[techtalk] Mandrake 8 revisited

[James Sutherland]

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Caitlyn M. Martin wrote:

> Hi, everyone,
>
> Never being one to let something go...  :)
>
> I've got Mandrake 8 plus all the latest updates on my box right now.
> Remember the issues raised by James before?  Here is what I've found so far:
>
> 1)  "Color in scripts":  James objected to Perl scripts being used to invoke
> gcc and vi and probably other things to get pretty, colored output.  He
> wanted to be able to invoke these commands, and not scripts, directly.
> Well...  if you don't install the gcc-color package you get gcc in monotonous
> monochrome, and avoid the whole script issue.  gcc-color is not part of the
> default development install.  It is something you'll get if you install
> everything, though.  My vi is also in monotonous monochrome, though I don't
> see what package (or how) I would change that.  Anyway, the commands
> I have checked so far are not invoked through Perl scripts.

Not Perl SCRIPTS per se; vim-enhanced (the "colourful vi") is a binary
linked against libperl.so. When I installed vim-enhanced, installation of
libperl failed - leaving me with a broken vi, instead of an error
message from the RPM installer...

> 2)  Mandrake Update breaking Perl:  It didn't for me.  In fact, there was no
> new version of Perl to update to.  So... either Mandrake withdrew the updated
> and broken version of Perl or else James installed from the Cooker.  Cooker
> is development code and does often break things, and yes... it can be
> accessed through Mandrake Update.  I always avoid it unless I have a really
> good reason to be on the bleeding edge.

The problem, in fact, is undetected corruption of the RPMs on the mirror I
was using. MandrakeUpdate handles dependencies a little "oddly" - if you
try to install foo which depends on bar, it adds bar to the list of things
to install. However, if installation of bar fails, it goes on to install
foo anyway - leaving you with a non-functional foo.

Moral of the tale: A little checksumming goes a long way - so why don't
they?

> Also, I've already come up with a list of reasons why I *really* like
> Mandrake 8 better than Red Hat 7.1:
>
> - Mandrake correctly detected all of my hardware and did an appropriate
> install.  Red Hat did not.  Oh, and looking at how my Zip was setup by
> Mandrake I know what went wrong in Red Hat.  It's /dev/sda not /dev/sda4
> nowadays.

Partitioning issue, in fact; there are two ways to format Zip disks. One
makes the disk appear as a partitioned HDD with a single logical partition
(hence /dev/[hs]dX4), the other regards it as unpartitioned, like a floppy
or CD ROM. Unfortunately, some Zip drives assume the former, and make the
partition appear as the entire disk. A nasty hack; more information on the
LKML archives if you're interested.

> - Mandrake update is free.  The similar, automated process for Red Hat costs
> money.

Yes. OTOH, perhaps RedHat's version works better; MandrakeUpdate still has
a LOT of nasty rough edges. It has improved, but still needs work: better
handling of corrupt/partial RPMs, for example.

> I should say that, honestly, Red Hat 7.1 is a very good distro.  It's
> functional and it's well supported.  At this point I just like
> Mandrake better.  I should also point out that I have never tried SuSe
> or Debian or a whole lot of less popular distros, so this shouldn't be
> seen as a "Mandrake is the best" post.  It's not.  The point was that
> a lot of criticism was levelled at Mandrake, and I went and checked
> and decided that it wasn't valid criticism.

It IS valid. You disagree - that's fine, but it does NOT invalidate the
criticism.


James.