I have been using Linux since 1993. I installed the first version of Slackware on a 16MB 386sx-25. Since then I have been using it almost exclusively on one or more of my PCs. So I consider myself as a bit of an expert. I have been using computers since 1982 mostly PCs, but also VAX mainframes and SPARC systems. Operating systems (and GUIs) I have been using include CP/M, DOS, Windows from Version 2 to XP, Geos, Beos, SCO Unix, Solaris, OS/2 and quite a few Linux Distros.
Computer Hardware
The review is based on this specification:
AMD Duron 1Ghz
320MB Ram
Primary Drive 40GB
Secondary Drive 6GB
ATI Radeon 7200 64MB
KV7MM Motherboard – Via 8233 Integrated Audio Via Rhine Integrated Ethernet
Avermedia TV Studio
Creative Webcam Go
Concord Eye-Q Digicam
Canon BJC1000 Printer
Installation Type
I did a custom install of Mandrake 10 on the above setup. I installed the root partition as a 15GB partition on the primary drive and /swap as 800MB on the secondary drive. I also installed /home on the remainder of the secondary drive.
/ is formatted as reiserfs
/home is formatted as ext2
The installation took 2.5GB and 16 minutes. The only hardware that was not detected was a Creative Webcam GO
Software Installed
I did a custom install first, installing both KDE and Gnome, Openoffice and Koffice. After the installation had finished, I ran Mandrake Update and picked the nearest repository to me and installed the rest of the software over the net. This included all the multimedia I use, Mplayer, Xine, Xmms, The Gimp and Tv-Time. I could have installed these from the installation disks, but I preferred to use the Internet update just to make sure I got the latest versions.
Daily Use
Mandrake included almost all the software I need on a daily basis. I use Mozilla for surfing, Kontact for E-mail, OpenOffice for writing. There are a few thing missing however. Xosview for example. I use this to keep an eye on the various resources that my machine is using at any time. Gkrellm is included and it does an excellent job of giving a quick idea on how things are running.
Kbiff is also not included. I use this to monitor all my mail boxes. There is also no software included for file sharing. GTK-Gnutella was found on the same repository as Xosview and Kbiff.
A quick browse on the net also found the main repository for Mandrake 10 development. It includes over 2000 packages in RPM format. Installing any of them worked like a treat as they were for Mandrake 10 rather than generic Mandrake. There was no dependency problems at all.
The default KDE theme looks extremely ugly to me, so a quick trip to http://www.kdelook.org soon sorted that out. I downloaded the Baghira theme and Window Decorations and now KDE looks very sweet indeed. Sort of Linux, sort of MacOS X cross. Best from both I think.
Mandrake 10 is extremely responsive on this computer. From reboot it is up and running in KDE in 23 seconds. Indexing files is a directory is extremely quick compared to all other versions of Mandrake. Although to be completely honest, I think that has more to do with reiserfs than the system itself. Mozilla and OpenOffice both take a few seconds to boot up, but once they are running, they are lightning fast.
Mandrake 10 is also really stable. I did have the KDE panel crash once when I installed some software and update the menu. It restarted without a problem though without restarting X.
I have installed Mandrake 10 onto a variety of machines since, both desktops and laptops, and none has shown any problems. I installed it onto a friends, (Windows Fanboy) computer. As the only system. I was expecting it to be removed within hours. That was 3 weeks ago, and he is still using it. He did have a few problems. He tried to install Limewire, and the install for this has to be done at the command line. He had not got a clue how to do this, and did not know it is case-sensitive. He picked up the command line very easily once this was pointed out… and also how to use the TAB key in the console 😉
He has two other computers running Windows XP. He asked for a copy of my Mandrake disks so he can install it onto the main computer. I do not know if he is a quick learner, or if it is because he knew that if he got stuck he could give me a shout.
Reviewer’s Opinion
What do I think overall of Mandrake 10 ? Hmmm, let me think…
I have installed every version of Mandrake released, and none has stayed on the PC for more than a few days. I never liked the system at all. I would always go back to Debian. Version 10 is different though. It will stay on this computer, and some day when I move all my user files from the Windows partition, it will be the only system there.
One thing that newbies often do when installing a new distro is to fromat the /home partition. If you have your preferred window manager set up the way you like things, then do not format /home. If you have used the standard themes and decorations to set the look, and have your desktop icons and menus set the way you like them, then they will carry over onto any upgrades you make, if you reistall the system.
The software that is included can sometimes be pretty much amazing, for example, Kstars, it is an astronomy program, however, it uses Linux localisations to set the town you are in. Any program on astronomy that I had tried in Windows, always wanted you to enter geographical location in azi and alt. Kstars worked it out for you. I am planning a camping trip in the next few weeks, so I typed in the town I was going to, the days I was going to be there, and printed out a map of the sky over 360 degrees. it had major and minor constellations, any planets that would be visible, and also deep space object.. Lovely!
K3B is also a wonderful program. It is even easier to use than Nero is in Windows. I have heard a few people who said that they would never stop using Windows because it has simple to use apps that are full of wizards, like Nero. I showed the K3B in action and their jaws hit the floor. One asked if he could try it out, so I left him at the PC for a minute, and he said K3B was far easier to use than Nero. My sentiments exactly. I went out for food and he stayed on the PC having a look around the system, when I returned he was playing with Screem and Quanta plus. These are both website designers, he thought they were the best designers he had used on any system, I could not argue or agree as I don’t use them that much, and have never tried them in Linux. He now dual boot between Windows and Linux.
For someone moving over from Windows, Mandrake 10 would be an ideal system out of the box. There are a few distros aimed specifically at these people, Linspire being the best of these with its “Click N Run” facility. However, it is a pretty limited distro once the initial learning curve has been passed. It is a bit too awkward to expect someone who just got used to CNR to move to apt-get.
Mandrake solves this with its Package Management menu, it has gui driven programs for finding, installing and removing software. Simple in execution, but very powerful in use.
Konqueror has carried on the “point and click” attitude, and double clicking on any files will open up the associated program. This is pretty weird on a Linux system, as the UNIX legacy declares that filenames do not have to have an extension. For Example, I could have an MP3 song called mysong and if I opened XMMS and loaded mysong, it would play. If I double clicked, it would not play. Putting .mp3 on the end enables the song to play by double clicking in Konqueror. It is a NOT the way it has always been done, but it is a simple improvement to make things easier for the people who will be migrating from Windows.
A strange thing also is that if you associate mp3 files with XMMS and use GTK-Gnutella to download an MP3. When the download is complete, GTK-Gnuttella amends .OK on to the end of the filename. If you then double click the file, it will not open in XMMS, but instead of throwing out an error, the way Windows does, it plays the file in Mplayer instead. Cool. I will of course be testing this with other file types.
Mandrake has never been taken seriously by the business world before, they prefer RedHat or Suse. I do not know if this is because it includes loads of games, or loads of multimedia programs, but Mandrake 10 is rock solid and of course includes all the stuff that RedHat has, and more.
I was experimenting a bit with it on a spare machine. It is a Fujitsu Lifebook Laptop. 800Mhz and 128MB RAM 20GB Hard disk, which I formatted to XFS filesystem. There was no problems there, Mandrake installed and ran perfectly on the laptop and detected all the hardware, I decided to try the webcam here using Hotplug… I started it as a service and tried plugging in the webcam. Like I said, it was not detected during the install on the main PC. Hotplug also did not detect it on the laptop. I suppose I expected that anyway I then reset the computer, it froze when it tried to shut down the Hotplug process. The next time I booted the laptop, it asked for a filesystem check. I let it do that and it carried on… until the Hotplug service. At this point the system froze again. I have read that if you leave kernel version 2.6 running for about 5 minutes after a crash, that it will recover. I left it 10 minutes and it did carry on to start KDE. I checked all the system logs to see at what point exactly the freeze occurred. It was indeed Hotplug trying to activate the webcam. It had found a device on the usb port, but did not load any driver for it as it, as it could not fully detect what was plugged in. I opened up the process manager and removed the Hotplug service. Hotplug had been disabled during install on both machines by default, now I know why. BUT, this can also help to displace some myths.. I had a problem, and was able to deal with it using the GUI only. I did not have to drop to the command line and enter some obscure commands.
An update on the webcam… I downloaded a driver for it, and installed it as a module. Simple in the end 🙂
Using the digicam is a dream. It sets itself up as an icon on the desktop, double click the icon (providing of course, that you set KDE up to open things with a double click), will open the camera as if it is another hard drive partition. Then the pictures on the camera can be viewed, moved to hard disk, edited, whatever… As usual, Mandrake 10 comes with a plethora of programs for editing/viewing pictures, like The Gimp, the ubiquitous open source Photoshop equivalent. Version 1.2 is included, which might seem a little old, but it is totally stable. I would rather have that when I would be dealing with the pictures I taken on holiday. FlPhoto is also a wonderful program with dealing with your own pictures, it will create albums and let you view them as slideshows. Mandrake 10 uses the GPhoto 2 camera database for cameras that are not using automatically added like a drive. I found this strange, as the database for all the camera drives appeared to be about 3 megabytes. I would not even dare to guess how big that driver database would be on Windows.
There are loads of games on the installation disks, and whenever anyone mentions Linux games, they always talk about Frozen-Bubble and Tuxracer.. I will not. I will however tell you about three of my favourite games..
Samegame, which is a type of puzzle game where you click on collections of orbs of the same colour, this makes them disappear and the ones above it to drop down to fill the spaces. It is very very addictive, although, I do not know why. Lbreakout 2 is a Linux clone of the old arcade game Arkanoid, including bat power ups and great sound effects. ArmageTron is a Tron bike clone in 3D. It can also be played over the internet. It is hard to play but well worth it once you master it.
I used to play a lot of games on my Windows system. My favourite game of all time was Enemy Territory. There is a Linux version of this, so I downloaded and installed it. Sweet. I have tried comparisons between the Linux and Windows versions, the Linux version loads maps far faster on this machine than the Windows version. This can be critical on some maps were the enemy spawns very close to you. It gives you time to prepare the attack. 🙂
I have tried over and over to fault Mandrake 10, and apart from that one crash in KDE and the missing software I use, I cannot find any faults. I was going to give it a mark out of 10, but instead I will give it a percentage mark. 98%. Very good but still a very slight margin for improvement.
About the author
I live in Belfast Northern Ireland and have studied computer science to masters degree level.
Well, need I say more? Mandrake is my favourite distro, has always been, and probably will for a while… The lovely thing about Mandrake is that it just… well, works! Files are ascociated with the right programs, it has a nice graph boot/shutdown and so on.
Two difficulties with Mandrake though:
1) They need to write the MDK Control Centre and it’s apps from scratch. Even though they do their job pretty well, they look and feel… outdated.
2) Please, MandrakeSoft… Do something about Galaxy! Damn, it’s ugly
I tried Mandrake as my first atempt at Windows replacement and even as an advanced user I found many OS related tasks to be extremely overly difficult. I took about a week to wait until I would form too strong oppinions about my negative experiences of using mandrake 10 but before I could start getting comfortable with not using Windows Mandrake would no longer boot after a session where I unsuccessfuly tried to install Gnome and some package managers.
Below is a short list of some of my dislikes.
1. During FTP install a package continued to be downloaded and was found to be corrupt. There was no way to go back and choose a different FTP site. instead I had to erase 2 hours installation efforts and start over with a different ftp site.
2. Figuring out which one of the 3 or 4 availble configuration utilites that has offers an option to change resolution actually resulted in the resolution chaging was a pain.
3. Getting a Japanese IME to work is a nightnamre.
4. Figuring out how to make shortcuts or links to files was sort of tough and also installing programs did not add links automatically into the panel or menu I used the mandrake package management tools.
5. Not being able to manage packages from one utility seemed strange to me and was a burden when trying to go back and fourth adding and removing programs.
6. Finding up-to-date packages for manny pieces of software like gaim wasn’t possible with the Mandrake 10 package manager. I don’t understand why there isn’t an option to browse to a local copy or ftp of a package and install that using the package manager.
Other than the crash that stopped me from using Mandrake 10 completely and some annoyances I was really pleased with some of the benifits of using Mandrake 10 over Windows XP. I’m not checking out Fedora and if I’m not any more impressed I’ll give Linux another year or so before I try to switch over agian.
I’ve used Mandrake since it was at version 9.0 and have been using 9.1 since it was released. Since 10 has came out, I have been kindof cautious to try it, but now I think I’ve heard enough.. I can’t wait to upgrade.
I downloaded all the ISOs via BitTorrent, which verifies them, and tried to burn. Nero told me ALL of the discs were too big for a 700MB CD. What is THAT about?!
Is this review of Mandrake 10 or KDE 3.2 and all of it’s apps?
I installed Pclinuxos and much of review could be exact copy paste. But anyway This could be written for debian or Suse or Slack.
Ok, I divie in to linux from time to time and I don’t get it how come that installation of programs is still so difficult? In pclinuxos you have Synamptec GUI for apt-get, but after I have tried to install Gnome – oh my god, wtf? There was gnome this gnome that, so much gnome everything I got sick. There should be just gnome … 250 MB; How do I know which gnome package I should install. This bothers me so much. But ok, it’s getting better and better…
jeff, you need to visit the following site and set up your repositories before you complain about software installation in Mandrake:
http://urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php
Learn how to use urpmi and you’ll be in heaven.
To install a package urpmi “nameofpackage”
To update all installed packages we issue the following two commands:
urpmi.update -a
urpmi –update –auto-select
To update the kernel:
urpmi –update kernel
Of course, all of the above can be done through the graphical tools, but the command line is much faster and efficient.
Which version of Nero are you using? I just installed the version that came with my CD-RW on the spare windows box and burned the CDs.
They burn without any issues. They also burn fine under k3b. These are not, from what I can tell, k3b’s or Nero’s problems.
Hi, I’ve been trying to fix the ugly non-aa fonts with mandrake 10 but it didn’t work. (Recompile freetype). Anyone has ever succeded ? Just unchecking AA Fonts don’t work (fonts are still very very ugly)
Anyway, anyone knows how I can make my fonts to look just like this :
http://kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&file=12859-1.png&…
From my experience with Fedora 2, Suse 9.1 and Mandrake 10, Mandrake 10 is the most responsive of all the three systems. It has better package management, fewer bugs and it is by far more stable.
The only advantage that Suse offers over Mandrake is an aesthetic one, in that their OpenOffice icons are prettier than Mandrake’s, but I am sure that Mandrake will see to this for the next edition. Yast also looks better than Mandrake’s Control Center,although I much prefer the functionality of the later. Particularly, DrakTermServ for settiing up terminal servers and DrakSec have no real equivalents under Suse. The Kolab installation tools is also very cool. Many people don’t add the server wizards, which you can do by doing a simple “urpmi drakwizard”
The new two-stage development process seems to be working nicely for Mandrake.
One final thing. All of the Linux distributions are improving and I am glad we have choices. I don’t see a need to belittle anyone’s efforts and I say this because I think Linux users need to unite more if they expect to displace proprietary software in favor of more robust software that you actually have a chance to share, review and control.
So if Suse is your ultimate distribution, more power to you. I am currently using it at work and i can live with it.If Debian tickles your pickle, great!
But do try new distributions from time to time for more than just a few hours.
Just use the font installer in Mandrake’s Control Center. The fonts look great on this box.
Thanks for answering. However, I didn’t ask how to install fonts. I’m asking about how can I get nice looking fonts without the anti-aliasing (with fonts like tahoma or verdana)
Thanks
Quanta , best … what ? I must be missing something here . I admit i haven’t tried it in a while , but still … how much better could it be ?
I’m sorry to be an “article basher” but this has zealot written all over it .
Well Mandrake 10 is a nice distribution, but it is lacking bug fix updates. E.g. How can I trust a distribution that is called stable but is still using KDE < 3.2.1 ?
That’s why I am still recomending Mandrake 9.2 to my friends, which is using an almost bug free KDE 3.1.3+
Unfortunately there are many other packages that face the same problem.
Regards, Helge
Mandrake’s packages have the fixes from KDE 3.2. 2backported to them.
Been trying to use linux for years, this one as well as the others chuggs along really slow on my p4 2.4ghz machine!
If someone says its the invidia drivers then I will have to laugh in their faces as nvidia is the most popular graphics card on the planet and linux has woeful support for it and many other things such as usb.
can I write an article now too?
Gawd, how many of these did we have now?
Mandrake’s packages have the fixes from KDE 3.2. 2backported to them.
They contain only a few fixes- Compare http://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog3_2_1_to_3_2_2.php with the changelog of the Mandrake-RPMs from update.
I have been running Mandrake since the 6.0 powerpack version… As a Mandrakefan, I love the article. I must admit that it has a bit of a fanboy air about it though…
Page three talks about FLPhoto as frontend for the Gphoto DB. While this is indeed the ‘standard’ Mandrake camera tool, I think the Digicam frontend at http://digikam.sourceforge.net/
is lightyears ahead. You might want to look at that one….
You can use this script to set up the fonts:
http://mandrakeprinas.org/mpnen
You can run it like this (this is all on one line):
cd /var/tmp && wget -q –output-document=mpnen http://mandrakeprinas.org/mpnen && chmod +x mpnen && ./mpnen ; rm -f mpnen
What really misses in 10 is the lack of ISDN support.
I need ISDN support on a specific location and i was amazed
after upgrading from 9.2 to 10 it did not longer support ISDN.
“Ok, I divie in to linux from time to time and I don’t get it how come that installation of programs is still so difficult? In pclinuxos you have Synamptec GUI for apt-get, but after I have tried to install Gnome – oh my god, wtf? There was gnome this gnome that, so much gnome everything I got sick. There should be just gnome … 250 MB; How do I know which gnome package I should install. This bothers me so much. But ok, it’s getting better and better…”
Yes, installing a distribution of programs known as a desktop environment does tend to be more complicated than installing programs.
You might ask around, there should just be one gnome. But gnome is a large group of packages. Your distribution should offer some sort of “meta package” which encompasses what is needed for gnome.
You called me a zealot for what I wrote about Quanta Plus ??
I have also been called a fanboy here too.
hmmmm,
yes, I am a manny 10 zealot, I will freely admit that. To become a zealot, you need to have a really strong belief in something. If you would have read my article properly, you might have noticed that I do have a strong belief in Mandrake 10
BTW…
If you would have read it properly, you will have noted that it was actually my friend who said Quanta plus was one of the best site editors he had used.
I know you’re trolling and all, but…
Been trying to use linux for years, this one as well as the others chuggs along really slow on my p4 2.4ghz machine!
Something must be wrong with your config. It’s quite snappy on my Athlon 900MHz.
If someone says its the invidia drivers then I will have to laugh in their faces as nvidia is the most popular graphics card on the planet and linux has woeful support for it and many other things such as usb.
Uh, Linux has GREAT support for NVIDIA. Just download the easy-to-use official NVIDIA installer! Although that would be for 3D. For 2D graphics (i.e. the Desktop experience), the open-source nv driver supplied with XFree86 (or x.org, which will replace XFree86 in the next Mandrake release) works quite well.
Also, Linux has excellent usb support. I’ve yet to try a single USB peripheral that hasn’t worked out-of-the-box with Mandrake 10. As I said, there must be something wrong with your setup. Or – more probably – you are deliberately spreading FUD.
You can download a the repacked freetype with AA enabled via the PLF urpmi repository on the urmpi webpage listed near the top.
I got a P3 1ghz runing MDK 10 and it runs fine on that machine. This guy is obviously making stuff up. I can vouch for the Nvidia claim as well because I got a 5200Fx card in the very same machine and those drivers work great, providing that you have the kernel sources installed so that the installer can recomplie the drivers for you. Frankly the installation procedure is just dead simple. ATI drivers on the other hand are horrible !
“As I said, there must be something wrong with your setup. Or – more probably – you are deliberately spreading FUD.”
Ahh, the typical reason for Linux not working for someone. Either the configuration doesnt work or its FUD. Couldnt be an issue with the OS! Heaven forbid since it has no problems at all! I have Mandrake 10 on my laptop (had it on the desktop, but deleated it since I needed more room on the hard drive for Windows) and I had numerous things that didnt work. Lets not get into sound, let alone having to download and compile the video card drivers, then deal with xfree86 to get 3D working. My USB thumb drive didnt want to initiate well either. Same thing for my digital camera. I could try another distro (have already tried $U$E and Red Hat), but why waste the time when I have Windows XP at my disposal that does all the complicated setup for me on many devices, thus freeing up my time that I could use for more important things.
You know, the ones fanboys don’t want you to know about:
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/advisories/
“Quanta , best … what ? I must be missing something here . I admit i haven’t tried it in a while , but still … how much better could it be ?”
Quanta Plus is awesome. Jump on the mailing list and you’ll read about former Dreamweaver users happily using
Quanta Plus because it is more productive and efficient. Its project management is fantastic, and when you see how it handles DTDs you’ll be amazed. It is one of my favourite GNU/Linux applications. I even use it for my Plone development.
How in the world does he have it booting to the desktop in 23 seconds? Is that from the time he pushes the power button? I must have something very wrong going on as I have a Athlon XP 1800+ and starting from the time the bootloader kicks in it’s at least 1.5 minutes to the KDE desktop…
Mandrake has been my distro since 1999 when I first bought and tried Mandrake 6.5. I have tried the other distros just to see what they were like but I always find myself coming back to mandrake everytime. Mandrake 10 is very good and I am very happy with it. Can’t wait to see what the future brings for Linux and my distro mandrake.
Ahh, the typical reason for Linux not working for someone. Either the configuration doesnt work or its FUD. Couldnt be an issue with the OS! Heaven forbid since it has no problems at all!
That’s true, sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good the OS is, the user will find a way to screw it up.
WOW! You have about 90 seconds to boot into KDE?
I have no trouble to belive you that. But this issue has to do something with your setup. Maybe you need to look at your tasks you start during boot.
I have a IBM ThinkPad A22p (P3@1GHz, 384MB Memory) and the Laptop is sure not the fastest in the world and I have about 3’800 fonts installed on my system and my Linux system (okay… it is Gentoo, but this is not the issue) starts much much faster then 90 seconds. And on each boot I run a script I have copied and modified from Knoppix (the one discovering the HW in your system) and I start a bunch of services and tasks as well (distCC, CCache, CUPS, serval nfs and samba mounts, etc). And even with that, I don’t come close to 90 seconds.
I think you have enought people here on OSNews wich would gladly help you (me included) to get your boot time lower then the 90 seconds. Just let me know if you accept my help and how I can contact you.
cheers
SteveB
Ahh, the typical reason for Linux not working for someone. Either the configuration doesnt work or its FUD. Couldnt be an issue with the OS!
Well, since it runs fast on my system and it runs slow on his (even though my system has a slower CPU), then there’s a good chance that there might be something wrong with his setup, don’t you think?
let alone having to download and compile the video card drivers, then deal with xfree86 to get 3D working.
I assume you have a nvidia chip. The installer is quite automated, and there’s only two lines to change in your xf86config-4 file. That’s hardly what I’d call difficult. I’ve had a lot worse time trying to install a NIC on Win98!!
My USB thumb drive didnt want to initiate well either. Same thing for my digital camera.
That’s strange…what model are they? Did you check Mandrake’s Hardware database?
why waste the time when I have Windows XP at my disposal that does all the complicated setup for me on many devices, thus freeing up my time that I could use for more important things.
Hardware detection and setup is often a lot easier with Linux than with WinXP. I know that, in rare cases, people still have some troubles with laptop computers. What model is it? Perhaps we can help you with your problems…
Now, if you don’t believe that some people actually make up false claims of Linux not working on their hardware to spread FUD about it, then I must say that I find that quite naive. There’s billions of dollars involved in sustaining MS’s monopoly, and MS has shown numerous times that it’s not above astroturfing (in fact, the term was invented to describe the company’s setting up of fake pro-MS “grassroots” organizations).
By the way, writing $U$E is really, really lame. Much lamer than writing M$ (which is also lame) for a simple reason: Microsoft is the richest company in the world. If anyone deserves the “$”, it’s them…not SuSE!
Please stop flamebaiting. People who live in glass houses (i.e. advocating Windows) shouldn’t go around throwing stones (i.e. pointing out that other OSes have security vulnerabilities).
I’ll take the help! I’ll post my question on alt.os.linux.mandrake.
Thanks,
Ray
It should be noted that VPL isn’t quite complete in the 3.2 Quanta releases, so Quanta is more of a competitor to programs like HomeSite than programs like Dreamweaver. It’s mainly a text-oriented rather than a visual editor. Given it’s category, it would be quite possible to say that Quanta is a best-in-class program.
I use Mandrake 10 to game(DooM, Quake 2 and 3, UT2004, DOSEmu and DOSBox); organize, print, and burn to CD/DVD pictures from my digital camera and scanner; surf the net; send and receive email; backup my files; balance the checkbook; record baby jabbering and transfer audio tapes to CD; and archive my cds to mp3 and burn them to seperate CD collections.
Mandrake 10 does everything I need it to do, except maybe play the children’s Reader Rabbit and similar games, and a few windows version of games I have. Wine will surely support them down the road, or I will try WineX… dunno.
I joined the Club to get Mdk10 Community and then later Official, and plan to get the PowerPack+ DVD later on. I might get my brother to use Linux (Mandrake) soon, from the way he is looking at it. For myself, I have not seen my windows me(98 lite) install for months. Hopefully, Linux will spread more and more, and ppl will have more software choice, and ms will also ramp up quality
I agree with Rayiner. Having used both Homesite and Quanta, I have to say Quanta is better. The UI is very friendly, and the app has lots of cool features.
Then again, I did code some sites way back then with Notepad. Hey, at least I could copy/paste!
By the way, I run a cookerized Mandrake 10 installation and it runs pretty sweet. It’s their best distro yet, I’d say. The xorg rpms are out on cooker and I’ve yet to experience a single X glitch with them (though of course bugs may happen on cooker stuff).
There’s a few legacy apps which require gtk1 (eg. XMMS, older version of Grip, Gimp and gtk1 Mozilla binary) where non-AA font are being used; in that end you can modify the UI font of gtk1 application according to this How-To:
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread27498-1.html
this was a solid review. I don’t agree with all of it as I never cared for Mandrake, but that is just personal preference.
you take about 90 seconds to get to kde ?
I was of course taking the 23 seconds timing from the point linux starts to load, not from hitting the power switch, as you will know that takes a few seconds, and grub defaults to a 10 second delay.
anyway, from “Linux Loading………” to kde takes 23 seconds.
You delays might be that you have services like webmin running on boot, or it could be a delay of your network card trying to detect the network… another thing.. Mandrake defaults for EXT3 for formatting partitions and this is usually 45% slower than a filesystem formatted in reiserfs.
Post more info or your set-up and we will try to sort things out for you.
… polish. I have been using Mandrake ever since from the second release and here are the things I think Mandrake lacks behind SUSE and Fedora and annoy me the most.
– As someone else pointed out, non AA fonts are ugly since 9.2 and so far I could not fix it myself.
– Mandrake sometimes don’t plan their releases to fit the KDE’s or GNOME’s which results in completly outdated release of either.
– Again, font problems with GTK 1 apps
– Better boot splash sequence (SUSE rulez here) and graphics are needed
– Shipping vanilla OO when others ship “nativified”
– Remove software and Add software should come back to ONE interface.
See, that many of these are cosmetical changes and I am quite satisfied with the current state. Urpmi is a godsend and they pay the same attention to both Gnome and KDE at the same time. MDK just needs some more polish and professionalism I think.
For example lately, a local comp. magazine gave out 4 CDs with MDK community edition (their fault!!!)and the forum was full of flames like this does not work, Linux sucks and I want my money back. People did not know how to set up their winmodem and flash, java etc. I think all these should be integrated in download edition too (see winmodems and graphic drivers). You cannot tell the user that they are not GPL so we cannot ship them in download edition. People just don’t care.
People did not know how to set up their winmodem and flash, java etc. I think all these should be integrated in download edition too (see winmodems and graphic drivers). You cannot tell the user that they are not GPL so we cannot ship them in download edition. People just don’t care.
What a silly comment.
Mandrake is leaving out those drivers for the simple reason that their licenses don’t allow Mandrake to distribute them.
Do you expect Mandrake to break those licenses? Or to pay for the winmodem drivers so you can download them for free??
I am a longtime Mandrake user and i only have one major complaint about it and that is the lousy package manager rpmdrake. It seems to have become a worse app over time. Every since version 9 (i think) it has been broke down into two seperate apps, one that installs packages and one that removes them. This is pretty stupid.
After having used synaptic on a fedora system it is painfully obvious how bad rpmdrake is. Mandrake should dump it like a truckload of toxic waste and develop a better gui for urpmi.
Other than that its a pretty good distro. I do think it leaves out some import packages on the initial install which means that you will be using the annoyingly stupid rpmdrake very soon after logging in for the first time.
-Some Winmodem drivers are not free (see linuxant for example), some software does not allow redistribution (at least for free).
-Deliver the absolutely newest version is not wise. For instance KDE 3.2 is now in its .3 maintenance release. Mandrake backports many features/security fixes of newer releases.
-It is impossible to adjust release schedule to match schedules of every program they distribute. They need to stick to a predictable schedule for bussines.
——————
-If you ask me, Linux Distros releases new versions all too often. Each 6 months a brand new product is released (even more often than the 1-year Apple cycle for MacOSX, which they already said will slowdown). RedHat <-> Fedora relation shows that RH already noted that entuasisths require different cycles (Fedora) than bussines (RHE).
-Mandrake latest releases are only package upgrades, nothing really new or innovative. And please don’t get me wrong, just merging all these packages into something resembling something consistant is a lot of work, but I would rather prefer that Mandrake would invest a little more on adding their own work, like for example making their tools share some consistency, or as someone said, “nativizing” applications as XMMS or OO.org, or even put an employee to look for good artwork on kde-look.org
Putting .mp3 on the end enables the song to play by double clicking in Konqueror. It is a NOT the way it has always been done, but it is a simple improvement to make things easier for the people who will be migrating from Windows.
simple improvement? this is a terrible windows-ification. you can’t even call it ugly hack, it’s just… shit.
WHO DID THAT? Was it the Mandrake folks or is Konqueror too stupid to do some decent MIME sniffing?
I though there would be just one (very popular even though it is insecure and unstable) operating system in the world whose developers are stupid enough to determine the file type and associated action by a particular string in the file name. Never mind. I know why i’m not using Mandrake or KDE any more.
yes it is a simple IMPROVEMENT… it is the way roughly 90% of the worlds pc users get their files to work with their apps.
you speak of MIME sniffing, would this be the same MIME sniffing that has slowed gnome 2.4 down to a crawl ?
would this be the same MIME sniffing that has been removed from gnome 2.6 ?
read the article again, you will see that kde does NOT need extensions
Since i never timed it I was curious how long it takes my computer to boot up to kde 3.2 in Mandrake 10. I timed it from turning on the power button to kde 3.2 being finished and ready to go. It took my computer 74 seconds. I havent tweak anything at all and havent turned off any services.
I have been using mandrake since MDK 8.0, and i have found out that an easy way to update the software using urpmi is going to easy urpmi (http://urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php) and selec the options you need, ona source of file to look at is Penguin Liberation Front (plf), there can be found any tipe of software left out of the distro for pettent an licence isues.
Have a look, it’s quite handly
> Quanta , best … what ? I must be missing something here . I admit i haven’t tried it in a while , but still … how much better could it be ?
Okay, how long is a while? Let’s see… I have one full time developer sponsored since mid 2002 and a part time developer sponsored for two months, plus a number of volunteers. Quanta won the LinuxQuestions.org Web Development Editor of the Year for 2003. It is fully DTD driven and can load XML DTDs on the fly. (show me a commercial web tool that does that.) It was the first real Linux web development tool to introduce a Visual mode. (think WYSIWYG without hacking up your source) It comes with Kommander, a visual dialog builder, a link checker, imagemap editor, an XSL debugger and deeply integrated PHP debugger (BE2, 3.3 Alpha1 and CVS). It manages project docs, multiple upload profiles, multiple document roots and more. Users can add language support with XML, it has XML tools and performs real time DTD validation and tag balancing. It has CSS tools, templates, code abbreviations and is fully scriptable through DCOP. I could go on, but do you really care?
> I’m sorry to be an “article basher” but this has zealot written all over it .
And you don’t? You could call me a zealot because I’m the project head. Fair enough. But at least I know what I’m talking about, not bashing FOSS software and I’m not opening my mouth where I don’t have a clue. If you try Quanta (3.2.2 or especially a 3.3 like BE2) you will have to admit it has advanced a lot. If you previously ran it on Red Hat 8.0 it was a crappy not ready for release pre 3.0 which is hardly fair to judge us by.
BTW I answer nearly every user email and we have a mailing list for user support. I would challange any commercial or non commercial tool for the title of best, and many former Dreamweaver users emphatically agree. Check it out if you’re doing web work, or before your next slam. 😉
Been trying to use linux for years, this one as well as the others chuggs along really slow on my p4 2.4ghz machine!
I happen to run Mandrake 10 on a P4 2.4GHz with 512RAM and a Radeon 7500, 64MB card . The OS runs very fast and I am impressed after about a year or so of refraining from Mandrake 9.x.
My daughter’s PC is a Duron 950MHz with 320RAM and a low end ATI card, 8MB I believe. She’s not much of a gamer so she’s very happy after switching from RH 9 (pathced from RH 8). The speed difference is very noticeable and disk swapping is rare – with OpenOffice, FireFox, Gaim and XMMS runnign all at the same time. She watches movies in XINE without any frames skipped, OpenOffice is ready to go in 32 seconds from click to ready. (18 seconds on one of my [email protected] with 512 RAM running Windows 2000Pro)
I also run a small server based on Mandrake 10.0 (recently switched from RH 9.0). It’s a Celleron 700 with 320 RAM. I use it as a multipurpose server for filesharing (mp3 library of some 10000 songs and a few movies for 4 client computers), web serving (about 5000 page requests a day), a PHP development/test server and a fax server. The hardware is performing very well so I don’t see the need to upgrade at this point. That particualr machine runs in non-graphical mode.
If you do have sped problems with your P4 2.4GHz then there is certainly something wrong, but I find it hard to believe it’s Mandrake’s fault. Therefore, I subscribe to the opinions of others that you may indeed be spreading some usual fud here.
I noticed some comments on the boot speed of Mandrake 10, so I went upstairs to test this on my daughter’s PC before she comes back rom school, at which point her room will be the usual teenage bedroom – no admitance to geezers.
Her PC specs:
Duron – 950MHz
Memory – 320
Video – ATI 8MB
HDD – 6.4GB (5400 RPM, UDMA)
Sound – on board
Ethernet – on board
Screen resolution: 1024×768 @ 64K colors
Tested and perdormed as follows:
1. Power on and wait for Mandrake boot screen. I didn’t measure this stage as it depends on hardware, bios, whether disks are autodetected or defined by the user etc.
2. In graphical boot screen hit ENTER.
3. As the boot starts hit ESC to see verbose mode (just for kicks)
4. Graphical desktop login screen shows up and ready for input
5. Click the user name in login screen
6. Type in password.
7. Hit ENTER (or click LOGIN button).
8. Wait for KDE desktop to be up and running
I didn’t measere the entire process becaus some of the steps depend on issues beyond the ciontrol of the operatind system, such as BIOS hardware detection or typing in passwords.
My tiems were as follows:
step 2 to 4 = 65 seconds
step 7 to 8 = 19 seconds
————————-
total 84 seconds
One more test I did was the time to load OpenOffice, which took 35 seconds.
To load an office suite??
On XP, with Office preloading turned OFF, Word starts in exactly 2 seconds, afterwards enough shared libraries appear to be loaded to give Excel and PPT subsecond start times.
This is Office 2003 btw, on an 1800XP with 512MB.
Hmmm…
It does seem like an extortionate amount of time for an Office suite to load up. However, there are a few variables to take into consideration.
1: Did Beetman optimise his system
2: Did Beetman select the quickest filesystem when installing
3: What else is he running as processes
4: Which version of OOo was running , 1.0 being rally slow, 1.1 fast
Your example…. 2 seconds to load Word without preloading. This does look impressive, however, You cannot turn OFF preloading for any Microsoft app. The shared libraries are already loaded by the time Windows starts. They also use PRELINKING.
If you study the Linux scene much, you will understand that the authors try to get the software working properly before they start to optimise for speed.
Try KDE 3.1 in comparison to KDE 3.2 and try OpenOffice 1.1 compared to OpenOffice 1.0
Also try formatting your system in reiserfs instead of EXT3, which Mandrake defaults to, and if using reiserfs, make sure you have notail and noatime options added to fstab.
The world knows Linux mainly as RedHat and SUSE. I don’t understand why most posted news keep bashing MandrakeLinux (by not mentioning it). In my opinion, Mandrake is the best Linux distro for the desktop and I recomend it to any Windows user to start out with this one. Keep in mind that Mandrake 10 Community Edition IS a pre-released version, NOT the final version. MandrakeSoft needs our help, so please contribute and buy the final version (supposed to have the bugs fixed). You wont be dissapointed.
I find the extension to the files very convenient. In addition, I can associate a given file with the application I want, in the properties of the file. I agree, this is similar to that as for Winblows. So what? However, I have a critisizm to Mandrake, or should be KDE? Konkeror should stay as a web browser only; I dont like it as a file browser. I dont know why. IS it because it reminds me of Windows Explorer with its double use? Cant explain why.