I know that a lot of people have posted reviews on Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora, etc. but here is mine. I downloaded the first 3 Mandrake CDs from LinuxISO and then burned them to a CD while in Windows to get to work. I had a Windows XP installation on my 100GB hard drive, but I only have it on 30GB because Windows acts up so much.Installation
Just pop in the first cd into your drive and you are ready to get started I read about a whole bunch of extra drivers, etc but I think that any modern BIOS will boot right off of the cd and you’ll have no trouble. I have tried Mandrake before, back when it hit 8.0, and Red Hat 9, and just tried Fedora Core 3 a few weeks ago, but they never stayed on my hard drive that long. There was always too much missing in the installation to keep me there. If I was completely broke, I would stay, but when I already have a copy of XP that I can use…I have to give the Mandrake team a thumbs up for the installer. It detected the vast majority of my settings for me, I didnt’ have to configure the mouse, keyboard, or time zone. I did choose, however, to use the custom disk partioning. I never have had enough trust in software to let it make such a big decision for me. I was immensly happy with the speed of the installation and the packages to choose from. This distro is a lot faster than Fedora, while even on a 2.1Ghz Athlon took over 30 minutes. The installer even configured both of my network cards correctly.
And would you believe it, for my Radeon 9200, it picked something besides a vesa driver. The credit here might go to the XFree86 team, but I was excited by the name, fglrx, and I’m happy to report that I didnt’ have to go through all of the mess of compiling drivers, etc to get accelerated graphics, it just worked! (That’s a big deal to me!) Windows doesn’t even do that for me, I have to download and install the ATI drivers to get something besides the vesa driver.
Software and Desktop
I chose to install both KDE and Gnome because I wasn’t sure which one I would fall in love with. I think that is a good idea for anyone, not just for someone that can’t decide (btw Gnome is my one true love now) but I get to use some great packages that are kde-based only, ie, K3B (a wonderful cd and DVD burning app) is a lifesaver and a pleasure to use, along with the handy Kopete messenger and a few other trinkets.
The list of software on Mandrake is very long and if you take the time to go through the individual package selection during installation, I booted to just about everything that I did need and nothing that I didn’t. Gnome 2.4 is a very clean desktop and provides an enjoyable computing experience. I do think that I like this over the new spatial mode that I used in Gnome 2.6 on Fedora Core 3. I know you can revert back to browser mode, but I just don’t understand the concept of spatial mode. Only thing it had going for it in 2.6 was the “Computer” on the desktop, I really enjoyed using that for those few days.
Room for Improvement
There were a few things that I think need to be fixed before Linux is great for somone like my dad (doesn’t fully understand what the destkop is) I tried Fedora and found huge short comings in the multimedia dept. Mandrake is a major improvement over that, Totem worked out of the box, but in general the distro needs more plugins. I have to say that all of the music/ripping programs worked great.
Also, the gnome photo app is a big improvement over what I have used before in Linux.(It’s no iPhoto, but still) Why aren’t firefox and thunderbird included? In my opinion those are major applications today. Especially thunderbird. I have no desire to use the included Kmail and Evolution. Native Quicktime and flashplayer support should come with the distro and just work. Finally, printing support. I’ve had my Lexmark Z45 for atleast two years now and still no driver. Granted that is Lexmark’s fault, but come on people. OpenOffice and KWord do me no good if I can’t print. But this list is a lot shorter than what I would have said in the past, so I say to the community, keep up the good work!
Overall
After using Mandrake for the week, I have to say I love it a lot. It has by far been the best Linux experience that I’ve had so far. There are a lot of things that I miss from the Windows world, ie The Sims, iTunes, and printing, but I can generally manage pretty well. If someone told me they wanted to try Linux, I would tell them Mandrake is for them. In fact, I would tell them that it is better than Windows in so many ways if you have a supported printer, don’t have a million songs from iTunes or an addiction for a PC Game. (I know about Transgaming’s Winex, I haven’t tried it because I can go back to Windows to play and I don’t want to pay the money to get it, but a newbie isn’t going to play around with wine and win).
About the Author
Matt Brewer is a 17 year old high school student who isn’t afraid to make mistakes and enjoys “tinkering” with the computer 🙂 He has used Windows since 98SE and has a good level of experience with both Windows and Linux and hopes to major somewhere in the computing field.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
Are you sure? Using CUPS and the assorted config tools, I configured my Lexmark Z53 under Mandrake 8. I have a strong conviction that the 45 works just fine under Mdk10, probably as a Z43. Read the following links:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php?product=103
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/cdetail11358.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/
http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html
Personally I have never like the downloaded version of Mandrake (I’ve been a user since version 7). I have always prefered Mandrake’s Power Pack series of software. Currently I use Mandrake 9.1 Power Pack, and hope to soon upgrade..
“Also, the gnome photo app is a big improvement over what I have used before in Linux.(It’s no iPhoto, but still)”
If you are talking about gThumb, it’s not much of an improvement over gqview, which has been around for a while.
“Why aren’t firefox and thunderbird included? In my opinion those are major applications today. Especially thunderbird. I have no desire to use the included Kmail and Evolution.”
Check contrib.
Native Quicktime and flashplayer support should come with the distro and just work.
Check PLF. The reason they don’t come with the download version of mandrake is that mandrake would need to pay for each copy and that could get expensive if you just turned around and gave them away.
Mandrake comes with these things if you just add the contrib or PLF repositories. Thats hardly much work compared to windows.
“The reason they don’t come with the download version of mandrake is that mandrake would need to pay for each copy”
Can someone elaborate on this, specifically with flash player and Java?
What specifically is the restriction where Sun will not allow them to ship a distribution with Java binaries?
Does windows even come with Java and Flash included?
Well… I’m always surprised when someone thinks 30 minutes is fast for an OS install. I use Linspire and a clean install takes exactly 8 minutes from power-on to working desktop. That’s 8 minutes on an Athlon 2000+. Also, the mention that the gnome photo app is no iPhoto is true. With Linspire, I use Lphoto which looks and acts exactly like iPhoto. It even recognizes my camera without any trouble. Add to that applications like Lsongs and a browser loaded with all the plugins you’d ever need and you’d become hard pressed to recommend any other distro. I highly encourage the author to check Linspire out.
“Native Quicktime and flashplayer support should come with the distro and just work.
Check PLF.”
“Mandrake comes with these things if you just add the contrib or PLF repositories. Thats hardly much work compared to windows.”
I know “Windows is evil” and all, but since when is downloading included in what “comes with” a distro? Firefox and Thunderbird do not come on the 3CD download (though I’m pretty sure Mozilla is in there). By that logic Windows comes with those same things. Also, despite it’s evilness, downloading Quicktime, Flash, Shockwave, Firefox and Thunderbird is not any harder than downloading the RPMs for Linux.
I think he is pointing out that they are available in urpmi….like debian/gentoo/*bsd, mandrake has a large collection of easily installed software available through urpmi. This may or may not qualify as “comes with”…but it is certainly not just downloading rpms.
[Note: I use Gentoo…am not a Mandrake-whore]
I am also having problems with an Epson CX3200 printer. It is supposed to work but will Mandrake 10 will not recognize it when connected to my PC. I also find cups docs very convoluted and unclear – not user friendly at all.
BTW what window decorations are you using in the second screenshot? Very nice.
No but it’s usually just one (ok, 2 or 3 counting the “Next”) click away, the first time you hit a java or flash web page.
In Linux it’s still a bit trickier..hope it improves.
…Mandrake + easy urpmi (http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/) is the best package management schema I’ve used (although I never tried apt-get)
“know “Windows is evil” and all, but since when is downloading included in what “comes with” a distro? Firefox and Thunderbird do not come on the 3CD download (though I’m pretty sure Mozilla is in there). By that logic Windows comes with those same things. Also, despite it’s evilness, downloading Quicktime, Flash, Shockwave, Firefox and Thunderbird is not any harder than downloading the RPMs for Linux.”
They are installed in exactly the same way as any of the software that comes on the cd. Infact, if you install from ftp, the contrib repository is added automatically. It is quite a bit easier then downloading seperate rpms or even installer files in windows.
what people are saying here is its an apt-get/emerge/urpmi/yum away on linux too, which if anything is easier then on windows. i would rather do apt-get install appname rather then going to http://www.appname.com, locating it, clicking through disclaimers, downloading it, then running through the wizard. granted, its not that much of a hassle on windows either, but its significantly easier to set these things up on linux.
“…the best package management schema I’ve used…”
The word is scheme.
I am an out and out mandrake 10 fanatic. i love it, it is simply the best linux distro around. I had a review here about a month ago… it was a review of mandrake 10 after 3 months use…
anyway, I am now used to reading reviews praising mandrake, BUT, where are all the reviews from these people who say linux is not ready for their/your desktop ??
where are all the reviews that say mandrake 10 is rubbish/useless/crap ?
come on, there must be one… lemme see it please
Mandrake is the easiest distribution to install with the largest software repository besides Debian.
Hang out with us at http://www.mandrakeusers.org
The author should have searched for easy uprmi on google after installation.
Add the plf and contrib repositories. You will have so much software in your hands, you will not know what to do with it and everything works out of the box.
The only thing you will need to do is:
urpmi libdvdcss
urpmi mplayer-gui
The latter provides quicktime goodness, the former DVD playing.
Put an empty CD-R in the drive and K3b starts. Put a DVD and Totem begins playing.
To update the system do:
urpmi.update -a
And then:
urpmi –upate auto-select
The only thing that isn’t upgraded automatically is the kernel, which is as it should be. To update your kernel:
urpmi –update kernel
Mandrake 10 *Official* is fast, very customizable and incredibly stable and it installs in less than 20 minutes. I guarantee that you will love it.
Ps: By the way, get yourself the Noia icons for KDE from the plf repository above. You will like those. If you want to give KDE a try, make sure that you install all the KDE add-on that Mandrake doesn’t install by default.
“Windows acts up so much? Maybe if you knew how to use it properly it wouldn’t act up. My Windows doesn’t act up, always does what I want it to.”
So you can uninstall Internet Explorer, The messanger? There are many ways in which
“Like how? I have yet to see any article from you, OSNews, or any other site to convince me how Linux is better than Windows. They both seem to do the same thing to me. Browse the web? Yep. Check email? Yep. Instant Message? Yep. IRC? Yep. Install software? Yep.”
Perhaps you should investigate instead of sitting on the fence and then maybe you could tell him why he is wrong. A feature list is painting with too broad a brush in this case. The centeral repository is better in many ways then the windows way of installing things. The package management in many ways is better also, allowing you to see exactly what files belong to what programs.
“where are all the reviews that say mandrake 10 is rubbish/useless/crap ?
come on, there must be one… lemme see it please”
Well, I could write you a review if you would like. I dont think youw would like it… I had it on my Desktop and Laptop for about 3 weeks and took it off to free up my Windows partition. With all the problems I was having, I saw no compelling reason to boot into it when I already had a Windows partition. Now, I have installed Fedora on the laptop, and it works much better (on the laptop, dont plan on putting it on the desktop). But still, I will be getting rid of that as well. I will just use a bootable CD from now on when I want to experiment in Linux.
>> urpmi libdvdcss
>>
>> urpmi mplayer-gui
>>
>> The latter provides quicktime goodness, the former DVD
>> playing.
The gist of what you are saying is correct but not the details. mplayer-gui provides only the gui and mplayer itself needs the win32-codecs package to play new quicktime files just like xine needs it.
I didn’t finish my sentence…
So you can uninstall Internet Explorer, The messanger? There are many things windows does not alllow me to do or chnage.
What I am saying is totally correct because once you try to install mplayer-gui, Mandrake will install all the other dependencies for it, including the win32codecs.
“Native Quicktime and flashplayer support should come with the distro and just work.
Check PLF.”
I assume you mean a player which includes the Sorenson codecs. How is this native Quicktime player called? Where can i find details, features, screenshots of it? Where can i buy a copy? Particulary, one which doesn’t come with additional software so we don’t pay for that. TIA.
“I assume you mean a player which includes the Sorenson codecs. How is this native Quicktime player called? Where can i find details, features, screenshots of it? Where can i buy a copy? Particulary, one which doesn’t come with additional software so we don’t pay for that. TIA.”
You are making way too much of this. Any Xine or mplayer based player will play Sorenson files if you configure them correctly and install the win32 codecs package. In the case of mandrake it’s as simple as adding PLF and:
urpmi win32-codecs mplayer xine
“What I am saying is totally correct because once you try to install mplayer-gui, Mandrake will install all the other dependencies for it, including the win32codecs.”
I guess I’m just more used to the sensible packaging of xine where it’s not a dep because it’s not required. I stand corrected.
Those are not native and the legality of that software is questionable. There are open implementations, but they don’t work for on demand Sorenson in which i am interested.
If you want ATI/Nvidia drivers, flash, java, etc all ready to go on install then buy a copy! It really bothers me that all these reviewers ignore the fact that they are reviewing a stripped down version of Mandrake 10… get a clue people.
“With all the problems I was having, I saw no compelling reason to boot into it when I already had a Windows partition.”
How ironic. I keep a Windows partition around just for games, and do everything else with Mandrake. For the record I find both Gnome and KDE more enjoyable to work with than Windows. And after a few worms and a bunch of overpriced software, I see no compelling reason to work with Windows full time.
“I had a Windows XP installation on my 100GB hard drive, but I only have it on 30GB because Windows acts up so much.”
Yahoo man 70 GB for an XP installation???!!! What are you doing with that XP, I have over 5 fully operational XP’s and one fully operational Windows 2003 Server Enterprise (with IIS…) in VMWare Workstation plus the host XP, that’s 7 Windows altogether, and it is only 54 GB, and I have even XP Plus and Multilanguage Packs ++, so I really don’t believe in your story, ’cause whatever wrong your administration works is, that is absolutely impossible!
Well then you better start writing to Apple asking them to port over Quicktime to Linux. Or just grab a copy of Coderweavers Wine and run Quicktime view Wine.
i’ve been hooked on gentoo for a while now and haven’t looked at an RPM based distro in a while (except for installing SuSE 9.1 for my mom)
if you do:
urpmi.update -a
does that update every package on your system (that there are newer versions for, of course)?
if so, is there a difference between whole number releases of Mandrake (or any rpm distro that can use urpmi) that can’t be resolved with urpmi? i know with gentoo there’s no reason to install 2004.2 if you have Gentoo 1.3 (circa 2002) installed, an emerge -u world will update your system to all the latest and greatest packages, the cds are merely there for installation and to provide a base set of packages to get a user going. does
(Mandrake 9 + urmpi.update -a) == (Mandrake 10)
like
(gentoo 1.x + emerge -u world) == (gentoo 2004.2)(assuming packages are current on the latter install disk)?
“Well then you better start writing to Apple asking them to port over Quicktime to Linux.”
I’ll try that indeed. But it’ll only be for x86 then. If that doesn’t work i’ll start a petition.
“Or just grab a copy of Coderweavers Wine and run Quicktime view Wine.”
Yeah i tried that using a demo. The stability and performance left much to be desired.
Anyway, i thought Mandrake offered something unique on this field. I was wrong.
No windows doesnt include flash or java. When they did include java Sun threw a bitch fit and sued. I imagine if windows included flash as well, someone would sue, then the linux people would rail on and on about a monopoly. The same people that bitch about programs being included with windows dont seem to realise that linux distros are becoming more bloated than windows could ever hope to be. I mean shit are 10 terminals really needed in a distro?
Has anyone else run into this? It’s too big for Nero 6 to burn, somehow.
What mandrake really needs is a good gui for urpmi. Rpmdrake or whatever it is SUCKS! Mandrake needs a tool similiar to synaptic that does everything in one gui not seperate guis for adding and removing software.
Another day, another distro review that focuses 90% on system installation and package selection — complete with the writer’s irrelevant personal opinions on which e-mail client, jukebox program, and CD burning software he prefers!
Really though, it is awesome to learn that Mandrake comes with both KDE and Gnome. I didn’t know that!
But no Firefox? Oh crap, I have to download the current prerelease version and untar it myself. And no Flash Player. Oh crap, I have to download it from Macromedia’s website just like everyone else using every computer platform.
Macromedia won’t let other companies distribute its copyrighted property for nothing … Apple hasn’t even created a QuickTime player for Linux … And some how these are Mandrakesoft’s fault?
But Mandrake got one thing right. I never would have thought of going to ati.com to download drivers for my Radeon card. That’s just too much work.
I’m one of those weirdos whose choice of operating system isn’t based merely on whether it saves me from a handful of two-minute tasks.
Dig a little deeper please … some of us actually use our PCs for work instead of just as a playground for installing the OS of the week on.
“Macromedia won’t let other companies distribute its copyrighted property for nothing”
What do you base this assumption on? Some of the non-free distros package things like flash and Java, and both Sun and Macromedia give these products away for free and would probably encourage this because they want to be/remain industry standards.
All this talk about making Java “open” so that it can be included but where did Sun tell anyone they can’t ship Sun’s JVM on a free Linux distro?
“Dig a little deeper please … some of us actually use our PCs for work instead of just as a playground for installing the OS of the week on.”
I do mostly agree with this point, but likely most “desktop Linux” users are hobbyists, and many of them do change distros often.
People spend 50% of their review on the install and the other 50% on the first 4 hours for a reason.
People dock windows stability because grandma has it eaten with buggy software after 3 years of not formatting the box, but most Desktop Linux installs rarely see the ripe old age of 8 months in the hands of technical users.
Most people criticize windows because of having to admin these types of windows systems.
Give grandma root access to a Linux box for 3 years and a pile of poorly written software to load on startup and then compare the stability of Linux on the desktop to windows.
It is several small things like this that lead me to say, that few people have any idea just how far Linux really is from joe users desktop.
[/rant]
urpmi.update -a
This will upgrade your urpmi database. It won’t actually install anything, but will download the package lists and set up urpmi to install the packages in those lists if asked.
For example, if you want the latest version of mozilla, and have a bunch of repositories in your list, then you’d do:
[root@foo]# urpmi.update -a
[root@foo]# urpmi mozilla
If you only do “urpmi.update name.of.setup.repository”, then only that repository’s list will be downloaded and updated.
does
(Mandrake 9 + urmpi.update -a) == (Mandrake 10)
like
(gentoo 1.x + emerge -u world) == (gentoo 2004.2)?
In theory, yes, but I’m not sure it would work 100%. It might be safer to upgrade from CD-ROM…note that, as specified above, you wouldn’t do “urpmi.update” but rather “urpmi –auto-select”.
“I had a Windows XP installation on my 100GB hard drive, but I only have it on 30GB because Windows acts up so much.”
u gotta be kidding since when are you using winXP since launch without formatting? then check diskcleanup & clear past system restore points. also remeber your data does not count in how much space windows eat up. I was running XP on my old comp with 20GB HDD & after fresh install winXP took only 1GB & with programs & all it used to go upto 2.5GB
so either you have lots of data on your HDD or u have just added extra 0 to your HDD space.
on the other note I also really like Mandrake. I tried V9 few day back for few weeks. Really loved it. But honestly Linux is not my thing. I am more sort of windows guy, I like things to be done for me so I went back to XP. However Mandrake really detected all my hardware including My Digicam & MP3 player & surprise was identifying my TV Tuner card. I only encountered one problem that it did not recognised my Internal Modem (HSP56 Micromodem) but since its winmodem I was not really hoping it to recognise. (I know there are lots of documentation websites out there but I am really not that energetic)
Anyways thumbs up to Mandrake! keep up the good work guys
“Yahoo man 70 GB for an XP installation???!!! What are you doing with that XP, I have over 5 fully operational XP’s and one fully operational Windows 2003 Server Enterprise (with IIS…) in VMWare Workstation plus the host XP, that’s 7 Windows altogether, and it is only 54 GB, and I have even XP Plus and Multilanguage Packs ++, so I really don’t believe in your story, ’cause whatever wrong your administration works is, that is absolutely impossible!”
All legal and registered I am sure!
Sun sued because Microsoft was including their own tweaked version of Java which would led to program in Java written using their implementation not being compatible with other Java VMs because you could access the underlying system directly and so on. So Sun was perfectly right to sue them as it would have led to Java programs running in Windows only.
As per the 10 terminals issues, the question is more like: amongst these 10 terminals do you have one that fits your needs, if yes, why do you complain?
Would you like going to a bakery selling just one type of bread?
At least when you have 10 terminals you can: try them, discover some you did not know about, find the right for you then remove the other ones. How difficult is that?
I’m sure you have the capacity like in all situation in life to evaluate something then decide what’s best? Or do you prefer that someone or a company tells you exactly what you have to do or use with no room for choice and argumentation?
In theory, yes, but I’m not sure it would work 100%. It might be safer to upgrade from CD-ROM…note that, as specified above, you wouldn’t do “urpmi.update” but rather “urpmi –auto-select”.
Yes, it works. I upgraded Mandrake 9.2 to 10 this way. I first installed a small mdk 9.2. Then I removed all urpmi media:
urpmi.removemedia -a
Then I added the mdk10 media:
urpmi.addmedia <link to site>
Then:
urpmi.update -a
urpmi –auto-select
A brand new mdk10 installation 🙂
For a beautiful mdk10 desktop, do the following:
1. Install the Bitstream Vera fonts (fonts-ttf-vera package). Use the Bitstream fonts instead of the default ones.
2. Use the Ximian Industrial theme (ximian-artwork package).
3. Upgrade to Gnome 2.6:
http://wwwra.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~waschk/Mandrake/GNOME2.6/RP…
4. Use one of the backgrounds from this place:
http://art.gnome.org/backgrounds/gnome/
mandrake is a beaut’
I’ve been using it for 18 months now and am involved with a project to roll it out across the voluntary sector where I live.
To the poster who complained about the epson cx3200 – carry on through the printer install process, the epson cx3200 is in the list of printer, I’ve successfully installed 3 already recently, they DO work.
Suse makes it easier to install Nvidia Drivers You just
have to select Nvidia from the Yast Installer and it
takes care of everything.