DistributionWatch Review: Linux-Mandrake 8.0

By: Brian Proffitt
Thursday, May 10, 2001 08:58:54 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/3346/1/

The Exciting and the Disturbing

MandrakeSoft, bless their souls, just doesn't seem to be content unless they release a Linux distribution that rides right up to the bleeding edge.

If you will recall from last fall, there was a minor hubbub afoot regarding the release of KDE 2.0 in the L-M 7.2 distribution. The boxes said KDE 2.0 beta, if you paid attention, but many users thought MandrakeSoft had released this environment way too early. This was most likely an argument based on principle than anything else, because I noted at the time that MandrakeSoft had clearly put some effort into their version of KDE 2.0 and had made it very stable.

MandrakeSoft, an apparent stickler for tradition, has done it again by releasing some GNOME products before their official gold releases. I find this both an exciting and disturbing phenomenon, which I will address later in this review.

There are three editions of L-M 8.0 hitting the shelves later this month: the Standard, which MandrakeSoft markets as a desktop workstation or a basic server; the PowerPack, essentially the Standard Edition jammed to the rafters with all the software MandrakeSoft could stuff onto seven CDs; and the new ProSuite edition, which is targeted for enterprise use. It will be interesting to see which tools show up in that edition, but, sadly, that is not the one I was sent to review.

MandrakeSoft kindly sent me the Standard Edition of Linux-Mandrake 8.0, which they are targeting for the desktop user and low-end server (read: personal) market. Again, no documentation was sent along with the package, so if I point out something that will actually be handled in the documentation, then consider it bonus information.

I like to look at the documentation for one very simple reason: I want to see how these distributions are handling the job of explaining Linux to the uninitiated. I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable in the ways of Linux, but I know that there are a fair number of new users out there who are not. Linux-Mandrake's Standard Edition is aimed right square at that user base, too.

Knowing this and looking at DrakX, I see a potential problem, because DrakX glosses over some of the importance of the individual steps that are taken in the installation process. For instance, DrakX does a very good job of breaking package groups out into logical groups: games, documentation, servers, etc. The server group lists several popular features: Web, FTP, mail. If someone were not "in the know" they might mistake this as a group of client applications and install it.

Granted, this would be a beginner's mistake, but that's who MandrakeSoft hopes will be using this edition.

As a whole, the installation process went very well. I was pleased to see that whatever glitch existed in LM 7.2 that did not properly install the module for my network card was fixed. Everything was detected and installed perfectly, except for the generic PS/2 wheel mouse I use on the test machine. Neither DrakX or L-M's hardware manager HardDrake could get that properly configured.

DrakX also recognized my partitions and properly installed itself in my disk's free space, which was nice to see. X Configuration went smoothly too, but again, I hope there's something in the documentation that explains why this is important to newcomers.

Early Releases: Slicing Through Linux

Within LM 8.0 is GNOME 1.4, which was wonderful to see in action. I had not seen it yet, due to time constraints, so it was a real pleasure to poke around. I was also excited to get to see a working version of Nautilus and Evolution in action. I had not seen Eazel's Nautilus since the early conceptual versions I'd never actually tried Ximian's Evolution.

The version of Nautilus released with LM 8.0 is 1.0.1.1, so clearly it is early in its lifecycle. You could not tell this by me. I found a robust and very cool file manager in Nautilus, much snazzier than KDE's Konqueror and certainly a more unique interface. But while it can load up Web pages like Konqueror, it sure could not render them as well, so these two file managers are in a dead heat in my opinion. (One pleasant surprise was the inclusion of the Mozilla-based Galeon browser that acts as backup for displaying Web pages with Nautilus, though.)

What really interested me was the prerelease of Evolution that was included in the LM 8.0 shipment. In terms of interface (though not security), I have long regarded Microsoft's Outlook as one of the best personal information management (PIM) applications around. For those few of you who have not heard of Evolution, it can be described as the GNOME version of Outlook, without all the annoying overhead and security holes.

Speaking for the geek in me, I loved it. I have been waiting for something like this for a long time, and Ximian clearly will be delivering a powerful PIM for the Linux desktop. I used future tense there because "will be delivering" is the right thing to say. The version of Evolution here is 0.9. Almost gold but not quite. Speaking for the consumer critic in me, I am wondering why this is a good idea.

This is a common occurrence in releasing Linux distributions, and it follows the open-source creed "release early, release often." The theory holds that by releasing early, you let the users find glitches and errors to report back to the development team or fix themselves, if they know how. But I question this kind of thing for boxed distributions being sold to consumers who may not find using a prerelease version of anything all that fun.

If you are a beginning Linux user and have just shelled out money for Linux-Mandrake 8.0, how happy are you going to be when you discover that this Evolution that MandrakeSoft is touting (in the press releases, in the installation splash screen and, I'm betting, on the LM boxes) is actually a beta that you are warned to use at your own risk?

You can't have it both ways--either the distribution is aimed at beginners or it isn't. Linux-Mandrake tires to straddle the line and for the most part it succeeds and delivers an good, solid product. But this continuing notion of releasing bleeding-edge technology may need to be reevaluated in future releases.