Okay, I finally got Mandrake 8.0 completely downloaded
and installed. Overall, I would say it's a success.
We've had a lot of people posting about problems and I
know that has discouraged some from trying 8.0. But
if you have a similar situation as me with a box that
can afford the risk, I actually recommend giving 8.0 a
try.
I installed on:
512 Megs PC-133 RAM
Intel Pentium III 866 MHz
Asus CUSL2 mobo (with Intel 815E chipset)
Hercules Prophet II (GeForce 2 GTS w/ 64 Megs DDR)
30 gig IBM ATA 100 hard drive
Pioneer 16x DVD drive
Yamaha 8/4/24 CDRW
Soundblaster Live!
Linksys EtherFast 10/100 NIC (LNE100TX)
Logitech wireless mouse + wheel and wireless keyboard
Viewsonic 19in PS790
Hardware not yet functioning:
Sigma Hollywood Plus DVD decoder
Intel PocketPC Webcam
Overall installation went pretty smoothly. Most of my
hardware was detected and set up without problems.
When Mandrake loaded it was attractive, stable, and
fast.
I did not run into any major issues. Programs I
tested seemed to launch and function properly. I
remembered someone having GL problems and mentioning
TuxRacer as an example. After loading nvidia's
detonator drivers for Linux, I tried TuxRacer. It ran
perfectly (and the music is very cool!). Sound seems
to be working almost flawlessly with most applications
utilizing all four speakers + subwoofer. The only
"flaw" is that it is slightly quieter than in Windows.
Adjustments to the sound mixer application quickly
and easily brought the volume to acceptable levels
(but never quite as loud and crisp as windows).
For those of you that were having mild problems with
the Linksys ethernet card in 7.2 like I was, you will
be happy to know that 8.0 installation detected and
installed Linksys and my network (Internet through
LAN) flawlessly and easily. If you are using the
LNE100TX, you will not have a problem with 8.0.
There were a few small issues with 8.0, but nothing
overwhelming (for me!).
If I chose the Logitech driver during installation, my
mousewheel would not function. I found that I had to
choose the Generic PS/2 with wheel driver. If you are
using the cordless Logitech wheelmouse, select the
generic driver and all will be fine.
I loaded KDE and Gnome. Both seemed to have nice
improvements and ran fine. In Gnome you have to
answer a few basic questions for Eazel, but no big
deal. When I exited Gnome, though, my kdm did crash.
I'll have to look into that further.
Hardware configuration reports a list of unknown Intel
devices. I suspect this is my chipset. Everything
seems to be functioning properly. So, I do not think
this is a big deal. The same thing occurred for me in
7.2.
My Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card is detected by the
Hardware configurator, but at this time it doesn't
appear to be functional. Sourceforge has some
experimental drivers for it that I will try over the
weekend. Anyone interested can check them out.
However, the HOWTO stresses the immaturity of these
drivers so it would be inappropriate to expect
Mandrake to support this card at this time.
My USB Intel PocketPC Webcam was not detected at all
buy the Hardware Configurator. However, this webcam
uses a progressive scan CCD to take its photos. I
haven't yet found any projects for such a webcam. So,
again, I do not expect Mandrake to support this any
time soon.
The only real issue that I had was that (believe it or
not) when looking at certain webpages using certain
fonts, those fonts would be messed up. Even more
surprising is that I tried this with Konqueror and
Netscape 4.77 and while the problem exists in both
environments, it is far worse in Konqueror. With
Konqueror, the fonts were almost unreadable (remember
this was only certain fonts on certain webpages).
An example of a page that made fonts display poorly
for me is the following:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html
If anyone can check that page and report whether their
fonts are messed up too, that would be greatly
appreciated. Specifically, the narrative at the top
was very bad.
I did edit /etc/X11/fs/config to list the 100dpi fonts
first (making them the default as discussed on
mandrakeuser.org). In 7.2 this always made a
significant improvement for me. However, this seemed
to make no difference for me with 8.0.
Because the downloaded version of Mandrake 8.0 does
not include the nvidia detonator drivers, the
installation must install using the "nv" driver. I
believe that "nv" does NOT support anti-aliasing and
so I thought that might be my problem. I wondered if
maybe when 8.0 was installing if it somehow turned off
anti-aliasing because it had to use the "nv" driver.
I installed the NVidia detonator driver which does
support anti-aliasing, but if I need to somehow enable
anti-aliasing, I don't know how. Can anyone help me
with this problem? Is there a way I can test my
anti-aliasing to verify for certain if it is enabled?
If it is indeed disabled, how do I enable it?
I am confident that the nvidia detonator driver is
loaded properly. I did make the necessary changes to
XF86Config-4. I did change the names of the old
MesaGL drivers before installing the nvidia drivers.
I did an lsmod and verified that the NVidia module is
indeed loaded. Also, GL games load and run smoothly
(inferring glx loaded properly).
After installation I did install many packages that I
apparently missed during the installation (maybe I
should have chosen individual package selection). I
used the Software Manager (or whatever it's called)
from the Mandrake Control Center. It was fast,
stable, and attractive. Installing software from the
CD was very easy and intuitive using this tool.
However, it appears I am supposed to use this for
updating as well. MandrakeUpdate seems as if it has
been completely replaced. I successfully configured a
server (ftp.stealth.net) for it to search for updates.
However, no updates were ever reported (as far as I
could tell). Maybe I don't have packages that require
updates installed, but I thought that at least Samba
had a new update.
While Software Manager excels in installation from the
CD, I didn't think it was as intuitive for updating as
MandrakeUpdate was. I did not have any stability
issues with Software Manager as many had reported
having with MandrakeUpdate, though. Most likely, this
"lack of intuitiveness" is due to me being a moron,
however. haha... I will search Mandrake's demo site
to see if there is any information there.
I also was mildly disappointed (although it's no big
deal) with the new graphical bootup. I preferred
Aurora because it would list the services that were
started making it considerably easier to read if one
was interested. Also, Aurora allowed me to change my
boot level if necessary. I'll have to look further
into this issue as well.
Finally, the only other strange occurrence was that I
told Grub during installation to make the console
1024x768. This worked flawlessly in 7.2, but did not
work in 8.0. I suppose this could have easily been
user error. Does anyone know what file I need to edit
to fix this?
But as you can see, these issues are very small.
Mandrake install went very well. It went smoother
than my 7.2 install. I am pleased with the results.
A lot of work was put into improving the appearamce of
the environment. Every program I used seemed to work
flawlessly. I had the latest of my favorite
applications. The system (thus far) seems to be fast
and stable. The configuration tools in general are
intuitive and powerful.
If you're running an Intel based system similar to
mine, I think you will be pleased with the upgrade. I
would recommend giving it a try if you are not running
a critical system. While many are having issues with
their AMD based systems (this is unfortunate), it (so
far) seems to be working great with mine.
Take care.
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