Tonight I am donning a bulletproof, kevlar vest and helmet. I have been
quietly lurking in the shadows watching the bullets fly as to whether or not
the package I purchased at Wal-Mart nearly a week ago truly was the 7.2
release or not. Now that everyone has either given up or is reloading I
would like to add another two cents. Hopefully you folks won't give me any
change back either.
I tend to agree with what Jason says on the subject. We both work for the
same isp and both swear by Mandrake as the distro of choice. The reason we
have reacted the way we have to this release is simple. We have pushed
Mandrake to many people. By doing so we have put our reputations on the line
as network engineers and linux users. This applies to anyone who has ever
believed in something or felt that one particular product is better than
another(Ford vs. GMC vs. Chrysler for example.) It appears what Mandrake has
done here is release it's own version of a Firestone/Bridgestone tire.
Fortunately no one has been killed as a result of this. The point is Jason
and I, as long time Mandrake users, feel that Mandrake has released an
inferior product and are voicing our opinions so that Mandrake knows about
the bugs and glitches so that they may improve. The 7.1 release of Mandrake
IMHO was the best Mandrake distro to date. Perhaps my opinion will change in
time about 7.2. I was anticipating 7.2 to raise the bar on features and
performance even more. I was not expecting to find such a large amount of
beta and pre-release software included. I recently spent a great deal of
time trying to get the slashcode script working for our company website.
After much hair pulling, cussing and swearing I discovered that we had to
downgrade our version of MySQL because the package included with Mandrake 7.2
is a beta. There is also a beta version of nmap as well as the more well
known KDE2 beta. To me this is not a good sign. This is something Microsoft
did starting with Windows 95. Windows 98 and ME are not new releases they
are bugfixes. That being said I hope that Mandrake respects the opinions of
its users unlike Microsoft and will strive to make the next Mandrake release
something of the ditributions of the past. Mandrake has done a superb job of
making linux user friendly without comprimising the power it holds. Not
only that but they also include cutting edge and power utilities that allow
network engineers to maintain a top notch network easily. How many distros
include swatch AND portsentry AND logcheck among their packages? That's why
I was so disappointed when I discovered my beloved gentoo and gkrellm were
missing. Every mechanic has their favorite tools, those are among mine. Now
let me move on to something more positive.
All harsh comments and opinions aside 7.2 is a great release. KDE has grown
by leaps and bounds even in the pre-release included here. In the last two
weeks I have been able to get more work done simply because I don't have to
spend as much time configuring things. While doing an installation(from RC1
cds so I could have the expert install option) Mandrake detected all of my
hardware with the exception of my modem, which is no trouble to configure
anyway. It even found my printer, and Epson Stylus Color 400. Weeding out
unwanted packages was much easier than in 7.1 and the new packages included
with 7.2 make it even more appealing. There are now _3_ quality HTML
editors. OpenSSL is included allowing me to have secure connections over
Licq which is also present here. I have a choice between proftpd and
wu-ftpd. And then there is urpmi. I feel(and Jason will quickly second this
as he is the one who pointed urpmi out to me) that urpmi is the best and most
important new tool that Mandrake has contributed to the linux community.
Given a list of ftp mirrors, nfs shares, local directories or cds, urpmi will
install a package for you AND install any packages necessary to satisfy
dependencies. How can installing software get any easier? I'm excited to
see what Mandrake comes up with for their next release. I'm sure we'll see
the 2.4 kernel and all of its new features. I'm excited to see if ext3 or
any of the other journaling file systems are included. Mandrake has proven
in the past that it is a leader and innovator. Nobody is perfect and even
when a mistake is made, if something is learned from it then no real harm is
done. I think it's safe to say that our opinions have been duly noted, now
let's get back to helping Mandrake improve. That's what we all want right?
--
Greg A. Bur
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.rivertown-computers.com
