Dear Friends,
Got myself a dvd rom and the linux distros are now being tried out one
by one.
First the live cds were tried out. Knoppix 3.2 and Cool Linux. Knoppix
is fairly good for a general live os setup. Cool Linux is a Russian
distro and comes with a dvd player icon on the desktop itself. On
booting, it gives a big list of boot options of different screen
resolutions and kernel versions. This is a very usefull feature. This
software is worth atleast to have a close look.
The main software tried out was Mandrake 10.1. This is a 3 cd iso set
and initially the installation does look dull with a low resolution
keyboard only type interface. It had boot loader options like loading in
the mbr or on the root partition. I wrongly selected the root partition
and after reboot, nothing could be booted and I only got a grub prompt.
The rescue option in the cd1 only reloads the bootloader, does not allow
any changes. So the os was reloaded and this time the mbr option was
selected. The os was loaded with the 'workstation' type installation.
On reboot, it gave me choices of linux, and windows. Mandrake uses lilo
by default. I tried to point to the rhel installation in /etc/lilo.conf
but the lilo command reports failures. A peculiar feature of Mandrake is
that root cannot log into the X mode. On typing a root password, the
login window only giggles and wiggles. The root has console access only.
In the console, a new user was created and this user gets X login and
desktop. My sound card was detected without any hiccups.
There is a very good all-in-one control centre that allows you to
configure everything. It asks for a root password for access. You are
still in user mode only. In this control centre there is a bootloader
selection option and I chose grub on my root partition. This brought
back my favourite loader and the /boot/grub/menu.lst was modified to
point to the rhel os. Everything perfect.
After the initial speedbreakers, I find that this is the most compatible
distro to the new P4 systems. It has audio, video (media) players, a
video editor too. The video player can play a video cd smoothly with
excellent picture and sound with full screen mode too. There is a dvd
play option too but I don't have a video dvd to test. The lx300 printer
too got setup. My external modem gets setup in a jiffy using kppp.
There are minor problems of no drivers available for my canon D646U
scanner and the canon digicam. But as time goes by this may be available
soon. There is a firewall that keeps you protected. The default desktop
is the latest kde 3+ with nice little utilities. Open office is the
latest 1.3 version.
If anyone has a ppd file for lx300, please mail it to me. The
linuxprinting site does not have it but it says that it can be available
in your windows partition too, though its not in my xp nor in my winme.
I have misplaced the driver cd. This file can be added to my driver in
mandrake and this would enhance printing features.
On a scale of 1 to 10, this distro gets between 7 and 8.
Regards,
Rony.