Hi I would like to make express some impressions and ask for some help. As you will note below I am a devoted mandrake user and have been since the 7.0 version. That being said, I would like to say that I really like much of the improvements found in the 9.0 final. as I've seen on the lists, there has been debate on much of the control center and "whateverdrake's" that are included. but I see only improvements and added simplicity which make using them easier for any who are new to linux. the look of mandrake has really matured and is cleaner while including all the bells and whistles people have wanted, by and large. I have a fairly recent set-up using an epox 8kta3l+ MB, 512 ram, amd 1700+ cpu, three Hard drives a wd 6.4, wd 10 gig, and a quantum fireball 20 gig, a sound blaster live sound card, and a 32 mg Nvidia tnt2 video card. along with two 3com 595 NIC's and an adeptec 2906 scsi card. all of which work totally and completely under 8.0. additionally I have my wife's machine, win98lite on my home network.
and while I can get all these to function well through version 9.0, they seem to lose increasing functionality as I have tried versions 8.1, 8.2, 9.0 beta's and now the 9.0 final. what happens is this, 8.1 was a disaster so I won't mention it, but 8.2 worked well except for the sensors on the motherboard ( via686a-isa-6000 ). on my vaio pcg fx-215 laptop, everything works under 8.2. under 9.0 though, I have the following problems : during boot of 9.0, after the shows it loads the scsi mod for the adeptec card it tells me " someone has reset Channel A " in a loop, requiring a reboot, though if I have something in the cd drive ( cdrw as scsi1 ) it will continue. next, the network connection/and or configuration will be lost between boots, or I simply can't log onto the Internet. at first I could if I set the firewall settings in control center to allow everything in, though with a cable modem especially do I not want to surf this way. ( in 8.0 using bastille firewall I can do what I wish and still have a secure box and network ) I can't use Linneighborhood in 8.2 or 9.0, or connect to the win box at all in 9.0 no matter what I try. I can use similar settings from 8.0 and still little works in networking in 9.0. likely I am doing something wrong, or there is some other hardware issue I'm unaware of which is the problem, still it seems to me that 9.0 has become more complicated, perhaps too complicated for an even advanced user, or at least a non-newbie. Shorewall is too much to wrap my head around, and I can't find a simple firewall to work with it as of yet. also I too have had the reappearing print job. I would really like to use the 9.0 series for the kde 3, the backup tools , and several other things, but unless I can set-up a firewall, and can maintain the network settings, and connect to the windows box as I can in 8.0 there is little point. being able to use the sensors would be nice as well. I'm not totally green by any means, as I can do a lot with linux I never thought I could, alias's to burn iso's, compiling apps, rebuilding rpms, manually configuring lots of stuff, but 9.0 seems to have gotten too complex to be as user friendly as it was. true some things I use may well not be as supported and in earlier versions, but shouldn't they be? perhaps someone could direct me to info on how to resolve my problems? I really want to have a viable firewall set-up first. at least then I could continue to look for help without compromising my home network. any advice is very much welcomed, as I really really want to move on to 9.0 and beyond. Mike McNeese ������������������������������������������������������������������������ currently triple booting win98lite Mandrake versions 8.0 and 9.0 - Linux registered user # 248955 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ "If obstacles are all we see, then we've lost sight of our goal!"
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