Mandrake 10 Escapades

I couldn't wait to get my hands on this release. The 2.6 kernel gives you at a minimum, a extra 10% performance boost. I got my hands on the Download Edition through alternative channels, USENET. Its much easier than searching for a fast FTP.

Feature Set

• Kernel 2.6.3

• XFree86 4.3

• Glibc 2.3.3 with Native POSIX Threads Library (NPTL) support

• GCC 3.3.2

• Apache 2.0.48, MySQL 4.0.18

• ProFTPD 1.2.9, Postfix 2.0.18, OpenSSH 3.6.1p2

• KDE 3.2.1, Koffice 1.3

• GNOME 2.4.2, Gnumeric 1.2.6, The GIMP 1.2.5

• OpenOffice.org 1.1

• Mozilla 1.6

• Samba 3.0.2, SMB4K

• Kdenlive Video Editing

• mplayer, XMMS 1.2.9

Nice feature set with the exception of The GIMP. The release is centered around KDE. Mandrake did not wait for Gnome 2.6.

Installation

The install was uneventful and very smooth. I did a clean install, no upgrades or dual boot installation. I never perform an upgrade anymore, even on Window's installations. There is always some remnant of a program or config file somewhere that comes back to haunt you when you need the OS at the most critical moment in time.

After the install I opened up Mandrake Software Updates to get the freshest RPM's and any last minute fixes. None of the USA mirrors actually worked, even though they are listed. In fact, I cannot remember the last time a USA mirror really worked. The France mirrors worked of course. Update churned briefly then presented a whopping 758 megabyte update! "Holy Download, Batman, to the batcave", I thought. Mandrake had pulled a "Shock and Awe" on me. My first thought was the USENET version was old or something. However, after some digging I found this faq:

"When previous versions of Mandrake were released, several bugs were usually found soon after release which caused a _lot_ (over 100MB) of updates to come out quicker than was liked. By releasing a formal snapshot of Cooker, hopefully all of these bugs can be fixed so that the 'Official' release doesn't have these problems. Also, people are more likely to install a 'Community' release because it doesn't say 'Cooker' anywhere (isn't marketing great?), so more feedback will go to the developers."

I was totally confused and dumbfounded (easily done you say, hehe). This was actually a release candidate, not the "Official", now I understood what was going on.

Problems

Soon as I was at the Konsole building my own custom kernel. This is a ritual for me. I totally customize the kernel to my hardware. After the "make install", I rebooted and my kernel was nowhere to be found in the boot menu (gasp). My /boot was now borked. The module_install was successful, but it overwrote the current modules instead of installing a fresh set. "Maybe that 758 megabyte update messed up my install", I pondered. I aborted Mandrake Community until I got "Official".

Mandrake Official looked no different than "Community", with the exception of less updates needed. I used Mandrake Official officially on my laptop as my everyday desktop for about two weeks. Notice the verb "used" in the last sentence. I'm back to Fedora Core. Using Test 3 to write this article in OpenOffice 1.1.1.

I was hesitant to build a custom kernel with Mandrake Official. It was during a weekday and I needed my laptop to work. So I just left everything at the Mandrake defaults. Below are the results of my everyday use:

• Scream segfaults when using the wizard to start a new project.

• gFTP would not transfer files with filenames greater, than say, twenty characters from a Windows FTP server. This wasted like an hour of my time tracking down what was going on.

• Konqueror would not allow "double clicks" on html files. I would get the following error message: "file.html is a file, but a folder is expected".

• The Galaxy theme seems to lack some font polishing.

• No default digital camera support unless Gnome is specified during install.

Trivial nuisances they are. The Mandrake desktop just seems not to be as sharp and polished as Fedora Core's. Fedora really has a very polished look, down to the font selection. Maybe the desktop looks better in French. Maybe I will try that someday just to compare. Other than the above little quirks, the desktop was very responsive and quick. You also have to be a paid up Mandrake Club member to download Official, its not free anymore.

Mandrake 10.1 or .2 should be a very impressive release. For an out-of-the-box distro, Mandrake 10 has all the features that a Desktop user needs.