Mandrake Is On The Move

By: Kurt Wall
Monday, March 29, 2004 09:07:52 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5314/1/

What's New

So far, it's been a banner year for MandrakeSoft, makers of Mandrakelinux. In January, they announced a return to profitability, followed by a return to the stock market in mid-March. Sandwiched between these two significant business events, MandrakeSoft released Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community, an early-adopter's release of Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official, due out in May. Even though it's only a public beta, the newest Mandrakelinux is definitely worth the download, some rough edges notwithstanding. Here's why I think so.

In a phrase, Mandrakelinux 10.0 is chock-full-o-Linux goodness. The default kernel is 2.6, which gives you a responsive desktop thanks to kernel preemption. Mandrakelinux also includes the latest releases of KDE (3.2) and GNOME (2.4); a very attractive default theme, Mandrakegalaxy 2; a reorganized menu structure; and a new control center, Mandrakelinux Control Center. Another handy improvement is Magicdev, which provides auto-play functionality: insert a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and Magicdev launches the appropriate application.

If you need a server-class installation, Mandrake boasts numerous server-friendly features:

  • MySQL 4.0.18
  • PostgreSQL 7.41
  • Apache 2
  • Samba 3.0
  • Support for Windows' Logical Disk Manager
  • Read/write support for the NTFS file system
A comprehensive list of Mandrakelinux 10.0's features is available online.

NOTE: As this article went to press, MandrakeSoft released Mandrakelinux 10.0 Beta1 for AMD64 (Opteron) platforms. More details are available at the Mandrakelinux 10.0 for AMD64 Beta information page.

Installation

The hardware test bed for this review was, by today's standards, a middle-of-the-road system: an AMD 1200 CPU (Via Apollo Pro KT133 chipset) with 512MB RAM; a Realtek 8139 10/100 Ethernet adapter; an NVIDIA GeForce MX 200 framebuffer with 32MB video RAM; an Asus 52x CD-ROM drive; a LiteOn CD-RW drive; and two Western Digital ATA 100 hard disks weighing in at 20GB and 120GB. Attached peripherals included a Lexmark Z53 color inkjet printer, a Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4ML, and an Epson Perfection 1660 scanner.

The installation was smooth, painless, trouble-free, and surprisingly fast. DrakX, the graphical installer, makes a great first impression, as any installer should. The installation process consists of the usual screens:

  • Device detection
  • Language selection
  • License acceptance
  • Security model selection
  • Disk partitioning
  • Package group selection and customization
  • Package installation
  • Post-installation configuration and fine-tuning
  • Update installation (optional)
  • Reboot to newly-installed system
A number of features from the installation process really stood out and deserve specific mention. The Help button was present on almost all of the DrakX screens, and the help text was genuinely helpful, uniformly concise, and refreshingly jargon-free. For example, on the Security model selection screen, I encountered a text box asking for the Security Administrator's login name or email address. Unsure what precisely DrakX wanted, I clicked the Help button, scrolled to the bottom, and learned that the "Security Administrator" is whatever account, person, or email address you want to receive security reports from Mandrakelinux's nightly security audits.

The package group selection screen boasted a richer set of options than I anticipated. Rather than merely selecting a workstation or server installation, you can select the *type* of workstation or server you want to install, and you can mix and match between server- and workstation-class packages groups.

On the workstation side, for example, DrakX offers the following options:

  • Office Workstation: Office and productivity applications and utilities
  • Game station: Games (duh)
  • Multimedia station: Sound and video editing and playing applications
  • Internet station: Clients for typical Internet usage (mail, news, the Web, and FTP)
  • Network Computer (client): Clients for other Internet protocols, such as SSH (Secure Shell)
  • Configuration: System configuration tools and applets
  • Console Tools: Shells, editors, file tools, terminals
For server systems, you can install Web and FTP servers (Apache 2 and ProFTPd); the Postfix mail server; database servers (PostgreSQL or MySQL); firewall and router applications; and so-called Network Computer servers, including NFS, SMB, proxy servers, and SSH.

Additional package groups not associated with either workstation or server installations enable you to add development tools, libraries, and headers; the standard deluge of HOWTOs and FAQs; the desktop GUI of your choice--KDE 3.2, GNOME 2.4, and other (IceWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, FVWM, and more); and, interestingly, third-party programs that provide LSB compliance.

In the end, I chose to install everything but the server packages. On the desktop, I opted for KDE 3.2. The total package count came to 1,423 packages, requiring 1.1GB disk space. Installing all of these packages took less than 15 minutes. Yes, you read that right, 15 minutes to install over 1,400 packages weighing in at more than 1GB of disk space! How's that for fast? An equivalent installation of Red Hat, er, Fedora requires something on the order of 45 minutes to one hour.

After everything is installed, DrakX gives you a chance to complete system configuration tasks before you boot the new system. Steps you complete here include setting the root user's password and adding mortal user. This is standard fare, but has the added twist of permitting you to create the root account sans password and to login the added user automatically--I strongly recommend against both practices for hopefully self-evident security reasons.

After completing the minimal post-installation configuration, I booted the newly-installed system.

A First Look

Figure 1 shows the default KDE 3.2 desktop adorned with the Mandrakegalaxy 2 theme.

The anti-aliased fonts throughout are easy on the eyes, the menus are spare but sanely organized, and, as befits a 2.6-based desktop, the system is responsive and snappy.

Although I don't typically use such unified configuration interfaces, I really like the new Mandrakelinux Control Center (shown in Figure 2).

Some icons, even at the top level, take you directly to a configuration interface. Others, such as the System and Software Management icons, take you one level deeper into a tree of options. I hope that MandrakeSoft will add the capability to view the Control Center as a tree rather than just as icons because doing so will make it easier to navigate. Figure 3 shows the disk partition editor running in basic mode. Clicking the "Toggle to expert mode" button converts the interface to a power user's tool, which, presumably, makes it easier to turn your hard drive into spaghetti.

Figure 4, finally, shows a few applications, Quanta HTML editor, the KDE System Guard monitoring application, and the Konqueror Web and file browser. All of the applications with which I played were snappy and none crashed. Overall, I like it.

Impressions

Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community installs as smoothly and far more quickly than I would have expected. The ease of the installation process alone makes Mandrake worth a look. The hardware detection was first-rate--it even detected my Epson Perfection 1660 scanner, attached via USB. The sound (ALSA, I might add) worked right away with no fiddling or twiddling required. I cannot say enough good things about DrakX. It just works!

Most of my unfavorable impressions amount to nits. If you select the LSB package group, DrakX warns you it will install a 2.4-series kernel in order to ensure LSB-compliance. This is not a shortcoming of DrakX, but I would have preferred this caveat to be made clear when I selected the LSB package group--as it was, I had to go back and disable LSB because I wanted the 2.6 kernel. A second nit is that DrakX defaults to automatically logging in the mortal user added during post-installation configuration--auto-login should be disabled by default. In the favorite annoyance department, I really dislike the User Survey wizard that confronted me the first time I logged in. While I sidestepped it by clicking the convenient, Skip Wizard button, I much prefer if MandrakeSoft found a less intrusive way to gather marketing information. Of course, I downloaded three full CD-ROMs of software for free, so I suppose the survey wasn't utterly odious.

One unpleasantry, however, is more than a nit. Boot loader installation is clumsily-handled, or, rather, mishandled. DrakX detected the bootable Windows partition on my first hard disk, /dev/hda, and included it as part of the LILO configuration. Unfortunately, DrakX did not notice the bootable Linux partition on the second hard disk, /dev/hdb (/dev/hdb2, containing my primary Slackware /boot file system). Moreover, it wasn't immediately clear how to add that partition in the post-installation configuration screens. Consequently, I was not able to boot my Slackware system until I manually added that partition to the /etc/lilo.conf file.

I appreciate that getting boot loader configuration right can be a tricky issue, but it is one of the points vendors simply must get right. My situation isn't that uncommon: a working Linux installation on a secondary disk that is booted from the primary disk.

Wrapping Up

The only reason I've given Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community four stars is that it is not the official release and because of the boot loader issue. Otherwise, unless MandrakeSoft does something horribly wrong between now and the full release in May, you won't go wrong to pre-order the complete Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official CD-ROM or DVD-ROM set. The misfeatures I mentioned are (mostly) small and easily remedied. The installation is a breeze, the application selection is first-rate, and the speed, stability, and features of top-notch. It is easy for me to recommend Mandrakelinux 10.0 to anyone, from the clueless newbie to the veteran, CLI-addicted power-user. There's something here for everyone.

Kurt Wall is an all-around Linux geek. He has written all or parts of eight books about Linux and UNIX programming and system administration and is the technical editor for over a dozen other Linux- and UNIX-related titles. Currently, Kurt works for TimeSys Corporation in Pittsburgh and lives in South Park, Pennsylvania. He receives entirely too much email at kwall@kurtwerks.com.

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