“Mandrake Linux 9.1 is the first significant update to the popular Linux distribution in some time. New features of the distribution include a revised user interface, tighter integration with Windows and improved networking support.” Read the article at LinuxWorld.com.au.
Mandrake Linux 9.1 Download Edition Review at LinuxWorld
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I just installed Mandrake 9.1 and it is really nice, but when I opened DrakFont and had it install Windows fonts it installed them but when I restarted, the default KDE font (the one used on all window titles and such) was an AWFUL font that was very very hard to read. I tried to go and open up DrakFont and change it, but guess what.. it didn’t load up. I click on it, it says “please wait” and then just throws me back to the config area without any error or anything. I wiped it out and reinstalled and did the same thing and once again, it had the same effect.
*sigh*
Maybe i’ll just buy a mac. No one seems to be able to tell me how to fix this.
From the article:
“The distribution suffers from the large number of applications included. Red Hat Linux has made significant usability improvements by including only one or two applications of each function in its distribution. In contrast, it is not uncommon to find three or four functionally identical applications within Mandrake’s menus. New users unfamiliar with Linux applications could benefit from Mandrake trimming some of the duplication from its distribution.”
I agree with this 100%. Sorry, but having 6 different text editors or 4 different pdf viewers or 3 different IRC clients installed by default is *not* the way to go. Mandrake should include them in the distribution, certainly, but I think the default install should pick 1 app from each major category and go with that. The experienced user can then install xterm or joe or kate or whatever they want at the package selection screen during install, or later after installation is complete. Either way, trim those menus please!!!
and I liked what tehy have done to the drake tools, BUT
my sound did not work with the drake kernel. I looked at the source and it had ACPI (which I need) and it was compiled as a module but for some reason it was not working. so I had to compile a ck kernel(I was gonna do that anyway since I wanted the performance enhancments and I needed to par down the kernel and get rid of all those damn modules.
Who doesn’t love the drake?
I hate the drake!
I used to love the drake but I tried to install 9.1 and the installer hung on me. I didn’t try to t/s it much though, didn’t really care to…just re-installed my distro of choice.
I was impressed with the work they did on the installer, it looked great and the mouse config bug was fixed, but alas it hung during package installation.
I have been using Mandrake since version 6.5. Tried them all since then. I like this one the best it seems they are heading toward the right direction. Stability has improved and the fonts are very nice to look at. Looking forward to the next Mandrake hopefully with the next kernel improvements included. Linux is getting easier and easier to use which is a good thing. I remember when started with Mandrake 6.5. Seems so primitive to how it is now. The os for me on my current rig set up everything no problem except that pesky winmodem. Which I dont use anyway since I am on dsl. But other than that Mandrake has matured nicely over the years. Redhat I liked to and tried it but the new all in one kde and gnome desktop I just dont like. Suse I have tried in awhile and Libranet is very good too. In short, kudos to Mandrake 9.1 is very good.
Stability has improved? Every time someone updates a distro people say stability has improved, yet linux is supposed to be the most stable OS around which never goes wrong! Make up your minds, is it stable or not? personally I have not seen any improvement since redhat 6 in stability, it just works. The only improvements I can see are pretty pictures and a few more bits of hardware get support. Applications keep on coming too which is nice. Just waiting for real support for my digital TV card and firewire scanner and it’s sorted :o)
I’ve tried the Debian, YDL, and Mandrake on my iMac. Mandrake 9.1 is my favourite simply because it works the best without much screwing around. If Suse ever gets around to updating their PPC distro I’ll give that a shot.
I thought 9.1 is quite possibly the best looking Linux distro out there (and looking I mean just that: looks). It’s installed on my laptop wand works well but the config tools were a bit of a headache.
SOme did not work, some were buggy and networking was a bit of a pain. I could not configure the IP, Gateway, DNS etc. from the Mandrake Control center. If I used Advanced configuration a “Next” button was missing and I could not finish the config. The auto detection did not work at all.
Also now my ethernet connection drops out every 20 min for no reason. I have to go back to the control center and restart it everytime. Mounting my external zip drive is a pain (works from Konq but not from the desktop shortcut).
Also, I have had the system installed for over a month and the Update System tool has yet to find a single update. It seems odd to me that there has been no update in any of the packages in that long.
Just small annoyances that make it more and more likely that I’ll be using MDK less and less.
when some one talks about the stability of a distro that is just it OF THE DISTRO.
I use debian and it is rock solid. I have used mandrake and it is as shaky as a feather perymid.
it all depends on how much testing and refining and the types of packages that are used.
an x-less Linux setup is rock solid but when you introduce X you run into the instability and it takes skills to put together a stable X system well.
anyone?
i like mandrake… have done since 7.0 … and have used it as my main OS since… (keeping bsds, gentoos, etc for testing)… and i like the drake tools, they work for me… i remember back in the old days when as far as i knew, mandrake had the simple drakxservices tool for selecting which daemons to start on boot… on redhat you had to go trhough that horrible linuxconf (remember that!) …
but sadly – mandrake 9.1, pretty though it is (i use xfce, not gnome/kde), is the first mandrake to crash or freeze on me about once a week… even the early mandrakes didn’t do that… its ok as a desktop… i backup important stuff to a remote box… or to CD… but i’d never use it as an uptime server…
personally, i’d prefer it if they brought out solid releases and let the user have the option to urpmi up to the cutting edge stuff… that way you have a choice… and you can undo it too….
in case anyone asks: it freezes, mouse doesn’t move, num-lock doesn’t respond, cntl-alt-F1234 doesn’t work, cnt-alt-del doesn’t work… only the power button…
t
It really helps to check for special settings for your particular card. I’ve suffered from random lockups on both Mandrake and Redhat for a couple of years whenever I’d run any desktop environment.
It turns out that I have to add Option “ShadowStatus” to the Device Section of the XF86Config file for the “savage” driver – I have a laptop with a SavageIX-MV graphics chipset and have had not a single problem since.
Too bad it took me this long to figure this out – the bugzilla database at Redhat wasn’t much help besides suggesting that I disable acceleration – which makes KDE very annoying to use.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3116
I switched from several years of SuSE to MD 9.1 but then found my self loving Libranet 2.8.
Debian is just better.
yes it is. but how can you justify paying that much money for libranet when Debian is easy to install and configure (there are netinst images that are simplified like the BF netinst image…
oh I suggest that you apply the ck kernel patch to the 2.4.20 kernel and renice your x to 0 with a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-common. you will never have problems with sound again and you can turn arts down to 8ms buffer (oh yeah, get the rmap patch and the O(1) interactive patch and get hwtools and hdparm and set up dma on your drives…then you can watch DVDs on Xine with no problems and perfect sync and almost no frames droped!)
I went with Libranet, because I wasn’t completely satisified with woody, I ran woody, and it was very slow compared to SuSE, MD & of course Gentoo. But I read Libranet was optimized faster and had some niffty little tools. WHich it does. Plus it installed faster and detected all my hardware for 3d enabled Nvidia TI_42000, SB Live, ATI TV Wonder VE…. blah blah blah, Very nice hardware support. Adminmenu is a nice little app that allows you to do everything with the kernel by a click of the button, Flash, RealPlayer, Java, fonts, the list goes on. Not that I don’t like the power of the CLI but, sometimes a gui tool makes it so easy. With all that being said, it’s easier to install it on several stations quicker than woody.
Plus I dom’t mind supporting a Linux Company that I think is worth it.
All and all friend we both agree that Debian is best!
I used Mandrake from 7.0 through 9.1, and I loved it.
Until I started to outgrow it. Then I started wanting to do things that were just plain difficult when they should not have been… like installing Audacity. Spending all my (limited) free time finding dependencies and fighting toi get them installed (some conflicted with currently installed software) just didn’t do it for me. That wasn’t the only thing.
Out of frustration, I gave FreeBSD a try.
cd /usr/ports/audio/audacity && make install clean
*surf the net for a while*
Oh, look, it’s downloaded, verified, unpacked, patched, compiled, installed and cleaned up after in 35 minutes without any troubles.
If you want stability, BSD is where it’s at. (Forgive the grammar.)
I also like that FreeBSD lets me stay as current as I want to while remaining so stable.
Mandrake is great for my mother and girlfriend… but I think I am outgrowing it.
Installation could not be easier in Mandrake from command-line. Use URPMI and it is done. For audacity just type
urmpi audacity
and presto! Dependencies are automatically resolved by urmp. I haven’t tried apt, but urpmi is one of the easiest ways to install something in Mandrake.
In this http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/urpmiweb.php#third site you will be able to find new update sources for URPMI so it can find programs in other sites besides the Mandrake CD’s. Texstar and PLF are great. And finally, even Macromedia Flash has a urpmi source so you are always up to date.
Yeah PLF is a neat concept. Why do I have so much trouble with it then? The packages arent signed, and more often then not, they dont download everything thats needed.
From my vantage point, I think whats going on is PLF files are cutting edge, and having MDK or mandrake cooker files installed conflict with the PLF files but are not noticed by URPMI.
Another annoying thing is, that unlike apt coupled with synaptic, is that you cant look at all you rpms in a sensible fashion, ie Upgradeable, Not Installed, Installed, etc.
Dont get me wrong, I have found mandrake 9.1 as a perfect linux for home use, the wife likes it (in fact she always prefers linux to windows yet has no idea how it works), it looks nice, is fairly responsive and was a breeze to set up. My problem is that I have a high speed internet connection, so I always want more software, and that starts the problems.
On the other hand, Mandrake 9.1 doesnt work on my laptop, but Redhat 9 does. Strange isnt it?
Or any other Linux, go into the BIOS and set PnP OS to no, and check to ensure that your drivers/IDE devices are set up correctly and NOT to cable select. Those are two things that can screw up a Linux installation no matter how compatible the configuration is.
Rexfelis, on audacity, urpmi audacity does the trick.
Make sure you have added all necessary repositories; then urpmi is as powerful as apt-get.
As for plf, you can add that as a repository, including the sig, so you don’t have any problem with it.
Of course, if you use cooker mixed with standard mdk, you’re asking for trouble…
Forgot to add this:
“Another annoying thing is, that unlike apt coupled with synaptic, is that you cant look at all you rpms in a sensible fashion, ie Upgradeable, Not Installed, Installed, etc.”
Yes you can. If you don’t know how, don’t blame Mandrake.
MCC -> system; install software shows all from the repositories you have that you don’t have installed, remove shows what you have installed, and update shows what there is to update, classed whether it is a normal update, bugfix or security.
So it just looks at things from a different angle, instead of having a list of all packages with comments on whether you have them etc it shows you the list of what you can still install, or deinstall etcetc according to your situation.
“Make up your minds, is it stable or not?”
Stability is no binary measure and never was. No matter how stable a thing is, it can be broken. The phrase “made something more stable” makes absolute sense. You don’t say a house is stable or unstable either. No matter how stable your house is, an earthquake of the right magnitude can break it (so is every house unstable?). But you can make your house “more stable” so that it resists earthquakes of a specific magnitude.
You made my point. Control Center has some very useful features, but its just is not a good package tool. I went and checked it out.
And no you cant see what is upgradeable. Sounds like you stick with just mandrake packages from mandrake cd’s.
Compared to apt get + synaptic the whole layout and design is not very intutive nor useful.
Case in point: Why do I have to load a updater, then update the packages (which takes way too long) then close that and open a different app to install said packages?
And there is no place to click ->see al packages, then click -> show upgrades for those packages.
Nope Mandrake doesnt quite work for me for package management, at least in the way to get them in.
On the other hand, it hasnt led me down a path of dependnecy hell very often.
You must understand, I installed approx 200 packages within the first week of setting this up.
An earthquake doesn’t stress house structural stability, it stress house elastic resistance. A house could be totally stable, but it’s material could fail or break after certain amount of stress.