ral

Thanks Scoopy. Now I gotta grab a copy somewhere. Damn I was getting kinda used ot RedHat.

Can someone confirm if my understaning is correct. My understanding is that my LG DVD/CDRW should not be affected by installing Mandrake 9.2.

Congratulations LiquidZoo :)

And this review does not boost my confidence in Fedora: "There is not a chance that I would use Fedora as my main OS at this point. It's got as many bugs as swiss cheese has holes, multimedia performance (at least with XMMS) and included multimedia feature-set is below par, application installation is a major pain in the rear, and there is no official support anymore for the bugs encountered throughout the experience. If this distro is just serving as a testbed for Red Hat's ideas to see if they work and then move them to their Enterprise product, it just means that Fedora will always be in beta state, whether or not they announce them as final or not." Full review

This article pretty much sums up how I feel about RedHats decision to dump RedHat for the desktop: "This is not me speculating based on one or two reviews. This is me after hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, when executives from Red Hat told me directly that Fedora will indeed serve as the testbed for much of the enterprise line of Red Hat. Fedora is their chance to try things on the bleeding edge and get the kinks worked out before they bring some new functionality into RHEL. This is all well and good for Red Hat, but it is not really what I need. I like cutting edge stuff just as much as the next user, but I have web sites to run. Software to examine. I don't have the time or the inclination to play around with glitches. I need something that works, is stable, and when I absolutely can't figure it out on JustLinux, LinuxQuestions.org, or my network of guru friends, something that offers technical support. Am I being too lazy? Perhaps, considering my background and experience. But it's for sure that my concerns are shared by other users who don't even have the technical background I do--people who just want to turn their boxes on and use them. People who need live support. I realize I sound grossly unfair to the Fedora developers by making the presumption that there will be problems. Maybe there won't be and maybe I am worrying for nothing. But when I hear terms like "testbed" being bandied about by Red Hat itself, I tend to get concerned. Over time, I am confident that any issues that do crop up in Fedora will be handled just as well as they are in any other big OS project, like Debian, OpenOffice, or Mozilla, just to name a few. x x x What still bothers me is not that I have all these choices but that after I finally made a choice I was happy with, I might have to do it all over again." Full article

Looks like they are joining forces with RedHat and others (Fedora?) http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5106119.html

Am a RedHat fan myself so I hope Fedora pans out... but thinking its time to go back to Mandrake.

But this will be much less than they had given to RH desktop in the past, since apparently they felt they would earn more if they drop Linux on the desktop.

But who will finance Fedora development and support?

Instead of having Mandrake and RedHat complete, they can now both focus their attention on MS with each one focusing on different segments of the market.

Initially i was a bit peeved by RedHat leaving the desktop market. While there is Fedora, I see this more as a distro where new ideas will be tested... and am not to sure if it will be good for the average joe (like me). But than I thought about it. There are too many Linux distro's anyway. Maybe its best if RedHat just focus on the server market. Their resourcs are limited and maybe best they take on M$ in just one area. Was thinking though, this would probably fortify Mandrake's position as the Linux for the desktop, as I suppose a lot of mainstream RedHat users would be headed this way.

Any feedback on this would be good. I doubt it will be something for the mainstream user. It sounds like its going to be geared to the enthusiast, used to test cutting edge technology.

I was always hoping the Linux companies would try to make money by charging business users (maybe by providing a high end paid only version) and keep a home use free version. Well maybe thats what Fedora is... maybe not. I don't think so. Why would the community support Fedora, which RedHat will use to support development of its commercial only versions. Maybe time to jump back to Mandrake. Am running Windows 2000/Firebird/OpenOffice right now. Got a copy in 2001 and it will be supported till 2008. Am not sure I want to get back to installing a new version evey six months. Who knos, though if Federa gets so good... maybe it might backfire on RedHat.

Me I am kind of dissapointed with then number of updates. I am not on broadband, so downloading them will take a fair amount of time. Windows does have large updates, but a 300MB-400MB update (Windows 2000) is for something almost 4 years old and not something new release. I have used Mandrake 8.2 and 9 (but never did update them) and RedHat 8.2 and 9 (which I did update). I was surprsied by the number of updates in RedHat which were much less than 300MB's. But I think one issue here is not the number of or size of updates. Correct me if I am wrong, but most linux updates are really minor ones which you probably can avoid making with little risk while Windows updates tend ot be mandatory because they are to cover serious flaws. But it would be nice to see a release that nee not be updated so often or so much. Since a new version is released every six months... there should be no need to update at all. Hope some develops a "simple" Linux, fewer packages, fewer featues but fewer updates. Not cutting edge, but all tried, tested and without bugs. It would be nice to be able just to use a PC for a long time without needing to worry about maintianing it.

I dont udnerstand this one. Is there also a risk to your hard drive?

] What can I say, the Mandrake community is made up of die hard fanatics :D

RTCW: ET looks really good, unfortunately I am on a dial-up connection at home :(

RTCW: ET looks really good, unfortunately I am on a dial-up connection at home :(

I guess you might be wondering why... Well I have a OC'ed AMD XP with 2x80mm intake and 2x80mm exhaust fans, a dual fan power supply and a 70mm 5600 rpm TMD fan on the heatsink. Even if each fan is pretty quite in itself.... well 7 fans still makes a fair amount of noise. So I put together for myself a older box from parts I got from the warehouse of a local retailer... pretty cheap though no warranty. This are the buffer stocks they keep in case of RMA's... it has a low profile heatsink and silent exhaust fan... more civilized. When I am typing or surfing, I like using this one more. Am kinda proud of it though: Abit KT7A Duron 1.0 @ 1.4GHz (9x155) 256MB Mushkin Rev. 3 PC133 @155MHz 30GB Maxtor HD Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro Its the PC I wanted two years ago... but it wa so expensive than... got it for a song :)

Thanks... okay got the cross cable working between the Win2K and Win98 PC. Now that I know it works, time to dump Win98 and put the Penguin back to work on that box. Well second hand monitors and keyboards would cost a bit more than US $2 and US $12 here... though we have an active online second hand market. But yes, a second hand set would cost about as much as the $35 KVM I got.

I have two machines sharing the same monitor, keyboard and mouse, via a KVM... can I network the two with a simple cable or do I need more hardware?

I'm in. Will submit a complaint online.

Good enough for me. Someoen told me to try it... it worked fine, Never bothered to check why :)

If you dimms are different brands, the order does make a difference. Dont know why, but have had similar problems before and changing the order fixed it.

Actually, I run Windows 98 on my ole K6-2 350MHz with 64MB of RAM. tried Mandrake Linux 8.2 with KDE on the same machine and it crawled. Linux can be as fast as Windows but not if you use KDE or Gnome.