[NCLUG] Looking for user reviews and installation CD-ROMs

[kensharon.morris at att.net]

I upgraded from Mandrake 7.0 to 7.1 and it loaded
great and the LILO put itself where it should be
without disturbing my windows directory/install.
7.0 didn't like 2 disk drives (Win on C: and Linux on D:)
but 7.1 has no problem....only annoyance is number lock
is turned back on and menus are slightly different which
you have to get use to...and background was changed.

Running on K6-300, 96mhz, 3.2gwin, 10gLinux drives.

Ken
> On Monday 06 November 2000 05:55 pm, Milind Kamble wrote:
> > Hi,
> >   Just joined this mailing list in order to try out
> > Linux. Can anyone comment about the merits/demerits of
> > the following distributions:
> > .. Redhat 7.0
> > .. Mandrake 7.1 and/or 7.2
> > .. Turbolinux 6.0
> >
> > Can anyone lend me Redhat or Mandrake cds to try them
> > out? I have Turbolinux 6.0 and wanted to compare
> > whether  the others are better in terms of
> > installation and maintainence.
> 
> I have installed Red Hat 7.0, using CheapBytes CDs, so I have enough 
> experience to give a halfway clueful first impression.
> 
> The installation had a major glitch - Anaconda came with a bug that 
> causes a crash with a Python error dump in the middle of installation, 
> after you've formatted your partitions and before it starts installing 
> packages, which happens if you try installing on a system (like mine) 
> with an unmodified partition table (no Anaconda, I don't want to 
> repartition, I like it the way it is.)  Fortunately, Red Hat has been 
> good about providing fixes, so I downloaded the fix, put it on a fix 
> floppy, booted the RH install cd with a "linux updates" on the LILO 
> line, and that solved the problem.
> 
> There are several other known major bugs with fixes available on the 
> Red Hat site (for example, the update daemon that runs in the 
> background leaks file handles and will crash your system after a few 
> days, either install the errata or disable the daemon.)  Other than 
> that, RH7 seems to work acceptably.  I was able to configure it to boot 
> into KDE, set up my networking and get online without too much hassle.  
> I did install KDE 2.0, which didn't come with RH7 due to bad timing, 
> though the RH7 CDs come with a KDE 2.0 beta in their previews section, 
> along with a 2.4 pre release kernel and some other goodies.
> 
> As far as day-to-day usage goes, I haven't had any major problems after 
> the installation.  KDE 2.0 still needs some bug fixes, but is pretty 
> stable at this point, good enough for government work.  The same can be 
> said for RH 7.0.  As far as the compiler goes, RH7 comes with two 
> compilers: the 2.96 compiler that has been *ahem* discussed at length.  
> After using it to build a few things, I have concluded it is Good 
> Enough for me.  It also comes with a kgcc compiler which is used to 
> compile the kernel, apparently there is some problems with 2.96 dealing 
> with the kernel.
> 
> All in all, I'd say it's working well, for a .0 release.  Provided you 
> make backups and pay attention to the errata on Red Hat's web site it's 
> good enough for tinkering.
> 
> Doug
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