I was hoping someone could give me some suggestions on choosing between Mandrake and Fedora for my laptop. I've used RH 9 in the past, so Fedora would be an easy switch but what have been people's impressions of Mandrake? I'm not looking for 'so and so' sucks - simply why they chose one or the other.

I just got and installed Mandy 9.2 from the Linux Format disks. Very impressed, and this comes from a SuSE guy.


John

mandrake is kool... especially for laptops. ATB

I think SUSE is better since it has a very large collection ( believe me its a huge collection) of softwares. Thats why i think it exceeds other distros. More over its fast.
I'm not starting a war or something, but just my plain opinion!

Mandake on the other hand is FREEly available. So if u r short of bucks then Mdk is a good choice.

Sorry to say, that I believe this to be poor advice. IF it was a case of "I want the distro that has the most software" then I'd suggest the obvious answer would be debian. As I understand it, there is currently in excess of 10000 different packages available.

But that's not the question.

Redhat product's are big in the US, though in the past I understood that they tended to be aimed at business users and just happened to have a free download version available. I strongly suspect that this is still the case now that they've renamed the download to fedora though whether that's to change the product/what's available or just a marketing thing ?? Who knows!

Mandrake probably as many packages available as SuSE (whether that will remain so, again who knows!) if you explore things mandrake, especially stuff like "easy urpmi" and then follow the instructions to include the extra sources from the likes of the plf and texstar, then you can play to your heart's content. I do


One thing that I would suggest is worth while, is getting "boxed set" versions if you have the money.

For instance, before I got myself sorted out with a modem/router for my dsl service, I had one of those annoying "alcatel speedtouch usb" modem's, and also my system has an nvidia based graphics card.

It depends how "all about" you are with linux, and even though I could now confidently download and install the various packages needed for the 2 hardware item's I've mentioned, the boxed set's have them pre compiled and they'll auto install if needed. It was such a relief when I found this out - absolutely no stress.

there's also shit loads of stuff here at LQ to help you on your way or you could also look here for specific type stuff - there's lots more, just google.

The choice is yours, but I've had no problems with mandrake and thoroughly enjoy using it.

regards

John

p.s. If you are pretty "switched on" IT/Linux wise, you could always have a go at gentoo - now that really is a distro to test your patience/stress level's/blood pressure

Ya right bigjohn, i am really bad at giving advice.
I just tried my hand here for the first time. But failed miserably.

I didn't mean to sound critical vinay_s_s, I tried SuSE first off, but when I managed to screw up my broadband connection (I had had to get my brother, an IT professional/linux nut to set it up for me) I had downloaded mandrake and they already had limited support for the modem I was using at the time.

since then, not only have I got rid of the modem (well it's sitting on a pile of mags in the corner of my office), but I've also tried a few "non-rpm" distro's, live CD distro's, etc all with limited success (except bloody slackware which managed to screw my system, more to do with me making a "bollocks up" of the install than it being rubbish - So many people praise slack, because it's good - as I say, it's me that's rubbish ), but of course, during the researching, I've picked up a few bits of trivia on the way.

the debian "fact" ?? may not be correct, but I do know that if you wanted to download the full debian mirror, not only is it in excess of 10000 packages, but it would amount to about 80 gig's of stuff. Because debian can be installed on 12 or so different chip architectures i.e. intel x86, alpha, sparc, etc etc

Happy new year.

regards

John

I am using Mandrake and I think it is great. Installing software with urpmi
is sooo easy....