This is an editorial by Brad Chamberlin on how he sees Mandrake Linux’s 9.1 usability. Before starting bashing the author [please keep it civilized, everyone has an opinion anyway], take note that he is a Mandrake user for many years, but he is sensitive on UI and usability issues. This user likes a clean, logical and well-thoughout experience and he simply outlines the unpolishness and incosistency that a user finds on any Linux distribution today, not just on Mandrake.
Why Mandrake 9.1 Makes Me Laugh
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
OK, another article on GUI imperfections. Boring. Just file a bug report and get past it. I’m much more concerned about having a few, good applications that work. If having inconsistent cases is the most striking negative aspect of a free operating system, well, I can deal. Is there any in-depth reviews written yet? I am very happy with 9.1, and I can finally create audio and data CDs without any problems. That was the last hurdle for me.
> Just file a bug report and get past it.
Sorry, but that wouldn’t work when a company is filled with geek programmers who do not see it as a problem, they get the attitude of “if it works on one way or another, it’s good enough” and then they file that report as “will not fix” or “feature request” or something, and that is never getting fixed. It is the case on most development products.
I was under the impression that mandrake adressed a uniform aproach to usability much like the efforts of redhat and sun’s dabbling with the gnome ui.
This however Is something they should fix and that is, focus on it the coming weeks, submit an upgrade, you can’t have a professional distribution aimed for “mighty joe schmoe’s” looking remotely like this, it’s all the little things that count.
and I had an epiphany the other day whilst looking over a variety of Os’s , actually i am doing an usability studie atm And to my astonishment it seems asthough WinXP when probing for modems also checks the sort of service it connects to, in this case the swedish telecom company “Telia’s” modempool, upon discovery it receives from the service provider the phonenumber of the corresponding connection and then fires up internetexplorer and connects to a onetime only “click on the “I Agree” button if you want to use this as your permanent connection to the internet”
this approach requires a minimum of interaction from mr.Schmoe.
This is the sort of small things that need to be adressed and come on people let’s get knacking.
oh and btw, I was under the impression mandrake used the anaconda setup engine from redhat can anyone elaborate on that?
>oh and btw, I was under the impression mandrake used the anaconda setup engine from redhat can anyone elaborate on that?
No, it doesn’t use Anaconda. And in fact, for 9.1 they have revamped their installation.
i dont agree with that user, but that is his opinion and i respect it. mdk 9.0 sucked IMHO. mdk 9.1 made up for mdk 9.0’s mistakes. I am going to buy mandrake 9.1 instead of SuSE, which btw i’ve been buying all professional versions since version 6.4.
D3M0N
I’ve never used Mandrake-only Red Hat- but it was very pleasing to see how beautiful some of the Mandrake apps look (at least from the screenshots). The pictures in this review make me wanna try mandrake.
(I wasn’t in the mood for cynicism, so I didn’t read the words in the article.)
that seems somewhat retarded, is not anaconda quite a robust tool?
Some of the best overstatements and misuses of all too strong words:
“Another thing that really annoys me is Mandrakes default bookmarks.”
“Open/Save dialogs they are by default about as small as they can get? … Not only is this a nuisance but it looks stupid and very unprofessional!”
“Notice the placement of the “Wizard” button and the text label saying “Click here to launch the wizard ->”
“None of the text boxes or labels are lined up, it looks chaotic and unclean.”
“No proper capitalization and underscores between words, what a joke.”
“Notice the tooltip shown in the third screenshot above, what is all that garbage?”
“The problem here is that it was not ported to Gtk2 like the rest of the DrakTools. It makes it look out of place with the rest of the DrakTools and adds a level of inconsistency.”
…
Things have really gone FAR when most of the complaints are on this level. 🙂
not only geek programmers…but arrogant geek programmers….I asked for help on something before the days of all the clubs and stuff they have and I got a very terse response from the programmer because I had the nerve to make a suggestion on how he could go about fixing the problem in a way that makes it better for the user.
yeah well, mandrake basicly beat redhat to the punch with GUI installers…the 2nd to get one, Caldera was the first.
mdk 7.0 which was the last great .0 version they ever made was great..not only did they have disk drake..a first for any linux…bu they had a good installer….but then it all went down hill from there becasue rather than feature freeze, tehy kept adding code and it got more and more and more buggy.
I have a saying…and this is not a troll even MDK fans will site this observation….every MDK install on your computer is diffrent…..some times it works…some times not…some times it remembers you have all the disks some times it does not…some times it loses your program choices, etc.
anaconda is nice, but mandrake just like all companies has the NIH syndrome.
UI glitches like these point to a lack of standards and non-programming software testers.
Anonymous (IP: —.pp.htv.fi): good point about small issues like these showing how far Linux has come, and that’s encouraging.
Debman: aren’t all geek programmers arrogant? 🙂
ah are you aware of any specifications in the wild concerning anaconda?
and “NIH” what does that stand for? “Nada In the Head”? ;-D
> Sorry, but that wouldn’t work when a company is filled with geek programmers who do not see it as a problem, they get the attitude of “if it works on one way or another, it’s good enough” and then they file that report as “will not fix” or “feature request” or something, and that is never getting fixed. It is the case on most development products.
Not true. KDE and GNOME have both really reconsidered their stance on UI issues, and place having a consistent, usable desktop on the same level of importance as having a functional desktop. File a bug, post to a ml, or email a specific maintainer. They will respond.
You say that KDE and GNOME are not “ready” for widespread use and have serious usability problems, and I agree. But to say that they refuse to improve/fix it because “programmers don’t care about ui issues” is honestly not true anymore. Look at what Havoc Pennington has done, for example. We will provide a desktop you’re happy with. Trust me. It’s getting there.
>But to say that they refuse to improve/fix it because “programmers don’t care about ui issues” is honestly not true anymore
I am talking about Mandrake programmers, not KDE programmers. In fact, I find the Gnome devs more sensitive to paying attention to their HIG than any other “team”.
>Look at what Havoc Pennington has done, for example
I know what Havoc has done. But Havoc is the leader in the desktop team at Red Hat. It’s his job to do all that. In fact, BECAUSE Red Hat has a person like Havoc on board, I could say that they are the most “sensitive” company in UI issues than any other out there.
SuSE does have a great usability engineer too, Waldo Bastian.
But Mandrake has none, in my knowledge.
BTW, are you greek?
NIH = Not Invented Here
I just couldn’t get into this article. It was all about his personal likes and dislikes about how 9.1 is arranged, not about how well it performed. Fine, so he doesn’t like this and that…that’s all up to him, and I wish him the best of luck. But if this is the worst he could come up with, then I think Mdk is doing a damn fine job.
Well, maybe this article was only about how Mdk looks and behaves, not how well it was performing. Usability is a valid reason to write a review for. It doesn’t have to always be about a generic review of the OS, we had quite a lot of these reviews already. Personally, I believe that Brad’s review was dead on, regarding the specific issues he described.
Having used Mandrake 9.1 since the day it came out, I can say that this article over the top. Bamboo certainly lacks some polish and consistency — as do all Linux distributions, including Red Hat. Comparing to Windows XP and OS X is only fair when you are talking long term – no Linux company has the resources, time, or unilateral direction to make the strides that powerhouses Microsoft and Apple can, and every Linux user should accept that. Saying the distribution sucks for the reasons he did is like saying telescopes suck because you can’t see grains of sand on Mars. We’re just not there yet.
I applaud Mandrakesoft and RH on their work of late. Perhaps SuSE will make a similar jump in quality with one of their upcoming releases. I’m not above criticism, but I certainly think that if Open/Save dialogs being too small is one of your chief complaints, you need to rethink your words before you make your view so obnoxiously public.
That said, some of what the author said does have merit. My advice to the author would be: Use bugzilla. And for God’s sake, be patient, guy.
From the other side of the fence — Many programmers see many of the users that complain about their programs as abrasive and ungrateful. You see, there are irritating people on both sides of the equation. I’ve seen many RTFM comments on mailing-lists or forums, and at the same time, I’ve seen many clueless rants on this site and others. If you are truely concerned about UI issues, you have to know where to go. In my experience, most of the programmers on these projects are extremely responsive and helpful. But you have to approach them in a certain way. Thus, here are some tips:
1) The Prime Directive — Open Source, by and large, is not commercial. They are not selling their products, and you did not pay for them. The driving force behind most Open Source products is to create a program that is useful to the creators, and other users. The goal, usually, is not to take over the world, make it into the home-user’s desktop, or to beat some other commercial program. The mentality of the OSS community is very different from the mentality of the commercial world. At the root of every other statement I’m going to make is this one driving principle.
2) Courtesy matters. I don’t care how important you think your statement is. There is no excuse for being impolite. We are not talking about earth-changing matters here; we’re talking about software. There is nothing to get excited over. People will not want to do things for you if they don’t like you. They will not like you if you call them names or insult their project.
3) Comparisons don’t help. Most of the time, people don’t care about anything more than making their project better. Thus, arguements like “X does Y, so we should do Y as well” don’t go very far. Either prove the necessity of a particular feature on its own merits, or don’t bring it up at all. You’ll see this most often on technical mailing lists or on Usenet. People will come on comp.lang.c++ and be like “Java does this, so C++ should too!” or “If C++ doesn’t do this, it will never keep up with Java and C# for this market!”
4) Developers would rather help their users than random people. If you are an existing user of a program, and would like to see a feature implemented, or are looking into using a program but can’t because of a key issue, then your request will carry a lot more weight than if you’re a random person who says “Put in these feature or else I won’t use your software!” Further, if you are involved with the software (you file proper bug-reports, communicate on the forums, etc) you’ll find it much easier to get your voice heard. Related to this is the idea of helping people who care about the community. If you don’t care, at least a little bit, about the OSS movement and the principles behind it, there is no reason for you to use OSS software. Developers have very little motivation to help people who are in it just for the free software.
5) Don’t suggest the impossible. Linux software is never going to consolidate. It’s just not going to happen. There is no way to force free programmers to follow a particular party line. If tomorrow, GNOME and KDE decide to merge into one project, somebody else will probably *start* a project, just to maintain competition in the market. Harping on impossibilities will definately weaken any valid points you do happen to make.
6) Try to find out the people who are specifically responsible for a particular feature or area of a program. Both KDE and GNOME have a specific group of people whose job is usability. Sending them an e-mail is going to go a lot farther than sending one of the aRts guys an e-mail.
7) Playing to stereotypes don’t help. Statements like “programmers don’t care about users” or “programmers don’t understand interfaces” just set an internal flag that routes the rest of your message to /dev/null. The truth is, that most of these programmers use their own products “eat their own dog-food” so to speak. They care about users, because they *are* the users.
8) The tech community, is by and large, composed of intelligent people. They have no interest in users who don’t at least try to solve their own problems. They don’t, for the most part, expect you to be able to break out a debugger and trace the exact source of a failure, but they’ll expect you to be able to follow simple instructions. More importantly, if your problem shows up in the first 20 hits of a simple Google Search, or was mentioned on the (searchable!) project mailing lists, then you deserve to be flamed. Again, you’re not paying these people for tech support. If you’re time is too important to spend 5 minutes (that’s all it takes!) to research a problem, then their time is too important to help you. I have gotten excellent help from the forums and mailing lists I’ve visited. Much better help than the usual tech support drivel that I have to wait 1 hour on hold to hear. If you’re the type of self-important user that has no patience for these things, than a $300-an-hour Microsoft support contract is probably more suitable for you.
9) Know where to look. Slashdot, for example, is not the best place to find people courteous to newbies. Many forums, on the other hand, are. forums.gentoo.org is a wonderful place for Gentoo newbies. There is an excellent article on ZDnet http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2338657-1,00.h…
about good places to look. Beyond that, http://www.linux.org has many sources of information.
None of this is to say that you should not criticize Linux software. OSS developers are generally interested in making their software useful for many people. Especially when we are talking about one of the commercial distributions (where you probably did pay them money) you have much more bargaining power. But in the end, nobody in the OSS world is in it entirely for the money. Even big companies like IBM are taking something of a risk by supporting the community. Because of that, you have to be careful how you approach the situation, that is all. The OSS world is a *community* and it depends on people acting like members of a community. The traditional corporation/consumer relationship really is really out of place here.
Disclaimer: I am not an OSS developer, merely a long-time user. I do not speak for OSS developers. All of the above points are completely colored by my own viewpoints and experiences. The only basis for these statements is what I have seen in a long time of lurking on various mailing lists and forums.
I have to agree with everything you say, Ive observed the same things.
Over thing that you have to look at check for example xfree86 and the forking issue. At the end of the day xfree86 was stuck in a rut by what could be said as “arrogant” bods. and The result is a fork.
Check kde-look.org for example check out because of this site not just people sitting down and bitching but actually causing great improvements. Out of this site has emerged so much gui enhacements to kde. The graphics artists meets linux. On top of which check them. They started a little thing about asking for improvements for the kicker someone came out with an excellent design and low and behold developers looked at it and thought hold on good idea. and slicker was born (slicker.sourceforge.net) its only pre alpha but u can see the directions things are heading. Then check on that site karamba samurize clone for kde. So much good coming out of constructive criticism. Instead of a blanket statement.
Just look at this for how far the guis in kde and gnome have evolved at one time kde tried to look like a mac/windows sort of interface (the very early days) look at it now. Windows xp is littered with ideas from gnome(nautilus) and kde. Thats not to say that kde hasnt borrowed ideas from windows or mac osx gui.
What does that tell you ?
As to arguements of rushing distributions out the door. Well its a two fold arguement generally within 6 months oss software has gone through a lot of changes. So you need pretty fast release cycles to be able to provide latest and greatest but this should not be done at expense of security or stability. As for polish yeah its nice i can see that as a valid arguement for modern commercial distros. I use debian for specific reason i hate stupid wizarss and i like to know whats going on so if i have a problem i can easily fix it. A gui really doesnt tell u what its doing in the background. Ill give u an example have any of you ever played with ms exhange server ? do u really know why sometimes it doesnt send etrn requests even when configuration hasnt changed at all for a month and all of a sudden it changes behaviour ? thats the problem with gui interfaces it can make things easier. but it also puts users into lazy mode. Point and click is a solution but not necesarrily the best solution.
One other thing many users who are completely competent in getting things to work how they want in linux come up with arguements but joe six pack couldnt do it. But they certainly can do it. So at times them arguements irritate me. Cos it is generally bullshit. If you can do it does it mean that no one else can figure it out ? if u can figure it out generally most people can figure it out.
As for readniess for desktop. It is at the end of day how willing the user is to try something new without preconceptions it will never be ready for a user that requires x,y z that windows only offers and is not willing to understand why throwing “but i just do this in windows” as an arguement is a crap arguement. Thats what needs to really be understood are you willing to forget the windows way of doing things and open your mind to the linux way of doing things and if something is faulty or could be more intuative to make constructive criticism to the right place or bug reports explaining why u think so.
On the whole as to the guys comments ok some things were really petty but i can get at why he is making them hopefully mdk will pay attention to them.
And if they dont well they will lose out.
> BTW, are you greek?
No, there’s a long story to my online name, though.
Anyways, in light of the fact that we seem to agree that linux deskop is progressing to a more usable state, does it then really matter that Mandrake is behind in fixing these little quirks? If other distributions like SuSE do a noticably better job, Mandrake developers can be expected to follow suit.
It’s a good article, but I made the mistake of taking it as another “Linux ain’t ready for ‘prime time.'” ranticle, and I see it’s just an article about Mandrake’s issues (which is totally cool and needed).
Amen.
I have to agree with the problems and I can’t believe everyone doesn’t see them as problems.
How can you write an app and not take pride in the GUI? On an app designed for ease of use!
Either do it right, or don’t do it at all.
These issues are small to some, but it makes Linux look as bad as crashes and insecurity made Windows 9x. To users, the GUI matters above just about all other features.
The fact that bug reports were turned in and ignored makes Mandrake look really bad.
Mutiny
The problems u underlined are real, but still, i did post a couple of things on bugzilla, and although quite late they finally got fixed.
I posted them when ther was Mdk 8.1 and thy got fixed just now
Still, it’s a positive step.If only they didn’t reelase it so early.
Rayiner, of course, had some very good comments. But overall most of the reactions here have been of the “wow, this isn’t important” variety, and even his almost bordered into that realm. And that saddens me.
One case really hit home for me regarding the software industry. My roommate, with a few friends, wrote Macster, and eventually worked at Napster producing the official Mac client. There was a multiple-month lag between the last Macster and the first release of the official client, and from the surface, it didn’t look that different. Why’d it take so long? Because, as he said it, commercial software requires much more polish than freeware. And polish takes time.
From even a two-second perusal of the screenshots, let alone reading the full text of the article (which, sadly, it seems few people here did) it’s amazing how unpolished everything looks. The fonts look nice and the overall skin Mandrake is using is attractive, but there are some really, really amateurish things in there (Misaligned text elements? Poorly-laid-out help text? Alignment inconsistent within a single program?).
Adam perhaps said it best:
no Linux company has the resources, time, or unilateral direction to make the strides that powerhouses Microsoft and Apple can, and every Linux user should accept that
You know, if all Linux users had the approach of “Hey, it’s free and we think it’s good. Try it and see if you like it,” I don’t think most people would complain. But the message you hear pounded in over and over and over again is “Windoze sucks! Linux rulez! Only idiots wouldn’t use Linux! It’s ready for the desktop and we’re taking M$ down!!!” Sure, not everyone in the community is like that, but there are enough that I can’t imagine anyone reading computing websites doesn’t encounter them almost daily. And then you try it and find problems, and then voice them, you get “What the hell did you expect, you moron?!? They’re working for free!!!”
Little complaints or not (“not” in my opinion, but to each his own), by and large Apple and Microsoft have released products that do not suffer from these problems. So don’t tell me it’s “just as good” when it clearly isn’t. It’s like having grammatical and spelling errors in your writing; sure, it doesn’t technically affect the content, but it sure makes you look like you either don’t know better or simply don’t care. And if you don’t care enough to get the details right, it makes me suspect that you haven’t gotten the deeper issues right, either. These aren’t “minor typo”-type issues that he’s pointing out; they’re pretty dramatic oversights.
Again, it’s not Mandrake’s fault that some of their fans are overzealous. But I have to wonder where all these people saying these are minor details and don’t really matter would really go out and buy, say, a stereo that just looked ugly in your living room. After all, the functionality is there, and that’s all that matters, right? Sure, it’s clear that Linux distributions have made a lot of progress. But stop overlooking the faults for the sake of “my side is better”-ism; that’s the best way to ensure that improvements will not be made.
No, reporting bugs to the Mandrake devteam didn’t work for me; I’ve filed 2 accurate bug report on the Mandrake Bugzilla at the time of RC1, just to find them (the bugs, I mean) alive & kicking in the final release.
Next time I’ll avoid wasting my time on such an activity.
Moreover:
– they removed the ‘profiles’ from DrakConnect (network configuration wizard/panel); they were the most valid reason for using Mandrake – instead of RedHat, ARK or whatever else – on my laptop, which I need to use in many different environments on a regular basis.
– speaking of which, DrakConnect 9.1 *doesn’t work at all* on my laptop (even though it did up to RC2). It’s not able to even report my network config, and it silently crashes whatever I try to do with it. No errors, no symptoms, it plain crashes.
Please note I’m using Mandrake since release 8.0, on 3 different PC’s (one of which is my aging laptop).
In my opinion they badly needed a RC3 before releasing 9.1; it’s unbelievable how they could have missed so many first-class bugs.
I wish Mandrake the best luck, but for god’s sake they should care more about what they release, and possibly listen to the users. er, customers.
FANTASTIC comment BKakes, as always.
The profiles are still there, it is called net_monitoring (or something like that) but only accessible through command line. And does Drakconnect crash after a fresh install ? Because some config files between RC2 and final have changed and made it crash.
BTW, a lot of updates have appeared on the 12th April. Among them, important pieces like urpmi or these drakxtools.
I recommend people running mandrake 9.1 to update asap.
At least Mandrake gives away new updates and corrections continuously. I think this is a very good thing.
the world is not perfect, so stop waste time compiling kernels and do something useful
you can’t modify cell phones, practically; that doesn’t prevent people enjoy them, especially in Europe, Asia where there is less competition in terms of standards.
stop trying to convert a police radio to a sleek mobile phon
I tried MDK 9.1 last night, and I think I like it more than RedHat. It is more targeted on my desktop needs. But I have problems with their installer, and I have to install it over text mode, and when I test my display setting when installing, it just crashes.
But it works fine after installation. Obviously it is not a perfect OS yet, nor does it catch up with Win/OSX in terms of ease of use. But at least I can spend less time on text mode now, then before.
“Either do it right, or don’t do it at all. ”
And how do you get to this state? I know no programmer who did it right from the beginning. Where are those masterminds?
Please show some respect.
Calling programmers geeks is stupid. These ‘geeks’ brought you a FREE os !
It’s so easy to focus on some mistakes, nothing is perfect.
The programmers are hard working people, you focus on 1% of their work. Like bookmarks???
You make ME laugh – show some respect man!
Amen….
mandrake 9.1 with Gnome as a gui is the only distro that i found really easy to use.
There are some bugs and a lot of imperfections here and there but it is much more usable and “ready to go” than the other mainstream distros.
I have to say that the concept of this article, focussing purely on the negatives has a lot of potential. It allows the main cons of a distro to be weeded out. However, I don’t think that little details as to how wording used eg. “CDROM-/mnt/cdrom” instead of “CDROM” is really very constructive. THE USER CAN CHANGE THESE FOR GOD SAKE!
Oh great, any Mr Hypthetical coming out of the woods claiming that he has been the victim of a conspiracy against them. Here is a hint sunshine, next time you do want to moan like a sheila, how about informed the unwashed masses here what your question was EXACTLY and what forum/newsgroup/chat room you used then we might actually get some accurate information. I’ll promise you that if I went to the “chat room” or what ever he went to there will be 10 people saying that they tried to help him but all he did was bitch and whindge about how it is “easier on Windows” and how Linux sucks.
The issue I think is that with closed software, the vendor never releases anything until the product is polished and perfect (well, usually
). Open source software aims to get there as well, it just releases “early and often,” so you can see the development along the way. Linux on the desktop is a work in progress, almost all of the functionality is there, we just need more usability.
Perhaps developers and more “hardcore” users get satisfied with builds “along the way” and don’t mind the little issues, since they’ve been using the codebase for a while. A lot of Linux users defend the “linux isn’t ready” claim by saying “I use everything fine.” Open source developers need to get better about realizing that a killer app isn’t just a binary or shared libs. It’s the code+documentation+polished interface.
IMO release maintainers and developers need to be much more careful with what they call “stable” or “1.0.”
Give us a year…:)
“In 9.0 Mandrake had an icon on the desktop called “Removable Media” which is now absent. In 9.1 the icons for the individual media are back on the desktop. I really don’t have a problem with that, in fact I think it is better than the single “Removable Media” icon. My problem is with the label of the icons. What end-user (especially in the consumer market) cares if the CD-ROM is mounted under ‘/mnt/cdrom’? It is also misleading. These devices aren’t actually mounted yet, there is nothing in the drives?”
Why are “removable media” still being treated as something special? ALL media are removable. There is no difference between a floppy and a hard drive in a caddy, or a drive partition on another machine in a network, or a USB camera.
They can all appear and disappear at any moment. The icon with the name of the disk or partition should appear when the storage device is connected and disappear as soon as it goes.
The only fixed storage is the ROM on the motherboard.
Severity: Blocker
Problem: Sloppy GUI, bloated programs (gratuitous examples include OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, KDE, Galeon, GNOME, Konqueror, Nautilus) cause performance issues. Lack of standards, consistency, features complicate the matter. Poor versioning support requires multiple redundancies in critical libraries, effectively nullifying any expected gain from shared libraries; poorly designed device namespace results in inconsistent naming, and therefore constantly changing expected mounted locations, of removable devices. Xfree exacts high latency charges in return for unnecessary network transparency; desktop GUI performance expectations are not met. Legacy file system layouts are not set; crucial system files remain scattered throughout entire installation, and locations vary between distributions
Proposed solution: migrate developer resources to OpenBeOS, or develop Windows 2000 clone.
Severity: blocker
Problem: persistent belief in innate superiority of UNIX clone OS for desktop use.
Workaround: Exposure to BeOS, fresh air, female companionship; indoctrination in normal hygeinic procedures (eg. bathing, flossing, regular laundry cleaning), acceptable etiquette in the company of other people, and firm instruction in the arts of social interaction.
amen.
I just wanted to say that
The author’s article is in order, some of the mistakes in Mandrake 9.1 are completely inexcusable and just the product of sheer carelessness and inattention to detail. The author had done Mandrake a huge favour by writing this. Hopefully, they will finally take note -something that isn’t happening when you file into bugzilla.
The good news is that most of the problems are just little details. Nothing major, and nothing that will take too much effort to fix. Overall, Mandrake 9.1 is a good stride forward. In fact, I’ve never liked or used Mandrake for more than 1 day, this is the first distribution that I’ve ever liked, and its my main desktop now. They are definitely on the right track. Now, if only they will sit down and fix the details!
Perhaps it was 5 years ago, it lost it’s place at the top a LONG time ago.
It sounds the like extreme mediocrity and onion-skinned egos seem to be what I’m getting here.
Taking the easy way out when taking flak seems a bit too common. Petty things are for the simple-minded, though.
> …some config files between RC2 and final have
> changed and made it crash.
Now if *that* doesn’t make you howl in pain, I don’t know what does. Sanity checks during an update? Versioning strings? Error handling? No, the stuff just crashes…
> The programmers are hard working people, you focus
> on 1% of their work.
The GUI is what you are working with every day, it’s the part you *interact* with. It might be just 1% of the work, but it’s certainly much more than 1% of what makes the experience.
> I don’t think that little details as to how wording
> used eg. “CDROM-/mnt/cdrom” instead of “CDROM” is
> really very constructive. THE USER CAN CHANGE THESE
> FOR GOD SAKE!
So while he’s using something for productivity, he has to step aside, note down the part that annoys, then come back later (or interrupt his work) to find out how he can fix it?
And then he has to do it again after the next install / update…
User interface design *is* about little details. Like the absence of a “new drawer” functionality in the Mozilla file requester (SuSE 8.1). Hell, what a minor thing, but it got in my way three times in a quarter of an hour. Such stuff might be minor in the eyes of the developer – for the user, it’s a *major* nuisance.
And too many Linux advocates take such criticism as insults, nitpicking, not-so-important-as-the-next-geek-feature.
Some of his points are salient, from the point-of-view of a fairly new-ish Desktop user who wants to get to know his system, however terms like “[…]the level of incompetence” is going too far and unfortunately reduces the respect many (particularly at Mandy) would have for his gripes.
Mandrake, Red Hat, Lindows, etc. have come along way in the last couple of years. They have made great improvements for the desktop users. However, with that said I think its time to start polishing and refining the various distros. Time to foucus more on usability. For example it’s time to start implementing one default printing sub systems that don’t require the user know the path to the port or whether they want to use CUPS or LPD. From the users stand point who the heck cares as long as it works and it’s simple to use.
Y’know, I used to enjoy reading OSNews comments…because they often had insight, (reletively) intelligent debate, and some good things to say…
…but is it no longer possible to have a single freakin’ article without someone whining about how “XFree sucks” or “Use BeOS”?
I used BeOS. I liked BeOS.
BeOS is dead. None of the BeOS derivateives I’ve tinkered with are near as up-to-date with hardware support as Linux and BeOS (and their clones) can’t run MySQL…a RBDMS that I use for 90% of all my dynamic web design work. Get over it.
XFree is NOT a huge bottleneck. Network transparency is a GOOD THING. Have you perchance seen the “amazing new features” that Microsoft has started exploiting in XP?
They’re little not-quite-tablet-PCs that are running a REMOTE SESSION OF THE GUI OF THE DESKTOP PC…and their touting of Remote Desktop Sharing as the best thing since sliced bread for IT departments.
Guess what – this is NETWORK TRANSPARENCY of the GUI. Something XFree has been doing since its inception.
…and if you honestly can’t get over that, then help the nice folks over at PicoGUI to develop their XFree alternative.
I’m sorry…I don’t read Slashdot comments because of the trolls…and I’m (sadly) getting that way with OSNews…
Who on earth cares whatsoever you mean. Open mind that computing is just a small element in the real world, and become so tiny infront of an imagination world! Thanks
Open Mind = Close Blame!
I’ve been using Mandrake since version 6.5 and best version so far was 8.1. Then there was a dip in quality. Things like broken dependencies, or configuration not working propeperly. I don’t like to start services manually if I set them do start at boot time using Drakconf.
I didn’t try 9.1 yet, but I hoped it would be better than 9.0. From the article I expect that it will not be so. I begin to think about changing to another distribution. Can anybody give me any suggestions?
Hello Mandrake,
I would like to file a complaint about a free product that I downloaded for free and never spent a dime on even though I get quite extensive use of it. It works fine overall, but there are several teeny tiny fuckin issues that I just can’t seem to be “ok” with, so instead, I’ll post about how stupid little crap makes the whole product bad, despite the fact that your product is superior over all products like it. I guess if I do complain, it will generate controversy, and thus, traffic to my site, which was my original goal in the first place.
Yours Truly,
-Disgruntled Linux Critic
I was once a loyal mandrake user, buying their distros, starting with 7.0 – I started with mandrake because that was what my college was teaching. 8.0 was the best release I think they made. 8.1 was so buggy I couldn’t even save default routes by using the control panel. Any changes to the control center would cause a lock up for about 15 seconds, and then no feedback as to whether the change was made or not. I tried again with 8.2, and the same problems. Usability bugs – most seemed to be results of quick and sloppy programming. I finally made the move to redhat then. I had disliked redhat before (7.0 was my previous experience) but 7.3 was amazing. I went to Redhat 8, and I was very impressed.
Mandrake 9 came out, and I thought I would try it again – to see what happened. Nothing had changed. It was buggy yet again. Even my wife asked me to switch it back (to redhat). Redhat 9 is even greater, if you ask me. I don’t have the lockups that mandrake has. I do a lot of tweaking to get what I want it, but it is still more stable than Mandrake out of the box.
Why is Mandrake buggy? I think they push to quickly to get products out of the door for their cash flow problems. I know they have a reduced staff, but like previously mentioned, they need a code freeze. Stop all the adding on, and test it out the wazoo. If mandrake cleaned up the bugs – I might go back. But each release that has these bugs keeps making me think less and less about going back.
Just don’t add the whistles until the bells ring properly – that would be my advice.
I agree with the article – mandrake is full of little irritations and one of the reasons I stopped using it at ver 8.0. It’s just sloppy work, there is no excuse for it.
I would like to file a complaint about a free product that I downloaded for free and never spent a dime on even though I get quite extensive use of it. It works fine overall, but there are several teeny tiny fuckin issues that I just can’t seem to be “ok” with,…
Yeah.. I’d have been reallly pissed if I’d paid good money for mandrake 9.x. Free or not – just think how awful Mandrake Linux would be if no one did complain..
Mandrake is crap. the worst in this release is the bloody notification panel applet ends up in the middle of your damn screen instead of on the panel. IT’s horrible. and takes fifteen-twenty restarts of X to get it to work.. only to revert back again after your next reboot.
Redhat 9.. i’ve been running since it came out. I love it. It doesn’t crash. OpenGL works nicely.. I downloaded the nvidia script.. and bang.. RTCW in full opengl.. and smoothly.. (something mandrake could never do for me).
well, if you want to know, it was around the time of MDK 7.2 and was in reguards to konq…I can not recall exactly what it was about but it was a direct e-mail to the maintianer(which at the time was the customer support part…you send it to customer support and they forward it to the correct person in the company).
it was around 1999 IIRC. so I hope that answers your synical question
all the geeks I know are proud to be geeks..I know I am….perhaps it is an out growth of teasing and we (As in myself and the people I know) just decided that “yes, we are geeks and therte is nothing wrong with that” and of cource, after we decided that the teasing stoped…I think it comes down to accepting who you are and being comfortable with it.
are you confortable being a geek?
Debian. that is what I have for you…that or slackware. both give you a basic system and no crappy drake tools….you use what ever you liek to for the job…and no, it is not hard to install…if you have a cable connection, I suggest you download this:
http://people.debian.org/~blade/XFS-Install/download/
this is debian 3.0 and is set up to use XFS, also many modules are loaded by default and if you do not know what modules to load at set up, just try them all and the ones that can’t work it just tells you they can’t…..if you have a realtek LAN though be carful…make sure you know the correct module for that…I had been trying to load the one on the list and it loaded but it conflicted with the correct module that was preloaded….just watch out…of cource if you know what modules your computer needs then your set….unfortunaly a look at the mandrake kernel does nothing to help becasue 99% of the modules it loads are usless on the computer that has it installed becasue they want the maximum out of the box install ability.
so, basicly the mandrake hardware detection is just testing each and every module with a modprobe.
If you don’t like inconsistencies, don’t use a product that is rushed out.
BTW if you have used Mandrake for 5 years, why not upgrade to a real distro like slackware. [ducks behind wall]
I have to concur with this guy. His points are valid, and his argument seems to boil down to the fact that Mandrake SHOULD HAVE FIXED these problems prefinale. I’d have to concur. It really isn’t “idiot-proof” yet, and there should be more consistency in the release and within individual applications.
On the counter, no one who uses Linux is supposed to be completely clueless. There IS a HUGE LEARNING CURVE in Linux. Dumbing it up so much is difficult, because you lose a lot of the functionality that makes Linux what it is. So I while I think inconsistencies SHOULD BE FIXED, and while a drop-down is preferred over a text box, and GUI elements should be allowed, the author should decide what he’s attacking- the idiot-proof version of things, or the errors in the GUI.
And there it is, the Linux stereotype: “If you have trouble with distro X, try distro Y”. The author might have aimed at a special distro, but the problem is a deeper one. Linux made great improvements because of the advantages of GPL.
The day has come to show that Linux – not distro X or distro Y, but Linux as a whole – now can overcome the *disadvantages* of GPL.
Mandrake 9.1 does have a few quirks (I have my own list of “favorites”, some of which were in the article), but this release lets me do things easily that I can’t figure out how to do at all in a number of other releases (Red Hat, Knoppix, Vector and Peanut, for example).
The Mandrake Control Center is a marvel of simplicity and clarity compared to Red Hat’s “Start Here” assemblage of folders and stuff. I have been able to get my Conexant-based winmodem to work flawlessly with Mdk 9.1 (rebuilding using RPM per the instructions at http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/index.html), while Red Hat 9’s rpm utility doesn’t even recognize the –rebuild option!). Importing Windows fonts worked perfectly (how do you do that with Red Hat?). Etc etc etc…
Mandrake is the only release that I have tried (no, I haven’ tried Xandros 🙂 that does *everything* right on my machine – sound, video, modem, CD burner, fonts… Quirks in the UI? Sure – Windows XP sure has quirks in its UI, too. Every OS does. All the things Mandrake does well are overwhelming in the face of a few small layout quirks.
If critiquing a desktop Linux has come to this, then we have come a long way indeed, and that’s good!
I’ve used/bought Mandrake, SuSE and Redhat on and off. I was using RedHat 8.0 before the newly released/ udpated distros. I settled with Mandrake 9.1 over both Redhat 9 and Suse 8.2. I believe it offers the best desktop experience off the three mentioned. I would try it before bashing it, you might be pleasantly surprised. With that said, I think Redhat 9 and SuSE 8.2 are solid distros.
alfredo
sure it still needs work, but hey, it’s not like windows is perfect either, it has the most stupid usability flaws.
(btw, not allowing comments to be posted without a header is simply annoying, we’re already discussing a topic, no need to break it down to smaller subtopics, IMO).
“Red Hat 9’s rpm utility doesn’t even recognize the –rebuild option!”
Please on that one: RTFM. Redhat split rpm into “rpm” and “rpmbuild”. So it is now “rpmbuild –rebuild”.
“Quirks in the UI?”… “Every OS does”
Agree that every OS has quirks but at that level it really looks like unprofessional design.
My guess is Mandrake gave to a developper both the UI design, the coding and most likely the testing. The result is not pretty!
“Hello Mandrake,
I would like to file a complaint about a free product that I downloaded for free and never spent a dime on even though I get quite extensive use of it. It works fine overall, but there are several teeny tiny fuckin issues that I just can’t seem to be “ok” with, so instead, I’ll post about how stupid little crap makes the whole product bad, despite the fact that your product is superior over all products like it. I guess if I do complain, it will generate controversy, and thus, traffic to my site, which was my original goal in the first place.
Yours Truly,
-Disgruntled Linux Critic”
This is the naked truth. More than a dosen developers and people on freenode seem to agree with this. And something else: I remember paying for commercial software, especially for Win95, 98 and so on, which by the way lacked functionality, but not only that they lacked stability even on the best hardware…Since Win2000 with the latest patches things started to be well. WinXP was a good release, but they invested millions in it. Stop comparing *NIX clone with commercial OS. And comparing it to OS X its stupid because: Imagine I would have a company and I wanted to bring out lets say PowerX OS on top of the Linux kernel. Wouldn’t I invest in X server (or alternate) and desktop enviornment? Of course Linux is GPL and we all know the story, but it could be done same way as with OS X. No, there where times when commercial software sucked, and it still does. And the worst thing is you keep it because you payed…but linux you’ll remove with fdisk or cfdisk or what ever.
Cheers.
“while Red Hat 9’s rpm utility doesn’t even recognize the –rebuild option!). Importing Windows fonts worked perfectly (how do you do that with Red Hat?). Etc etc etc… ”
Yeah, rpmbuild –rebuild is what you want. Mandrake must be using an antiquated version.
“Importing Windows fonts worked perfectly (how do you do that with Red Hat?)”
As they do with RedHat. You just have to get the windows core fonts package and install it. (OR copy them from a Windows machine to ~/.fonts)
I’ve read a lot of “don’t complain, they are doing this for free” replies, but Mandrake is a commercial company. After all, they do sell commercial versions of the distro, and I doubt the tools are much better in the “full” versions.
After 9 versions of a commercial product, it’s not too much to ask that the results should look polished. I’m not expecting Mandrake to improve KDE/Gnome, but they should make sure that the configuration tools that they make looks good.
Yes, I’m happy being a geek. However, it irritates me when people typecast me into a certain mold. Yes, I love to program. But I also love history and literature. Geeks are as diverse as any other segment. People pretending that all geeks are somehow insensitive, newbie-hating elitists is what irritates me.
rpmbuild: Truthfully, I wasn’t aware of that, and it certainly is different from the instructions that came with the modem driver. Whether Mandrake is using an “antiquated” version of rpm or not, it’s what at least this user (and I bet a lot of others) is familiar with. But maybe now I can make my modem work w/ Red Hat.
fonts: Using the ~./fonts directory is fine. I tried it, actually, and it didn’t work for me. I’ll go back and try again.
RTFM? My only point is that with this release of Mandrake, I didn’t have to RTFM. Its UI (the original topic of this whole thread) may not be perfect, but it’s certainly good enough that I could figure out how to do what I wanted to do without a manual. And the rest of the release (audio, video, etc) just worked as expected, no tweaking needed.
If we want Windows users to start to use Linux, not having to RTFM is a Good Thing. To take this OS truly mainstream, in fact, it’s essential. Assuming that is the goal, Mandrake has, in my book, made real progress in this very area – despite a few buttons that maybe could have been moved a little to the left. 🙂
Also, fonts:/// in Nautilus should get you a fonts list, and you should be able to copy the fonts there.
I would also like to say that it is a matter of opinion whether or not a single control centre is better than having a folder where all the configuration tools are. I prefer the latter as in Redhat’s case. I think it also makes it easier to change tools later without having to update a control centre. could actually save programmer hours too.
rpmbuild –rebuild works the same in Mandrake as it does in Redhat! Next time you post you should get your facts straight!
Mandrake: RPM 4.0.4
ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/mandrake/9.1/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/…
RedHat: RPM 4.2
ftp://redhat.newaol.com/pub/redhat/linux/9/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/…
It appears my facts ARE straight. I never said rpmbuild –rebuild would not work in Mandrake. I said “Mandrake must be using an antiquated version.”, which as you can see is an accurate statement.
even though the internals of mdk 9.1 are better, slicker and more solid, etc etc … the following userland tools are WORSE than they were in 9.0 … and i am thinking iof moving back to 9.0 because i use them:
* xfce has broken fonts… no titlebar, no rootwin menu
i had to rebuild the srpm after all other attempts
failed (incl reinstall, new media, urmpi, change
video drivers) – we don’t all use kde, you know
* evolution has broken contacts lists and nickname
resoltuion – if you’re an emailer like most people
this will annoy the hell out of you
– or landyou in trouble as mail gets sent erroniously
to nickname@<you.smtpserver.com>
* galeon has less functionality than in mdk 9.0
– its true. the galeon 1.3.3 is from the unstable
branch (1.2.9 is stable) and things are simply
missing. eg. no clear completion history. no mime
/ application handlers prefs. so things that
worked before like “launch realplay when i click on
the BBC news website video links” don’t work anymore.
– and can i compile 1.2.9? hell can i? things are so
skewed (skewed, not screwed) that its not trivial
at all – and i’m not a beginner here.
so – thats 3 important funtions that are broken or retrograde… web browing, emailing, desktop-ping..
they shouldm’t ignore such vital function sjust to havethe latest… and if they do they should at least alow us to have an easy path to fix them … i understand that they might want to put “contains software x v12.3” on the box to compete… but…. its gotta work!
and conversely – they concentrate on all this GNOME and KDE stuff and leave xfce to rot… take another example… lyx has been released… and it was a stable release… ad they didbn’t include it … for no real reason other than it wasnt the focuss of theiur latest and greatest kde/gnome/gtk2 bloat. and people use lyx for real work.
to summarise my less than coherent post: make sure the vitals like email, web, work, are your first priority… THEN go onto your fancy kde/gnome/gtk2 funky stuff!
a travesty!
As of 9:00 AM EDT 4/17/03, the article link returns a 404 error. Too bad; I was interested in reading it…
Looks like http://www.freewarecds.com will have a linux blow out this weekend (april 19, 20). All linux cds they carry will sell for 1 cents each, including latest Redhat 9, mandrake 9.1 and all major distros. I don’t know how they do it, by I already bought 5 from them. I bought from them before, and had good experience with them. If you are in the east coast, you’ll probably get the cds within 2 days- which makes this deal even sweeter.
Who is this idiot? You’ll find someone in every crowd that just likes to nitpick everything apart? I’m sure you could find fault with anything if you looked hard enough and focused on nothing else.
I would like to see you do better. When you come out with your Linux distribution let me know so I can rip it to shreads with all of the problems that it will have.