[K12OSN] OT: Mandrake 10 mini review on a laptop..

[Tom Ventresco]

Hi,
I just purchased the Mandrake Discover package and installed it on my Toshiba 
laptop this weekend.  Here goes.

Machine Type:  A Toshiba Satellite A10-S167  (P4 2.2 256  30GIGHD)  CDR/DVD

Installation:
I used PartitionMagic 7 to resize my NTFS XP partition.  Easy.
Boot up to Mandrake CD#1 
Answer a few questions --> IMHO always install development stuff - you never 
know when you will have to compile. I did a laptop install with KDE and 
Gnome.   
Do a manual partiton setup of the open space on /dev/hda. 
Feed CD's.
Configure X
Check that the system sees your hardware.
Reboot.
LILO gives an easy menu which boots Mandrake, shell, safe mode, and windows.

You know the drill, create a user bing bing bing. Hey cool feature .  Auto 
login one user.  I have my regular user account autologin to KDE.  

I have congfigured Kontact for my e-mail and Palm.  Easy.  Kontact is using my 
school IMAP account and my home POP3 account.  Easy.

The performance is fine.  This Mandrake 10 boots faster than the XP install on 
the same machine.

Mandrake 10 comes with OO 1.1 so an update is in order but I have not done 
that yet.

Another neat thing - Konsole terminal program can use vt420 keyboard 
emulation.  Yes some of us still use DEC stuff or is it Compaq no no its 
HP :)

So if you are looking to make the switch from XP to linux, Mandrake is not a 
bad choice in terms of installation, hardware detection and performance.  The 
packaged bells and whistles are fine. Note on sound hardware:  The program 
"Audacity" had a bug when I had "Sound System Notifications" turned "on." 
My Finding Nemo DVD did NOT PLAY.  GIMP is sweet.  If a wine install goes well 
I might test this out in our treasurer's office on 6 workstations.

I just noticed that my "As-you-type spell checking disabled" prompt at the 
bottom of this window....rats please forgive the type-o's.  

Wow this is fun.

Tom Ventresco
Austintown Local Schools