyone who chooses expert intall mode needs to be an expert, which obviously your not. You like how I keep using the word obviously? I’m doing it because it’s quite obvious that when you intentionaly try to break something you’ve proven it’s quite easy. Your lack of knowledge is astounding. It’s not Mandrakes fault that a professed expert doesn’t know the limitations of XFS and lilo, or that said expert is too selfabsorbed to read the instructions at the bottom of the mouseconfig page.I really think asking any OS to contend with 8 operating systems being intalled on a machine is a little much, maybe it’s time to invest in a test machine that has room room for the OS your installing. How can any OS compete fairly when it has to make concessions for 7 others. Your review is faulty, biased, skewed and plain wrong.
Oh and whats with bashing slackwares installer, it’s my favorite of all of them, fast and efficient.
/dTd
In my opinion Linux is just beta software. But at least the community understands that. Eugenia, I’m glad you don’t feel like part of our community. Until you have the experience of supporting all these OSs discussed here in a corporate environment I think your comments as an end user are sufficient. Thanks for the review. Your opinions have been noted.
That being said I’ve used all the OSs mentioned except some of the BSDs and I’m not a debian expert. I am, however, a Linux expert.
Stability:
Linux is stable. The kernel is not 100% stable, but 2.4 has reached a level VERY close to 2.2. The end user will not notice the difference. Of course the GUI can crash and leave you in a state where you might not be able to get a console on the system without plugging in a serial cable or sshing across the network. However the underlying OS will most likely be fully intact, even if you have some minor hardware failure. Usually it takes a power outage to crash my systems, and I run RedHat, which is rather unstable for Linux, IMO. I watched my / drive cough up failures for weeks before it finally took down my fileserver, I was just lazy and didn’t care, I had a backup of the only file that was important and my raid is still intact.
Administration:
Unix, and to a far lesser extent Windows, can be fully automated across a network. Unix, however, can be automated quickly and efficiently with simple shell scripts. I did a network migration, reconfiguring over 500 various unix boxes. It took me less than a week of preparation (collecting system info, getting new ips and writing the script) and less than 2 hours to complete without affecting any users currently using those systems. All unix systems, including Linux, are multiuser, except maybe Lindows. This means many people may be using the same computer even though they are no where near it phsycially, which is why stability has been such a high priority. Every client is also a server. But one thing you can’t do with windows is setup an automated configuration system to handle all levels of system maintence, monitoring and configuration remotely. Why can’t you do this? Because computers don’t understand GUIs, and I doubt you want to monitor a few thousands systems yourself, let alone reconfigure them through the GUI. That’s my biggest complaint about windows, and its honestly total BS, because with perl you’ve been able to fully automate everything for a few years now.
In short I’m just too fucking lazy to waste my time with Microsoft software anymore. I have better things to do, my time is more valuable than that. At least the time I spend on Linux teaches me a LOT about how things really work, instead of provide me yet another abstraction layer or excuse. There are no more excuses.
>Your lack of knowledge is astounding. It’s not Mandrakes fault that a professed expert doesn’t know the limitations of XFS and lilo
READ THE FREAKING REVIEW. I **know** about the Limitation. STOP WRITING such crap over here please.
I am running Gentoo with XFS on my / and ext3 on /boot for God’s sake. For months now. **I** know about the limitation. I wrote this about the OTHERS.
I am so freaking pissed off now, people are taking things out of context and they don’t really understand.
> Your choice of blasting Mandrakes configuration modules is pretty peculiar as Mandrakes tools all start with Drak* and the tool your using is linuxconfig
I AM USING the Drake tools. I just ran LinuxConf because it WAS THERE. It is not that I use LinuxConf as the default.
JESUS.
The reason you were having problems burning the 700 MB images is that you were probably using 650 MB CD-RW discs instead of 700 MB CD-R discs. When I pulled down RC2, I tried a number of times to burn onto 650 MB CD-RWs and it kept failing. I ended up wasting two 700 MB CD-Rs and they burned fine.
It was kind of a waste of time anyway since I decided to stay with Mandrake 8.2 for a while longer.
>I really think asking any OS to contend with 8 operating systems being intalled on a machine is a little much,
WHAT are you talking about? They are all laid out on different partitions, some on different drives. All Mandrake has to do is just install its / root partition on the partition I will show it to do so. And Mandrake did so FINE in this respect. On the Expert mode that is, because the Standard mode does not allow you to do that.
I don’t understand what the difference would have been if there were ONLY 1 more operating systems there, or 100. As long there is a bootmanager and an available partition, Mandrake and ANY other OS, should just load fine. AND IT DID LOAD FINE.
From all the other OSes I have here, the only OS that has special needs is QNX, which needs to be on a primary partition only. ALL the rest of my OSes are flexible enough to install anywhere. Even WinXP.
I really don’t understand your stupid claim.
>maybe it’s time to invest in a test machine that has room room for the OS your installing.
This machine has ALL the room Mandrake needs. I gave it a 6 GB partition.
>How can any OS compete fairly when it has to make concessions for 7 others.
Write your crap ELSEWHERE.
If an OS can’t be installed when another OS is installed there, then that OS is *b0rked*. Mandrake isn’t.
>In the few times I have read reviews here, I have only ever been disappointed by the reviews.
You mean the Linux reviews? Maybe because Linux is not ready to compete with OSX and XP. Just maybe.
Why the hell should Linux be always compared here as a desktop OS to compete with Windows and Mac ?! There’s not such a comparaison when it’s about QNX, AtheOS or any of those alternative OSes.
Let’s compare Lycoris with XP and OS X if you want (Lycoris is targeted to that), but generalizing it to all Linux distributions is not a good thing. For instance, it’s possible to install Mandrake as a server without any GUI whatsoever that would outclass a server install on XP or OSX. When I think there’s still many people working with DOS and only DOS, tell them it doesn’t compete with XP, they will just answer you DOS does the job they have to achieve. It simply doesn’t have to compete with something else to work well.
>Why the hell should Linux be always compared here as a desktop OS to compete with Windows and Mac ?!
Because THESE are the points of measurement today. They both even have more marketshare than Linux and they do have a better integrated desktop experience than any Linux.
>There’s not such a comparaison when it’s about QNX, AtheOS or any of those alternative OSes
Because UI-wise, they are not as advanced as WinXP and OSX either.
>Let’s compare Lycoris with XP and OS X if you want (Lycoris is targeted to that),
I don’t know in which cave you were hiding in, but if you read the article, you will see that Mandrake also targets the desktop.
jetexas wrote:
“Does any Linux distribution in the whole world come even close to the ease of use and compatibility of Windows XP?”
In a word, No. Serious Linux developers readily acknowledge that is a major objective in making Linux a viable desktop OS alternative.
jetexas wrote:
“More importantly, is there something any Linux distro does that Windows does *not*?”
Most Windows OS versions can’t do alot of things that most of the major distros of Linux can do, such as function as a viable server, etc. However, there are, of course, Windows OS versions that function as server and development platforms.
jetexas wrote:
“And why do distro makers feel the need to pack 5 CDs worth of stuff into their releases? Most of that junk is never going to be used anyway – like three different browsers?”
My SuSE 8 pro comes with more than three browsers. : )
But really, it’s just to make the distro more useful, and it also let’s the user decide what will be installed/used and what will not.
jetexas wrote:
“Who needs that? And all that crap in the KDE taskbar shouldn’t be there be default, either. Remember the KISS principle and use it.”
It’s hard to determine who needs which applications. It is better to have choices and options, and having (for example) multiple browsers from which to choose is a good thing. About the “crap” on the KDE taskbar, to each his own.
jetexas wrote:
“Every Linux distro I have tried has aimed to be a Win98 clone and each of them has failed miserably.”
You probably mean the desktop environments, particularly KDE. The desktop environments are not germane to Linux at all, and may be used on, say, FreeBSD. You’re probably aware of this but quite often the GUI desktops get confused to being the OS itself, which they aren’t in any sense. The Linux operating system itself has no similarity whatsoever with Windows 98.
However, KDE is, on an aesthetic/interface level, certainly playing catch up with the Win98 interface. There is no serious dispute that the major Linux distros, such as Mandrake, SuSE and Redhat, for example, are trying to make Linux a serious and viable alternative to the Windows 32 platform on the desktop. They aren’t there yet.
jetexas wrote:
“Why replicate what has been done (poorly)? If you Linux guys really want to beat MS, show me something that hasn’t been before.”
There is no doubt that Linux on the desktop is playing catch-up for a place on the desktop. As a non GUI server it truly excels (with the right sysadmin); on the desktop, a ton of progress has been made but a lot of work still needs to be done.
jetexas wrote:
“Until then, I am happy using Windows XP.”
A good deal of the “dispute” has very little to do with the operating systems themselves and are concentrated on business practices/political views. I have used Windows XP Pro (NTFS) for just about a year now and it has crashed a grand total of zero times, is very responsive, easily networked, and (of course) has a truck load of serious commercial third party software available. In comparison, we also use BeOS 5 Pro and it, too, has crashed a grand total of zero times. Windows 98 (SE) would infrequently freeze/crash, and it would see heavy use.
Linux running KDE and Gnome, specifically Mandrake 8 and SuSE 8, have locked up quite a few times, and are decidedly less responsive, *as desktop environments running GUIs*, than Windows XP Pro, or, for that matter, Windows 98 (SE), running on the same type of hardware (PIII 800, 256 mb ram).
Linux on the desktop has a way to go before it can be considered a viable desktop platform used outside of geek circles. There is still need for quite a bit of refinement and, yes, business dealings to be worked (i.e., commercial ports of major desktop applications for Linux and whatever GUI desktop is considered the ‘mainstream’ de facto standard).
On the desktop Linux certainly has potential but it does have a bit of work ahead for itself.
To Ranger: yeah, I agree on most of your points.
Reviews are pretty weird here (not to say…)
For instance, it’s possible to install Mandrake as a server without any GUI whatsoever that would outclass a server install on XP or OSX.
XP doesn’t have a server install. OS X Server is a bit different from OS X. Mandrake is typically viewed (whether it actually is or not) as a desktop-level Linux distro, as stated in the conclusion of the review. When people start talking about Linux on the desktop, Mandrake comes up. Should the reviewers look at Mandrake in it’s own isolated little world, or in the isolated Linux world, or actually compare it to other operating systems (even those that haven’t been around as long as Linux, like NT-based systems such as 2k and XP)?
Well, I found out about the wheel mouse thing after installation. I found out that I didn’t use the wheel mouse driver so I used HardDrake and switched to wheel mouse. As you stated, the mouse went crazy. Just killed the X server and started over. It was fine.
Once again, rather than discussing Mandrake, many are attacking Eugenia because they don’t like her review. This has become ridiculous. I saw in her review many positive comments about certain aspects of Mandrake along with the negative. The whole point of a review is to use it as a reference point to discuss the product. In all of these posts, I have seen only a few that give me another glimpse of Mandrake 9 – some Mandrake users agree with Eugenia pretty much and believe Mandrake is not keeping up and some think it’s the best Mandrake distro ever. I haven’t tried it yet, but I can use these comments in determining whether or not I might want to give it a whirl. All other comments are useless. Many do not even read it or read only perhaps the first paragraph. You can tell who reads it or not by the comments. Eugenia has always tried to view products as a user would and I have never seen her have an ax to grind. In fact, I recall she was very unimpressed with SuSE’s presence at LinuxWorld, yet she gave SuSE 8.1 a good review as she found it to an excellent distro. She is not biased. If you don’t agree with her reviews, stick to why and leave off the insults and baloney so we can try and get some good, informed insights and info.
“[Linux] simply doesn’t have to compete with something else [Windows] to work well. ”
Actually, it does! If you were in a parallel universe where Windows didn’t exist and the computing world (especially The Internet) wasn’t so Windows-centric, your statement might hold water. But as it stands, we live in a world where almost EVERYTHING (on the desktop) is Windows and it becomes a problem when you start hitting some websites that are IE-only or hardware that is only supported in Windows. Of course, I am not saying this is a *good* thing (in fact, quite the opposite is true), but it is a fact that Linux has to deal with if it wants to compete with Windows on the desktop.
For example, if I go out and buy a new DVD and this DVD has ‘DVD-ROM’ extras that run on a computer, are these going to work in Linux? If the answer is no, then you might find Joe User getting kind of frustrated that he can’t (or has to jump through hoops to) do with his computer what his next door neighbor can do with Windows.
I have tried Redhat 8.0, Suse 8.0 (not their latest, though), Lycoris and Mandrake. Redhat 7.3 was good. I liked it a lot. Redhat 8.0, I don’t like. I hate the menu’s organization and really hate the default theme. I felt like I was going back to Windows.
SuSE is good, but frankly, I disliked their tools. Lycoris is just too bland for me. It is the closet Linux to Windows on the market.
Mandrake gives me what I want, all the apps I crave, the tools I like and KDE all the time. If I wanted to run a Gnome based distro, I would have stuck to Redhat. I perfer KDE and perfer my KDE to look like KDE, not like some Windows theme.
So I’ll stick with Mandrake for now.
After deciding to go for it, and download the 3 CD ISO of Mandrake, and move away from Windows (I’ve used Debian before, but only a little) I was overwhelmingly unimpressed with it. I still run it, but I think it could do so much better.
I started by booting up with the cd in the drive, which went fine – It found the cd, and voila – install screen. I started off going through the menu’s (Why, oh WHY don’t they include a BACK option?!) in the advanced mode, so that I could handle the partitions, etc myself. Eventually I landed at the packages screen, with fairly little hassle – the main options screens went nicely – so far so good, I’m impressed. Half an hour later, I finally work out roughly what packages I want to install, and hit go.
An hour passes. I return, and it’s crashed – Just locked up, nothing happening, no HDD activity, no mouse, nada. Great – well, maby somethings dodgy? Ram, etc is all fine – I run everything through a tester, and no errors.
2nd time at installing. Half way through selecting packages I click on one of the expanding + signs and I get some archaic error message and it crashes. Lovely… At this point I’m pondering just installing Windows or the like again – this thing is only supposed to be a basic system for mucking around, a PII-400 w/ 128 megs of ram and 3 gigs hdd..
Third time lucky; I’ve cut the package choice screen down to 10 mins now, I know excatly what I want and don’t.. And eventually, it installs.. Takes about an hour, give or take 10 mins.
That was just the install – 3 times to get it in?! I’ve had that with Windows in the past too, but I expected better from the ‘stable’ OS.
Konqurer is ugly, slow and why does the simplest task take 5 seconds or more to load under KDE?! It’s a P-II 450, this thing used to FLY with 95/98. The menu is cluttered, and I found it hard to know what was where, and what did what. I liked the ‘What to do’ section, but it could do with more work.
Packages. Gods.. What to say about packages, except they need some work! And a single place to get them from! I couldn’t get libpng.so.2 installed for some odd reason, only libpng.so.3 seemed to be on the cd’s – This package, and that package, and x/y/x – Erg – I hate packages, and dependencys. Give me apt-get back! It did it all for me, I just told it the thing I wanted and it went and found me a copy.
Overall, Mandrake is stable – I’ve rebooted it maby 3-4 times including changing a network card (It didn’t like my D-link 530 initially, so moved to a 220 which it flew through with) but I was fairly unimpressed with both what was packaged with it, and the speed (or lack thereof) that it ran at.
Mandrake needs a lot of work; and I agree with most every point made in the above review.
I look forward to updating to something nicer in 9.1!
Dakisha
While installing Mandrake 9, I experienced the same problem with choosing the “ps2 wheel mouse” option – the cursor promptly goes nuts and jitterbugs all over the screen, making it impossible to continue the install.
Acting on the tip in the Red Hat 8 manual, I then looked for Microsoft Intellimouse among the wheel mouse options, but didn’t find it. I then tried “Logitech Mouseman Plus”, and that worked perfectly. (My “mouse” is actually a Logitech Trackman Marble, which is kinder to my slight carpal-tunnel symptoms).
I recently tried both Red Hat 8.0 and Linux Mandrake 9.0, and my impressions are different from Eugenia’s. For some reason cdrecord was broken in my RH 8 install, though I had successfully run Mandrake 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, and 9.0 on the same machine with no problems. Updating all the cdrecord tools to the recommended RH 8 ones from sourceforge didn’t fix the problem, either. I also found RH8’s disk partitioning tool clunkier and less intuitive than Mandrake’s. After trying both distros, Mandrake 9 was my definite choice for my desktop – CD burning is a must for me, mostly for data backups.
FYI, I just installed Mandrake 9.0 on my brand-new Micron Transport GX3 laptop (mobile P4 1.6 GHz, 256MB DDR, ATI Radeon 7500 video, Intel Etherexpress NIC, combo DVD/CD-RW drive.) Installation was totally painless, and everything seems to work except for the biometric fingerprint-reader doohickey, which didn’t work under the default WinXP install either.
The laptop came with Windows XP, which I was glad to get rid of; it might be pretty, but it won’t let me upgrade my hardware without being branded a software pirate and having to plead with Bill Gates minions, the default browser has no cookie-management features or tabbed browsing, Win XP doesn’t come with Apache/Perl/PHP (which I use for developing CGI scripts), it doesn’t come with Latex (which I use for typesetting all my homework assignments and exams – I teach math and electronics and Latex does a better job with equations than any wordprocessor I’ve used), and Win XP doesn’t have a command-line any more. Nor does it come with a C compiler for the occasional small C programs I write. And that’s not even mentioning the bad smell left behind by its parent company’s ethics!
Despite Linux’ many failings, for me it just works better than any version of Windows. And so far, Mandrake continues to be the distro I like best.
Judging by the long-running poll over at desktoplinux.com (http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3153607016.html), many other Linux users have come to the same conclusion.
One of my friends works for JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs, the place that designs and builds all those cool planetary probes and satellites). Guess what Linux distro they use at his workplace? Yup, it’s official: rocket scientists use Mandrake Linux!
-Jules Verne
Eugenia, you have to realize several important facts:
– opinions do not belong in product reviews. Just because you don’t like the default colors doesn’t mean they are bad. Many people prefer unobtrusive themes to stuff like Aqua or Keramik (which gets tiring after about 10 or 15 minutes)
– Mandrake is not responsible for fixing bugs in other people’s programs. Your argument doesn’t cut it at all. If Linuxconf has a problem, it’s linuxconf’s problem and not mandrake’s. It is shipped on the CDs as a convenience to you.
– Mandrake follows an open-source development policy, unlike suse. All of the drak* tools are free. They do not have millions of dollars to blow on that stuff, and do not depend on life-support from IBM, unlike suse.
– The distribution is not targeted at idiots. Yes, they tried to make everything simple, but it’s not for people with a double-digit IQ. Don’t review it as such.
– consistent look and feel is not that important, especially if it’s as minor as GTK vs. QT. Many windows programs (media player, winamp, realplayer, 3d modelers, etc) have completely different GUIs, yet people like them.
– If you are going to review the system with substandard hardware, make it clear you are doing so. On my machine, it most certainly doesn’t take 3 to 4 seconds to log in. More like half a second, and it’s a semi-outdated 800 MHz P3.
– Finally, don’t judge a system based on one or two minor bugs. I don’t know what the problem with your DVD-ROM was, but I do know that I have not encountered that on any of my boxes. If you turned off supermount, I am sure your problems would be solved (partitioning tool has a checkbox)
Overall, I found Mandrake 9 a great distro. Just because it doesn’t suit your taste doesn’t mean it’s not good. Please take that into account next time.
“Something that I find annoying with this distribution is that authenticating is slow. Why the heck it takes a whole 3-4 seconds to authenticate my password in the command line (I don’t use any *DM), when loging in either as eugenia or as root? Mandrake Cooker also did the same. Mandrake 8.0 didn’t (on the same machine) and other distros I have here don’t do so either.”
I believe that is a security feature, probably to limit the effectiveness of autologin bots (which use trial-and-error to to guess your password). I can’t remember where it can be configured, but I have a similar setup on my Gentoo box. This is a GOOD thing.
… though the bugs in 9.0 are kind of alarming, I definitely like mandrake for workstations _and_ servers.. All the stuff is compiled 586 and up, and as you state they tend to use the newest/fastest compilers on the newest stable kernels..
I may wait for 9.1 or 9.2 before going off 8.2, but I’m still sticking with MDK..
Boy where to start….
First off I will say that it is refreshing to see a site which takes a negative basis for thier reviewing standards. Many sites are so busy congratulating themselves and the Linux community they fail to point out the weaknesses in the various distros. Honestly I don’t particularly like your writing style, but a different viewpoint is always good. (And yes I know everybody is entitled to thier own opinion and that you care not one whit about mine.)
The only true slight I would give your review is the comment involving mouse configuration. While it has been a long time since I installed Mandrake I experienced the same problem. So what did I do? I read the page for directions. This seems fairly intuitive for me, if something does not seem right look at what is on the screen.
Less important comments. On the Redhat review you chose a resolution much higher than most users would consider on a typical Linux system. Fair enough, graphical designers and movie special effects people are using Linux more and more so it would come up (though I dount they would be using a “typical” nVidia card). This showed a problem with Linux in general which you seemed to, for lack of a better term, grouch about for the remainder of the review. Again, it is your site so you can ponder on whatever you like. But then in your Mandrake review you complain because things don’t fit at 800X600? And 800X600 is used by most people? Now I grant you I hang around with a technical crowd but most people I know run at 1024X768 at a minimum. I have only run across one person in recent times that still uses 800X600 and that is a 52 year old Judge who still uses WordPerfect 5. I would hardly call 800X600 mainstream anymore.
Finally I agree that Linux is not as polished as XP as a desktop. Not by quite a bit. As a desktop I would even argue that XP is as stable as Linux for the average user. I think generally an experienced Linux user can set up his machine to be more stable than an experienced Windows user though. Why do I say that? Because the experienced Linux user has a much greater level of control that a Windows user. As a desktop Linux is quite usable though. It can be very functional, maybe not as fancy, maybe not as easy, but it can be functional. Linux has also made advances in the usability area and… Oh never mind. It would only lead to more heated debate.
As a final note for all but one of my systems I use Slackware as my desktop. The one XP laptop I have is for Windows programming, got to pay the bills you know. Slackware is definitely not the easiest distro out there. But it suits my needs nicely as a person with a Unix background. Is it for everybody? No, but it is good for me, the same can be said of Mandrake, Suse,Redhatm and even Windows.
“Jules Verne” wrote:
“The laptop came with Windows XP, which I was glad to get rid of; it might be pretty, but it won’t let me upgrade my hardware without being branded a software pirate and having to plead with Bill Gates minions”
This is not correct. Windows XP permits upgrades of hardware, without being branding a software pirate or having to plead with Bill Gates’ ‘minions,’ or anyone else for that matter. I have easily and legally upgraded video cards, ram chips, ethernet cards, CD-RW drives, installed additional harddrives, etc.
“Jules Verne” wrote:
“the default browser has no cookie-management features”
This is not correct. The installed, default browser, Internet Explorer 6, has full cookie-management features. With IE6 running, see Tools/Internet Options/Privacy.
“Jules Verne” wrote:
“Win XP doesn’t come with Apache”
Easily solved.
See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/windows.html
“Jules Verne” wrote:
“and Win XP doesn’t have a command-line any more”
See Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt
“Jules Verne” wrote:
“One of my friends works for JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs, the place that designs and builds all those cool planetary probes and satellites). Guess what Linux distro they use at his workplace? Yup, it’s official: rocket scientists use Mandrake Linux!”
The JPL uses a variety of computer systems, from Beowulf supercomputers running Linux (with Redhat being the default distribution installed by the vendor, PSSC Labs), to desktop systems running Windows NT, et. al. The most common Linux distribution used by the JPL is Redhat.
While I agree that the XFS-boot situation is indeed not good, the rest of Mandrake is top notch. My primary desktop is GNOME and I, for one, am glad to see that Mandrake has gotten rid of the crappy-looking QT based admin tools and the crappy psuedo-KDE icons. I’ve had no problems with prolonged load times. All my software works great. This is the best Mandrake yet.
That’s what I like about Eugenia’s reviews. It’s her soapbox and it’s entertaining as well as informative.
Her stance is obvious and I prefer to see that that some “objective” brown-nose bullshit which obscures the real issues.
To the strident knockers:
You don’t have to agree with her. If you don’t agree with her, shine your own light on the problem, not attack Eugenia. If you are not robust enough to handle a little dissent then at least don’t say anything you wouldn’t have the guts to say to her face in public. Be adult enough to be as polite as if you were visiting her home – this isn’t some kiddy D&D game.
I installed 9.0 about two weeks ago, and I have very mixed feelings. I’m running on a Latitude CS400, 400Mhx PII with 356Meg ram.
X seems more stable; under 8.1 X would freeze at least once a day.
But the system as a whole is very slow. Paging down a web site goes very slowly and jerkily, not smoothly as it did in 8.1.
And booting is much slower, a couple minutes to boot to the login and then 2-3 minutes for KDE to come up.
It seems like about twice as long as 8.1.
It reminds me of when I first put Win98 on a Pentium 166 with 32Meg.
On the plus, it did recognize all my hardware and the install was ok.
jetexas, you can’t be serious, is Uncle Bill paying you????Windows is a virus, acting like an operating system.
Also, had trouble with ISO’s, wound up burning them in Toast at 1X speed. That worked, use good media too. Burned a couple for a buddy with Nero at slow speed, and that worked for him. Cheap disks are …….well cheap. Try a slow burn speed and good disks.
Eugenia did a review. Agreeing or not with her doesn’t make her right or wrong. I believe the review is fair as a review of a users experience on installing Mandrake. I had the mouse problem, which I figured out can be solved after installation . But not all newcomers are going to be willing to dig around and solve problems that simply shouldn’t exist.
Linux, and as I see it, Mandrake, have matured a lot recently. I still think MDK is not near perfection and I do think it bearly keeps up the evolution in computers. But what is behind MDK matters more to me. A distro that tries to keep up and keeping it free. I love MDK and no matter what a review says, I will still use it.
Eugenia, keep up the good job. All kinds of critisism are welcome. Without it, how can there be evolution and how can we move forward?
Thank you for your comment Michali.
> But not all newcomers are going to be willing to dig around and solve problems that simply shouldn’t exist.
I very well know about how to allow wheel operations on my mice, I mean, back in the day I used to do it by directly editing my XF86Config file. But that was not the point of my paragraph about the mice.
The point is that the driver does something *unexpected* for the user, and from the usability point of view, is just not right.
My experience was close to Eugenia’s review. The installation was actually OK, I almost choose default everywhere except for hard drive.
But after 2 hours of use, I experienced several bugs, the supermount bug of course, that one alone should justify not calling the software RELEASE.
Also my mouse was stuck at one point after I clicked a OK button to log as “root” on one of the tools. Even a reboot did not bring it back. I had to reboot in one of the special mode and then it came back.
The design of many administrative tools really looks like “done by programmer”. Not intuitive at all. The command line is most of the time the best option.
So many inconsistency overall. For example, I played a mpeg2 from Konqueror. The player has a close button. Click on it, nothing is closed! You have to go to konqueror, click back and then the video ends.
Overall I think MDK 9 would request at least 3 months of hard work certification to be called a product!
–quoted by Igor–
– Mandrake is not responsible for fixing bugs in other people’s programs. Your argument doesn’t cut it at all. If Linuxconf has a problem, it’s linuxconf’s problem and not mandrake’s. It is shipped on the CDs as a convenience to you.
–/quoted by Igor–
Nope… Why the earth, would Mandrake include the bug apps in their product? Mandrake is supposed to choice the stable apps to be part of their product. Also, if they can fix then do it. The users will call/email to the Mandrake’s support ticket area for this problem. Therefore, it’s Mandrake’s fault to include the bug apps. I suggest you to re-read what’s Mandrake’s goal, which they still haven’t meet this goal yet.
Hence the reason I say to any newbie to avoid Mandrake like the plague. Beta quality applications, beta quality kernel modules that are promoted as “stable” and the X server, don’t get me started. It is though there mission is to get the most buggy unstable crap, put it into a distro then promote it as a “user friendly distro”. Redhat 8.0, IMHO comes out on top.
What do the average user have? they have a typical Celeron setup with a 810chipset, integrated “everything but he kitchen sink” or have an integrated ATI Rage Pro 128bit (which is very typical in the Dell optiplex range sold to corporations). Redhat installs perfectly. Maybe the two problems a user may face is if they have either a Winmodem or a Winprinter. Yes, Winprinters do exist, along with WinAudio.