Mandrake 9.1 on Pre-Order

[fatshady]

I pre-ordered MDK 9.1 from the Mandrake ONline store about 2.5 months ago (April 22nd) and i am still sitting here waiting for it to be delivered... There order tracker tells me its been dispated for about 3 weeks, but emails to them disappear into email ether....

Anyone else in the same situatuation... Or is it time to call the creditcard company and cancel the payment (which they took or the 22nd April...)

Think it time for a new distro... but which one....

[Parcival]

At the begin of April I was looking for my distro, too. As I had a Mandrake 9.0 I originally wanted to purchase the sequel. However, news spread that Mandrake is nearly bankrupt, so I went for SuSE 8.2

Mandrake is officially still operative and it hopes to become helathy again with its 9.1 sales, but I have no clue how high their level of operation still is. my computer store said 9.1 wouldn't be shipped to their place anymore while 9.0 was on sale.

If you search this forum, you'll find numerous posts on this issue.

[elite_syntax]

I had the same prob to.

[fatshady]

well i have lost patience and they have lost their order... I have asked my c\card company to get the money back, and have ordered from another company, http://www.cheeplinux.co.uk... and when my new PC arrives i'll be getting a new distro...

No wonder they're going out of business...

[mchangun]

that's a pity 2 hear. I was about to support them and buy CD's directly from MDK and give em 30 bucks. Yes, no wonder they're going down.

[elite_syntax]

Try mandrake 9.1 and i didn't like it at all.I do think red hat better.:D

[fatshady]

I'm thinking about using Gentoo or Slackware, but with a 160GB disk to play with (soon i hope) i should be able to play with all three and see how i get on....

Been a bit scared by the "mdk is so easy and noddy compared with a real distro" stuff.. From what i have read seems like a big jump from MDK to anything more...

I'm still reading up and trying to make my decisions... I like the idea of compiling Gentoo for my PC, but think i could be tough...

I'll see...

I like MDK and it is a shame about it... but i wouldn't bother getting anything from them...

[retsaw]

I sent them an email at the begining of May asking why the pre-order I placed at the end of March was taking so long, a few days later I got a reply apologising and few days after that my order was delivered, but it wasn't the English version. I didn't bother complaining about that as I didn't want the hassle of sending it back and I don't really need the manual anyway, but I won't be ordering from them again.

[deanrantala]

fatshady:

I have used Mandrake now for some time (currently 9.1) and must say that it is a very nice distro. The programmers and contributors who have made this distro what it is and the people who *try* to market it are two different stories. The "no comparison" phrasing you are always hearing about is not everything it is always made up to be. I personaly like Mandrake for its (yes) easy (yet) powerfull configuration tools, software completeness, and top notch "out of the box" multimedia support. It is easy to learn - but has the same capacity to teach you fundamentals to use a more.....bleeding edge distro. SuSE is the same way, as it is also very nice for beginners and veterans alike. But don't give up on a good solid distro (that will serve you very well) because of the companies Human resource Department incompotence. :)

[fatshady]

I'm not, but to not let me know what is going on, and to take my money (of whihc i have very little at the mo' - bloody cars) kinda take the p**s...

I'll still use 9.1 and keep up with it... It has been useful.. I have moved away from the GUI and now a lot of what i do i do through the CLI (i never could get RPM package manager to work)....

This is why i'm a bit dubious about moving - i seem to have Mandrake working well form the command line, and i can't believe other distro won't work in a very similar way...

A couple of friends recommended MDK to me and i was v impressed... Went on without a prob, and has worked well ever since... There is no doubt the programmers and developers are doing a wicked job, but their sales and marketting is crap.... The one will not survive unless the other pulls it finger out....

[elite_syntax]

Mandrake put to much j that you don't need on it.

[deanrantala]

_________________________________________________
The one will not survive unless the other pulls it finger out....
_________________________________________________

Sadly, history has proven it time and time again......

[CMonster]

Mandrake always seem to take forever with pre-orders, it will likely appear in stores before your copy arrives in the mail.

I have a subscription to the 9x PowerPack editions, and just got my 9.1 the other day. Don't build up too much anticipation -MDK 9.1 isn't all that polished.

[fatshady]

I wouldn't mind if they let me know what was going on... but they haven't....

According the their online order tracker my copy was dispatched about a month ago, but they won't reply to my emails (as their order tracker is only beta-test, and crashed taking a lot of their record out looking at it today)

Its just all a bit amateur really...

[shakin]

I used to be a die-hard Mandrake supporter, but have since seen the truth. Mandrake's reputation for ease of use is undeserved. While their tools make the system easy to work with, they always fall just short of what I ever needed to do, so I was stuck editing text files. After becoming familiar with text file editing, I could easily move on to another distro.

I use Red Hat exclusively on servers and it has never failed me. I use Suse exclusively on the desktop and it's waaaay better than Mandrake. The Yast admin tool is a million times better than anything Mandrake has -- it lets you admin just about everything on the system, from setting up or connecting to NFS shares to switching runlevels and installing software.

IMO, if you're looking for an easy to use distro, then go with Suse.

[anza00]

I order mine on April 29 and receive it on June 4. You'll like it when you do get it. You ought to read the forums at MandrakeLinux.com, there's people like you that havn't receive theirs yet. They need to do better with the store because they're getting a bad reputation for this and that's too bad since their product is great.