My first attempts to install Mandrake were 7.0. I never figured out at the time why the install would always go in circles and gave it up to wait on 7.1. 7.1 gave the exact same trouble, so I dug a little more into why it wouldn't install and found that Mandrake couldn't handle my faithful $12 Sony 2X SCSI CD-ROM. After changing the CD to a 4X, 7.1 installation was quick and painless, and subsequent operation has apparently been error free.
I tried to install the 8.0 GA on an added HD in the same system and had many different problems and gave up trying. When the 8.1 betas came out, I tried the 1st & 3rd, then RC1, all of which were little less painful than 8.0. There were some problems solved from beta through GA, but others introduced. I managed to get all of the 8.1 variants installed, but all were difficult, and none were worthy of trust until possibly 8.1 GA. I certainly have my doubts. The installer just isn't ready for converting people used to other operating systems. If you have the right combination of relatively new hardware, you may have success. I certainly didn't, and other than the HD addition for 8.x, using the exact same system 7.1 works flawlessly on. I hope there is to be an 8.2 before a jump to a 9.0. Mandrake needs to finish debugging 8.x before jumping into more new territory. Get automount to work so that floppies and CD's are accessed as easily as is taken for granted in windoze. Get the installer to provide error feedback to the user instead of looping back two or more steps when a later step fails and dumping cryptic jibberish into a log file the person installing has no clue exists. Add back the opportunity to give XFree setup the special parameters the video card requires, or better yet, fix the distro so that video cards don't need special parameters to make X actually work, or knows what they are and inserts them automatically. If anything new is to be added, the installer should find the compatible hardware database on the installation CD, query for matches, and report to the user what found hardware is missing from the database and may cause install failure. 8.1 is very nice. It simply wasn't/isn't ready to be called a GA. -- "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.members.atlantic.net/
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