First, you are right: You have managed to hit on all the most serious
flaws in v7. I myself would have consigned Mandrake 7 to the trash
almost immediately (like your colleague) were it not for the fact that
it's the only distribution with X 3.3.6 support, which was the first
one that supports my new video card in native mode.
If your colleague uses KDE, I heartily recommend Caldera OpenLinux
for a truly smooth install, though others haven't had the same
experience as me. But if he doesn't use KDE, well, he's out of luck.
RedHat 6.1 didn't install real smoothly for me (indeed, the graphical
installation completely locked up on me; I had to use the text
install), so that one isn't quite there yet, either.
Despite Mandrake's hope & hype to be the installation for newbies, I
think it's much more of a great hacker install myself (except for that
#@$! 50% thing). It's got the speed and the large number of packages
but not all the rough edges are out yet.
Hopefully 7.1 will be there, though. You should keep in mind that 7.0
is, in a sense the very first "real" Mandrake release--the previous
releases were just RedHat with a few added extras and Pentium-targetted
compiles.
So think of it as Mandrake 1.0 and the rough edges are a little more
understandable.
On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, you wrote:
| When I first installed it, I really liked Mdk 7.0-2 - real nifty new
| installer, supermount, XFree3.3.6, the first graphical install to work
| with my SiS 6326 chip, ... Yes, I thought it was really nice. Then the
| cracks started to appear - sound card that worked under Ver 6 wouldn't
| install under 7, Netscape had yucky b&w icons, cd burner not linked
| properly, and wouldn't burn when it was, wheel mouse that wheeled
| without help under 6 didn't under 7, partitioning tool buggy, expert
| install option absolutely unusable - how the hell do you know what is
| selected and what isn't? - the "magic 50%" install rule - it only fills
| your partition to 50%, regardless of what you really wanted, ...
|
| Now, weeks later, some of the above are fixed and some aren't, but I put
| it down to my "el cheapo" buying - PCchips motherboard, ide cdrw, etc
| and lack of knowledge/skill - ie my fault...
|
| Today, I feel differently. We have had a Mdk 6 machine at work for
| some time, and its supervisor today decided to install 7.0-2 . He
| started by booting from a boot floppy, the install locked when it tried
| to initialize the CD. So I suggested that he set the BIOS to boot from
| CD (it was previously set to boot from the floppy, then the ide drive.)
| and this time the install went nicely, until he hit the expert select
| packages fiasco - he couldn't make any more sense of it than I could -
| so he cancelled that and started again, this time being careful not to
| select expert! It loaded the packages (why is Mandrake so slow doing
| this, compared to red hat?) and then locked up as it started the X
| configuration. Rebooted the machine, everything started up well, but no
| X. At this stage my colleague threw the ver 7 cd in the bin, and will be
| putting 6 back on the machine next week. (No - he doesn't want to know
| how to fix it, or what went wrong.)
|
| Also today, I installed the BeOS 5 (Personal Edition) operating system
| that I downloaded last night. It really just unpacked the files. I
| rebooted the machine, and hey! presto ... BeOS! Funny, video worked,
| sound worked, Cdrw burnt cd's, ... all with NO installation questions,
| NO how-to's, No hassles. OK - so there is nothing written for BeOS yet,
| and I'm not serious about keeping it, just curious, BUT, it proved you
| can write a hassle free installer THAT WORKS!
|
| OK - back to Linux - the current attitude that if something didn't work,
| it's because you didn't read the instructions or your hardware is faulty
| IS SIMPLY NOT ACCEPTABLE to me any more - If it doesn't work FIRST TIME
| it's because its broken, and needs fixing.
|
| The first Linux distribution that produces a hassle free installer that
| works (no if's, but's, or maybe's - I mean works - full stop!)
| WILL SUCCEED, all the rest will only be installed by enthusiasts (which
| I still count myself among) and are doomed to their rightful resting
| place in the garbage bin.
|
| Now, it's time for my big decision - Do I, like my colleague, consign
| the Ver 7 install I have spent so much time on to oblivion, and go back
| to Ver 6 because it worked, or do I persevere, and try to get 7 up and
| running properly, or, perhaps, do I try RedHat 6.2, or just wait for a
| distro with kernel 2.4 & XFree 4? I really don't know, and I really
| don't expect anyone else to decide for me, I just know that my
| perceptions of install problems will never be the same again.
--
"Brian, the man from babbleon-on" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brian T. Schellenberger http://www.babbleon.org
Support http://www.eff.org. Support decss defendents.
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