And one more Mandrake Linux 9.1 review. This time is at LinuxOrbit.
And Yet Another Review of Mandrake Linux 9.1
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Please, this is an april fools joke right? Is this the 5th mandrake 9.x review posted here now?
Gimme a break.
I would have to agree – they’re getting a little old. I’d say pass on all other reviews, unless they’ve actually got something insightful to say.
Why get so excited about Mandrake or SuSE when you can simply us Debian. No Financial contraints. High quality and very stable…
Don’t let eugenia fool you, these are Mandrake ads.
BTW, like that linuxcult ad, very cute.
hmmm, i wonder…
It already is 1 April here, 8:30 in the morning. So I guess this link was a joke, and the review it points to too.
I love Debian Unstable. The name might sound very bad, but the packages itself are mostly stable versions, so Debian Unstable should not be more unstable than, say, SuSE 8.2. And this is *not* an 1 April joke. So I suggest OSNews to review every new version of Debian Unstable.
“Don’t let eugenia fool you, these are Mandrake ads.”
And JFK was shot by the Beatles and Gabby Hoffman.
I do have to agree, though, that enough is enough. We’ve read about the betas, we’ve read about the rc’s, and now we’ve read (many times) about the download edition…often from users who have compatibility problems with their hardware (which doesn’t help me at all, since 9.1 should be completely compatible with what I have). Just give us one or two reviews of each distro (Linux and otherwise) who are knowledgeable and can comment on the distro itself, not “oh, it didn’t find my networking card–damn (insert distro name here)!”
By the way, this is coming from a Mandrake user who is eagerly awaiting the shrinkwrapped version to hit the stores, so I am one of those who most wants to know what’s going on with Mandrake.
Hey! Has anybody here tried the new drivers posted on the nvidia site Version: 1.0-4349 dated march 31?
Can’t wait to try them on mandrake 9.1 when i get off.
1) K – Configuration – KDE – System – Login Manager
(or open KDE Control Center – System – Login Manager)
2) Administrator Mode – Type Root password – User (Tab) – Uncheck “root” ( Hidden Users) – Apply
new nvidia drivers work ok.
theres a new install script that is distro-agnostic, which is nice (and really easy to use too!)
You have to edit xf86config-4 manually though…
So far everything runs smooth, havent noticed any major speed difference, but Ive only got a geforce2mx400… I spent last evening playing some 3d game without any problems…
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=Mandrake+9.1
I just had to post this link
Sadly, I can’t get Mandrake 9.1 to install on my work machine – it just keeps bombing out during install.
When I do manage to get it to install, doing any kind of hardware scanning or attempting to get the sound card to work locks the box up.
You won’t find that in any reviews.
In contrast, my Home box works perfectly with Mandrake – I had it up and running in 25 minutes with the Nvidia drivers, which install perfectly.
I wish I knew how to fix my work machine issues – RedHat 8.0 installs fine on it.
yep, new nvidia drivers are working just great!!! now my 4 year old daughter is back playing tuxracer, and chromium.
)
I think the install decides to place lilo in the mbr first, and then later in the install it ask you where you would like to place it.
Why do I say this? Because my MBR was overwritten. I realised this on first reboot.
I launched it Mandrake, “WOW KDE3.1 is faster here than in my Gentoo install”.
I logout I get a console without X. “Gee I don’t remember specify this!!”
I type login name then password. Once hitting enter after password it goes to a login screen.
It is funny how from the login screen I can’t shutdown or reboot, it just doesn’t work. So I load Gnome instead, and do the usually logout but instead specify reboot.
This time it doesn’t boot I get the following,
L 99 99 99 99 99 99 forever down the page.
Also it didn’t ask me at all during installation to create a boot disk like redhat does. If with Redhat I specify to put GRUB on my “/” partition. Having a boot disk allows me to load redhat and do dd if=/dev/hda7 of=/bootsect.lnx …..
etc
Oh yeah fontdrake whatever it is called couldn’t install windows fonts and was had an unituative interface.
I was seriously impressed by it visually (Galaxy Theme) and its sheer speed on my 450 Mhz K6-2.
But I have always had things not work in software, so I always go back to redhat.
Hardware detection was great and sndconfig(again redhat technology) worked detecting my ISA sound card after a little pause.
So I am looking forward to my local computer magazine offering redhat9 CDs, because my stupid ISP Optus has a 3GB download cap for about 89 australian dollars.
Sorry just not happy.
“No Financial contraints” — I don’t understand this comment…
Mandrake allows (sinces ever) to configure wich system you want to boot by default.
So…if I get into a car and drive about 200 metres, Can I make a review of that car? “The car started fine, the steering wheel goes in circles, the wheels are behind the car…”
Please, make a decent review after making a decent testing of whatever you want talk about to us.
thanks
I have to agree with u. None of these ppl have posted reviews on MDK after using it for some time. They always post a review on installing on their box.Somebody has to write technical reviews. What is missing, what can be done, what are the limitations ,whats bad and whats good, how stable it is etc. but not these kind of I HAVE INSTALLED XXX VER X.Y ON MY BOX and this is it. thats bad. Some technically critical reviews we want to read.
Just to save anyone else this problem: I reinstalled mandrake 9.1 after removing some other things on my computer. I logged into gnome and notice everything was running MUCH slower than it had before. Clicking on gnome terminal took about 8 seconds to launch, mozilla took at least 10. (celeron 1.2 ghz oc to 1440 btw). I wasted too much time trying to figure this out, even reinstalled again and changed filesystems. Turns out I had just forgot to add my hostname in /etc/hosts along with localhost for the loopback address 127.0.0.1. After doing this an logging back in, all was well. Odd how that works, certainly something you would think should be set in the install.
And a question: Can anyone tell me their preference between reiserfs and xfs and the pros and cons?
Oops, I left out an important part. I was logging into KDE and it was terribly slow, then when I logged into gnome (after a reinstall) to check if it too was slow, I got that error message about the hostname and that’s what reminded me to edit /etc/hosts.
I think something is taking a lot of processor time for some reason.
Doing the things you mentioned would take longer.
I am not certain what it is, as I can’t log into Mandrake because of a kernel exception or something.
I installed 9.1 with no problems.
I configured my Ethernet etc… every thing worked…
I had 1 Problem with my Sound Cards
My SB Live! didn’y want to play enything…
so i had to edit /etc/modules.conf and delete some lines
1 reboot, every thing worked [but Mandrake added back those deleted lines thou, but everything worked fine and dandy]
I configured some service loads
added some, deleted some…
installed latest nvidia drivers
just had to recompile it to get AGP – 4x working
EVERY THING WORKS!!!
my system Boots in 30-35 Sec!!!
KDE is fast as Hell
2 bad KDE is 3.1(.0) not KDE 3.1.1
[PS: Waiting 4 an update!!!]
[Pss: when KDE 3.2 will be out ? ]
My System:
AMD Thunderbird 800Mhz[!]
384 SDRAM
20 GB HDD
Creative Live!
Via KT 133 Mother Board with AC 97 sound…
Finally!! My Scanner is scanning Smthng =]
RealTek 8029(AS) EtherNet Card
My vindoze eXpe loaded in 50 sec + [a min, 1,5 min sometimes]
I’m glad i installed Mandrake 9.1
I’m now a vindoze Free Man
I’m going to Order Mandrake 9.1 retail now…
And/or become a Mandrake Club Member…
Mandrake 9.1 Download edition WORKS WITH WINE!!!
Its in the 2nd and 3d cd
search 4
libwine
wine
wine-tools
Happy winening u Alcoholics
How in the hell did he get winex to work. I have the 2.2.1 rpm and I can not get it to work for the life of me.
All these reviews and non one has even mentioned the missing KDE screensavers? What could be more important than that? They’ve been missing in their last few releases.
I can’t run Linux without my slide show screensaver!
Anyone know how to add these to Mandrake?
Most screensavers are in the kdeartwork package, some maybe in kdemoreartwork. Mandrake’s KDE isn’t actually 3.1, either. It’s 3.1-and-a-bit, since it actually has quite a few patches from post-3.1 CVS. I don’t know why everyone’s getting so worked up about 3.1.1, anyway, it’s only a bugfix release, no Shiny New Stuff. If you REALLY want it, the RPMs just went into Cooker, but installing Cooker RPMs on a stable release is unsupported.
alan: your issue is a sort-of-known one that doesn’t affect everyone, I think it depends on your networking setup. The “proper” fix is a matter of some debate on the Cooker list… =)
Well…the more you try to configure your system, the more it will break. I’ve tried to use the lilo config editor from the KDE menu. Did a probe, my boot menu listing got shorter. OK, let’s reboot. Tadaaa…The system could not reboot anymore. I had to go into rescue mode to edit lilo.conf with the evil vi. After many reboots/fix sessions. I know have a broken distro that an update cannot fix. When the system loads the ACPI module, it reboots just after that.
I had many more issues, but this is pretty severe…
K3B is much better for desktopers than xcdroast, so that is a nice addition
I’m still puzzled since Eclipse runs much faster on xp than on Man9.1 using GTK. I expected the opposite
About Wine. It did not work before I played with WineX which made miracles. To slow to be usable on my machine, but it seemed to be pretty reliable.
I replaced a perfectly good RedHat 8.0 on my home machine with Mandrake 9.1 and while it works well, it just doesn’t feel as good or as solid as RedHat.
There’s something slightly unprofessional and ‘strung together’ about it when compared with RedHat 8.0 in day to day use.
I found the installer to be limited and irritating – I don’t know why all these so called ‘reviews’ are raving about the installer – I think it’s a step backwards for Mandrake.