A closer look to Mandrake-Linux-10.0 Community
I have finally found some time to install the brand new Mandrake-Linux 10.0 Community Edition PowerPack (what a nice short name!) on my very powerful and sexy Shuttle (SB65G2, my main PC at home).
I was using previously Mandrake 9.2 as my main desktop and I was very satisfied with it but I knew that version 10.0 will be a huge step ahead so I was eager to make it my default desktop (see my previous quick review of Mandrake 10.0).
Since I am using GnomeMeeting with a Quicknet card for PC-2-Phone functionality I still need a 2.4 kernel due to the quicknet drivers not yet ready for 2.6 kernel. Therefore I decided to install both 2.6 and 2.4 and I will have to reboot on the 2.4 if needed. Meanwhile I am planning to test tkPhone from thekompany.com which supports net2phone and iconnecthere.com pc2phone services(although not free but very cheap), but what I like with quicknet is to use a regular wireless phone to call. Anyway, this is just a question of time to get this driver ready.
PowerPack is a 5CDs special edition. It basically adds 2 CDs full of packages (software) on top of the 3 standard CDs from the Download version.
It includes some non-free and commercial software such as realplayer, flash and Java (this is really great to get them out of the box working in your browser) as well as a kind of bestof from Contributions packages, including a lot of excellent -not to say mandatory!- software such as Digikam... ).
It is also worth to mention that Mandrake-Linux is available in more than 60 languages (at least partially), compare to Microsoft with around 30 languages...Open Source has definitively some benefits!
