I personally think Mandrake has done a great service to the Linux community. Their distro enables newbs to ease into Linux without being confronted by a command line or dozens of config files. Everyone should be praising it for the amount of people that have stuck with Linux as a result of Mandrake, not calling it crap.

But that's just what I think.

The same day I started using Linux I had to install XP on another machine. It took me about 3 hours to completely install it with all the proper drivers and get it on the net. On the other hand Mandrake was up in 30 min. That’s absolutely amazing if you ask me.

i didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings...I just thought that poopie sounded funny.

i just installed Slackware on VMWare virtual pc... and i am a total neewbie.... on linux only from july this year and never looked back since... (must confess i do have winxp on VMWare too... for those things u just cant find on linux.... eg vp6 video codec, yahoo messenger video chatting, Flash MX 2004, etc...)

back to the point... there are many walkthru's for the install even here on LQ... and its really not hard but i recommend having one machine connected to the net while doing the install just in case u run into problems and need help...

i am using mandrake... which i feel isnt as stable as linux is made out to be... but the ease of finding programs for various tasks is what gives it the edge over Slackware for me... urpmi rules... add a few ftp sites to urpmi... most notably Pengiun Liberation Front (PLF)and u can get anything u want... i am connected to FastTrack (Kazaa) network... (most notably)... besides that i have downloaded all the rpms from the mandrake ftp site.. so u can imagine the amount of software i have for mandrake is mind boggling.... till i can figure out how to get this ease of use into another distro i'll be with mandrake... but Slackware is very enticing... and gentoo too...

anyways i'll be going to my parents in a few weeks and will try to resurrect some old boxes and install slackware (due to its fine-tune-ability) or damn small linux (coz its just so damn small) on them... so be sure to hear from me with problems soon...

laterz

No, it doesn't have a graphical installer. But to be honest, the install is easier and quicker than SuSE and RH. And yes I have used all 3 (and then some). Running -current keeps you bleeding edge AND stable - something I could NOT do with SuSE. No dependency checking is actually a blessing (IMHO). I really think people (including me at one time) have been sold a bill of goods on what constitutes a good installer/package management system.

Especially when you consider that most of these systems are GUI front-ends for CLI programs or script/config editors.

Of course, you are entitled to you opinion - no matter how wrong it might be ;)
Check out the home page (and NEW package browser) and see for yourself.

Seriously tho' - try it, you'll like it. If not - no harm done. :D

I must say that as far as text-ish installers go... slackware's is STRIKINGLY easy it just smacks you in the face with its simplicity. go online and read a guide to partitioning and the man page for cfdisk and you're set. this is especially so when you hold it to debian's installer or even the redhat installer... (I wouldn't go so far as to say it was easier than mandrake) but it is perfectly bug-free...whereas I have personally had serious problems regarding keymaps in the redhat installer.
slackware is really rewarding if you have the patience to work with it and keep it maintained.
but I must admit the thing that made slackware(or linux in general) even become a feasible choice is a wonderful thing called cable internet. there's a LOT of fun stuff that simply can't be done on dial-up :)

Depends what you want. It's easier to get a fully-functioning Mandrake system up and runnng from the word go with limited experience. But if you know what you're doing, Slackware is quite a bit more elegant, stable and fast. Both have their strengths.

GO SLACKWARE!!! I've been using slackware for over a month now and its just great. Sure there are going to be problems, but once you fix them, it will probably never happen again. Plus, you know how to fix them if it happens again. Slackware teaches you linux, sorta. I say go for SLACKWARE!!! :D:D:D:D

If you want more information what distribution to choose you might search this forum for "Debian" and "SuSE". There are quite a few threads comparing the pros and cons of these two distributions in great detail.

A big difference between Slackware and other distributions is, eg, the package management. The threads mentioned, covering Debian and SuSE (here, in the Slackware forum!), explain the consequences, and most of the information regarding SuSE would also hold for Mandrake and Red Hat, while Debian and Slackware are different.

There are threads comparing Slackware to Red Hat and/or Mandrake, but less detailed, as far as I can see.

gargamel

probably?!?!?! now thats funnier than the word poopie

I have one main experience with mandrake.

We were replacing a 2003 RC1 server (RC2 was out by now and the realease of 2003 was a week away but anyway) and I said lets setup a slackware server. But low and behold slackware is to hard to use they said. No no no, to much of a headache they said. Thats for "hackers" they said. We need something easier to manage after initial setup they said. You can probably guess what they said next... ( "mandrake" if you didn't figure it out )

So i said ok, thats fine with me. Didn't know much about mandrake at the time. Had only done a single install of it once while i was at home about 6 months before. I didn't have it installed longer than 1 hour but it was nice b/c it detected my samsung laser printer and let me print to it right away.

So their they are setting up mandrake, i wasn't really involved in the process. This was going to be an after 5 job and maybe we'd all go home at 10pm or sooner and come back the next day. Well around 12:30 ( in the morning ) there was a lot of frustration spreading. There was only me left and one other person left ( the one with the say so about what would be installed ) and he was fumbling with webmin ( tool not specific to mandrake ) to get samba working. He still hadn't managed to get the second ethernet device working either. The DHCP wasn't administering IP's. And man I dont know what the deal was with Samba but it was nasty enough to make me mention it a second time here. Finally after sitting on the sidelines making comments about ways to fix things i ask him if he wants me to setup mandrake. He subsides and so I start.

An hour later I managed to get samba working, though not using webmin and I compiled a driver for the second ethernet device. Yet still running drake stuff to setup dhcp server didn't seem to be effective since nothing was receiving IP's. So I did my own dhcp config file and thats worked out fine *shrugs* so i tried to use drake to bridge the the two network connections and that wasn't working. I was very confused, it was late, why was i using drake? it doesn't seem to work. So i suggest, hey you want managability, how about we try Suse.

Yes!!! he exclaims, lets try suse. Do an install of Suse, everything comes up fine ( even that second network card ) and i try to setup the first eth to receive an ip addy from dhcp for inet and the second eth to administer dhcp on LAN. But low an behold suse overwrites the dhcp config file with something special when it acts as a dhcp client which kind of makes it hard to be a dhcp server to the LAN ;)

Looked the issue up and it had some absurd work around. I had to ask how many more absurd work arounds would there be in the future. It was around 4am now, and I said, can you just let me put Slackware on this box so we can go home? He said what the hell, why not.

Everything was up and running by 6am and we went home.

Just give me my Slack

I like ur story man. (y)

Very nice story :)

i installed it , and it was pretty easy. i've got a problem with lilo, so i have to have the boot floppy in the drive if i want to use it. how? plus, i want to use XFCE and Gnome, but i said my default wm was KDE. how do i fix?

oh yeah and i wrote an essay about why i hate microsoft and how they have a monopoly on all of computing. i want to submit it to the Washington Post :D

fuk u microsoft!!!

Nice story sio!
Reminds me a friend, but he stop at suse and got it eventually working. After struggling! He kept on telling me that slack was too complicated, it was for hackers,... blabla. But I won't change my slack for anything! A bit harder in the beginning, but so good when you get your fingers trapped!

re-run liloconfig to sort your lilo stuff.

As for the other stuff, just either run wmconfig or edit your .xinitrc

(or set up gdm/kdm so you get a nice lil drop down menu)