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Noah silva wrote:
>
> On the subject of mandrake, does anyone actually use this?
>
> I was putting together a computer for my girlfriend, and she wanted to
> have "what I have" (debian linux). I thought debian might be a bit much
> for her since, f.e. dselect doesn't have one decent gui, (and the whole
> stable is too old, unstable isn't, etc.).
>
> I heard of Suse and Mandrake both being good "end user" linux distros.
>
> I played with the SuSE live eval, and was very impressed by the hardware
> detection, reasonable defaults everywhere, YaST, etc. - but I didn't like
> the no ISO policy.
>
> Mandrake allowed ISO downloads, so I figured I would check it out. After
> installing it, it seems worse than debian for configuring stuff. The GUI
> tools were inconsistant, use KDE stuff for this, linux conf for that,
> webmin was installed too... I had to look all over creation to figure out
> how to change a setting. I couldn't use the config files either, since
> they weren't where I am used to seeing them in debian and solaris. My
> roomate looked at it and said "now I know how you feel using windows at
> work".
>
> I decided to overlook my dislike for the no-iso policy, and I got the FTP
> installer ISO image and installed SUSE by FTP. Getting the ISO was
> horribly slow, but once I booted that, the FTP was very fast. The
> hardware detection was perfect. The installed desktop is about as
> polished as it could be, and everything just works, with no tinkering. To
> change any settings I might want to, everything is in one consistand and
> very well made place (yast). Installing software is just as easy as with
> apt-get too. Next I put red-carpet on it and installed ximian evolution
> and gnome, which also worked 100% perfect.
>
> I ran into only two minor problems:
> a.) The install program is super friendly and polished in every way except
> for the very first part of the FTP ISO CD, where it looks more like netbsd
> or debian's installer... I had to know to install the kernal module for my
> network card. This would make it more difficult for non-technical users to
> install it. (There is no way around entering the network settings, but it
> could find your card, since yast finds it once you load stuff from the
> FTP).
>
> b.) I installed OpenOffice.org 641C from YaST, later I installed
> OpenOffice.org 1.0.0 from red-carpet. Later I installed StarOffice 6 from
> red-carpet. StarOffice 6 had OpenOffice 1.0 listed as a dependancy. Even
> though I already had it, it downloaded the rpm again, and then it
> complained that it couldn't install SO6 because it couldn't install all
> dependencies.. (and it couldn't install OO1 because it already
> was!). This seems like a bug in red-carpet or its dep db, but it's the
> only one I found so far, and I have used yast half the time and red-carpet
> half the time, so if I were going to break something else, I probably
> would have by now.
>
> I thought since SUSE was so pre-built (compared to debian anyhow), that it
> would suck if you actually DID want to compile something yourself, etc.,
> but it actually seems to have a very reasonable development setup if you
> choose to install it. (hey I wanted mplayer).
>
> The more I use it, the more I think about converting my desktop too. (My
> servers are safe, they will continue running debian or netbsd probably
> forever).
>
> I was also surprised that the mandrake seemed older and more patched
> together because it came out more recently than suse 8 I thought.
>
> Anyone else have experiences with Mandrake (7.2 I think) or Suse 8?
>
> -- noah silva
>
I've been a SuSE user for a while. SuSE 8 has only been out a few
months, but I've got it on one machine at home and generally like it.
Had some issues with KDE upgrading, and it still has some KDE startup
problems, but other than that it's working great.
I use that system primarily for development, so yeah, I'm happy with
SuSE development install. They haven't jumped on the bandwagon with the
really new autotools which suits me and they don't ship gcc 3 yet as the
primary compiler (which I also approve of.)
Their setup tools Yast/Yast2 are good, although not always as intuitive
as you might like. I've gotten used to them.
They are also pretty good about security updates, making update packages
available online from the web site, and SuSE 8 supports an online update
mode which will check for new updates for you.
--
Kevin Brosius
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