On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, William Anderson wrote:
> has anyone had a serious play with a recent build of Mandrake? If so, what
> was the install/usability experience like? I'm thinking of trying Mandrake
> on a spare box to see what the fuss is about :)
I use 8.1 on all my machines just now. Installation was, as
usual, a pain in the butt (but then I am icon-blind so graphical
interfaces annoy me immediately). The standard problems are that the
installer asks what kind of install you want and I usually say 'expert';
it then seems to ignore everything I say from that point on. I tried
installing it on my network gateway (which doesn't run X and has no mouse)
but eventually gave up and attached a mouse and a 17" Iiyama monitor,
because even the text install needs a mouse!
On the other hand, I like Mandrake. It has CUPS already; it has
reasonable security (if you upgrade immediately with the updates); it's
not too hard to change its configuration (I use RPMs generated by a
configuration compiler PERL script, which takes a network description and
writes out all the host, network, etc., files, and that works fine); and
it interacts OK with Bernstein's DNS tools and QMAIL, which I run. The
most annoying feature I have noticed is that Mandrake seem not to supply
the RPM macro file they use when building packages, so rebuilding binary
RPMs from the Mandrake source packages can be a bit of an adventure...
The only time I have had any serious trouble with it was when I
upgraded my laptop to 7.2 two hours before leaving home to catch a flight
to the US...
The most useful piece of advice for installation I can give is to
save the list of packages you choose, after the `choose your packages'
step, before proceeding to install. That way, if you have to do it all
again (as I generally do), you don't need to spend another hour
re-choosing the packages.
Cheers,
John.
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