Please read my full review here:
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/review101.html

The most important thing is to properly set up urpmi, through http://easyurpmi.zarb.org after which you can install loads of software, including stuff for dvd viewing, video editing etc.
If you have the powerpack, naturally it comes with loads of software, but my guess is that many will get the 3 cd download edition.

The user community is also great, apart from here at linuxquestions http://www.mandrakeusers.org is a good place to come for assistance.

The kde that 10.1 OE comes with is problematic in some cases (I found it problematic on 2 systems, of all those tested not too bad, but still) - usb drives or memory sticks not getting mounted, konqueror blocking. The updates (configure urpmi with easyurpmi for updates) do fix these issues.
Another problem I faced is that the LIRC drivers are not included - I compiled them so you can find those on my configuration page at: http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/configuration101.html

On the whole, after a few weeks of use I can really say that I enjoy using 10.1 OE.

Go ahead, give it a try!
Enjoy Linux,
aRTee
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/

I run this dist on my 400mhz computer.
KDE works okey, could probebly be faster but.. hmm alot faster then FC 3 were on my 400mhz.

i strongly recommend this dist. it got everything you need and alot more, atleast what i've seen it got OK video support atleast if you use xine.

would give it a 10 if it werent for that thing i had to write "nvidia" in modprobe.preload to get my geforce up and running without having to using modprobe everytime. And ofcourse i got that 10 thing till a flawless dist comes out.

if i would compare Mandrake and Fedora i would say that when you for NTFS, MP3 and video up and running in Fedora it comes to a draw between the 2 dists.
one good thing with mandrake also is that you can easely choose were you want to download your updates from.

all i can say is that Mandrake is a high quality dist.
but all linux dist tend to act diffrent from comp to comp.

Pros:
The best thing is that during the installation the part where it can allocate automatically once u tell the drive in which it has to be installed.

The touchpad is detected in the starting so thats a pro


But after that its not thaaat good. Its just okok ... the fonts dont look good and web pages also looked messed up.


CONS: (why i dropped )
1) the NIC is detected (good) but if i tried to d/l stuff, it would drop the connection and dont start untill i restart the comp. even `service network restart` didnt help.

2) Same with the Wireless card

I've tried most of the major distro's and found the Mandrake-Linux distro's to be the most comfortable and easiest to use, want to run a few servers? no problem the Wizards will have you up and going in no time, want to customise the appearance? again the Control Centre makes it all so easy, want to get down and dirty? just slip into Console mode and do your thing. aRTee is absolutely right about setting up urpmi it's a must :-). If I must level a critisism it would be that with each new release after doing an upgrade something that was under this section in your menu has now been moved to that section or has been removed completely! Other than that once you have this baby installed and configured it performs like a dream. Good work Mandrakesoft.

I started with Mandrake 9.0, and started toying with it to get some stuff working (eg CanoScan, NeoDio card reader, both items I've described in the HCL).
I liked it, but after a while, I found there were programmes I wanted to use that required library versions that where only minor increments above what was Mandrake standard.
So I installed Mandrake 10.0 on another machine and found they all worked. I subsequently installed 10.1 on my desktop, and I'm now runnings apps like Audacity quite happily.

Pointing the RPM sources at the correct repositories deals with searching for new apps quite sensibly. I was doing some compiling on Mandrake 9.0, and I've decided that mixing install styles doesn't work well - I much prefer one method for this :)

This is a desktop I could probably give to my parents.
Clean desktop, though KDE isn't the fastest, probably due to lack of video acceleration (I've not installed it).
My (oldish) hardware - PIII Celeron 1GHz, GeForce 256.
The bootup seems faster than Mandrake 9.0, and the drive mounting system is a huge improvement over the old one.
I think the new 2.6 kernel helps a lot.

i installed fedora core 3 yestarday after 2 sleepless days (AND NIGHTS) and though the gnome 2.8 interface is slick-looking, there's more that doesnt meet the eye - apps keep disappearing even with window selector and window list added to the panel. i had to delete my .mozilla directory every few times...bla bla. i thought 512mb ram was a decent figure for today's general-purpose computing, but with gnome 2.8, it looks different...it had used up all the ram!!!! holy cow!!

you might be wondering i mistakenly posted a fedora review in a mandrake spot...not exactly. i'm trying to compare fc3 with my older mdk 10.1 install...and i find mdk much muchhh better.

installing apps in fc3 is a nightmare, what with unresolved dependencies blah blah even with yum and apt-get. urpmi is heaven. i didnt mention how the fc3 install screwed up my lilo boot loader, so i couldnt boot mdk anymore. and during the install, it NEVER--not once --asks you if you want to boot into X by default...it just assumes. sorry i'm rambling.

fc3 sucks bigtime!!!
MDK ROCKS !!!

Fantastic installation!! I installed on my Dell Latitude x300, it resized windows partition, installed without a problem, and gave a dual-boot startup menu. Works with usb cd, auto configed my net connection, mounts ntfs partition (read-only), all apps running smoothly. A God-send for a newbie. Mandrake has plenty of useful docs on their web site too.
Only downside was usb key drive not mounted, and some problems installing apps, resolved once I got urpmi. Highly recommended.

Mandrake 10.1 (in my case PowerPack) is by far the best distro I've tried yet. It' stable, it's fast and it's easy to use.

The hardware detection is really amasing. I've NEVER seen a distro automatically enable 3D support for my Radeon 9600 card before. Urpmi is another work of genius (much better than yum). It makes it easy to install software. Just "urpmi <packagename>" and it's installed.

KDE lacks some functionality in selecting themes but that's a small flaw.

I'm so new to Linux that it's unbelievable - however I got the installation on my HP lappy working fine (800 Celeron 256 ram) - basic set up was fine - support from LQ has been fantastic THANKS EVERYONE! I feel that Linux needs to get close to Windows in terms of operation - sorry but you have to meet the needs of the masses.. however installing programmes has got easier - just need to get an icon on my desktop to launch app - so built in ability to add this automatically would be fab

Easy to use with clean interface.. a good distro for newbies to experience taste of linux..

Not so good if u are already in touch with linux.
On some machines squid started giving errors and installation of some packages such as firefox etc gave segmentation faults..

I downloaded this as my first test run of Linux. I have never used it in the past, but I had it recommended it from a good friend. It booted up great and continues to run great with out errors for the most part. It didn't require divix codecs or any special attachment files to run, so I thought that was an awesome plus. The free office and mozilla firefox kick serious tail for sure. However, the glitches in various programs annoyed me a bit, because I thought Linux was the omnipotent-ness in being glitch free. I guess I was mistaken. I am yet to know how it works with my external hard drive, but I do say that it has exceeded my expectations thus far, and I would recommend to anyone who is pissed at Microsoft for being a bunch of software code hoarding Nazis.

Installed with nary a hitch on my computers. I could not
get the built-in sound on my Vaio to work. A cheap 5.1 soundcard took care of that.

why so long with no reviews here? Pretty lame. Must not be popular,despite the "most popular" ratings elsewhere.