One comment about the long prompt: I’m one of the people who like pwd as prompt. That’s the first thing I change when I have to work on a computer that is not configured that way.
I agree, I have had much better experiences with Suse than Mandrake products. I wonder what all the buzz is about Mandrake. Suse is clearly the better choice.
I would like to say this is the best review of SUSE/Mandrakelinux I have ever read. It actually taught me about the two distributions, gave me some useful tips and went beyond the installer.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading Artee’s review of Ubuntu in the near future.
I have a test machine and regularly install distros just to try them out. My main machine runs Gentoo, although that was more to do with SUSE 9.1’s kernel not finding my USB yoke for X-Plane.
Anyhoo, there is just something about Mandrake that I don’t like. I really don’t know what it is, but the menus seem too, cutesy (is that a word?). URPMI while nice, I somehow find it frustrating to use when there isn’t a central place for software. I know about easyurpmi, but it sometimes doesn’t work and I need to find another repository. I just don’t like it.
SUSE was good and I had it on my machine for a while until the USB issue. I didn’t want to build my own kernel so I put Gentoo on (I know, didn’t want to build a kernel, but built the entire OS). I thought about Debian, but decided to go wtih Gentoo. Perhaps in a bit…
Given the choice between the two, I would vote for SUSE. This is all personal, and I can’t justify it. I just like SUSE better.
I share your feelings. There is “something” about Mandrake I don’t quite like. It feels to me like “a toy OS” (in fact it isn’t), difficult to describe.
SUSE feels much more “professional”, IMHO.
And then URPMI: I find apt/apt4rpm so much better: once again, difficult to describe why.
Mandrake was my first distro way back starting with 7.2. I bought it at Walmart for $30 and it was awesome. Apart from having no clue what I was doing (and being lost in the shell, what dir /p doesnt work, how do I list files?) it was pretty cool and I loved that star program that came with it, cant remember the name of it though (Celestia?). I moved on to Mandrake 8.1 and then I saw a review of SUSE 8.0. I bought it and fell in love with it. I’ve been using it ever since. I’ve tried Xandros (formatted 2 drives without asking me when I added mount points to them in the install, and I didn’t like how Windowsy it was), Gentoo (couldnt get it installed, I know a failure as a geek I am), Ubuntu (nice GNOME distro but few config tools and I am more KDE-centric), and Slackware (great on my servers, not so good for my desktop). I always come back to SUSE.
Well to say that linux should cooperate on something is kinda ludicrous. How can an inanimate object like a kernel cooperate with vendors and set a standard? Obviously companies that create Linux distributions such as SUSE, Mandrake, and Red Hat *DO* work together and form standards. The Linux Standards Base, the Filesystem Hierarchy Stahdard, and other desktop standards on Freedesktop.org are all such examples. Pretty much every distribution has all switched to X.org for the X Server so I don’t know what you are talking about there. If you are griping because this release of SUSE is incompatible with ATi binary drivers, well complain to ATi, though it won’t do you much good. I am anxiously awaiting the latest release myself as it is supposed to have X.org 6.8.x compatibility and 64 bit support (I don’t really care about 64 bit support yet but I will in the future). As it stands the new release should be here *real soon now*
I just wished that the people commenting on the review would offer something a bit more meaningful and substantial to backup their bias, which is waht you call something that you dislike without being able to describe what it is that makes you dislike it.
Mandrake 10 and 10.1 are stable and fast systems. Urpmi is far better than apt4rpm as apt4rpm is not Suse’s official tool or supported in any way by Novell. In fact, if you begin to install nilly-willy by using apt4rpm, your installation will be left in an inconsistent state and Yast will run into problems with updates and so forth.
Urpmi on the other hand has a very long pedigree by now and it is officially supported by Mandrake. I think Suse has better documentation and better looks on default, but that is very easy to fix.
Mandrake makes it very easy to create a multimedia box, while Suse cripples xine and kaffeine to make it nearly impossible to play DVDs without removing all of xine and all of kaffeine.
In Mandrake, the default installation just needs libdvdcss and you are ready to go. Each system has its merits, but Mandrake installs, boots and performs a bit faster. It is also much easier to install third-party software through contrib and plf because you can do so using Mandrake’s supported tool.
Those that are new to Mandrake can use the following tool to set up their software repositories:
but with a ‘clickthrough’ installation you end up with the ‘standard’ security level, and there the firewall is disabled.
The firewall has no relation with the msec security setting.In the post-configuration screens you are asked wether you want the firewall on or of and if on,what services you allow the internet to connect to,or not.
Nice article,sometimes pictures tell more than a 1000 words.
I think than SUSE is very good distribution because is easy and comfort. I tried Mandrake and Fedora, Mandrake is easy too but outstanding. Fedora is very good system too. I’d choose between Suse and fedora.
I was a mdk packager for a long time but pi**d off more and more as I was forced to build more and more add-on packages that fix the problems that the mdk guys had been built into the distro / kernel deliberately. I many cases it is just to remove one of the overaged patches in the original rpm spec that broke things. In essence, mdk does not test – the download edition is their testbed and you have to send patches to get things fixed. That`s the main difference to suse who seem to have the required workforce to do serious testing. If you compare to fedora then a bugfix will often be applied quicker with them than trying the same with mandrake.
On the real meat of hardware support, setup procedures, postinstall administration and graphical admin components for nonpro users it seems the game is not decided. Suse brings a dozen admin components but non for usb and usb is nonfunctional on my box. Mandrake ships overaged and largely nonfunctional dvb drivers. Fedora had long no isdn support and was not recognizing the dual video card setup. Oh, and everyone patches acpi of course and over the last years we had a report from any distro out there that denied installation on that cause… sadly, most of “the other” distros lack graphical admin components for nonpros so that I have to skip them again and again. I don’t want to do too much handholding for the neighbourhood…
Besides Novell knows about apt and doesn’t disapprove, on the contrary (I know what I am talking about)
“In fact, if you begin to install nilly-willy by using apt4rpm, your installation will be left in an inconsistent state and Yast will run into problems with updates and so forth.”
That is not my experience at all and, as a generic statement, it is simply not true.
Of course, like for any other tool, you must know how to use it. I have broken my system much more often with Debian apt (not to mention Portage) than with apt4rpm (never, in fact, since I have lerned how to use it)
As to URPMI I have read quite often of people who have broken their systems because of needed dependencies which were simply not available (I have a personal experience as well). In fact some people have left Mandrake just because of URPMI.
im personally no linux geek :p used redhat and MDK before suse.
suse 9.2 continues to impress me. suse watcher, plugger and the whole yast control center apps are the reasons suse stands out among all linux distros.
as a technical user i can say linux will continue to thrive
the programs i use: kde 3.3, firefox, evolution, gaim, skype, amarok, photoshop, kdevelop, eclipse, k3b, kaffeine, realplyer10, acrobat 7
canon pixma through commercial driver
one bad thing in linux theres still no decent video editor for the penguin.
so wats next for linux? a native version of photoshop?
Hey! Did he say anything about compatibility with this chip to the X.org version in this Suse? I went back to windows after the X.org craze for which ver 6.7.0 (or was it?) didn’t support acceleration of my laptop’s video anymore (xfree86 did). Any testimonies?
“As to URPMI I have read quite often of people who have broken their systems because of needed dependencies which were simply not available (I have a personal experience as well). In fact some people have left Mandrake just because of URPMI.”
Congratulations, you just made the Dumbest Post Ever.
Go back and read that again. How could the *problem* POSSIBLY be anything to do with urpmi? Dependencies do not come from urpmi. They come from RPMs. Whether depended-upon packages are available or not *also* has precisely nothing to do with urpmi.
Think about it. In the situation you describe – package X depends on package Y and package Y is not available – what is urpmi doing wrong? What would rpm, YaST, apt, portage etc etc do differently? Zip.
As a matter of fact, no package in Mandrake main depends on anything outside of Mandrake main. No package in Mandrake contrib depends on anything outside of Mandrake main and contrib (contrib packages can depend on main packages, but main cannot depend on contrib). No package in PLF depends on anything outside of Mandrake main, contrib and PLF. So the situation you describe could only *possibly* arise if you were attempting to install a non-Mandrake package – for instance, a Fedora one. This is wrong. What do you expect the package manager to do to fix your broken procedure in this case? Magically determine the location of a Fedora location, install fifteen Fedora RPMs you need for the INCORRECT package you are installing to work, and break your system? er, no thanks, I’ll pass on that.
“URPMI while nice, I somehow find it frustrating to use when there isn’t a central place for software. I know about easyurpmi, but it sometimes doesn’t work and I need to find another repository.”
As to my own experience I was trying to update 9.1. I found a mirror that had *some*, but not all the updates, which were also needed dependencies. Result:a wasted download of hundreds of MB and a broken system. Never had anything like that with apt4rpm.
If you really want I can find hundreds of complaints over the internet, and then let’s see who is the dumbest among the two of us.
Besides a newer 2.6 kernel there hasn’t been introduced much improvements with SuSE 9.2.Compared with other modern distributions it’s incredible slowwww.
anonymous penguin – this may be a stunningly obvious point, but easyurpmi is not urpmi. urpmi is a dependency-resolving package manager. easyurpmi is an unofficial website which compiles links to mirrors of the official Mandrake ftp site (along with some third-party media like plf). easyurpmi, zarb.org and Mandrake’s rather tenuous mirrors all have their own drawbacks which have indeed been widely remarked upon. None of them has the slightest bit to do with *urpmi*, which as I mentioned is a package manager that is excellent at its job.
FWIW, I use ftp://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/ and ftp://ftp.proxad.net/ as my main mirrors. Both are listed on easyurpmi and I find them resilient, stable and up-to-date. This is indeed not the case with many of Mandrake’s mirrors, which is a shame.
“As to my own experience I was trying to update 9.1. I found a mirror that had *some*, but not all the updates, which were also needed dependencies. Result:a wasted download of hundreds of MB and a broken system.”
That would be your experience with finding a broken mirror. Had you found a broken SuSE mirror would apt4rpm somehow have magically fixed the problem that half the packages were missing? Er, no.
Besides, urpmi does not ‘waste’ downloads. Packages which cannot be installed are preserved in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms so when you fix whatever the problem is they don’t need to be redownloaded.
Oh, and BTW, even the case of a broken mirror is handled much more gracefully these days. Packages are downloaded in batches of interdepending packages and installed in those batches. So if X depends on Y, Z and B, and the mirror is somehow broken and doesn’t contain B, X won’t be installed. So no broken system.
Sigh….yet another distro war that shouldn’t happen in first place. Please repeat after me “use what is best for you, use what is best for you, use what is best for you”
There you have it. Nothing is perfect! If it is, there should be only one distro and everyone loves it!
Here is what I like about Mandrakelinux (David, it’s not Mandrake anymore FYI )
1. urpmi rocks
2. If it is just me, whenever rpm -qf something as user, it segfaults
3. Mandrakelinux UI is the worst I’ve seen (compared to SUSE that is)
4. The only distribution that supports the most languages on earth!
And here is about SUSE
1. Very nice looking.
2. *No* powerful package management.
3. No large *official* and *non-official* repo (compared to Mandrakelinux and Debian of course )
4. When you install a package, it *will* run *all* the scripts as it calls updating the configuration. Try to install ncftp and you will see
5. 9.2 installation default to 640×480 on my laptop. What the fsck?
6. Mind you, Yast2 is copying Mandrakelinux Control Center. Check back prior version of SUSE Linux and now, you will see
Looks like it’s just you. This isn’t a distro war – from everything I’ve read, SuSE is an excellent distro, and indeed either here or in another SuSE thread on OSNews (can’t remember) you’ll find a post from me encouraging someone to try it out. I am objecting to the frankly *wrong* posts from Anonymous Penguin, not promoting Mandrake over any other distro in particular.
I realize that urpmi is just a package manager, and that easyurpmi may or may not contain “official” packages, but being able to expand a system is what I like about Linux.
I don’t want a stock SUSE install. I don’t want a stock MDK install. I want to install the OS and then add the programs I want and I don’t feel that is too much to ask for.
I also realize that third party programs might ruin my machine and am willing to take that chance. What I don’t want is jumping through hoops to install software.
While not the best example, I have to have MythTV (great program) installed on my computer. Under Debian, I add a single line to apt.sources, update, and install. Under Gentoo, emerge mythtv (although it used to be at .15 which was a version behind Debian). I couldn’t find a source for SUSE but Anandtech had a review and instructions on how to install under SUSE (not that difficult). Under Mandrake someone did create packages, but the last time I used it I had to download a new kernel and video drivers that he had. That was too much to ask for. I only needed the frontend so why was my kernel being touched?
Unfortunately I am extremely stubborn when it comes to my computer. I don’t use a lot of packages but the ones I do use I want to make it easy to install.
For now I will leave Gentoo on the machine. I can live with compiling at night in exchange for an easy, central place for packages.
So he had some kind of problem with an update which is utterly unidentifiable from the information given. What, usefully, do you expect me to post? He stopped using Mandrake. I’m not going to be able to help. Anything else is just peeing in the wind. As the replies indicate, plenty of people had no such trouble with MDK updates, so it obviously wasn’t a truly universal problem; it must have been something specific to his configuration and / or the mirror he used.
For the responses about the MythTV. Last year when I was looking, I did find a repository for SUSE, but it was for an earlier version of SUSE and I didn’t know if it would work.
As for Mandrake, I think it was Thac’s site that had MythTV. I didn’t see it in the PLF listing. Again, this was last year when I had tested it (being stubborn, I struggled with urpmi, so it might have been there).
I will have to check both of these out again.
While I don’t care for the feel of MDK, I don’t dislike the disto. I recently set up a laptop for a friend and put MDK 10.1 on it. On my personal machine I had SUSE for quite a while.
I like having a choice of distros, warts and all. I like to download and try new ones as they come out and mature. It’s fun and a learning experience, what more could anyone want!
In the end it’s like having 4 PC’s.Ubuntu (girlfriend),XP professional (author),Mandrake 10.1 (author),FreeBSD 5.3 (author).I have used SuSE from 7.0 upto 9.1 It’s evident why they omitted libdvdcss from their distro,nothing wrong with that.What irritated me is they altered all video packages so even when you would install libdvdcss from elsewhere you still got the legal message,that’s just unnessary harrassment in my opinion.They claim one of the flavors to be professional yet they ship the box with an admin guide which discourages kernel compiling,their description lacks a great deal of info also,one has to search for it on the net anyway.Somewhere in between i met someone who couldn’t stop to make compliments about Mandrake so i decided to give the distro a chance.Suprisingly Mandrake is security aware above the average,with a configuration that’s almost windows like.Just like Ubuntu ,Mandrake is a distro i can and will recommend to everyone who wants to make aqqaintance with Linux.Set the system security to paranoid,set it back to standard when you want to install a nvidia driver and set it back to paranoid when the nvidia driver is installed.There’s nothing to it,the “normal” user account also has accelerated X while most file permissions are still pretty tight.After that patching a vanilla 2.6.10 with the latest sec patches and grsecurity is a breeze.”make && make modules && make modules_install && make install” does the trick (with lilo as boot manager).Install gradm (control program for grsecurity,”gradm -F -L /etc/grsec/Learning.log” makes a pretty good initial *strict* framework after that “gradm -F -L /etc/grsec/learning.log -O /etcgrsecacl” enforcing the automatically generated policy by the Learning module.Guess what it all works,while i don’t get 3700FPS with glxgears anymore,i think 3600 still is sufficient.Grsecurity has PAX memory protection included which can be controlled on a per binairy basis with the “chpax” util.All mentioned tools are part of the Mandrake distro,advantage is they are signed,and for what it’s worth easy to verify.
Bottom line: all unessary services disabled,system setting (msec) to paranoid,system updated,kernel patched,kernel-source patched with grsec and enforced on top of the msec enforcement.Note:the current Mandrake 10.1 comes with RSBAC instead of grsecurity.RSBAC is nearly endless configurable and very advanced,great drawback is the lack of good documentation especially quick start guides since the only docu site besides the official site is still down.FreeBSD come with several MAC modules which is not as difficult to configure as RSBAC,but greatly enhances system security when properly configured,lol got myself locked out numerous of times before i got the hang of it:)
Oh i forgot to mention the firewall thingy.Personally i like shorewall ip-tables script which is fast and easy to configure in a “/etc/default/rc.config” BSD like file editing way.Mandrake comes with a default setting that blocks everything that blocks all inbound packages on the “wan” side and passes all initiated from the local machine with DHCP support.If you don’t need DHCP and can life with a static assigned ip addressing it’s nice to set in “/etc/shorewall/policy: fw net BLOCK,net fw BLOCK,ALL ALL BLOCK.After this you open only the ports which are nessary for your programs to function properly./etc/shorewall/rules could be something like this:
ACCEPT fw net:192.168.X.X udp 53 (dns)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 21 (ftp)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 25 (smtp)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 80 (www)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 110 (pop)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 443 (https)
After this “shorewall start ” starts the firewall.
note: on debian you have to gunzip everything in “/usr/share/doc/shorewall” and copy it all to “/etc/shorewall” the rest is the same as described above.
result: everything inbound is blocked
everything outbound is blocked unless it’s initiated by your machine *and* is stated in the policy.
Thinking about the ‘custom video drivers’ comment some more, do you have a PVR-250 or PVR-350, by any chance? That’s the only situation I can think of where the comment makes sense. In that case you may be right in some way – I don’t have such a card so I don’t know, but I do remember there is / was some issue with the Mandrake kernel packaged driver for these cards (ivtv). Don’t really know much beyond that, but maybe it’s still some kind of problem…would be a pity if so…I can’t see any reason it’d need a custom kernel, though. I’ve run the PLF mythtv packages happily on a stock Mandrake kernel and nvidia.com video driver.
For the responses about the MythTV. Last year when I was looking, I did find a repository for SUSE, but it was for an earlier version of SUSE and I didn’t know if it would work.
It doesn’t matter if the package was made for 9.1 ,more important are the intertwined dependencies.YAST will tell you if it’s feasonable or not regarding needed libraries etc.
Thanks to all who gave constructive feedback to my article.
No, the Armada’s 3d is not accellerated, just as with Mdk10.1OE.
Thanks for your comments about distro bickering, Larry, I agree completely with the ‘use what works’, which I hope also showed from my conclusions. (Hey Eugenia, am I a Mandrake fan? I wouldn’t think so, I just choose to use and recommend Mdk, and since some time also recommend SUSE. Along with all other Free distros.)
I just can’t see the point of messages here that state their preference, based on their (often single machine or single problem/issue) related experience.
It’s just asking for needless/senseless replies to the contrary, and this doesn’t actually add anything.
Urpmi doesn’t work for you? Well, I can imagine apt or whatever doesn’t work well either if mirrors are not updated. Mentioning this as a weak point of urpmi just shows misunderstanding.
As to people leaving Mdk (or SUSE for that matter) due to certain problems -in most cases I’d wager it’s the people’s lack of experience / useful assistance that makes them move away from a specific distribution. The forums to go to for SUSE resp. Mdk are mentioned on my website, I don’t recommend MandrakeSofts own forums, mandrakeusers.org is a better place to come for help.
Tobaccofarm,
thanks for the info on security level and unrelatedness with the firewall – I added this info to the article. BTW isn’t it
service shorewall (re)start?
(PS Bedankt voor je positieve commentaar en aanvullingen.)
How many screenshots can you have of this?
Is this news, must be really difficult and boring
in the land of linux to repost the same article
showing the installation process for the 5th
time!
Linux on the desktop is boring, if this is all
they can come up with.
yawn, time to go back to sleep.
One comment about the long prompt: I’m one of the people who like pwd as prompt. That’s the first thing I change when I have to work on a computer that is not configured that way.
Intel said they only support Redhat and Suse for their integreted AGP chipset.
Xandros will not boot consistently on my computer therefore.
I have not been impressed with Mandrake. Suse has been a better choice for me.
I agree, I have had much better experiences with Suse than Mandrake products. I wonder what all the buzz is about Mandrake. Suse is clearly the better choice.
I would like to say this is the best review of SUSE/Mandrakelinux I have ever read. It actually taught me about the two distributions, gave me some useful tips and went beyond the installer.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading Artee’s review of Ubuntu in the near future.
I have a test machine and regularly install distros just to try them out. My main machine runs Gentoo, although that was more to do with SUSE 9.1’s kernel not finding my USB yoke for X-Plane.
Anyhoo, there is just something about Mandrake that I don’t like. I really don’t know what it is, but the menus seem too, cutesy (is that a word?). URPMI while nice, I somehow find it frustrating to use when there isn’t a central place for software. I know about easyurpmi, but it sometimes doesn’t work and I need to find another repository. I just don’t like it.
SUSE was good and I had it on my machine for a while until the USB issue. I didn’t want to build my own kernel so I put Gentoo on (I know, didn’t want to build a kernel, but built the entire OS). I thought about Debian, but decided to go wtih Gentoo. Perhaps in a bit…
Given the choice between the two, I would vote for SUSE. This is all personal, and I can’t justify it. I just like SUSE better.
I share your feelings. There is “something” about Mandrake I don’t quite like. It feels to me like “a toy OS” (in fact it isn’t), difficult to describe.
SUSE feels much more “professional”, IMHO.
And then URPMI: I find apt/apt4rpm so much better: once again, difficult to describe why.
that linux would cooperate on one standard so software and X server would work on all computers.
Maybe some legal pressure on hardware makers to release drivers for unified linux.
Agree ?
Mandrake was my first distro way back starting with 7.2. I bought it at Walmart for $30 and it was awesome. Apart from having no clue what I was doing (and being lost in the shell, what dir /p doesnt work, how do I list files?) it was pretty cool and I loved that star program that came with it, cant remember the name of it though (Celestia?). I moved on to Mandrake 8.1 and then I saw a review of SUSE 8.0. I bought it and fell in love with it. I’ve been using it ever since. I’ve tried Xandros (formatted 2 drives without asking me when I added mount points to them in the install, and I didn’t like how Windowsy it was), Gentoo (couldnt get it installed, I know a failure as a geek I am), Ubuntu (nice GNOME distro but few config tools and I am more KDE-centric), and Slackware (great on my servers, not so good for my desktop). I always come back to SUSE.
Well to say that linux should cooperate on something is kinda ludicrous. How can an inanimate object like a kernel cooperate with vendors and set a standard? Obviously companies that create Linux distributions such as SUSE, Mandrake, and Red Hat *DO* work together and form standards. The Linux Standards Base, the Filesystem Hierarchy Stahdard, and other desktop standards on Freedesktop.org are all such examples. Pretty much every distribution has all switched to X.org for the X Server so I don’t know what you are talking about there. If you are griping because this release of SUSE is incompatible with ATi binary drivers, well complain to ATi, though it won’t do you much good. I am anxiously awaiting the latest release myself as it is supposed to have X.org 6.8.x compatibility and 64 bit support (I don’t really care about 64 bit support yet but I will in the future). As it stands the new release should be here *real soon now*
Great review.
I just wished that the people commenting on the review would offer something a bit more meaningful and substantial to backup their bias, which is waht you call something that you dislike without being able to describe what it is that makes you dislike it.
Mandrake 10 and 10.1 are stable and fast systems. Urpmi is far better than apt4rpm as apt4rpm is not Suse’s official tool or supported in any way by Novell. In fact, if you begin to install nilly-willy by using apt4rpm, your installation will be left in an inconsistent state and Yast will run into problems with updates and so forth.
Urpmi on the other hand has a very long pedigree by now and it is officially supported by Mandrake. I think Suse has better documentation and better looks on default, but that is very easy to fix.
Mandrake makes it very easy to create a multimedia box, while Suse cripples xine and kaffeine to make it nearly impossible to play DVDs without removing all of xine and all of kaffeine.
In Mandrake, the default installation just needs libdvdcss and you are ready to go. Each system has its merits, but Mandrake installs, boots and performs a bit faster. It is also much easier to install third-party software through contrib and plf because you can do so using Mandrake’s supported tool.
Those that are new to Mandrake can use the following tool to set up their software repositories:
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/
but with a ‘clickthrough’ installation you end up with the ‘standard’ security level, and there the firewall is disabled.
The firewall has no relation with the msec security setting.In the post-configuration screens you are asked wether you want the firewall on or of and if on,what services you allow the internet to connect to,or not.
Nice article,sometimes pictures tell more than a 1000 words.
I think than SUSE is very good distribution because is easy and comfort. I tried Mandrake and Fedora, Mandrake is easy too but outstanding. Fedora is very good system too. I’d choose between Suse and fedora.
I was a mdk packager for a long time but pi**d off more and more as I was forced to build more and more add-on packages that fix the problems that the mdk guys had been built into the distro / kernel deliberately. I many cases it is just to remove one of the overaged patches in the original rpm spec that broke things. In essence, mdk does not test – the download edition is their testbed and you have to send patches to get things fixed. That`s the main difference to suse who seem to have the required workforce to do serious testing. If you compare to fedora then a bugfix will often be applied quicker with them than trying the same with mandrake.
On the real meat of hardware support, setup procedures, postinstall administration and graphical admin components for nonpro users it seems the game is not decided. Suse brings a dozen admin components but non for usb and usb is nonfunctional on my box. Mandrake ships overaged and largely nonfunctional dvb drivers. Fedora had long no isdn support and was not recognizing the dual video card setup. Oh, and everyone patches acpi of course and over the last years we had a report from any distro out there that denied installation on that cause… sadly, most of “the other” distros lack graphical admin components for nonpros so that I have to skip them again and again. I don’t want to do too much handholding for the neighbourhood…
…apt4rpm is not Suse’s official tool or supported in any way by Novell…
This is only partly true, because the apt repositories are in the official SUSE directory:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/
Besides Novell knows about apt and doesn’t disapprove, on the contrary (I know what I am talking about)
“In fact, if you begin to install nilly-willy by using apt4rpm, your installation will be left in an inconsistent state and Yast will run into problems with updates and so forth.”
That is not my experience at all and, as a generic statement, it is simply not true.
Of course, like for any other tool, you must know how to use it. I have broken my system much more often with Debian apt (not to mention Portage) than with apt4rpm (never, in fact, since I have lerned how to use it)
As to URPMI I have read quite often of people who have broken their systems because of needed dependencies which were simply not available (I have a personal experience as well). In fact some people have left Mandrake just because of URPMI.
Is that the truth; “cutesy menu and toy OS”! You know this has bias written all over it.
im personally no linux geek :p used redhat and MDK before suse.
suse 9.2 continues to impress me. suse watcher, plugger and the whole yast control center apps are the reasons suse stands out among all linux distros.
as a technical user i can say linux will continue to thrive
the programs i use: kde 3.3, firefox, evolution, gaim, skype, amarok, photoshop, kdevelop, eclipse, k3b, kaffeine, realplyer10, acrobat 7
canon pixma through commercial driver
one bad thing in linux theres still no decent video editor for the penguin.
so wats next for linux? a native version of photoshop?
Hey! Did he say anything about compatibility with this chip to the X.org version in this Suse? I went back to windows after the X.org craze for which ver 6.7.0 (or was it?) didn’t support acceleration of my laptop’s video anymore (xfree86 did). Any testimonies?
“As to URPMI I have read quite often of people who have broken their systems because of needed dependencies which were simply not available (I have a personal experience as well). In fact some people have left Mandrake just because of URPMI.”
Congratulations, you just made the Dumbest Post Ever.
Go back and read that again. How could the *problem* POSSIBLY be anything to do with urpmi? Dependencies do not come from urpmi. They come from RPMs. Whether depended-upon packages are available or not *also* has precisely nothing to do with urpmi.
Think about it. In the situation you describe – package X depends on package Y and package Y is not available – what is urpmi doing wrong? What would rpm, YaST, apt, portage etc etc do differently? Zip.
As a matter of fact, no package in Mandrake main depends on anything outside of Mandrake main. No package in Mandrake contrib depends on anything outside of Mandrake main and contrib (contrib packages can depend on main packages, but main cannot depend on contrib). No package in PLF depends on anything outside of Mandrake main, contrib and PLF. So the situation you describe could only *possibly* arise if you were attempting to install a non-Mandrake package – for instance, a Fedora one. This is wrong. What do you expect the package manager to do to fix your broken procedure in this case? Magically determine the location of a Fedora location, install fifteen Fedora RPMs you need for the INCORRECT package you are installing to work, and break your system? er, no thanks, I’ll pass on that.
How about this explanation by Chipper:
“URPMI while nice, I somehow find it frustrating to use when there isn’t a central place for software. I know about easyurpmi, but it sometimes doesn’t work and I need to find another repository.”
And how about this thread:
http://forum.mandrakeclub.com/viewtopic.php?t=29641&sid=2846c62c886…
As to my own experience I was trying to update 9.1. I found a mirror that had *some*, but not all the updates, which were also needed dependencies. Result:a wasted download of hundreds of MB and a broken system. Never had anything like that with apt4rpm.
If you really want I can find hundreds of complaints over the internet, and then let’s see who is the dumbest among the two of us.
Judging from your posts you are miles ahead in the dumbest among you two competition.
So now it’s urpmis fault if a site providing links to third party repositories is down?
I’m impressed by your logic to say the least.
I wasn’t talking about “third party repositories” if you can read: I was talking about main updates.
I might be dumb, but you can’t even read English.
I was refering to the quote from Chipper my intelligent friend…
Besides a newer 2.6 kernel there hasn’t been introduced much improvements with SuSE 9.2.Compared with other modern distributions it’s incredible slowwww.
anonymous penguin – this may be a stunningly obvious point, but easyurpmi is not urpmi. urpmi is a dependency-resolving package manager. easyurpmi is an unofficial website which compiles links to mirrors of the official Mandrake ftp site (along with some third-party media like plf). easyurpmi, zarb.org and Mandrake’s rather tenuous mirrors all have their own drawbacks which have indeed been widely remarked upon. None of them has the slightest bit to do with *urpmi*, which as I mentioned is a package manager that is excellent at its job.
FWIW, I use ftp://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/ and ftp://ftp.proxad.net/ as my main mirrors. Both are listed on easyurpmi and I find them resilient, stable and up-to-date. This is indeed not the case with many of Mandrake’s mirrors, which is a shame.
“As to my own experience I was trying to update 9.1. I found a mirror that had *some*, but not all the updates, which were also needed dependencies. Result:a wasted download of hundreds of MB and a broken system.”
That would be your experience with finding a broken mirror. Had you found a broken SuSE mirror would apt4rpm somehow have magically fixed the problem that half the packages were missing? Er, no.
Besides, urpmi does not ‘waste’ downloads. Packages which cannot be installed are preserved in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms so when you fix whatever the problem is they don’t need to be redownloaded.
Oh, and BTW, even the case of a broken mirror is handled much more gracefully these days. Packages are downloaded in batches of interdepending packages and installed in those batches. So if X depends on Y, Z and B, and the mirror is somehow broken and doesn’t contain B, X won’t be installed. So no broken system.
Sigh….yet another distro war that shouldn’t happen in first place. Please repeat after me “use what is best for you, use what is best for you, use what is best for you”
There you have it. Nothing is perfect! If it is, there should be only one distro and everyone loves it!
Here is what I like about Mandrakelinux (David, it’s not Mandrake anymore FYI
)
1. urpmi rocks
2. If it is just me, whenever rpm -qf something as user, it segfaults
3. Mandrakelinux UI is the worst I’ve seen (compared to SUSE that is)
4. The only distribution that supports the most languages on earth!
And here is about SUSE
1. Very nice looking.
2. *No* powerful package management.
3. No large *official* and *non-official* repo (compared to Mandrakelinux and Debian of course
)
4. When you install a package, it *will* run *all* the scripts as it calls updating the configuration. Try to install ncftp and you will see
5. 9.2 installation default to 640×480 on my laptop. What the fsck?
6. Mind you, Yast2 is copying Mandrakelinux Control Center. Check back prior version of SUSE Linux and now, you will see
/usr/src/linux
[adamw@htpc linux]$ rpm -qf CREDITS
kernel-source-stripped-2.6-2.6.9-1mdk
[adamw@htpc linux]$
Looks like it’s just you. This isn’t a distro war – from everything I’ve read, SuSE is an excellent distro, and indeed either here or in another SuSE thread on OSNews (can’t remember) you’ll find a post from me encouraging someone to try it out. I am objecting to the frankly *wrong* posts from Anonymous Penguin, not promoting Mandrake over any other distro in particular.
I realize that urpmi is just a package manager, and that easyurpmi may or may not contain “official” packages, but being able to expand a system is what I like about Linux.
I don’t want a stock SUSE install. I don’t want a stock MDK install. I want to install the OS and then add the programs I want and I don’t feel that is too much to ask for.
I also realize that third party programs might ruin my machine and am willing to take that chance. What I don’t want is jumping through hoops to install software.
While not the best example, I have to have MythTV (great program) installed on my computer. Under Debian, I add a single line to apt.sources, update, and install. Under Gentoo, emerge mythtv (although it used to be at .15 which was a version behind Debian). I couldn’t find a source for SUSE but Anandtech had a review and instructions on how to install under SUSE (not that difficult). Under Mandrake someone did create packages, but the last time I used it I had to download a new kernel and video drivers that he had. That was too much to ask for. I only needed the frontend so why was my kernel being touched?
Unfortunately I am extremely stubborn when it comes to my computer. I don’t use a lot of packages but the ones I do use I want to make it easy to install.
For now I will leave Gentoo on the machine. I can live with compiling at night in exchange for an easy, central place for packages.
“I am objecting to the frankly *wrong* posts from Anonymous Penguin”
You can’t leave it, can you?
Why didn’t you comment on this thread:
http://forum.mandrakeclub.com/viewtopic.php?t=29641&sid=2846c62c886…
And don’t dismiss it as a troll, because pksings explains his reasons very well in the 5th post from top.
And BTW, Chipper, it seems that there is an apt source for MythTV for SUSE 9.2:
http://folk.uio.no/oeysteio/apt/suse/9.2-mythtv/
I’d suggest that you’re using the wrong packages. mythtv is packaged for Mandrake right in PLF. Requires no custom kernel or video drivers.
So he had some kind of problem with an update which is utterly unidentifiable from the information given. What, usefully, do you expect me to post? He stopped using Mandrake. I’m not going to be able to help. Anything else is just peeing in the wind. As the replies indicate, plenty of people had no such trouble with MDK updates, so it obviously wasn’t a truly universal problem; it must have been something specific to his configuration and / or the mirror he used.
For the responses about the MythTV. Last year when I was looking, I did find a repository for SUSE, but it was for an earlier version of SUSE and I didn’t know if it would work.
As for Mandrake, I think it was Thac’s site that had MythTV. I didn’t see it in the PLF listing. Again, this was last year when I had tested it (being stubborn, I struggled with urpmi, so it might have been there).
I will have to check both of these out again.
While I don’t care for the feel of MDK, I don’t dislike the disto. I recently set up a laptop for a friend and put MDK 10.1 on it. On my personal machine I had SUSE for quite a while.
I like having a choice of distros, warts and all. I like to download and try new ones as they come out and mature. It’s fun and a learning experience, what more could anyone want!
In the end it’s like having 4 PC’s.Ubuntu (girlfriend),XP professional (author),Mandrake 10.1 (author),FreeBSD 5.3 (author).I have used SuSE from 7.0 upto 9.1 It’s evident why they omitted libdvdcss from their distro,nothing wrong with that.What irritated me is they altered all video packages so even when you would install libdvdcss from elsewhere you still got the legal message,that’s just unnessary harrassment in my opinion.They claim one of the flavors to be professional yet they ship the box with an admin guide which discourages kernel compiling,their description lacks a great deal of info also,one has to search for it on the net anyway.Somewhere in between i met someone who couldn’t stop to make compliments about Mandrake so i decided to give the distro a chance.Suprisingly Mandrake is security aware above the average,with a configuration that’s almost windows like.Just like Ubuntu ,Mandrake is a distro i can and will recommend to everyone who wants to make aqqaintance with Linux.Set the system security to paranoid,set it back to standard when you want to install a nvidia driver and set it back to paranoid when the nvidia driver is installed.There’s nothing to it,the “normal” user account also has accelerated X while most file permissions are still pretty tight.After that patching a vanilla 2.6.10 with the latest sec patches and grsecurity is a breeze.”make && make modules && make modules_install && make install” does the trick (with lilo as boot manager).Install gradm (control program for grsecurity,”gradm -F -L /etc/grsec/Learning.log” makes a pretty good initial *strict* framework after that “gradm -F -L /etc/grsec/learning.log -O /etcgrsecacl” enforcing the automatically generated policy by the Learning module.Guess what it all works,while i don’t get 3700FPS with glxgears anymore,i think 3600 still is sufficient.Grsecurity has PAX memory protection included which can be controlled on a per binairy basis with the “chpax” util.All mentioned tools are part of the Mandrake distro,advantage is they are signed,and for what it’s worth easy to verify.
Bottom line: all unessary services disabled,system setting (msec) to paranoid,system updated,kernel patched,kernel-source patched with grsec and enforced on top of the msec enforcement.Note:the current Mandrake 10.1 comes with RSBAC instead of grsecurity.RSBAC is nearly endless configurable and very advanced,great drawback is the lack of good documentation especially quick start guides since the only docu site besides the official site is still down.FreeBSD come with several MAC modules which is not as difficult to configure as RSBAC,but greatly enhances system security when properly configured,lol got myself locked out numerous of times before i got the hang of it:)
Oh i forgot to mention the firewall thingy.Personally i like shorewall ip-tables script which is fast and easy to configure in a “/etc/default/rc.config” BSD like file editing way.Mandrake comes with a default setting that blocks everything that blocks all inbound packages on the “wan” side and passes all initiated from the local machine with DHCP support.If you don’t need DHCP and can life with a static assigned ip addressing it’s nice to set in “/etc/shorewall/policy: fw net BLOCK,net fw BLOCK,ALL ALL BLOCK.After this you open only the ports which are nessary for your programs to function properly./etc/shorewall/rules could be something like this:
ACCEPT fw net:192.168.X.X udp 53 (dns)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 21 (ftp)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 25 (smtp)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 80 (www)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 110 (pop)
ACCEPT fw net tcp 443 (https)
After this “shorewall start ” starts the firewall.
note: on debian you have to gunzip everything in “/usr/share/doc/shorewall” and copy it all to “/etc/shorewall” the rest is the same as described above.
result: everything inbound is blocked
everything outbound is blocked unless it’s initiated by your machine *and* is stated in the policy.
Thinking about the ‘custom video drivers’ comment some more, do you have a PVR-250 or PVR-350, by any chance? That’s the only situation I can think of where the comment makes sense. In that case you may be right in some way – I don’t have such a card so I don’t know, but I do remember there is / was some issue with the Mandrake kernel packaged driver for these cards (ivtv). Don’t really know much beyond that, but maybe it’s still some kind of problem…would be a pity if so…I can’t see any reason it’d need a custom kernel, though. I’ve run the PLF mythtv packages happily on a stock Mandrake kernel and nvidia.com video driver.
For the responses about the MythTV. Last year when I was looking, I did find a repository for SUSE, but it was for an earlier version of SUSE and I didn’t know if it would work.
It doesn’t matter if the package was made for 9.1 ,more important are the intertwined dependencies.YAST will tell you if it’s feasonable or not regarding needed libraries etc.
IMHO is Suse better than Mandrake. Iam using on my machine Suse PRO 9.2. Is more stable, more easy to use and faster than Mandrake.
Thanks to all who gave constructive feedback to my article.
No, the Armada’s 3d is not accellerated, just as with Mdk10.1OE.
Thanks for your comments about distro bickering, Larry, I agree completely with the ‘use what works’, which I hope also showed from my conclusions. (Hey Eugenia, am I a Mandrake fan? I wouldn’t think so, I just choose to use and recommend Mdk, and since some time also recommend SUSE. Along with all other Free distros.)
I just can’t see the point of messages here that state their preference, based on their (often single machine or single problem/issue) related experience.
It’s just asking for needless/senseless replies to the contrary, and this doesn’t actually add anything.
Urpmi doesn’t work for you? Well, I can imagine apt or whatever doesn’t work well either if mirrors are not updated. Mentioning this as a weak point of urpmi just shows misunderstanding.
As to people leaving Mdk (or SUSE for that matter) due to certain problems -in most cases I’d wager it’s the people’s lack of experience / useful assistance that makes them move away from a specific distribution. The forums to go to for SUSE resp. Mdk are mentioned on my website, I don’t recommend MandrakeSofts own forums, mandrakeusers.org is a better place to come for help.
Tobaccofarm,
thanks for the info on security level and unrelatedness with the firewall – I added this info to the article. BTW isn’t it
service shorewall (re)start?
(PS Bedankt voor je positieve commentaar en aanvullingen.)
Anyhow, enjoy Linux!
aRTee