OsReview : Mandrake Linux 7.0

Well here I am once again to bring you more Linux loving. I was actually
hoping to be get my hands on a copy of Gentus Linux *yeah the Linux OS
from ABIT, however the CD came in a little late so I'll have that one
for you next month*. In the mean time, I have managed to get my little-hacking
hands on Mandrake Linux 7.0 and managed to play around with it a little.
For those of you that have never heard of Mandrake Linux I have just one
thing to say to you... WHICH ROCK HAVE YOU BEEN UNDER?! Linux Mandrake
has been around for quite a while, and it's based on Red Hat Linux. So
it's pretty safe to say that anything you find on a Red Hat based system,
you'd find it on Mandrake as well. So why get Mandrake instead of Red
Hat then? Well firstly, Mandrake includes several enhancements to the
Red Hat system which will undoubtedly make your life easier. Secondly,
Mandrake is easier to install compared to Red Hat - experienced Linux
users need not apply in this area. You guys have probably done thousands
of installs before and having "ease of use" installation isn't
a major criteria for you. But for those of you that are planning on moving
to Linux, Mandrake makes it a lot easier to do so.

Alright...
so what's new with 7.0 eh? Well lots actually. Firstly, there are 6 CDs
thrown in *one of which is your main OS CD* while the other 5 have been
filled with applications. Sweet eh?! What kind of apps you ask? Well it'd
take me for ever to list every single one here, so I'll be a lazy-ass
mofo and just tell you what it says on the back of the box :

Star
Office 5.1a

Corel
WordPerfect 8.0 Lite

IBM
ViaVoice SDK

Arkeia
professional backup

Perl
modules and Python extensions

Translators,
converters debuggers, parsers and decoders of all kinds

Window,
file, print and list managers

Client/server
programs

ALSA
devices, drivers and players

Additional
HOW-TOs and Linux documentation.

Not
bad not bad. So what else is new? Well the installer for one thing. They've
changed the layout of their GUI installer so it's a lot easier to use
- I suppose it would be beneficial to newbie users. Personally, I couldn't
care less for a GUI install. As long as I can install the friggin thing
- I'm happy. While we're on the topic of installers and installing, Mandrake
Linux 7.0 also adds the ability to do an install directly from Windows.
Pretty neat although I wouldn't trust Windows with the install. Especially
when doing something as important as REPARTITIONING YOUR DRIVE! All the
same, that option has been included. If you were to choose to do an install
from Windows itself, the Mandrake tool would resize your current Windows
partitions and install the OS. There is a drawback of course. Your system
will be slower. A loopback system will definitely be a lot slower than
a standalone installation. Once again, I personally feel that this feature
has been added in for the benefit of Windows users who have can't differentiate
their hard drives from the CD-ROMs.

The
Install

Armed
with my trusty Pentium II 400 by my side and a laptop that I had lying
around, I set off with the task of installing the beast onto the two systems.
The configuration for the Pentium II system is as follows :

Pentium
II 400MHz machine *clocked to 448MHz*

128MB
SDRAM

44X
CD-ROM drive

2
X 8GB hard drives

SoundBlaster
AWE-64 sound card

Creative
RIVA TNT-16MB graphics card

Some
crap brand 10/100Mbps network card *NE2000 compliant*

Here's
the configuration for the laptop :

Pentium
II 333MHz processor

64MB
SDRAM

inbuilt
24X CD-ROM drive

4.3GB
hard drive

ESS
Maestro Sound card

ATI
Rage Mobility graphics accelerator

Built
in modem - although for networking I slapped in a Xircom RealPort 56K+10/100Mbps+GSM
PCMCIA card

Prior
to installation, both the hard drives were formatted, and checked for
errors. With the Pentium II desktop system, the installation was done
on the primary slave drive (/dev/hdb1). The reason for this is that the
primary master drive holds my Windows NT and Windows 98 *blergh*!

Since
I didn't want to waste time mucking around with the Windows based installer,
I chose to pop the 1st CD into the drive and do the install from CD-ROM.
Since most of you out there will probably take the same route, I doubt
you'd have any complaints about this one. As I mentioned earlier, the
GUI installer has had a make over since version 6.5 This time around,
the dudes over at Macmillan have color coded the side menus which just
makes it a little easier to monitor your current install state. They've
also added themes to the installer so you have the choice of changing
the way your installer looks. Pretty much a waste of time if you ask me,
since you're probably only going to do this install once!

Since
I had a lot of space to play around with, I decided to go with a rather
hefty install of applications and tools. More stuff than I would possibly
use - I don't recommend users go around installing services that you don't
need though. You're only creating security problems for yourself by doing
so. Applications on the other hand are another story all together. Go
ahead and install any productivity tools you think might come in handy
or multimedia applications. As long as you've got the space, knock yourself
out and have fun with the wide choice of apps.

For
productivity, I chose to install both Word Perfect 8 Lite and Star Office
5.1a. The time taken to install 3.8G's of stuff? About 40 minutes on the
desktop and just over 60 minutes on the laptop. The installer had no problems
at all detecting the networking card on the desktop so I had the ability
to access the system as soon as the install was done from my main server
*I did have some trouble with the PCMCIA card on the laptop - more on
this below*. I proceeded to portscan the machine just to get an idea of
what was left open on the machine. Well there were no open ports - none
at all! Zero! Zilch! Nada! :) Amazing! Just incase you were wondering,
Mandrake is using Kernel 2.2.14-15mdksecure. That might explain
the "no open ports" situation. I must say it was rather nice
to see that Mandrake actually installs relatively securely on the default
settings. Certainly a big difference from Red Hat 6.1!

One
really nifty feature of Mandrake that's missing from Red Hat has to be
Lothar. The GUI configuration tool for your ISA and PCI based devices.
Lothar takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to get your various
sound and network cards to work. Excellent tool. It reminds me a lot of
Windows "Add New Hardware Wizard". One tool that was sadly missing
was the one that's included in Corel Linux to make changes to the resolution
of your system on the fly - without touching a single line of your X configuration.
Well perhaps, this might be made available in an up coming version of
Mandrake.

Problems
- the notebook

I
did not have any problems with the OS on my Pentium II 400MHz machine
although Mandrake did run into some problems on the laptop. Firstly the
PCMCIA device was reported as brought up without any problems however the network was inaccessible. Attempting to ping any system on the internal
LAN resulted in errors. The only way I could bring the device up was to
use the ifup eth0 command. I tried using netconf to correct the problem
that happened to be plaguing the laptop however after about three unsuccessful
attempts I just placed the ifup eth0 command into the /etc/rc.d/rc.local
file so it would run the command at boot up. No problems after that.

The
other problem was with regards to the ESS maestro sound card. The sndconfig
tool managed to detect the card and was good enough to provide a link
to a page with the drivers and instructions on installing the ESS card.
The Lothar configuration tool on the other hand did detect the sound card
however just reported back with this message : "Lothar cannot configure
this soundcard... yet". Very helpful I must say. :)

I
removed the Xircom PCMCIA card and ran Lothar once again to see if it
could detect the built in modem - no luck. Perhaps it's a winmodem. Eitherways,
I'm sure any laptop user would probrably have a PCMCIA based modem anyhow.

Other
than these few problems, the sytem was running fine. On the whole I would
have to say that Mandrake Linux does bring a lot of new enhancements to
the Red Hat distribution *although I'm comparing it to Red Hat 6.1 - I
have not had a chance to test out 6.2*. Is it worth upgrading to Mandrake
7.0 from Mandrake 6.5? I would have to say definetely - especially for
all the new enhancements. Is it worth migrating from Red Hat ? Well that
depends on you really. The choice of distribution is a really personal
thing. I hate getting into the "my distribution is better than
your distribution" debate. There are those that just love Red
Hat while other prefer Slackware. At the end of the day, it all comes
down to a mater of preference.

- L33tdawg

1.)
OsReview
: Mandrake Linux 7.0 Deluxe -
L33tdawg

2.)
Setting up
a DHCP server (Part 1) -
L33tdawg

3.)
Basic
Networking Guide -
Haven

4.)
How
To HaX0r1z3 your Toaster -
[SANiTY]

5.)
INFOSEC:
Theoretical vs. Practical Security
- Silere Praeses

6.)
Hop Box
- A telephone relay proposal -
Silere Praeses

7.)
Crippling
Windows -
xearthed