On Sat, 25 May 2002, shane wrote:
> On Saturday 25 May 2002 09:22 am, Dale Huckeby opened a general hailing
> frequency and transmitted to all open stations:
>
>> This is my first post to the list. Can anyone tell me how to install
>> Gnome and Kde, but especially Gnome, without having Mandrake_Desk shoved
>> down my throat. I can't even install Midnight Commander without it, for
>> Chrissakes! This is for 8.1. If I can't get my desktop to be MY desktop,
>> I'm going back to 7.2, which unlike 8.1 is lean and mean, or to another
>> distro.
>
> if by mandrake_desk you mean the rpm, well it is only some icons and
> backgrounds. don't use them, choose other theme/styles, delete the
> mandrake shortcuts, whatever. but 800k of icons and backgrounds seems
> like a poor reason to go back a few versions to me.
If it's "only" some icons and backgrounds, why does Mandrake threaten
to uncheck so many other packages, such as GMC and MC, when I uncheck it?
It's not just 800k of icons and backgrounds. It's an overall difference
in behavior between 7.2 and 8.1. With 7.2 I type in my userid, then my
password (at the console), and Bam!, I have a prompt. With 8.1 it takes
about 10 seconds. With 7.2, in Gnome, I can put in one of the install
CDs, double-click on the CD icon, and GMC pops up and in very short order
I can browse RPMs. In 8.1 the same actions bring up Nautilus, which is
a bloated pig of a program, and I wait and wait while it loads the same
info in about three times the time it takes GMC. Granted, this is Gnome
rather than Mandrake per se, but this graphics intensive, take the poor
dumb user by the hand attitude seems to permeate the latest version.
In 7.2, for instance, if I wanted to run a program that needed root
permission while in a GUI as user, up pops a window that lets me type
in root's password, then the program itself comes up. Now, after I type
in root's password, nothing happens, so I have to exit the GUI, type,
say, "xinit /usr/bin/startgnome" from a root console, then watch the GUI
scold me for running it in root as I do what I tried to do unsuccessfully
from the user GUI. Can you spell "b-u-g"?
Don't get me wrong. I have used and loved Mandrake for several years.
And I appreciate that one of the 8.1 wizards was able to recognize that
my new ISP (I just moved cross-country) required a PAP login with the
password twice, not once, something tech help ("We don't support Linux")
was too incompetent to tell me, and thus got the connection going. But
Mandrake_Desk, if that's the package that's doing it, interposes an extra
layer of control over the desktop, giving me the icons IT wants me to
have and taking away some of the functionality I had in 7.2. The reason
I abandoned Microshaft several years ago in the first place was that,
in addition to MS's outrageous corporate behavior, I got tired of having
my software dictate to me. Well, 8.1 is getting uncomfortably close to
that same sort of behavior. It's buggy, it's bloated, it's slow, and
it's too inclined to take me, the user, by the hand because it knows so
much better than me what's good for me. Just my subjective impression,
of course. That's why I'm seriously considering going back to 7.2,
or even Redhat (again), or SUSE, or Slackware, or even Debian.
Dale Huckeby
ps. I'm also thinking of reinstalling 7.2, and then upgrading specific
packages, such as replacing the older Gnome with 1.4. But the point is,
I want *only* Gnome 1.4, without Mandrake's own desktop aps trying to
run the show. The problem with this is the (shudder) download time over
a dialup connection.
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
