I'm not entirely sure if this is the best forum for this, so if youthink it's not, don't hesitate to move it.


FIrst, let me say that as most of you know, I'm former windows user and I've only been exclusively linux since mandrake 9.0

As for my hardware, I have a GeForce4, a soyo motherboard with an AMD athlon cpu. I also have one of the dreaded LG CDroms.

THe first thing I want to say is to the folks that screamed at the ads in the first release candidate. You are out of your minds. Mandrake is a free os and they chose to ad a couple of non obtrusive and totaly passive ads to the mandrake instalation progress scream. Even windows does this, and that's not ven fre. I had no objections at all.

THe next thing to point out which is actualy the first thing I noticed, is that everything looks more polished, as expected. The global theme has been redisigned slightly and it all looks much more visualy pleasing in my opinion.

As for the installer, I was very happy to see the hard drive partitioning system from 9.0 return. I was never happy with the default one in 9.1

I did notice that many packages which wree installed by default before are no longer installed unless you do it manualy after install. THe first one I noticed was kPPP. Also, fewer CD writing programs were installed and several games were left on the CD's. Nothing important, just different.

On boot-up, I found that everything seemed much smoother and faster than it had in 9.1. Frankly, I'm realy surprized given that this is only a dot release. I'm extremely pleased.

The menu has been altered slightly in several places to make more more sense. As an example, in 9.1 ther were seperat links for the mandrake controll center and KDE controll center. unfortunately, they were labeled, 'Mandrake control center' and 'control center,' not hard to figure out, but an oversight none the less. Now they say, 'Configure your computer' and Configure your desktop' respectively. I think that is an improvement, and other links have had similar usefull changes.

THe next thing I noticed, was the software installer front end to urpmi in the controll center. At first I was dissapointed because it looked exactly the same as the last 2. That was where my disapointment ended. In both of the previous releases, I encountered errors when installing large numbers of packages at once. ANd worse yet, if there was even one error, the installer would think that none of the packages had installed successfully, and it would not install anything after the error. This was a huge pain in the butt. Now there are fewer errors, and they are handled differently. Now everything is installe normaly, and if there is an error with a packages installations, only it and it's dependencies are affected. AFter the other installs complete, the installer gives you meaningful output, something that is lacking from many linux apps, as anyone who has ever had an error while compiling can tell you.

As for my CDrom, I took the advise I got on these forums and upgraded my firmware BEFORE instalation. I had no errors. However, that's just my CDrom, do the same at your own risk.


In conclusion, I think people have the idea of the mandrake release numbers all wrong. What I keep hearing is .0=new release with lots of upgrades and big improvements, .1=some upgrades and bug fixes, .2=just bug fixes but no real changes

This is all wrong!!!
.0=too much new stuff and buggy as hell
.1=usable
.2=a realy polished OS with most if not all of the bugs worked out.

Barring the unforseen, I won't upgrade again untill 10.2

Another thing I forgot to mention, is the boot up screan. Other than looking WAY better, you now have the option of the same verbose boot messages from 9.1 or a nice simple progress bar. For the die-hard linux users, this may be a waste, but for former windows people, we don't want verbose reporting unless we're having a problem that needs trouble shooting. I think this is a plus.

One big negative I forgot, the kernel source isn't on the CD's. Not cool mandrake soft!!!! otherwise, very happy camper.

I'm glad you are having a good time. I am not, and the number of updates is an indication that, once again, a time table was more important than a solid release. 9.1 is still my main os, and I am trying to get 9.2 working well enough to use. The gui improvements are great. But I am getting some freezing of the system, so bad that I have to shut down. That has not really happened since 8.1.

I'm realy sorry to hear that. Lot's of updates after install, while almost universal, is a pain. I'd offer to help in any way I can, but chances, are, I don't have much to offer Anyway, what are you haveing problems with? It all seems so smooth to me I hate to see other people having problems.

Interestingly enough, I had system freezes much like what you describe when I was using 9.1, but 9.2 seems like a rock on my hardware.

umm... ...what updates?
Running Mandrake Update still returns 'void' (unsupported version). Is this a 'Club' thing?

Today I had my first lockup and had to hit 'reset' :roll:

LOL, to be honest I don't know. I never try to update anything unless I have aproblem, and sisnce I have no problems, I haven't een bothered to add an update miror to urpmi.

Go to the Mandrake security updates page, where the errata is listed, and you will find links to the mirrors containing 9.2 security update folders. I always use ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Man...dates/9.2/RPMS/

:wink:

Aren't the amount of updates more about a new version of KDE, 3.1.3 to 3.1.4? I know there was a screensaver problem with the KDE in MDK9.2, but I don't think it's fair to say the 300MB of updates are all bug fixes.

Cheers!

Oh and who can forget the infamous Red Hat 7, aka Guiness? That was so bad, they had to re-release the ISOs within a week or two.

Is 9.2 available for the general public to download, or is it still limited to club members?

to be honest, I'm not sure. I purchased CD's from http://www.cheapbytes.com a good long while ago now. When I bought them, I was under the impression that the publick download was available, but apearantly not, so basiacly, I just don't know the answer to your question.

If all else fails buy the CD's for $6.99+s&h from http://www.cheapbytes.com

Well, up until I discovered the numbering scheme for kernels .<odd number>=development and .<even-number>= stable, I was under the impression that software releases went by .<even number>=development and .<odd number>=stable, which is, basically, I guess, an MS ploy, but still I assumed that was the case for Linux Distributions, which is why my first stab at Linux was MDK8.1 and the 8.* releases seemed to follow my theory from what I heard:
8.0 -> crap
8.2 -> crap
But that's just what I heard. Thankfully, 9.2 was a pleasant surprise. For me, at least, it has been almost flawless.

Hmm.. that's the first one I heard that 8.2 is crap. From what I hear (and what I experienced) 8.2 is actually very nice, stable. In fact, Linuxindo still uses Mandrake 8.2 as its training tool in its classes. Maybe 8.2 just hated your system

Anyway, I agreed that 8.0 is crap. It was the worst release Mandrake ever did. 9.2 was bad initially, but nowhere to that level. Now that it works in my laptop, I think 9.2 works beautifully with all the patches