OFB Community Mailing Lists

[David M.]

On Tuesday 25 May 2004 10:31 pm, N. Thompson wrote:
> I've been bouncing back and fourth between Mandrake and SUSE lately, and I
> can't seem to pick one or the other (they are both great).
>
> Since SUSE 9.1 professional is so expensive I'm just as easily considering
> Mandrake Linux 10.0, perhaps someone in the list could offer some sort of
> comments that would help me choose between the two?
>
> So far this is the best Mandrake release I have tried yet, the extra
> community edition phase has eliminated more bugs then in any of their
> previous releases as far as I can tell. I'm very happy with Mandrake 10.0.
>
> There is however the matter of media support in both Mandrake and SUSE, as
> I understand it neither has much support for media formats out of the box,
> that requires MPlayer and some illegal (in U.S & maybe Canada) libraries.

I've never had a problem with media formats except .wma

> I'm wondering, which distribution of these two would be the best desktop
> distribution _with development tools_ and which one offers more bang for
> the buck?

As far as I could tell when comparing fedora and Mandrake, both came with the 
same development tools.

> BTW. When bringing up points for either distribution please keep the
> following in mind:
> 	- I am not a member of the Mandrake club and would rather buy a boxed set.
> 	- I have an NVidia GeForce FX card and would like drivers for it.
> 	- I want to have Java support, preferrably even the J2SDK (software
> developers kit)

I heard that the mandrake boxed set has the Nvidia Drivers.

I don't know anything about java software development, but setting up java on 
my mandrake box took 2 minutes. just download the RPM from Sun, make sure 
there is no java on your box to avoid conflicts: urpme java

Then install the rpm.
Log in as root and do: cd /usr/java and rename the java directory to java.

then open konqueror and go to Settings->configure konqueror->java & javascript 
and put /usr/java/java/bin/java into the field on the first page where it 
asks for "path to java executable, or 'java':"

Then go to the "plugins" section and click "scan for new plugins" and all  
should work.

Then you will need to set the Java $PATH. To do this open a console as normal 
user not root and type:

EXPORT PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/java/bin

now open a text editor or konqueror and edit the .bashrc file in your /home 
directory and add this line after the very last line that contains "fi":

PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/java/bin

Ah All Done! :-) Java should work like a charm.

> 	- I want good multimedia support if possible, that include Macromedia
> flash player.

I have the Macromedia Flash player and it took less than a minute to set it 
up, heres how:

Open mandrake control center and go to "Software Management" then open "Media 
Manager" Open software sources and add this url as a new source

Type of Source:	HTTP SERVER
Name: Flash
URL:     http://macromedia.mplug.org/urpmi/mandrake/9.2/RPMS
relative path to synthesis/hdlist:   synthesis.hdlist.cz

Now open a console log in as root and type:
urpmi flash

All done.

David M.