Mandrake Linux is the only Linux I have tested so far, where I could get my scanner to work. I simply plugged it in and clicking on the XSane icon on the desktop worked. I was able to scan in a picture and save it as a .jpeg file. I also tried the "Kooka" application found under the menu and it worked as well.
When I tried to play MP3's with XMMS no sound came out. It appeared to be playing, but no sound. The volume control on XMMS was set to zero, so I thought that was the problem, but when I turned it up there was still no sound. Finally, I brought up aumix from the Multimedia->Sound menu and it was set to zero as well. Then I got fooled again when playing a CD and once again had to bring up aumix to set the volume up on the CD player.
When I plugged in the camera a hard disc icon appeared on the screen (not mounted) and an icon for GTKam. I tried to use the GTKam first but it said it couldn't access my camera. Finally, I clicked on the Hard Disc icon and was able to access the photos through it.
I was happy to see that Mandrake had added explanations for many programs in parenthesis next to the name of the program. For example: "Kooka (Scan & OCR Program)". I think this is really helpful, especially for the Linux newcomer.
There is one thing that has caused me grief with Mandrake in the past is their convention of adding "mdk" to the names of all their RPM package names. This makes all of their packages incompatible with RedHat and all the other RPM distributions. In theory RPM's allow you to find a software package on the internet and with one command install it. But since that package is likely dependant upon other packages, they will also need to be present on your system. Since Mandrake adds "mdk" to all of their packages, a package made for a non-Mandrake system won't install on Mandrake because it won't be able to find the other packages (even if they are present) because the names all have "mdk" in them. I should note however that this may sound worse than it is. I must say that I haven't ever had very good luck installing some random RPM even on RedHat or SuSE. The only time I've had success with installing RPM's is if I find the exact RPM for the version of operating system I'm running.
I feel like Mandrake is an excellent Linux distribution. Although it's still has a few rough edges, I have had very good success with things working without any grief.
| Version | Mandrake Linux 9.1 | |||||
| Installation | The installation was pretty simple. The first part you simply answer a few questions and verify that your mouse works. The second part is similar to the SuSE installation where it presents the status of various things (Time Zone, Graphics Hardware, etc.). You must configure the Graphics Hardware. | |||||
| Change Screen Resolution | Yes, had to log out and back in to change. | |||||
| Word Processing | Yes, OpenOffice was already installed. | |||||
| Mount Data CD | Auto mounted when I clicked on the CD-ROM icon. Disc was unmounted by pushing on the eject button. | |||||
| Play Audio CD | Yes. | |||||
| Play MP3's | Yes. | |||||
| Play DVD | No, Xine was installed but was not set up to play DVD's. | |||||
| Play Internet Radio Station | Yes. Did not automatically connect to XMMS, I had to save the .pls file and load it into XMMS. | |||||
| Rip and Encode MP3's | No, Grip was already installed and set up to rip and encode Ogg Vorbis files, but no MP3 encoder was present. | |||||
| Burn CD | Yes, there were 3 burning programs installed: GCombust, Gnome Toaster, and K3B. I couldn't figure out GCombust or Gnome Toaster (quickly) so I used K3B to burn an ISO image. | |||||
| Printer | Yes, setup was very simple it found the printer and I clicked on OK. It installed more software from the CD's and it took several minutes, but that was all it took to get the printer working. | |||||
| Digital Camera | Yes. | |||||
| Scanner | Yes, clicking on the XSane icon on the desktop worked fine as well as using Kooka from the Multimedia->Graphics menu. | |||||
| Additonal Software Installation | Yes, pretty easy with RPM Drake. | |||||
| Geek Stuff | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ssh and scp | Yes. | |||||
| vi | Yes. | |||||
| emacs | No. | |||||
