DistributionWatch Review: Linux-Mandrake 7.2

By: Brian Proffitt
Wednesday, November 1, 2000 08:39:27 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/2567/1/

Discrepencies between boxed and ISO versions

There was a time in the not too distant past when I was searching for a Linux distribution to call my very own. I had just written several books about Red Hat, one about Corel Linux, and even contributed to a Slackware book. None of these really struck my fancy, because there always seemed to be something missing for me. As good as these distros were, there was always a rough feeling to them, as if all of the components were sort of jammed together to make a pretty package, but inside the package I could still hear gears that were not quite aligned grinding together.

When I got SuSE 7.0 on my doorstop, I found out that Linux distros could be chock-full of apps and utilities and still be hugely user-friendly. This week, I discovered that Linux-Mandrake 7.2 can just about join this elite category--provided you install it correctly.

But other problems may plague this boxed set release of Linux-Mandrake 7.2, because while owners of the download version are getting the latest version of software for free, retail purchasers will have to pay to get a version of Linux-Mandrake that is already slightly obsolete.

Too Smart For my Own Good: Installation

The download version of Linux-Mandrake 7.2 became available to the general public on October 28, and immediately the FTP mirror sites got deluged with file requests. Getting in that first day was a bit of a challenge. I already had the CDs that will go out in the boxed set in mid-November, so I installed those instead. This decision would later prove to be enlightening.

The version I tested was 7.2's PowerPack Deluxe, a seven-CD set that will retail for $69.95. On first look, this is a pretty good deal, considering that there are, all told, over 2300 apps ready to download on these discs alone. (Besides the ubiquitous StarOffice 5.2, Linux-Mandrake even tosses in IBM's ViaVoice voice recognition application.) The other retail version is the Complete version, with fewer commercial applications but retaining the same base functionality. This version retails at $29.95.

What MandrakeSoft failed to send me was the actual box, with the corresponding documentation. Attempts to get a handle on the included documentation were unsuccessful by the time this review was posted.

Installation of this distribution was done on a 5 Gb open partition of a 12 Gb drive. The machine has an AMD K6 processor and 96 Mb of RAM, well within the minimum requirements of this release.

According to the stats from MandrakeSoft, Linux-Mandrake needs at least a Pentium level processor, 32 Mb of RAM (64 for running X), and a minimum of 1.5 Gb hard drive to install--big for a minimum installation.

There are three installation paths you can choose in Linux-Mandrake installation program, DrakX: Recommended, Customized, and Expert. The Expert path, should you choose to take it, does warn you about the complexity of the installation using shadow passwords as an example of the technical level of this path. If you know about shadow passwords, the implication was, then you should be fine. I soon found out that this was not necessarily the case.

Users who are new to Linux-Mandrake, no matter how familiar with Linux in general, should think about taking the Recommended path. This is because there are a lot of proprietary features for Linux-Mandrake that are not turned on by default in the Expert path package selector. A big missing app was DrakConf, Mandrake's uberconfiguration tool. It, along with many of its component configuration utilities, was not installed by default during the Expert path; since I was new to Linux-Mandrake, I did not know I needed to select it.

Veteran Linux-Mandrake users should not have a problem with this because they are aware of the proprietary tools previous versions of Linux-Mandrake have used. But to take advantage of these tools you should either have a list of them handy and go hunting for them in the package list, or just install via the Recommended path and ratchet up your box later.

There is a drawback to this latter approach, too. Many of the configurations you can do manually during the Expert path are handled automatically during the Recommended paths. My network interface, an AMD PCI card, was recognized by the auto installation, but a glitch in the program made it refuse to load the module. I tried to back up and do it manually, as I'd done in the Expert path, to little avail. Fortunately, upon reboot, Kudzu kicked in and saw my network card and loaded the right module, as well as my sound card, which made me feel better. This was not the end of the hassles with the network card, but it helped.

The Recommended path also completely skipped the LILO configuration, which meant doing it later in the Mandrake boot configuration utility.

These were minor hiccups in the overall scheme of things, and I was pretty pleased with the Recommended and Customized paths' selection of packages, because it filled in some serious gaps I'd missed after the Expert path was completed.

Configuration Madness!

The area of hardware configuration was where Linux-Mandrake really shone. The Xfree86 4.01 configuration picked up my exact monitor, Kudzu nailed the sound card, and the new CUPS server not only had the right driver for my OfficeJet 600, it installed the Samba client for me so it was completely ready when I sent a test page to the printer, currently sitting on the lone Windows machine in my network.

I found CUPS to be a pretty good printer manager both for local machines and remotes. It was quite intuitive to use, which is what a new user would need.

Hardware is mostly managed with HardDrake, which is essentially Linux-Mandrake's big ol' Device Manager. HardDrake did an excellent job in letting me tweak my current software, and found every piece of hardware on my PC except the internal modem. Winmodems, it seems, still can trip it up.

HardDrake is accessed through the DrakConf configuration tool, which also contains several other configuration tools, all spelled out in plain English. X configuration becomes "Change screen resolution," and so on. There are lots of good tools in DrakConf, including old standbys like Linuxconf.

Of these tools my favorites were MenuDrake, which lets you configure the application menus in any of the desktop environments; CUPS, mentioned before; and RpmDrake, Linux-Mandrake's package manager. I liked RpmDrake because it isn't as slow as GnoRPM and is certainly more intuitive than Kpackage. This is a straightforward package manager that made locating new stuff pretty simple.

Related to RpmDrake, in that it has a similar interface and functionality, is Mandrake Update, which goes out to FTP sites around the world, based on a list downloaded from the Linux-Mandrake FTP site, and pulls down a list of updates for any outdated packages for your current version.

The only problem was, while this looked good on paper, I could not test it. The popularity of the Linux-Mandrake download version has drastically slowed down the mirror sites' synchronizations, sources at MandrakeSoft told me. This is actually a bigger problem than you might think for a brand-new out of the box software release, because Mandrake Update will be a very necessary tool for devout KDE users. Because, depending on where you buy Linux-Mandrake, you will need an update pretty quickly.

KDE What? Where?

In English, the About KDE menu command in the Control Panel said that this was KDE2, Release Candidate 1. What I had in my hands were disks that were supposed to be released in a couple of weeks, with marketing material that indicated KDE 2.0, but actually contained KDE 1.99. (Remember, I had no box.)

Then a new message thread popped up on the Cooker (the perpetual name of Mandrake's development version) mailing list, complaining mightily about the fact that boxed sets of the Complete version of Linux-Mandrake 7.2 are already in U.S. stores with this non-final release of KDE inside.

Faced with this new and conflicting information, I spoke with Daniel Morales, Vice President of U.S. Operations at MandrakeSoft, who confirmed that several thousand sets of Linux-Mandrake Complete 7.2 are indeed already in some retail channels in the United States. This channel primarily consists of Wal-Mart stores through the U.S.

Morales explained that the decision to put Linux-Mandrake 7.2 boxes on the shelves before KDE 2 was fully ready to go was a very hard one to make, but essential if Linux-Mandrake was to get on the shelves of one of the country's largest retail outlets for the holidays.

Wal-Mart communicated to MandrakeSoft and its primary distributor, Macmillan Software, that if Linux-Mandrake was not delivered to Wal-Mart for distribution before October 31, then the product would not be stocked at the retail chain's shelves until January 15. This practice is used by Wal-Mart to manage the massive influx of products that appear in its stores during the holiday season, but non-compliance means that some products are left out in the cold during the largest consumer spending season of the year.

Faced with this obstacle, the developers and executives at MandrakeSoft decided to print a limited batch of CDs--just enough to fill the units being delivered to the Wal-Mart retail channel. According to Morales, the RC1 edition was tightened up by MandrakeSoft's own development team, eliminating many of the bugs that plagued the desktop environment at that stage of its development.

"It was a very difficult decision," Morales said, "balancing between the market and the needs of the community."

Morales said that the material with the 20,000 released boxed sets indicate that the version of KDE shipped inside is a beta version. (My local Wal-Mart had apparently not stocked the software as yet, so I was unable to confirm this.) Bill Gardner of Macmillan Software provided the number for the first print run of Linux-Mandrake 7.2 as being 20,000.

Gardner reiterated that both MandrakeSoft and Macmillan feel that this is "the highest quality release of Linux-Mandrake ever." The pre-release of KDE 2.0 does not effect the overall quality of the product, in his opinion.

Gardner also stated that there are other channels this first print run will be introduced to besides Wal-Mart, though he did not reveal which other stores would see this version of the 7.2 release. The reasons for this, he explained, were similar to the Wal-Mart holiday mandate, though Wal-Mart's requirements were certainly the most stringent. He added that beginning Nov. 1, a second print run of the CDs was getting started, and that this second run did contain the final version of KDE 2.0.

MandrakeSoft has officially announced the release of 7.2,and a line at the bottom of their press release does inform the reader that "If not included in your product, the final version of KDE 2.0 is available through Mandrake Update." This advice was echoed by Morales, who feels that the users are not going to notice much of a loss in the functionality between the version shipped with the boxes and the download version.

Morales said that for now, upgrading through Mandrake Update is the best recourse for users to get KDE 2.0 on their systems. Morales added that if enough people request it, MandrakeSoft will send out CDs with the KDE 2.0 binaries.

As for the near future, Morales said that a new run of CDs is being created right now for inclusion in later boxed set releases. "Expect them to have the full version [of KDE 2.0]," he emphasized. Morales could not confirm the dates that the new boxes would hit the U.S retail shelves, saying that it depended on when deliveries to the various retail channels would be made.

Wrapping The Box Up

All of this fuss about KDE 2.0 is important to many long-time users of this product but, ultimately, this is just one environment among many included with Linux-Mandrake.

Taken as a whole, Linux-Mandrake certainly lives up to its claim as being a good entry platform for the new Linux user.

Beyond the standard workstation set of tools, Linux-Mandrake offers a decent set of server tools that allow it to perform as one of many different server types. There's not a lot of new stuff here, just an up-to-date server set that you'd find in most other large Linux distros.

If you want a server distribution, you would almost be better off trying out Red Hat. A lot of the same tools are there, with more configuration utilities.

For the workstation platform, Linux-Mandrake is a pretty good offering. If it can surmount the timing hurdles of the software market, it stands an excellent chance of becoming one of the premier Linux releases.