Mandrake 10 1st Impressions

[Edlin]

Just installed mandrake 10 @ work to test,

And I just have to say WOW,

The hardware support has improved, (I can use my USB mouse right away, I had a lot of agro in 9.2)

KDE seems to belt along a lot quicker, and it seems more intuative,

I have only looked at it a few mins but its a def improvement on 9.2,

Anyone else tried it yet?

[Baldar]

I installed last night, and got to play with it for just a few minutes. Only problems I've seen so far are:

1. Installer would not boot off CD. I had to make a boot floppy to install it (Only distro to date I've had this problem with). I did find this morning that on their unofficial errata page, they say to boot off CD2 if you have this problem, then replace it with CD1. Either way you do it, its jumping through an unnecessary hoop.

2. I was hit up for a non existant CD 4 during the install. Does anyone know what this is? It does give the option to cancel, which I did, and the installation went fine. Just looks a little sloppy.

3. What happened to Fontdrake? It looks to me like it got a downgrade. In the 9 series it had an option for getting Windows fonts (if you had a Windows partions). It was basically a one click import of the fonts if you already had them on that box. This seems to be gone now....

Good points were all my hardware was identified correctly, and seems to be pretty fast with the 2.6 kernel and the new KDE. Doesn't boot as quick as my slackware system though....

[Edlin]

I had the prob with CD1 booting @ first, but it turned out to be a problem on the burning of the iso, I reburned the first cd at a lower speed and then could boot off it,

I also had the CD 4 thing, weird.

[bsm2001]

Baldar
2. I was hit up for a non existant CD 4 during the install. Does anyone know what this is?

Cd 4 is only available to club members has another 650mb of programs.

[MMYoung]

Never had any trouble booting at all.

Posted some of my thoughts HERE (http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123995)

Later,
MMYoung

[infiniphunk]

Wow, nice to hear you guys had all the same problems I had. I too couldn't get mandrake10.0community to boot off of cd1, I had to pop#2 in there so it could tell me I had the wrong disc in and prompt me to put in disc1. Nice smooth install otherwise, until it asked for disc4. Other than that everything was rolling nicely, I rebooted and immediately started exploring for some differences from the beta. For one thing it was no longer doing that funky thing with the app menu flickering all over the screen. But what got to me was the Kdiskfree was missing. Rebooted, still not there. That really bugged me cause, I was using this tool often to access other disc partitions as well as my slave drive. So I figured doing a quick re-install would do it. Nope. So then I decided to to reinstall beta so I could install community as an update over it. What a mistake that was! I went through the install with 10.0 beta and after rebooting guess what? No pointer control with the mouse! And I was so happy that 10.0 now had a driver supporting my fancy-shmancy mouse wheel. So you know, at this point I was starting to get a bit pissed off. I tried again to do a reinstall...same results. Eventually I gave up, feeling defeated and cheated out of my valuable time. Well, at least I could still boot wXP. Once I was back in there I decided to delete all these useless partitions I had set up for linux. Well, PM did its "magic" and just when I thought I'd be back to having a one-partition hard-drive again, guess who makes its appearance? None other than that pretty blue boot-loader! OK?! So now couldn't boot linux, and I couldn't boot WINDOWS EITHER!!!! WTF!!!! Well, I have decided to lay off the linux thing for a little while, out of sheer fear that if I try again I'll again end up spending a lot of time to get very frustrated. Can anyone tell me why me it was refusing to let me use my mouse-pointer? I use a KEIO(KYE systems) three-button(wheel) USB mouse. Hey, I'm not a pro or anything, I just want to learn some more stuff here. Anybody got any suggestions how to get around this mouse thing and the kdiskfree? HHHHEEEELLLLPPPP!!!!!:(

[j79zlr]

Paragraphs make life easier.


Anywho, run FIXMBR from the recovery console to remove the linux bootloader.

[lagitus]

Did KDE 3.2.1 make it into the release? IMHO KDE 3.2.0 was very buggy. Also KDevelop 3.0.0 crashed much more often than the current 3.0.2.

[ShieldWolf]

The Mandrake (http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandrake) page at Distrowatch (http://www.distrowatch.com) will tell you which version of over 170 packages made it into Mandrake 10, as well as letting you compare it to the previous releases.
BTW, it's 3.2.0.

[pickarooney]

If I want to update from the beta 2 release to the Community or even the Official release, so I still need to download the 3 ISOs and install them over the current installation or is there a simpler solution?

[tonimontanna]

It has been years since using Madrake. How does Mandrake allow one to update their system. Are they like Redhat and only allow one demo account. Just wondering because looking to either stay with Redhat/Fedora or jump ship.

[Edlin]

Update,

When I tried it at home, I couldn't get my NIC (3com 905TX) to run out of the box, yet it runs fine on Mandrake 9.2, weird

I played with it for hours, then just went back to Mandrake 9.2

The Mandrake 10 system I have on my desk runs run tho,

[cybertron]

If I want to update from the beta 2 release to the Community or even the Official release, so I still need to download the 3 ISOs and install them over the current installation or is there a simpler solution?

I believe you would. You'd still need the new versions of all the packages. However, I'd recommend reinstalling completely, because it seems like there are a lot of problems with upgrading. I suppose you could try and if it doesn't work reinstall. Just make sure you back up your home directory.

It has been years since using Madrake. How does Mandrake allow one to update their system. Are they like Redhat and only allow one demo account. Just wondering because looking to either stay with Redhat/Fedora or jump ship.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by one demo account, but you can use urpmi to update everything in Mandrake.

My impressions of 10.0:
I would agree with whoever said that KDE 3.2.0 is a little buggy. I've run into a number of situations where WM related things don't seem to be working right. Overall I've run into a lot more bugs in general than with 9.1, but I suppose by 10.1 they'll have a lot of them worked out. One major problem I've had is that the MPlayer pre3 that is in 10.0 doesn't work the same as the pre3 I had compiled for 9.1, so my GUI I had written for it isn't working. I'm going to try to find a different RPM for it and see if it starts working again. KMail is also being a royal pain about importing my old e-mail.

Those are my negative things, and they do bother me, but not enough to go back to 9.1 because I really like some of the updates. Konqueror seems to be a lot more stable now and does a much better job rendering HTML. I may not even switch browsers now. I really like the fact that KMix is automatically put in kicker now (which for some reason it wasn't before for me) and the best thing for me with my laptop is that the 2.6 kernel supports ACPI so I know what my battery status is. The menu organization is much better also, although it still leaves a little to be desired IMHO.

Overall, there's lots of good and some bad also. I have a few things I need to get fixed before I'll be really happy with it.

[cereal83]

I like it better then 9.2. I don't notice it being any faster. I was also not able to boot from CD but making a boot disk is not a problem. It also asked for a 4th cd. Only members get that.

I like how you can change the loading screen. I currently have the clone on the Windows XP one.

I am finally able to play Enemy Territory. I was also able to install the ATI driver properly.

I like how when it boots up, i just shows the progress and not what it's accually doing.

I was able to start a new session and come back without it crashing but not it crashes. :(

I think I will stay with this distro for a while. I usually switch every week or something but I like this one. I find myself being on Linux more instead of windows. If I could just get Wine to work I think I would spend 90% of my time on Linux.

I think it's great

[ShieldWolf]

So far I have mixed feelings. Nothing is so bad that I want to go back to 9.2(actually 9.1 on this machine), but I find myself hoping that a few things get corrected/updated/documented soon.

My biggest problem right now is getting urpmi set up and working right. I'm getting dependency errors, instead of a list of things that will also be downloaded to satisfy those dependencies. Maybe the mirrors just haven't got caught up yet.

I also had to reload the NVidia drivers after rebooting. I rebooted because Evolution would not re-start after I had closed it. I made some changes to Evolutions configuration, then closed it to make sure that it saved those changes. When I tried to re-start it, it gave me several errrors, so I tried re-starting X. No go, so I re-booted. Next thing I knew, I was looking at a rather nice login prompt. Startx got me an error message about the NVidia kernel module. Fortunately I still had the NVidia installer in my home directory, so it was a simple matter to install it again.

Rebooted, X started just fine, and Evolution isn't acting up either. What happened? Who knows. I'm waiting to see if it happens again. If not, I'll write it off as Gremlins, or maybe solar flares. :rolleyes:

So far, it's a keeper, but I'll probably wait for the "Official" release before upgrading my 9.2 machine at work.

[liquidfx13]

i just downloaded this but was wondering before i gave it a whirl.......i am running the Nvidia 5700 Ultra 128MB vid card in my system. mdk9.2 didn't have the right drivers for this on the install (i had to install them myself and the one's i installed were beta for linux at that). i was wondering if anybody knows if 10.0 has the latest drivers? or if anybody with this card knows that it worked right off install? or if i have to d/l and install the drivers manually after i install? tia for the help

[ShieldWolf]

Mandrake 10.0 does NOT include the nvidia drivers due to nvidia's licensing terms. The good news is that the driver is easy to get from nvidias linux driver page. (http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html)

Just download the driver, stop X, cd to the directory you saved the driver to, su to root, then type "sh NVIDIA-Linux-the version you downloaded.run."

It will walk you through the install, and then remind you to edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file. One word of warning though, make sure that you have installed the kernel source, either during installation, or afterwards.

[ShieldWolf]

Just wanted to give an update on my experiences with Mandrake 10.0.

I had a hard-drive failure, and had to reload onto another hd, and didnt' have any problems with the install. Of course, none of my hardware is cutting edge, so it was all detected smoothly.

Installation of the nVidia drivers went well. Had a problem with the UT2004 install dieing at arbitrary points. I traced that down to a faulty ide cable. I probably messed it up doing the hd change.

The first time I installed, my network was correctly configured, but my hostname was localhost. No problem, su ed to root and typed "hostname redbox". It worked fine, until I rebooted, and then it was back to "localhost. The next time I installed, I did a manual configuration on the network, and set the hostname I wanted. No more self-changing hostname! :)

My HP 932C usb printer was detected as a HP 930, but works perfectly. Truth be told, the 932C is probably just a re-skinned 930.

My PNY Attache' usb pen drive works fine, as does my parallel port Zip100.

I did have the squeel through the speakers, but had heard of this problem before and knew to turn down AC97 in the KMix control panel.

My Mustek 600III EP Plus flatbed scanner's still not working, but it's never worked with any other distro, and is just about the only reason I keep a Windows partition around any more.

Still working on adding apps, and setting all of my preferences. The new KDE 3.2 has changed a few things, and is taking a little getting used to. Still haven't found out how to change themes.
:o

[ShieldWolf]

Spent a couple of hours un-installing XMMS 1.2.9 and installing XMMS 1.2.10 and it's dependencies. Probably would have taken MUCH less time, but I'm on dial-up at the house.

I ended up compiling GLIB, GTK and XMMS from source, but my songs still don't play any faster. Who says compiled from source is faster than binaries? :D

[cybertron]

Hmm. I was trying to compile a GUI I wrote in QT and I found that I had a whole bunch of libGL* files missing. The package manager claimed they were installed, but they weren't there. I ended up having to force re-install some Mesa and xfree packages from the CD. I wonder if this is possibly related to the fact that my OpenGL screensavers don't work even though I've installed the NVidia drivers. I guess that's a project for another night.

[ShieldWolf]

Been too busy IRL to get back to my scanner, but I did find out that you can now change screen resolutions as easily as in windows. At least using KDE 3.2 you can. Just open up krandtray. From the KMenu it's System/Configuration/KDE/System/Screen Resize & Rotate

Not particularly useful on my flatpanel, but would have been great on my old CRT.

Going on 4 days uptime now, so stability seems pretty good.

I have noticed that when playing mpegs and divxx that my color gets screwy. Not the desktop colors, but the movie colors. Restarting X fixes the problem, for a while, but then it comes back. I don't know if this occurs in any other window manager, or if it's an nVidia driver problem. It seems to occur after playing UT2004, or if the Euphoria screensaver has been running.

Oh well, gotta go check on the barbeque. Gotta love spring time!

[tony_t73]

I haven't gotten 10.0 community installed yet, but I had a few questions before I jump right in...

SO, I'm running 9.2 right now, and for the first time with a Linux distro, I can't complain too much. I can print to my HP 5100, but I still find that printing is greatly lacking (as compared with Windows... Of course if HP only made a Linux driver...) I've got my ADSL up, which takes enough time as it is (ZyXEL 630-11), and things are just- well, smooth. But not perfect.

I can't install GNOME because there are three packages needed for the install, and it seems that they are corrupt on the CDs. So I downloaded them and added the directory to my "Media Manager" in the CC, but still no luck. I wish that when I said "Use the damn rpm's I downloaded" the CC would obey, but... And I don't feel confident enough that I would get a GNOME compile set up correctly. (I think GNOME is my main reason for wanting to jump up to 10.0. Maybe I'll burn my CDs slower than 24x next time, too... Though the md5's were correct??? )

So seeing that I have this 9.2 that I've spent some time on and I REALLY don't want to have to redo, is it wise to try an update? Or should I do a fresh install side-by-side with 9.2? (I have the space).

Another thing is that I need some strange packages (ok, they're not really strange...) for the ADSL modem. Like, I have to have kernel 2.4.22-10, or something like that. If I jump up to 2.6, is it possible that this will mess up whatever it was that was special about my kernel for the modem?

Well, I should have the third and fourth CDs downloaded by tomorrow morning, so I'll give an update in about two days...

OH- and PS: that fourth CD, the one for club members only- if you're really itching for it and like me, you found that the Mandrake mirrors were just not working right... Well, there's a neat program called LimeWire that runs on Linux...

[pickarooney]

Has anyone got the Official version installed and if so, what's it got to offer?

[cybertron]

Has anyone got the Official version installed and if so, what's it got to offer?

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that Official is basically the same as Community but includes some fixes to smooth out problems that were found in Community after it was released.

[pickarooney]

Ok, thanks, I'll probably wait till it becomes available priblicly and try and upgrade from 10 Beta. Hopefully it won't format the / partition like 10 beta did when updating from 9.1!