Dear Cooker,
I am using Mandrake 7.0 for over 3 months now on a 4-way networked system. I have lost
several man days on setting up mandrake for what appears to me to be obvious
defaults:
1. httpd (apache server) is on by default. Why?
2. dial-up networling setup is a nightmare. I still can't get it to work. I dual-boot
in windoze and the setup is a snap here. The settings I need to do in Mandrake are
too much for what is today a default requirement.
3. I spend days to get to find the 'xterm' command to allow remote X-Windows apps to
work. Mails to mandrake expert also got me no answer.
4. Remote printing needed changes in several 'host' files to get it of the ground.
5. An 'upgrade' from 7.0 to 7.1 was estimated to take over 20 hours. I aborted the
upgrade. In India the power situation does not allow me to take such risks.
6. During the last part of an installation if the display gets garbled (vga probe)
there is no way to see anything and continue.
7. I have purchased a Mandrake 'Box'. The installation guide is extremely sketchy. The
built in user guide is even more sketchy.
8. The Mandrake Search is sooo poor that I often need to get help from sites of other
distros.
9. Many questions that I post to my 'free 90 days installation support' are rejected
as these are not 'installation related'. Where do I get non-installation related help?
10. I can't get RPM Drake to work from a remote CD-ROM. This will be a real useful
feature.
The reason why this extremely great OS will still take years to get on to the regular
PC-Users desktop is that there is almost no focus on such a user type. Power users,
geeks & guru's can take to linux easily but the learning curve for the SOHO user here
is just too steep. For the typical Internet-Mail-Chat-Word-Excel-Games user linux
needs to have another installation: 'HOME'. Can I be of help here? I am a system
Integrator with 100% of my clients falling into this bracket. The stability of Linux
is a
highly motivating factor to bundle Mandrake with a System Sale, but as of now the
highly troublesome windoze wins.
Any suggestions & pointers will be highly appreciated.
SUNIL GUPTA.
