[TriLUG] TONY's third and last installment on installing Mandrake 8.1 from PenguinShell newsletter.

[al johson]

This is part 3 of Tony's description of HIS (not mine!) experiences with
loading Mandrake 8.1. And this is the last one for Mandrake. He tackles
Debian next!! Because of the confusion, and the fact that I'm no where near
tackling Debian myself, I'm not going to bother the group with his Debian
experiences. Debian fans can get it by visiting www.lockergnome.com
and signing up to receive their Linux newsletter, Penguin Shell. It's free!!
There is also a lot more than Tony's distribution experiences in it. For
example there's an article on VI in this same edition. ---AL (not to be
confused with Tony!!)
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Tony writes:
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I'll go a bit easier on you today. The report and tweak were both very long
yesterday and I'd hate to burn you out too quickly! I do want to give you
the view from 10,000 feet on the application installs for Mandrake 8.1, as
well as update you on a few outstanding items.

First, several readers sent me the fix for the the USB shutdown problem. It
was actually on the Mandrake site and I'd just missed it. I also received a
very nice email from a public relations representative from MandrakeSoft.
She's either a Penguin Shell reader or has a heck of a web crawler focused
sharply on Mandrake stories. She inquired as to whether the USB problem had
been resolved and offered tech support if it had not. A nice touch, I
thought, and certainly a gracious note. It was also the first lesson in the
power of the bully pulpit.

On to the task at hand. As I said yesterday, there are more than 2200
available packages in the Mandrake install, depending on which version of
the distribution you choose. Ladislav over at distrowatch.com lists the
major packages nicely, with links to the individual homepages.

Mandrake offers several packages of tools, ranging in price from $129 for
the ProSuite to a free 3-CD download version. This free set includes more
than 1000 applications on 2 regular CDs and an Open Source Supplemental CD.

To access the Internet, the download version includes Mozilla, Galeon,
Konqueror and Evolution. Desktop environments include Gnome 1.4.1 and KDE
2.2.1. A slick firewall program and Everybuddy, the multi-client chat
program, round out the Internet applications.

Office applications include StarOffice 5.2, GnuCash (a Quicken-compatible
personal finance program). You can sync your Palm-based PDA with GnomePilot
or KPilot.

There are also games in Mandrake's download edition, including the very
entertaining and very popular TuxRacer. Other open-source games include
Pingus, ArmageTron, FreeCiv, and Chromium.

The multimedia package is a bit thin, but does include XMMS, and Grip, both
excellent multimedia players. The Gimp and gPhoto round out the image
manipulation programs. The Gimp is incredibly powerful, and is quickly
becoming one of my favorites. And finally, you can use a GUI to burn those
hot CDs with Gnome-Toaster or eRoaster.

Overall, I've been very impressed with Mandrake. The USB shutdown problem
bothers me, as it should have been shaken out in beta testing. But the fix
is posted and, more important, quite easy. The sound problems I experienced
could only have been my error - they've mysteriously gone away, hopefully
never to return. The standard download package offers everything the average
user needs to surf, play and be productive. And the install, as I've already
noted, was simply amazing. After this short 3-day test drive, I'm impressed
enough to consider coming back to it after the Great Distro Review. I'd
easily recommend it for a new Linux user.

Next week? It's onto a real GNU distro - Debian. This could be interesting.

Tony Steidler-Dennison