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I am a total newbie to Linux, but have found Mandrake to be fairly easy to
deal with. I use 8.1, but 8.2 came out not too long ago and from people I
know that have used it, it seems to have been made easier still. I have
tried it with several desktops and KDE still seems to be the most
intuitive and easiest to deal with.
Craig
--- Kevin Brosius <kbrosius@kns.com> wrote:
> 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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