I want to start off by saying that MandrakeMove is an incredible distribution and I am going to focus on some rather particular points in this review. My hope is to make the community aware of some of the outstanding issues with running MandrakeMove and not to discredit the countless hours Mandrake employees spent on making such a polished product. We all want Linux to succeed and that can only be accomplished by continuing to test, report and ask why or why not? The lifecycle of linux is like an organism, it has to keep breathing to stay alive.Reading the Nest
After convincing the security officer at my work to allow me to use a bootable live version of Linux to save me from Windows hell (nevermind that he doesn’t realize the significance of this agreement, but so much the better), I couldn’t wait to update my MandrakeClub subscription and start leeching the USB-key version of MandrakeMove. After patiently waiting for bittorrent to scour the network for a few willing peers, downloading at a mere 5K/s, I had a complete ISO ready to burn. Just because I didn’t want to have to share any of the 128MB of space with my current USB flash drive and was too excited to wait for another one to come via snail mail, I did what any impatient male would do. I cruised over to CompUSA and picked up the cheapest 128MB money can by, a SanDisk Cruzer Mini 128MB USB flash drive. I cleared my schedule and prepared for a swim.
Time for Action
All ready to give it a whirl, I quickly exampled my peripheral devices to determine if I had anything that needed custom configuration since my last install of Mandrake:
- Barebone desktop system w/ 2 CDROM drives, Zip drive
- 128MB SanDisk Cruzer Mini USB Flash Drive
- Handspring Visor
- Epson Perfection 1600 Scanner
- Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
- Prism54 11g WLAN card
- ATI Radeon 8500
I knew the prism54 wlan card was going to be an issue since I had to build a custom kernel module to get it to work. The ATI Radeon card required a special rpm download from www.ati.com, so I figured the optimized driver would not be loaded for that card. I had used flash drives before, so I figured the SanDisk Cruzer would not cause any issues. The rest of the devices have been working since Mandrake 9.0 or earlier. Rats, no internet, that would be a pain. I decided to press on.
I booted up, saw some pretty graphics with MandrakeMove’s product image and awaited the first instructions. It first asked for me to setup a user. Following that screen, it said something about my USB flash drive being accepted and then onto a screen labeled
“Setting up and detecting devices, please be patient…”
After about one minute on this screen, my keyboard began flashing the num- and scroll-lock keys and my mouse was no longer responding. I knew right away what that must have meant, a kernel panic. Great, something was screwed and I didn’t know what it was since my computer was locked up. I rebooted and tried again, only this time I figured out how to get to the console screens showing all the output. There were tons of messages about my USB drive and they weren’t happy messages. Not wanting to throw away $50 I wasn’t giving up yet. I booted back into Mandrake 9.1 and attempted to work with the USB drive on my own…and it was kernel panic after kernel panic. Scouring google I found that this was a common occurrence with the SanDisk Cruzer drives. “Great!” I cursed, “my USB drive is unusable!” But not to fear, my old drive was still a possibility for at least testing purposes, so I backed up the data on that device and went back to the top. This time everything seemed to work out and it detected my drive (after having to pull it out and put it back in during the “search for USB key” screen). Finally, I got to the desktop! At this point, as I had expected, Mandrake was amazing, the applications worked well, they were reasonably fast and it was a ton of fun, but that experience is not the focus of this review. It even installed the proprietary ATI Radeon kernel module, which allowed me to top 2000fps on glxgears. Chromium was working like a charm! Once you get it going, Mandrake hardly ever lets you down!
Learn from Mistakes (the important part)
As the human interface guidelines state, if it isn’t obvious, then it doesn’t work. I can’t refrain from ranting here…I realize that Mandrake sells MandrakeMove as a boxed set with a USB key (or drive, whatever they call it these days). However, Mandrake had to realize that a large majority of their subscribers (as creatures of habit) have, and will continue to, download the MandrakeMove usb-key distribution and immediately run out and buy a USB flash drive of their own. Therefore, there is no reason, no, it should have been imperative that Mandrake tested every USB flash drive on the shelf, starting with the least expensive ones (everyone knows the SanDisk Cruzer is the cheapest widespread USB flash drive on the market). They should have, and still could, made sure that the drive either worked or that it was added to a posted list on the website product sheet stating which drives did not work so as to notify future users about potential incompatibilities with these USB drives. Truth in advertising, this is not M$, it is okay to communicate! Normally, it is not the responsibility of the distribution to ensure that every peripheral device works, but in this case, when one is required to run the distro, it would have been nice if they thought about this situation.
Additionally, I want to note that after returning to Mandrake 9.1, I mounted my USB flash drive (the one that worked) and checked to see what files MandrakeMove had created on the drive. Seeing that it creates a directory with the username I used from the first prompt during the boot process and an additional “dotfile” folder for system data, I decided I wanted to do away with them on my drive (anticipating the purchase of a replacement for the one that bombed on me). But I was denied! It claimed the device was a “read-only” filesystem. Confused, I checked the kernel log file. Sure enough, lots of nasty messages about bad blocks were listed and it finally kicked the mount into “read-only” to protect the drive. Great, my drive was screwed. Having backed up the data, I decided it would be best just to format the drive. Using mkdosfs I was able to rid the drive of any files. But what does MandrakeMove do to the drive? I know from the bootlogs in MandrakeMove that it mounts the drive as vfat, so it wasn’t like it created another filesystem. And even if it was going to screw up the disk, couldn’t it have asked to format it during the MandrakeMove boot process? All I know is that after MandrakeMove is finished with a USB flash drive, I have to format it again to use it with my own files. Something fishy is going on there for sure.
Now for the advanced stuff, boot flags. The very first screen that appears gives you the option to start MandrakeMove or see more options. I decided after a few rounds I would check out the options list. It has some interesting stuff there, including updatemodules, clearkey and patch. I immediately perked up when I saw patch/updatemodules because that meant I might be able to add my wlan module into the kernel to use my internet! Only problem is, there is no documentation that I can find on how to use these flags! I tried to search the forums, mailinglists, nothing. Rats again, this doesn’t look good for my internet. Problem is, I need to add a firmware.agent to hotplug, a hotplug agent and a kernel module to get my wlan running. I am not sure how I am going to be able to add all of that on a readonly filesystem. I then thought to myself, perhaps I could add these files into the MandrakeMove image. Again, I got no where because I don’t see how I can possibly do that not knowing the format of the MandrakeMove files. What seems to be the reoccurring theme here? DOCUMENTATION!!!
Conclusions
Again, I want to credit Mandrake with another excellent product. Only, I don’t want anyone to think that we, as a community, are done. There is still much work to be done. Many people are starting to realize the potential for Linux in any situation, whether it be home, office or on the road. However, the one thing that drops technology to its knees is when that technology cannot adapt. I put in a USB flash drive which lead to a kernel panic error. As great as MandrakeMove is, to a person with a non-working drive, it sucks. The best way to test technology is to abuse it in ways only a child would do. Hit it from all angles until it is so rock solid and only then can we can begin comparing it to the linux kernel itself. More important than newer versions of KDE or better fonts is that it just plain work. Keep that in mind and MandrakeMove, or more generally, Mandrake’s products will be unstoppable.
The following summarizes what Mandrake needs to look into or correct in MandrakeMove:
- USB drive compatibility, perhaps posting a list of working/non-working drives
- Better instructions on what to do if the USB drive is not detected during boot, besides just having a “scan again” button
- Documentation on how to use boot flags to load custom modules, patches
- Documentation on how to customize mandrake move images to add custom modules/files
- Information on what we can expect for new driver support (Knoppix is released almost every two weeks!)
does anyony know what happened to beta 1 for MDK 10??
Yes its OT…
“I couldn’t wait to update my MandrakeClub subscription and start leeching the USB-key version of MandrakeMove.”
As much as I may sympathize with the author’s feelings about Mandrakemove and linux in general, he’s TOTALLY out of line here to expect to download this version for free (which comes with its own USB key when purchased) and then whine when he can’t get it to work with some off the shelf piece of hardware.
Mandrake was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy last I read. I’m not crazy about their distribution myself, but this is no way to support them if you do like them.
does anyony know what happened to beta 1 for MDK 10??
Mandrake’s wiki is one of the best place to find infos about them. Here you are :
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Mandrake10
For the moment, there is no beta, nor alpha, nor pre-release. There is Cooker, the community behind Mandrake as well as its experimental distro (equivalent of debian’s SID distro).
More info here :
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/CookerHowTo
“Again, I got no where because I don’t see how I can possibly do that not knowing the format of the MandrakeMove files. What seems to be the reoccurring theme here? DOCUMENTATION!!!”
Hello, it coems with PDF and HTML documentation for all the stuff you mentioned and if you ordered it online you will get printed documentation too.
Also you do not need to buy a USB key to get the boxed set. You can buy the $20 one without a USB key. That’s what I did, since I already have a 128 MB key.
“Mandrake was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy last I read. I’m not crazy about their distribution myself, but this is no way to support them if you do like them.”
I guess that you haven’t read recently. Things are improving and they should be out of reorganizing their debt and avoiding bankruptcy.
But that doesn’t mean they are in the clear nor profitable yet. Re-organization of debt is a small step in the long way MDK has to go.
Most of usb key are crapy and aren’t compatible with the usb standard for usb drive. That’s why they come with there own driver for windows to circunvent hardware bugs…
The best brand seems to be iomega and PQI.
True, but they are not “teetering on the edge of bankruptcy” either. It takes a while for any company to become profitable. Especially one that gives away their product for free.
The Fujifilm XD ones are proper USB mass storage devices. The XD cards are also very small (postage stamp sized), so they look pretty nice in addition to working well with Linux.
Here’s a pic:
http://search.kelkoo.co.uk/sitesearch/go.jsp?offerId=2062uk1340x115…
They are about $40 for the drive, and 128mb card runs around $60-80, depending on who makes it.
The author should have brought a hardware compatability list with him when he went shopping. For most manufacturers, Linux is not a Tier 1 supported operating system, it just works if you are lucky, unfortunately.
I’m using a KVM switch since space is at a premium for me. It seems that live cd distros have a hard time configuring X in those conditions : both MandrakeMove and Damn Small Linux stay in command line mode, complaining about an unknown monitor; Knoppix does better but runs at a minimum resolution. The mouse and the keyboard work fine.
Is there a way to install mandrake move like how knoppix has a hdinstall command? It works smoothly on my machine but I can’t get 9.2 to work that smoothly so I’m stuck in windows until there is a easier solution.
Your problem is not the distribution. It is the Cruzer flash drive. It has problems with ALL distributions. They did not properly implement the standards for the drive. The Cruzer even chokes somewhat on Windows 2000.
I got one for Christmas, and it repeatedly brought down most of my systems, especially my MDK one since it tried to supermount it. After a week of messing with it, I returned it to the store and picked up a PNY one which implements the standard properly.
I’ve had no problems since then.
Send a letter of complaint to SanDisk about this issue. If you search google, you’ll see TONS of people with the same problem.
I’ve tried it on three computers and all three just keep flashing the screen off and on and never gets to the desktop.
Two have ATI and one has an old S3/
Kernel panic because of the insertion of a USB device?
Can you really induce a kernel panic on a Mandrake Linux box by plugging a USB key into it?
Does this affect all Linux kernels? and if so, it seems to be a pretty bad flaw – surely the assumption should be that idiots can and will plug all manner of things into the USB ports – including things that arent even meant to be plugged there.
It never ceases to amaze me how someone can make a statement like “Windows Hell” and then go on to write a review about what sounded like “Linux Hell” and have the balls to call it a great product…
I sure don’t remember ever having Windows XP crash from a USB drive! And wireless on XP is a no-brainer, and it just got even better with XP SP2!
At the end of the day what is this guy going to be able to accomplish, from a true BUSINESS viewpoint, that he couldn’t have accomplished with his existing Windows box? In fact, as his manager I would have been really pissed at his complete waste of company time and resources! Nothing would be my guess, especially if he can’t even get on the Internet!!!
LOL
The Fujifilm XD ones are proper USB mass storage devices. The XD cards are also very small (postage stamp sized), so they look pretty nice in addition to working well with Linux.
I am curious as to what happens when you pull the memory card out of the drive after you mount it? I have a panasonic drive that uses the SD media. I have used it on my Mac and my windows laptop but have not tried it on linux yet. I will argree this type of media is nice to have.
There is a latch that you have to slide out to remove the card. It slides towards the computer (when the thing is inserted in a usb slot), so you can’t open the memory card slot when the drive is plugged in. Pretty smart, actually.
I have said it before, and I will say it again — “You get what you pay for!” You want to buy the cheap stuff — Have fun later when it doesn’t work the way it should. USB keys/drives are the same as any other peice of computer hardware — pay a bit more, and get something that’s been tested on more than one system.
I agree with you, to a point. More like, “don’t expect it to much beyond what it claims.” Yes, it works in Windows because it was probably tested to work there, but after that, you’re really lucky if it “happens” to work in Linux.
‘I sure don’t remember ever having Windows XP crash from a USB drive! And wireless on XP is a no-brainer, and it just got even better with XP SP2!’
I’m doing a college course at the moment and just about everyone in my class has a USB drive. I’ve seen multiple crashes and errors on the college’s Windows 2000 systems. I’ve never seen a USB drive that works perfectly on Windows 2000 and there are still problems with XP.
Quite often my drive will not be recognised when I insert it, and if I remove and reinsert it too quickly Windows restarts. Worst of all, if I leave the USB drive in the machine when it’s restarting the data becomes corrupted and it has to be reformatted.
I’ve gone back to floppies for transporting small files, the USB drive is only used when I’m dealing with files over 1.4Mb.
Just for the record, since I have received some critism on this article, I want to make a few statements.
First of all, I did not “steal” or “unfairly” obtain this version of MandrakeMove. I upgraded my membership to “silver” so that I could have the promised priviledge of downloading the usb-key version of this distribution. I have already purchased Mandrake 9.2 and was simply testing out MandrakeMove to see what it was all about and introduce the possiblity of using it at work (as a previous reviewer had done at school).
It is not unreasonable to think that other USB keys should work. Again, I don’t even think that Mandrake should necessarily support them, but rather just list those reported by the community as causing problems. Sure, I purchased cheap hardware, but this was not an investment which was going to help me much, so I didn’t want to pour a lot of money into it.
Finally, I wrote this review to detail what MandrakeMove could not do, I realize that what it does do is quite amazing. I am pushing the envelope and I would like to see where Mandrake can take it. I will tell you that non-linux users will be much more critical than I was. I understand this is a first release and for that I applaud Mandrake.
hi, im new to linux in general (using windows/mac os mostly) and heard about mandrakemove. i liked the idea and decided to check it out to see if it would be a good fit for me. i downloaded the free version iso and put it on cdr. i decided to try my “old” toshiba satellite 1800 (think i bought it in 2000~) changed the boot priority and away i went. started up no problems (~screen resol. set to 800×600~) changed the resolution and checked out the platform. i definatley liked what i saw. connecting to internet was no problem (everything seemed to be configured properly). i would love to see this idea undergo further development and after trying out the free version i am now ordering a boxed version, as well as opening myself to “other” linux os’s.
one con for this product: my laptop is a lame celeron800 with 256soDIMM and a 24x? cd drive. i think they reccomend 32x? anyhow, i felt my system was limiting the power of this cool little os (but hinestly it wasnt that bad). all in all i like what i see and i will now seek to support linux where it applies usefully to me.
Does your employer know that you insult Windows user on Web sites?
I guess this shows that not all MS shills go through great lengths to hide their true nature. Kudos for your chutzpah, I hope it was worth it!
Everyone, i am sorry for the post above. I just got annoyed by author calling windows hell when this article was not related to windows at all. I know being a professional you should not get sentimental and react to it but i just reacted. I hope you guys don’t make that topic any further.
The post above only represents my views and doesn’t in any way are associated to Microsoft.
I lost control of myself and did a knee jerk reaction.
It is a personal request to everyone that please don’t talk about my post (TrollKilla (IP: —.microsoft.com)) any further…i sincerely apologize for that.
And a personal request to osnews, if they can get it removed for me.
Thanks
Manav
Sorry, but I don’t take insults coming from Anonymous posters seriously. I’m pretty sure that the MS employee stepped out of line, even if he was on his lunch break. In fact, Manav’s reply (if genuine) seems to corroborate this. So does attbi.com know that you’re sullying their good name with your silly (and misguided) comeback?
I do agree though, that OSNews should just remove the post. I mean, we’re just talking here, there’s no sense in the poor guy being in trouble with his employer for a little flame, however un-PC it might have been.
Peace.
Don’t worry, I have already taken the liberty of reporting it to [email protected] in case anyone tries to delete it. I totally agree with you, so need to attempt to flame me. And no one takes insults seriously from Candians.
” And no one takes insults seriously from Candians.
”
*shakes fist widly at screen
Curse you americans!
🙂
whoops
*wildly
It’s OK. Probably the humorous effect was amplified by my typo, maybe at my expense. Dern candians.
Guys, I am thankful to you for removing that post. Its sad for me that someone reported to abuse at microsoft. I guess he mistaken me, i sent a flame post (by the name trollkill) only for the author of the article because i got annoyed at the word windows hell and did a knee jerk reaction, though i later apologized for it too.
Well anyways tons of thanks to osnews.com for helping me. I owe you guys. You guys are great.
Just as a thought, shouldn’t we all not make fun of an OS (mostly we do of windows) without any reason. I am planning to write a linux kernel vs windows kernel architecture comparison and somehow i strongly feel that NT/2000/XP has a better architecture. Lets see if i could spend enough time studying linux architecture for that and prove my point.
Hi all…
Just wanted to mention that I have a flash card reader that barely works under windows, in spite of being the target platform, and if connected on boot, makes the boot process hang. Works sometimes if you plug it in afterward, but kills the boot.
Always buy quality USB components!
Dear Manav: it depends what you want to compare, really, if you choose to look at the Linux and NT kernels. To a great extent, it depends what result you actually want to return as well. The old Micro/Monolithic kernel debate has been done to death, and while counter to early 90’s wisdom, the Linux kernel bucks the trend for monolithic kernels.
In terms of final results, you need only look at the uptime of Linux systems and the fewer security issues than the NT kernel for the most part to judge it. At the same time, it depends what you want it for.
Personally, I think the Server 2003 kernel looks very good and solid, and that the NT codebase, with that product has finally achieved parity with the Linux kernel in terms of stability and security.
Windows systems still require more resources in general, however, and that is just life. Taking a look at servers, Apache serves more pages, faster and to more users than IIS does under Server 2003. That’s why Microsoft shops have, for the past five years, been splitting their mail, file, printer and web servers into separate boxes. Then adding fallover systems for those (due to stability, which server 2003 will hopefully correct) and the server count gets large. With per server per user licensing, this is the main reason why Windows deployments have cost companies so much money.
Anyway, I’m rambling. The question of whether making a stable product is a good idea based on the fact that it will halve client licenses in many cases is something Microsoft managment are, I guess, still chewing over.
Personally, I think the Server 2003 kernel looks very good and solid, and that the NT codebase, with that product has finally achieved parity with the Linux kernel in terms of stability and security.
Aha, and where have you seen that architecture?
Have you seen the sources (wow, where can i download them
), or is it just one of those nice components-charts you’re talking about? Some time ago there such a chart for longhorn was published,too.. but what can you really learn from them?
It’s funny how you said you were using MandrakeMove to get yourself out of Windows hell. If you ask me from reading your article, the amount of time and energy you spent trying to get Mandrake working sure sounds like you jumped from Windows hell to Linux hell. Was it really worth it?
I’ve tried MandrakeMove as well as Knoppix and I have to say I much prefer Knoppix. It comes with much more useful software and it ran much better on my hardware. Maybe you should give it a whirl.
Only because I was not specific enough in my article and people seem to be hounding on it, let me expand upon my “windows hell” statement.
To me, using windows is hell. No one else is required to think that, it is just my opinion. I have not used any time at work to play with MandrakeMove. I am extremely busy at work and I simply don’t have a spare minute to play with something like this, nor would I. It was all done on my own time. However, if I was able to run a live version of Linux, I could be more productive at work since I am much more comfortable in Linux.
I already have a perfect Linux distribution at home, Linux Mandrake 9.1 with an upgraded Mandrake 9.2 kernel and a wireless card. All of it was super easy to setup. I was simply looking to expand my horizons with a bootable live CD. Windows can’t even run in this fashion, so it is no use in even talking about Windows when comparing it to my article. That comparison would be better off left to a desktop distribution review.
Unfortunately, it looks like MandrakeMove might be a little bit too “iffy” to try at work and not waste time right now. Knoppix might work better, but then again, it might have issues as well.
I did eventually buy a different USB drive, it was not a big deal. I even ended up getting a better deal for the price. (Lexar jumpdrive pro 2.0, works like a charm). I am trying to play devils advocate, reflected what a person might say if they tried MandrakeMove as a “non-geek” distro like Mandrake claims. Reviews such as this help Mandrake create better products. I am not bitching about Linux in general, I already love Linux and again, I have a Linux that works for me, much better than windows in my opinion (though you are free to disagree and not bash me).
Side note: I find that many of the responses on this site are quite hostile. It is unfortunate I think because I never said that you couldn’t disagree with me. People may be inclined to read the comments more often if you just take a breather and put down an appropriate response. Think of it as a courtroom, where if you blast out inflamatory statements you get “overruled.”
Knoppix, morphix, bbc, slax, all work on my 3 pcs.. Mandrake move sez I need memory… Oh well…
> I put in a USB flash drive which lead to a kernel panic error.
[…]
> Hit it from all angles until it is so rock solid and only then
> can we can begin comparing it to the linux kernel itself.
It’s funny to underline that this is fully plain nonsense.
Journalist complains about a kernel panic (that’s a kernel error) and then says that the product must be tested and fixed to be more solid, just like the kernel is.
Using a simpletech 256 usb 2.0 flashdrive ($49 from Sam’s club) and a FujiFilm 512meg usb flashdrive got it for $129
Both work flawlessly. Wow i love this MandrakeMove. Firebird is so easy to add instead of Konqueror. Only thing left is more documentation to allow us to remove and replace more complex apps that need symlinks created and are directory location specific. Thanks for a wonderful review
enjoyed it and keep up the good work.
As an Aussie I’ll just say “She’ll be right, Mate” to all comments about being upside down etc. before I start (mainly because I’m a day ahead of youall anyway).
I’ve been using Mandrake Move since a couple of days after it became available, and I think it’s way ahead of any other OS on the market for the ultimate portable desktop (the concept makes Windows look old-fashioned, doesn’t it?) there’s a couple of extra programs I’d like but I can always boot in Mepis or Knoppix for them if I really need to.
1. Totally Portable email
My mail server is running IMP using IMAP so no matter where I am I can access all my mail folders etc. via webmail, and if I’m on the home/office network KMail is setup for IMAP and works fine.
2. Portable documents
I setup a directory called shared in my Mankrake 9.2 home directory and a script to copy updated docs back and forth to a shared directory on the USB key.
More Memory
If your hard drive has a Linux swap partition Mandrake Move will use it and give you more headroom.
Folding
I have a Folding directory on the USB key and the Move folds quietly in the background whlie I work.
USB keys
I’ve found that every USB key that says it works with Linux works fine – and if the docs for the key don’t say that it works with Linux – it doesn’t. Why should Mandrake need to test all USB keys when the manufacturers tell us what works?
com’on, where the heck do you live?
seriously, Sandisk has been around for a long time, and has shown the world that it is very much willing to give users troubles by not following the standards. I am staying away from it, and fortunately for me, the price isn’t competitive either.
mdk 10 beta 1 is coming very soon, is the impression I’m getting ATM. it was mostly waiting on an official mdk kernel 2.6.1, which we now have. so i’d expect it sometime this week.