[ILUG] Mandrake 9 CDs available?

[Fergal Daly]

Whenever I read a glowing review of Redhat or Mandrake and how smoothly 
everything works I am always a bit bemused because whenever I install either 
of them I end up swearing uncontrollably within about 5 minutes (I guess I'd 
have similar reaction to other distros if I tried them). It always takes me a 
while to work around the bits and pieces. I'm not doing anything fancy, I 
just try to use the tools provided. It always amazes me that the tools are 
released in the condition they are. I usually end up having to do it by hand. 
It's not such a chore but it's just frustrating to be promised a nice GUI but 
to end up digging around in /etc/sysconfig/wherever-they-put-it-this-time. 

I had read a little bit about how Rehdta 8.0 was a bit smooth on the desktop 
so I decided once again to take it easy and use the various wizards and GUI 
things. That's when I started hitting problems. Here's what I was going to 
enter into their bugzilla until the KDE start menu decided to stay open and 
cover half my screen...

I tried to set up my modem with the nice Network config program. It told me I 
don't have a modem so I selected /dev/ttyS1 manually. Attempting to bring up 
the ppp connection resulted in a nothing much apart from a please wait 
dialogue. So I went back to the old reliable kppp which had no problem 
communicating with my modem, however trouble struck again when I realised 
that redhat's little ppp thingy had actually managed to bring up a ppp device 
(I have know idea what was on the other end of the non-existent serial line) 
and had given me an IP address of 10.122.122.122. Where these numbers came 
from is a mystery to me but because this mysterious ppp0 was a default route, 
the pppd started by kppp was not happy.

A quick "sudo service network restart" later and my routes were back a single 
line for "lo". kppp got through and authenticated no bother but I couldn't 
browse the web or ping things. It seems that selecting "high" security for 
firewall while installing means no traffic in or out, a warning about that 
might have been nice. So finally I'm online and happy(ish). Every time I 
restart the machine I have to turn the firewall settings down from high 
again.

Time to grab some updates. I clicked on the rather nifty flashing exclamation 
mark to get at the update tool. It asked me to register or login. To 
register, you need to choose a username, a password, confirm the password and 
give an email address. It says that if you're already a member that a 
username and password is all you need. I'm already a member so in with my 
username and password and click continue. It asked me to confirm the 
password. At this point I knew it was hopeless, as far as computer was 
concerned, I was going to register rather than just log on. No attempt was 
made to log me on with the username and password. I confirmed the password 
and tried again. Now it wanted an email address, I gave it the one I used 
when I registered originally knowing that this just wasn't going to work. I 
was rewarded with an "unkown error" and an "OK" button which closed down the 
update tool. This is the front screen of one of the most important GUI tools 
in Redhat and it just doesn't even make an attempt to do what it says it 
will.

While trying to submit these bugs to redhat, KDE went mad on me and blocked 
half my screen with several levels of the start menu.

I can't get the preferences for the external task bar in KDE.

When I go into Chinese mode the icon on my desktop for xterm stops working.

KMail doesn't display Chinese emails properly, that worked fine on 7.3. 

Pasting into some KDE dialogs doesn't work.

I know it's a .0 release but if that's what I find in the first half hour, I 
just don't see the point in wasting more time. Plus, I actually prefer 
Mandrake it's just the CDs I have for it was dodgy. I know I'm going to have 
a few problems with Mandrake too but maybe this'll be the one that just 
works. Plus Mandrake comes with lots of weird libraries that are handy for 
getting DVD players and other stuff working,

F