Hi,

I used for a while a Mandrake 9.1 Linux. Until I did something really stupied as a root (yes, I am ). After acting like an ..., I desided to format my /usr, and give a try to Mandrake 9.2, just to see if I can do it. Well, Nvidia's NForce2 mobo gave me small probs, mainly because I lacked kernel sources. When I finally got source, zap. Up and running. No probs, untill today's (January 8th) kernel warning.

I have searched the kernel updates, but for some reason my apt-get, or urpmi, or anything else, does not find it. Partly those updating progs are saying that they are not getting either access, or that my main/contrib/update list is not up-to-date. And also, I keep banging my head to Club door. I do not want to join to any club. I want to have free linux desktop, and not paying to some Club for something that I do not know...

So, I think I either kick Mandrake out, downgrade it to 9.1, or change a distro.

I would quess that Debian and Slackware are the distros, which might give me more than challenges. On the other hand, there are no distro specific changes in Kernel / GUI. Am I correct or not?

How about sticking in Mandrake, should I still give a change for it? Downgrading to 9.1, or cleaning this install and trying to have more calm approach not updating every peace of binary I see?

Well, this is more or less a frustrated guy just after mid-night complaining his own stupidity. Sorry taking your time for nonsence

"On the other hand, there are no distro specific changes in Kernel / GUI. Am I correct or not?"

If you want to avoid any changes made by a distributor then download the source directly from the developer and compile it on your machine. Get the kernel source from www.kernel.org (which is what I always do). Get KDE from www.kde.org (which I rarely do, I usually use my distributions KDE upgrade) and so on.

I use rpm to keep track of the packages that I have installed. When I compile my own packages I use checkinstall to convert the source tarballs into rpms.

"I would quess that Debian and Slackware are the distros, which might give me more than challenges. On the other hand, there are no distro specific changes in Kernel / GUI. Am I correct or not?"

Yes.

"How about sticking in Mandrake, should I still give a change for it?"

Mandrake tries to do everything for you. If you are installing Linux for the first time then Mandrake is great because it gives you few choices and you can set up a working Linux system with a minimum of Linux knowledge. However, this makes Mandrake hard to change and I think that Mandrake is the hardest distribution to maintain if you want anything other than the Mandrake defaults. If you want to configure Linux your own personal way then Mandrake is the worst distribution to use.

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Steve Stites