Maybe time for a new distro?

[Bill Mullen]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, brian wrote:

Brian, I second Brian's motion; here is another recommendation for 
Mandrake. :)

> Been using Redhat for years (still have my 5.0 installation CD's and
> diskette from Redhat (am on 9.0 currently)).

As Mandrake is an RPM-based distro, you should feel right at home. MDK was 
also originally (way back when) based on RH, so you'll find little that is 
unfamiliar to you about the layout, runlevels, initscripts, etc. etc. ...

> Some would consider this a character flaw, I know, and don't really
> care.

Certainly, there's something to be said for brand loyalty. :)

> However, I've been thinking recently of switching to a different distro,
> mostly for "because" reasons and partially to just try other things.  
> I've also got a fair amount of Debian experience, FWIW.

Things you'll recognize in MDK from Debian:

	The unified menu system, gives you the same menu tree in all WMs
	The "/etc/alternatives" system comes from Debian also, IIRC

The single best MDK innovation, IMHO, is the urpm* suite of tools. They 
rival Debian's apt system in functionality, and make installation of RPMs 
virtually effortless (and "Dependency Hell" largely a thing of the past). 

When a compile is looking for a file, you can't beat urpmf for finding the 
package that provides it - whether or not it's been installed yet; issuing 
"urpmi filename" will get it and its deps, from CD or d/l or local dir or 
NFS or any combination of those (as needed), and install them all. Sweet.

http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/basics/brpm3.html

> My major wants/needs are:
> 	Support for my dual-head ATI card

Anything a version of X can do, MDK with that version of X can do, AFAICT.

> 	Gnome out-of-the-box (preferred)

MDK includes it - and it's not a neutered version, like RH's KDE ... ;)

> 	Some degree of mutli-media support ("stereophonic beeps" are usually
> sufficient for me)

With the RPMs found in the PLF and contrib collections, multimedia support
is just fine; I watch TV and DVDs on this 9.0 box routinely. Mandrake's
hardware detection is pretty decent as well, IMHO.

> 	Ability to function well as a server for Mysql/perl/cgi type stuff 

All that and more is there; MDK is a solid server platform, with things 
like Apache2 available if you're interested (and Apache1 if you're not).
MDK's default versions of Apache are impressively tweaked ones, BTW:

http://www.advx.org/specs.php

Another useful MDK toolset is msec, the Mandrake Security system:

http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/docs/msec.php

> Any suggestions/ideas/comments/thoughts/flames welcome...

If you decide to try it, do a tiny bit of reading first:

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/errata.php3
http://mandrake.vmlinuz.ca/bin/view/Main/FiveStarNews

The latter URL is a page of the MDK Community Twiki, a project of the
Mandrake Expert mailing list members; some good info to be found there.

After install, go to this page and follow the directions there to set up
(at least) PLF, contrib and update sources for your urpm* database :

http://www.urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php

Stay away from the secsup.org mirrors, they're broken ATM.

The GUI software manager (rpmdrake) uses urpmi as its backend, so all of
the packages at those sources will now be in its s/w lists as well.

HTH!

-- 
Bill Mullen   moon at lunarhub.com   MA, USA   RLU #270075   MDK 8.1 & 9.0
"In communities where men build ships for their own sons to fish or
fight from, quality is never a problem." -- J. A. Dever