“MandrakeSoft PPC developer Stew Benedict has been working hard behind the scenes to give Mac users a look at how Mandrake Linux 9.1 PPC is shaping up. This is a great opportunity to take an early peek at KDE 3.1 Beta2, XFree 4.2.1, Gimp 1.2.3, Koffice 1.2, and many others.” Read more and check out screenshots at MandrakeForum.
Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Cooker) for PPC Availalbe
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
which is more popular these days…red hat, mandrake, or suse?
IIRC mandrake was more popular at one time than red hat and suse is the most popular in europe
just curious
-bytes256
According to our poll (which is of course just a small indication, not a real one), it is Red Hat:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1299
However, that poll was done before Red Hat released 8.0, which I have to admit made a huge impact on many users. I read about many stories of people switching from Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake etc to Red Hat 8.
Even if Mandrake might have been first until 1-2 months ago, after the release of RH 8, I only see Red Hat at least catching up (if not becoming No 1).
On other polls though, Mandrake is still first:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=results&…
http://www.distrowatch.com/ (on the right side “Page hits”)
So, who knows?
Desktop-wise….
Red Hat 8.0 probably has the best Gnome desktop implementation today. Font support is awesome, and many people are impressed with Bluecurve.
SuSE probably has the best KDE desktop implementation today. (And SuSE 8.1 is already available for free FTP installation) From what I’ve read, 8.1 does an outstanding job of hardware detection and is a breeze to install.
Mandrake just won the Linux Journal Reader’s Choice awards, but many people seem to think they have fallen behind RH and SuSE with 9.0. Others think 9.0 is the cat’s meow. They are taking flak over nvidia support. I wish they would ditch the GTK controls and go straight up QT.
All 3 distros are LSB-certified. I’d wager RH is more popular than ever, with Mandrake and SuSE tied for 2nd place market share.
has anyone really sat down and compared yellowdog vs mandrake vs suse?
i’ve only used yellowdog on ppc (a redhat derivative)under the assumption that they do not work on other architectures, so they probably do linux on ppc very well.
but who knows…
Didn’t a few months ago, a Mandrake employee declared Linux on PPC dead, and Mac OS X rulez? Uhmmmm… (dang, I can’t find that article).
Linux PPC is still very much alive, especially on the server…Mac OS X server, as great as it is, still gets edged out by Linux…and with Mac-On-Linux (MOL)…many geeks use both simultaneously…Which is probably the setup i would use if only I could afford one of those sexy tibooks…
-bytes256
Ahh, from the “press release”, this isn’t a “server” OS.
I am using Linux Mandrake 9.0 right now on x86 and I also installed the Xft hack, I never thought I would give this comment for Mandrake 9.0 but it really JUST WORKS! The last time I used Mandrake was Mandrake 7.2 and I was very disappointed and this new Mandrake 9.0 came on a cover disk. I am glad I got it. The fonts also look great when the Xft hack is installed. One con for Mandrake however is that I *HAD* to do an expert install because when I did “recommended install” it didn’t install some important libs such as libz etc so I tried re-installing it again and I chose expert and I chose it to install all of the development libs and it installed everything I need. I got my internet running with no problems but I am wondering how do I play DivX files?
You can find here all the multimedia apps you need :
http://plf.zarb.org/
Just follow the instructions!
Which Xft hack are you talking about?
Thx Strass for that link. I am talking about the Xft hack from the following site: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/ It makes the fonts (in KDE and now abroad) look as good as in Windows (LITEREALLY). They are really good.
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/
Screen shots:
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/sl-shot.png
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/apps-2.png
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dchest/xfthack/fla-compare.html
I am using Nimbus Sans I (Xft) for my standard KDE fonts, looks better then MS Sans Serif (my opinion)
(Adding to the somewhat off-topic posts…)
I’m going to have to stick my neck out and say that I’m (currently) a Closet RedHat user (on my home system.)
This is a hard admission to make, after swearing off of RedHat during the 6.x days, where I can recall statements such as “RedHat is the Windows 3.1 of the Linux world” being bantied around on a regular basis. (Obnote: This was at a time that Windows 95 was undisputed king, so it was meant as a negative reference. Forget the fact that Windows 3.x boots momentously faster than the entire 9x tree…)
I had reluctantly written off OS/2 as dead (about 12 months after blind Freddie could see the fact!) and moved to FreeBSD because at that time it was superior to Linux in nearly every way. (Please, no BSD vs Linux wars…)
Noticing my patterns of choosing the beta in every VHS war, (starting with my Amstrad CPC rather than Commodore 64) I made a switch and jumped on the Linux bandwagon.
RedHat, being the one with the most hype, was my initial choice. I found it extremely simple to install, with its text-mode installation a no-brainer. I still cannot work out why people thought that it was a “hard install.”
Disgusted with the flaws in, what everone lovingly labelled “Dead Rat,” I wandered aimlessly from to Caldera’s OpenLinux to a (very) short stay with TurboLinux, to a time with SuSE that I remember fondly, before resting with Debian for a few years. I had a quick dabble with Mandrake (regretting it immediately, as I could not get any sense of stability) during this time – giving 7.1, 7.2, 8 and (more recently) 8.1 a go. I think this was moreso to waste some potentially productive time, more than anything.
Then Gentoo came along. I think Gentoo is synonymous with “Sweeeeeet!”
Now? RedHat 8 has come out, and it has delivered the goods to meet *my* needs. I don’t play games, I don’t own a TV & I listen to music from a CD player.
I agree with the Anonymous post regarding RH 8. The Gnome desktop is nicely polished. The Bluecurve theme is “smooth,” (but not perfect), and having a readable version of OpenOffice.org is something to die for.
There’s nothing that I need to add about the KDE debate that hasn’t already been said.
I just had to get that off of my chest and come out of the RedHat closet. Before you begin throwing blunt objects, however, may I just add: ‘my heart is still with FreeBSD.’
Linux/PPC was always a kind of second-class-citizen in Linuxland, especially in the views of Mandrake and SuSE.
What I really hope is, given the IBM’s commitment to Linux in general and to PowerPC in particular, and the sexiness factor Apple machines have nowadays, Linux for PPC will be viewed a little better by distros, ISVs and users in general.
(And I’m also hoping for the new version of YDL to come with RedHat’s customizations for GNOME 2.)
rajan r is correct. Mandrake did declare that 8.2 was the final PPC release.
I am happy that they changed their mind though.
SuSE would be the most popular if one could download the iso images. I know that you can download the iso bootdisc and install off of that, but it doesn’t work over PPPoE (only static IP, DHCP). Lock out the DSL customers: Way to go.
Hi you Mandrake users. I would like to know if mandrake has drak tools for file/internet sharing/firewall in text mode. I’m no expert in linux networking and I would like to setup small network in my home, however due to my very old computer (pentium 166), setting up erver in x would be a night mare. Thanks
I have a question about the xfthack. I seem to be the only one really disappointed with the changes, which leads me to believe that I have screwed something up. I always use microsofts Times New Roman font for web sites, and with the freetype2 rpm from the plf konqueror renders that font really nicely, and Times new roman looks just like it should. With the xfthack in place though, the font looks quite different. The thing is I do like the way xfthack renders all the other fonts, so my question is, is there anything I can do to fix this?
Here are some screenshots so you can see what I’m talking about.
http://web.pdx.edu/~elliott/
Look for yourself, http://www.tuxppc.org That is a project a used to work with, Steve also when he has time
John and the boys are still kicking. Curtrently working on the new iMac port. Check it out.
They’re into Cooker 9.1 and I still haven’t gotten the 9.0 DVD I pre-orderd! What’s the deal?
ZERO modem support…… ZERO for iBooks, unlwss you have an antique…….
I have a 400 Mhz Titanium Powerbook with 768 Megs of RAM and a 60 gig harddrive that I’m am dual booting between Mandrake PPC (8.0) and OSX 10.2.
I’m constantly amazed at the speed difference between the two OSes. I’m using WindowMaker, and widows just pop right up with very little delay. I can’t see any delays when moving or resizing then. Launching programs and resizing windows in OSX, on the other hand, is terribly slow.
Unlike OSX, Mandrake 8.0 PPC required some hacking to get everything working correctly. However, once things are setup correctly it works very well, including Airport connections.
My hardware doesn’t allow me to take advantage of Aqua’s Quartz Extreme so the OSX experience for others may be different than mine.
Wow, your Serif text is much more blurer than my Mandrake 9.0 machine (same hack, BTW, same font I assume). There must be something wrong… (BTW, xfthack doesn’t work all that well with italics, I noticed).
Elliot: Why fix something that works at first time?
)
Anyway I don’t know what causes the problem you are experiencing. I have no problems with the xft hack and I am not using any MS fonts.
I just replaced the original file with the hacked and works perfect on my machine.
rajan: xfthack doesn’t work all that well with italics
I haven’t noticed that. Using italics works as good as when using a non-italic font on my machine.