I eagerly installed 10.0 (have been using 9.2) and seven hours later after countless reinstalls followed by fruitless attempts to get back to 9.2 operation, went to bed. Three hours later up again and reinstalled 9.2 about four times and finally got to where I could manually reinstall approx. 25 applications I use, start fixing other things, etc. In short spent virtually 24 hours needlessly because 10.0: (1) wouldn't let my mouse work despite numerous reconfigurations that had NO effect; (2) would not recognize my CD-burner at all, and apparently could not be made to; (3) has fonts that look terrible in OpenOffice.org, which I use hours every day--and other fonts that looked awful, too. Very disappointed. I belong to MandrakeClub, which I find just about useless it's so complex and ill-organized, but I will probably renew because I do want to support Mandrake. They TRY. This time they very definitely did not succeed. I'm glad I'm able to settle down in 9.2 again and will stay here for the forseeable future, I guess.

Strange... I've heard rave reviews about MDK 10.0.

After I experienced the distorted fonts in OpenOffice.org-1.1 (all the "i"'s were more or less boldface, for example), I did a Google search and found numerous posts here and there about the same problem, with no definite solutions in sight.

Surely somebody should have checked out the working of one of the most important applications, under the new release, before it was sent out to the public.

Under 9.2, OpenOffice.org looks easily as good as Microsoft Office, and maybe even better. In fact, most applications and the X-Window environment itself, with the desktops and most of the window managers I've tried, looks better than Windows. (I settled on IceWM for my favorite, because it has never once crashed, and it is very customizable yet stays out of my way.)

Looks are important when you spend a lot of time with the computer.

Not being able to use my CD-burner or mouse was completely unacceptable. I got the mouse to work briefly by changing some settings manually, but that improvement disappeared.

One very odd thing was that when I did a clean install of 9.2 (one of at least half a dozen I ended up doing before I got everything working again), my CD-burner was recognized with no tweaking. And JPilot for synchronizing my Tungsten E handheld worked without any alterations to it! It's the first time I've installed and had both those things work without a lot of extra effort.

Mysteries. I will stick with 9.2; looks fantastic, works flawlessly most of the time, and does what I need it to do. I will very cautiously review users' comments about 10.1 or succeeding releases before I try to "upgrade" again.

Maybe it's a kernel problem, as one user said (page one of this thread). But I'm not advanced enough to trust myself messing with kernels, and I wouldn't know how to install 10.0 with other than the kernel version it comes with, anyway. And I don't think the user of a distribution like Mandrake, which prides itself on user-friendliness and readiness for the masses, should have to.

Im also using Mandrake 9.1.

Its just better to wait a while with new releases. You never know whats going to happen.

For example, Windows XP SP2 rolls out and all of a sudden people are just downloading it like crazy but then there computer crashes.

Best advice is, Its better to wait with new releases.

This makes me wonder what beta testing's all about. Aren't beta testers supposed to subject the product being tested to real-world conditions? How could these major issues get missed, in that case?

I have several installs of MDK running fine here. Unfortunately when testing it's hard to test on all possible hardware with all possible software, so MDK 10 is glitchy with some hardware and software. Most of the systems here were fine out of the box. My main system had some glitches, but then I run a lot of stuff on it and it's not the greatest hardware. Currently this install of MDK10 is running kernel 2.6.8.1 and it's 100%. The other boxes are original, and they are working 100%. All work flawlessly, but one has had a kernel change, nothing else.

Sounds like it's not just the kernel that came with the 10.0 release, then. All the more reason for me to wait!

I would like to make it clear I'm not bashing Mandrake here--though I do think they should have been more careful about this release, but folks said the same about 9.0, as I recall. (Somewhere I read once advice to never install anything ending in a zero--wait till some update comes along! May be good advice.)

I respect Mandrake for honestly trying to bring Linux to a wide base of computer users, and for providing a generally good, in some respects excellent product. I'm also glad Mandrake was able to overcome some serious financial woes and now is apparently in pretty good health again! If it wasn't for a user-friendly distro like Mandrake I don't know how I'd be able to use a computer, for I absolutely will not use Microsoft software, I can't afford Apple, and Linux is the only sensible way for me to go. And in general, despite some horrendous battles and having to call for advice from LinuxQuestions and local people both, I've enjoyed my computer MUCH more since moving away from MS Windows. I don't think I'll ever cease to marvel at the way Linux just doesn't crash (the OS itself has never once crashed on me; single apps have, of course, but they leave everything else merrily running just fine).

Just as you can be disappointed by something a friend does, but still remain friends, I will continue to support Mandrake Linux!

The only glitches with this box were with artsd (which is always a pain) and occasional locks when accessing USB flash drives. Whether this was a pure mandrake problem is unclear as the problem wasn't too bad originally, but much worse with the win4lin generic kernel I used for a while. That was a dog, but not really Mandrake's fault. The only thing I've changed has been th kernel and the lm_sensors user tools.

I haven't had any problems with mandrake, or any distro, that wasn't fairly easily fixed. Compiling a kernel.org kernel specifically for your hardware is never a bad thing to do anyway.

Lucky you! (And I'm not being sarcastic--I'm truly glad you've had a smooth path.)

Can you point me to a clearly written, comprehensive tutorial on kernel compilation? If there is such a thing...

Maybe I could learn how to do it. I keep seeing posts here and elsewhere, where that's the only way to achieve the best results from a given system.

I think compiling a kernel is a bit like riding a bike. If you can do it it seems dead easy and those who can't do it must be stupid or something. On the other hand if you haven't done it, it's a nightmare and you are likely to fall off and bust your knees...

I'll try and find a howto, but most seem out of date. In simple terms 'all' you have to do is:

Go to www.kernel.org, pick a mirror, and download the latest kernel. If you are currently using a 2.4 kernel then stick with that. If you are using a 2.6 then download 2.6.8.1 (current). download the full bz2 source (about 34meg) and put it in /usr/src

Unzip it with tar xfvj and it will create the source tree with the appropriate name.

cd to the 2.6.8.1 tree and run

make xconfig

The hard part is then going through every option and setting the config for your PC so it helps to know the chipsets, eth, soundcards, etc - though if unsure just add extra modules. It will use the ones it needs. drivers can be compiled into the kernel, or as a module. Most things are okay as a module, but you want the main things like the root filesystem (ext2 or whatever) compiled into the kernel. This is the hard step, but if unsure you can get help here.

once configured you can run

make bzImage

and this will build the kernel. It will take a while.

you then run

make modules
make modules_install

to make and install the modules in their directory. It also can take a while if you compile a lot of modules. I tend to to compile what I need as I have a slow box.

You then copy the kernel to boot

cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/linux-2.6.8.1

then edit /etc/lilo.conf to add this new kernel to lilo - but keep the original. You may have to do it a couple of times to get it right. the new lilo entry will look like your original, but have the new kernel name. You can get help on lilo configuring. It's easy enough and just copy and paste with some changes in this case.

You then run

lilo

When you reboot you select the new kernel and see how it goes. Once working you can remove the /usr/src/linux link and point it at the new kernel tree if you like.

This is a brief overview, and if you have to redo it a couple of time you may need to do a make clean or whatever, but the idea is to give you an overall picture of the process - and I may have missed something.

It is a little complex at first, but I run though it these days in no time and it gets automatic... But I still screw up all the time. Generally you dont do any damage, you just go back to the original kernel and boot and try again.

You couldn't have hit on a better analogy. I'm a longtime bicycle commuter (15,000 miles, all on city streets), now retired. So I know about riding bikes--and also about busted knees!

Thanks for the detailed rundown. I'm going to copy and save it and study it. Then one of these days I'll give it a try! I've already obtained the highly-recommended kernel 2.4.22.36 (corrected numerous security holes in the one that came with 9.2) and installed it several times (due to recent problems with 10 and reversion to 9.2) with no problems whatever, so that part of fear is in the past.

The less mysterious things become, the more I like it. So thanks again--you spent a lot of time on giving me this help.

I am wanting to change from Fedora Core 2 to Mandrake, because every time I tried to install a video driver there, it crashed. I could see in this forum that the version 10.0 is not good at all. So, I'd like to know wich version I should take? I see that you guys apreciate the 9.1 version, but what about the 9.2? Isn't it better? What are the basics differences betwen them? By the way, where can I get the cds to install Madrake 9.2 or 9.1? And how many cds?

With my computer hardware, version 9.2 is better than 9.1. My CD/DVD-R/W drive gets recognized for what it is automatically, which didn't necessarily happen with 9.1. There were other improvements when I moved from 9.1 to 9.2, but frankly I don't remember now what they were. I'm happy with 9.2, except when I break something and find myself having to reinstall it. But it only takes about five minutes.

I got my four CD's for Mandrake 9.2 through the mail from CheapBytes.com. I also pay Mandrake about $60 a year for Mandrake Club membership, to support them.

The CD images can also be freely downloaded from any of numerous (as in several dozen) mirrors you can find on the mandrake.com website pages.

All the mdk 9.x were okay. 9.2 is probably the pick of the 9.x series. I currently use mdk10 quite happily, tho on a current kernel. Mdk10 with 2.6.7 was very good. With 2.6.8.1 there were some tweaks needed and problems. Most of these problems still seem to be in kernel 2.6.9 so far - at least in 2.6.9-rc1bk5...

Both 9.1 and 9.2 are going to run out of support soon.(I think 9.1 may have already) If you do get 9.2, make sure you get it with all the updates as there were a few small (not serious but annoying) bugs in the initial release.

I think you would be better off going for 10.0 or waiting for 10.1 which will be out fairly soon. Remember this is a forum where people post their problems, so you are going to find people having problems with lots of things, and may i just say that a great deal of the problems are user error, or simple things that they could fix themselves if they just read the documentation supplied with the distro. The point is that the vast majority of people aren`t having any problems.

You will also find that the latest release, in this case 10.0 wil cop a fair bit of heat. I remember when 9.2 first came out, there were people all over these boards ragging on it and saying that it was the worst piece of crap that they had ever used. Now there is a general consensus that it`s a very good distro and that it has improved over it`s predecessors as I`m sure 10.0 will be viewed in the long run and so on. Just my opinion, don`t be scared, the chances are 10.0 will work fine for you.

Cheers