> Finally gave up and went with RedHat 6.1.
>
> Maybe when LM7.1+ comes out I'll take another look...
>
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. I was running Mandrake 6.1 at home
and work. I upgraded the home machine to the Oxygen beta and everything
still works (still running the beta), although I haven't stressed that
machine yet.
At work, I had to load Linux on another machine that was going to be used as
a low-end server. I tried installing LM7.0 Air six times! Every time, the
damn install failed to install something (one time it was Drake stuff,
another it was ncftp). To top it off, the later installs couldn't load X.
It kept giving me a 'Id "x" is respawning too fast. Waiting five minutes.'
or something close to that. Plus, supermount never worked, saying it wasn't
supported by the kernel. Never did figure out the problem. I, luckily,
found a site with the mandrake61-1.iso file. LM6.1 loaded up with minimal
problems (nothing critical) and it is running fine right now.
I'm impressed with some of the new features promised in 7.0. However, it
came out the door with too little testing. Some examples:
- the selection of packages is completely non-intuitive. I can't figure out
what is going on. Plus, accidentally unclicking an item ripples a bunch of
other packages to the "don't install" mode. How the heck am I supposed to
guess which buggers were turned on? The old install package selector wasn't
pretty and wasn't easy, but it sure got the job done.
- There's no "back" button (I know this was mentioned before). If you make
a mistake, you must give the machine the 3 finger salute.
- The formatting option does a quick format, not a detailed format. I like
the increase in speed, but am I sacrificing anything for that feature?
- If you have a partition table already set up, the install won't give you
the option to "check for bad blocks", and I was in "expert" mode. I got to
this point (of having a partition table with no formatting or bad block
checks) because I 3 fingered a previous install of LM7.0 gone sour. I find
the RedHat partition program (a girl's name which escapes me now) worked
better for me. At least give the "expert" users the choice of which
partition program to use.
- Why do I still get, on booting the CD, the ability to pick "expert" on the
lilo line? It doesn't seem to do anything.
- This is nit-picking, but the install asked if I wanted to create an
emergency floppy. I had only hard drives and a CD drive installed.
I know the Mandrake team invested a lot of time into this release. They are
to be commended for their past accomplishments (up thru 6.1) and the desire
to push the envelope. When the Mandrake team wants to add major feature
changes to the distribution, however, a much longer beta period is needed.
I will help with beta testing 7.1 when you reach that stage.
