I have completely skipped Mandrake Linux 9.2 because previous versions of Mandrake Linux were not exactly that “glamorous”. However, I wanted to try out the new Linux kernel 2.6.x on my new Linare PC and so I decided to give Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition a spin. Here are some quick thoughts on it on how MandrakeSoft has earned back my trust with this release. Update: MadPenguin reviews it too. UPDATE 2: More bugs, more bugs. I have changed the rating of the software because as much as I keep using it, I find more and more and more bugs all over the place. MandrakeSoft should REALLY sit down and think hard about their QA department (I have already emailed them about it).The goodies
Installation went through fine (except that it asked me for a non-existent 4th CD (possibly part of the non-community version)). Mandrake booted in graphical mode all the way (by default) and a KDE 3.2 desktop was unveiled. I liked how MandrakeSoft has organized the menus this time around with the help of KDE 3.2: few sub-categories and only the needed software installed (that’s for the default installation). The only problem with the menus was that for the system tools sometimes you had to go hunt deep into the tree (e.g. the gnome pref panels).
My biggest welcome surprise was the fact that Mandrake now installs by default a video editor, KDEnLive! At last, a distribution that is sensitive enough to the sign of the times and includes a solution –even if that solution is still very alpha. It shows sensitivity to the multimedia issue and I liked that. There is also the option to install Kino, the gnome video editor.
Other software options include OOo, Galeon, Epiphany, Mozilla, Kontact, Evolution, you know, the usual. Mdk 10 also comes with kernel 2.6.3 which seems to work fine on this Linare PC. Only my $20 USB webcam I bought at Frys 3 weeks ago is not recognized (2.4.x doesn’t recognize it either).
Mdk10 also comes with Xine, Mplayer, Xmovie, Totem but without Rhythmbox, Mono or Muine. There are quite a few CD burners included, including the eRoaster which I never heard before (still pre-release).
The overall speed of Mandrake 10 on this 1.3 GHz AMD Duron seems comparable to my Slackware 9.1-Current on my AthlonXP 1.4 GHz (1600+), booting is a bit slow because of all the services, but usage speed seems comparable (Slackware still uses kernel 2.4.x).
For those who read my yesterday’s review of the Linare PC would remember the adventures I had with both Linare Linux and Xandros for the SiS 740 driver. Mandrake’s Xfree 4.3 had absolutely no problem. It found the card, found the right monitor, and it used the right resolution/depth and refresh rate out of the box without me having to tell it anything: 1280x1024x24bpp @ 85 Hz.
The bugs
Mandrake Linux 10 is not without its flaws though. Here is a quick list:
1. KDE’s Kontact will reproducibly crash when clicking on its “notes” button.
2. For the love of me, I can’t change the theme on Gnome. I had to yank completely the ~/.gtkrc and ~/.gtkrc-2.0 in order to get the theme I wanted! When the user says “I want theme X”, the theme manager should do so.
3. During installation and later in the drak time/date tools, I told it that I am in the “Los Angeles” area and also instructed it to use a time server. Mdk would just not listen. It was stuck on the default “New York” timezone and it wouldn’t use the time server. I had to change the time by hand…
4. No matter how much work MandrakeSoft puts into their drak tools, most of them are still butt ugly (e.g. “Manage connections”), they don’t follow usability rules and they don’t refresh their windows enough, as you can see in the shot. Others will resize the buttons as you resize their window. Ugly!
5. The “Install” drak tool is buggy. I spent 15 minutes going throw the whole list and check the software I wanted for additional installation, only to get the installation bail out after a while saying that hylafax is conflicting with some other lib, and upon retry, it would then bail out telling me that a whole bunch of RPMs were not “signed” correctly, and after that point the “URPMI was locked”, and so I had to restart my installation effort from the very beginning. At the end –by doing installation for only few packages at the time– I was able to get what I wanted, but that was not a great experience. Plus when installing the RPMs, the installation window wouldn’t refresh, giving the impression that it was crashed (it’s not). I am shouting for this very thing on Mandrake Linux tools for 2 years now. Anyone listens?
6. Check the screenshot in this article, after you close the Bittorrent-gui “Open file” dialog you get that thing with no scrollbars (and I have pointed the exact same thing with LinuxConf on my review of Mandrake 9.0, 1.5 years ago).
7. The Drak-fax tells me that in order to configure the Fax server I have to give my root password after I hit “ok”, but by doing so it never asks me for any password and it doesn’t give me the fax server dialog!
(Update: Bugs, more bugs…)
Update: Even more bugs:
a. After rebooting Mdk, it would fail to load my eth0. People said that I had to go and disable “networking hotplugging”, well fix it then! There is no reason why a network card was working on the first boot and not able to
work after a reboot and the user would have to go disable stuff manually!
b. I wanted to change the “/usr/games/frozen-bubble” command in the menu drake to “artsdsp /usr/games/frozen-bubble” to go around another bug which was crashing the app when its Sound is on, and guess what. MenuDrake brought back to life (without anyone requesting it) the defuncted “What To Do ->” submenu out of nowhere.
The Mandrake-specific tools have seen many updates again and new tools were added. However some they now are more confusing than before. There are so many tools spread across different options that they don’t feel elegant at all. For example, we got different pref panels for “X server”, for “monitor” and for the “gfx driver”. Why the bloat when you can have all three options on the same panel nicely layed out? And why a “Manage Connections” and a “New Connection” and a “Remove a Connection”? All these options are relatives, but it feels that they spread themselves thin all over the place just to fill up the “Network & Internet” sub-category. MandrakeSoft should get a clue from Mac OS X’s preference panels on this one. MandrakeSoft should put together panels that make sense to be together and not fill out screens after screens with panels that for example only have two radio-buttons and nothing else and they could be part of another related panel.
Additionally, configuring CUPS seems to be indeed a nightmare. All these confusing options on the printing submenu about Lexmark, a printer that I don’t have… Sending a fax is not as straightforward as it is on Mac OS X either.
Also, urpmi is awkward. Its setup is not elegant, I would much prefer preconfigured servers based on my location and a nice gui tool for installing new apps.
I truly hope that MandrakeSoft will fix the remaining bugs for the commercial version in 1-2 months, ’cause I will be watching…
Conclusion
Despite the problems above, I must say that I have re-affirmed my trust to Mandrake Linux. All previous Mandrakes were filled with dissapointment for me, but this time I believe MandrakeSoft has created something that is much-much better than in the past. If MandrakeSoft pulls it off and fixes the problems above, they got a winner. In fact, I believe that this is the highest score I ever gave to any Linux distro so far.
For the next PC I would be buying for my little brother (not so little at 25 years old, but he still is the baby brother for me), it would be with Mandrake Linux in it. Slackware is still my favorite (overall score 7.83/10 in my Slackware 9.1 review) because of its simplicity under the hood, however Mandrake Linux 10 has all the tools/software a newbie needs to start off with Linux. Just fix the obvious bugs please!
Installation: 9.5/10
Hardware Support: 9/10
Ease of use: 8/10
Features: 8/10
Credibility: 5/10 (stability, bugs, security) (it was 7 before this change)
Speed: 8/10 (UI responsiveness, latency, throughput)
Overall: 7.91/10 (it was 8.25 before this change)
I had no deep problems with mandrake linux previously. I had 2 machines with intel cards and Mandrake was first one to detect my sound card correctly! only after that red hat and other like suse(it never detcted it correctly though).
My experiences with mankrake has been very good so far. It is my most fav distro with Redhat/Fedora coming next and suse coming third(for me suse has always been problematic even now on my toshiba laptop i have hard time ) .
Mandrake looks and feels good from the start. Hope this new version bails mandrake out of it’s crisis
Currently my Linux machine is reinstalling Suse 9.0. That about sums up my experience with Mandrake 10. I didn’t notice any speed improvements, and the system crashed several times in an hour worth of use. It felt unresponsive and sluggish. On the other hand, Suse runs perfectly on the system. Oh well… I guess my next Linux download will be Suse 9.1 when it comes out!
Suse is the one to watch for. the rest of them please keep trying. my 2 cents.
I think that is a problem with bittorrent.
I tried installing Mandrake 10 yesterday and it was a long, frustrating evening. It crashes when I try to set the regional settings to norwegian at the end of the installation (I get a grey dialog box with no buttons on it and then I’m stuck), it crashes when it tries to start KDE (some unreadable error pops-up)…for me this version seems rushed. Too bad because I enjoyed Mdk 9.1 a lot (but 9.2 was already going down the hill, I didn’t even try installing it since I have a LG CD-Rom and I didn’t want taking chances)
For me it’s also back to Suse 9, and hope they release their new version soon!
Rodrigo
I found a nasty bug from somewhere RC1 and MDK10CE, where if you press the Import button and in the next dialog you press “Install Fonts” without adding anything, you will get back to the Fonts Tool pane, but most of its controls will be disabled! I reported this bug trought the Help->Report Bug tool.
This action could ocurr so easily that it amazes me that their QA Team did not catch it (they have a QA team, right?)
It will be interesting to see whether the new development & release process actually translates into fixing bugs on the ground. I reckon we have an even 50/50 chance of the bugs actually being fixed.
>I think that is a problem with bittorrent.
Of course it is. But the point of any major distribution is to also clean up any such obvious bugs before they include them in their distro and jeopardize their quality factor.
Shouldn’t the author of bittorrent fox this problem?
and fix it too
Not necessarily. Whoever has business or personal interest could fix the problem, it is open source. And MandrakeSoft does have the business interest in this case. The fact that Mdk/SuSE/RH/Debian are “distributors” doesn’t mean that they are not also “OS people”. And that means that whatever bugs they find, they should either be fixed or not include them in their CDs.
Pure “distribution” (as in “this should be fixed upstream”) is Slackware or Ark. Most of the other “big” distros are also into bug fixing in order to offer good products.
The only things I like about Mandrake is that it is i586, and the theme Galaxy, and now Galaxy2.
It would not boot CD 1. However it booted CD 2 which told me to place CD 1 in and than it worked from CD 1
I won’t get in too many details, it’s not worth it, I’ll get into details once I have the OFFICIAL edition.
Rodrigo, did you check the integrity of your media?
it crases atleast 3/8 times when it starts X with my NVIDIA card. It does not allow me to set up more than one profile for my wireless card?(Centrino) and so I have to manually edit files in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0 for ESSID. Suse 9.1 should be better than this. But definately my exp with Mandrake says its more stable for me than SUSE
With some concerrn I upgraded my heavily customised mandrake 9.1 machine that runs mail, web, smb and ldap servers plus a heap of dektop tools. To my relief the upgrade went with out a hitch it even managed to keep the layout of my desktop up yet upgrade all the icons and decorations around it. Very cool. BTW I have installed it on 3 machines and 1 of those required me to boot off the second disk while the others where OK?
If you are having trouble post a bug report so that the Offical version can be rock stable and problem free.
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/
8/10 for ease of use? That’s one more point to reach Jaguar’s 9/10. Personally, I would love to see Mandrake to choose a desktop. Perhaps KDE because if Red Hat included KDE in the first place, Mandrake may never have been concieved… Then start integrating Mandrake tools by hook and crook into KDE. That would boost ease of use a wee bit…
I have seen that a lot of people have had problems to boot
from the CD. I worked fine for me.
Before I created the CD’s I verified with md5sum.
K3b was used when I created the CD’s.
I installed Mandrake 10 on my desktop at home (PIII 700 MHz).
Very stable and much faster than Mandrake 9.2.
I just enabled Sound on “Frozen Bubble” and now I get it crashed each and every time.
I guess you get what you pay for.
Two more:
1. The game “Mures” crashes my X.
2. I asked from inside Gnome for a “shutdown” and it got me to the login screen again instead of shutting down. In the login screen, there is NO root user showing up in the mdk-DM user list and also there is no “shutdown” option to be found. How do I turn off my machine?
Is it not on the menu at the bottom of the login screen?
I have an Athlon 1.5ghz on a Asus A7V 333 with onboard audio and the only disto’s that detects my sound card right out of the box is Mandrake and PCLinuxOS.
With that said, I have had almost no problems with my installation of MDK 10. It’s way faster than 9.2, more stable, and looks a whole hellova lot better.
I just wish Texstar was still packaging for Mandrake’s distro. He built quality rpm’s, but has sinced turned his interest to his own distro, PCLinuxOS.
>Is it not on the menu at the bottom of the login screen?
No. MandrakeSoft uses its own DM, called MdkDM I think. It is not GDM or KDM.
Oh well u could always goto a console and type “sync; poweroff”
)
But seriously agreed this sounds rather bad, especially considering this is a major release. Hope they fix this soon.
There’s something wrong with this review
> Installation went through fine
> 9.5/10
OK, let’s see:
> except that it asked me for a non-existent 4th CD […]
> During installation and later in the drak time/date tools […]
> The “Install” drak tool is buggy […] At the end –by doing installation for only few packages at the time– I was able to get what I wanted, but that was not a great experience.
Hey, as for me, it’s nightmare and exactly the reason I abandoned Mandrake somewhere around verision 8.2. As I can see, nothing has changed. But 9.5/10???
The installation procedure is not bad. The only real bug there is the time/date thing.
The 4th CD is a design decision from MdkSoft, because the paying members have access to 5 CDs instead of 3. The third thing you quote is the “instal new software” utility, NOT the installation of the OS.
So, yeah, 9.5/10 alright.
I’ve tested mdk10 since beta1 and problems revolved around USB devices and sound.
Sound works now and USB mostly. USB problems stem from how “young” 2.6 kernel still is. 2.6.4 is just out, with a lot of USB fixes. That should remove the last problem for me : my All in one doesn’t scan.
I asked from inside Gnome for a “shutdown” and it got me to the login screen again instead of shutting down. In the login screen, there is NO root user showing up in the mdk-DM user list and also there is no “shutdown” option to be found. How do I turn off my machine?
Root user is apperantly setup as a hidden user. You should have a config option for MDK-DM (which is based upon KDM, I think), where you can choose to NOT have root hidden.
They way you worded it above makes it sound like a bug.
My reason for not keeping 10.0 an my laptop (acer tm662) was that every time X started the screen looked like pay-tv without a decoder – until you switched to terminal and back, then everything worked (except knotes, which crashed, but only when called from within kontact…). In RC1 everything had worked fine. Except USB. Erm, except the mouse, which did fine again.
Luckily I had kept my 9.2 partition. Right now I’m giving Debian another chance, this week I got X and kde 3.2.1 running for the first time
I’ve read in the press realease that NTFS support has been completely rewriten.
Has anybody tested it? Is it really safe to use NTFS writing now on Mandrake 10.0?
You claimed slack to be the best distro in town but rated it lower than mdk.
I understand what you meant with “under the hood”, but shouldn’t slack be rated higher than mdk since it has less bugs ?
Frankly, I’ve got to the point where I’ll only install distros which include drivers for my ADSL modem (a common USB type). Linux distros who go on about not supporting or issuing non-free software aren’t getting the important point that an incomplete product is an incomplete product regardless of their precious principles.
People just want their stuff to work.
Bugs aren’t everything..Slackware is not user friendly to a new user.
I really like mandrake, but I always get a bunch of core dumps usually 3 or 4 every few days(which is one of the reasons I switched to slack and am now core dump-free). Is this release more likely to cut down on those or not? If so I may have to switch back.
I tried it at home last night, and I can’t for the life of me get my network card working properly (and therefore have no internet access). I tried it with two different cards and still no joy (and yes, I did check the MD5)
The community edition as Mandrake had said in the past will recieve updates and bugs fixes as they come up. This version is a stable version of what is in Cooker and it will recieve any updates and bugs fixes that come out of Cooker. The “Final Version” will come out in about two months and will incorperate most what is in the community edition at the time.
Hey,
I hope that you guys do submit bug reports because it doesn’t halp mandrake if you guys just complain on msg boards.
–quitedown
I may attempt the upgrade to CE. I really haven’t had many issues with RC1 though. Totem and XMMS don’t want to play without crashing and I can’t seem to boot into failsafe mode. Other than that, I’m really impressed so far. Hopefully the upgrade process won’t wreck my install. I’ll be sure to post any negative experiences.
10CE has worked pretty good for my on my desktop. I did notice the knotes bug when starting from Kontact. 10CE is seriously broken on my Sony Vaio Laptop. USB does not work. I have to use the 2.4 kernel if I want to use my mouse or printer. The Mandrake tools definitely need to be reworked. They are not user friendly. I agree that many of the tools should be combined. My biggest pet peeve is that they split the rpmdrake tools into separate applications. It is a pain to have to start different apps if I want to install, remove, or manage media. They should all be together in one app!
It would not boot CD 1. However it booted CD 2 which told me to place CD 1 in and than it worked from CD 1
I won’t get in too many details, it’s not worth it, I’ll get into details once I have the OFFICIAL edition.
That’s because you burned the CD 1 in a wring way !
(Since it works with CD 2 ! )
Not a Mandrake 10 problem !!!
If I were you, I would have gotten a good PPPoE ADSL modem. Personally, it seems faster. A big plus point is those coming with network hubs – brain-dead easy Internet sharing configuration, even on Linux. But regardless, yeah, they should include drivers for at least the more common USB modems – after all, there are drivers out there (though not really sure of their availability for 2.6.x)
It crashes when I try to set the regional settings to norwegian at the end of the installation (I get a grey dialog box with no buttons on it and then I’m stuck)
This one has been fixed in the installer CVS … will work in the “Official” release. AFAIK, it was only reported after “Community” was released …
it crases atleast 3/8 times when it starts X with my NVIDIA card.
Which drivers are you using? There are known issues with the currently available versions from NVIDIA. Search in Mandrake bugzilla (and if you got the drivers from NVIDIA … complain about them …).
It does not allow me to set up more than one profile for my wireless card?(Centrino)
It should allow you to set profiles in Mandrake Control Center, which apply to more than just networking … is this what you tried, or not?
I have deployed Mandrake from last Saturday and I have not one issue . Everything run just great.
Great Job Mandrake Team.
10CE has worked pretty good for my on my desktop. I did notice the knotes bug when starting from Kontact.
Packages fixing this just got uploaded. You probably want to test them …
“I tried it at home last night, and I can’t for the life of me get my network card working properly (and therefore have no internet access). I tried it with two different cards and still no joy (and yes, I did check the MD5)”
Make sure you turn off the “Network Hotplugging” for the NIC that you are trying to get working. I have tried it on 6 different makes/models of cards, and with Network Hotplugging turned on they do not work. Turn that off for the card and the network should come up and work. This is a known issue and has been reported to Mandrake numerous times.
Frankly, I’ve got to the point where I’ll only install distros which include drivers for my ADSL modem (a common USB type). Linux distros who go on about not supporting or issuing non-free software aren’t getting the important point that an incomplete product is an incomplete product regardless of their precious principles.
People just want their stuff to work.
And, you may notice that now the proprietary drivers for some popular USB ADSL modems don’t work with the 2.6 kernel, but the open-source driver (now included in Mandrake 10.0) *does*.
People who just want their stuff to work should support the work of people developing open-source drivers for their hardware …
Of course, most distros will give your the proprietary drivers if you buy the commercial version …
And, some people believe principles are important. If you don’t, why do you even bother running Linux?
the 4th CD is part of the Mandrake Club download version. It is nothing more than the files you’d find in the contrib folder on the mirrors stuck on a CD.
(my apologies if someone else covered this)
Any news on a PPC version? The latest version of Mandrake for PPC is 9.1. I hope they release 10 on PPC too.
Umm… Actually Microsoft has been selling updates SP1 versions of Windows XP for some time. Used them… They do exist!
BTW: The only two systems that I have ran that are perfectly stable (for me) are Windows XP and SUSE 9.0. Of course everyone has their own configuration and experiences. (I am currently typing this on my freshly installed SUSE 9.0 box… Yes I tried Mandrake 10.0 and yes that’s the reason my installation of SUSE is freshly installed.)
It crashes and reboots during network configuration. Lots of bugs have already been reported. I am surprised that Eugenia did not encounter that.
Actually Eugenia did mention a few bugs in posts… For instance that Frozen bubble had problems when she turned on the sound. I’m sorry, but Frozen Bubble is my favorite Linux game. If it freezes… Well… That definately settles it. Down with Mandrake 10.0
Eugenia, this is a known bug in frozen bubble across all distros. You can read about it here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=42137
The suggested fix is to run frozen-bubble like so:
artsdsp frozen-bubble
“If it freezes… Well… That definately settles it. Down with Mandrake 10.0”
God forbid we spend 2 seconds searching google to see if it is a known issue that can be corrected with a 2 second fix.
The best way to compare is to see in same time two brothers growing…
I just had a new HD and it was the perfect time to try this new OS
After a buggy test of mdk 10 (does anyone could use xmms without a core dump ?? among others)
I just tried the development Core of Fedora2 :
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/development/i386
And even I do not like the new philosophy from RH I must say no comparaison can be done: faster, better worked around etc..(except the Gnome 2.6 still in early stage) it looks already in a better shape than the 10.0 from Mdk.
Comparaison can be done…? Wait and see
I return for now to Debian
“God forbid we spend 2 seconds searching google to see if it is a known issue that can be corrected with a 2 second fix.”
Umm… It was sarcasm….
Now back to Mandrake 10. Have you read the comments from other posts. People are having problem after problem with it. That’s completely unacceptable. Those 2 second fixes add up.
In the past I’ve always given Mandrake a try, but I would eventually remove
it because there were just too many bugs. A bug such as not being able to set
a GTK them is tolerable for an experienced guru, but the average Joe would
become quickly irritated. Bugs in the system configuration utility are not
as acceptable, especially if the tool locks up on you or core dumps.
Now, I know that things cannot always be perfect, but I would like to make one
major point: the major bugs ought to be fixed in subsequent package upgrades. This is
the question that all major Linux distributions should address and none of them do, at
least not to my satisfaction. A major bug should be defined to be a flaw in software or in
the system setup, which causes usability problems or system instability, that are directly controlled by the distribution. So, if
the Mandrake Control Center is locking up on package installation, it ought to be
repaired.
I hope somebody will begin to realize this.
Mandrake 6.x were the best Linux desktop distro out a couple of years ago. When they introduced version 7-8-9 and so on it’s just a bunch of buggy sh*t! Avoid Mandrake and install SuSE, you wont regret it!
Drill Sgt is correct turn off network hotplugging and you should be fine.
I tend to agree, I wish there was only like 3 distros and
Mandrake just doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from
others.
Buggy how and for whom ? I have had it running via cooker for a while and I only encounter maybe 3-4 bugs which were quickly fixed. To say that Mandrake is buggy but too not mention some of the bugs in SuSE ( yes SuSE has some bugs in it ! ) or any other Linux distro or OS ( Windows, OS-X ) and to say it sucks becuase a few people are having problems is stupid. It does not suck for me or others who have had it working fine.
> Root user is apperantly setup as a hidden user. You should have a config option for MDK-DM (which is based upon KDM, I think), where you can choose to NOT have root hidden. They way you worded it above makes it sound like a bug
It IS a bug. It is a usability nightmare the way it is setup now. The default is to not expose the root user and that is fine with me. However, when you DON’T get the “shutdown” button on the login screen, there is a real life problem! There should have being a “shutdown” button then and if necessary to ask for the root password if someone wanted to click it.
> Frankly, I’ve got to the point where I’ll only install distros which include drivers for my ADSL modem (a common USB type). Linux distros who go on about not supporting or issuing non-free software aren’t getting the important point that an incomplete product is an incomplete product regardless of their precious principles. People just want their stuff to work.
Very well said.
> God forbid we spend 2 seconds searching google to see if it is a known issue that can be corrected with a 2 second fix.
You are _completely_ losing the point. If this is already is “known issue”, then MandrakeSoft takes a BIGGER BLAIM for including a buggy application in their product. They should either fix it (Frozen Bubble has no problem on my Slackware btw), or not include it. That’s how it goes. The fact that is a “known issue” makes things even worse. If I didn’t want big distributors to fix bugs, I would create and use my own distro, but I use these big distributor’s distros because I WANT to use software that works.
> Drill Sgt is correct turn off network hotplugging and you should be fine.
You should not be having to do this (and from what I read, this was reported many times to MdkSoft). Why Slackware doesn’t have such problems with its hotplug??
> I have had it running via cooker for a while and I only encounter maybe 3-4 bugs which were quickly fixed.
You must be a very lucky man.
first, my centrino support! after getting ndis wrapper, it does not work! dont knw why!
second , tried driver from linuxant but it does not work coz of dependency on wireless-tools(and it has dependency probs too!)
third, key board on laptop seemed sluggish! had hard time with keys on it. also it took long time to log me in on even command prompt log in! dont knw why!
boots only after 9 seconds even after pressing enter!!!
goodies: kde 3.2 i guess really quick and fast.
on the whole i would say that I am a bit disappointed with Mandrake 10 after tryingit. I was so curious to install it but it just went away after installing it. ! I am installing Suse 9 back now on my laptop again!! a lot to be done i guess
“Mandrake just doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from others.”
Says you. How about if we keep Mandrake and get rid of Fedora seeing as how Matthew Szulik told us to use Windows anyway.
But seriously, did anybody notice a difference between the Power Pack and regular editions?
> Frankly, I’ve got to the point where I’ll only install distros which include drivers for my ADSL modem (a common USB type). Linux distros who go on about not supporting or issuing non-free software aren’t getting the important point that an incomplete product is an incomplete product regardless of their precious principles. People just want their stuff to work.
Usually, distros that go on about not supporting or issuing non-free software aren’t “products”. Linux is not a product. Debian is not a product… etc. So there’s no “incomplete product” in such cases.
Victor.
I bittorrented the ISOs but they are 711mb, and Nero won’t burn them on a 700mb blank cd. What gives?
Use Cheetah burner for Windows. Worked fine here.
And, some people believe principles are important. If you don’t, why do you even bother running Linux?
While I support the Free(Libre) Open Source Software philosophy, I find it hard to say “Tough Luck!” to someone who wants his nVidia graphics card to use its 3D hardware. I will recommend using the (GASP!) propriatary nVidia drivers.
I don’t know about anyone else here, but I use Linux becuase it works well for me! It does what I need done very well and reliably. If, by your comment, you feel that if you don’t refuse to have anything to do with propriatary or closed-source software then you should NOT run Linux, then I think you are way off-base.
I was running Mdk10 Beta 2 for a while, and upgraded to community edition right after it was released to public ftp. So far the experience is not bad. However, the upgrade process failed to get rid of XFree86-4.4.0-rc2 rpms and replace them with 4.3.0 version that’s included in CE. I had an awful system lock up when in KDE maybe because of that (I really hate the fact that errors in XFree are able to lock up the whole system, on the contrary, winxp generally can recover by invoking the task manager via “Ctrl-Alt-Del” then killing the offending process). Ctrl-Alt-Bksp didn’t work, Alt-SysRq-S/U/B didn’t help. Had to press the reset button to get out of it. But overall, MDK10 seems promissing. Its installation tool is among the best, its responsiveness is catching up, its menu/theme unification of KDE/Gnome is awesome, and its uprmi tools is handy(slightly buggy though). I hope once they get out of the financial difficulty, they can have more resources to put on DrakXXX tools, more QA, better UI consistency. Maybe not to be so bleeding edge, ’cause that should be part of the reason why MDK is not rock solid… Anyway, congrats to MDK team. Being a long-time MDK user, I still remember what a good disto MDK6.1 was (it’s the first distro under which I can easily use the modem to dialup back in ’97 or ’98).
Mandrake Linux 10 Community Edition: When Bugs Attack
So, it’s time to go to http://qa.mandrakesoft.com and report that bugs. That’s the only way they can be fixed in Official Version. I have encountered my “piece” of bugs too, but they will be sent to the MDK qa team. If you (and all of us) do the same, 10 Official will be really stable and bug free.
My two cents.
If we got rid of fedora, mandrake, slackware and 200+ distro’s and were all expected to run debian, redhat, gentoo or suse, sure id be all for it. I’d gladly move to one of those systems.
but Mandrake seems to only copy everything red hat. First they fork the distro, they get cooker from rawhide, get ‘community’ from fedora. Why are they around? cause they’re french? cause they use the color orange? cause thier sys-config tools are written in perl instead of python?
As far as szulik saying run windows many of us happen to agree with him. If <enter distro here> markets windows users and think they can use it without going into command line, understanding root or reading man pages more power do them but what happens when all these windows users switch and say “linux sucks” cause it wasn’t ready? Only people who WANT to learn linux either for technical reasons or sheer hatred for microsoft apply themselvs enough to learn linux. gamers and grandma’s would think it was ‘broken’ is that the BUZZ you want going around about your Distro, that is broken and windows is better? me either. We got one shot at this desktop thing once we get the rep for being something it sticks so lets make sure when they ‘try it’ they stay.
congratulations, that’s the most ridiculous post in this thread, and there’s some hefty competition.
one, cooker has always existed and has always been the way Mandrake has been developed. if you can think of a better way of developing an operating system than by having a continuously updated bleeding-edge build of the entire thing, I’m sure Microsoft, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake would ALL love to hear about it, because that’s how they ALL do it. It’s just the sensible way to develop, no-one’s “copying” anyone else.
two, seems you’re another person who’s completely misunderstood the whole Community / Official thing. It’s completely different from the Red Hat / Fedora split. Red Hat Linux and Fedora are now COMPLETELY SEPARATE PRODUCTS. Fedora Core is a community-supported home-oriented Linux distribution. Red Hat Linux is a Red Hat-supported, corporate oriented Linux distribution. They have separate development processes.
Mandrake Linux 10.0 Community is what Mandrake Linux 10.0 final would have been on the old MDK development cycle. Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official will be Community – the old “final” – plus the first month or so of official updates for it. Remember MDK 9.2? There were a lot of bugs which were patched early, and many people – including many right here – suggested that a 9.2.1 should be released which would be 9.2 plus those updates. Eventually that happened (you can get the updated 9.2 ISOs if you’re a club member), and MDKsoft decided to incorporate that as a permanent refinement to its development cycle. 10.0 Official is essentially 10.0.1. It’s that simple, and completely different from Fedora / Red Hat.
Cheetah CD Burner for windows burned the ISOs when Nero wouldn’t! Woo hoo!
“but Mandrake seems to only copy everything red hat.First they fork the distro, they get cooker from rawhide, get ‘community’ from fedora. Why are they around? ”
If that’s all there was to Mandrake, then all Mandrake users would be Red Hat users. But all a matter of personal preferences. Everybody has different priorities, and somehow Mandrake remains one of the most popular distros. Because Linux is all about choice. We always say it in here, and choice is often based on whims.
“We got one shot at this desktop thing once we get the rep for being something it sticks so lets make sure when they ‘try it’ they stay.”
Actually, at least half the people I know (who own computers), don’t even know or barely know how to use Windows, how to install software, how to change their wallpaper, how to burn a CD, how to cut and paste, etc. That’s not even mentioning worms and spyware. If one wants to get a computer, one had to learn how to use it. That’s all there is to it. It will NEVER be easy enough for some people. If people don’t like my favorite distro, they should be able to pick a different one. The more the merrier, I say. Suppose there’s only three distros and I happen to think they’re all lousy. Then I’m screwed Linux-wise. Then it would be me saying Linux sucks which would be untrue and unfair.
And besides all that, you make it sound like Windows doesn’t have bugs, doesn’t have security issues, that apps don’t crash on it, etc. You’re worried about rep? How good is Microsoft’s rep these days? People use it because they think have no choice and because it’s cheaper than Mac.
So community would have been MDK 10 and Fedora would have been Red Hat 10…. huh? Fedora code will be in RHEL 4 just like ‘community’ code goes into ‘official’ right? I don’t see the huge difference you speak of. It seems more like a war of words than real deep differences. It seems mandrake just learned from the ‘no support’ of fedora that ticked everyone off and kept the current model. They are both the front runner for thier stable projects.
nope, you’re still not there. 10.0 Official is a minor update to 10.0 Community. They are the same product. RHEL will be a separate product from Fedora Core which happens to incorporate some of its code.
I spend time with windows users and most come back because of things i’ve already stated. They do not understand its the hardware vender that is broken, they say its linux thats broken because drivers are not provided. Most of them have old e-machines which almost nothing works for linux in alot of cases and if you listen to them talk to eachother these are the reasons they say linux sucks due to ignorance. people should call crackers, crackers. but they don’t they call them hackers its not the correct term to use but cause of its widespread usage that is now the defination. same with procieved problems with linux. Everyone says ‘it does not work’ so thats what gets adopted as the truth. What red hat (the original topic) ment was they want to get that support by entering the server market where companies are expected to provide support for hardware then that will trickle down into the desktop market. We need hardware venders to see dollar signs before spending dollars to develop drivers. and ‘free desktops’ do not yet generate the same amount of money servers do. people out there will buy 10,000 workstations and the hardware vender gets to sell 10,000 video cards. How many linux desktops do we sell? 20 half of which get refunded for ‘being broken’
I’m probably wrong and need a shot of zealotoxide but i have some other stuff to do.
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhelorfedora/
Nero burns the ISOs without problems.
Mandrake: the biggest disappointment of mandrake (9.2) was the “emergency repair cdrom”. It seems to be impossible to repair a destroyed boot sector with it. I don’t know No 10.
Well, I just installed it, haven’t tried it much yet, but I have to say that installation is the best/simplest one I have seen in Linux so far. It beats Suse and Fedora hands down. Let’s just hope they get those bugs worked out before the final release… Btw, I’m a slackware user.
I understand your point. Guess it’s just going to be up to each individual to decide for themself.
Oddly enough I’m almost one of those people you describe. I’m a cheapskate so I own an Emachine. I have work twice as hard as anybody in here to get Linux to run on my pc because of it, and I’m a newbie. No 3D acceleration, no modem, and because of some silly wire from the cd Player, I have to rip cds, I can’t just play them or I get no sound. That’s only the things I know about. I asked Emachines if they were going to be supplying Linux drivers like they for Windows, and they basically told me to go pound sand. Or might as well have. VIA is dragging their feet on drivers as is S3. NONE of those people you deal with goes through as much hell as I do, and now I’m getting ready to install Mandrake 10.0. I don’t know, I guess Linux is worth all the hassle to me.
What other bugs did you find? Anything really terrible, nasty, horrible we should be warned about?
The text was updated. Bugs don’t always have to be nasty, just be on your way is enough to drive people to other solutions.
This linux thing isn’t so bad after all. Thanks Eugenia for the help, now I too can join the ranks of teh leet haxor. — This message brought to you by Konqueror!
I didnt have any blank CDs so I had to do an FTP install. Went alright. Everything seems to be working OK, Right now im downloading the kernel-sources so I can install my nvidia drivers.
IMO this release is much faster than previous versions.
Great job MDK team!
I knew from the Days I was using Mandrake 7.0 that this is Different. The French hav a a good aesthetic Taste as obvious fron their wine fashion and now Mandrake. The Community edition is so polished, And it works for me without problem out of Box in my toshiba tecra 8100. I have an ADMTEK wireless card which is workig like charm. I had horrible experience with Redhat 9 and Fedora Core 2. Ndiswrapper was never so sweet for me until I tried it on Mandrake. Antialaising of the fonts makes them close to Windows Xp in terms of Font Rendering. And best of all kernel 2.6 I never thought I caould do any other job while untarring a 150MB file. But with this Kernel TADA it was literally flying.
OK I just installed my nvidia drivers(5336) and changed my XF86Config-4 file. When I try glxgears in the terminal I get:
Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0”.
Error: couldn’t get an RGB, Double-buffered visual
Anyone else have this problem?
OK, gang…
I just dug out an eMachines Celeron 366 system from the dustbin as an experiment. 128MB RAM, onboard Rage graphics, onboard sound. Installed Mandrake 10. Now it’s the third machine I’ve installed it on, and the only problem I had was having to change out the CDs in the proper order. This one even recognized that CD1 was the boot CD. Works just fine for me. Is it that my morphic resonance field is above average? Good Karma? Are a lot of people on here smoking the GOOD crack? I’m sorry, I just don’t see where the problems are. This is the most trouble-free distro I’ve encountered. Package manager works fine, frozen bubble works with sound… am I hallucinating, or what?
> I’m sorry, I just don’t see where the problems are.
Have you tried actually to USE the machine and its applications and its tools instead of just “installing it”?
LOL nevermind, im an idiot
I didnt save my changes. VI is so confusing
been using it all afternoon so far with no problems other than the obvious… it’s a celeron 366 with 128 MB so it’s dog slow. but everything I’ve run on it just works.
>been using it all afternoon so far with no problems other than the obvious
What do you mean “no problems other than the obvious”?
Have you tried to reproduce the bugs I mention in the article (which I found just by using and trying the OS and its apps?)
they did say it was the community version lol. The official release will be more stable if people actually report bugs rather than saying screw it and formatting the HD
I started out on Mandrake but the system crashes and frequent (once or more a week) crashes of desktop software forced me to install debian. I really miss the easiness and look of mandrake but it’s got too many crashes! When using debian I can appreciate just how stable a linux system really can be. The only times I ever got a system crash was when my RAM went bust.
Mandrake has everything in place now, they should freeze their distro and just fix bugs for the next year. Sure some of the packages might seem a bit dated in a years time but if people want bleeding edge they should install from cooker.
just my €0.02
the obvious that it’s dog slow. which I said in my previous post. Other than that, no, I haven’t run into ANY of the bugs you have. Kontact is working fine. I don’t use Gnome, so I can’t comment on the themes problem. It changed the timezone with no problem at the installation. I loaded new soft with the “Install” tool with no problems. And on and on.
I will admit that The Drak tools aren’t the best looking, but that’s a matter of taste more than anything else.
YMMV.
PS: No, I don’t work for Mandrakesoft, and have no proprietary interest. I’m just another luser.
dog slow on a Celeron 366, that is.
Ever consider that you may have flaky RAM or some other hardware problem?