I just installed Mandrake 10 on my system and man is it awesome! Out of the box my built in NIC card was working along with my GeForce 4. This is the first UNIX distribution I''ve EVER tried that got my computer up and running without hours of configuration. It uses the brand new 2.6 kernel and has some really wicked graphics (like in the back of the console, without X running). HOWEVER, it has one tragic flaw which makes it so I can''t use it. Every 10 minutes or so it arbitrarily crashes. I''ve tried reinstalls and nothing works. Once it crashed during installation, once it crashed while installing detonator drivers, once it crashed when I was untarring a file, once it crashed when it was just running a screen saver, and once it crashed at the console without X running. How sad. If anybody had an idea of what my problem is that''d be great, but it seems to me that Mandrake 10 is a great Operating System with one tragic flaw, its unstable.

If anybody had an idea of what my problem is that''d be great, but it seems to me that Mandrake 10 is a great Operating System with one tragic flaw, its unstable.
I would highly doubt that they released a unstable OS.
actually that''s an oxymoron linux and unstable in the same sentence like yeah right!
More likely the hardware you trying to run it on is flawed. I installed linux hundreds of times and the only time I''ve seen the behaviour u are talking about is when I installed it on a machine that I knew had a chipped cpu. Sure enuf it crashed just as randomly as windows did and that''s the last time I remeber seeing linux crash anyways!

If God played dice, He''d win.
—Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos

Make sure that you have noapic and nolapic set in the bootloader and try updating your bios. I was having loads of problems installing mandrake 10, it kept freezing all the time, but them things seemed to fix it.

Also have a read of the posts at linuxquestions.org you will get more help there.

Hope that helps you some

Steps to diagnosing random crashes:

1. memtest86 (badmemory hits linux hard)
2. No proprietary drivers (NVIDIA, etc)
3. turn off some "buggier" features (noapic nolapic acpi=off etc)

Anyway, Tell mandrake about this, not us. They know their software.

I''m not trying to be unhelpful, but I''ve been running Mandrake 10 since the community edition came out and it hasn''t crashed on me once, so it''s probably your hardware or the drivers causing it. Try searching some mandrake forums for details about your hardware causing problems maybe. It''s well worth it; Mandrake 10 is an excellent package.

Hmm ok I'll look into it but I doubt the problem lies with my hardware. Why do you say "No proprietary drivers"? Arn't the NVidia drivers safe? If there's one thing I've learned to count on its the reliability of NVidia's software.

What were those options you were talking about and how do I change them?

[edited by - 31337 on May 29, 2004 1:14:51 PM]

quote: Original post by 31337
If there''s one thing I''ve learned to count on its the reliability of NVidia''s software.

*chortle*

huih!? The only time my linux box has ever crashed is while running nvidia drivers.

quote: What were those options you were talking about and how do I change them?

kernel commandline, when LILO gives you a boot: prompt, type "linux noapic nolapic" assuming the name of your prefered kernel is "linux"

I''ve never used grub, so I don''t know about that, but I think mandrake uses lilo anyway.

Mandrake 10 community runs fine even on my 266 dell lattitude ( gnome/kde) . Very stable IMHO. might be a harware issue.

Ok I ran memtest86 and my memory is fine. I''ll make a post to the folks over at Mandrake.

Good to hear that

Mandrake was my first (together with RH) experience. I''m glad you like it. You''ll eventually move to somthing more hardcore later on though.