1 - I like the interface a lot. It is very customizable and, well... downright fun!!!
2 - It appears to be rock solid in the programs that it will install, and incidentally, there are tons of free programs available for it.
3 - It avoids that tedious Windows process of having to restart almost everytime you install a program.
4 - Being able to drop down into console mode and having the flexibility to further drop down into root is awesome!
5 - Download speeds seem to be better than in Windows.
6 - Security is better than in Windows and pushing the user to create a non-root account is a wise move.
But unfortunately, I still don't think it's ready for primetime and here's why:
1 - It never did "see" my Canon D760 copier/printer.
2 - Couldn't get my nvidia video capture to work, despite help from experts like Anne Wilson.
3 - Couldn't upgrade to KDE 3.3, despite having the CD for it and despite help from experts like Randall. I spent *weeks* on this. Nothing I tried worked, nor did any suggestions work.
4 - I use voice recognition extensively (Dragon NS and IBM ViaVoice). I don't believe this even exists for Linux.
5 - Most damning of all was my attempted upgrade to 10.1 official. I completely wiped my drive to do a clean install, and after everything was said and done, the official version could not find the internet, nor my onboard (Asus P4P800) sound card.
10.0 had no trouble finding these 2, nor did the community version of 10.1. Luckily for me, I had imaged the drive beforehand, so I was able to go back to 10.1 community.
6 - I spent the $170 or so bucks to become a silver club member, but not once have I received an answer from Mandrake when I found myself stuck. I was also forced to install Bit Torrent to download the new ISO's after have waited for over 2 weeks (in vain) after my request for FTP access. (I *hate* peer to peer networks and I didn't appreciate being forced to use one, even though it did turn out to be pretty fast. I consider peer to peer a security risk.)
A mature operating system should not encounter these problems, I have a pretty standard Intel 2.6 gz system with 512 mb of ram, and Windows has never had a problem configuring my setup.
I see great potential in Linux and I will maintain my dual-boot system, slowly learning to survive in Linux while waiting (and hoping) for the operating system to mature to a more usable state...
- Jack
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