Guest chris26 Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Hi all. I am honestly not intending to create a flame war here or a war of the distros. If you are new to linux and are thinking about which distro to choose, I hope that this post that I make now will help you in making your choice. It's often said that one should choose the distro that best suits one's needs. I always found this to be a rather all-to-convenient one-size-fits-all answer, but I figured, what the heck. They say that Mandrake is the most newbie friend distro out there, and has the most advanced graphical interface available of all the distros. They say that Mandrake rides the cutting edge of linux technology and it is especially good for high demand graphical applications. I cant remember when I started using mandrake, but my first distro was 8.2. I first picked up Mandrake because the Red Hat version I installed wouldnt start in X for me. After Red Hat, I tried SUSE. It installed into X, but for some reason or another I had to do a re-install and then It would recognize my graphic card anymore. So, next on the list was Mandrake. It worked from the first install. A lot of things acted weird on the system, it kept trying to reset my clock, would not let me connect to the internet without resetting some config files manually every single time(even though nothing actually changed from boot to boot). I was very forgiving because at least it worked. Even though I crashed the system at least 10 times I was happy to have a working version on Linux! Being a newbie, I read what I could, asked lots of questions and just went slow with things. I decided to upgrade to 9.1 as it was hailed and well received by the populous. Right from the start, Mandrake was still werid. Nvidia drivers will not install on my Mandrake system for whatever reason, the mandrake config tools are still bugged and partially broken. I still have to reset certain files to get connected to the internet, and depending on the boot, somethings work and somethings dont. And, even after all these years, they still cant be considerate enough to keep the sound ON as its default. I find that 9.1 is still not reliable, nor stable. Although, it looks beautiful! However the worst of it is that I'm still a newbie. How many years has it been, how many books have I read? I forgot. But complete computer newbies who start up with debian, or slackware know a good deal more than I do after only one year. (Probably after getting install to work, for the slack users) Now that Mandrake requests that you be a Mandrake club Member in order to receive support help, downloads, or discounts on their overpriced commercial distros, I'm starting to get this weird and vague feeling that Mandrake is trying to copy Microsoft's business practices. They have three biggies already.. They overcharge their product, they require you to be a paying member to receive support, and they release unfinished software. I'm not a computer expert, I'm not a business or market expert so I dont feel to comfortable expressing my opinions about why I think Mandrake is doing what they are doing. But, I'm getting tired. In addition to my complaints about the stability and reliability of the distro itself, I have come to the conclusion that Mandrake's way of spoon-feeding its users cannot be productive to their understanding of how to setup, maintain and configure linux systems. I feel sad to have come to this conclusion, because I was hoping that mandrake would serve as my way out of the Windows world, but it's just not there yet. Sorry Mandrake, I had a lot of good memories, but........ Im switching to slack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davecs Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Mandrake ASKS that you join the club. You are not forced to. You can link to contrib sites, and other people who do Mandrake rpm builds such as plf and texstar via the Easy Urpmi site. I've got Mplayer, complete with DVD-readability, all the multimedia stuff and the latest KDE and K3B thanks to me following the instructions in this site. As far as I know, this level of independent specialist support does not exist for any other distro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted October 30, 2003 Report Share Posted October 30, 2003 Sorry to hear that. Slack is one I have never tried, but of course it is linux so it has to be good! I grumble some about Mandrake and their marketing. But the fact is, I have always ran every release successfully on my box. And when I get to it, I'll fix 9.2 to run on my box. You see, eventually the people hear will find all the neat fixes. Have fun, and I'm sure we'll see you around! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtweidmann Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Nobody forces you to buy stuff from Mandrake. Te distro is still available for free download, and there are still sites like this offering community support. Either way its your choice which distro to use, so have fun with Slack. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polemicz Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Sorry to hear you will leave Mandrake, but please don't leave this board! I've been doing Mandrake since 8.1 and have always found it to be very stable. I have never used Mandrake for support, but have used this board, and its predecessor, a lot. That is my support. I have also played with Red Hat and they have just as bad "offical" support and no board like this. I use two distros: Mandrake (currently 9.1) and Debian (the unstable). I will soon upgrade to Mandrake 9.2. My basic work is done on Mandrake, not Debian, simply because I love the configuration tools on Mandrake. To me these tools are well worth the headaches with Mandrake's business incompetence (mainly their service). My Debian is more "bleeding edge" than Mandrake, but to me Mandrake is more solid. Hope Slack goes well with you, it's one I haven't thought of trying. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest klinger2004 Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Sorry to hear about the troubles. Mandrake, although I am not currently using it actively, has been the only distro thus far to not give me ANY problems. But, you certainly can't deny the great peeps around here - my distro of choice at the moment is RedHat 9 and awaiting Fedora - but I still come HERE for help, probably always will. I can understand what you mean by distro's wanting you to join the club and buy support - but at the same time I buy a distro if I like it - just to support it. Hell, these are men and women who a struggling just like you and I. Although RedHat (certainly) doesn't give as good support as even this board does, I still purchased a boxed product - and I certainly make donations too. I've donated to K3b cause I LOVE the product... I've also donated to this forum. It's never a substantial amount - I struggle like the next guy - but it's something to show that the work is appreciated and hopefully they'll stick around. Besides, it sure beats paying $hundreds to MicroShaft and getting the shaft. At any rate - good luck, but stick around, you won't find a better place ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Sorry to hear that you are disappointed. I paid just over 80 bucks for the whole shootin' match. And that includes all the apps that I use, some of which are way better than the fnWindows apps that I was using on the fnWindows box. I have run into some bugs, but so far there have been no showstoppers. I think that Mandrake was worth every cent that I paid for it. This does not seem like overcharging to me when compared to the hundred$ of $$$ that I have spent on fnMicrocrap that crashes all the time and spams me with my own equipment. Just my $0.02 Banjo (_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 It's a shame you didn't get on with Mandrake. I found mandrake great for my first year or so with Linux and now I use Gentoo. I'm much more comfortable with gentoo now and I prefer it, but I owe a lot to my time with Mandrake... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 For pete's sake, find a distro that's more compatible with your hardware already. Every distro has its issues with certain hardware and if you try to install any OS on hardware it doesn't like, you're in for trouble. Mandrake isn't bad because it doesn't run well on your hardware; it runs great for me and many others. Stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, complaining all the way. Try and find something more suitable; maybe slack is the answer for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chris26 Posted October 31, 2003 Report Share Posted October 31, 2003 Hi all, I just wanted to thank you all for your encouragement and posts. I might be leaving Mandrake, but I will never leave Linux. cheers, Chris >>pmpatrick: I try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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