redhat or mandrake?

[Master of Reality]

is there much of a difference between linux mandrake and redhat?

or should i just spin aroun d a pic whichever one i happen to point at?  :confused:

[voidmain]

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  You are going to hear a lot of people say they like Mandrake, I prefer RedHat.  Try them both.

Mandrake originally was just RedHat with some customizations.  It now is really it's own distro but still very similar to RedHat. I personally have not had good experiences with Mandrake (others have not had bad experiences). Of course I've had some snags in various releases of RedHat as well, none of them hard to overcome mind you.

[Master of Reality]

Does anyone have any opinions on the Front end i should use, Gnome or KDE?
I havent used linux in a long time and the one i was using was pissing me off...(I cant remember which one)

[voidmain]

Try them both.  They both can be installed at the same time, just select which one you want to use when you log in.  You can run Gnome apps in KDE and KDE apps in Gnome.  I prefer KDE as the desktop and I think most of the people on this site have a similar preference.  Of course there are more than just KDE and Gnome. I also like Enlightenment but that is seriously different than the "Windows" type of system.

[Centurian]

Hey,

is there much of a difference between linux mandrake and redhat?

or should i just spin aroun d a pic whichever one i happen to point at?   :confused:  [/QUOTE]

I would have to say Mandrake 8.1 personally. I had the opportunity to experience both today and find Mandrake a complete pleasure to setup and use.

Later
Centurian

[Master of Reality]

well.. i happen to have mandrake 8.1 on CD.
so that is what i shall try
  :cool:

[Leodak]

you might wanna try blackbox as a window manager, it's simple and clean, http://blackbox.alug.org/  but it takes a little getting used to

[voidmain]

Blackbox looks like just the ticket to speed up my Laptop... Have you used it?  KDE is pretty clunky for my slow laptop but it's bearable. Of course it's no slower than Winblows.

[lost]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
Blackbox looks like just the ticket to speed up my Laptop... Have you used it?  KDE is pretty clunky for my slow laptop but it's bearable. Of course it's no slower than Winblows.

Good minimalistic windowmanager would of course be Windows Maker.  Highly customizable and very small footprint.  Blackbox is right up there with small, minimalistic and useable.  Could always go twm if you really want to punish yourself though.
 

[voidmain]

I am very familiar with Windowmaker and twm already (8 years ago twm was about the only Window manager that would run on Linux, at least until fvwm came out).  I despise twm and Windowmaker is ok but I prefer kwm, the screen shots on Blackbox looked pretty cool.  Just wondering if it was as mature as Windowmaker?  It claims to be able to run KDE apps.  Does it have any problems doing so?

Actually, I just installed WindowMaker on my laptop and it *is* the ticket. Now my laptop seems as snappy as my AMD 1600 (well not quite). (-; It runs KDE and GNOME apps just fine (Konqueror and Evolution being my favorite). kwm is way too clunky and slow on my laptop for some reason.  Thanks for reminding me about WindowMaker!  In fact after using it again I realize that I don't use most of the "features" of KDE/kwm. I might just switch my other machines over to WindowMaker, why waste all those CPU cycles unnecessarily?

The main reason I got on the KDE/kwm kick was so I could show Windows users that Linux can be very much like Windows.  But why be like Windows and be bloated when you don't have to be?

[ January 31, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Leodak]

quote: Blackbox looked pretty cool. Just wondering if it was as mature as Windowmaker? It claims to be able to run KDE apps. Does it have any problems doing so?

yea, i've run plenty of kde apps with it just fine, and i've never really used window maker before, maybe i'll check it out

[penguin]

I reccomend mandrake! I bought the power pack for about

[badkarma]

I'm a SuSE user and literally threw away my mandrake disks right after when I tried to install it on my second pc, right after the point where it could only make 39mb free to install it on (while SuSE had no    problems shrinking my wincrap partition) but right now that pc is running slackware so I can toy around a bit with it. I had a friend who had installed mandrake on his own and threw it off his pc after a week orso, I just installed SuSE this weekend on his pc and he's absolutely extatic about the ease of use of it (plus the fact that he can play rtcw at 50+ fps really did it   )

my 2 eurocents

[Druid]

See the threadMandrake Install on SCSI System
Mandrake has almost put me off Linux for good.

[ February 12, 2002: Message edited by: Druid ]

[lu666s]

In my experience, there are few things that mandrake is finicky about (VIA KT chipsets), albeit in your case, without step-by-step details, it is hard to judge.

You can always try another distro, RedHat, Elx, Lycoris (Redmond), SuSE. I have about 4 desktop and 3 server types in my cache and if one does not work, I try another one. There are some differences, but it's all linux.

I think that in your case, SuSE may work well.