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Mandrake 8.2 is boring -- in the best way
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May 01, 2002 (8:00:00 AM)
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- By Robin "Roblimo" Miller -
Less than an hour after my review copy of Mandrake 8.2 Powerpack arrived, I had everything up and running, including my printer, wireless connection, and StarOffice, along with Mozilla and a number of popular plugins. It was about as ho-hum an operating system install as anyone could want.
Less than an hour after my review copy of Mandrake 8.2 Powerpack arrived, I had everything up and running, including my printer, wireless connection, and StarOffice, along with Mozilla and a number of popular plugins. It was about as ho-hum an operating system install as anyone could want.
I have been using Mandrake for quite a while, but that didn't really matter. This was strictly a "stick the coaster in the cupholder thingie and turn the switch on" install. I chose defaults from beginning to end, mindlessly clicking on everything that was presented to me. I swapped coasters when the cupholder thingie opened up, then clicked "okay" after I put the next coaster (they have numbers) into the cupholder and shoved it back into its slot. In between I read The Wall Street Journal. On paper. The Journal was more exciting than the install.
The manuals
Because there's nothing to say about the Mandrake 8.2 install beyond, "it worked," let's look at the books that came in the box. The first one, and the most important one for new users -- and I mean a user either new to Linux or new to Mandrake -- is the Installation and User Guide. It is 371 pages (including index) of real, honest-to-bonkers user manual that tells you how to use all of Mandrake's graphical-install and setup tools and how to run many of the most popular programs included with this distribution. It has sections with names like "Office Work" and "Using the Internet." People who might have asked, "What's a Linux?" yesterday could read this book and know how to do almost every ordinary computer task in Mandrake after they were through.
The second book, titled Reference Manual, has paragraphs like this one in it:
environ This file contains all the environment variables defined for this process, in the form VARIABLE=value. Similar to cmdline, the output is not formatted at all; no newlines to separate between different variables, and no newline at the end either. One solution to view it: perl -pl -e 's,\100,\n,g' environ.Mandrake starts out easy, but if you want to go deep, they don't stop you, and they give you the basic written material you need at every step of the way. 8.2 just makes the start a little easier than it used to be.
Linux for the lazy
You could, no doubt, set up all the packages that come with the Mandrake 8.2 Powerpack yourself, and you'd probably make a cleaner and faster system if you did, what with you being an elite hacker and all, but just as it's nice to have someone else clear the table when you're done eating now and then, sometimes it's nice to have that RealPlayer plugin install itself automagically into the .9.8 Mozilla that comes as the default, then to automagically click on a couple of thingies and have the current 1.0 release candidate download and install itself, fast as an apt-get if not faster, and be able to add software that's not in the default install, like NEdit (my favorite text editor), and have it show up in the KDE menus without doing a thing, with all dependencies handled for you.
Or maybe you're not lazy but just short of time. I know some highly skilled Linux programmers and sysadmins who like Mandrake because it lets them get not just "an" installation, but one complete with all kinds of neat stuff (Flash) going in very little time, while paying attention to something else.
Is the 8.2 Powerpack worth $69 US (plus shipping), including StarOffice? I can't make that judgment for you. The download edition, plus OpenOffice, is free, and if that'll do for you, then that'll do for you. I find it enough faster and easier to have everything install quick-like-bunny in one lump that I'm willing to pay $69 for the convenience, plus the extras you get with StarOffice that don't come with OpenOffice. Not to mention the manuals. I bought a laptop recently with Windows XP pre-installed, and to learn anything deep about XP, I'm sure I'd need to spend at least $70 for books, because I certainly didn't get much XP documentation with it. Then I'd have to get some sort of office suite for Windows, and most of them cost a bunch of money, plus I'd want to get at least some sort of image manipulation program (Mandrake includes The GIMP and some other utilities) and manuals for them, and so on.
Yeah, I talked myself into it. I'll spend the $69. Of course, I'll also use the same copy of Mandrake on the laptop with XP (which is running the Mandrake 8.2 download edition 99% of the time already), so that brings it down to less than $35 per computer. And then I have this other, older computer I use as a backup, so now we're down to $23 per install. I can live with that, even if a friend or two doesn't bum the CDs from me (which will inevitably happen) and maybe buy me a drink or two in return.
This is the best Mandrake yet. Just like that. Now I'm going to stop typing and go watch some Quicktime movie trailers, Yes, a trial edition of the justifiably famous Crossover "run Windows browser plugins in Linux" program is included, as are trial versions of many other interesting commercial programs for Linux. Anyway, here's the Mandrake 8.2 product page for the version I tested. There's also a less expensive Standard Version that's not quite as fancy (OpenOffice instead of StarOffice, for example), but still includes the fine manuals, that's probably plenty for most home users.
Now I really am going to stop typing. I've spent longer writing these few words -- and lots more keystrokes -- than it took to install and set up this latest Mandrake. That's sure a change from how a Linux install was just a few years ago, eh?
Note: The review platform was a common HP Pavilion 5340 laptop with a Savage S3 video card and ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1 sound card. The printer is an HP Deskjet 940. Wireless connection is through an SMC card; I don't remember the model number (it's on the bottom), but it's pretty standard. I also got a Linksys PCMCIA combination NIC/modem working without thought -- after watching some Quicktime trailers.
Comments
on Mandrake 8.2 is boring -- in the best wayNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
I tried Mandrake 8.1 on my laptop(pII 266, 64RAM). The installation was very easy, amazing... but after all, my laptop took 2 minutes to boot... and my sound card didn't work at wall.. it was really a pity...
I, personally, prefer Slackware... it's fast and stable... people says that it has no package management, it's old... but Slackware rocks.
Nothing personal... it's just my preference
I, personally, prefer Slackware... it's fast and stable... people says that it has no package management, it's old... but Slackware rocks.
Nothing personal... it's just my preference
I will ditto this.
G.
G.
One thing that wasn't mentioned in the review is that the Mandrake 8.2 Powerpack is an INCOMPLETE Distro!! There are about 433 packages (KDevelop and Grip among them) that are not part of the CD Set!!
In order to get them, you have to go the Mandrake FTP Mirrors... If I wanted to install from the internet... why the hell did have to go through the exercise of paying money for the CDs!
In order to get them, you have to go the Mandrake FTP Mirrors... If I wanted to install from the internet... why the hell did have to go through the exercise of paying money for the CDs!
8.2 worked OK for me, but still a few minor glitches with the wireless stuff that would have scared a newbie.
I have a feeling that 8.3/9.0 is going to be the breakthrough release for mandrake.
They will no doubt continue refining the installation process, but for the first time, the distro will come with KDE3, Mozilla 1.0, and OpenOffice 1.0 ready to go, out of the box.
If those programs work as advertised, it seems to me that Mdk 8.3/9 will have all of the pieces in place to make a perfect alternative to a windows desktop box.
It will just be a matter of execution on mandrake's part.
I have a feeling that 8.3/9.0 is going to be the breakthrough release for mandrake.
They will no doubt continue refining the installation process, but for the first time, the distro will come with KDE3, Mozilla 1.0, and OpenOffice 1.0 ready to go, out of the box.
If those programs work as advertised, it seems to me that Mdk 8.3/9 will have all of the pieces in place to make a perfect alternative to a windows desktop box.
It will just be a matter of execution on mandrake's part.
Speaking from personal experience, I was able to install Mozilla RC 1 and KDE 3.0 onto Mandrake 8.2 without a single problem or conflict. They work OK, though KDE 3.0 does have a few bugs (which may be of my own creation).
With 10 minutes or less of your time, Mandrake 8.2 can be the breakthrough release that you are dreaming of now.
With 10 minutes or less of your time, Mandrake 8.2 can be the breakthrough release that you are dreaming of now.
it _is_ the breakthrough release already, for people who can install all of the requisite bits.
The real breakthrough will be in the next release, though, when all these fully-functional and well tested apps are included and run flawlessly.
Then i'll let my parents have a crack at Mandrake.
It's going to be fun.
The real breakthrough will be in the next release, though, when all these fully-functional and well tested apps are included and run flawlessly.
Then i'll let my parents have a crack at Mandrake.
It's going to be fun.
and i think it still is. personally, it just got pretty boring for me. it's like everything was spoon-fed and left no room to experiment.
i'm using gentoo linux right now. i may not be getting all the "bells and whistles" mandrake gave me, but i'm definitely learning what makes this thing run.
though i think mandrake would make the best linux distro for newbies to start with.
i'm using gentoo linux right now. i may not be getting all the "bells and whistles" mandrake gave me, but i'm definitely learning what makes this thing run.
though i think mandrake would make the best linux distro for newbies to start with.
I don't know what it is with people, but you can have the same level of control on your system with mandrake as you can with slakware, debian or even gentoo. You can still compile your own packages, you can remove the RPMs for libs and compile them yourself, you can set up networking without the use of their utilities, and hell, you can even remove the utilities. IF you are pressed for time and have little patience, then this is a great distro. I use it simply because I don't like to fiddle with EVERYTHING on my system. Somethings, yes, others, no.
Agreed, I have spent enough time mastering the process of manipulating various Linux systems to suit the needs of others, both professionally and for personal purposes - when it comes to my own workstation or toy, I just want the damned thing to work.
That is what people who have too much time in their hands usually say. Notice that if you interested in the gory details you can investigate them using Mandrake. But beginners are not the only population for distros like Mandrake. Their other public is formed by the real top notch people who have far better things to do than struggling with X configs, printers and modems. One of them is a such Linus Torvalds who is notorious for using "easy" distros since his time is far better used hacking the kernel instead of struggling with distros unable to automatically find and configure his printer.
Mandrake 8.2 was completely stable for me, loaded up fine, and had all of stuff (DSL, wireless, Palm related software, Xine, etc) working without a hitch. I have been using it for about 2 weeks and have not had a single library or RPM problem. This is a refreshing change from my usual "new distro" experiences, which commonly involve tedious minutes of removing, swapping, or replacing libraries and applications to make them work properly (or at least the way in which I require them to operate).
Very good operating system Mandrake 8.2 is, I highly reccomend it to anyone that prefers a stable Linux system without the fuss over an obstinate distribution that requires too much of your time just to gt working - many of us geeks like to get out once in a while....
Very good operating system Mandrake 8.2 is, I highly reccomend it to anyone that prefers a stable Linux system without the fuss over an obstinate distribution that requires too much of your time just to gt working - many of us geeks like to get out once in a while....
Stable compared to what? Windows?
Every distro I've tried seem more stable than Mandrake.
(e.g.redhat, debian, turbolinux, suse, slackware..)
Every distro I've tried seem more stable than Mandrake.
(e.g.redhat, debian, turbolinux, suse, slackware..)
I've always had a problem with Wal-Mart, and the problem is when things likethis get too big, they start to redefine how things progress and then competition either has to play by those rules or perish. WM ships more jobs overseas for cheap production and more people are out of work since for every 2 jobs they create, 3 are lost decimating the local economies that they advertise they're helping. The comments on the wages and what they consider full-time is atrocious. If competing companies don't follow that lead, they'll be out, leaving people with less choice and, by default, reaffirming the leader and all of its tactics. I don't mind saving money, but the question truly comes down to 'cheaper, but at what cost?' Before we completely lose the choice of *how* we buy, we should at least know the facts behind the "Always Low Prices".
<A HREF="http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12962">How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World</a alternet.org>
CB
<A HREF="http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12962">How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World</a alternet.org>
CB
this thread is fully covered <A HREF="http://newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=23048&cid=12356">here</a newsforge.com> and provides valid points to those that champion Wal-Mart carrying Linux distros, such as Mandrake.
Didn't you know? It was Wal Mart that blocked the release of MDK 3.0! Also, they screwed up all the otherwise flawless wireless support. Corporate BASTARDS!
*Everyone* knows that, silly.
--Altoid
*Everyone* knows that, silly.
--Altoid
The only thing that I want to know is "What was this person smoking, because it must have been good stuff". :D
Say what you will, Mandrake 8.2 is a winner with me. So many packages are included which used to require extra trips to locate, such as arcane games and extra fortune-mod fortunes. The hardware support is also great now, and there are only a few bugs that I've seen, but at least nothing glaring.
Heck, my Philips USB cd-burner even worked with this release, right out of the install!
I can't complain.... Great work guys!
Heck, my Philips USB cd-burner even worked with this release, right out of the install!
I can't complain.... Great work guys!
how about USB printers like HP Officejet v40 ?
Till has around 20 USB printers connected to his test system. After a longish talk with him, I bought an Epson (895) inkjet and had a pleasure of having my own photo-lab for the last 2 months.
HPs come as a close second, and apparently Till recently released an update pack for the drivers which puts the photo-quality of HP printers very close to the quality obtained with Epsons now.
That is: if your USB system works, your printer will too (out of the box) - assuming that it's one of the printers which have Linux support. Most HPs and Epsons do.
HPs come as a close second, and apparently Till recently released an update pack for the drivers which puts the photo-quality of HP printers very close to the quality obtained with Epsons now.
That is: if your USB system works, your printer will too (out of the box) - assuming that it's one of the printers which have Linux support. Most HPs and Epsons do.
I have a Officejet v40. I have been unable to get this to work under Mandrake 8.1 or 8.2. I have since, went to Redhat 7.1(and 7.3) with printing working successfully on the first time.
I tried SuSE 7.3, messed with it for a week, and then installed Mandrake 8.1. I reinstalled SuSE a few hours later. SuSE is a far better distribution, IMo. This is not to say that Mandrake is bad, just that SuSE is better.
SUSE ? SUSE ? This goes about MANDRAKE, not about crap oké ! SUSE sucks bigtime ...
You seem very open to new distributions ^^^ person. You look like a Mandrake zelot which is probably giving charity to Mandrake. SuSE 8 IS much better than Mandrake 8.2. It's tools and installation looks much better and I don't know why but it's faster and the instalaltion surpasses Mandrake. The cool thing is that it also has an evaluation version which never actually installs and does not need partitioning. This is how I got into Linux a friend gave me the 8.0 cd eval cd and after 10 miniutes it was installed in the memory and worked fine if I had the cd in. It also booted faster after the 10 min temp install.
Try it: http--www.linuxiso.org-download.php-347-liveeval-8 . .iso
Try it: http--www.linuxiso.org-download.php-347-liveeval-8 . .iso
Wow, real comprehensive response here. You should've said that 'mandrake isn't bad but I personally liked SUSE better'. Saying it matter-of-fact-ly makes you look like a condescending fool.
Yesterday I have tried the distro in subject. The installation was superb, I have created the following partitions:
hda5 /boot 7MB
hda6 swap
hda7 / 4,7 GB
hda8 203MB Windows
hda8 was already there. So teh install was really the best I have seen. It recognised my network card, that should have not been recognised becasue of an IRQ routing problem of my laptop. X was also well defined, AIT radeon mobility was recognised. However, I tried to choose resolution 1400*1050, but it allways switched back to 1280*1024. Eventually I managed, so I rebooted.
1.) It did not reboot at all, complained about missing root partition. I booted my SuSE 7.3, and saw, that both lilo.conf and fstab thinks, that my root partition is hda8, (that was in fact a vfat partition), swap was as hda7 set up, however, that should have been hda6. I changed these, and finally I was able to boot in.
2.) Next surprise: the XF86Config file was empty!!! I had to ceexecute draxconf to set it up properly.
3.) I forgot to mention, that the install program toched my windows xp partition, and REMOVED THE BOOTABLE FLAG!!!
Because of the buggy X driver (not Mandrake's fault), X was completly unstable, it locked up my box. Consol worked OK. However, my network card did not work anymore.
I have got to say, this distro is a nice try. The install is the clearest one I have ever seen, however, these bugs should be fixed.
KDE seemed to be fast, and the graphics looked nice. But Mandrake is not my world, I cannot stand supermount and the slow boot up.
I may stay with SuSE 7.3...
Cheers
Gaboro
hda5 /boot 7MB
hda6 swap
hda7 / 4,7 GB
hda8 203MB Windows
hda8 was already there. So teh install was really the best I have seen. It recognised my network card, that should have not been recognised becasue of an IRQ routing problem of my laptop. X was also well defined, AIT radeon mobility was recognised. However, I tried to choose resolution 1400*1050, but it allways switched back to 1280*1024. Eventually I managed, so I rebooted.
1.) It did not reboot at all, complained about missing root partition. I booted my SuSE 7.3, and saw, that both lilo.conf and fstab thinks, that my root partition is hda8, (that was in fact a vfat partition), swap was as hda7 set up, however, that should have been hda6. I changed these, and finally I was able to boot in.
2.) Next surprise: the XF86Config file was empty!!! I had to ceexecute draxconf to set it up properly.
3.) I forgot to mention, that the install program toched my windows xp partition, and REMOVED THE BOOTABLE FLAG!!!
Because of the buggy X driver (not Mandrake's fault), X was completly unstable, it locked up my box. Consol worked OK. However, my network card did not work anymore.
I have got to say, this distro is a nice try. The install is the clearest one I have ever seen, however, these bugs should be fixed.
KDE seemed to be fast, and the graphics looked nice. But Mandrake is not my world, I cannot stand supermount and the slow boot up.
I may stay with SuSE 7.3...
Cheers
Gaboro
If you wanna play with Linux, then play with Slackware ... But if you even can't handle Mandrake, don't start with Slackware, it is much to difficult for you ! SUSE wuss, it is like wintendo and only one configfile (/etc/rc.config).
A disgrace for Linux !
A disgrace for Linux !
Thanks for encouraging.... Slackware! You must be a real hacker... I wish I were too... :-)
But if you really think yourself an expert, try using Sourcerer (or Sourcery, whatever it calls himself nowadays) or Gentoo. They have no glitches, but still nice to handle.
Anyway, if you read my comments carefully, you could have seen, that I was able to handle Mandrake, I fixed fstab and lilo.conf, and it worked. Also, I have downloaded the ati.2 drivers and it eliminated the unstability of X.
I was writing about the bugs in the install program. These are bugs, no doubt...
Yeah, and you are bloody wrong about SuSE... it also had serious bugs, I would not call it a "wintendo". In 7.3, the firewall configuration was hell buggy, so as the SuSe config tool, yast2. USB handling was awfull (instable...), so after installing SuSE, the first thing must be compiling a new kernel, whatever they say about it....
I use SuSE since 5.3. I know, it is not the best (maybe Gentoo would be the optimal), but I get used to it, I know its bugs, and I know where I can find them.
Thanks for remember me to Slackware. It was the first distro I have tried, once in '95 or '96 if I recall right. Then I used RH, then Debian, then SuSE. I think I may stay with it for a while...
Cheers
Gaboro
But if you really think yourself an expert, try using Sourcerer (or Sourcery, whatever it calls himself nowadays) or Gentoo. They have no glitches, but still nice to handle.
Anyway, if you read my comments carefully, you could have seen, that I was able to handle Mandrake, I fixed fstab and lilo.conf, and it worked. Also, I have downloaded the ati.2 drivers and it eliminated the unstability of X.
I was writing about the bugs in the install program. These are bugs, no doubt...
Yeah, and you are bloody wrong about SuSE... it also had serious bugs, I would not call it a "wintendo". In 7.3, the firewall configuration was hell buggy, so as the SuSe config tool, yast2. USB handling was awfull (instable...), so after installing SuSE, the first thing must be compiling a new kernel, whatever they say about it....
I use SuSE since 5.3. I know, it is not the best (maybe Gentoo would be the optimal), but I get used to it, I know its bugs, and I know where I can find them.
Thanks for remember me to Slackware. It was the first distro I have tried, once in '95 or '96 if I recall right. Then I used RH, then Debian, then SuSE. I think I may stay with it for a while...
Cheers
Gaboro
You ALWAYS compile your kernel after install !!!
BTW my first distro was Slackware 3.0 (april 96).
I always stayed with slackware, but tried some others on my other PC, RedHat (5.0), Debian, SUSE (5.0 -> 6.2) , Mandrake (7.0 -> 8.2) , FreeBSD (4.3 -> 4.5). I even tried the intel version of Sun Solaris 8. The nicest thing was to make your own linux (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org).
+ i've got HP-UX11 running on HP 9000 E-25 .
We can say one thing : We love Unix LOL
BTW my first distro was Slackware 3.0 (april 96).
I always stayed with slackware, but tried some others on my other PC, RedHat (5.0), Debian, SUSE (5.0 -> 6.2) , Mandrake (7.0 -> 8.2) , FreeBSD (4.3 -> 4.5). I even tried the intel version of Sun Solaris 8. The nicest thing was to make your own linux (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org).
+ i've got HP-UX11 running on HP 9000 E-25 .
We can say one thing : We love Unix LOL
Yes, now I have got to compile, because of the IRQ-routing problem of my laptop.
SuSE keeps saying, that noone needs to compile an own kernel. I find this stupid (I agree with you at that point), and let me tell a strange story about SuSE's default kernel.
Once I had installed SuSE6.4 on a Abit BE2, with a HPT366 UDMA66 controler. The harddrive was on that controler. The install was nice, and then I decided to compile an own kernel. I had to realize, that the standard kernel did not contain the HTP366 driver, so I applied the patch from Anre Hedrick, but the kernel did not boot. And I saw the coment in the patch, that in its current status it is not bootable. However, the SuSE kernel booted in! So SuSE have modified the patch from Andre removing the "not bootable" restriction. Being a lamer, and having not internet access to get help, I did not find this option so I stayed with the original SuSE kernel. After a very short while, I realized, that is is bloody unstable. I locked up the box on the next day. I was not able ot resolve this, finally I put the harddrive to the normal IDE controler, and everythig went just fine with my own kernel.
So, I just wanted to point out, that SuSE sometimed does strange stuff with its kernel, and it is not certainly good. If I had stayed with the SuSE kernel as they wanted, and I had never tried to apply my own kernel, I would have never figured out why my linux is useless unstable....
So, we agree at last: let's just have our own kernel without the unnecessary craps and undocumented patches.
Cheers
gaboro
SuSE keeps saying, that noone needs to compile an own kernel. I find this stupid (I agree with you at that point), and let me tell a strange story about SuSE's default kernel.
Once I had installed SuSE6.4 on a Abit BE2, with a HPT366 UDMA66 controler. The harddrive was on that controler. The install was nice, and then I decided to compile an own kernel. I had to realize, that the standard kernel did not contain the HTP366 driver, so I applied the patch from Anre Hedrick, but the kernel did not boot. And I saw the coment in the patch, that in its current status it is not bootable. However, the SuSE kernel booted in! So SuSE have modified the patch from Andre removing the "not bootable" restriction. Being a lamer, and having not internet access to get help, I did not find this option so I stayed with the original SuSE kernel. After a very short while, I realized, that is is bloody unstable. I locked up the box on the next day. I was not able ot resolve this, finally I put the harddrive to the normal IDE controler, and everythig went just fine with my own kernel.
So, I just wanted to point out, that SuSE sometimed does strange stuff with its kernel, and it is not certainly good. If I had stayed with the SuSE kernel as they wanted, and I had never tried to apply my own kernel, I would have never figured out why my linux is useless unstable....
So, we agree at last: let's just have our own kernel without the unnecessary craps and undocumented patches.
Cheers
gaboro
I'm a little administrator and I personally use Debian. It is absolutely the best.
But if somebody asks me what to install on their pc, I say Mdk8.2.
Mandrake is the best out-of-the-box desktop linux, and Debian the best secure server linux.
All the others are in middle way: this means they are useless.
But if somebody asks me what to install on their pc, I say Mdk8.2.
Mandrake is the best out-of-the-box desktop linux, and Debian the best secure server linux.
All the others are in middle way: this means they are useless.
I use to think that Debian was better than Mandrake, but actually, I realized that with Mandrake I could do all the same things and more as in Debian because there are more software packages for Mandrake, and furthermore I used to do these things twice more quickly! So I definately switched to Mandrake for all my servers.
Why you are all wasting your time with Linux ?
FreeBSD is the solution...
FreeBSD is the solution...
This reviewer obviously didn't try to burn a CD. Out of the box, there is NO software on the 8.2 that works to burn a simple CD. You can forget X-CDROAST, eRoaster (eClipt), Gcombust, KonCd, KreateCD and others. You can hand-craft your CD by using the cdrecord, cdda2wav etc. but the GUI's are flat broken. After substatial handcrafting and installing many patches from Mandrake's site I got eRoaster to work "mostly".
Shame - shame - shame. How about a little QA huh?
Shame - shame - shame. How about a little QA huh?
Hmm...
GCombust is the only one I consider worth my attention, since the others either failed miserably (in Mandrake, SuSe and Redhat) or were no longer supported (college projects left behind).
However!!! GCombust works everytime, without fail, on every CDRW we sell in our Linux machines. Whats' your problem? Get an Acer CDRW and you'll do fine. You must click the detect button though for the SCSI ID and then the verify button, when you first run GCombust (or it will not find the CDRW). Then you must unmark Dummy Test or it will go through the motions, but only as a test run. Read the README file and you'll know this.
Failure in Linux is 75% of the time due to the user's ignorance (brainwashed from Microsoft mental abuse), 23.5% of the time due to damaged/failing or obscure hardware, and only 1.5% of the time bad programming in the Linux program.
Even Windows based CDRW software doesn't work out of the box sometimes. You usually have to update the software online before it will work (Adaptec, Nero, and Prassi have all had this problem with the CDRW drives the software came with).
Read your documentation.
GCombust is the only one I consider worth my attention, since the others either failed miserably (in Mandrake, SuSe and Redhat) or were no longer supported (college projects left behind).
However!!! GCombust works everytime, without fail, on every CDRW we sell in our Linux machines. Whats' your problem? Get an Acer CDRW and you'll do fine. You must click the detect button though for the SCSI ID and then the verify button, when you first run GCombust (or it will not find the CDRW). Then you must unmark Dummy Test or it will go through the motions, but only as a test run. Read the README file and you'll know this.
Failure in Linux is 75% of the time due to the user's ignorance (brainwashed from Microsoft mental abuse), 23.5% of the time due to damaged/failing or obscure hardware, and only 1.5% of the time bad programming in the Linux program.
Even Windows based CDRW software doesn't work out of the box sometimes. You usually have to update the software online before it will work (Adaptec, Nero, and Prassi have all had this problem with the CDRW drives the software came with).
Read your documentation.
I agree about buggy CDRW / CDR software - in Windows. My experience with ACER drives and Adaptec software was miserable. Wasted 33% of my disks with partial completions. NERO was much better - and did need an upgrade.
Damn you are a retard if you truly believe those fantasy statistics. What kind of world do you live in where people "brainwashed from Microsoft" actually use linux? Please I'd like to know. I have been using linux for 4 years on the desktop and I would say that 80% of failure rate is due to buggy programs or untruthful feature sets. 10% of the time it is due to bad or missing documentation explaining to the user how the program thinks it should be used and the other 10% is bad hardware.
I'm sorry, but for me cd-burning works flawlessly with Gnome-toaster. I have made no configurations or anything. As you see, this too can be a very different experience from machine to machine.
... I've used 8.1 for EVERYTHING: desktops (dual- and triple-head), firewalls, servers. Always very nice. The firewalls are a little tricky since they involve lots of rpm -e and a kernel/iptables/freeswan rebuild, but otherwise Mandrake has been very good for me (and my companies). I like how the RPMs have been compiled for i586 and up, though a specialized athlon kernel build would be nice.
I can't wait to see the moz1/oo1/kde3 release, hopefully with a mjc 2.4 athlon kernel!
I can't wait to see the moz1/oo1/kde3 release, hopefully with a mjc 2.4 athlon kernel!
been using mandrake for months, 8.1
upgraded to 8.2,
absolutely no issues with anything. the full install of every option found and ran every piece of hardware.
some of which M$ won't run without a battle.
since hd space isn't a problem at all ( 50 GB allocated for linux ) literally selected every possible option.
upgraded to 8.2,
absolutely no issues with anything. the full install of every option found and ran every piece of hardware.
some of which M$ won't run without a battle.
since hd space isn't a problem at all ( 50 GB allocated for linux ) literally selected every possible option.
started with 7.1 and have upgraded to every issue since all distros seem to be fine and get better with each release how ever i always find plentyof broke apps in the distros. simply dont load or refuse to work in some way., however for most every day use it is fine. dont care much for gimp no info and complicated, guess i got too used to photo impact with winders.wish they would port for linux.
I am not a Linux guru, just an interested explorer but I wanted to make a few comments about this platform. First and foremost, Mandrake is a vast improvment from the state of Linux installs in the past. Nevertheless, it is still tedious and in the new world of effortless XP installs, it is far behind the curve. Let me give you some simple examples of some Mandrake installs.
I have installed Mandrake on both old and new machines. Things that do work are generally legacy. The printer config is superb. Modem support is awful.
What does a user want from a desktop OS? A user wants to play some CDs watch some DVDs and maybe some DivX cd compressions. They may want to burn some CDs. A typical user wants to surf the web with speed and ease, perhaps have an operational messenger service. They want a reliabe word processor, spreadsheet, and perhaps database. They want to be able to handle photograps and perhaps even film clips, and a camera interface. Some want to play games. But the vast majority want something that can do these functions quickly and painlessly. Time is the issue.
I recently installed a K7S5A mobo with a 1600xp athlon. The board has onboard Audio, onboard LAN. It had a DVD, CD Burner, a 3com hardware modem model 2977, a linksys NIC, an ATI radeon VE graphics card, and externally a Speedtouch USB DSL modem. Mandrake 8.2 gave the impression that this would be a typical easy install. NOT SO.
First off, Mandrake claims to have audio support for the SIS AC 97 onboard audio but it doesn't. I substituted a Santa Cruz card with the same results. Finally had to resort to an old Etonic card which worked. Linux clearly doesn't like new hardware. There's more. The modem was not even recognized period. No com port forces or settings could force it to be seen. So I swapped out an Intel hardware modem with identical results. The ethernet card was recognized but failed to establish contact with the network. The Speedtouch USB modem was flatly rejected during the install with a message that the Speedtouch_Mgnt rpm could not be located although Mandrake specifically maintains software in the interface for this speedtouch USB modem. So what does this mean? It means no internet access, not by network, not by modem, not by DSL modem.
Ok let's just assume the packages are not yet up to speed and the computer must exist as a stand alone device unless I want to download drivers and compile eight different patches.
One of the many options in Mandrake is to select a Multimedia workstation. So this was checked. So let's play a DVD... Xine, simply can't play DVDs as it is configured. Mplayer RPMs would not load. Music CDs could be played out of GNOME using the KDE CD player, but not automatically. MP3 required another player. DIVx movies and AVI movies, simply didn't play on anything. Even with XINE drivers loaded, it couldn't play the DIVx. Oh did I forget to mention that even though most of the software didn't work that the platform itself did not crash.
So what is Mandrake really? At this point in time, it is a good effort, but still an unmade bed dedicated to the resurection of old legacy hardware, that really doesn't have the muscle for modern multimedia. So what can it do?
Well, it could be a server, or a firewall device, exactly what Linux has been all along. Even here, as a server, it is slower than Windows, and not capable of the same performance under load. Clustering is interesting but Windows is also capable of clustering.
Then you have the Mac, now running X a unix variety. All hardware conforms to their OS, so the installs are easy. But this bridles the hardware to conform. XP bridles the hardware drivers to conform. Linux, waits for programmers to compile the new hardware. Thus, in both cases of Linux and X, they are forever to live in the past. A great example is USB 2. X wants to go the firewire way, XP USB 2, and Linux struggles still with some USB 1 devices; like the poor fellows that just can't catch up.
I will continue to revisit Mandrake as it moves forward or sideways with some forward stumbling. There is no doubt an ideal hardware configuration that works with Mandrake; I just haven't found it. In my programming past, I may have enjoyed the tedious effort of reinventing the wheel everytime I wanted to do something slighly unusual. But that's my point, what many people are trying to do with Mandrake and Linux is not unusual but now typical. It is false to pretend that Linux is capable of being a multimedia workstation when essentially nothing works out of the box, and even the most simple attempts at the typical effortless delights of the Microsoft media player are hikes through a desert with bare feet in Linux. The net weight of what I might learn from the tedium and frustration, pales in contrast to more efficient uses of my lifeforce and intellect.
There are some very esoteric thoughts about Linux and Unix from a computer engineering perspective which don't make a lot of sense. If someone today was to design an OS it is likely that it would not be fishing for kernals, the human brain does not appear to work this way, if it did, recovery of lost functionality after stroke for example would be impossible. The actual structure of reality is more like a web in which various intelligent signalling convege. For example, an arm knows it's an arm and informs the brain, not the other way around. The linkages to what the arm can do, are accommodated by the brain, not dictated by the arm or the brain. Thus, Michael Jordan is more capable than the newbee computer user with a circulation stopping lobster claw grip on the mouse. Often Kernel interference is stiffling. I would for example envision hardware like say a DVD, being capable of operating somewhat independently with it's own logic. I like USB for this reason. It conforms to web intelligence vs. central intelligence and reduces to a great extent the need for the dictator at the center of the universe. Traffic and content become one in the same. Unless Linux can offer some significant advantages in the harvesting of content it will amount to little more than a dead language, and a massive squanderer of time. How people use there time and their life energy is up to them. Reinventing the wheel is not my preference.
I have installed Mandrake on both old and new machines. Things that do work are generally legacy. The printer config is superb. Modem support is awful.
What does a user want from a desktop OS? A user wants to play some CDs watch some DVDs and maybe some DivX cd compressions. They may want to burn some CDs. A typical user wants to surf the web with speed and ease, perhaps have an operational messenger service. They want a reliabe word processor, spreadsheet, and perhaps database. They want to be able to handle photograps and perhaps even film clips, and a camera interface. Some want to play games. But the vast majority want something that can do these functions quickly and painlessly. Time is the issue.
I recently installed a K7S5A mobo with a 1600xp athlon. The board has onboard Audio, onboard LAN. It had a DVD, CD Burner, a 3com hardware modem model 2977, a linksys NIC, an ATI radeon VE graphics card, and externally a Speedtouch USB DSL modem. Mandrake 8.2 gave the impression that this would be a typical easy install. NOT SO.
First off, Mandrake claims to have audio support for the SIS AC 97 onboard audio but it doesn't. I substituted a Santa Cruz card with the same results. Finally had to resort to an old Etonic card which worked. Linux clearly doesn't like new hardware. There's more. The modem was not even recognized period. No com port forces or settings could force it to be seen. So I swapped out an Intel hardware modem with identical results. The ethernet card was recognized but failed to establish contact with the network. The Speedtouch USB modem was flatly rejected during the install with a message that the Speedtouch_Mgnt rpm could not be located although Mandrake specifically maintains software in the interface for this speedtouch USB modem. So what does this mean? It means no internet access, not by network, not by modem, not by DSL modem.
Ok let's just assume the packages are not yet up to speed and the computer must exist as a stand alone device unless I want to download drivers and compile eight different patches.
One of the many options in Mandrake is to select a Multimedia workstation. So this was checked. So let's play a DVD... Xine, simply can't play DVDs as it is configured. Mplayer RPMs would not load. Music CDs could be played out of GNOME using the KDE CD player, but not automatically. MP3 required another player. DIVx movies and AVI movies, simply didn't play on anything. Even with XINE drivers loaded, it couldn't play the DIVx. Oh did I forget to mention that even though most of the software didn't work that the platform itself did not crash.
So what is Mandrake really? At this point in time, it is a good effort, but still an unmade bed dedicated to the resurection of old legacy hardware, that really doesn't have the muscle for modern multimedia. So what can it do?
Well, it could be a server, or a firewall device, exactly what Linux has been all along. Even here, as a server, it is slower than Windows, and not capable of the same performance under load. Clustering is interesting but Windows is also capable of clustering.
Then you have the Mac, now running X a unix variety. All hardware conforms to their OS, so the installs are easy. But this bridles the hardware to conform. XP bridles the hardware drivers to conform. Linux, waits for programmers to compile the new hardware. Thus, in both cases of Linux and X, they are forever to live in the past. A great example is USB 2. X wants to go the firewire way, XP USB 2, and Linux struggles still with some USB 1 devices; like the poor fellows that just can't catch up.
I will continue to revisit Mandrake as it moves forward or sideways with some forward stumbling. There is no doubt an ideal hardware configuration that works with Mandrake; I just haven't found it. In my programming past, I may have enjoyed the tedious effort of reinventing the wheel everytime I wanted to do something slighly unusual. But that's my point, what many people are trying to do with Mandrake and Linux is not unusual but now typical. It is false to pretend that Linux is capable of being a multimedia workstation when essentially nothing works out of the box, and even the most simple attempts at the typical effortless delights of the Microsoft media player are hikes through a desert with bare feet in Linux. The net weight of what I might learn from the tedium and frustration, pales in contrast to more efficient uses of my lifeforce and intellect.
There are some very esoteric thoughts about Linux and Unix from a computer engineering perspective which don't make a lot of sense. If someone today was to design an OS it is likely that it would not be fishing for kernals, the human brain does not appear to work this way, if it did, recovery of lost functionality after stroke for example would be impossible. The actual structure of reality is more like a web in which various intelligent signalling convege. For example, an arm knows it's an arm and informs the brain, not the other way around. The linkages to what the arm can do, are accommodated by the brain, not dictated by the arm or the brain. Thus, Michael Jordan is more capable than the newbee computer user with a circulation stopping lobster claw grip on the mouse. Often Kernel interference is stiffling. I would for example envision hardware like say a DVD, being capable of operating somewhat independently with it's own logic. I like USB for this reason. It conforms to web intelligence vs. central intelligence and reduces to a great extent the need for the dictator at the center of the universe. Traffic and content become one in the same. Unless Linux can offer some significant advantages in the harvesting of content it will amount to little more than a dead language, and a massive squanderer of time. How people use there time and their life energy is up to them. Reinventing the wheel is not my preference.
Someone needs to understand that it is not Linux, but the rest of the industry that has the problem. Maybe they should create the drivers for both Linux and Windoze. Then the drivers will be bundled with the software. Ever think of that? I thought not.
I hope I'm not too late for this but...
I just downloaded the 8.2 thing, but not as Isos, but as individual files, 'cause when i downloaded isos and my pc hanged, it gave me "Segmentation Faults" or something like that when i resumed the download.
Well, the thing is: I have the files, but how do i make CDs out of the files? I found a utility called MakeCD under misc/ but it doesn't work. It complains about locale and some CWD.pm file missing.
Can anyone help me or tell me where can I get help?
mdk 8.2
Posted by: Matthew Beale on May 01, 2002 08:57 PMunless 8.3/9.0 is a phenominal release, i dont expect to be using mandrake agian, which is a pity because it was my top distro for many years. personally, i feel that mandrake dropped the ball on 8.2.
-Matte
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