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I came across Mandrake Linux 9. Is this a good product? Is it easy to use? Can it be used on the same computer as Windows 98? I havn"t downloaded it yet till I know a little more about it. Is there a better Linux out there? If I'm posting this in the wrong window, someone be kind enough to tell me which one I should post it. Thanks for any help.
Hi,
1) Yes, Mandrake it's really good and maybe the best, it's all a matter of different opinion. Although maybe you can find it a little weird at the beginning you'll see that is a really good and easy to use OS if you use the graphics interfaces.
2) Yes again, you can use it with Windows 98 too.
3) You could have posted this thread on the Linux forum... don't worry, you'll learn soon but it would be a good idea to look at the AO's newbies help section to learn faster.
Bye.
Mandrake 9 is a good introduction to Linux. It makes a good effort to provide you with many of the "wizard-like" tools of Windows, while giving you the functionality of a standard linux distribution. It will happily share a hard drive with Windows 98 (with some initial preparation of the drive). It does act a bit sluggish if you set up a fully-loaded installation, but that's understandable with the vast number of additional components that come with the kernel.
Overall, however, it's a strong Linux distribution geared toward the desktop user, and built for ease of configuration. I give it 2 Tux's up!
i agree, its easier than some, for me, id say if your new, go for that, some people say redhat is easy, but for me mandrake was easierall around, also, calsera open Linux was fairly easy to, and make sure you read the manuals first, i cant stress this enough, you wanna make sure you can get everything prepaired, and read how to partition word for word unless you know what your doing, but this can be a very hard thing for some people. and MAKE SURE YOU BACK UP ANYTHING YOU DONT WANNA LOSE. if omething does go wrong youll have a back up. if you get it installed and you like it and get good id reccomend trying a few other flavors of it, red hat for one is nice, and if you get good at that, you may even like a BSD:) to warn you though, installing FREE bsd can be a kick in the butt because its not all easy (at lest last time i checked anyway) but, then again, its also secured greatly. well whatever your choice goes for, read manuals first, buying a Linux book can help alot because you can read it as your installing, and usually it comes with an install CD. good luck, i hope everything worls for you:)
Well, I haven't used Mandrake since I installed it once about 3 years ago, so, I don't know how the install goes.
But, I must say that SUSE the latest version has a very nice installer. It will automatically resize your windows partition, safely and cleanly, if you tell it to deal with the partitions automatically, and if your windows partition fills the drive. I don't know if any of the others will do this, as on my current dual boot laptop(Redhat 8), I specifically left space for the linux partitions when I installed windows. Maybe someone else can comment on other distros auto resizing your windows partition.
Mandrake probably is easier to use, as that seems to be the opinion that everyone has, but for a newbie, the install and dealing with partitioning is a big deal. You could easily screw up and delete your windows partition in most installs. The SUSE one on the other hand, will just automatically resize it for you.
Fred Brown I just moved to Mandrake 9 a couple of weeks ago. I was able to partition my hd correctly the first time.(very easy)
I am totally loving this operating system. It's not crashing, everything works. I'm finding it easier to use then windows. And with the great people of ao it makes life easier. Now this is the first linux I've tried so I hope that as I get better with the O.S. I will find more advanced versions of linux just as enjoyable. So I say go with mandrake 9. :)
Yes, Mandrake is the choice install for Linux Newbies when we do our installfest with OLUG
I haven't used it since 2000, but it seems that alot of folks we start out with it are happy and I've heard very few complaints with it. Very easy to install and maintain rpms with and there is alot of support out there for it.
Hey, if you really want a challenge and if you got alot of time on yr hands, or if u get bored, try Gentoo
Mandrake 9 is the distro of choice at home here, very easy to install and maintain. Great for newbies and experienced users alike. From a 65mb minimal install for the commandline freaks to the full blown desktop GUI - the choice is all yours.
Good thing about Mandrake is that is up there in popularity stakes with Redhat so there are many users out there prepared to offer assistance, contribute tutorials without getting to technical about it - which is great when you are starting out with linux.
Mandrake is the bleeding edge distro of the linux world which is good news if you are running new hardware. I recently installed a new 17" monitor, 32mb Riva TNT2 graphics card (stolen from the windows box on upgrade) and a Phillips (saa7134) chipset tv capture card (FlyVideo 3000) - all detected and running with the minimal of fuss.
It will survive comfortably alongside a windows partition, although I personally dont like this (I'm a bit of a purist here) but dont forget to defrag the hard drive before installing Mandrake. The install is very simple from this point on - insert the CD and just follow the prompts.
As any linux distro you have complete control of the machine - so can the hackers - so avail yourself of the AO tutorials to lock down the box. Mandrake comes with the msec (Mandrake Security) option which can do a lot of the work by default but somethings need to be known and tweaked to access the services and applications you want if it is set too high.
You can disable services you dont need - the Control Center in Mandrake can be used here. Some learning will be required on your part here. Mandrake run a forum on their site to assist in the installation and tweaking of the system to get the best out of your computer.
The best part of linux is there is hardly a day that goes by when I am not in the guts of the code, tweaking something to see what happens :) - great learning curve.
I dont think you will be disappointed with Mandrake 9 and unless you are a serious gamer I reckon it will take over that windows partition before long. :) Definitely the distro to cut your linux teeth on in my opinion.
Yupe mandrake 9 it's good choice for newbie.. Phat_Penguin already explain it, but if you want try something else ..I agree with Ichnisan SUSE Linux(8.1) is good too it's very easy...to install and with YAST you can do alot things including resize portion for windows.
My personal laptop using dual Oses SUSE Linux 8.1 and Free BSD 4.7
The other Linux I like/love is Gentoo ...I have Gentoo Linux 1.4 rc1 on my other comp..it's very solid Linux distro very cool Linux (mmmmm...my friend said I am *nix geek now :) cause I am used to "party girl" :p ),but if you first time try Linux might be Gentoo little bit hard..Quote:
Hey, if you really want a challenge and if you got alot of time on yr hands, or if u get bored, try Gentoo
So try mandrake first and you can try something else..you can check out this site http://www.distrowatch.com/top.php you will find alot of Linux distro out there...
Wellcome to Linux world ..
WOW!!!! Great feed back. Thanks to all. I put a 60 gb hard drive in not to long agoI'm still running the Windeath 98 on the 6gb that came with the compaq presario 5440. So, I was thinking about putting the Linux on the new HD. My compaq only partitioned 30 of the GBs, so I have anthor 30 to play with. Any words of wisdom?
-RTFMQuote:
-Back up yr data
-And, Don't be afarid to make mistakes
Be sure not to mess with /etc/fstab. I learned that the hard way.
Mandrake is definatly a good nix distro. Comes with cool built in stuff and install is simple. In fact, I prefer some features in Mandrake over Redhat like automatic mounting of windows drives (cool for shareing MP3s between the two OSs). but if you game youll still want windows wasting some hard drive space. good luck with Mandrake and if you need help i recomend checking out the yahoo linux chat, lots of good people who will help. But openBSD is still the coolest!
H()()KT
Hey, does anybody have a 'Promotion code' for Mandrake 9 by any chance?
I too use mandrake 9, and i havent looked back. I have a box set up with just mandrake 9 and another with it partiitoned with windows 2000. I keep windows because i am a die hard gamer.
What i want to ask is it very secure? I haven't really heard much about any major security issues and i wanted to ask the community what they knew....
muppet, what security level have you set Mandrake at and what services are you running ? It can be as secure as you want and likewise as open as you like, its all up to you. There have been a fair few security/bug updates for software since Mandrake 9 was released.
Mandrake comes with 5 default security settings, 0 = "hello crackers" through to 5 = "paranoid". Level 3 is OK if you are not running any servers like httpd (web server) and just using the machine as a standalone - you can change the level of security on the commandline by issuing, as root, the command, msec -o log=stderr 3 (for level 3). Change the number to the level you want but I wouldn't suggest a machine connected to the internet go below 3.
I suggest you take a look at msec - http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/docs/msec.php for an indepth explanation - its pretty straight forward.
Also disable any services you are not going to use - this can be sorted through the Control Center.
I would also subscribe to the Mandrake Security Advisory List from the Mandrake site and receive email alerts when packages require updating. You can use the GUI (Software Manager) to update the software but I prefer to use a small script and rsync from the commandline to get the updates. As people will tell you, keeping your distro updated is very important.
I was talking about any sort of root exploits or things that would effect it. E.g. microsoft xp's giant gaping hole in XP of the UPnP remote root exploit. Not that anydistro of linux would be as badly made as windows :D
At the moment its set to 4, because i am running a apache webserver out of it.
Before you go and start installing, it would be best to make sure that you know how to partition your hard drive.
Heres a couple of good tutorials for getting your hard drive ready for the install.
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Insta...on_System.html
http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Insta...ing_fdisk.html
Hope this helps!
Cheers
r3b00+
sorry muppet - didn't mean to sound patronising - I apologise.
Hi,
I went and got SuSe 8.1 Pro. From what I read it sounded pretty good for Newbis. Thanks for the insights IchNiSan, and JockVSJock, I will RTFM,[had to look that up] so it will not be FUBAR[you know what that one means?]. Thanks to everybody for all the insight. I'm new to this sight and I'm having a great time.
Just a couple things to add, since I now know a little bit more about your setup......
I don't know for sure, as I have never tried it, but, you may experience trouble booting to a second hard drive in your machine(set in slave mode I assume, or cable select, which will default to slave mode, if another is master). The following should help to prevent this issue.
Someone please correct me if any of this info is incorrect.....
One way to get around this, is (you should be prompted) to tell Suse, or whatever linux, to take over the MBR(Master Boot Record). That should be on your primary drive, and will load whatever boot loader you choose during setup, which should take over loading your linux system from whereever it is.
On the subject of boot loaders, Suse 8 should default to using GRUB. If it does, great, if it offers you a choice between GRUB and LILO(Linux Loader) choose GRUB. Grub is a newer loader than lilo(though lilo certainly has been updated) and deals fairly easily with some issues which used to confuse the hell out of lilo, such as having your /boot partition past the 1024th sector of your drive, among other things. If I understand it correctly, LILO uses the BIOS drivers for talking to the hard drives, and some older BIOS cannot read past the 1024th sector of the drive. GRUB has its own drivers(simply put) which deal with the hard drive, and you dont have to worry about it. As long as you allow it to take over your MBR.
Also, SuSe should automagically add a boot option for your windows partition. Though you may have to give it a name. If you get through the install, and don't have the option to boot into windows from GRUB, there are a number of people here who can help you get that sorted out in fairly short order.
Have fun, don't let yourself get easily frustrated, and please, please spend some time using the command line(though the gui's are getting very nice a flexible these days.. You will learn a lot more about the OS, and nix in general.
I use Mandrake just 2 weeks and i love it!
With KDE i had the most fun as a Linux newbie.
I think its a bit more W98-user frendly than the Gnome desktop.
You will love it.
:) Yeah its sweeeeet!!! We have a comp with it at the University, though i havent had extensive time with it. Great GUI(KDE, not sure which version). It fooled me for a sec , first i thought it was windows, then a mac ( :D lol). truly amazing :cool: ...
I was impressed with this distro. It is the firsts distro that I think is truely ready for desktop users. I was skeptical when I saw Walmart advertising Mandrake based PC's, but after giving this one a whirl I was impressed enough to think that is solid enough for users that don't need or want to know much about a Unix based CLI. Its a far cry from the Slackware distro that I used to save on shoeboxes of floppies about 12 years ago :) Have fun!