Well craigl,
as I don't recall which version "discovery" is, I can't say for certain.
So I'll bore you with a "potted history".
When I first started, I had SuSE 8.0, a friend gave that to me. I couldn't get my adsl connection working for me, so I had to get my brother, an IT professional configure it for me.
I never did get the sound (i810 based onboard chip). But before I buggered the SuSE install, I downloaded mandrake 8.2 because it was alledged to have support for my adsl modem "out of the box". I did actually find a cure for my sound snags, but screwed the SuSE install trying to sort it out, so I just installed the mandrake 8.2 which I liked straight away.
But the modem support was broken (even though I'd been told that under 8.1 it had worked fine) so I spent about a fortnight pissing around, and with help from a forum called
mandrakeusers I managed to config it myself. I then discovered linuxquestions. I got the sound working with shitloads of help from MasterC (who mod's here now).
I was so impressed with mandrake, I decided to buy a standard boxed set of mandy 9.0 when it came out. I figured that although I could download it, I was happy to support mandrake with some of my "hard earned".
When I installed, I was amazed to find that not only did the adsl (a speedtouch usb model) modem work, but the nvidia driver was also included/configured (not to mention the linux port of adobe acrobat - If my memory serves me correctly). I didn't have to do anything except setting up e-mail etc.
So I then got the dvd powerpack of 9.1 and that was just as good. Straight in, no messing about with graphic's drivers, sound, the adsl modem, etc etc.
I didn't bother with 9.2 but only because mandrake changed their website. If you look, they price their distro's at the same price whether it's dollars or euro's, but as I'm in the UK it doesn't offer me the option to buy in dollars (which even now, is about 20% cheaper than buying in euro's).
I'm a member of mandrake club, so I get the various update info, plus access to preferential mirror's etc - standard membership is included with powerpack (dont recall about standard version of distro), but it explained the changes to the way they are releasing the distro, and I had mandrake 10 community edition (the testing version of 10) running within the first week of it's release.
I was eager to try kde 3.2 and a 2.6 kernel that I'd heard so much about, but not confident enough to compile myself.
Still awake? well, to finish, I haven't looked back and would recommend boxed set's of mandrake to anyone - it's been trouble free and very straight forward.
But the choice is your's (it's only money, and not very much of that either), so good luck.
regards
John
