A Galaxy of Possibility: Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite

uninet writes "Our last consideration of Mandrake Linux was early this year when my colleague Eduardo Sanchez thoroughly reviewed Mandrake 9.0. In that review, Sanchez noted the numerous advances made in 9.0, but also reported some serious flaws that somewhat limited his enthusiasm. With that considered, we were anxious to find out if 9.1 could again return Mandrake to the amazing quality achieved in release 8.2. See what we found (including a look at features exclusive to the ProSuite edition)."

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[Dancin_Santa]

Also, it is reviewing the Pro version, so the average user buying or downloading the non-Pro version really doesn't have much idea what to expect as far as app support goes.

A little late?

[OctaneZ]

Well seeing as Mandrake is in freeze for 9.2 gold (rc1 is out) [mandrakelinux.com], isn't this a bit late?

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[homer_ca]

Although he only hints at it in the first paragraph, IMHO the #1 improvement over Mandrake 9.0 is the bugfixes. 9.0 looked great but it had all kinds of wierd freezes, CDROM supermount bugginess and devices not being detected. I installed 9.1 and everything just works.

Re:eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

No mention of the price though

Oops, says it's not even out yet. Anyhow, it's $345 for:


By entering the ProSuite Subscription Program today, you will get your 9.1 version box and receive the complete set of CDs for the two next versions when they become available.

This is an excellent opportunity to stay in touch with the latest versions of the Mandrake Linux ProSuite Edition !

Support:
Support included with 9.1 version only:
Support coverage, please see the 9.1 Mandrake Linux Prosuite description

Offer details:
One 9.1 ProSuite Edition boxed product including:
- 8 CDs
- 1 DVD (Workstation DVD)
- 1 Quick Installation Guide
- 1 User Manual
PLUS:
- one complete set of ProSuite CDs of the next two versions as soon as they are released.

(found at http://www.mandrakestore.com)

Linux Mandrake 9.1 Guide

[mandrakewilson]

http://mandrakeuser.cjb.net [cjb.net]

New web site up on how to set up mandrake 9.1 to ease the configuration pains of the new linux user. Written and catered for the moderate computer user. It covers how to get and install mandrake and add in most of the needed applications. Covers most of the major software included in the distribution, other freely available applications, newbie command line tutorial, how to handle some common and annoying bugs peculiar to each application.
This HOWTO [cjb.net] is my first contribution community, and since I found newbie documentation wanting, I wrote one myself. It is for the impatient user who wants to reduce their startup time, and would apply to other distributions and mandrake versions [mandrakelinux.com] as well.

Written from a user's point of view [cjb.net], it covers how to get [cjb.net] and install Mandrake [linuxmandrake.com], add in most of the needed applications [cjb.net], a newbie command line tutorial [cjb.net], and how to handle some peculiar bugs [cjb.net] to each application. This guide might spare you a lot of googling [google.com] for answers as it's all placed on one convenient website.
PART I [cjb.net]
1. Introduction
2. Indispensable Tools for the Linux User
3. Useful links

PART II - Mandrake Installation [cjb.net]
1. Getting Mandrake 9.1
2. Installing Mandrake 9.1
3. Going through the install sequence
4. Using Mandrake
5. Nice things to add easily
6. Configuration with Mandrake Control Center
7. Configuration with Gnome Control Center
8. Important Configuration of Menus and MIME Types
9. More Advanced Configuration

PART III - Linux Shell and Apps [cjb.net]
1. Navigating around terminal
2. Shells -- bash, csh, rsh, sh
3. Environments and Paths
4. File Permissions
5. Editing files
6. Linking
7. Finding Files
8. Using grep
9. Basic bash scripts knowledge
10. Running Remote X applications
11. Mounting Remote File Systems
12. Language setup for man pages
13. Handling Print Jobs

PART IV - Software Packages [cjb.net]
1. What are packages?
2. Specifying Sources For Online Downloading - Mandrake Mirrors, Texstar, PLF
3. Packages to be installed from Mandrake CDs - Mesa, mplayer, Timidity, pan, gaim, mozplugger
4. Packages to install from Texstar - Macromedia Flash, nano, Real Player
5. Mplayer and Codecs
6. Other essential packages- Open Office, Sun Java, Adobe Acrobat 5, BitTorrent
7. Setting up SMB share for Windows
8. Using vncserver for remote desktop applications
9. File Sharing - p2p networks - Limewire, edonkey, lmule
10. Running M$ Office under Linux.
11. Games - SNES, MAME, WineX

PART V - Advanced FAQ [cjb.net]
1. How do I get DRI 3D acceleration to work?
2. Mandrake Fonts Deuglification and Anti-aliasing
3. Email Clients and Web Browsers (Handling mailto: and http:)
4. Full Mozilla Plugins Configuration (Quicktime, Java, Flash, Mplayer)
5. Konquerer Plugins Configuration
6. X Windows xmatrix screensaver
7. How to adjust the sound volume permanently

Re:eeek

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

All the new IBM stuff we are using at my company is coming with DVD-Roms.

In any case, check my other post above - it comes with cds and dvd, so we're both happy :)

Re:Article Text

[VisorGuy]

Why all the raving about DVD based installation? Sure, you don't need to swap 3 CD's

Actually, it's 1 DVD instead of 8 CDs.

Re:A serious review?

[uninet]

That is not stated in the text of my review. Someone has changed the text of my quote, quite offensively I might add.

Re:Article Text

[uninet]

Despite the fact that this article appears to copy the text of my article, it has been modified to include one or more offensive remarks. Please read the original instead.

Mandrake ProSuite 9.1 also awarded by InfoWorld!

[joestar]

InfoWorld recently compared Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, and Turbolinux for a use inside a corporate environment. The result was that the 4 all products were excellent, but the Mandrake Prosuite 9.1 ranked first with the best overall note. Additionnally the ProSuite is by far the less expensive product (around $200). You'll find this 3-page article at InfoWorld [infoworld.com]. And the Mandrake 9.1 ProSuite is available for purchase directly from MandrakeSoft at MandrakeStore [mandrakestore.com] (Mandrake Club [mandrakeclub.com] Members usually get rebates on most Mandrake products).

#1: Mandrake consistently number 1 in userland

[sniggly]

According to most polls including the one on open for business mandrake is the most widely used distribution. Throughout the years Mandrake has gained the reputation of being a consumer oriented, fun & easy Linux. Even where RedHat, SuSe and other distro's have caught up with mandrake in user friendliness the perception persists.

I run mandrake on a ti powerbook g4 (apple) and the support from the mandrake ppc community is excellent. (Stew Benedict deserves mentioning). Mandrake PPC is on a slower (annual) release cycle.

I hope mandrake can stay the most popular linux distribution, it earned it through dedication to user friendliness and keeping to the spirit of open source arguably better than RedHat and SuSe.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[molarmass192]

Well, the big 3 RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake are all standardized on RPM. It's the non-commercial niche distros like Debian and Gentoo that choose not to use vanilla RPM. Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that, it's how innovation happens, but it really negates the "everybody does it different" argument. RPM is "good enough" and it does the job 95% of the time. A far more important goal I think is the LSB which could eventually lead to a single common x86 Linux RPM for all distros, now that would be an accomplishment. The problem there is that the further you stray from kernel land, the greater the disagreements on how things "should be".

Easy to use

[ShieldW0lf]

I've tried so many linux distros over the past couple of years, trying to get a good workstation and a good server set up here. And after dealing with so many badly-implemented wizards and guis, the easiest one (hell, the only one) to get working and keep working was Debian.

Those guis and wizards need to be FLAWLESS. If the are not, you'll need to go to the command line and config files anyways, and those GUIs will just obfuscate you from what you need to do.

Mandrake, which is supposed to be among the easiest, was a nightmare to configure properly by comparison, because when the wizard fucks up (which it did numerous times), you don't have a clue what to do with the damned thing.

Now if only I could get eRServer in the stable tree, I'd be set...

Re:Is It Worth Jumping To? Yes!

[joestar]

Besides its installer, there are two things that, in my opinion, make Mandrake a great distro compared to Red Hat:

1) its calpability to install/uninstall software easily with the urpmi tools, from multiple sources - for instance, just type (or use the rpmdrake app): urpmi the_app_I_need and urpmi will automatically search for the other packages needed for this app (dependencies) and install them if you accept. The power of this tool is that if you added a FTP source (or multiple FTP sources) in addition to your DVD source for insta,ce, it will look for the missing libs/missing apps in all these sources. This is very convenient.

2) the Mandrake Club applications sources (60,000 packages!) which can be added to the URPMI sources. It provides many many many apps, including most common commercial software (FlashPlayer...). Just select an app in the list (or use the search utility), click on install and it downloads and installs the app. This is powerful actually.

Additionnally, using the "PLF" (plf.zarb.org) source of apps (unofficial) just provides direct download and install access to all codecs needed to play all videos formats (AVI, MOV...) under Xine and other video-players for instance... Maybe not very legal, but convenient for the least.

Re:Mandrake 9.1

[Anonymous Coward]

urpmi handles all of this in mandrake.

just type 'urpmi $packagename' and it figures out the dependencies, downloads them from the proper source, and installs them in the right order.

It really could not be any easier.

Re:I like Mandrake.... but....

[Graabein]

Sounds like what you really want is FreeBSD. Seriously, give it a try, you'll love the ports collection and the easily available documentation.

As for your gripe about the security setting: If in doubt, just select "standard", the default setting. After you have finished installing the system, log on and fire up Mandrake Control Center. You can change the security level there and also exercise fine grained control over each level. The install program really should tell you this though, so you don't sweat over it.

Re:I won't use Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been done [distrowatch.com].

Though its not called Womandrake, it does come with porn-get instead of RPM.

Re:Pretty content-free article, IMHO

[jallen02]

From the article:
Not surprisingly, specification wise Mandrake Linux 9.1 is pretty much on par with the rest of the industry. For those of you wanting a few details, the following are included: Linux version 2.4.21, glibc 2.3.1, XFree86 4.3, KDE 3.1.0, and Gnome 2.2.0. In other words, pretty much everything is similar to the other distributions that came out this spring.
Jeremy