Richard Rasker wrote:
> I can't really say all that much about the current situation with other
> distributions, as I've been using Mandrake/Mandrive almost exclusively as
> a desktop OS for at least five years now. But it the past I found it could
> often handle things smoothly where other distributions I tried (Fedora,
> Debian, SuSE) presented problems. I still use Debian too by the way, but
> only for servers; one reason why Debian's hardware support is sometimes
> troublesome is because its "stable" releases often don't support newer
> (<12 months old) hardware. Another reason is the way Debian treats
> closed-source
> drivers, which means that it takes a bit of extra work to get graphics
> acceleration and wireless working.
> Anyway, as I said, I hardly ever encounter hardware problems with
> Mandriva; together with its excellent package manager I find this enough
> of a reason to stick with it.
I don't remember exactly when I started using Mandrake but it should be
getting very close to a decade. I first used Linux in the university.
At the time there where available to the students NextStep machines with 19"
screens (HUGE for the time) and a X terminals powered by a Alfa machines.
These machines where always occupied, ALWAYS. In five years I rarely put my
hands on one of them. There where VERY MANY green text terminals also
connected to Alfa machines (no problem finding a seat for one of these).
There where also many PCs scattered about. Most had Windows 95/98/NT but
several dozen had Linux. The Linux machines could easily connect to the
several servers in the place and work as X terminal, also function as media
players (I first saw Star Wars I on one of these connected to a projector,
my first pirated movie :) ). Needless to say that those where also very
much occupied but not has much as the NextStep with 19" screens.
As for the Windows machines, you could occupy 10 of them and no one would
care. I'm not exaggerating because one of my projects was simulating a
particle detector and it took 10 machines over 9 days to get all the
numbers I needed for my report (my first grid program). I lost count to the
number of times I rebooted the computers because windows kept freezing.
Windows simply was up to that level of load (CPU, graphics, memory,
network, disk all working at high levels for that long). My "love" for
windows started there! By the way, those very same machine got Linux a few
months later and my next grid program run for 12 days in the background
without a single reboot so the hardware was NOT the problem.
OOPS!!! I got way out of topic.
As I was saying :), I first saw Linux in my university and got a Mandrake
disk to try in my personal CRAY machine, a AMD CPU 386 40MHz 8MB RAM, 512
KB Trident card 8bit color, 16bit sound card, 2X CDROM, HDD 210MB, 9600
baud modem.
I was using DOS+Win3.1, made a backup and installed Mandrake Linux in it. I
could call it an upgrade but that would be an understatement. I was in
computer seven heaven. After that all my PCs have been a home (now with a
lot more room to play in) for a very very happy Mandrake/Mandriva Tux.
Tux may not run on old machines but it has a very very VERY sexy walk. :)
Regards
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