[NTLUG:Discuss] Die hard SuSE fan... err... Mandrake 8.0!

[Daniel Hauck]

How is it for ReiserFS support?

I was really disappointed to find that RedHat 7.1 didn't include ReiserFS
support at the install level.  I have been in communication with some people
in Brazil that is helping me rebuild the RedHat 7.1 CD to include that in
the installation but at least we have a floppy disk image that is a step in
that direction.  (We can make all partitions as type ReiserFS at install
time except /boot because of the lilo version redhat uses.  But changing
that package out will resolve that problem.)

----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Cox <cjcox at acm.org>
To: <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 9:47 PM
Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] Die hard SuSE fan... err... Mandrake 8.0!


> Looking for a Linux distribution to go on the hardware
> I am planning to sell has been tough.  My dear old
> SuSE at first seemed to be the best choice.  Polished,
> simple and chopped full of software.  Mandrake which
> has always been desktop centric as well always seemed
> to have too many bugs for me to consider it.
>
> Having not tried Mandrake since the pre 7 days... I
> decided to try 8.0.  WOW!
>
> You get:
> Kernel 2.4.3
> XF86 4.0.3 (3d ready... something even SuSE seems to have
>    missed on 7.1... it works, but I was planning on redoing
>    it "right" if I went with SuSE... Mandrake does it right
>    out of the box)
> Qt with RENDER extension!! (Anti-aliased fonts in all KDE
>    apps!)... I know this is eye-candy stuff... but it really
>    makes a HUGE difference.
> KDE 2.1.1 (not bad... much better than 2.0)
> GNOME ... Mandrake is one of the first distributions where
>    I found that both environments work EQUALLY as well
>    out of the box.  Well done.  With RH, KDE is tack-on...
>    with SuSE, GNOME is a tack-on.... with Mandrake 8.0
>    you get BOTH... and they both WORK!
> RPM Installer... Very cool.  Graphical software package
>    installation, notification of new packages.  Easiest
>    graphical installer I've seen.
>
> ALL optimized for 586 and above machines.  Feels very fast.
>
> ... on the down side....
>
> Mandrake is still work in progress.  Their hardware
> detection couldn't find my old non-PnP SoundBlaster 16
> (no surprise), but didn't even let me configure it
> manually (that's a mistake).  Easy enough to do outside
> of the GUIs... but something they could work on.
>
> Clean and simple out of the box... just what I wanted
> in a Linux distribution.  Sorry SuSE 7.1, just too
> many issues to get that distribution workable.
>
> Files in Mandrake are laid out weird.  I'm going to
> run an LHS test on it.  I wonder if it follows
> RH?  Installing software packages NOT from Mandrake
> will most certainly scatter files in other locations.
> That's one thing I liked about SuSE... they tended
> to leave stuff where it naturally wanted to install
> instead of forcing their packages to conform to
> some SuSE specific layout.
>
> Anyway, if you haven't tried Mandrake 8.0.... it's
> definitely worth a look.  Haven't done much
> on the server side... I do know that I asked
> it to set up for database access and it configured
> PostgreSQL correctly!
>
> Regards,
> Chris
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