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A Lemon


AussieJohn
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i have to chime in here. it amazes me how people so quickly jump on a band wagon. "mandrake 9.2 is a lemon", mandrake 9.2 was rushed", whatever the case. first of all, the issue of mandrake was not mandrake exclusive, just mandrake got all the publicity. the problem was LG. they do not support linux. a kernel patch was made and resolved the problem. thats a tribute to the community abroad and to mandrake in specific, for getting it resolved so quickly. each version number has its little quirks. DONT go in expecting it to be like before. i remember when people were upgrading from 9.0 to 9.1 and couldnt find kppp any where. change is change, deal with it.

 

i have tried a number of distros over the years. i setttled on mandrake. i started with slack, but when i got my new box (3 years ago) slack wouldnt configure X, leaving me with out a gui. at that time i was only on dial up (thankfully not a winmodem). i was a newbie. i didnt even know dos commands (what the hell was i thinking). from there i tried red hat, but i didnt like how red hat configured things. i tried freebsd. freebsd was like slack (except X configured). i tried lycoris, conectiva, suse, and mandrake. do i have some gripes with mandrake? sure. but i sure as hell wont leave over a couple little changes such as what has been described here. thats like complaining about how M$ changes things in windows. or how Mac changes things in the Mac OS. every OS version gets changed. deal with it.

 

when your next distro of choice pisses you off by changing things so you dont like it any more, are you gonna leave them to? what will be left? i do understand linux has sometin like 180 distros, but thats alot to go through.

 

didnt you ever notice that the headlines read something like "mandrake kills cd roms"? how biased is that? how many of you verrified the story? so then that leaves what? little inconvient changes, such as menu's? give it a rest already. cant you edit the menu? if having the menu changed from one version to another bothers you so much, why switch, where your garunteed more than a menu change?

 

have you forgoten that we ARE the community. we are to mandrake what economics calls "supply and demand". if we clamor loud enough what we want, it will be done.

 

if i were to call anything a lemon, it'd be M$'s windows. theres only so much you can do to fix that. with linux, your only limited by what you know, or dont know.

 

instead of complaining about these little inconviencances, why not do something constructive? like, let mandrake know what you think, help newbies out, write howto's, and if you know how, write code.

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I have used Linux and Mandrake in particular for most of the last four years. Ever since an upgrade of MS Word turned some of my carefully worded prose into little boxes I have vowed to keep my stuff out of the reach of Bill Gate's buggy code. I have been with Mandrake since release 6.0 and so far for what I want to do with it the present 9.2 version is fine.

Others have obviously had their problems with it, and their disappointments, but for me it is working fine. Yes, the defaults in installing wanted to leave out a good number of my favourite programs. Yes, when I tried to install a stack of packages I lost the menues and had to completely reinstall before I read on the net of the 'update menues' trick. All right, so Mandrake 9.2 made a fool of me but after that everything is working. Certainly Mandrake have a deplorable habit of fixing things until they don't work (remember how they lost supermount back around releases 7.0-7.2 or so?).

The one thing that really didn't impress me with MDK 9.2 was that when I went to look for the familiar KPPP application to dial up the net on the home machine though I searched high and low it wasn't there so I had to install it.

MDK release 9.1 on the other hand proved nothing short of a disaster on my upgraded computer (Athlon 2800+, KT600 chipset, PCI ATA133 card). I wasn't able to get a stable setup in plenty of tries. 9.2 on the other hand installed straight away and is running very clean.

It goes to show, everyone is different.

All the best.

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"I wasn't able to get a stable setup in plenty of tries. 9.2 on the other hand installed straight away and is running very clean."

 

I think thats the point. Its the 'randomness' of it all. For some it will be the opposite.

Personally I found the 'release' 9.1 very unstable, from the installer on and 9.2 might be a dream for me or it might not. What I'd like to see is it getting progressivly better, Im not talking apps - Im talking mainly hardware support, you can always install an app but getting HW working can be long and tedious and then you have to do it all again next release.

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I just recently (a couple of months or so) got around to installing 9.1 Powerpack. I had to go from 8.2 Powerpack to 9.0 Powerpack for my new printer (deskjet 3820). Surprisingly, all 3 of those run fine for me, on different motherboards. Granted 8.2 doesn't recognize the the newer Via southbridges.

 

I guess I am one of the really lucky users here. I haven't gotten around to getting 9.2, and I may or may not. It may be 10.x or even 11.x before i upgrade again, considering that I still have some major outlays for hardware, yet to go.

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Well.........For the peeps in chat they will agree with me on this. In the last week I have tried about 4 different distros. Suse,Debian, Libranent (same thing just about),Fedora and now Mandrake. I have started with RH9 when I started with Linux in Jun or Aug, somewhere around there, and it worked, just worked.

 

Now with each distro I used in the past week, they ALL have their little quirks. I can only attest to two of them. Mandrake, I used 9.1 for a short period, and RH 9, but each of thier updates or next releases have some quirks. The others I use well I am not that of a linux guru, or have that much experience with them, so I will say that I think there are some things broke, and quirks in thoses too.

 

Point is, each distro is gonna have quirks, things you have to tweak, maybe fix. Its just a matter of how much you can live with, how much you want to do to get it to work the way you want to. I don't think any distro out there can be installed without ONE problem or another to be fixed.

 

Calling Mandrake a lemon is kind of harsh. Im not that big of a fan of it either, but gonna give it another shot here and see if I can live with it or not. If not I'll go back to Fedora. One thing I can say though, this board, and the #musb chat are the MOST helpful places I have been.

 

FX

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Yeah, all distro's have issues

I have my own recurrent issues...

Someone else mentioned supermount etc. (I won't bother repeating)

My opinion is some parts of Mandrake just don't work, never have and never get any better with a new release.

My big bugbear is the upgrade option....

Its not reliable, so it should be stuck on the F1 options, not made the default and carry the health warning.

 

Same with acpi etc. in the installer....

OK... it would be nice but why not just admit its not stable right now on all configs and just make noapic the default for the installer.

 

This is just honesty..Mandrkae must be aware that the UPGRADE messes up a lot and that a lot of people have issues with the acpi...

Its NOT the end of the world so it wouldn't hurt to make it something that advanced users can try (who can repair any mess)

 

Again and again on this board we see certain issues repeating (like supermount/acpi/upgrade) and the old timers know the score. Turn it off, linux noapic acpi=off, don't risk it) but countles others never find us becuase they just give up. Perhaps going to another distro or back to windows.

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True,

 

if something isn't 100% the case, they should not suggest it is. A '1% lie' just does not exist.

 

And this kind of behaviour can hurt one of the big strengths of Linux as well:

 

credibility.

 

 

Who is going to take it for serious any longer after they happened to experience such problems and received no warning - no, instead, comfort !?

 

It's like you buy a warm blanket and when you toss it over you, the thorns on the inside rip your skin...

Edited by Darkelve
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Mandrake 9.2 IS A LEMON!!!

 

But if you ask me, a really good one, juicy and tasty!

Exactly what I was looking for to go with the fish tonight!

 

 

Anyway, it seems that some are having problems.

 

Well, welcome to computerland.

 

Any system has problems. Heck I work on UNIX (work, don't do maintenance) and there are plenty of problems, even with software packages that are licensed at 100.000 USDollars PER YEAR.

 

Back to linux.

There is no such thing as the perfect distro. Since each distro or release ships with a different kernel and different patches have been applied, performance on hardware varies.

 

In most cases there are problems related to which version of what program is installed, something that also differs between distros and releases.

 

I once wrote an article on how to deal with problems: http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/learninglinux.html

 

I consider it a loss if a user switches distro's because something didn't work, without trying to make it work. (Whichever distro is being used.)

Once you've gone through the major distro's you're going to have trouble picking whichever of the minor ones, or you keep playing ping pong between a couple of major ones.

I don't know about you, but my guess is for most people a pc is there to do stuff with, not to.

 

Back to Mandrake.

So AussieJohn, Mdk9.2 doesn't perform for you? Too bad. I've seen some of your posts, and I know you really tried. And I realise you are among the people who use the pc as a tool, not a toy in itself. So after a certain amount of time, you have to call it quits.

 

But in many cases, it's very tiring to read all the bashing against Mandrake Linux; there I agree with bvc.

Not to say there is nothing wrong with Mandrake. But that's Mandrake the company, aka MandrakeSoft (MS :D ) -- so Gowator, I hear you. (Except that I disagree on supermount, this is an essential feature. And it worked for me on 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2 on all machines that I installed it on and of the colleagues and friends that I gave discs -- more than 10, no probs.)

 

Mandrake linux is not perfect, but it is very far from crappy.

To me it is great, the best Mandrake ever. Best linux I ever installed (am looking forward at holiday time -- got suse and fc1 scheduled for install) I had some colleagues install it, on old (P I class hardware) and new hardware (athlon xp), all are now enjoying nicely working machines, with no real problems (well, plenty of user errors for sure).

 

BTW contrary to bvc I agree with MandrakeSoft to release on a 6 month schedule. New hardware (chipsets! else no dma, without dma no fluent dvd playback -- been there done that) has to be supported or your distro just looks bad.

 

 

addition:

Forgot to mention, there is a way to check if the cd's from your pack are properly read by your cdrom drive (sometimes they are picky), you can do an md5sum on the whole disc, read more here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/coasterless.htm

But naturally you need to know the md5sums of the discs; I'm sure someone on this forum will have them and be able to do the same excercise to obtain md5sums.

Edited by aRTee
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I consider it a loss if a user switches distro's because something didn't work, without trying to make it work. (Whichever distro is being used.)

 

Yeah, I think thats what niggles me aRtee.

Theres nothing wrong with an experienced user who knows the consequences using upgrade BUT it shouldn't default to it because noobies will use the defaults thinking these are less likely to make a mess.

 

What I don't get is why they just don't take things out of the DEFAULT options with a reasonable probability of not working OR a possibility of trashing data.

 

Then if you have to go and find it yourself you are reasonably aware it might fail/trash stuff etc.

 

The main regret I have is that many users might just try linux once, have a bad experience and judge Linux and opensource on that.

 

Ive lost track of the number of people who say "oh I tried it once but...."

I understand why AussieJohn is dissapointed, he spent considerable effort spec'ing machines and checking compatibility with 9.1 not o mention a financial comitment to the hardware and then finds it incompatible with 9.2.

 

Ill probably try 9.2 but prepare myself for dissapointenet and make sure my working 9.1 is properly and fully backed up first.

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I will just add that i have installed 9.2 on several more machines all good (all AMD's though).

 

All in all i would say it is better for me than 9.1 (9.1 was harder to get running well initially) and i really liked 9.1 after i got it working. Supermount appears to work perfectly for once, but im sure it will break soon :P

 

Upgrading should not be an option imo (at least not default and with dire warnings ;) ), so much changes between releases it is just to much of a hassle.

 

I don't think Mandrake is perfect at all, but it is the most comfortable/productive/fun distro/os for ME so i use it.

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Can I just suggest that remarks like 'Deal with it' are no more helpful than calling 9.2 a lemon?

 

I'm finiding it a whole lot slower than 9.0, and when I'd completed the upgrade I was greeted with a KDE page that had the 9.0 icons AND the 9.2 icons on it. Further usage revealed that there were no terminal windows available, and KMail had disappeared. Fortunately a quick 'Help' post on here fixed the former, and once I had a usuable shell I soon located and loaded KMail, but since then I have found other problems. Audio doesn't work. The application comes up, then either 'plays' in silence, or gives me an error message. The dictionary has gone. RPMDrake won't recognize my source CDs. And it's now running painfully slow. I'm soldiering on in the hope that all things can be fixed given time, but I'm just starting to get that feeling that once again I'm going to have to go back to using 9.0. :juggle:

 

I'm sorry, but 'Deal with it' really doesn't cut it. :screwy:

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Guest kuchwas
Mandrake 9.2 IS A LEMON!!!

 

But if you ask me, a really good one, juicy and tasty!

Exactly what I was looking for to go with the fish tonight!

And some of us fools are already off and running on helping to develop the next crappy release in about 5 months! New kernels, new programs, new bugs, ummmmm yummie B)

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Sometimes, "deal with it" is the perfect answer for some of the whining people. Most people seems to think that linux in general and mandrake in particular is a magic box that will automatically fix every problem they experience. The truth is, nothing works like that. There will always be quirks, workarounds, gotchas, etc in everything we use, OS, computer, and other things. I've seen computers that hangs when I try to install windows 2000 and XP while working fine in 98 and ME. In the past month, we've tried many distros in one computer ranging from Debian, Slackware 9.0-9.1, RedHat 8.0-9.0, Fedora 1, Knoppix, JAMD, Mandrake 9.1 to 9.2, and some others. All of them have gotchas, quirks, workarounds, niggles, etc. The solution, we deal with it, do the workarounds, patches, etc. And we make it work for us. If we don't know the solution, we search for the answer, using google, message boards, usenet, and even emailing the people involved. In other word, we don't give up.

 

Anyway, I think Mandrake 9.2 as it was out the first time, is a bit of a lemon. I cannot make it work in my work laptop and I don't have the bandwidth or resources to replace my perfectly running 9.1 desktop with 9.2. However, as soon as the patches are out, I find it much better. If I can make 9.2 running nicely (not perfectly since some stuffs just cannot be done in this stupid laptop) on my toshiba non-legacy laptop, I believe that people can solve their own problems with mandrake 9.2. All they need is a bit of a drive and willingness to learn.

 

Anyway, that's my rant for the day.. phew.. I feel a bit better now :)

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