[plug] Mandrake 9.1

[Tim Bowden]

Richard Meyer wrote:

>>I have installed (or tried to) Mandrake twice- and both times I didn't
>>like it.  The first time in mid 2000 (what version would that have
>>been?) I had to do some fiddling with the partition table (1024 cyl
>>limit stuff with duel boot) and I needed fdisk-   that was as far as I
>>got before going back to rh in disgust.  If it wasn't going to provide
>>decent tools in the installer then I wasn't interested.
>>    
>>
>
>This is amazing. It's when I install RH, that I get whinges about
>misaligned partitions, and unable to install LILO because the partition
>isn't on a cylinder boundary, etc. SuSE and Mandrake (and Windows FWIW)
>just install where I tell them. As I result I tend to think of RH as being
>unnecessarily fussy.
>
I have always created new partitions during an install or used 
partitions created by fdisk or disk druid during a previous install 
which if memory serves me correctly does like cylinder boundaries.  Is 
this not a good thing?

>
>  
>
>>The second time was about 6 or 8 months ago when I installed it for a
>>friend.  It was ok but it seemed to tell me less about what it was doing
>>than rh does which I didn't like.
>>    
>>
>
>In what way? (not antagonistic - I'd like to know)
>  
>
Thinking back my impression is it didn't offer as many configuration 
options-  I'm a glutton for doing custom installs of just about evey 
piece of software I have ever installed. I don't like the install 
routine making choices for me when I could be making them.

>  
>
>>Does mandrake still dislike 486's?  Does it do a decent text based
>>install?  If I'm putting linux on an old box then it sometimes won't
>>have the grunt to do a gui install.
>>    
>>
>
>Mandrake's always had a bit of a problem with older hardware. Remember that
>they started out in the early Pentium days, offering RH with all RH
>references changed to Mandrake, but with more bleeding edge packages and
>kernels optimised for Pentium. Just the way they positioned themselves. Ran
>faster on a Pentium than bog standard RH did.
>
>Haven't tried the text based install.
>
Has anyone tried the mandrake text install?  Does it have one?

Tim Bowden