First Impressions

First impressions of Mandrake 10.1 were that, not much has changed. There is the KDE 3.2 desktop, the same Menu features, many of the programs are the same. This is a basic upgrade of 10. However, there are a few noticable features.

New Install Option:
If you wanted to save on downloading all the Mandrake 10.1 CDs you can download the mini-install CD which allows yo to add an extra media CD or network during the install and finish the packages with an Internet connection. Great idea.

Firewire Detection Will Change Networking:
If you have firewire on the computer Mandrake 10.1 will by default make this eth0. Please note if you are doing an upgrade this feature will screw up your whole network configuration! What a happy thought. It will also destroy your firewall configuration as you must choose which ethernet card is the outside source and so if you have firewire it will changes this all around. Mandrake's recommendation if you are updating from a previous version is to delete your whole network configuration and rebuild it. This is sure to make some users very unhappy.

PCMCIA network card Changes:
Network cards must be set to ONBOOT=yes now. So you need to change it if you upgrade using drakconnect or any other ways. What?

Xorg Now Default:
xorg is now the default X server and the configuration file has been moved from /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to /etc/X11/XF86Config
These changes will only impact you if you are making manual changes to XF86Config file.

Wireless Networking:
The addition of drakroam to help in connecting to a wireless network is a nice addition. This may be started from a terminal with the command drakroam.

Bittorent Wizard:
I figured it would be great to have an easy setup of Bittorent but alas it did not work in the Beta 2 setup....maybe later.

Mandrake Control Center:
Mandrake says it has a new look and feel. Well...it looks very similar and functions much the same but it does have a few new features like the XWindow connections called "Online Administration". Mount Points gives you rapid access to all of the sharing you may be doing with Samba, NFS and disk sharing which is handy. The Samba mount points did not work correctly when I tried it. As I mentioned elsewhere, I had to restart Mandrake Control Center several times because it just did not open...other than that it did work OK.

What's New

The first item of note is the PIM manager on the Panel as an icon.

Kontact looks very similar to Evolution and offers an alternative Groupware application with a summary page containing new messages, birthdays, appointments, weather and notes.

On the right hand side of the page there are icons for the Summary page, contacts, email using KMail, a ToDo List, Calendar, New and Notes.

Net Applet:
There is now by default a network applet that is located on the Panel. This applet will give you information as to your connection access to the network. I am not sure how necessary another RAM eating applet is for telling me I am connected as that is probably the first thing I would notice if I was not connected...anyway.

XWindow Programs:
The Mandrake Control Center now offers a new service of connecting to other Linux or Windows machines using the XWindow.

The dangers of making these kinds of connections should be reviewed before users employ this easy method of accessing other computers.

Great Features of Mandrake 10.1

I am a networking guy... I deal with network connections and security all day every day, so when I evaluate an operating system how well and how fast I can set these features up is a good indicator of the overall system. Now I use a benchmark. I can setup a lan connection, and Samba in less than 30 seconds on a Knoppix CD or on a Suse 9.1 Live Evaluation CD. This means, at least to me, that a full blown operating system must be able to match that or even beat that time. In the past Mandrake constantly failed is this area as there always seemed to be some extra step or a bug that defeated rapid setup. However, Mandrake 10.1 did allow me to setup the network and have it working in 12 seconds flat and I probably could have done Samba in another 15 if I used text mode but I installed Samba Swat as a test and sure enough it worked great!

Samba Swat is easy to use and helps you setup Samba with a graphical interface. There are only a few options that need to be set to get it going quickly.

The Security Features on Mandrake Control Center are excellent.
The Firewall setup has only one problem, the default is to open up your computer to everything...no firewall. Why in the world would we want to see Linux go down the route of Windows....the default firewall should protect the user from the bad guys....have many people just forgot to check it?

Security Levels and Checks:
I cannot understand why other distributions do not follow this pattern. Users select a security level that automatically runs appropriate checks for security...simple and effective. This is a great feature of Mandrake, has been for several distributions.

File Permissions:
Another feature in the Security section of Mandrake Control Center is the checking of file permissions. This easy to use process will help keep your computer safe...I love security.

Features That Need Work

If I was going to say a few things to Mandrake it would be this:

1. Go out and find the 100 very best desktop icons and backgrounds for the operating system and include them. People are impacted by first impressions and I think Mandrake is missing it with the dull blue desktop and the same old desktop backgrounds. Look at what Suse 9.1 did in transforming impressions with their new desktop look.

2. Wait! - Quit releasing versions that freeze up, have bugs and things don't work. Mandrake Control Center had to be restarted several times because it just stopped working. It did work in the end but it is very frustrating.

Xorg did not detect my TNT video card correctly and I had to scroll the screen to see the whole thing. Again, it was easily fixed by changing the resolution but you would think that the default detection of my older video card would be easier.

3. Management of Networking Features
One thing you have to love about SuSE is that by using YAST, the operating system has a graphical user interface for almost all of the networking features like: Samba, NFS, VNC, DNS, HTTP,LDAP,TFTP, etc. Mandrake is moving that way but I think new administrators coming from Windows are looking for these features in an operating system. This could be a very significant upgrade.

4. The Menu
Mandrake boasts having over 1800 packages for this distribution. Why when I open my menu do I only see 40. Yeah, I know you can add programs but if you add them all you do not see them on the Menu. nobody does the Menu better than Knoppix. The Menu is packed full of programs and users feel like they are exposed to more programs than any other OS. Linux systems all have this problem, how to develop a menu that displays all of the programs that users can explore. It would be huge, no doubt, but maybe a User Menu and then an Explorer Menu where all of the programs were listed. You could even make connections to programs launched in a terminal like cal.

I guess my point is that Linux has a lot of programs available to the user but the normal user just cannot locate them...what a shame.

Conclusion:

I am observing a change in the Linux area the last three months. Linux users are becoming more demanding in terms of what they receive with a new distribution. Users want three things; new features, stability and security. A new distribution should have upgrades to existing programs and add new features that users are interested in. In this distribution Mandrake was successful in adding some features like drakroam. However, I don feel there are enough new features to warrant a new distribution. Secondly, users are looking for stability. Mandrake has taken a lot of heat over releasing distributions full of bugs, just check the message boards. Unfortunately, I found a number of bugs that would be show stoppers for a business to use Mandrake 10.1, like problems with Control Center. Finally, nobody cares about security in the short run, look at Microsoft, but in the long run security is a very important feature that users are demanding because they are sick of patches and viruses and violations. This area was a strong argument for choosing Mandrake 10.1 as Mandrake continues it's strong commitment to security, except for the firewall being off by default.