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Mandrake Gaming Edition
Ready for a new audience?
Linux seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. And now, they're trying to take a bite of the home gamer/user with Mandrake Gaming Edition. This distribution of Linux is based on the popular Linux Mandrake 8.1 base distribution, enhanced with a few extra games and commercial applications, and The Sims, in it's Linux debut.
The Linux version of The Sims is being made possible through Transgaming's modifications of the Windows Emulator, to optimize it for DirectX gaming. They're calling their version WineX, and normally, it costs $5 per month for a subscription to their website in order to be able to download a copy (Downloading the source code through CVS is free, however, but unsupported). However, with the purchase of Mandrake Gaming Edition, you receive a free 3 month subscription to Transgaming's website, provided that you choose automatic renewal.
Mandrake is proven technology, while WineX is most definitely in the experimental stages (other than the specialized implementation for The Sims). But since their release is hand in hand, we'll look at both in this article.
Mandrake Linux Overview
As we covered previously in our Linux Perspective, Mandrake is the number 1 selling Linux distribution in the US, and has distributions targeted to the home user, Server administrator, firewall designer, and now, with the Gaming Edition, the gamer. At least, that is Mandrake's hope; while I'm sure they'd like to get a large piece of Windows' market in this are, how likely this might be depends on the product (or in this case, both products).
The base distribution of Mandrake 8.1 includes all of the basics of Linux. This means you get all of the basics of Windows, plus KOffice software, CD burning and multimedia creation software (now included with Windows, as well), the robust Evolution clone of MS Outlook, development environments, and much more. Added to this in the Gaming Edition is StarOffice 5.2 (an MS-Format compatible office package) and all of the other commercial applications included in Mandrake Standard Edition, as well as 30 days of support-by-e-mail. And of course, the free 3 month subscription to Transgaming, and the special Linux version of The Sims (It will not work in Windows).
You also get a nice, thick book about how to use Mandrake Linux, as well as a complete manual for The Sims. However, the Mandrake User Guide is not distribution specific, meaning it doesn't cover what's specifically in ProSuite versus Standard Edition, et cetera. It's generic to all of Mandrake's distributions, however they're similar enough where this shouldn't be too much of a problem. The User Guide takes you step by step through a Linux installation, and then teaches you the basics about navigating the GNOME and KDE environments, as well as how to use the command-line terminal. It also goes into basics on the various applications included, such as StarOffice and XMMS.
Mandrake Installation
Installation went fairly smoothly, though it is an intricate process if you choose the expert option. And ESPECIALLY intricate if you choose to select individual packages for installation. However, at the end of the Install process (and later, in the OS's configuration dialogs) you are offered the opportunity to create a floppy disk containing a script to install Linux using EXACTLY the options that you have just used. This is a big plus, especially because the install process can be so intricate. And those of us who have learned scripting of commands in order to automate Windows installations will find that they don't have to here. Since Windows makes it so difficult to run an automatic, unattended install for those of us who don't work for PC manufacturers and vendors, Mandrake gets a huge plus for this.
At the end of the install, when first booting, you run into the First-Boot configuration wizard, which will run whenever any user on that PC logs on for the first time. This will also force that user into KDE for that particular session, but Mandrake seems to be very closely integrated with KDE. Once the wizard is finished or bypassed, a user can log in to whichever environment they like without any problem.
Page 2: More About Mandrake
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