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Mandrake 9.0© Copyright Darrell Anderson. After being frustrated by the intolerable slowness of Lycoris (Build 46) and KDE 2.2, and my total inability to install either Peanut or Vector Linux, I decided to try Mandrake 9.0. I read several positive reviews. I decided to plunk down cash at a store to obtain the comprehensive package rather than the fiddle with the modestly limited but functional download version. Because I still am in Linux exploratory mode, I decided to perform a full install. Thereafter I performed several installations and reinstallations just to learn and get a feel for how this process works. OpenOffice (1.0x) has to be the world’s all-time slowest program to open. Mandrake did not recognize my wheel mouse and I had to manually edit a configuration file. Mandrake refused to configure my ISA sound card. I wasted a lot of time and energy surfing the net trying to learn how manually configure an ISA sound card. I succeeded but the process was nonsense. Mandrake defaults to LILO for the boot loader. I eventually preferred GRUB. However, with every installation and reinstallation, Mandrake seemed to lack the intelligence to notice that I was using GRUB and not LILO. I had to pay particular attention to the install program to manually change that option. For a day or so I had problems with Mandrake and my computer clock. Mandrake seemed to insist I run with UTC instead of a local time zone. I am not sure what I eventually did, but I know I had to manually run both clock and hwclock from the command line and edit some config files. I find the Mandrake kicker (Start) menus to be confusing. Every (re)installation went well and I had no difficulty partitioning my hard drive as I wanted. Because of my partitioning environment in NT4 using a C: partition for system files, a second C: partition that serves as an alternate emergency boot partition, a D: partition for program files, an E: partition for data files, an L: partition that allows for quick copying and backups, and a K: partition for temp and swap files, I naturally wanted to learn how to provide the best partition setup for Linux. Fortunately, because Linux is based upon file systems and not “drives,” Linux can be easily partitioned and mapped. I learned that the default partitioning for Linux distros is a swap and a main partition (/). Doable and acceptable for the typical user. However, I anticipated further experimenting with additional distros, so I wanted more flexibility. Normally, experienced users recommend to most new users a swap, /home, and / partitions. However, I decided to create partitions for swap, /, /home, /boot, /usr, /opt, /tmp, and /var. I spend almost all of my time logged in as root. I realize that in a real-world production environment I would run as a user and “su” to root to perform administrative tasks, but for now with trying to learn the basic Linux philosophy and structure I do not have the patience to battle being impeded by system restrictions. At this point I am repeatedly editing and copying configuration files as part of my learning curve. Besides, for a dozen years I have been running my Windows systems as “root” and the thought never once bothered me. I understand the philosophy of Unix/Linux, the “root” user, and the multi-user approach, but I do not think that running as root is as such a big issue as so many people pretend to proclaim. At least, not on a single-station, single-user, home system. Running Linux in real-world production mode as a user will arrive at a future date. For now I need to learn. Finis. |
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