A Mandrake expatriate not convinced

[cage47]

Hey, y'all. Haven't seen me around here much? Sorry. I've been a Debian convert since Woody came out. Now I've been keeping an eye on Mandy all the time looking to see if they could win my favor back. I had 9.1 but wasn't impressed. So I just got a copy of 10.0 official and installed it onto a spare partition on my debian box. (actually I moved my home dirs back onto /'s partition and used my old /home partition) Well There is good and bad. In order. I've got the 5 cd's. And the installer is familiar to 9.1's installer. Nothing much diff there. Familiar. but my one actual problem came up during installation. The installer halted for a long time and gave errors on installing about 5 packages. Two were xpdf and quanta. Now confusing thing is that is errored at xpdf whether I selected it to install or not (tried it both ways, same result) Now I first thought it might be the cd since all the packages that errored were on cd 2. But when I did get the system installed I could bring the software installer up and install them after. Another was smb4k eventhough I didn't select it. This makes me think it's an installer as opposed to a cd burn problem. (I got them 3rd party so I don't know about the md5sums) But like I said the packages are installable post-install and work fine.

 

Now two positives. One biggie is the difference in performance with KDE. 3.2 loads quick and flies compared to the kde 3.1 included with Mandy 9.1. Very pleased with this. Also they fixed the annoyance with the muted sound on bootup that was in 9.1. This was a big plus to me. Also the ability to change the cd icon names in KDE is a nice return (those damn large titles for the cd desktop icons in 9.1 were infuriating)

 

But one negative I can't blame on Mandrake. It appears the ne2k-pci module in the 2.6 kernel included with 10.0 doesn't seem to work. In the 2.4 kernel I've had no problems, but the system fails on boot to initialize eth0 even though the ne2k-pci module is listed in my lsmod. This I'm going to look more into. Now I noticed that when I ifconfig eth0 in a console I can setup the interface but it doesn't stay at reboot. This'll take more checking.

 

But the other negative Is more me being spoiled with Debian. I was disappointed that with all Mandrake does install it lacks some of the basic pacakges I have come accustomed to. Like xkobo, xgammon and a few other games. Now I know they have to limit their space on the download cd's and i'm not sure what's on the powerpack discs but these used to be included in the distro back in 8.2 (actually I've saved the rpms for them but haven't tried to install them.)

 

Over all I am impressed with Mandrakesoft's efforts and it is a good overall distro and one I would again refer my newbie converts to (provided that package install error during install is just on my end. Like to hear if anyone else has that) But I'd have to see about how easy it would be to replace the packages I'm missing from Debian before I could convert back from Debian. Then again I haven't gone into setting up my printer or samba. That might be another wrinkle but I'm going to give this week to test some things. We'll see but I think I'm too spoiled to go back. I dunno gotta admit I really am impressed with 10.0's performance and will at least give it a going over before wiping it off the partition again. Whadya guys think bout my hangups?

[Ixthusdan]

I agree that the installer is an issue. Since I am not a programmer, I can't explain why the installer is still problematic. It is better than the 7.0 days :P ! As far as packages, Mandrake is still more bleeding edge than many distros, and it is still good for beginners, an interesting combination. I think their marketing is my biggest beef. B)

[Guest iphoting]

Now I noticed that when I ifconfig eth0 in a console I can setup the interface but it doesn't stay at reboot. This'll take more checking.

The configuration for ifconfig stuff lives in /etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-eth*

 

Hope this helps.

[Gowator]

Have you added the urpmi sources (see easy urpmi) just google it...

 

also I get lost with the shere number of Deb packages... sometimes I like the fact MDK has ejm all categorised and half the debs i guess becuase I know the package from mandy... but such is life.

[cage47]

OK So I'm actually logged in on my Mandy 10 partition. So I got my dialup configured. Now I have one confussion. I need to figure this out before I consider making this a working install for the family and save Debian for the backup box. now I looked in /etc/sysconfig and there is no ifcfg-eth* but there is another directory called networking and in it has ifcfg-lo. my loopback device. I used Harddrake and setup my network card. Now I had to go back and reset my dialup since using harddrake rendered my dialup useless but I got that fixed. That's similar to the other mandrake installs I had. Anyway, when I boot it still shows (in verbose mode, blah splash screen) that bringing up eth0 fails. But still when it finishes loading eth0 is available. route -n shows both my lo and eth0 with my selectd ip addy. What gives? Is hard drake initializing it by itself? How can I get the setup set on boot up. I used to use linuxconfig but that's not included any more. So what tool should I use now. Things have changed and I just need to know what tool is prefered now. So far the system looks ok and I can find my missing packages on my old cd's or online. But gotta say I am really jazzed about it's speed now.

[Guest iphoting]

OK So I'm actually logged in on my Mandy 10 partition. So I got my dialup configured. Now I have one confussion. I need to figure this out before I consider making this a working install for the family and save Debian for the backup box. now I looked in /etc/sysconfig and there is no ifcfg-eth* but there is another directory called networking and in it has ifcfg-lo. my loopback device. I used Harddrake and setup my network card. Now I had to go back and reset my dialup since using harddrake rendered my dialup useless but I got that fixed. That's similar to the other mandrake installs I had. Anyway, when I boot it still shows (in verbose mode, blah splash screen) that bringing up eth0 fails. But still when it finishes loading eth0 is available. route -n shows both my lo and eth0 with my selectd ip addy. What gives? Is hard drake initializing it by itself? How can I get the setup set on boot up. I used to use linuxconfig but that's not included any more. So what tool should I use now. Things have changed and I just need to know what tool is prefered now. So far the system looks ok and I can find my missing packages on my old cd's or online. But gotta say I am really jazzed about it's speed now.

About the Bringing up eh0 ... Failed part,

Do check your syslog while that happens (if running).

 

As for my case, after it showing failed, ifplugd kicks in;detect's link beat and finally, brings eth0 up. I'm not sure if it's a bug... But after booting, do run a ifconfig. I'm quite sure under normal conditions, eth0 would be brought up.

[cage47]

When I initially installed there was nothing for eth0. but it showed bringing up eth0 at boot with a FAILED. Now at this point I DID do an ifconfig and set the ip and route -n showed it. But at boot it didn't stay. A route -n after reboot didn't show eth0 again. That's when I used the mandrake wizard.

 

Now in regards to packages I have been able to find my old rpms for some of my progies and have looked online and found the rpms for a few I was missing (lincity, xgalaga). But still looking for an Acroread rpm. I have an old acroread 4.0 installer but it's not the rpm. It'll work in a pinch but it's old.

 

But there's one other catch I'm worried about. I've read somewhere but haven't verified it yet that KDE 3.2 libs are incompatible with some of the backwards compatiblity libraries. specifically the libs I used so I can load my old Word Perfect 8. (Not one word! No one has yet shaken my stubborn loyalty to WP). Now I know about the new (rehash) WordPerfect proof of concept linux version that came out (basically same wp8 with compat built in for new systems) But until I can scrounge up the $$$ to get it I'm stuck with my old 8. I've still got it on my old laptop and in my windows side if nothing else but still use it for quick and dirty word processing. Though I'm using OOo more. But am I really going to be shut out here?

[linux_learner]

on rpmfind.net i found several rpm's for acroread, just not for mdk. the non rpm install of acrobat is easy though. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html it is a gziped file. you can unzip that with out the cli. just right click and select "extract". now you will need the cli at some point, and that would be to actually install it. i believe that to install it, its ./filename. no 'make', 'make install'. then just do your softlinks (ln -s) so that the plugins work in your browser.

[cage47]

Yeah, I've had the link for rpmfind since my old mandrake days. I pulled down the Suse rpm for acrobat. It installs fine except it gives that bad signiture error which does nothing performance wise. And you have to manually make a menu entry. No biggie since I tweak my menus anyway. I still have my old add on rpms from before, like prboom, xkobo and what I can't I pull from the Mandy 9.1 cd's but one thing that really bugged me is the lack of xkill. I looked all through the 10.0 cd's and couldn't find it. I consider that essential. I'll just pull off the 9.1 rpm. I've still gotta tinker to find the preferred way to setup eth0 without crapping out my dialup. That's one thing I never liked about mandrake. But I'll get around it. But I did some tests. Everything else is top notch. I'm not sure if it's the 2.6 kernel or Mandrake optimizations but everything from system performance to internet connection speed it faster than good old Debian. So I'm relegating Debian for the backup box and I'm going offline now and putting Mandy 10.0 on the main partition of the main box. I burned all my config files and user stuff to cd so I can pull it back. So I'll see you guys in a few.

 

(I'm still not satisfied with my lack of WordPerfect on the main box now though)

[fred_the_fish]

ifup eth0 appeared to be broked due to a DHCP issue with early mandrake 10 on the ne2k driver - I've had the same problem. It then disapeared after I manually entered the values into etc/hosts and the others.

[cage47]

Well when I do ifconfig eth0 (myaddress) netmask 255.255.255.0 it works fine. I can connect to my laptop and it connects back. But it won't work when I use the harddrake tool. Also the ifconfig setting doesn't last when I reboot. it's the only thing hanging up right now. But the system is in now and I'm back in Mandrake land. Gonna check on that network config stuff more. At least the dialup is fine.

[cage47]

OK I'm finally good in the network. Problem was harddrake was putting dns servers in my eth0 setup. I just have straight nic to nic static ip so those werent needed. And I'm on dialup so no dns needed. Now I can ping the laptop and I'm dialed up at the same time. All is good in the world. Now on to Samba. and now I have to reset all my internet passwords in Mozilla. Guess I'll be lurking more around here again.

 

Hasta dudes.