Mandrake Linux versus Thiz-Linux, do you recommend?

[Guest dolphans1]

Hey Guys,

 

I am new to the board and I want some honest advice on Mandrake Linux.

 

Do you guys recommend it over Red Hat or anyone else out there?

 

I installed Thiz-Linux and it was ok, but I had problems finding reliable customer support. They are Chinese based and the language barrier and response lag was troublesome and presented problems. In short, they're customer support was a D- (for effort), really an F (perhaps because of langauge barrier problems.)

 

I use Windows and I hate it because of the latest rashes of security holes and because of this, someone advised Mandrake or Red-Hat "linux".

 

I like the name Mandrake over somehing that starts with the word "Red", I know, sounds picky.

 

I'd like to know what you like and don't like about Mandrake or any other Linux brand.

 

d-1

[liquidzoo]

If you are just coming to Linux, I would definitely recommend Mandrake. It is one of, if not the, most newbie friendly distro on the market.

[Guest dolphans1]

How do you feel about how Mandrake handles the installation of other software programs. Problems I had with Thiz-Linux was not being able to properly install other programs. i.e. untar, install.

 

Sometimes it would work, other times it would not.

 

d-1

[Steve Scrimpshire]

That's going to be a problem with any Linux distro. There's going to be source code that you just can't get in RPM format that was just written poorly or documented poorly (e.g. they don't tell you the right dependencies the software will have and/or the 'make' or 'make install' fails without a verbose enough error)

 

What you'll want to try to do is get a distribution that you like (Mandrake is the best for newbies, from what I've read) and try your hardest to only install programs that are in RPM format until you get the hang of installing from source (tarballs). The best ways of installing software (in Mandrake) is either through rpmdrake or with urpmi that is properly configured with a decent amount of sources. There's an easy way to define sources in urpmi (or at least a site that spells out the exact commands to add whatever source) here:

 

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/index.php

 

You can even download a version of the software used on that website from here:

 

http://www.aerov.jussieu.fr/~thauvin/pub/urpmi.setup/

 

(wow, that's a lot of parentheses in this post)

[Guest dolphans1]

Thanks for the information, I will let you know when I install Mandrake.

 

d-1

 

That's going to be a problem with any Linux distro. There's going to be source code that you just can't get in RPM format that was just written poorly or documented poorly (e.g. they don't tell you the right dependencies the software will have and/or the 'make' or 'make install' fails without a verbose enough error)

 

What you'll want to try to do is get a distribution that you like (Mandrake is the best for newbies, from what I've read) and try your hardest to only install programs that are in RPM format until you get the hang of installing from source (tarballs). The best ways of installing software (in Mandrake) is either through rpmdrake or with urpmi that is properly configured with a decent amount of sources. There's an easy way to define sources in urpmi (or at least a site that spells out the exact commands to add whatever source) here:

 

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/index.php

 

You can even download a version of the software used on that website from here:

 

http://www.aerov.jussieu.fr/~thauvin/pub/urpmi.setup/

 

(wow, that's a lot of parentheses in this post)