“Mandrake Linux 9.1 RC1 was released without fanfare on Tuesday 18 February afternoon in Paris, and as the ISO images percolated through the various mirrors worldwide, I prepared my hardware for another review of the latest pre-release of MandrakeSoft’s “swiss-knife” Linux distribution. My previous articles have dealt exclusively with Mandrake’s use on the desktop. This time around, I tested Mandrake 9.1 RC1 on three different platforms: a home use mid-range desktop workstation, my trusty old-and-battered Dell laptop, and last but not least a dual Celeron homebuilt SMP box nowadays used as a file server and test rig.” Read it at DistroWatch.
Mandrake 9.1-RC1; Desktop, Laptop, Small Server: 3-In-1 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
With every new release of these big distros, it seems they’re looking (and i mean visually) better and better, which is a Good Thing, always.
without fanfare on Tuesday 18 February afternoon in Paris, and as the ISO images percolated through
I don’t understand the ‘without’ fanfare remark – I mean, you don’t need fanfares on a pre-release (RC1) software compilation – > I always felt more productive with Mandrake software than with any other distribution, and I hope they make it kylix2 compatible, like SuSE announced their next release, libraries and friends are really the nightmare of Linux.
I hope they survive !
since I have had both big disapointments and big rejoices with mandrake, mostly rejointement.
That theme is BEAUTIFUL, it’s probably my all time favorite GTK theme from what I see. mandrake 9.1 really is looking great, and it’s control center actually seems very good.
One question, does Mandrake provide that beautiful GTK2 theme consistently with KDE as Redhat does with Bluecurve? It would be great if they did and at the same time if they also sued Geramik code in order to match color schemes.
I still am not modtivated enough to switch from Xandros, it still doesen’t ahve the USB support for cameras, storage devices, etc. like Xandros. Xandros handles all those beautifully exactly like XP and it also automatically configured windows netowrk anda llows me to sahre files ina n instant etc.
Yes, the new theme is pretty good.
I too hope that KDE also has the same theme.
However, Mandrake should work on their menus on KDE.
it seems all teh distributions except Redhat 8.1 really don’t have their menus setup too well.
amndrake also needs to upgrade some fo tehir icons like the mouse one for example in thecontrol center.
Never knew it was possible to make so many spelling errors in one post.
Oh well, hoepfully you guys like the game Scramble.
The font rendering looks much better than 9.0 Mandrake on Gnome. 9.0 had bad Gnome font rendring on my CRT display. I’m buying the 9.1 DVD (or maybe SuSE if they have Wine and kylix2 fixed).
The theme is nice, imho.
I don’t like the too round buttons and the button sizes (especially with icon inside) seems strange too.
anyone knows whether/where one can get this theme?
anyone knows whether/where one can get this theme for free (gpl would be best)?
just woke up, sorry =)
For the theme, there is also a KDE style Galaxy theme and a Kwin Galaxy theme.
I am on Mandrake Cooker now so I get them
I urge anyone who has any trouble/gripes w/ Mandrake 9.1 RC1 to post a bug report, just like the article says (-:
Oh and Galaxy is a great looking theme… I just hope they get the KDE version up and running in time.
1)1GB installation is quite big for a server. Our Mandrake 9.0 production file-server/domain-cnotroller/ldap-server/backup-server with drakxtools, and even a minimal (read twm as wm) X is under 500MB (/, /usr and system files in /var).
2)Apache modules
There are apparently about 80-90 apache2 modules available, I know someone who would be very upset at you calling that “number of modules and add-ons”
3)SWAT and Samba
This is something I would like to see disappear from the distro, since it destroys the really good default smb.conf file. There are also better solutions, such as ksambaplugin (in contrib), or the use of Webmin (which at least uses SSL, SWAT is cleartext!, and does not destroy comments). One feature that I have seen no reviewer comment on is Mandrake’s support for windows domains (currently only available during installation). Using it allows you to login on first boot to any service (be it X, openssh, an IMAP server etc) using your Windows Domain Account. You can also enable the feature to allow either all users, or only those in a specific group to be able to share any directory in their home directory via samba (without them needing root permissions). For shares outside your home, you would to have root access, and use something like ksambaplugin.
4)USB devices
Someone commented that Xandros does this better, but I would like to know how much better, since I just had to double-click an icon that appeared on the destkop to access files on my USB flash disk. USB printers are trivial to setup with printerdrake, and the only irritation with some USB scanners is that they need a firmware image (which you must copy from the driver CD).
Anyway, thanks for the review!
the article displays poorly in Opera.. not everybody uses netscape/IE for browsing
“3)SWAT and Samba”
Ok this is where I disagree with you. SWAT is a very nice and easy to use tool for a newbie or someone who does not care that much to become an “expert” on Samba. It has very nice help links sprinkled around it. I’ve had this argument w/ someone on IRC a few time and I say if you know enough to know about this “flaw” and care as a result, don’t run the thing. However if you are a newbie, SWAT is much better than any other frontend.
the article displays poorly in Opera.. not everybody uses netscape/IE for browsing
I’ve fixed the problem. Sorry about that 🙂
You´re welcome! And I should say thanks to Ladislav for taking my poor HTML and turning it into a presentable article.
What I tried to do with this article is give the readers a sense that they can buy a single boxed copy of Mandrake Linux 9.1 (I mean, when it becomes available) and install it on different kinds of computers. Compare that to commercial OSs that would have you buying one license per machine and I think the cost advantage of Mandrake Linux becomes obvious.
The other idea was to show a little bit of Galaxy under GNOME 2.2, since some readers complained that I was a KDE-only guy – which I am not.
My humble opinion on the KDE vs. GNOME debate is that the developers should cooperate to develop the best GUI possible, since there are very good ideas in both GUIs.
Now I am waiting for RC2. Apparently there isn´t going to be an RC3, so perhaps I´ll have to write an article about a Cooker snapshot in mid-March.
Finally, I would like to instill some sense of responsibility on those that report bugs to MandrakeSoft. I guess there are good bug reports and bad bug reports, and I am sure the developers at MandrakeSoft would prefer to only get the good ones. 8^P
But of course the main idea of the article is that people would enjoy taking a look at it and find at least some of the information useful.
The author states, “Luckily, the internal v.90 LT Winmodem is supported by a proprietary driver which works perfectly well when I need it.” Does anyone know where I could get this driver?
here: http://www.heby.de/ltmodem
“I am practically giving up on Mozilla and OpenOffice in this notebook. BTW this is not a Mandrake issue. Quite simply, OpenOffice Writer takes at least 30 seconds to get started…”
Thats it?? I just timed the OO writer startup on my machine (Athlon XP 1600+ 256MB) and it took 21 seconds.. What kind of magic are you working to get it to start up in 30 seconds on a 300mhz??
Well Xandros will work with any USB device windwos work practically. Every camera I tried worked whether compact flash, secure digital etc. It works the same way as in Windows.
I would imagine that this is thanks to gphoto and not xandros.
See:
http://www.teaser.fr/~hfiguiere/linux/digicam.html
and
http://gphoto.sourceforge.net/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
I dont have anything against xandros, but i dont think they should get credit for other peoples work.
Thats it?? I just timed the OO writer startup on my machine (Athlon XP 1600+ 256MB) and it took 21 seconds.. What kind of magic are you working to get it to start up in 30 seconds on a 300mhz??
Stop exaggerating, it only takes 8 seconds to load; my spec is simillar to yours.
IT is not anything with Gphoto, in fact it works with many cameras not supported yb Gphoto. LIKE I SAID it is like in XP, no drivers required. I don’t need to select what camera I ahve or anything and it shows it as a removable disk. It also works with far more than just cameras.
mario , food for thought, to access my olympus, I just doubletap the “Camera” icons on my desktop or go to the “Camera” folder (in nautilus) and presto, all access granted thanks to gphoto..
I almost forgot, it sounds like someone has found the wonders of the usb mass storage ;D and automated it with supermount.. no magick there ;D
I’ve been looking for a distro with good hardware support for my laptop. I’ve also been wanting a well-integrated and user-friendly one. I tried Lycoris, but it failed to set up PCMCIA, the built-in wireless card, irda, and the FireWire port properly. Red Hat did better, but still choked on the FireWire and had some difficulties with the wireless. This build of Mandrake, however, autodetect everything and I had it working within seconds. I’ll definitely be running the final version when it’s out!
I know this is weird, but you will find that your OpenOffice.org menu fonts look just fine if you (get this) go tools > options > view and adjust the scaling to 109%. Hey, where’s the setting to scale my monitor by 109%? All my fonts would look great then!
it seems all teh distributions except Redhat 8.1 really don’t have their menus setup too well.
It all seems to be a matter of opinion. I happen to think the opposite, that the Red Hat menus are bad and the Debian style Mandrake menus are excellent. It goes to why we choose our distros.
You can use oooqs to quickstart OpenOffice. For me with oooqs : <1 second (Athlon 2000+)
http://segfaultskde.berlios.de/index.php?content=oooqs
Mandrake 9.1 comes with the rpm (do urpmi oooqs, you need the “contrib sources”). Maybe they will activate it in final ?
Thanks for the tip, I am going to test and add a note in my next article. 🙂
Andrew
most camras that are smart use standard usb mass storage calls to handle i/o:)
what i have seen of the lastest red hat (as in the latest released rh, not the beta) the menus where a mess, i found config tools in 3-4 diffrent locations!
did you notice if urpmi ejected the cd if the cd it waslooking for was the one that was allready in? happend to me in 9.0. and allso, does it have a absurdly long seektime ot chekc if there is no cd inside or just a read error?
im looking forward to this one, most of the time a .1 fixes most of the problems in a .0:) now if i could jsut figure out why they make gnome look like mac osx (the stuff with plaing the menu up on top) and ill be all set. btw, windowmaker have a bad habbit for me to turn all green, could be that i access x across a lan but i dout it…