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Journal AKAImBatman's Journal: The Mandrake 10.0 Experience (TM) 21

Journal by AKAImBatman

Perhaps I was simply expecting too much out of a RedHat derivative, but my review of Mandrake did not go well at all. I've long heard how easy to use Mandrake is, and how easy it is to set up. Supposedly, you install it and boot. It's that easy. I just wish it were that easy for me.

I downloaded all three ISO images and burned them to CDRW. (I'm just glad I didn't waste CDRs on this.) I then rebooted and began the installation. A very nice looking GUI installer came up and I began to follow the steps. Unfortunately, the installer locked up on the first button I clicked. I had to reboot a few times and keep trying before I finally figured out that this is the same mouse bug as in RedHat and Fedora. I was then able to get through the installer by careful use of the keyboard and mouse. (Hint: Click the button and let go of the mouse until the operation is completed. If you move the mouse, you're dead.)

The upside of the install was that it was very easy to choose the packages I wanted, and the new 2.6 kernel was installed without fuss. The installer even warned me that it would have to downgrade to 2.4 if I wanted to install the Linux Standards Base (LSB) software. This was definitely a nice touch, as I wanted to use the system as Mandrake had intended. (I was also hoping the 2.6 kernel would get rid of that $%Q# mouse problem.) I was also able to easily select ReiserFS as my default filesystem.

The downsides to the install was that there was no small boot CD to install over the internet (all 3 CDs were required), it wrote the Linux partition as a non-bootable extended partition (which the Mandrake version of the bootloader somehow got around), and the sound card couldn't be configured (it told me to run 'sndconfig' after the first boot). Considering that sound was exactly the reason I was performing this experiment, this did not make me happy.

After install, the machine booted up to KDE 4.2. I'd love to give you a guided tour of all the great new features, but to be perfectly honest I never got to find out what they are. The same mouse locking problem that was present in Fedora was also present here. That was annoying in of itself. Then I spent time trying to find this 'sndconfig' utility that I was supposed to run.

I eventually found it under '/usr/sbin' and ran it. It was unable to detect my PnP sound card, and asked me to manually enter the values. I did so, and the sound card tested fine. Upon exit, the utility froze up and I was forced to hit CTRL+C. The '/etc/modules.conf' file appeared to have been properly modified, so I attempted playing a sound. Nothing but an error about sound not being configured. So I restarted the system. When it came back up, I still didn't have sound. I reran the 'sndconfig' utility with the exact same results. I then checked and verified that the audio streams existed under the '/dev' directory. There were there. I then played with the KDE sound config to get it to recognize the sound device. Even manually setting the path to the device didn't work. So, I restarted the system again, hoping this time it would work.

I then made a startling discovery. After I reboot the machine, the sound devices disappear from the '/dev' directory! They only come back after I rerun the 'sndconfig' utility. I then figured that I had better check Mandrake's website to see if they had any help on the problem. Unfortunately, I found I was unable to reach their website. In fact, I then realized that I couldn't reach any website. It seems that after one of the reboots, the network card somehow disabled itself. That's about where I gave up.

Final verdict: I don't have time for this.

I sincerely hope that the rest of you have a much better experience with Mandrake 10.0 than I did. I really wanted Mandrake to work, but it simply ended up being too painful to continue.

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The Mandrake 10.0 Experience (TM) More

The Mandrake 10.0 Experience (TM)

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  • tcejbus (Score:2, Informative)

    by name773 ( 696972 )
    mandrake... i used to use mandrake, but it was too bloated and i switched to slackware. two disks for the newest version, and the second disk is optional (kde & gnome).

    regarding your sound issues, the alsa site [alsa-project.org] has a lot of documentation.
    as for the mouse: mine would quit too; then i switched to a different (more generic) mouse and it works fine. if you use slackware, scrolling isn't available by default so beware. but the software is available at http://jcatki.no-ip.org/imwheel/ .

    have you submitted

    • as for the mouse: mine would quit too; then i switched to a different (more generic) mouse and it works fine.

      *sigh* How can Linux not correctly support one of the most popular mice on the market? Microsoft Optical Mice are everywhere. Methinks Linux is in big trouble if this problem persists across all distros.

      have you submitted any bug reports yet?

      Last time I used RedHat 8, this was a known problem. In an old usenet post, one RedHat engineer even gave a solution that involved dumping reset commands
    • If I remember correctly, the mouse wheel is activated in X using the ZAxisMapping option in the config to enable receiving scroll events. Most apps understand those correctly and scroll.

      Anyway, if it's any help, here's a sample wheelmouse setting in X that works on mdk10 (w/ kernel 2.6.3):

      Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier "Mouse1"
      Driver "mouse"
      Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
      Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
      Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
      EndSection
  • Judging your past few posts in your journal, it looks like perhaps your sound card has problems. 1)Windows screwed up with it 2)Mandrake screwed up with it. The only time I've seen that is on my dad's old Asus athlon board. It's a weird thing and it may be an isolated problem. I'd recommend trying a new soundcard to see if that messes up 2k or any other linux distribution you may try. I've been using Mandrake since 7.2 and I've yet to have issues with soundcards. Best of luck!
    • Perhaps. However, the sound card was working fine on Windows until I started messing with the drivers, it seemed to work fine on Fedora, and it worked fine on my former (*sniff*, *sniff*) FreeBSD installation.

      The real problem with the sound card is that it's ISA. ISA sound card support is a known problem with Mandrake. Supposedly most people have no trouble with the 'sndconfig' utility. Perhaps I just set one of the settings wrong. The sudden disappearance of my network card cut my attempts short and force
  • It sounds like you're pretty comfortable with the command line anyway, you just don't want to have to compile anything. Debian has a network install option. It takes a little more work, but for those people who have even a small amount of knowledge of their computer will be able to breeze through their install. Apt-get and its newer cousin, aptitude, are incredibly easy to learn. Basically, Debian requires more knowledge about your computer than the other distributions, but it's the same amount of work.
    • If you haven't yet, go read my first journal entry. I am quite comfortable with all variants of Unix (including Linux). Unfortunately, Debian is not a good option for this experiment because it requires too much work to setup. I want a Unix system that is setup quickly, easily, and painlessly. Obviously I could get all of the above by just going with an OEM system, but very few companies sell those for more than RedHat. Besides, that would be a lot of money. I just want to evaluate the current offerings, an
      • Ahh, in that case...

        Lately I've been advocating Knoppix a lot. After you've played around with it on the CD, there is a way to install it on to the hard drive. It's been a while since I've used it so I don't remember the process off the top of my head, but it's not difficult, IIRC. Let me know how that works for you.
        • I actually have a Knoppix CD sitting right next to me. As far as I understand, you aren't able to install it per say, rather you can save your settings and documents to the hard drive. This prevents you from losing your work and desktop settings after every reboot.

          This same concept is adopted by Mandrake's "Mandrake Move" product. Basically, they give you a Knoppix-like CD, and a USB thumb drive in the package. You put the CD and thumb drive in whatever computer you're currently in front of, and *bam* inst
          • Nope, you can install Knoppix on your hard-disk, like any other distro. The command-line tool to do this is called hdx-install. You simply get the whole CD tree dropped onto your hard-disk, giving you an instant Debian unstable distro, with all the Knoppix goodies.

            I've never tried it, but I've heard nice things about it. Might want to check it out. Many people use it as an alternative Debian installer. You just need to update your apt mirrors and you're set.
          • I found you a link [freenet.org.nz]. There's more links on Google [google.com]

  • I tell ya, chasing that Linux distro rabbit really got old for me some time ago. Not to mention I get literally insulted at the way current distros spew config files all over the directory tree. What is up with the /etc/sysconfig directory? It looks like a dog's breakfast.

    For servers, I use nothing but FreeBSD. I'll occasionally use OpenBSD. For Unix workstations, I use... FreeBSD. If you're planning on wiping your machine clean and starting anew, FBSD is a good choice. There will be problems if you have

    • You're preaching to the choir. I actually deleted a FreeBSD 5.1 installation (that I had working correctly *grrrrr*) in order to attempt this experiment. I probably would have stayed with BSD, but my attempts to CVSUP/buildworld to 5.2 didn't go so well. (Something with initializing the filesystem. It's a known problem.) Instead of reinstalling FreeBSD, I decided to give these various distros a go. I'm actually not new to any of them (save for Mandrake), as I've been supporting software on them for quite a

      • Man, why are you doing this to yourself? It must be for the Zen enlightenment of it, because to move from FBSD to Linux (to me) is like... well, passing on steak for shit.

        Remember way back, when Linux was good for revitalizing an old machine? I used to do stuff like turn old [34]86s into nifty terminals and suchlike way back when kernel 1.2.8 was hot stuff. Now, if I want to resuscitate an old box, I put FBSD or OBSD on it. My latest passion is turning old P90s into Firewall/VPN routers with m0n0wall (don

        • Man, why are you doing this to yourself? It must be for the Zen enlightenment of it, because to move from FBSD to Linux (to me) is like... well, passing on steak for shit.

          It's just an experiment. I like to pop in every once in awhile and see how close Linux is getting to being as good as FreeBSD was four years ago.

          Seriously though, FreeBSD is a server and workstation operating system. You have to go through a lot of legwork to get all the software you want. Everything works fine, and the installs are pai

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