Here is a nifty comparison of three of the top Linux distro’s, Fedora, Mandrake and Suse. The article covers everything from installation and boot times to configuring and software bundling.
Intermediate Linux Distro Comparison
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I would like to see that happen. So that I can still use my old Celeron and not drool so much on a new Windows (whenever that’d be) which probably requires 10X the power as its minimum specs. I tell you, this hardware and OS developers, it’s a conspiracy! ;-D
I really enjoyed reading this article, I use Fedora myself, and it was nice to have a good look into Mandrake and Suse.
The GNU stands for GNU’s Not Linux (a recursive acronym)
Hmm, this guy should not write articles at 3AM anymore…
Some proof-reading and link-checking would be good too, for example the link for the OOo screenie for Mandrake gave me a 404.
Interesting review for those curious to have a 10-mile view of the 3 distros, but I agree in part with the guy above, people should write reviews after using the system for at least a month, not only 10 minutes. You can’t really feel the system by just installing it and checking how it looks. The real important problems just start to pop when you use the distro for some time.
OK, I honestly believe Debian is at least bigger than Mandrake 🙂
i agree about trying a system out.
i have had to run lindows for a couple of months on my workstation before concluding that it’s not best for me.
although it has up-to-date apps and great hardware detection i will install debian stable and then run lindows in a vmware session (as i currently do with win2k). that way i should get the best of both.
lindows will be truly special once sarge (testing) goes stable!
BTW – same comments apply to xandros which i have on my laptop.
now – where was debian? – surely this should have been in the review because as a server OS its pretty hard to beat.
again – after a period of months/years the beauty of debian shines through!
kev
OT – also having had
OK, I honestly believe Debian is at least bigger than Mandrake 🙂
I believe the intention of the article was to compare the 3 most popular entry-level distros (despite the misleading title), which would exclude Debian.
I thought there were more mdk rpms than binaries for Debian. I remember reading that somewhere: although it may have been Mandrakeclub 🙂
perhaps they should have called the article: “Top Three Commercial Distros Targetting the Corporate Desktop”
Of course that’s a very long title
FC is backed by redhat, let’s not pretend it’s a community initiative, sp no comments about FC not being a commercial distro. So community backed yes. Community initiated like Debian, no.
To be honest, after using all 3 distros for months at a time, I have to say that they are much more alike then different.
Splitting hairs.
Debian makes a more noticeable departure from the standard fair of the Suse/Mandrake/Redhat trio.
Slackware, even more.
and Gentoo the most.
For a newbie, you can’t really go wrong with Redhat(FC)/Mandrake/Suse.
I’ll stick with Slack for now.
All of the distributions allow you to utilize IDE Burners without SCSI emulation. It just works. Also, each of these distributions include the excellent K3B CD writing application. K3B is becoming the standard Linux CD writing application, and is becoming more functional and useful than CD Burning applications available for Microsoft Windows.
Why don’t you compare that with an old version of Nero, and rewrite that the last sentence. Even Nero 5.0 blows K3B out of the water. Nero 6.3 is completly out of its league.
Great article – really enjoyable read and nice to see not just another review but comparisions on key features, especially as I’m v.new to Linux.
Looking at those boot times there must be something seriously wrong with my Fedora install. My XP from Power On to usable desktop ~30s. Fedora not sure but feels like weeks.
It was also good to see mention of the lack of DVD playback on default install as it gets mentioned loads and honestly a bare XP install does little other than let you play minsweeper and edit text files
for once an article which breaks some linux distros down and gives windows users an insight as to which is the best for them. and not abusive at all
It said three OF the top distros.
what’s wrong with you? can’t you read?
he never said k3b was better then nero. second, this was a comparison of 3 distros. not a comparison of cd burning under windows vs linux.
third, it was a simple remark noting that linux has a decent burning solution.
fourth, you don’t know jack squat about nero. the latest versions of nero are becoming bloated kitchen sink apps that each part (mpeg, mp3 encoding for example, dvd authoring)in it’s own category being beaten by some other WINDOWS software.
i’ve used nero for 6 years. i used to enthusiasticaly recommend it 3 years ago. it has now undergone the “benefits” of commercial success. it’s becoming the next EZ CD Creator. Bloated, Slow, Error prone.
Yes Nero does everything, but it’s a jack of all trades master of none.
ppl, if you are looking for a tight, lean burning program for windows, you need to start looking around. cause nero’s time has come and gone.
well except for the newbs just getting into windows scene as of the last couple of years, they think nero is the shite.
Nero has a lot more stuff than it used to have but I think calling it slow and error prone is going a bit far
. It’s the same as its always been if you only burn file to CD/DVD with it 
Re: the original article.
The hardware detection stuff in X in SUSE looks pretty cool, why don’t more do it that way?
Anonymous (IP: —.satx.rr.com)
“FC is backed by redhat, let’s not pretend it’s a community initiative, sp no comments about FC not being a commercial distro. So community backed yes. Community initiated like Debian, no.”
You do realize you say “FC is backed by redhat” then one sentance later say “FC is backed by the community” I may be missing something but I do not see the problem. Fedora has a HUGE community especially for It’s age, probably only Debian has a larger community, Gentoo has a lot too, maybe they are close.
Yes Fedora is commercial because it is backed by a company. I’m not so far gone I hate people making money or want everything to be done by programers who have the weekend off. Decent companies exist you know. Red Hat is one of them.
Anonymous (IP: —.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
“Looking at those boot times there must be something seriously wrong with my Fedora install. My XP from Power On to usable desktop ~30s. Fedora not sure but feels like weeks.”
It’s not just you. Fedora is slower than windows to boot, probably takes a minute to get a useable desktop for me, windows takes probably about 40seconds. That said there are MANY, MANY things you can do to increase speed, Fedora has been built for everyone, if you customize it things will surely speed up. for instance; Look at /etc/readahead.files and /etc/readahead.early.files for me there is about 200-300 lines in there I don’t need pre-loaded cause I don’t use them (evolutions files for one) or turn off the billion services put on by default. Also any mis-configuration like say you have an invalid hostname and sendmail takes 30 seconds to figure out whats going on before moving along. Linux does one thing at a time unlike windows which was built to reboot a lot so they do things like initiate a network query then run something else while the network tries to do its thing. Linux will just check the network and stay there until the job is done, or fails.
Fedora like most new distros that are feature rich, has slowness that NEEDS to be worked on no doubt about it. But if you don’t like to tweak/learn your system Fedora is probably not your best bet, or even linux for that matter.
To see if Windows really boots so fast, I just made a little comparison between FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Windows 2000, all booting to a bare KDE or Explorer desktop without any webservers, tray icons etc. This on a PII 350/128 MB RAM.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD: 38+30=1:08
NetBSD: 48+?=?
Windows: 47+10=0:57
So Windows is about 16% faster. Wow, great, but I wouldn’t say 10 seconds is very important. On a newer PC the absolute difference would be even smaller.
I would be worried more about the slow rendering of Gecko compared to IE and Konqueror (computer.ebay.de: Firefox: 11s, IE: 6s) All in all that wastes more time in total.
I tried this out for a week not long ago to see how close I was to throwing away my XP disk.
Athlon XP 2600, 512Mb RAM, GeForce 2MX (Not a gamer :>), Suse 9.1
First problem I had was the Nvidia drivers. I managed to get them installed the Suse way (YOU + Sax2), but the hardware 3d just wouldn’t stay on for some reason. It kept reverting to the mesa libraries, even after following their reinstall the Nvidia package advice. Luckily a few years of playing with Linux informed me that the NVidia script was likely to be on the system, so I just found it, ran it and got my 3D back. Had to manually input my monitor (Which is odd because Knoppix detects/installs it straight away), and strip out the RIDICULOUS number of modelines in the X config file. After that everything went swimmingly. Not something I’d expect a newbie to know though.
Once that was sorted everything seemed to work fine. I had no problems surfing the net (Firefox was in the repository, although an older version), writing documents, doing a little coding etc. The desktop did seem a bit slow compared to XP (I could see mouse pointer updates, which bugged me), my mousewheel seemed to work only when it felt like it (Intermittent even on the same app), and a few of my favourite Firefox extensions didn’t work (Not SUSE’s fault) but in general the experience was comparable.
The major problems began once I finished my little test (I ran it for everything for a week, not just occasionally).
I’d been hit by the parted LBA ‘feature’, but I’d done some research before installing and knew how to at least get XP booting again (Force LBA in BIOS).
Now came the fun part.
I wanted the partitions back from SUSE, and I wanted rid of GRUB, basically because I wasn’t using them anymore. So I tried to delete the SUSE partitions in XP. Bang, corrupted partition table…doh. At this point I’d expect a newbie to get very confused, and probably be forced to reinstall Windows. As it was it took a Knoppix disk (Lifesaver :>), forcing cfdisk to create a blank partition table (Yes, fdisk and cfdisk didn’t understand the parted created table any better than XP, although admittedly removing the SUSE partition might have damaged it) and rebuilding things manually (I always write down my partition table geometry when I change things). Then I could finally use the XP disk to reset the MBR for an XP boot.
I’d say SUSE is pretty accessible for the newbie Linux user, and things have definitely moved along in the past few years, but there are still a few rough corners to catch out the unwary. I’d guess the same goes for the other distros as well. It’s not quite there for me (My one and only 3d game won’t run in Wine yet, and I need that FPS stress relief), but I’m sure it would be for others with different requirements.
try eroaster (Eclipt Roaster) it is an exellent front end for burning CD’Rs & CD’RWs
it is GNOME & Python orientated so check depencencys
“and strip out the RIDICULOUS number of modelines in the X config file.”
You may not know it, but you were probably the cause of the high number of modelines. At installation time, there is only one in the file. Every time you changed your hardware configuration, e.g. monitor, graphics card, nvidia drivers … another modeline was added to meet the requirements you asked of it.
I agree it’s silly SUSE doesn’t have the old modelines that no longer apply removed or commented out, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
Anyway, on my own experience, SuSE was the only one of these three to see my ALPS pointing device correctly (HP zv5000z laptop). FC2 was better than Mandrake in hardware detection, but SUSE wins on speed over FC2, Mandrake, Xandros, XP and even Slackware (on this system; your results may vary). By the way, Xandros and Slackware detected the ALPS touchpad without a hitch.
Every time you changed your hardware configuration, e.g. monitor, graphics card, nvidia drivers … another modeline was added to meet the requirements you asked of it.
My fault then. I tried using YOU to install the NVidia drivers multiple times, and every time I did Sax2 would forget my monitor and try to use 1280×1024 mode (Which just hurts my eyes on a 17′ monitor) so I’d be forced to change it back. Just not used to seeing that many modelines.
I used another program the other day, I think it had Sony’s name stuck on it but I don’t remember. Anyway, it was an awful mix of metal colors and orange. It was doggedly slow and locked up several times. Nero is getting bloated, but it’s still better than some of the giveaway alternatives.
Personally I like K3B, I find it easy to use. It burns cd’s, what more do I need? I think you can even burn VCD’s on it.
Let’s whine about features on DVD burning software, because mkisofs + cdrecord is all you really need for cd burning….
The GNU stands for GNU’s Not Linux
Huh? GNL? How about GNU’s Not Unix
Last time i checked Mandrake is based on Redhat so despite cosmetic differences…
The ISO of SUSE i downloaded 9.1 Personal was kernel 2.6.5. The table shows the kernel at 2.4…!?!
Overall this is a pretty good article for new Linux users gives them a basic idea of what to expect. Since i beleive most new Linux users will install linux just to take a look at it rather they quit windows cold turkey.
The discussion on boot times relies alot on processor/memory and Hard drive speed. I think these three distros are great Distros to get new users interested in linux(i started with Redhat Baltimore) once they get familiar with Linux quirks in RedHat or otherwise then they can move on to more challenging Distros debain, gentoo, crux etc.. Eventually they will try out BSD and evolve into a higher being…;)
I’ve used Nero from v4 in W98 through v6 in XP64. Anytime a bug in Nero gets fixed, they add three others. In addition, the bug fixed was usually one you never noticed, while the three new ones are now at the top of your list of peeves. I used Nero, but cursed its bugginess and bloat. It might be the best Windows burning ap, but that’s not a recommendation.
When I installed Fedora Core 2, I tried K3B. It was a pleasent experience. It doesn’t have every single bell or whistle that Nero v6 has, but it has most of them, and without the annoying bugs. I especially like how K3B gives you better control over the filesystem settings; Nero doesn’t match it there. K3B is also faster over the entire burn/verify cycle, although some of that is probably more due to Linux being more efficient/faster than Windows.
If you regularly use Nero to rip rented DVDs and CDs, you probably won’t like k3B as much, but in every other way K3B is Nero’s superior.
“Last time i checked Mandrake is based on Redhat so despite cosmetic differences… ”
Actually, Mandrake was originally based on RedHat, but it’s been a long time since that was true; they are completely separately developed and maintained. I personally prefer Mandrake 10 Official (on XFS) to FC2 or SUSE 9.1 (although I have only played with the Personal Edition)…it’s a personal, subjective choice, though – all three are impressive systems.
I think FC2 would be speedier if it weren’t tied to EXT3, but you won’t hear me complain about choosing stability.
My primary machine is a Slackware machine, but I am a bit of a distro junkie 😉
Since everyone seems to be looking for a better app to replace the once great Nero, I’d suggest looking at “Stomp RecordNow Max”. It is all I use and all I recommend on Windows machines… The others have tried to become “do everything” programs and of course that spells the end for actual usefulness. I hate having to deal with a bloated beast of a “multimedia music playing image viewing microwave your popcorn” program when I want to do is write a damn data or music disc with cd text support.
Now if only there was a decent GUI MP3->music disc burning util for linux that would do CD Text as well… is that too much to ask? I guess I’m going to have to write it myself, all the underlying programs are there, but no decent front-end. K3B is okay, but not good enough.
When I used to use Windows back in the day, I would use Winamp for music, WMP for movies, Netscape or even IE for webbrowsing… nowadays, every one of those try to be the end-all, be-all of everything. webbrowsing with winamp or WMP, music and movies with all three… All windows programs are starting to be the same way, bloated and try to do everything while just sucking at individual tasks. Why cant I just have programs on windows that do one thing and do it well?
I’m just waiting for MS Paint to be combined with WMP and DVD photo album writing.
hi
i use suse 9.1
somebody have some trick to improve boot time?
thanks
If these are intermediate distro’s then I’m Linus Torvalds
Re: First problem I had was the Nvidia drivers. I managed to get them installed the Suse way (YOU + Sax2), but the hardware 3d just wouldn’t stay on for some reason. It kept reverting to the mesa libraries, even after following their reinstall the Nvidia package advice.
SuSE Linux “YOU” (YaST Online Update) provides an optional package called “fetchnvidia”. If you had installed this then you there was no need to mess around with Sax2 since SuSE Linux would auto-install the correct 3D drivers for your card. NVIDIA on their site even recommends installing the 3D drivers via YaST instead of using the old method of using a Terminal and configuring Sax2. You can check that you have 3D drivers installed by opening a Terminal and typing “glxinfo” (no quotes). Novell now even provides 3D ATI drivers for SuSE Linux that can be added as a YaST Source Repository so they too can be installed and updated accordingly.
The only issue I experienced with SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional was with crappy media codec support. It would of been nice to see a retail Linux distribution offer all popular codecs instead of crippling Xine-lib to the point that it was useless on most sites requiring Quicktime, Windows Media, or even simple AVI. Example I could not play properly a single movie trailer on the Spiderman site which supported various media codecs. This was for the most part corrected when I updated to KDE 3.2.3 and fiddled with the codecs library in “usr/lib/win32” but I was still disappointed to see Novell release SuSE Linux 9.1 lacking sufficient codecs. Consumers do not want to have to be a Linux Geek to configure/install codecs that they had for in Windows or OSX. Novell could use the cost of the retail sales to compensate for acquiring licenses from developers such as Microsoft and Apple. This may change the way SuSE Linux is licensed but it would in the end make it more attractive for home consumers and businesses.
The review should of been a comparison of all the distributions offered by Red Hat, Mandrakesoft and Novell. All three of these developers offer commercial distributions as well as free versions. SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional should of been reviewed against Red Hat Linux AS, ES or WS, not Fedora. SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal and SuSE Linux Desktop should of been reviewed against Red Hat Linux Desktop and Fedora.
The problem with some of these reviews is that the authors don’t normally go into the significant applications offered that would be of interest to more than just home consumers. Articles or advertisements posted by developers such as Microsoft also make mistakes. Such as comparing TCO and security of Windows and Red Hat Linux with out factoring in the other Linux alternatives. Novell for example offers many options for both businesses as well as home consumers which in many ways is cheaper than Red Hat or even Windows. Though this may explain Microsoft’s marketing who appear to want consumers to focus strictly on the battle between Red Hat Linux and Windows instead of seeing other Linux distributions that may be cheaper or easier to set up.
SuSE Linux “YOU” (YaST Online Update) provides an optional package called “fetchnvidia”. If you had installed this then you there was no need to mess around with Sax2 since SuSE Linux would auto-install the correct 3D drivers for your card. NVIDIA on their site even recommends installing the 3D drivers via YaST instead of using the old method of using a Terminal and configuring Sax2.
Did this (In fact I did it multiple times) and it didn’t work. In fact it left me with the nv driver until I went into Sax2 and chose an nvidia card again, at which point every time x restarted the accelerated setting would get disabled.
You can check that you have 3D drivers installed by opening a Terminal and typing “glxinfo” (no quotes).
How do you think I know that it was using software 3D and not NVidia’s? Just because I happened to mention my normal desktop is XP doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around a Linux system.
Re: “How do you think I know that it was using software 3D and not NVidia’s? Just because I happened to mention my normal desktop is XP doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around a Linux system.”
Try not to take things so seriously. My post was intended to help you, not make you out to be an idiot
Linux distributions such as SuSE Linux provide 2D Drivers due to licensing but that can be fixed by installing the 3D drivers either in the Terminal or by using a package manager such as YaST. You really shouldn’t be having any difficulty with that card so I don’t know if it’s something you did, corrupted OS or a hardware issue.
Sorry for snapping, reeled off that post without really thinking.
I guess it could have been me. I spent a couple of hours playing around with various things immediately after installing (To get the feel of the thing) so maybe I just tweaked the wrong setting. Wasn’t a big hassle to fix, but I still think it would have stumped a real newbie.
“Looking at those boot times there must be something seriously wrong with my Fedora install. My XP from Power On to usable desktop ~30s. Fedora not sure but feels like weeks.”
It’s not just you. Fedora is slower than windows to boot, probably takes a minute to get a useable desktop for me, windows takes probably about 40seconds. That said there are MANY, MANY things you can do to increase speed, Fedora has been built for everyone, if you customize it things will surely speed up. for instance; Look at /etc/readahead.files and /etc/readahead.early.files for me there is about 200-300 lines in there I don’t need pre-loaded cause I don’t use them (evolutions files for one) or turn off the billion services put on by default. Also any mis-configuration like say you have an invalid hostname and sendmail takes 30 seconds to figure out whats
>
>
Don’t you people have *BETTER* things in your lives to
do rather than sitting around watching how long it takes Windows or Linux to boot up?
Personally I like the Linux bootup as it is. I think it’s
a great idea for the OS to tell you what’s going on as it loads and what problems it’s running into if any while booting up.
Only an total idiot from the Windows or Mac userbase would try to argue otherwise.
And then sit around for hours trying to figure out what’s
causing their systems to either lock up or crash.
A graphical bootup a la Windows can be a bad thing indeed, in fact, yesterday I had to reinstall Windows because for some reason it would logout already at login (and I had enabled auto-login), reason unknown. Argh.
Yet that does not mean that boot times are not important. Or will you argue me when I say something is wrong with Lindows when it takes 8 times as long to load compared to Windows or BSD?
By the way, what has wasting time by clocking Linux and Windows boot times to do with the output of the boot procedure anyways?
Yet that does not mean that boot times are not important. Or will you argue me when I say something is wrong with Lindows when it takes 8 times as long to load compared to Windows or BSD?
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What are you planning to do during the extra boot time? Have sex or somthing?
No there is nothing wrong here. But there is something wrong with you if you think that this is something that really matters.
Is my English so bad, or do you have less brains than Bush?
Anyways, it is something that matters, as slow bootups (5+ minutes) are annoying, are the result of more deamons meaning more security leaks and more memory usage which leads to a slower and worse performing computer.
alright, nice history lesson. Where are the comparisons????
Very OT cause it’s a linux article. But look at DeepBurner. It simply works and look a bit like nero in the old days.
(installing a cd-burner on a friends PC, Nero wouldn’t recognize the burner, deep burner did. Free beer tastes good (-: )