Star Review: Mandrake Linux 9.2
Linked by James Smyth on Tue 21st Oct 2003 17:51 UTC
Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris MandrakeSoft has recently released the latest version of their desktop operating system. Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download Edition is available on their web site across three ISO files for the Club members. The first disk is about 650megs and the following two are ~700.
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My review of the review...
by Eu on Tue 21st Oct 2003 18:46 UTC

This review was superficial. Did you actually take the trouble to use Mandrake 9.2 for more than a few minutes.

Konqueror, both the file manager and the web browser, have made huge leap forwards in stability and speed. OpenOffice is much more polished and very fast, unlike its predecessor.Totem is awesome. It plays CDs, mp3s, mpgs, and DVDs if you install the following rpms:

libdvdcss-1.2.8-1.fr.i386.rpm
libdvdread-0.9.4-fr3.i386.rpm

Both of them can be at freshrpms or here:

http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/redhat.shtm

K3b is just beautiful for CD burning. Right click on an ISO file, click on action, burn. Done. Same for any folder that you want to back up to CD.

The speed improvements are fantastic. The amount of software available for it unrivalled. The Mandrake Control Center tools are solid and reliable and have been tweaked to perform very well.

The only shortcoming I can find is that you will have to download AMSN (http://amsn.sourceforge.net) or udpate GAIM or Kopete if you intend to connect to the MSN Messenger network and that is due to changes made by Microsoft to its proprietary protocol.AMSN is nice as it allows you to not only send and receive both files and messages from people that use MSN Messenger. By the way, you may want to consider giving Jabber a try. Very good and open source, so you will never have to worry about being locked out in the future.

The fact that people cannot appreciate the huge improvements is a testament to how good Linux already is. The response of the system is also much improved and the graphical boot-up is gorgeous. Only trouble is that if you have 1GB or more of RAM,you will not see the graphical boot as it will load the enterprise kernel, which does not use it by default.

Talking of which, there are huge improvements to be had by using the kernel that comes with Mandrake 9.2. Multi-tasking has never been so smooth and a sleuth of new devices are now supported. I finally was able to make full use of my Maxtor USB2 PCI card and my external USB2 hard drive.

If you have not tried Mandrake yet, hurry up and do so. You won't regret it.

Ps: By the way, the 'most frequently used programs' list, 'what to do', 'quick browser', and 'run command'can all be quickly re-enabled if you need those.