So far linux is nothing of what I heard it was. I heard it was a fast and stable OS, but so far all I have is crash, error, error, crash, slow, slow, slow, slow.. crash, freeze, chopy, more chopy, slower, crash.. and thats about all it has been so far, none of these games it comes with work, I can't install one thing without having to install another thing. And just about all the software it comes with is crap.

WIth windows, everyone works just fine, it's MUCH faster then this and it doesn't freeze at all.. ever. But.. I guess I can try to use Linux for a few more days, try to get everything to work right and learn a bit more about it, but I might have to go back to windows.. because this... crap.

Can you post your computer specs. please.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.50ghz
nvidia e-GeFORCE FX 5200 graphics card
ASRock K7S8XE+ mother board
40 gig SAMSUNG hard drive(Can't remember the speed)
1 stick of 512MB DDR ram (1 more stick in a few days)
19 inch monitor
Logitech MX 300 mouse
cd-burner
dvd-rom

Kylesun,

Shame you've had a bad first experience of Linux - and like they say, first impressions tend to be lasting impressions.

Your hardware specs look fine - there doesn't appear to be anything in there that would cause a problem .

I don't have any experience of Mandrake 10 - I tried Mandrake 9.0 a while back and wasn't terribly impressed, but I believe 9.2 was very good.

Mandrake 10 really is at the cutting edge, uses the latest 2.6 kernel, etc. I personally would recommend using a distro with the older 2.4 series kernel, at least for now. the 2.4 kernel is well proven, has good driver support, etc.

I use SuSE 9.0, have also used SuSE 8.2 - both nice, stable distributions (I prefer them to Mandrake, but it's an entirely personal choice)

As regards speed.. Linux does things slightly differently to Windows. For example, Windows Explorer is built into the operating system and is loaded into memory from start up. By contrast, the Linux equivalents (say, konqueror or galeon) are only loaded on demand, so will appear slower to start and perhaps slower to browse the filesystem at first use. there are other similar instances.

So is Linux 'fast'? The answer is - it can be. You've got lots of choice with Linux. Big desktop environments, such as KDE, gobble up system resources. Gnome is slightly leaner, and faster. There are lightweight window managers, too. And you can prune what services are started at boot - do check what you're loading, you might be surprised.

I've found that Linux is faster / more efficient when it comes to raw number crunching - stuff like video editing / processing, etc.

As regards all programs being 'crap', well I don't think that stands up. World-class office applications (Star Office, Openoffice.org, the KDE Office suite, etc), a fine selection of web browsers (where to begin... Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, etc..), a brilliant email / groupware client in Evolution, powerful graphics apps (Gimp, amongst others which I haven't used. But Gimp rocks!), loads of audio editing / ripping / productivity apps (I use Gnome Wave Cleaner to clean up my old vinyl recordings prior to transfer to CD - and the results are *better* than a well known Windows app...). I could go on...

Recommendation - suspend outright judgement on Linux itself, try a different distro (recommend - SuSE 9.0).

Oh man, flying an airplane is nothing of what I heard it was.. I keep running into things and can't even get it off the ground, stupid airplane can't even fly...... Maybe I should have went to school or at least read the manual or book on flying airplanes before jumping into one and expecting it to work the first time... stupid airplanes, why can't they just fly themselves... ughhhh!

I'm not intending to pun you Kylesun but maybe you'll understand the point I'm trying to make!

Cheers and good luck with your Linux experience!

Are you using the AMD64 version of Mandrake 10? Your configuration gets good reviews in HCL
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...hp?product=483 with Mandrake 9.1 and Slackware 9.1

trickykid: nice point


yes, go with kevinatkins's advise and try a different distro, i like Gentoo myself (only cause of the easy installer), but it requires you read the online docs/manuals

Oh no, Mandrake is fine.. it has been getting better, things are running more smoothly and my internet exploring has been great since I got Mozilla Firefox, so everything is pretty good now, I just need to install my gfx card driver now.

The latest nVidia drivers are quite easy to install, IIRC.