In 1998, a French company called Mandrake created its
first Linux distribution. At the time Mandrake was not much more
than a rehash of the popular Red Hat Linux. Since then, although,
Mandrake has come to epitomize the phrase "ease-of-use" in the
world of Linux. At the very least, they have been a boon to new
Linux users. Naturally, they are much more than that, as they cater
to the more-experienced user as well.
The focus of creating a graphical environment that allowed
non-professionals to manage their system contributes heavily
Mandrake Linux being fairly prosperous. They are also very
well-known for their disk partitioning software, Disk Drake, which,
until recent times, was pretty much unparalleled in the open source
world. The installation and configuration tools that Mandrake
created have been published under the GPL (GNU General Public
License), demonstrating their commitment to the Linux
community.
Aside from ease-of-use, Mandrake Power Pack is attractive to
users simply because of the sheer number of applications that are
included with the distribution. According to their web site,
Mandrake's PowerPack (the copy which we received for review) comes
with over 2300 applications. There is little doubt that when it
comes to the abundance of applications included, that their only
rival in the commercial market is SuSE. Mandrake and SuSE seem to
be continually duking it out for the friendliest and most usable
Linux distribution, a competition that has the pair leap-frogging
over each other every few months. This is great for the end-user,
as it raises the bar with nearly every release, leaving you with a
much more friendly Linux.
MandrakeSoft's latest release in this saga is version 8.1, which
we'll be taking an in-depth look at today. Read on for an overview
of its new features and to see how it stacks up against its
previous releases, as well as the competition.
