Well, much has been said about Mandrake 7.0 problems. I
thought I would look at some other distros with a nice GUI
INSTALL to see if anything was better:
Caldera OpenLinux 2.3 -- SEVERE problems with dhcp
(basically unusable) And if your sound card isn't supported
at install the chances of getting anything working are quite
small. Even their distro of OSS doesn't seem to be able to
overcome the problem with COAS and the ability or (lack of it)
to load modules. OTOH, if you are not using dhcp and if your
sound is detected and properly set up, it is fairly nice.
Just DON't try to load Sun's version of StarOffice on it,
because you get annoying and inconsequential error messages
with every GUI logon(Sun assumes the directory structure is
different for KDE). Also, all systems I have tried with it,
the way to get from GUI to console and back without going to
the gettys is to restart the system. It hangs going from
GUI to console at the login screen, and also in console mode
if you type startx or kde.
Corel Linux 1.0--Not a whole lot there, but it seems to be
good. However an nmap -sS scan puts it down (no joke). Now
back to the REAL OSes. If nmap broke it from inside, that
would be OK, but on a LAN or over the internet a scan against
its IP made it hang.
RH 6.1 -- In the category of "interesting" but hardly
useful. Non-detection of mice seems to break the gui install.
Independence--Not there yet, but better at modem setup and
Kppp than Mandrake. It is more oriented toward the user who
will use it as the only system on a modest computer, and it
does better at that task than any other I have checked.
Civileme
