[olug] Mandrake 9.1

Mon Jun 9 13:45:40 UTC 2003

I have tried Mandrake and had better luck with Red Hat.
I believe they are similar due to RPM packages but Mandrake has created
their own packages and releases that are unique from Red Hat for sometime
now.
I tried Mandrake 8.0 on a shared memory video system and went back to Red
Hat.
I tried Mandrake 9.0 at home and the GUI kept crashing during use.
I wanted to try Mandrake 9.1 but the install would no complete.
The GUI install crashed and the text install was stuck in a loop when
configuring the boot loader.
I do use some Mandrake packages at times on Red Hat since they are usually
newer releases at times.

I like SUSE but had problems with 6.4 so I only use it at home to see what
it looks like.
I have SUSE 8.1 loaded from FTP at home.
It does not contain some desktop packages that Red Hat and Slackware contain
such as GAIM.

I like the way Mandrake supports many filesystems at install also and you
can go back up to a previous install step when the installer skips them like
with boot disk creation.

I use Red Hat because it is supported first on the packages I run and
because it is most similar in my opinion to SCO Openserver that I have been
supporting for many years.

I will have to see if I can get Mandrake to install on a different system
and research it more.
At least for Desktop use.
Just my current thoughts.

-----Original Message-----
From: olug-bounces at olug.org [mailto:olug-bounces at olug.org] On Behalf Of
Robert A. Jacobs
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 10:56 PM
To: Omaha Linux User Group
Subject: Re: [olug] Mandrake 9.1

On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 08:00, Brian Roberson wrote:
> Various off/on topics - Just my ramble....
> 
> So I decided to install Mandrake to get up to speed for the 
> installfest... I am so used to server oriented distro's that make you 
> use your brain when you install... this thing is very user friendly ; 
> I think I may be changing my opinion of Mandrake. I used to not like 
> it, but when I thought about it, the reason I did not like it 
> initially was the fact that it was(is?) solely based off of redhat 
> with just recompiled i586 packages. I have not hit the website to 
> really do some digging, does anyone know if this is still true? I have 
> not been outside the realm of SuSE for over 3 years.... I guess once 
> you get to a comfort point, you just dont want to move. I must admit, 
> this distro really opened my eyes. I even installed it over a previous 
> SuSE instal, complete using reiserFS and Mandrake allowed me to keep 
> the fs's I wanted to  intact, I did however end up just formatting all 
> partitions except my /home ; it even left them all reiserFS. - very 
> nice. Does anyone else have any feedback on Mandrake as compared to 
> other distro's? I must also admit that I have had my head stuck in an 
> M$ environment and found it much easier to just conform rather than 
> rebel ; especially when I am the one supporting it. I know, that 
> sounds like bigotry, however over the last year I have came to a new 
> level of respect for the term "single seat management" ; It does work.
> 

I ran Mandrake (I want to say 8.0) for about six months.  My only problem
with it was the feeling that I was not in control the same way I am when I
run my Debian box.  Coulda been that I didn't give it enough of a chance,
though.

Every Mandrake user I knew was doing a reinstall from disk every six months
or so i.e. whenever Mandrake released a new version.  Definitely was not
appealing to me.  The main complaint they had (and that I had) was RPM-hell
and a general feeling of not being in control (feeling like they had to rely
on GUIs more, etc.).  In the end, it was just easier to re-install than try
to upgrade.  I realize Mandrake and Red Hat can use apt4rpm but the
impression I've gotten is that it is not quite up to par with Debian's
apt-get.

My initial perception of Mandrake, however, was the same as yours:  very
impressive.  If I could have gotten over the rpm-is-not-deb thing, I'd
probably still be running it (there are times, however rare, that I truly
desire anti-aliasing and other perks without having to run Debian unstable).
Before this post can be used to spark a .deb versus .rpm flamefest, I'll
drop it there.

Not that it matters but after Debian, the next distro I'll probably try is
Knoppix (Debian-based, for those who may not know) or Gentoo (optimized for
your system and only for those with gobs of time to do the install -- wife
is expecting twins so that is probably not me!).

robert.a.jacobs

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