Hi.
I've spent the day testing our beloved first Beta (including updates
up to and from today). Here it goes.
Hardware:
- Acer TravelMate 521 TEV laptop
- 600 MHz P III, 256 MB RAM
- Intel EtherPro 100
- Ati Rage Mobility M, 8 MB
- Ali soundchip (trident module)
- 13,3 '' LCD screen, 1024x768
- CD-ROM/DVD Matsushita
- Connected to a hub/router
- The usual stuff: touchpad, PCMCIA-, USB-, parallel ports
Everything working fine in 8.0.
Overall impression:
- quite nice. No showstopper bugs here.
- *slow*: on a standard installation it takes 2:50 (yes, almost three
minutes) to get from the boot screen into KDE. In KDE itself I can
actually watch the background redraw when moving windows. Some
applications need 30 seconds to come up. I'm just lucky I'm not using
KDE ... :-)
Installation:
- languages selection not sorted alphabetically, same goes for keyboard
list.
- installation type: the help file mentions *three* installation types
('Recommended' 'Customized' 'Expert') and refers to the 'Primary
usage' setting. We don't have those anymore :-) amd only two choices.
- I'm not sure but in 'recommended' mode I don't remember having seen
the 'how many CDs you've got?' screen. Intended?
- Partitioning. The partition sizes chosen by DiskDrake when left on its
own devices ('auto-allocate') are sub-optimal. Here's for 3 GB of free
space:
1,7 GB for /, 243 MB for swap, 1.1 GB for /home
When using the 'with /usr' setting:
392 MB for /, 243 MB for swap, 1.2 GB for /usr, 1.2 GB for /home
Who needs a GB for home? Isn't there a way to set a hard limit for
auto-allocate to let's say 400 MB and *always* allocate the rest to /
or /usr?
- Screen during package installation. How about a different colour for
the progress bar? Slightly fairer blue on slightly darker blue isn't
all clear ;-). Also: Please replace the last sentence in the help
screen to this screen with something like: "This operation will take a
few minutes, depending on chosen installation size and hardware
equipment." The current sentence is Frenglish.
- Printer installation failed - but I guess you already know why :-)
- Bootloader installation: Maybe we should add a sentence to the help
screen in 'expert mode' how *not* to install a bootloader. *Many* people
want to know that.
After installation:
- no FB (is working on 8.0)
- Aurora in consequence isn't working either.
- supermount doesn't work (missed the error message but should be
common)
- Audio chip gets recognized correctly during installation but then
'disappears'. HardDrake lists it as 'other device'. However, after
restarting X the sound works, and the trident module gets loaded.
- 'printerdrake' will die silently when CUPS isn't installed. It should
install CUPS if it isn't there. Actually it does open the tray, but
there's no message on the screen ...
- hostname. Now that's a very weird error and I will have to recheck
tomorrow, but my hostname was set to '.' (yes, that's a full stop).
Easy to fix with DrakNet, but things like these can really confuse new
users ... I still don't know which file caused this 'unusual' name.
Usability:
- The new interface to the Software Manager is really nice. Like it.
What I don't like, though, is that you still can't interrupt downloads
and that you still don't see, what SM is doing during this time.
It would be very nice if you could redirect the messages from wget to
a X window, and if you could implement a way to kill it :-)
- Where's the Euro symbol? I don't have it.
- a lot of 'can't stat /usr/share/applnk-mdk: no such ...'
- MCC: When opening the Software Manager (SM) for the first time, it
covers the whole of the MCC window. This is inconsistent to what the
other screens do. I know, you can resize it, but how to do that isn't
very obvious. Well, apt-get works just fine *grin*
- KDM displays every window manager, if it's installed or not.
- GNOME: A Netscape-Communicator icon? Who the hell needs that? And why
is it on GNOME and not on KDE?
- I can't remember seeing a 'create bootdisk' screen in 'recommended
mode'
- Can we add a small 'Press ESC to pass options to LiLo' to the graphical
bootloader screen?
- USB/hotplug. Uhm, how's that supposed to work? The man page refers to
init.d script which isn't part of our package. To get my ZIP to work I
had to:
edit /etc/sysconfig/usb and set 'Storage' to yes'
restart usb
It's *very* cool that you don't have to worry about mount points and
fstab anymore. Now if supermount would work ...
Packages (referring to a standard installation with no changes to the
package selection screen):
- no pcmcia installed, no slocate, no howtos, no mandrake-doc, no
localized man-pages
- but gcc3.0, seven (!) web browsers, uucp (anyone still using it? Wow)
Minor glitches:
- The Nautilus bookmarks are very interesting... Can we change them? Or
will you ever feel a sudden urge to visit the website of LinuxOne?
- DrakNet is neat. There's one error though: If dhcpcd is running and
you do some configuring in DrakNet, it will restart the network
_without_ stopping (-k) dhcpcd first. Which of course kills eth0. Not
nice :-)
- There's no explanation for the 'fam' server.
- No automatic power down after system halt.
Tomorrow I will test B1 on my desktop machine.
cu
tom
--
Thomas 'tom' Berger, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.mandrakeuser.org/
All advice provided without warranty of any kind. I *may* be wrong ...
GPG-ID: 0x6AD65877 http://germany.keyserver.net
