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Rick069
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For me, Mandrake was easy to install and start using, as a Linux beginner. I first tried SUSE, which installed easily, but then, anywhere from ten seconds to five minutes after booting up, my entire system would freeze up. I asked for help on several forums and could not get an answer that would solve the problem. I then installed Mandrake 10.1 and everything just worked. Having the 6 CD set, I had virtually every program I could want or need. I have upgraded to Mandriva 2005 (6 CD set) and would not even consider any other distro.

 

zenarcher

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Well, the reason I tried Mandrake (8.1) was because it was right there in the OS section of software in WalMart and it was a good price. I can't say it was easy to install, because I had a Gateway 700 series with a Jabil/Kadoka motherboard and it would not boot after install (it would hang right after "Press 'I' For Interactive Startup"), but it did not take long (a day or two) for someone to reply to my post on MandrakeExpert with the solution to hit F1 at the boot prompt and type Alt1 and install with the alternate 2.2 kernel instead of 2,4. This worked and it did not take me long to find the original incarnation of Mandrake User Board and the wealth of knowledge there and I stuck around, passing on the little knowledge I gained as I went along.

I eventually went on to experiment. I tried RedHat (forget the version), but it felt too clunky and Windows-y for me. Tried to install Debian, but that failed every possible installation method I tried, until I eventually did a HD install of Knoppix and changed my apt-get sources to Debian Unstable and upgraded. Debian was great and is my second favorite distro. Tried Gentoo and after a week of installation and configuring, never could get X to work right with 3D acceleration, so I gave up.

 

I keep coming back to Mandrake. Why? urpmi. Upgrading to the next release is as easy as keeping up to date with the updates and then changing my urpmi sources to the new release's tree and doing urpmi --auto --auto-select. Some upgrades were a tiny bit difficult because some naming conventions of pkgs changed and it confused urpmi, but overall relatively smooth. I keep hearing people complain about the problems with urpmi and how apt-get is soooooooooo much better and so is yum and yadayadayada, but I have had way less trouble with urpmi than apt-get or yum. The gui config tools of Mandrake are far superior than anything else I've tried, though they do have their problems.

The variety of packages in Mandrake is amazingly vast.

Why do I keep trying other distros? Well, to make sure this is the best I can do; to gain more experience in other methods of problem-solving to help others; because sometimes Mandrake makes me very mad at some of the stupid choices of development packages they use in critical areas of the OS and their customer service royally sucks.

 

Note: Please read 'Mandriva' instead of 'Mandrake' where desired and appropriate.

Edited by Steve Scrimpshire
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In the past, mandrake used to have a better hardware support among distros for beginners. As a result, the install was a snap - RedHat users had to recompile kernels to get support for the hardware which MDK supported out of box. Unfortunately, my experience with the latest and greatest indicates that it all is in the past.

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I remember thinking I wanted to try it out ages ago, and I bought a magazine which had the first CD with Mandrake 8 (I think), on the front. Or was it 7? Anyway, I installed, and it went on a breeze with no problems.

 

I did want to put it on an older machine I had, but I couldn't boot from CD as the BIOS didn't allow me, and I couldn't figure out how to get it to boot from floppy and install. Nonetheless, I still went with it on my newer machine, and had a dual boot back then (not sure which version of Windows - prob 95). And it worked.

 

I only looked at it briefly then, but probably should have taken more time to work with it. Now I have, and I love it. I've not tried any other distros, but then not had a need to because I like Mandrake/Mandriva. If I did try another distro, I would always be comparing it against Mandrake/Mandriva, because this is the first version I've used the most, and there is every chance that I might not like another distro "because it doesn't do what Mandrake/Mandriva does", or "it's not the same as Mandrake/Mandriva".

 

I know that's not the best way to think, each version probably has it's good and bad points, like any software (blue screen's of death - hmmm which OS :P ), and every distro should be given a fair chance at least. It's always down to personal preference.

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I first tried Red Hat 9. I was satisfied with using that for my linux needs (as sparse as they were back then). Well after a few months, Red Hat declared they would stop their free personal edition and replace it with Fedora which would have absolutely no support. At that point I went to find another distro (later went back to try Fedora and was simply unimpressed by it). I decided to try Mandrake Linux because my Linux friend used it as the distro of his choice. It was version 10 that I was able to install properly on my system (9.2 I think it was never would install). I stayed with Mandrake up until Mandriva because of this great forum and how easy it was to do many things. Now I've moved away from Mandrake for several reasons (new name, nuiances with doing things that finally got to me) and currently moving along with Debian based distros. Mandriva is a fine distro, but as everyone says, you just need to find your own.

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when i was a linux-beginner, it was definitely the configuration tools (mcc) and urpmi. today, my main system is ubuntu, but i still have mdk 10.1 on one box and, contrary to my predicitions, i installed le 2005 on another box. mandriva just works and this is why i recommend it to anyone who wants to start with linux.

 

mandriva was a wonderful learning experience and it still is. and somehow, i like the flat galaxy style. :)

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My first Linux and Mandriva installation was 9.1, I skipped 9.2 because it was a disaster on my sys, then went 100% Linux starting from MDV 10.0 OE

Got it because my sister had atviced it to me. She used RedHat herself, but went on to MDV too.

 

I have tried various other distros (Ubuntu included), but for me MDV is the one that suits my needs best.

I don't even notice it's there, it just works :jester:

Of course there have been some annoyances and crawling through xf86config in a dark no X environment, but that was a part of my learning and still is. I've never taken any Linux courses (or windows for that matter), so I discover a lot of new things, but not lately though, because as I said, I don't need to do anything anymore.

With the latest releases of MDV (I like 10.2 quite much) everything works and does everything I want.

 

Of course I could go trying Debian or Slack, or maybe Libranet, but there is no need, because I have everything I need already.

 

Some geeks may oppose that I have abandoned the path of geekness, but hey, it's just an OS, not a god,

I don't see why I would have to abandon my pleasurable enjoyment for some half baked or super-configurable distro that would give me a 2 sec advantage.

Edited by solarian
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¨I don't see why I would have to abandon my pleasurable enjoyment for some half baked or super-configurable distro that would give me a 2 sec advantage.¨

Ditto to that.

Cheers. John

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For me, well I believe I have been receiving subtle messages telling me to choose Mandrake.

 

A while back, there was a snippet in the local press ranting about the release of Mandrake 10. But at the time I wasn't interested in an alternative to windoze. But last month I got round to installing the hard drive I got at chrimbo. A significant upgrade from my old 15GB drive to an 80GB, with all this space free to me, I thought what the hey, might as well give linux a bash (seriously, no pun intended there!). So looking around the net reading up, hearing about how Mandriva was good for noobs, and given that the linux mag I bout recently had LE2005 on it, I started with that!

 

And never looked back

 

Learning linux's quirks keeps me amused, while Mandriva's GUI and apps make things simple for me when I need them to be. KDE has certainly proven to me to be far superior that the win XP GUI!

 

Cheers

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Mandrake and SuSE were both available at retail. I picked Mandrake. I have since used over a dozen different distros, and Mandriva is one of the easiest to use. AT the time I started, which was 7.0, Mandrake had just released a graphic install. Oooo.

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... KDE has certainly proven to me to be far superior that the win XP GUI!

shhhhh...there's a large Gnome following here that'll call you out on that. :P

Gnomes? pfft! :screwy:

They can never tell me the things that I'm supposedly missing out after I show them my KDE 3.4 desktop. :D :thumbs:

Perfect in simplicity and functionality + looks great.

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