Paul . L . Snyder on Wed, 20 Feb 2002 11:28:25 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Mandrake 8.1?


On 20-Feb-2002, "ian reinhart geiser" <geiseri@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Wednesday 20 February 2002 10:13 am, W. Chris Shank wrote about [PLUG]
Mandrake 8.1?:

>> What are your thoughts on this? How difficult will it be to get these
>> things working? I'm on the fence with a return to SuSE which I know
works.
>
>Mandrake in my experiance is very nice AS LONG AS YOU CHANGE NOTHING.
>no kernels, no non mandrake packages, and update only when you have to,
and
>use mandrakes own tools.  If you can work in those constraints mandrake is
>very solid and will run very well.  It is a good desktop and easy to
setup,
>but even using non-mandrake kernels causes problems, and development is
>completely out of the question.  As soon as you start installing your own
>software bad things happen.

I'm currently running Mandrake 8.1 on my laptop, and can confirm the
pain of upgrading the kernel.  At the time, kernel rpms for the version
I needed were not available, so I compiled my own from stock sources.
I broke a fair number of things, the jagged edges of which I cauterized
with vi.  Most irritating was Aurora, Mandrake's putatively spiffy
graphical
concealment for boot messages.  I can't remember what it was interfering
with, but I had to rip references out of four or five different places
before it was completely inactivated and I could actually boot.

I'm still having two problems:

1. No matter what I do, I cannot get apm support in the kernel to compile.

2. Probably as a consequence, I can neither plug nor unplug the power
supply
while Linux is running.  If I do, the system instantly locks up.

Other than that, I like Mandrake well enough, perhaps a bit better than
Red Hat.  Nonetheless, I'm about to switch the laptop over to Debian.

pls


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