Does Mandrake 10 Official screw Windows ?

[!nkubus]

i have a laptop for work with mandrake 9.2 on one partition and one partition with windows XP (wich i need to work ) and i want to resisntall mandrake 10 official edition on it but i read the mandrake 10 is screwing up windows xp ? am i right to assume that i should keep 9.2.

 

or is it better to do a an update^ on urpmi 10 repository and do a kernel update to have a mandrake 10 ?

 

 

thanks for your answers.

 

*** moved from software by Phunni

Edit: moved again from Everything Linux by spinynorman!

[ral]

Dual booting ML10OE and WinXP with no problems, altough they are on separate hard drives.

 

HDA - 20GB's NTFS (WinXP), 8GB's NTFS (Data)

HDB - 5GB Ext3 (ML10), 500MB (Swap), 17GB Ext3 (User), 5 GB FAT 32 (Data)

Edited May 6, 2004 by ral

[NeoXP]

Dual booting ML 10.0 OE and XP on the same HD, no problems at all!

[SoulSe]

I'm starting to worry - Mandrake 10 was supposed to hail my big return to the distro, but with all the horror stories I am hearing I might just be forced to stick to Gentoo.

 

Luckily this doesn't seem to be one of the big problems, but I am dissapointed at what I am hearing on this board about the official release...

[ral]

I am kind of dissapointed about not being able to get 3D accelration up and running, and not being able to play Region 3 DVD's. Otherwise all is well.

[!nkubus]

Thank you very much guys, i just didn't want to screw may work laptop, because it does not look quite professional for a boss to screw your data and loose 2 days for reinstall everything.

 

thanks a lot. :)

[AussieJohn]

What is this bit about Mandrake 10 screwing up Windows XP?? Is this nonsense still being repeated ad nauseum? The problem referred to, is as I understand it, is that if the bootloader is not installed correctly then it screws up the MBR and this MBR has to be cleared to enable rebooting into windows. There have been dozens of posts on how to do this so I am not going to bother going through it all over again. The procedure is pretty simple. Just do a LITTLE search. The main problem is with the person doing the installation and not Mandrake10 as far as I know.

 

When Windows 2000 is available there is NO WAY I would ever contemplate having XP on any computer of mine. Sure sometimes I have had to clear the MBR after doing a Mandrake Install (any version) but I have ALWAYS found the cause to be something I did or didn't do correctly and definitely not Mandrake.

 

SoulSE. Where are you hearing "all these horror stories" and what exactly are they.

Please list what they are so we can dispose of the stories one by one. Let us not have fud sneaking in here as if it were fact.

 

John

[aRTee]

No, the problem is the partition table in the mbr being written to in the wrong way.

 

It seems if you don't do any new partitioning all goes well. That was also the case with 10.0 CE by the way.

 

And there is a fix, that should work for everyone, read this:

http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/...Main/Mandrake10

 

and this bugreport:

http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959

 

------- Additional Comment #21 From Pascal Rigaux 2004-03-18 00:50 -------

 

At last someone here reproduced the bug which is now fully explored.

 

Part of the reason I could not understand the bug, is that I could not

believe windows XP was still using the error prone int13 function 2

(CHS based) instead of the (available everywhere for some time) int13

function 0x42. Under linux, grub and lilo only use function 2 when

function 0x42 fails (they don't even ask the BIOS if it manages 0x42

since some BIOS don't report correctly having this functionality, cf

FORCE_LBA in grub)

 

The other reason is that I thought BIOS faking heads number (the

so-called LBA mode) was a choice independant of the content of the

drive. This is wrong, the BIOS tries to adapt its mode based on the

partition table [1]

 

So here is what happened:

- kernel 2.6 doesn't try to give the logical geometry, and gives the

  physical geometry instead [2]

- diskdrake uses the physical geometry to generate the CHS information

  (which is a broken duplicate of the linear sector number)

- the BIOS sees the partition table uses a different CHS geometry, and

  adapt to it

- ... and Windows computes the CHS to read its stage1.5 based on the

  previous geometry that it keeps in its boot sector. Alas the CHS

  doesn't get the same sector and Windows's boot dies (with very bad

  error detection) [3]

 

 

Bug occurence: the pb only occurs when you modify the partition table,

  since otherwise diskdrake won't write it.

 

 

Code fix description: inspired by the way new fdisk and parted detects

  the logical geometry based on the partition table [4]. parted code

  is especially quite robust.

  The fix is now included in cooker (DrakX #1.912), so:

 

  I still would like to access the BIOS geometry, esp. for empty

  partition tables. But kernel 2.6 doesn't give us this

  (/sys/firmware/edd/int13_dev80/default_heads is plain wrong on a box

  here)

 

 

Known workaround: forcing LBA mode in the BIOS

 

 

Fixing partition table:

  with diskdrake from drakxtools-10-24mdk do

    % diskdrake --change-geometry=hda=255,63

  where

  - you replace hda with your drive device

  - if Windows still fails, try adapting 255,63 to your drive LBA

    emulation. For this, see what is the geometry your BIOS gives when

    forcing LBA emulation

 

[1] http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker...311.3/1142.html

[2] http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker...311.3/0898.html

[3] http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker...311.3/1029.html

[4] http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ker...311.3/1164.html

 

 

On the whole, I agree with John, in general Mdk10.0OE ROCKS!

And yes, I'm running it even at work. No more windows. :D

[Darkelve]

On the whole, I agree with John, in general Mdk10.0OE ROCKS!

And yes, I'm running it even at work. No more windows. :D

While that may be true, now you will have to update all of those screenshots on your website again :lol:

Edited May 6, 2004 by Darkelve

[SoulSe]

SoulSE. Where are you hearing "all these horror stories" and what exactly are they.

Please list what they are so we can dispose of the stories one by one. Let us not have fud sneaking in here as if it were fact.

 

John

Yeah, we all know how much I love spreading FUD. I also make blatant and stupid statements that are based on my complete ignorance and lack of experience with / knowledge of Linux.

 

Whatever. But lets not get nasty.

 

Since you asked for a list:

 

The major problems I've heard so far:

 

- Mandrake 10 does not detect hardware as well as 9.2 did.

- It writes partition tables to the MBR incorrectly.

- The Mandrake Control Centre has taken two steps backwards.

- Graphical Login Managers are b0rked on many systems.

 

Those are the biggies. Like I said, I've HEARD horror stories, I haven't witnessed any - and if I did use Mandrake again, it would be with a self-compiled vanilla kernel anyway, so my experience would be different (except with the MCC).

 

As for where I heard them: right here!

[NeoXP]

I am kind of dissapointed about not being able to get 3D accelration up and running, and not being able to play Region 3 DVD's. Otherwise all is well.

 

@ral

 

I did not have the time to try it myself, but it seems there is a solution for getting 3D to work:

 

click me, click me

 

Good luck.

[Guest Adriano]

Running Mandrake 10CE (now 10 OE) with win XP on the same disk, with 3D accel (nvidia). No probs with login managers whatsoever.

[aRTee]

SoulSe, I think the point is that there are horror stories, but how do you know how many? And extrapolating, how do you know how bad things really are?

 

So, in my and Johns experience, things are not that bad.

You are NOT spreading FUD imho, but just relaying info that is not statistical in any way, and therefor has less meaning to the 'greater public' than people might take it for.

 

If I look here on the board, and other places I go,I don't see all that many b0rked systems, and the ones that are bad, are often so due to kernel 2.6 .

Lss good hardware detection with Mandrake 10 compared to 9.2 you say? Hit F1 upon install and choose

alt1

to boot and start the installation. Then you get a nice 2.4 kernel with similar hardware support.

2.6 is not in all that many systems yet, so these problems are bound to happen - remember, 2.4.8 was the first decent 2.4 kernel.

On a side note, anyone with hardware problems due to 2.6 not being mature enough and blaming Mandrake is out of their mind.

(Note: I'm not referring to the situation where a Mandrake patch broke something, but just general 2.6 kernel immaturity making for a 'bad' system...)

 

One more thing: there are 2 big reasons why there will always be relatively many Mandrake problems on the various boards,

1) Mandrake is the hit among beginners, and they often just don't know what and/or how so they break things or make a mess

2) Mandrake is just very very big, so for every problem with some other distro from the same nature, there will be many more messages about it from a Mandrake user

(remember the LGcdrom problem - which also hit Gentoo users and came from SUSE - only with Mandrake did the problem give enough statistics to figure out what the true problem was)...

 

My 2 rappen....

[rockybalboa]

My Newbie two cents worth.

I fought 9.2 for the better part of 2-3 weeks. No luck.

Just before jumping ship a friend(s) convinced me to try MDK 10.

This working setup was easier than the one I couldn't get running.

I am very leery of MBR and boot issues. I have none.

My own experience is superior.

Running XP/MDK 10.

GeForce3 200Ti

Sound Blaster Live

AMD TBird

Nothing spectacular, but solid performance.

I am still tweaking 3D, but I still have graphics so any failures beyond this point will be at least partly my own.

I've done alot of research in the last month or so and I have seen alot of grave concerns from others, but I usually find more people who either didn't have the problem or found a good fix.

As a newbie I have to say that when I abandoned 9.2 things really went well.

"Indvidual experiences may vary"

Good Luck,

Dan

P.S. Without the encouragement of those who hang out here, I would've jumped ship long ago. Windows has taught me to expect consistent mediocrity with little user input. Boring but easy to run. Sort of like a Ford Pinto.

[null]

Sort of like a Ford Pinto

 

I remember way back when it seemed like there were millions of those around. Hardly ever see one anymore. In fact, I saw one a few months ago and was amazed - it was the only one I've seen on the road for probably 10 years.

 

edit: sorry for going OT

Edited May 9, 2004 by null