Is Mandrake Linux any good?

[rokkon]

I just found an old 10gig drive under my bad, and since I always wanted to get my head into linux it seemed to fit
Now I wonder which distro to go... I have not the slightest clue bout Linux or in what each distro differs, let alone which is the right one for me
Debian, Gentoo, SuSe, RedHat, Mandrake... argh!

In a kiosk around the corner I just saw a mag for 10 bucks coming with a set of mandrake disks, so that would save me the hassle of downloading and stressing my monthly free traffic volume.

Is it good for music? Good for people who don't know anything?

[valley]

good for people who don't know anything - it isn't the lightest distro though, so not the very best choice for a DAW.

I like mandrake though - we use it extensively at work, and it is pretty good to us over all.

[MDMAchine]

Alright Mandrake is not bad, and easier to use for guys just getting into the linux land. Also considerations for new guys is Xandros, and Linspire. I beleive for Xandros and Linspire you pay like $5 a month and they have services which install the stuff you want for you.

Alot of poeple bash this, but if your new and dont know how to get a program, compile it, build dependencies, then finally install it. This is actually handy, even to those who know how to do all that.

Anyways Mandrake is along those lines of a nice GUI, and easy to use as well. Defintly Make your cpu dual boot, so you have your regular windows available, and just take your time learning all the little things about linux. My predection is in the next few years will become a stronger OS with more companys porting over for it.

Another thing to look into is winex, for linux which is supposed to install your win progs and work! Worth a shot I suppose. Also There is the GNUALA linux distro which is for music. I tried it and didnt like it myself, but its not bad. Most of the sounds stuff you get with it, you can use in any other linux so check that out too...


Good luck...

[scamme]

Another thing to look into is winex, for linux which is supposed to install your win progs and work! Worth a shot I suppose.


Good luck...

Sounds promesing, where can iget it?

[VitaminD]

I have mandrake 10.1 and must say since its my first trip into linuxland it has been both interesting and scary..

interesting in that it comes with a very user-friendly gui.. feels almost like a litestep skin for windows..

scary in that I have no clue on how to setup anything in it.. building stuff.. compiling etc.. as a result I dont even have sound setup in mandrake yet..

I downloaded it at uni where the connection is free and fast (a little over a megabyte per second) so it was no biggy..

I also have knoppix which is pretty cool to just start doinking around in linux.. boots and runs from it's own cd and was only 1/3rd of the download of mandrake 10

[MDMAchine]

www.transgaming.com

http://sourceforge.net/projects/winex

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... 1/1/109396

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/print18808.html

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_product ... p?id=12435


ok you have regular wine (windows emulator) and the big hype is:

WineX-Point2Play where you put in any install disk, and it will install it "right out the box" to your linux. Those are some links, and im sure you can google it for more info....

I think wine is free, and point2play cost like 20 bucks or sumthing...

[tetraplan]

I've found that you really need to find out about what you want to do with your Linux box.
Each distro has pro's and con's. For office-desktops, I'd say Mandrake and SuSE (and probably Fedora) are good, If you want to find out about every little bit that makes your computer tick (and have a month or two to spare) Gentoo would be a good choice.
For Audio/video-stuff I'd go for AGNULA/DeMuDi or Planet CCRMA. The former is based on Debian, the second on Fedora, which might influence your choice.

I wanted to install Planet CCRMA but this weekend I found out SATA-drives hate M-Audio cards so I'll end up moving all my audio stuff and Sonar projects to the disk I had reserved for Linux. Beh. I hate computers.

I installed DeMuDi on a friend's computer and it was pretty simple. The installer will guide you through the process and apt-get will get any updates. I'm not too fond of the Gnome desktop (one of the reasons I preferred Planet CCRMA) but it's familiar enough for a windows-user to find your way around in.
Important tip: learn all about xterms, apt-get and what ./configure does. It will make your life more pleasant. Mac OS X taught me a lot about that.

There is a turnkey package for Mandrake A/V, look around on Sourceforge. No idea if it's any good. Most A/V people seem to go for Planet CCRMA or DeMuDi (with a slight preference for DeMuDi).

Groet, Erik

[GaryG]

If you can find a UK magazine 'Linux Format' in Berlin then this months issue has a distribution of AGNUALA with lots of audio apps on its CDs...

Nothing you can't download I guess but nice to have it all in one place with instructions.

.g

[odo]

think it`s the best linux
Odo.

[acousmod]

There is also the Dynebolic Linux CD, with a lot of powerfull A/V softwares, I think much usable than AGNULA :

http://www.dynebolic.org/

[rokkon]

thanks for the comments, and thanks for confusing me with even more distros
DeMuDi looks interesting, though I like that Mandrake is said to be simple for newbie folks like me. I also suppose using a popular mainstream distro keeps things easier for the beginner..(?).
Lindows is interesting, but I rather get a free os.

I think I'll go mandrake, though I've already read that installing the geforce drivers on mandrake 10.1 is a nightmare... I'll better get me a bigpack of aspirin

btw, I'm just surfing KVR with Knoppix, I got the cd today
It's a nice expierience but also frustrating, some things that should work and are explained in numberous tutorials just won't work without giving proper reason. That's what I love about computers
Also many webpages, including kvr, just look plain ugly and are hard to read.
Thouh that could be fixed with installing the MS TT fonts, if I only found out how to stop dpkg from whining and get it working

[Mr.Freeze]

Wait!

Fresher than Agnula's DeMuDi 1.1.1 Live CD, SuSE 9.2 LiveCD Audio has just been released and bundled on the latest issue of the german Keyboards magazine (see details here in german). You can still get your hands on it as it's free software (in english though). Use your favorite ftp client (ex: FileZilla under Windows) to download the CD ISO image:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/live-c ... -Audio.iso

Note: you'll want to verify the integrity of your downloaded version by checking its MD5 sum using MD5summer under Windows before burning it.

You may have a try for both as it's a great way to see what has been updated on one year. I tried all three (including dyne:bolic linked above, which I didn't find relevant). I didn't try APODIO, fearing it may be as awkward as the website.

If you are ready to dive in, take a look before at the wide choice of distributions. To fiddle with music on Linux, each of these distributions is dependent to specific repositories, which are servers from where you can update your music-related apps (and more general ones too) ala windowsupdate, in a few clicks. These are (in a "distro / repository" way of listing):
- Mandrake / Thac (select the page from your version number then go to the "Sounds" page)
- Fedora Core / Planet CCRMA
- Agnula DeMuDi (debian-based) or ReHMuDi (RedHat-based) / Agnula

I won't advertise for any in particular. It's up to anyone's cuppa, like always... I'd just say I'm quite familiar with Fedora Core 1 / Planet CCRMA, a friend of mine is happy with Mandrake 10.0 / Thac...

When it comes to the usability of Linux for music, I won't spread words any longer. I still have XP aside on a dual-boot, even if it's mostly compulsory for my job, as Tracktion available for free still hasn't its bug-free equivalents in Muse or Rosegarden or Ardour, but it's very close! I'll call articles from Sound On Sound instead of biased visions:
- Linux And Music - Open Source Music Software & The AGNULA Project
- Using Linux For Recording & Mastering - Mirror Image Studios

Whatever your choice is, there is a community of people to help you (including myself), using mailing-lists, forums... For example linux-audio-user, PlanetCCRMA... Be sure to browse the archives before posting.

Last but not least, to avoid drowning you among a lot of links, here are a few, the most relevant:
- ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) (the ASIO driver equivalent, a must-browse to see if your soundcard is compliant)
- Sound & MIDI Software For Linux (the most comprehensive Linux and Music related ressource database)
- Quicktoots (the "getting started" tutorials)

[gruberman]

I use Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/). It's easy to setup with a graphical install. It finds all the common hardware and you don't have to partition your hd and can leave it to Ubuntu if you want.

It's Debian based and uses apt-get, so you don't have to manually compile every program you want to use. It has a great user base who gladly answer any questions and I recommend you to visit #Ubuntu on irc.freenode.net.

The fun part with linux is that you can do it the hard way, (compile Gentoo, ARGH!) or take the newbie friendly route like Fedora and Mandrake.

[gruberman]

BTW, there are Live CD's which let you run Linux from a CD without any install Great if you want to try linux out and not worry about crashing your box completely.

[fake]

Took the plunge last week and installed Agnula's DeMuDi on a 12gb partition.
The install was flawless, picked up everything and it works.
Because Linux is being developed fast, some of the music apps now have newer versions out but the Debian libraries need upgrading before I can ./configure them. That's what I'm now learning, how to do stuff.

DeMuDi is good but can be buggy and don't seem to be configured very well. Like some others I'm not keen on the gnome desktop, prefer KDE. It has no fat32 support so no file sharing, however the cd burner works fine. Unfortunatly the debian kernel version is classed as "unstable".

The way "Jack" works is fantastic, everything gets routed automatically and it is all in sync. Now just got to figure out how to set the samplerate in Jack to 44100 as it seems to be set at 48000. Perhaps the newer version has an option.
It can be frustrating as a lot of stuff has to be done in a terminal which means command line entering.
Being an old DOS junkie this don't bother me and I even like using Midnight Commander.
A few commands for DeMuDi:
mount /media/cdrom0
You can then view the contents of a cd with nautilus.
eject -r /media/cdrom.

I dont think it will be long before they produce a kernel configured just for music with just a basic desktop. Cos a lot of the stuff installed is not necessary. Worth learning though.

A final tip in win98 for erasing any boot loader info.
fdisk /mbr

fake

PS The Ubuntu disks are free, just had 5 posted to me free. Like what it say on the back.... "You are legaly entitled to copy, share, and redistribute this CD"
How f**king cool is that!