[olug] Mandrake 9.1

[William E. Kempf]

Robert A. Jacobs said:
> On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 08:00, Brian Roberson wrote:
>> Various off/on topics - Just my ramble....
>>
>> So I decided to install Mandrake to get up to speed for the
>> installfest... I am so used to server oriented distro's that
>> make you use your brain when you install... this thing is very
>> user friendly ; I think I may be changing my opinion of Mandrake. I
>> used to not like it, but when I thought about it, the reason I  did
>> not like it initially was the fact that it was(is?) solely based off
>> of redhat with just recompiled i586 packages. I have not hit the
>> website to really do some digging, does anyone know if this is still
>> true? I have not been outside the realm of SuSE for over 3 years.... I
>> guess once you get to a comfort point, you just dont want to move. I
>> must admit, this distro really opened my eyes. I even installed it
>> over a previous SuSE instal, complete using reiserFS and Mandrake
>> allowed me to keep the fs's I wanted to  intact, I did however end up
>> just formatting all partitions except my /home ; it even left them all
>> reiserFS. - very nice. Does anyone else have any feedback on Mandrake
>> as compared to other distro's? I must also admit that I have had my
>> head stuck in an M$ environment and found it much easier to just
>> conform rather than rebel ; especially when I am the one supporting
>> it. I know, that sounds like bigotry, however over the last year I
>> have came to a new level of respect for the term "single seat
>> management" ; It does work.
>>
>
> I ran Mandrake (I want to say 8.0) for about six months.  My only
> problem with it was the feeling that I was not in control the same way I
> am when I run my Debian box.  Coulda been that I didn't give it enough
> of a chance, though.
>
> Every Mandrake user I knew was doing a reinstall from disk every six
> months or so i.e. whenever Mandrake released a new version.  Definitely
> was not appealing to me.  The main complaint they had (and that I had)
> was RPM-hell and a general feeling of not being in control (feeling like
> they had to rely on GUIs more, etc.).  In the end, it was just easier to
> re-install than try to upgrade.  I realize Mandrake and Red Hat can use
> apt4rpm but the impression I've gotten is that it is not quite up to par
> with Debian's apt-get.

Mandrake has urpmi, which is "officially" supported (meaning Mandrake
supplies several mirrors with full repositories, as well as development
and experimental repositories for those so inclined).  Functionality is
nearly the same as apt, though the interface/implementation is certainly
different.  There's absolutely no need to do a full install with a new
release... just point urpmi at the updated repositories and do an update. 
I prefer to do an install from CDs, but there's no reason you have to do
so.

I prefer the GUI's for most things, but I do remote administration enough
to tell you there's nothing that can't be done from the command line.  So,
I don't think there's any valid reason for the impressions you got.

> My initial perception of Mandrake, however, was the same as yours:  very
> impressive.  If I could have gotten over the rpm-is-not-deb thing, I'd
> probably still be running it (there are times, however rare, that I
> truly desire anti-aliasing and other perks without having to run Debian
> unstable).  Before this post can be used to spark a .deb versus .rpm
> flamefest, I'll drop it there.

I'm most interested in portage... but am reluctant to try Gentoo.  (Unless
someone has a spare box they want to lend me for playing with! ;)

> Not that it matters but after Debian, the next distro I'll probably try
> is Knoppix (Debian-based, for those who may not know) or Gentoo
> (optimized for your system and only for those with gobs of time to do
> the install -- wife is expecting twins so that is probably not me!).

The install for Gentoo is supposed to have improved... but getting
KDE/Gnome up and running on a fresh box is probably still going to take a
very lengthy amount of time.

-- 
William E. Kempf