[ILUG] Mandrake - it works....but why?

[Barry Redmond]

On 10 Feb 2005 at 9:39, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
> Barry Redmond wrote:
> > [...]
> > Not very reassuring behaviour.  If I'd wanted this kind of thing I would 
> > have stuck with Windows.
> 
> 
> That's quite surprising from where I sit. True, Linux might be _close_ 
> to totally perfect, but, even the best systems in the world have warts.[1]
> 
> Just checking up on which kernel Mandrake uses, I think your version 
> should be 2.6.8.1-12mdk... notice the -12mdk appendation denoting that 
> this kernel is not a vanilla release, but a release that Mandrake 
> themselves have put together and thus should not be the yardstick you 
> measure ftp.kernel.org releases by. I suspect quite strongly, that if 
> you take the time to go and get the latest vanilla 2.6 from 
> http://ftp.kernel.org and engage with compiling your own, it is quite 
> likely this problem can/may be made to go away.
> 
> If you don't feel up to doing that, I would suggest you try an 
> alternative distrobution, Fedora Core 3 and SuSE sprining to mind as the 
> optimum alternatives.
> 
> 
> Bryan
> 
> [1] Plug
> 

I've happily used Slackware for servers for years, with not a GUI on the 
horizon.  Mandrake 10.1 was my first venture into Linux on the 
desktop.

All I wanted was a functioning trouble-free desktop to do my work.  I do 
not expect to have to spend time fiddling with boot parameters to get a 
printer to work, when it works perfectly well if I boot into Windows.  I 
certainly do not expect to have to compile and install a kernel.  If fixing 
a USB problem in Windows required a user to compile and install a 
new Windows kernel we'd all fall around laughing.

What I can't understand is that this USB problem appears to be one 
that a significant number of users have encountered, and yet there is 
nothing (that I could find) from Mandrakesoft about it.

Regards,
Barry Redmond