“Is Mandrakelinux 10.1 (X86-64) worth €119? As we did not test the commercial edition of the product, we cannot really answer the question, but the FTP edition has given us enough warning signs to put any recommendations on hold.” Read the review at LWN.
LWN: Mandrakelinux 10.1 on AMD64
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=193&slide=1
Not b/c I’m a mandrake fanboy (using Ubuntu ATM), but this review was plain unfair. It was really the worst review I’ve ever read, just read it yourself and you know what I mean.
There was a comment on LWN that hit the nail on the head:
I feel this review was a unfair in reviewing what may, or may not have been the Community edition, downloaded from a mirror directory that may, or may not have been officially there. (Who knows, maybe the mirror directory was just in the process of being populated?)
I have looked at the packages on the X86_64 CD’s and the net install, and they are quite different, starting with an older kernel on the net install. The net install kernel does not work with my hardware, where the kernel on the CD’s does just fine. So in the future, the reviewer might not want to take the lazy route and actually get the product as promoted and distributed.
[quote]
Why pay for 64-bit X86 Mandrake when fedora works just fine and is free.
[/quote]
Because we all have a choice in what we wish to run. Because some people want to actually support a distro by giving them some $$. Because not all of us like being public beta testers for Red Hat. Because that choice is what running *nix is all about. Because some of us may think that Mandrake gives better KDE support (and that is our DE of choice).
Just a small list to get going on……I hate questions like this.
“Why do you use <insert distro> when I use <insert different distro> and it is <better/works/faster/easier/blah blah blah>?”
It is simple….I use <insert distro> because it is the one that I think works *best* for *me* at the moment. Ty.
“Because we all have a choice in what we wish to run. Because some people want to actually support a distro by giving them some $$. Because not all of us like being public beta testers for Red Hat.”
but you will be public beta testers for mandrake. stop throwing silly remarks like that
@anon
Because not all of us like being public beta testers for Red Hat.
Except if you use the community edition you’re just beta testers for Mandrake’s commercial edition…oh wait, that’s just like RedHat!
Give it up, commercial distribution companies don’t give anything away for free, there’s always a benefit for them.
> Because not all of us like being public beta testers for Red Hat.”
Fedora => Mandrakelinux
RHEL => Mandrakelinux Corporate Server
I use Fedora because i like being beta testers for free software (that Mandrake also use).
“I think the question was, Why pay for 64-bit X86 Mandrake when fedora works just fine and is free.”
So this comment “but you will be public beta testers for mandrake. stop throwing silly remarks like that” means nothing because you don’t pay for the community edition. And of course the same for this comment: “Except if you use the community edition you’re just beta testers for Mandrake’s commercial edition…oh wait, that’s just like RedHat!” since again, that is not what the question was about.
“I use Fedora because i like being beta testers for free software (that Mandrake also use).”
And vise a versa btw.
When I reviewed Mandrake 10.1 64 I actually got the offical copy, not downloaded off an FTP site. Is it worth the money? It’s worth to me if everything works. So far I have almost 0 problems with it and have been using it for a few weeks now as my main desktop. Perhaps there was an issue with the FTP site or the build that was placed there. I will be more than willing to pay for something if it works well with my system and I tested a copy of the 32-bit edition first and found no issues. Everyone has a right to there opinions about their experiences, but I have to say mine was just fine.
As others have pointed out this review is unfair. I’ll add that it’s downright silly. Who the heck knows what they downloaded, they sure don’t. Last time I checked 64 wasn’t publicly available. Maybe it is now but lurking around FTP servers seems like a dumb thing to do when reviewing a product. (That said the 2 times I’ve used mandrake I’ve been swarmed by bugs).
As for mandrake v. fedora I think a huge factor is your default choice of DE– let’s face it fedora is gnome-centric. If you want to use kde, it’s suse (less free than mandrake) and mandrake in the big ‘easy’ distro category.
Allthough i fortunately have bitten through the sour FreeBSD apple,i enjoy playing around once in a while with Mandrake.Mandy has never let me down.While SuSE is de facto a better (looking) programming platform with for ex eclipse amongst the many environments,mandrake is defenitely more agile.I realy couldn’t care less about an OS that connects the wrong countries to a continent in the upgrade shema,as long as it’s a visual flaw.The prime focus would be on how the system handles the updates itself.Unfortunately i’m not in the luxury position to fool around with a 64 bit mongrel but experience and my gut tells me to have certainly more confidence in Mandy64 than the reviewers.Time will tell.
Mandy is the common nickname for Mandrake Linux.
On the subject of reviews.., interesting that Mandrake’s recently been ranked as the top-rated distribution from a Linux Format comparison:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20050117
Seems the reviewer grabbed the 10.1 x86-64 tree that turned up on mirrors before 10.1 x86-64 was officially released for any kind of download. And yes, this tree really was screwed up…apart from anything, the entire contrib section of it went missing and was quietly replaced with the contrib section from 10.0. Sigh. I know this doesn’t exactly reflect brilliantly on MDKsoft, but the fact remains there’s a real product out there for testing and this guy didn’t test it. If the review had been titled ‘review of an undetermined free version of Mandrake 10.1 x86-64’ and the conclusion had been ‘all we can really tell is that if you want to try MDK 10.1 for x86-64 you shouldn’t try and do a network install, but buy the product’…fine. But he really had no call to be making conclusions about the paid-for product when he patently obviously hadn’t used it.
Whilst the reviewer may have been ‘unfair’ as the Mandrake users that have posted so far have jumped up and down about, I feel that he has made some very valid comments.
OK – he downloaded an ‘unnofficial’ version, big deal. You can download unnofficial versions of Fedora, Debian and Suse as well you know – and without the lack of polish or problems that he encountered. This is the exact reason why I choose not to use Mandrake.
The majority of people that I know don’t use Mandrake, and their reason? Because it is full of bugs and nothing but problems. My short experience using Mandrake showed the exact same issues that others have reported. The location map is a prime example, some here have posted ‘what’s the big deal’ approaches to this problem, I look at things a bit more differently. Firstly, if you’re buying this you’re paying a LARGE sum of money, overpriced in my honest opinion by a LARGE amount. 119 pounds? You have to be kidding. It would have to be the most expensive distribution available. Poor interface bugs like the location issue do not instill confidence, they instill the thought that this is sloppy. The vast majority of new Windows refugees trying Mandrake would not be impressed.
Also, read the positives that the reviewer states:
“In all fairness, once we got through these early troubles, the distribution turned out to be a pleasant product. The hardware autodetection was flawless, the applications we tested behaved as expected, and Mandrakelinux Control Center is a friendly utility for most general configuration tasks.”
You can’t get more fairer than that in my eyes.
It seems that humans are humans, and humans that like a particular thing do not like it being ‘trashed’ by others. That doesn’t mean that his [the reviewers] point of view is wrong or any less applicable.
Dave
PS No I do not use Fedora, can’t stand Redhat/Fedora either, and Suses’ support the last time I tried their distribution was totally and utterly disgraceful.
Hey Dave, how goes it? 🙂
“OK – he downloaded an ‘unnofficial’ version, big deal. You can download unnofficial versions of Fedora, Debian and Suse as well you know – and without the lack of polish or problems that he encountered. This is the exact reason why I choose not to use Mandrake.”
I agree with you to a point, but what the reviewer really ended up with was cooker, not even a snapshot, but just straight cooker. So holding it to being the same as an unofficial version isn’t even close IMO.
Cooker is probably the most unstable (today it works, tomorrow it doesn’t) repository that I person could find. So basing a review on it is way less than fair.
Now obviously there was some confussion of where he should have been getting his packages from, but as a reviewer isn’t it really his responsibility to at least contact the company and ask? Especially knowing that the distribution he was supposed to be getting was a paid for distribution, and was not supposed to be available for ftp download?
Didn’t want to start the Fedora vs. Madrake fight my main point was meant to be why pay 120 Euro for something that is readily available elsewhere via download? I don’t use the GUI with my linux boxes mainly becasue they perform server duty so i am sure that is a consideration overlooked by myself that could be a consideration for others. Personally Fedora works fine for me and i can’t find any significant differences between major and minor Distros other then packages bundled with it. I have grown past my days of constant fiddling with an OS just to get it to do what i want it to do Fedora “just works”
All you guys who are complaining about the review being unfair, just remember that I downloaded the distribution from the “official” directory on Mandrake mirrors. OFFICIAL. Not “community” and not “cooker”, but “official”.
If it wasn’t official, but was mistakenly uploaded to the wrong directory, then you can hardly blame the reviewer. In fact, it just adds to the impression of the distribution being unpolished and unprofessional in more than one way.
That’s been explained already; what’s available for free is not the same thing that’s available for $120 (or whatever the price is, that sounds too high to me, and besides you can now download it for whatever the price of being a Silver club member is nowadays). What’s available for free is a similar competing product. Some people may still prefer the product that costs money enough that they’re willing to pay money for it, and who’s to say they’re wrong? It’s their choice.
“Hey Dave, how goes it? 🙂 ”
Goes well!!!
“So holding it to being the same as an unofficial version isn’t even close IMO. ”
I agree, but as the reviewer has posted, he downloaded the iso from the “official” directory. One would expect uploads from vendors to be done properly.
“as a reviewer isn’t it really his responsibility to at least contact the company and ask?”
Yeah I agree as well. But remember, you can grab the equivalents from Redhat et al without asking Redhat and I doubt you’d get the same type of mixup happening.
I think it’s a combination of bad luck and timing myself, he does state that post install it’s quite good, and in reality that’s the MAIN point. And as long as these problems are no longer present in current downloads/purchased disks then all is well.
My only concern is the cost – it is VERY expensive. Libranet GNU/Linux is a lot cheaper and whilst 2.8.1 is getting long in the tooth now, it’s still really nice. Debian Sarge is coming alone very nicely as well. So there are options, and I really think Mandrake needs to be more competitive in the pricing arena for their own survival.
Dave
“If it wasn’t official, but was mistakenly uploaded to the wrong directory, then you can hardly blame the reviewer. ”
I agree, this is more Mandrake’s fault that anyone else’s.
I respect the work you do at distrowatch a great deal, but this article of yours was pure bullshit.
From your subscription to MDK’s announcement list, you knew that Mandrake hadn’t officially released its 64-bit version.
You then write a review upon a product that was never available for public release. In fact, you used the wrong/generic installer by your own admission.
Pointing out bugs and problems helps us all. Writing bogus self-serving reviews helps no one. I have been quite critical of Mandrakesoft when it is called for, but it really is very hard to take your review seriously.
The only fair thing to do would be for you to get your hands on the official CDs and update the article.
Later.