Mandrake & Users,
For the past 4 releases of Mandrake I have installed and used the
distrobution. I have VERY standard hardware ( P2-450, ASUS P2B, PS2 mouse,
no USB devices, ISA SB AWE 64, 3COM 905B, ATA/33 Seagate 6gig hard drive,
TNT2 video ), and never have any hard ware issues with Linux distros in
general. Every time I've installed a Mandrake distro ( 5.x, 6.0,6.1,7.0 ) I
always do a full install and try and keep the install as default as possible
( to try and avoid "special" unaccounted for situations ). After
installation I've always within 10 minutes encountered segfaults of utility
software, or misconfigurations, or endless lists of errors being printed out
to the console during runtime of a application. This is always kept me out
of bed with Mandrake and in the arms of other distros like Redhat ( which I
have no troubles with ). HOWEVER, I LOVE the user friendlyness of mandrake
along with all the kick ass utilities that help make the distro so robust.
I got into a discussion with a friend the other day about Mandrake, and he
as well as the LUG he goes to have an ongoing cliched joke about Mandrake
and stability. I think that is a horrible, but seemingly at the moment
deserved description ( minus 7.1 betas, I haven't tried them, but from what
I hear people have their fair shares of complaints ). One thing that I see
as the cause to this is the incredibly quick development cycle mandrake goes
through. 7.1, as far as I've known, is the longest devel cycle I've seen
mandrake take before releasing, and its encouraging to me and will probably
have me trying 7.1 when it comes out.
This is not a flame, but more of a request or a plead, however you watn to
see it. I really want to use mandrake, but the issues noted above keep me
from it. I really feel a longer devel cycle, EVEN if you are just sitting on
the product and releasing betas, gives you an incredibly stable product just
through the process of elimination. I kinda of equate the difference of what
long cycle of betas can do to the Quake3 release cycle and the Ultima 9
release cycle.
Quake3 had 3 ( I think ) "Test" releases before even concocting a demo just
to make sure the technology was working and compatable on many different
machines. Ultima9 pushed their product out the door about 4 months early
due to EA's funding, but that's not the point ) and look where it got them.
The game was simply unplayable on about 1/2 of its user's machines. I urge
you to take a look at the early message boards related to Ultima, you had
people tearing their hair out, flaming Origin, threatening to class action
suit them AGAIN, etc.
But I digress, it was ugly, and could have been totally avoided. What are
the developer's thoughts on the shorter devel cycle of Mandrake? Is this by
choice, or is it out of excitment and want to be "ahead of the curve" that
the releases are made?
Best wishes,
Riyad Kalla
Java Programmer
Game Enthusiast
P.S.> Please do not waste time flaming, but do take time to discuss. I'm
really not interesting if "Mandrake is the best distro ever and your just a
#$%@*(ing idiot!", that helps no one.
