MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-05-11 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Mandrake, SuSE Offer New Linux Features
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Mandrake, SuSE Offer New Linux Features
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1585570,00.asp
May 10, 2004
By Jason Brooks
The purpose of a Linux distribution is to deliver a Linux-based operating
environment with a useful set of applications in a single, well-integrated
package.
Two of the best such distributors, MandrakeSoft S.A. and Novell Inc.'s SuSE
Linux division, recently shipped new versions of their respective mainstream
Linux distributions, both based on the new Linux 2.6 kernel.
eWEEK Labs tested Mandrakelinux 10 PowerPack+ and SuSE Linux 9.1
Professional-which each began shipping last month-and we were impressed with
their ease of use and with the broadness of their capabilities.
Check out the eWEEK Labs Executive Summaries for Mandrakelinux 10 and SuSE
Linux 9.1.
Mandrake's and SuSE's Linux distributions fit well into the roles of
mainstream desktop and of low-cost small-business server-filling a sizable
void left by Linux market share leader Red Hat Inc. Red Hat's offerings are
divided between the annual-subscription-priced Red Hat Enterprise Linux and
the community-supported Fedora Core.
On the desktop, SuSE Linux 9.1 and Mandrakelinux 10 offer a better
out-of-the-box experience than Fedora Core, which, due to
redistribution-related license issues, lacks several key applications, such
as a Java Virtual Machine, a Macromedia Flash plug-in and libraries for
playing MP3 music files. Mandrakelinux 10 and SuSE Linux 9.1 also feature
much nicer software installation tools than either of Red Hat's Linux
distributions.
While some corporate users require applications that are available only for
Windows, there are generally good Linux alternatives available. Both
distributions we tested ship with a large number of these Linux
applications-SuSE comes with five CD-ROMs and Mandrake ships with eight.
The latest versions of Mandrake and SuSE are also great candidates for
setting up small and midsize departmental servers-server software is one of
Linux's strengths, and both of these distributions provide administrators
with a wide range of server applications, along with tools to configure and
manage them.
SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 costs $105, or $70 for an upgrade version. SuSE
9.1 also comes in a $35 Personal edition, which we did not test. The
Personal edition lacks the printed manuals and some of the server and
developer software that ships with the Pro version.
Mandrakelinux 10 comes in $230 PowerPack+, $85 PowerPack and $50 Discovery
versions. We tested the PowerPack+ edition, which contains a wide range of
server applications, including the Kolab groupware server. This version also
includes 90 days of Web-based support and five free telephone support
incidents (within 60 days).
Both distributions are priced well below Microsoft's Windows Small Business
Server 2003, which costs $599 to $1,499 and requires the purchase of client
access licenses beyond the five that these prices include.
Mandrakelinux 10 runs on Pentium-or-better x86 machines. An AMD-64 version
of Mandrakelinux 10 was in release-candidate stage at press time-the latest
official version of Mandrakelinux with AMD-64 support is Version 9.2.
SuSE Linux 9.1 supports both Pentium-or-better and AMD-64 machines in the
same package.
Next page: The 2.6 Advantage
The biggest change in the distributions we tested was the inclusion of
Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel. Mandrakelinux 10 ships with kernel Version
2.6.3, and SuSE Linux 9.1 ships with 2.6.4.
In our tests running the new kernel on Fedora, Debian, SuSE and Mandrake,
we've noticed speed gains with the 2.6 kernel compared with the 2.4 version,
but we've also run into some application compatibility issues.
For instance, the Cisco Systems Inc. VPN client that we're accustomed to
using does not yet support the 2.6 kernel; it's important to make sure your
key applications support the new kernel before moving to a 2.6-based system.
Mandrakelinux and SuSE Linux use KDE 3.2 as their default desktop
environment, so both distributions benefit equally from new KDE features
such as the KWallet password manager. As a KDE alternative, both products
include GNOME 2.4 as well as lesser-known Windows managers. Both Mandrake's
and SuSE's iterations of GNOME are well-implemented but, with the recent
release of GNOME 2.6, already outdated.
Click here to read eWEEK Labs' review of KDE 3.2.
However, we were able to find GNOME 2.6 packages for Mandrake with a quick
Google search, and SuSE users will likely be able to upgrade to GNOME 2.6
using SuSE sister company Ximian's Red Carpet tool.
We've long been fans of SuSE's YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) system
configuration tool, because it does a good job of centralizing management
tasks. In SuSE 9.1, YAST includes an improved help system and a new module
for configuring ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) settings.
We tried this module on a test laptop, with mixed results. Some of the ACPI
options, such as suspend, did not work, and the tool didn't provide us with
any indication as to whether our laptop supported this option.
During installation, SuSE offers the option of resizing an existing Windows
partition-including NTFS (NT File System) partitions-to make room for SuSE.
In one of our installs, we were able to resize an NTFS partition, but we
were then unable to boot into Windows. The procedure didn't appear to have
damaged the data stored on our Windows partition because we could access the
data through SuSE, but we were unable to get booted back into Windows. Use
caution with this feature, or leave it alone.
Both YAST and Mandrakelinux Control Center include great tools for updating
and managing software packages, another area in which Red Hat currently
trails SuSE and Mandrake. With both package management tools, we could
browse graphically through the packages we'd installed, and when there were
updates to fetch, we could read through security or bug-fix bulletins.
One difference we'd like to see in future versions of SuSE Linux and
Mandrakelinux, however, is the organization of the distributions' package
update and package add and remove functions into a single interface, as is
the case with the Synaptic front end for Debian's Advanced Package Tool
package manager and with Ximian's Red Carpet.
Another feature we found helpful in both YAST and the Mandrakelinux Control
Center was the integration between the various server configuration tools
and the package managers. When we'd launch the tool to configure a service
we'd not yet installed, the systems prompted us to do so.
We did, however, run into a few bugs with this feature on Mandrake. When we
attempted to use the WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
mount point tool, the package we needed to install, davfs, wasn't available
either on our installation discs or on the Mandrake update server.
Similarly, while configuring the Kolab groupware server that ships with
Mandrake, we were prompted to make a change to our network settings-a nice
touch, but the prompt instructed us to make the change using drakconnect, a
tool from Mandrakelinux 9.2 that's no longer used in Version 10.
SuSE Linux now ships with a graphical database front end, called Rekall.
Rekall is similar to Microsoft's Access and can fill the gap left by the
exclusion of an Access-like application in OpenOffice.org. Rekall let us
create databases in the dBASE format, and Rekall plug-ins are available for
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and Oracle databases.
Senior Analyst Jason Brooks can be reached at jason_brooks-at-ziffdavis.com.
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