On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 16:47, Chris Higgins wrote: > Mandrake Linux is what I use on my desktop, I put redhat or > debian on servers. I'm considering dropping Mandrake for my > desktop - and let me take a second to explain why.
Having read your reasoning, the idea of replacing Mandrake with RedHat is loopy, on a server or elsewhere. RedHat offer you less choices than Mandrake. Mandrake and SuSe, for example, _prefer_ KDE and so write most of their tools to it. RedHat essentially *requires* GNOME, militantly markets GNOME-alone. RedHat's dependency checking is also sloppier than Mandrake's. If I chose Debian over Mandrake on a server, I would do so because Debian's packaging is much more careful, and their update system more reliable to a more or less unbeatable degree. In point of fact, I do have a Debian gateway for my home (I replaced a Mandrake 6.0 (!) server with it) specifically to become more adept at using these tools. I have apt-get dist-upgraded Debian servers and had 100% of the services survive the experience - in part because the package scripting stops and asks if it's not sure - but with Mandrake something inevitably breaks. With RedHat, several things inevitably break. Having said that, Mandrake is (oh-so-)slowly becoming more proficient at sorting out dependency issues and the like in its RPMs, and the semi-automated RPM handling tools have caught up to Debian considerably and should - post 9.0 - stabilise rapidly. Mandrake seems to have a genius for picking good versions and variants of things. Very rarely do they release a distro and then immediately afterwards have a security issue to patch, and they were early adopters of successful systems and services such as postfix. Counterbalancing this, their system for netting all bug reports seems to have leaks - at least from a user's perspective - or perhaps there simply aren't enough people on the incoming end to deal with them all. > I can't stand Aurora (personally) but I can quite > happily accept that it is probably useful for some > people out there. It should be fairly simple to dress up the current system to look more GUI-ish without detracting from its usefulness. What they have now is a better compromise than Aurora in that it is much more useful and understandable. What I would appreciate is the ability to start the system in three wise monkeys mode (progress bar only all the way, which is more than Windows gives you (some variants give you progress for a short leg of the boot) but not overwhelming or confusing for a newbie), and have a simple keystroke (maybe +/-) to turn on/off detail as required. A regularly updated set of advertising images would be a useful filler for the box in the middle. Later, a tool to allow the user to add their own image(s) and/or replace the existing set would be good. If progress-bar-only is regarded as detail level 0, and the current system is regarded as detail level 2, at a lower priority (maybe for 9.1) I'd like a `detail level 1' that consisted of packing the current `text' window with icons drawn early in the piece and overlaid with tick-questionmark-cross as each started, staggered (e.g. successful fdisk of a damaged partition) or failed. Given that functionality, I can't think of any reason to miss Aurora. Cheers; Leon
