Thoughts on Installing Mandrake 9.1
This is not a full review of installing Mandrake 9.1, instead it is simply a few thoughts on things that I liked and things that I found to be odd. Remember, your mileage may vary.
For me, installing Mandrake 9.1 was the easiest install I have ever done, and this includes installs of windows 98, 2000, and XP. 9.1 is simply the easiest and fastest install of any OS period. For the most part, Mandrake have achieved an OS that anybody with an inkling of computer know-how can install.Here is a brief overview of the things that I like and/or the things that jumped out at me about the install.
1. The install is fast, very fast. I installed Mandrake 9.1 in about a half hour. It detected my network settings without a problem — dhcp through a router/firewall — and I was on the net as soon as I booted into Linux. (This is a huge improvement over 7.1 where it took me three days to get on the net).
2. At the end of the install, there is a configure/summary screen that lists all the hardware and how it has been configured. This has been improved over 9.0 and lists even more devices. If something was not detected or configured correctly it is very easy to see and correct using this screen.
3. Aesthetically, the overall install process has been greatly improved and actually looks very nice. Probably one of the nicest install I have ever seen. Mandrake has pulled ahead of Red Hat on this one.
4. The fonts look beautiful. Full anti-aliasing right out of the box. I will probably install the Microsoft fonts (too many website, including mine, use Verdana as the base font), but there is becoming less reason to do this.
5. The Galaxy theme looks beautifull as well as very professional. It is probaly the best looking theme I have seen. Once again, Red Hat has some serious competition here.
6. As far as NVidia drivers, once I installed the kernel-sources the src.rpm”s compiled and installed without issue. Mandrake also was able to load default drivers for my Geforce 4 Ti 4200 video card. Something 9.0 was not able to do.
However, there were a few oddities that I must mention.
1. I did not notice any explicit screen asking what kind of install I wanted to do — Update, Install, Recommended or Expert. This I found to be a little odd, but everything went fine.
2. My video card and my monitor were not automatically detected. I had to configure these at the end of the install. With the new summary screen, though, this was very easy to see and just as easy to correct. I had to tell Mandrake what kind of monitor I had and the wizard detected my video card without a problem. I was then able to set the colour depth and the screen resolution.
3. My sound card was detected correctly, but when I tried to play an mp3 in XMMS I found that the volume had been muted for some reason. The upside is that I now have a little volume icon sitting in the kicker.
Overall, my initial impressions of this new release are nothing but positive. Mandrake has created a very professional looking and easy to install Linux distro with this new release. In my opinion, this is probably the best version of Linux on the market today.
. Slackware is one of the oldest distributions around and is well-known for adhering to (well, at least unofficially) the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. That’s right, no graphical installer, no GUI configuration tools and no advanced package manager. But in turn you get a very transparent, stable and fast system.”