Re: 10.2 Beta 2 DVD: First impressions

I am with Richard Brooklyn on this one. Only thing I'd like to ask him 
is not to advocate removing firefox from the distro. Apart from my 
predilection for it, I am happier with two surfboards.

And oh, yes, I am glad the FlashPlayer problems in konqueror are not of 
my making!

_______________________________________________
Yehudi Levine
Nijenheim 64-01
3704 BN Zeist
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 30 695 1729
Fax: +31 84 711 6792





Dave Ellis wrote:

> Richard Brooklyn wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm probably going to get told off here for not reporting on 
>> bugzilla. But I find that thing generally impossible to navigate, 
>> bugs tend to get ignored on there anyway unless they are for x86, and 
>> with the amount of 'similar' bugs that thing throws up (numbering in 
>> the hundreds), I simply don't have the patentice to trawl through the 
>> thing to check every time I post if the bug is going to be ignored 
>> anyway.
>>
>> I generally just want to be giving feedback anyway, nothing I post 
>> here is a show-stopper, and I would personally like to get some 
>> debate going in here, as this list is fairly quite. I apologise to 
>> anyone I may offend.
>>
>> Generally, I find the release to be of very high quality. I find 
>> applications crash a lot less often than they did with 10.1, which 
>> was my main motivation for trying 10.2.
>>
>> I'm mightily impressed by the way the distro handles 32-bit 
>> applications, namely Cedega, which I use a lot. Kudos for that.
>>
>> Minor bugs I've found:
>> I run a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. The installer didn't seem 
>> to realise this, and wanted to push my monitor to 1600x1280, which it 
>> can't handle. I had to manually correct this. Upon booting, when the 
>> system asked for my mandrakeclub details, only (at a guess) 1024x768 
>> of the screen appeared occupied in the top left corner. The rest was 
>> black until KDE started.
>>
>> Changing IP address was a pain. After changing from DHCP to a static 
>> address (the installer shouldn't assume I want this, just because 
>> it's available on the network), no programs loaded at all. I think 
>> this is due to X not handling the ip change very well, and programs 
>> were unable to communicate with the X server until I logged out and 
>> back in again.
>>
>> The Kaffine media player always segfaults when I tell it to quit. 
>> Bringing up the KDE crash dialogue.
>>
>> amaroK refuses to work with the xine plug-in which it's configured to 
>> use by default. Details in 
>> http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14299
>>
>> I don't understand why both Konqueror AND firefox are included. 
>> Surely there shouldn't be competing products on the default 
>> installation ... ?
>>
>> There are some graphical glitches in the boot-up splash screens, but 
>> I assume these are likely to be present in the i586 release as well. 
>> So I assume it will be fixed soon.
>>
>> These are hardly show-stoppers. But I feel that if the devs don't 
>> know about them, they won't be fixed. Of course, if I've reported 
>> complete crap here, feel free to correct me. 10.1 was a personal 
>> disappointment for me, I would often find stuff randomly crashing for 
>> no reason, 10.2 is shaping up to be a solid release with predicable 
>> crashes (sorry for the bad humour, I'm British).
>>
>> I really love this distro. When my girlfriend saw Linux, and 
>> generally how secure and spyware free it was, she fairly quickly 
>> wanted 'the cute penguin'. Mandrake really is doing a lot for the 
>> Linux community by getting non-geeks like my girlfriend interested in 
>> Linux.
>>
>> Regards,
>> -Richard.
>>
>>  
>>
> This is not good news at all.  I've read some issues on the Club forum 
> as well, which leads me wonder "what kind of crap product is Mandrake 
> trying to push out the door?"
>
> I ask this because:
>
> The mixer issue in x86-64 also shows up in x86 10.2 RC1m  (whoops)
> SoundBlaster has issues (related to mizer hanging on start and shutdown)
> Apps and libraries that should have been updated, but weren't.
>
> In the past, Mandrake has put together awesome products, but I can't 
> help but feel that quality is slipping with this release.  Quality not 
> only in x86 but x86-64!  I'm downloading the DVD release of beta 2, 
> but I'm not even sure I am going to load it after reading this report.
>
> I've played with some other x86-64 distros that look good and solid.  
> Fedora and CentOS top the list as OS's that have it together.  Let's 
> hope Mandrake gets this attitude and gets the release right, or i fear 
> an exodus to Fedora or CentOS may be in order.
>
>
>