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Mandrake lunix12/17/2023 ![]() It was sold in CD format as "plug and play" and seriously it took like 2 weeks for me to get it to a point where it would allow me to log in (/usr wouldn't mount automatically, if I remember right - found a small slip of paper months later explaining that it had to be added to /etc/fstab). If any other old sods come along and disagree feel free to voice those opinions! This was a long time ago and these are just my recollections. This was probably undeserved considering 99% of Red Hat RPMs could be installed on Mandrake and the underlying Kernel was practically identical to Red Hat. I think it also suffered from not being considered a "serious" server distro as a result. I have the feeling that Mandrake made a huge impact being one of the first and most successful distros to really focus on Linux on the desktop. ![]() It also marketed itself in book stores as an OS (other Linux distros were in book stores but usually as a disk in a book or just a bunch of disks in a box not as a well packaged OS "product" with instructions). Mandrake tried very hard to be user friendly with the GUI, tools and installer. There was a rumor that Mandrake was started by people from Red Hat but I honestly never bothered to confirm or deny this. The main difference between the two was that Red Hat was interested in being stable and cutting edge while Mandrake wanted to be accessible to non-techs. Mandrake repackaged a LOT of the Red Hat distro. When it came out I did play around with it a few times and I do recall a little history. A special thanks to everyone for not turning this thread into a flame war. I think it is remarkable how similar our stories are. I am still thoroughly enjoying reading everything. People are sharing all sorts of experiences, some good and some bad. Reading all of your responses, I finding it interesting to see how just far GNU/Linux has come from having to manually bootstrap and compile everything, to getting sound and video to work. Great responses, keep 'em coming!ĮDIT_2: I am actually astonished with both the quantity and quality of all the responses. By the looks of things a lot of us have the same sort of starting out story. I thought it might be interesting to hear other people's responses to these questions.ĮDIT_0: I'm going to bed, I'll check back in the morning.ĮDIT_1: I'm back. I was thinking about these things today, though I don't know why. The learning curve was fairly steep, but I kept using it through the years. When I had expressed interest in the area of computers, someone gave me some distributions to "try out". As I recall, I was intrigued by computers, both hardware and software. I started out using Linux at a fairly young age and I cannot for the life of me remember why. Does anyone else keep the distributions that have downloaded over then years? I have a binder full of them. I think I might even have the original CD that was given to me. ![]() The first distribution that I really used heavily was Knoppix either 2.1 or 2.2 I honestly cannot remember anything (good or bad) about it. One thing about Rosa that did amuse me – I caught myself thinking “hmmm, a Russian distro, I wonder if it can be trusted?” and then remembered that of all the nations in the world, they don’t come close to America for lack of trustworthiness – where big software houses have and continue to work with the “alphabet agencies” against the interests of the “man in the street”.When I was younger and just starting to use Linux I was only exposed to a few distributions. So, as polished as it is, it’s not on my computer. I’m a bit of a config freak and I like my desktop to look exactly the way I want and I have and will continue to reject distros because they lock out that level of configurability. Further evidence of the loss of direction currently on display in software design, where the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater (along with the towels, the bath mat, the sink and the toilet). There is no justification on earth for a desktop OS to have a Start menu that takes up the entire screen. You can add a normal menu but the icon for the silly menu remains and cannot be deleted. It takes up the entire screen – on a 1600×900, 20″ monitor. The “menu” that appears when you click on the “Start” button is ridiculous. ![]() One can add an empty panel at the top and fill it, but “right click > Panel Settings > Screen Edge” is a nice way of changing things and the loss of that functionality is hard to justify. I ran into a couple of problems though – the panel at the bottom of the screen cannot be moved. Rosa is a fine looking distro, as polished as elementaryOS is.
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