Mandrake Is On The Move
Installation
Kurt Wall
Monday, March 29, 2004 09:07:52 AM
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.
Next: A First Look »
