by Same system as in the SuSE 7.3 review.
*************************Mandrake 8.1*******************************
Mandrake comes on 3 CD's with the very latest versions of software,
which can be good or can be bad.
Mandrake installed fine, recognized the Soundblaster and ignored the
Midiman card.
Unfortunately like SuSE, sound was non-existant and when I tried using
drakconf I was greeted with a locked up system.
In fact Mandrake seems to have mastered the art of locking up a
system.
The same system that SuSE ran ok on, Mandrake does not seem to be
stable on.
Mandrake didn't work with my scanner but at least identified the wheel
mouse correctly.
Mandrake seems to have the best looking font's and screens. Everything
is crisp and bright and at least as good as Win2k, but not as good as
Windows XP.
I tried the update tool but it locked me out and reset switch was
needed.
Mandrake also seems more sluggish compared to SuSE, at least on a PIII
850mhz with 512m ram.
It is quite noticeable in fact.
In addition Mandrake hangs for a long time when initializing my eth0
device for some reason. It's all DHCP and automatic so I don't know
what is wrong with it. The card does work however.
I played around with Mandrake for a while but to be honest I don't
like it too much and SuSE was much better, which doesn't really say
much.
So much for Mandrake and on to Redhat 7.2.
I will post my comparisons of all Linux distributions tested in my
final post.
Spammy Davis