I would reccomend Mandrake for the noob and experienced
 

For years now I have been using Mandrake and I started the Linux learning process without it, I wish I had though. I have used Slackware, Redhat, Caldera, etc. and even if I go back to try them again I still come back to Mandrake. The Canooks ( I can say that i am half canook...lol )can really fine tune an OS for most users.
In my experience along with my friends, it seems to install and run out of the box 99% of the time with little or no configuration. This is either from a hand edit or through mandrake config tools.
I have run it as a firewalling / routing OS for almost as long as I have used Linux and it does all I need and then some on that note. It also acted as a web and FTP server, etc. When I started using Linux in that role it was on a 486 DX4 100, ran like a dream. That system ran untouched except for updates for security reasons until about 3 or 4 months ago and i frankensteined the machine together close to if not 4 or so years ago give or take.
Now the firewall is my old 266 PII overclocked to a 333 running 9.1. I love it. That is why I am downloading 9.2 through suprnova.com right now to check it out. I hope I find it to be like the other versions of Mandrake I have used.

Re: Mandrake 9.2- Worth the upgrade?
 

"condensending feel to it" - hmmmmm

cannot say anything other than 9.1 works like a charm, noooo problems anywhere....

as for slackware, i want to try slackware but i have not got the time right now....

but NO to 9.2, if you thought 9.1 was "condensending" becuase it worked nicely i can only imagine what you are going to say about 9.2

- perry

Re: I would reccomend Mandrake for the noob and experienced
 

you excite me with terms like 266 overclocked running 9.1, as i love how linux breaths or unleashes new life into old machines, machines which are problem more than capable of being of great service with a decent and "real" operating system underneath it's covers....

as for 9.2, it'll be interesting to see how you make out with it, if you were a newbie, i would say stick to 9.1, but where you've been doing this for years, it'll be interesting to see what happens...

how i wish i was working somewhere, where i was installing linux on old machines to make new systems out of them, my girlfriend has an old pentium ii class machine i think that needs a new keyboard. once i get that, it'll be interesting to see what a 16meg former windows 95 machine can really do....!

- perry

I've been considering the upgrade from Mdk 9.1 to 9.2 on my laptop but I'm waiting for the download ISOs to come out.

I've been reading about the load of bugs and that does worry me (I loved 9.1 and its been good to me...but the performance enhancements of 9.2 are hard to resist IF they work).

Has anyone heard if they are planning to put some of the fixes into the download edition or will Mandrake leave it as-is and make you download 350megs worth of fixes anyway? (not to mention playing with 'patch.pl' floppy files to get it to install)

try ftp://raven.cslab.vt.edu

they have all of mandrake 6.0 -- 9.2 iso's, updates, contribs, commercial and even slackware iso's to boot

and they are f%$#ing fast in the Internet connection download arena + they are free!

- perry

Thanks :)

but the problem with that is that its the 9.2 with all the listed problems (I may still check 'em out tho...i can't resist :D ).

what I wonder is whether the isos that mandrake WILL release for free download will have fixes incorporated in them or will they be the same edition as the commercial that's already out for members? There's rumors of remastering the isos, recalls and such, but I haven't found anything concrete anywhere.

If they aren't going to bother changing the isos, then I'll download them now...but if some fixes are going to be incorporated, then I'll be patient and wait for the fixes :)

"If they aren't going to bother changing the isos, then I'll download them now...but if some fixes are going to be incorporated, then I'll be patient and wait for the fixes :)"

Agreed. (But that said, I've already got 9.2 running... and its going _very_ well for me). I've been telling people that if its an important machine to just wait for the formal release... I think we're talking under a week anyways. I have no idea if they will incorporate the fixes or not, but if it were my company you could be damn sure they'd be in there ;)

mandrake iso from raven.cslab.vt.edu
 

Someone mentioned in this thread that vt has iso's for 9.2. Uhh, either theyre not there, or well hidden. I know the iso's will be available there when mdk releases them the end of this month, but i dont see anything there now.

BTW, I live in SwVA about a four hour drive from virginia tech, and the rutgers or ibiblio mirrors are faster for me from the local community college. (about 2MB/s)

Re: mandrake iso from raven.cslab.vt.edu
 

now that i think about it, i got 9.2 rc2 from mandrakelinux.com, download area, however. they changed their site one day and put in a link to the 9.1 and thats how i found the raven site.

however, whoever is running that site seems to be on top of things!

- perry
ps.
anybody have anthing to say about slackware, is it better or harder than mandrake ?

yeah, that must be what it is.. I think they might have the 9.2rc2 iso's. I'm thinking about getting all the current rpms, updates, and contrib, from somewhere tomorrow to try and upgrade rc2 to the latest and greatest. I really don't know why, except to have the latest and greatest.

also, as far as slack, i have no experience with that. I tried gentoo, but gave up way too early. Ive heard(read) that slack is fast, but I cant understand how it could be faster, since its compiled for i386 unlike i586 for mandrake. I know people say mdk has a more bloated kernel to make life simpler for the user. However, after disabling a few services and other odds and ends in mdk, it runs fast on my old p3 733 256mb ram, GF2. Much faster than say, xp(again with unneeded services disabled), and about the same as 2k. Id say slack is harder simply because it doesn't address dependency problems during software installation. There may be an app to take care of this though. Gentoo is supposed where the speed is. You either compile everything from source or a few things, or download a prebuilt iso for your CPU architecture

just my two cents.. Oh and Fedora beta 3 is supposed to be pretty sweet..

when you say "disable services", what presisely did you disable ?

or would you?

you have me curious, if slackware is suppose to be faster, how so ?

just a little curious

- perry

services
 

Basically, I at the end of the installation, I go through the services and uncheck anything that I dont think I need loading on startup. Depending on what you use your computer for you might need more or less services loading on start.

Its easier for me to list what loads on start. Ive disabled all the rest.
This is for mdk 9.2rc2 which i reinstalled today. Its about the same for 9.1 I think I ended up with about 16 services starting with 9.1 and 13 on 9.2 here's what starts:

alsa, devfsd, dm, harddrake, keytable, kheader, network, numlock, portmap, random, rawdevices, sound, syslog, and xfs.

There may be more that I could disable on start, but I havent looked into it a lot.

That's something i do in windows 2k/xp so i figured I could do it in mdk as well.. Just be sure to read the descriptions.

Since, I have no experience with slack, there's really nothing i can tell you about it. If you just browse around, reading reviews on the web, and browsing usenet, then you can, get some opinions. This forum also has a slack section, so you might check in there. better yet do a search in these forums..

Re: services
 

i greatly appreciate that man, each and everyday i learn something new about my wonderful computer and i can say that now, now that i have an operating system that does not keep me in the dark and cause me to have to fight with it just to get it operational let alone develope software on it (aka windows).

i don't know, its like with linux. i am motivated to shape my code in parallel with everything else in the operating system. that is, everything has a start, a middle and an end. and everything is unique, has a purpose and works well with others

this encourages you to write application software in the exact same manner as in, i am not doing anything to try and overcome the operating systems limitations

i can go on and on, but you know what i mean...

thanks again

- perry

ps.
best of luck with 9.2 !

Re: services
 

i stopped the following services:

apmd, atd, crond, cups, irda, linuxconf, netfs, nfslock, ntpd, partmon, postfix, saslauthd, smb, wine,

i'm wondering about these:

internet, iptables, xinetd

i could have listed all that i had but that might be pointless. i'm hoping that as a result of this, my little dell inspiron pentium iii 500 mhz will have a little more kick

is there anything in the ones that i stopped should be worried about and about the ones i'm wondering about, do they look familiar...?

thanks

- perry

ps.
smb, hugh what a joke, had a the services for that and nmb running and neither of them bloody working

I am using 9.2, no observable difference in speed, but I upgraded, not clean install. I think the 9.2rc2 was less buggy. I don't think mandrake is getting any better overall, but mandrake is close to excellent for me anyway.