Mandrake 10 - A Newbies Review

[TrakerJon 0]

Mandrake 10 - A Newbies Review

 

Mandrake 10 has been out for a couple of weeks now and from what I've seen most people seem to like it. I'm running it right now as a workstation and in my humble opinion this release was thought out much better than 9.2 (although compared to 9.1 it misses the mark a little). The fact that you have to manually install Mozilla and Evolution is a pain in the arse. Mandrake was smart enough (this time) to include the current releases of popular software (good job guys) but when are they going to start including Sun's Java VM, Flash and RealPlayer in the community release?!!! They were nice enough to put some of the icons back on the KDE panel and the application start menu is organized a little better than 9.2. In general I give it a "A" for effort with the suggestion that there is some room for improvement. Hey Mandrake...the standard workstation install should include:

 

1. OpenOffice

2. Evolution

3. Mozilla

4. RealPlayer

5. MPlayer

6. Sun's Java VM

7. Gaim

8. XMMS

9. GTK-Gnutella

10. Macromedia Flash

 

 

[Edited by TrakerJon on 2004-03-20 08:37:32]

 

[TrakerJon 0]

 

 

Here's the goodies...

 

GTK-Gnutella - http://gtkg.swimmingnoodle.com/pkg/

 

Gaim - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=235&package_id=253

 

Flash - http://ruslug.mutgers.edu/macromedia/site_ru.html

 

Sun Java VM - http://java.com/en/index.jsp

 

RealPlayer - http://forms.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html?src=031104realhome_1_1_2_1_1_2

 

 

[danleff 0]

You had better luck than me. On my install, the network and sound are not functional.

 

OpenOffice is installed by default. In fact, I did an expert install and deleted it, as I have StarOffice.

 

What is not installed by default, at least for some of the packages that you note, just install from the CD's. Mandrake's control panel/configure computer is pretty good and some improvements have been made that you will like.

[idud 0]

Hey, I'm not as lucky as all of you.

 

xmms-arts crash

In my installation, xmms-arts is totally crash, previously I use xmms with libarts for output, so I can play xmms together with other producing-sound apps. But not in Mdk-10.0, when I activated arts output in xmms, xmms stops the playback and when I click some part of the xmms body, it crashes. ;(

 

No "eject -t" in rpmdrake

When using 9.1 I'm so glad that I will never touch the eject button on my cdrom, because I can use "eject" to eject cd and "eject -t" to insert cd. And so in rpmdrake, I only need to click OK (or just enter in urpmi) and automatically the cd tray closes.

 

But not in Mdk-10, still I have to press the eject button, and the click OK (or enter in urpmi), eventhough I changed the fstab to supermount CD (default in Mdk-10.0 CD is not supermount).

 

HANG when opening FAT/NTFS partition

Defaultly, kernel 2.6.3-4mdk from Mdk-10.0 is unable to write NTFS, but work fine in FAT. So I decided to recompile the kernel and enabling the ntfs write support. But then when I exploring the fat/ntfs partition with konqueror, the system is completely hang! Painly, I press the power button and use the old kernel.

 

What a pain!!!

x)

[TrakerJon 0]

 

 

Hmmm XMMS does seem to be quite a problem with Mandrake 10 unless you include it with the initial install. I don't mess around with my NTFS partician while using Mandrake but if that functionality is something you need that may be another issue as well. Ok, Mandrake, what other surprises are there?

[idud 0]

Hmmm...., I have to revise my satements above

 

Mandrake has released the bugfix (at least I call it bugfix) at the Mandrake cooker. I downloaded the xmms-arts, install it and now it's working well.

 

And the "hang" thing, it's probably not from the ntfs-write-support because I recompile (agin) the kernel with only change the ntfs-write-support, ufs-write-support, and the processor family to amd k7. With that configuration I get hang no more, but still Mandrake can't write into the ntfs partition.

 

In the previous kernel compiling (with the "hang"), beside the original Mdk-10 configuration (/boot/config) I also enabling all filesystem write support (including that stated DANGEROUS), enabling SELinux security support, and changing processor family to amd k7.

 

I hope with this post, Mandrake will do something better.

 

Go Mandrake, God bless you!!!

[idud 0]

New Bug

I don't know if someone have mention this before, but I found in diskdrake, that even if you choose to create primary partition, the diskdrake will treat it as if you choose logical partition. I reformated the /dev/hda1 and give it primary option, but the result, diskdrake give me /dev/hda5 and renumbering all partitions behind it.

 

So please be careful.