Mandrake 7.2 vs Suse 7.1

[Curtiss]

Please I,m not starting a distro war. But would line some comments about Mandrake vs Suse.

Recently installed Drake 7.2 . What I like about Drake is it setup my CD burner during the install and and TrueType fonts were easly imported from windows. But Drake seems to be afully buggy compared to Caldera's eDesktop. Not having tried Suse will Suse setup up my CD burner during the install and can I easly import TrueType fonts from windows.

I love Linux but getting very tired of configuring this and that. Caldera's eDesktop was very stable but could never getting my CD burner working but read an annoucement that they are getting out of the retail business.

Comments please. Thanks

[bdg1983]

There's precise instructions for setting up a CDRW here http://support.calderasystems.com/caldera

And another one here http://linux.nf/stepbystep.htm for eDesktop 2.4

Mine works fine...

[r@nd0m @cce$]

Originally posted by Curtiss:
Please I,m not starting a distro war. But would line some comments about Mandrake vs Suse.

Recently installed Drake 7.2 . What I like about Drake is it setup my CD burner during the install and and TrueType fonts were easly imported from windows. But Drake seems to be afully buggy compared to Caldera's eDesktop. Not having tried Suse will Suse setup up my CD burner during the install and can I easly import TrueType fonts from windows.

I love Linux but getting very tired of configuring this and that. Caldera's eDesktop was very stable but could never getting my CD burner working but read an annoucement that they are getting out of the retail business.

Comments please. Thanks


No, SuSE will do neither of these for you, but this in no way means that it is difficult to set up a cd-rw or true type fonts in SuSE. It is actually very easy and well documented within their manual.

[bdg1983]

Caldera going out of the retail business? I just received a email from Caldera today announcing their new OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 Beta.

Caldera's OpenLinux Workstation Enters Open Beta; Includes the New Linux 2.4 kernel, Targets Commercial, Corporate and Open Source Developers


OREM, Utah--March 19, 2001--Caldera(R) Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD) Monday announced that OpenLinux(TM) Workstation 3.1 has entered open beta and will be available for download from Caldera's Web site at http://www.calderasystems.com/products/beta this Thursday, March 22.

OpenLinux Workstation is the develop-on platform for Caldera and targets commercial, corporate and Open Source developers seeking the ability to deploy on Caldera high-performance, unified Linux/UnixWare(R) enterprise platforms. OpenLinux Workstation will be the successor to the award-winning OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4.

OpenLinux Workstation is built on the new Linux(R) 2.4 kernel and features a complete self-hosting environment, KDE(TM) 2.1, glibc 2.2.1 and Xfree86(TM) 4.0.2. The beta contains an expansive set of Open Source development tools including: gcc 2.95.2, g++ 2.95.2, Perl 5.6.0, OpenSSL 0.9.6 and Sun(R) Java(TM) 2 SDK, Standard Edition, version 1.3. Commercial development tools will ship with the final version.

"OpenLinux Workstation is an ideal develop-on environment to write applications for Linux or to UnixWare via the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) technology," said Drew Spencer, chief technology officer of Caldera Systems Inc. "Developers run the same operating system on their desktop as they deploy on the server.

"The product is particularly suited to developers that need to deploy their applications in a secure, supported, scalable, server setting -- in an easy to use environment."

OpenLinux Workstation is developed to function as an integrated client for all Caldera server offerings -- both OpenLinux and UnixWare-based -- and includes the Caldera(R) Volution(TM) management agent. In addition, it consists of the base components Caldera's Professional Services will use to deliver specialized Linux-based client platforms for OEMs, Internet devices and thin clients.

[Chatterjee]

Wow.. 3.1 beta... I was wondering what was going on with them. I'm using there Caldera eDesktop distribution and think it's fantastic. Their online support system is very straightforward and gets down to business (as is the nature of their distribution).

Redhat, I think, is similar in nature but still needs "tweaking" (like most distros) to make in a work smoothly in a production environment... I guess I'll have to check out the beta on thursday then. Thanks!
-S

[cyan]

--WARNING: Opinion of someone nowhere near Guru status--

Jost a few observations from a novice. Mandrake has it's benefits. RPM based always makes life easy, configures a lot of stuff automatically, generally does more of the "dirty work". On the downside, 7.2 does seem pretty buggy. A quick scan of the tech support forum will find tons of people having trouble getting things working. Plus the fact that it shipped with a beta KDE that had to be updated through Mandrake update (making life difficult for the bandwith impaired) I personally had some weird troubles with my SBLive (plays this but not that,etc)

On to SuSE. The plus side: RPM based, very up to date, mandrake update style download agent, YaST (the do it all configuration tool) and most importantly, TONS OF DOCS! Damn near anything you could thing of doing is covered in the "handbook" (it's over 600 pages, can we call it a manual yet :) )

The downside (only been using it for a few weeks so far, so your mileage may vary) I personally think that YaST is getting a little TOO big. I mean, it's solid for configuring hardware, there's stories all over of people getting "non supported" harware running with it. But, take the internet connection, why bother with YaST just to set up a net connection which apparently only affects kinternet. If you want to use another dialer, you'll have to configure it all over again anyway. (at least from what I can see) Plus some of the files seem to be in weird places. I'm not very experienced, but seeing cdrom directly under / doesn't seem right.

Overall though, they're both pretty good. If you want to do a real comparison, perhaps check back when Mandrake 8 comes out.

Hope some of this helped. If not, well... :p