I am looking for someone who knows about and has (preferably) used Mandrake Linux, specifically version 9. I am currently "in-between" distributions, you might say. I used Slackware for a few years, and while I agree with the consensus that it is a good, solid distro, I don't have the time to update, maintain, and generally use it. I switched to Red Hat for about six months, and it irritated me that my desktop of choice, KDE, was changed and I couldn't really upgrade to the new 3.1 real easy, among other problems. So now I am looking into another distribution, preferably one that uses KDE (Mandrake's default, according to DistroWatch) and a few other things, like RPM (I don't really like building from source unless I have to). I have done my research and only a few questions remain unanswered: First, I like to stay on the cutting edge of software. Generally, this means the latest stable version of something. I shy away from betas. How easy is this? For example, can I upgrade from KDE 3.0.3 (included) to 3.1 in a relatively easy manner? I have read about Mandrake Cooker and I am not all sure as to what it is, and if I can use it to upgrade my computer's individual packages. This would be very nice. And finally...a general opinion of the distro would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance for any opinions or information you can offer.

Why not stick with Redhat and set KDE as your default?

I did; but I want to upgrade to KDE 3.1 and Red Hat has not released modified packages for RH8. I haven't heard about any plans to do so. Also, some of the things they did to KDE kind of irritated me (removing the menu editor, among others) and contributed to my decision to jump ship.

That's me
There are easy ways to do this with Slackware, but I won't go into that since you later on say you like the RPM format. (*Straps on flame suit) That's because the new RH sucks IMHO Cool, here we go: Extremely. At the end of this this reply I'll hunt down another thread where I made a pic how to for a member, it will generally help with setting up upgrades which are very very easy. Yes, cooker is beta however (For the most part) but does tend to work well, and is usually fairly stable. It's about as close as you can get to "bleeding edge" and stability. One of the best. It's definitely a huge "add on" to RH's distro. It does piggy back off of the distro, but I like to think of it as improving upon it, rather than piggy backing off of it. It uses ALSA by default for sound which is a great idea IMO. Excellent user interfaces, explains things fairly well, and allows one to use the system as they desire, whether a n00b or a linux expert (such as an ex slacker). You choose how you want to use it, you tailor it to you, and very easily too.

I do think this distro would be a great idea to give a run for it's money for anyone, especially your situation. Go for it! Here's the link as promised:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=42052

Good Luck, and whatever distro you choose, enjoy linuxing

Cool

updating in mandrake is very easy... u can do that with 2 different ways:
1: the mandrake update in gui (configuration--> packages)
2: urpmi (CLI) urpmi.update -a (updates packageslist)
follewed by urpmi <packagename>. Do'nt worry, it solves deps for you.

the desktop is indeedy bleedy edge.. KDE isnt changed up like RH did..it's all pure.. a full install can make u install 5 or 6 different environments/windowmanagers.

personally I think that's mandrake 9 is the no1 desktop OS IMHO.

Okay, looks good...thanks for all the input. I think I am going to order the CD set from CheapBytes or something. One last question, though: does updating the system (errata and new versions) through MandrakeSoft require payment of a subscription or something? Is using MandrakeSoft's official channels even necessary? I'll probably be buying the "download" version from CheapBytes, so I won't be getting a built-in subscription. I did like Red Hat's thing, where you could use the up2date utility for one system for free (they called these entitlements, I think) and if you had more than one you had to pay. I am aware that there is a MandrakeClub that they have, how does this figure into this equation? Thanks again for all your help and I appreciate anything else you can offer.

You don't have to use any of that. You update from a mirror, not through MandrakeSoft. If you choose to support the distro financially, then you can, but you aren't forced to just for updating. You can use it on as many systems as you'd like AFAIK for free.

Cool

Mandrake is certainly one of the better distro's out there.

Comparing it to Slackware is like comparing two automobiles, one with a standard transmission, and one with an automatic. With the standard, it is a little more effort to "drive", but you feel you are in total control of what it does and when. You also usually get better performance out of it. With an automatic, it drives easy and effortlessly, except in difficult situations where it often does the wrong thing and/or performs poorly. I prefer to drive a standard transmission car ... and use Slackware.

==== Okay, I'll shift gears now ====

I've got Mandrake 9.0 on a partition on this quadruple boot Win/Win/Slack/Mandy machine. When I installed Slack on it, I went though the usual minimal effort getting everything configured. You know the drill: edit rc.modules, edit XF86Config, edit fstab, etc. But soon after doing that, I had everything working. When I installed Mandrake, It totally messed up configuring my X server, I ended up manually setting it to the vesa frame buffer just to get something to work. I don't know why I couldn't work with my ATI Rage128 card with it's native driver. Of course it works under Slack. It also up messed up something else, I can't remember now, but maybe it was detecting my ymf724 sound card, but I fixed that manually. Contrast this experience with the friend that gave my the Mandrake 9.0 disks in the first place: He was a total Linux , just stuck in the CD's and installed it. It all worked perfectly on his system and that is saying something because he installed it on a 2 drive RAID-5 stripe array connected to one of those Promise IDE RAID controllers, next to an existing Win-XP partition! He said the whole process was a lot easier and faster than when he installed XP on that same computer! So the installation experience with these "automatic" distributions is very hit-and-miss.

My Slackware installation runs quicker than the Mandrake installation. But to be fair, I did highly tweak the Slackware installation: Recompiled kernel, custom "hdparm" settings, and highly patched X-server DRM modules, etc. I haven't done any of this with Mandrake, but expect a harder time than I did doing it with Slackware because of the extra complexity of Mandrake.
Mandrake also seems to be running a few extra services that chew up a little RAM. Of course I could tweak my Mandrake too, but with my past experiences with Mandrake (ver 7.0, 7.2 & 8.0), I find it easier to manually tweak Slack.

Mandrake *does* do a nicer job preconfiguring all their Window Managers however. Expect to find much more themes, fonts, wallpaper, sounds, etc. to choose from, as well as more cool desktop applications installed and usually nicely configured.

Mandrake *does* seem to stay fairly current. They do new "stable" releases several times a year. Unfortunately I feel it is at a cost of stability. Expect to find a few glaring bugs, both in the installed software itself, as well as the configuration of it. More so than with Slack I think, but then on the other hand, Mandrake has more neat features working out-of-the-box like automounting of removable drives.

I personally never got along with RPM, but it should be better than the primitive package manager Slackware has. For some reason that hasn't been the case with me. Several times I've had an easier time chasing down missing dependencies with Slackware than dealing with RPM refusing to do something because it somehow got misinformed about what it had previously installed on the system.

Unlike some of it's competitors, Mandrake generously gives its distribution away for free, including upgrades to it. They also have an excellent record of complying with the philosophy of the open source software movement. Unfortunately they are also now in bankruptcy. If you could find any excuse to send some money their way, I'm sure the whole open source movement and most of the rest of the world would appreciate it. It would be a shame to loose such an open source participant. They do have a convenient donation system set up last time I checked.

well said

Mandrake Club has set subscription levels, which some people find they can't manage to contribute. The donations, aka Voluntary Contributions page has no set level ($1 minimum) for those who want to pay what they can but it is not prominently promoted, due to the potential negative connotations of 'donation' to investors.

Mandrake has a thing for using non-standard placements of things which can cause some software to not work or not install at all. They rename some things which cause compiling some software (I ran into constant headaches trying to install a Gnome2 RPM for Firestarter because Mandrake named one .so something else, and had a directory somewhere different) to bork. It also, in my opinion, holds your hand a bit too much (although I think the GUI install process is something every *nix and *BSD should have).

But it is, overall, a very fine Linux distrobution. If you like bleeding edge software you can check out Mandrake Cooker which is like some psychotic repository for things that will be in the next release. Mandrake also seems to release new versions fairly regularly, which is nice. It also does a better job of installing your bootloader and detecting what it needs to boot.

Recent versions of Mandrake are certified to comply with the "Linux Standards Base" or "LSB". This means that they have adjusted things to comply and some of their other "non-standard" things have become "standard". Since the LSB is said to be biased towards RedHat anyway, which Mandrake is similar to, they probably didn't have to change much, but hopefully soon a lot of that software will install easier as it becomes more "LSB" compliant.