Mandrake MNF

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Sunday 10 August 2003 4:13 pm, Jeffrey Cady wrote:

> "Mandrake is famous for the hidden (non-standard) config files.  What you
> may want to look into is where webmin or linuxconf store their files.

Woah there - that's completely backwards.  

It's the GUI junk like linuxconf and webmin (though I have no knowledge of the 
latter) that use non-standard configuration files.  Mandrake is very much 
standard-based, and is is coming into compliance with the LSB.  Admittedly, 
the RedHat line of distributions, of which Mandrake and YelowDog are members, 
does things a little differently than say Debian or SuSE, but I believe 
they're more compliant with the Sys V standards.

One of the main reason linuxconf is being actively killed off is that it's 
possible to have a system configured one way with the standard config files, 
and have linuxconf do something else entirely.  It's never sure which 
configuration's going to win, but it's certain that you will loose.

I believe that Webmin does a better job of using the standard config files, 
modifying them directly rather than using a seperate store of settings.  The 
nice thing about that is that once you have the system configured, you don't 
have to load Webmin and expose your system to potential security holes.

MNF has several areas where it's incomplete, and if the standard settings 
aren't what you want, there's not much you can really do about it.  You 
either accept the narrow range of defaults, or go to a standard distributin 
and implement the firewall from there.  Mandrake and RedHat both offer some 
decent firewall configuration tools in their main distributions now.

MNF reminds me a lot of Microsoft's Small Business Server - an absoulte 
nightmare to manage, and hopeless if you step outside of Microsoft's 
pre-configured image of how you're supposed to use it - which is not 
documented anywhere, let alone detailed enough that you can know before you 
buy it.  At least with MNF you're not out thousands of dollars if it's not 
for you.

I don't know why you guys are so down on Mandrake.  I've found more 
documentation that uses the same standards as RedHat and Mandrake, (MNF 
excluded) than doesn't.   Even docs that may have originally been written for 
SuSE or Debian will include notes on what's different in the RH world.  I've 
certainly never seen a document that mentioned how Gentoo does things, 
outside of references to Gentoo's own web site.  

Is Gentoo a derivation of one of the bigger trees, or is it 'scratch built'?

Winging, by the way, is this pointless carping and complaining about something 
that we know really isn't as bad as we make it out to be.  Often in the 
context of group whining in the workplace.  We were winging about the KC Job 
market, you are winging about Mandrake.