[plug] Mandrake 8.2 Pro review

[Leon Brooks]

Good morning, Thomas!

Referring to http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25160.html -

I've installed the Download Edition of Mandrake 8.2 in several places. From 
what you say, it seems to be notably different to the Pro version.

TCPdump, IMAP and a number of other `missing' tools are there, but you need to 
be in the `flat' package selection mode to see them during install (a 
recycle-looking button on the individual-package-selection page). It's not as 
if there's a shortage of packages to choose from (3159 in DE). They did lose 
Ethereal though, and I miss that.

The DE uses OpenOffice.org instead of StarOffice, and that's worked flawlessly 
for me. The font hints are absent because SO includes a lot of code 
statically, including font stuff. The OOo which ships with 8.2 has less 
static stuff but they're still polishing the font handling of it in Cooker.

IMHO they should do an 8.3 sub-release in about a month to tidy up the loose 
ends befor emoving on to their next (9.0) release. The KDE3 and KOffice 
updates, plus OOo 1.0 with the fonts up to par, would be worth including in 
that, but could not reasonably be included in the edition being refined for 
CD pressing in late Feb. You will also notice that the shipped WINE is very 
roulette. The version in Cooker, compiled with less optimisation, is more 
widely reliable too.

XFS is still kind of experimental; it certainly isn't the best-supported FS in 
the distro. Unless you want a specific feature from it, or from ReiserFS, use 
Ext3. Ext3 has been absolutely bulletproof for me across the board. It reads 
like a lot of your trouble arose around XFS,

The Mozilla in 8.2 is labelled 0.9.8 but has most of the patches for 0.9.9 in 
it. It works extremely well for everyone I know who's tried it.

You don't mention which bits of KDE are missing, which is a mystery to me 
since I seem to have them all here. Please update the article with that 
smidgeon of detail.

The installer is *not* proprietary. Full GPL source is included with the 
SRPMs. Full GPL source is included with absolutely everything in the 8.2 DE 
since they don't ship Netscape with it any more.

The config for my own machine appears to match the running kernel. This may be 
different for the enterprise version and/or the boxed set. The SMP version 
running the dual-PPro box on the shelf above me seems to be kosher too.

The entire article reads like you got out of the wrong side of bed that 
morning (very bad idea if the bed's against a wall) and wrote it as a reflex 
action. It really should have been left to sit for a couple of days before 
revision and publication. Better luck next time.

Cheers; Leon