I tried installing the new beta, so I figured the results could be useful. I'm running a Quicksilver G4/733 with the GeForce2MX video card. Sorry if I seem critical, I really do appreciate all the work that people have put into Mandrake, I mean all my criticism to be constructive :-). If you have anything you'd like me to test out, or if you need more information about anything, I'll do what I can.
Video: - install-riva doesn't work, when second stage install starts the graphics are huge, and "stretched" horizontally. There are also small thick vertical black lines all over, and. - install-novideo makes everything in the second stage into this really ugly shade of blue; mouse tracking is bad also. - My monitor, a Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 73, is listed when I'm asked to select the monitor I'm using. It wasn't listed in either the Yellow Dog or Debian installers, so good job :-) - X won't start up properly. When the system boots and the display manager tries starting X, my monitor seems to stop receiving any signal. Using "Cmd-Ctrl-FKey" to switch to a tty doesn't work after this, so I'm forced to reset my computer. Hard Drive partitioning: - My partition setup before installing looked like this (as gleaned from pdisk): hda6 HFS+ hda12 HFS hda7 HFS+ hda8 HFS+ hda9 10 MB yaboot bootstrap hda10 128 MB swap hda11 ext2 Yes, the partition that's physically earlier on disk is hda12, that's because of the order I set it up with pdisk. The Mandrake installer just numbered them in physical order, eg hda12->hda7, and every partition after that has its number incremented by one. - I wanted to initialize the ext2 partition, and it wasn't clear at first how to do so, so I selected "Custom partitioning" and deleted it, then wanted to add it again...but there wasn't any obvious way to add a partition. I still don't know how to do so through the installer. - After experimenting with the partitioner a bit, I decided to back out and set up the partitions myself before installing again. But after hitting "cancel" or "exit" a few times, and hitting "no" when asked whether to write the new partition map, I found on restart into OS X that my partition map was changed. Miscellaneous: - The package lists seems very up-to-date including a recent kernel, Nautilus, etc. - I like the ability to set up automatic log-in. - When I get to the printer setup dialog, I get the message "An error occured: foomatic rpm not found." - There doesn't seem to be any way to select a timezone. There's a label on the screen that details my mouse, keyboard, printer settings that says "timezone", but there's nothing in the associated selection box. - After installation, I had to set the boot device in OF; booting with yaboot was not autmoatic. Note that the Debian and YDL installers seem to have this working. - I get a few errors during startup: - "Finding module dependencies: unresolved symbols" and then a list that included something about fdomain_cs in a scsi module, and something else. Sorry I can't be more specific, the X problem above meant that I crashed just after startup, so I couldn't really access system logs. - "Loading USB interface (modprobe): Can't locate FAILED" - At one point I saw a "starting pcmcia" error. I'm on a desktop, I'm not sure why pcmcia support is being started. UI: - "Cancel" buttons during the installer often do nothing. It might make more sense for them to quit the installer and reboot. At some points I got stuck during the install, it would have been nice to have a way to reboot cleanly. - During the first stage, there's a message on the bottom of the screen that says "Alt-F4 for kernel logs", etc. At least on my computer, it's really Cmd-Ctrl-F4 instead. I hope this is of use, Dave Vasilevsky