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I've installed and tried really hard with various distributions in the past, going all the way back to Red Hat 5. I'm not a novice computer user and consider myself fairly technically-minded.

I spent the last three days downloading Mandrake 9.1 on my lowly 64k ISDN line and was it worth the wait? ...partly yes and, sadly, mostly no.

I burnt my ISO image and rebooted eager to see how things had improved since my last venture with Linux (SuSE 8.0) ended in abandonment when I failed dismally to get anything working properly. The install process was speedy, easy and very straightforward. I didn't have to worry about partitioning my system as I already had 9gb free and 1gb swap left over from my SuSE installation, and it found and used them without any intervention on my part. Trying to remember the difference between hda1, hdb5, hdb7 and hdc always leaves me in a cold sweat in case I get it wrong and format my windows drive by mistake ( I never have, though). But I was glad not to worry about it.

As I only downloaded disk one I couldn't install all the packages but Mandrake made allowances and gave me an option not to install anything from the second disk. (just as well, as I didn't relish the idea of another 3 days worth of downloading). As my Linux partition is on my Slave drive, I wanted the boot loader at the front of this disk, enabling me to boot to that device first in the bios. This was a real nightmare in SuSE until I found out how to add the "bios=0x80" option, So I was prepared for it this time, but Mandrake didn't seem to need it and this again was very welcome. (although it did write to my master drive boot record as well and meant I had to repair it with the Windows install CD)

The only real dilemma for me came when it asked for which logon manager I wanted to use and presented me with several options. I hadn't heard of any them (why would I have?) but I chose the mandrake logon thingy. Why it felt the need to ask me I don't know. How would I know which one was better, which was one right for me? What if I chose the wrong one, would I be able to change it back? It would have been better if it had just chosen for me unless I specifically asked to change it myself. But chose I did and logged straight in.

Here is where things started to go wrong. Mandrake did find both my Windows partitions for me, and knowing how to add them to the desktop I did so. I then fired up Xmms and tried playing my Mp3 collection (got to get your priorities right!) - No sound...hmm. Checked in XMMS and found an option to change sound output formats OSS or ARTS (just what's the difference between the two and why would I want two of them?) - changed over, still nothing.

This is where my heart sank, I was going to have to try to configure the hardware as it had clearly not found it correctly, or so I thought. It's a Soundblaster live 5.1, and had in fact installed correctly. The problem was that all my sound was muted. Why? It took my an obscene amount of time to figure out how to adjust the sound. Turns out there is an applet in the start menu called AUmix. Unless you know what this does, AUmix is meaningless to the average person and it was just by sheer luck I stumbled upon it - surely renaming it to something useful like "sound mixer, or Volume control" would be better.

Next task was Internet access. Mandrake has a very nice Internet connection wizard, so I started that up and went through the motions, only to discover that there is no option to connect my isdn terminal adapter via USB. I get Com 1-8 listed, incidentally, so why can't Linux use the same notation as Windows here? Sure, Com 1-8 was in brackets next to each ttys port, but why still use this confusing and seemingly archaic terminology if you have to then clarify it by sticking "Com1" next to it. In Windows, my USB isdn adapter connects through a hub but appears to Windows as if it's on COM3. So I tried that, but that didn't seem to work, although it's hard to tell if it worked or not as clicking "apply" in the wizard seems to make it hang for a bit then restart. I guess this means it failed to connect, but who knows? After repeating this several times, making minor changes without success, I quit out and visited the hardware configuration tool. In there, Mandrake correctly identifies my Terminal Adapter (Eicon Diva USB TA) but places it in the "Unknown" section of the hardware. Clicking on the TA's details yielded no clue as to the problem, or how to resolve it. I know it works in Linux though as I had it working in SuSE, (one of the few things that did work in Suse). Also listed in the "unknown" section was my Bluetooth adaptor (on the motherboard) and my webcam (what still no Creative Webcam go drivers after all this time?)

Hardware problems easily must be one of the most annoying and difficult things to work with in Linux. How do I get my Terminal Adapter and Bluetooth working? Looking at the GUI there is nothing that helps me here and browsing through the help I can't find anything helpful either. Of course, I could just open up a terminal window and type some clever phrases into it and I'm sure it would work, but that relies on two things, me knowing what to type and me knowing what's wrong. Neither of which I do know of course. After a couple of hours of frustration I gave up looking -- I'd go online in Windows later on and have a look on the web. The lack of GUI tools is clearly a problem for me. I use the command prompt in Windows a little, mainly for pinging servers or performing traceroutes, but in Linux I still feel that you can't get anywhere without using it and that's unfortunate because it's never going to be accessible by novices and is just too damn "hard core" for anyone who just wants to get something done quickly and with the minimal amount of reading required.

1. "Personal Review of Mandrake 9.1, Part I"
2. "Personal Review of Mandrake 9.1, Part II"