Mandrake mini-review was: Re: rsync Mandrake iso was Re: [plug] SATA chipset support question

[Chris Caston]

On Sat, 2004-05-15 at 16:43, Brock Woolf wrote:
> > I'm also going to try out Xandros.
> > BTW I am trying to come up with a setup that makes moving Windows users
> > to Linux a turn-key process.
> > Being organised is important.
> 
> It seems Linspire have created a really easy to use installer, or so i
> read but maybe it's not so good. I'll have to check it out.
> But it also has My Computer, Network Places, My Documents on the
> Desktop, so it looks really easy for a newbie, so you might want to
> check it out.
> If anyone has a CD of Linspire let me know.
> 

Okay. 

I think there was a deal where you could download it as a celebration of
their change of name if you used the download code: Lindows

No idea if the promotion is still running.

Anyway Mandrake is going really well. 

All of my hardware was detected except for the Promise UDMA controller
(as suggested by people on the list) but I don't care about that as I
only use the SATA bits.

I've just about got used to urpmi but not being about to find
winesetup-tk is frustrating. For some reason the perl5 rpm on cd 1 was
broken but I downloaded it from one of the sources instead. After that I
could use rpmdrake which is very close to my dream of an open source
replacement for Lindows click 'n run.

The Mandrake control centre is really cool and it should be ported to
Debian if it hasn't been already.

I tried out amsn as well and it had the MSN skin at the default which
made it look almost exactly like the Windows version. It does give an
annoying message about not being the latest version and gives the sf.net
address. Once you download the new version it doesn't have the MSN skin
(the Tux one is much cooler anyway) but you can download the skin again
from the sf.net project page.

A slight gotcha is that you need to install wxvlc before kvlc will work
but it's the same on Debian.

Also the kernel version is 2.6.3-4mdk

I've got a customer coming around tonight and I'm going to setup his
machine to dual boot between w2k and Mandrake 10 Community edition.

If all goes well I'll be moving 2 more customers in the coming weeks.

I also tried to install Xandros 2.0 but it didn't like my Promise SATA
controller and gave some error that flashed to fast to read it (but I'm
sure it willI also tried to install Xandros 2.0 but it didn't like my
Promise SATA controller and gave some error that flashed to fast to read
it (but I'm sure it will come back to me in my sleep ;) come back to me
in my sleep ;)

thanks,

Chris Caston
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.linux.org.au
> http://mail.plug.linux.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
-- 
Linux is ready for the desktop like a Boeing F-22 is ready for the
run-way.