On Wednesday 22 October 2003 17:15, Greg Meyer wrote: > > I think the official 9.2 release should be delayed a little for these > > things to get fixed. Experienced > > users should have no problems fixing these install isues, but for new > > users it would be a big dissapointment. > > Unfortunately, it is too late. FiveStar has been sent to the manufacturer.
What a shame. So far, for me, this is the worst Mandrake version I've seen in years. I did a regular install, keeping my home directly, but the thing wouldn't boot. Got as far as the modprobe, and either got an error "insmod pwc failed"or it just hung when I booted. I reinstall 9.1 and all the updates, and all works just ducky. I tend to do full installs rather than upgrades since I'm not the most sophisticated of end users, and my experience with Mandrake over the years has been that so much stuff is broken after an upgrade, a full install is actually quicker than running around trying to fix all the little problems. I next tried downloading the ISO's again, and reburn them, figuring this could all be a problem in the user space (me!). Nope. After a second install with new ISO's on new CD's I hit the the same snag again. Bummer. Next up, I return to 9.1, install the 500 megs in updates a second time, and decide to give it one more go. This time, I do an upgrade, rather than a full install. No luck there either. It hangs at the same point. But!!! I now have the option of booting my old kernel, so I do that, and I'm in. Wahoo! Shiny new software! But wait! After a quick glance, all is not well. KOrganizer is missing or broken. Now, I haven't had a chance to see if this was a "design choice" by the kind folks at Mandrake or not, but since this was an "upgrade," I figured it would have installed newer versions of everything already on the machine. Also, I got an error that Eth0 failed, although after a quick check it's pretty clear that the Internet connection is working just fine. I also notice that I'm stuck with Centigrade for temperatures and a 24 hour clock on my tray. Very Euro, but a little difficult for my American head to get wrapped around. When I opened "Adjust Date & Time Format" menu to select my location, the drop down menu is empty. This a typical annoyance for me when I do an upgrade rather than replacing the whole system. I'm sure there are dozens of little broken pieces all over the system I've yet to find. So, the upgrade path to 9.2 isn't nearly perfect, but I'm limping along, and could probably get some work done. I next decide to download any updates since the ISO's came out. Maybe my friends at Mandrake have fixed the boot problem? I connect to ftp.math.utah.edu, and select all the updates available, gdm, gnome-applets, and the three openssl packages. The selection doesn't look likely to fix my problems, but no big deal. I like to keep the computer current anyway, so I proceed. I download the rpm's, but I get an error that the packages have bad signatures. Figuring the machine is pretty well broken anyway and can't get much sicker, I continue. Alas, the update process is not to be. It ends with an error stating that it can't install because libopenssl is missing and dies there. I love Linux, and I love Mandrake best of all. I belong to the club, and have another 22 months or so on my membership. When Mandrake works, it rocks, and it's gotten so incredibly good in the last year. I'm running a three year old computer, an Athlon 700 on an Asus motherboard with 128 Mb of RAM, an ATI Rage Mobility video card, with a Creative Labs Soundblaster Live card. I bought this system to run Mandrake Linux (not Linux, but Mandrake Linux!), and every piece of hardware I run on this system, my Logitech Mousewheel+, my Palm Pilot, my HP LasterJet 1100 printer, my QuickCam, my UMAX 1200S scanner with the Adaptec SCSI card were all bought because they would work with Linux. I'm very careful about what I buy, and I have never had one bit of trouble with any of this stuff. Certainly 9.1 works just fine. At this stage of the game, it's so disappointing to see this. I mean, anyone who has used Mandrake for any length of time knows that QA has never been their strong suite. But they have alway gotten it together by the x.2 release. I hope this is just a fluke and just my problem. I mean, I ran the two RC's on my laptop and had nary a problem. In fact, things went so well, I decided to start by installing the new Mandrake on my main machine. As I said, I hope it's just a fluke, and I'm just an unlucky sap with a poor or malfunctioning piece of hardware. But if I'm not, and this is indicative of what others will be experiencing, I'm really, truly worried for Mandrake's future, and saddened, very deeply saddened. Bill
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
