[sound of hair being torn out, screaming at monitor, cursing, etc...]

I'm so sick of Mandrake 10.1 mangling my KDE desktop and other bits of Linux.
I have a Slackware 10.1 distro close at hand - I'm thinking of giving it a go.
What I'm after is just some reassurance and install tips to push me over the edge...
What makes Slack better than MDK?

(I've been using MDK for about two years, and have a basic/ moderate knowledge of Linux)
Thanks in advance,

saltire

I personally used, Slackware, Debian and MDK.

Slack and Debian are a kind of slim distro, I know what I am doing. On the other hand, I have to do everything.
MDK is a kind of "all-in-one" kit. It is easy to setup, not knowing what I am doing.

My perosnal preference is Debian, which is well-balanced between "I know what I am doing" and "easy to configure"
Slack is most flexible, but I do not have enough experience to survive, I wish I had.
MDK gave me a lot of trouble, similar to yours, I could not figure out how to do, so I quit.

Never used the other Linux distros. BSD is nice, but I used only short time. Solaris and HP-UX are so so good.

My opinion: these days, GUI makes great difference.
KDE > gnome > XFce (user friendliness.)
KDE < gnome < XFce (maintainer friendliness)

I guess it is up to you.

I really just want a distro that has a logical selection of tools that don't mess with each other - A lot of MDK's tools clash and are incomplete. They seem to take over the UI: Kmenuedit gets disabled and replaced with the MDK menu editor which is hopeless, it replaces the Kmenu gear icon with the MDK star, it messes with the hardware detection in Kinfocenter, Userdrake doesn't work with the KDE user config, and the documentation is either non existent or could be better in my opinion.
Some of the utilities in MDK are nice, like URPMI, but I can live without it.

My main concern is losing my data while shifting from MDK to Slack - is there any way to install Slack and keep my files intact? Will it automatically reformat my partitions?

If you set up your system with a /home partition just do not format that parition. You will need to format the / partition at the minium. I have my / and /home on different partitions, and this has worked out very well for me as I tend to change distros 2-3 times a year. I just rename my user directory so I can use the same login. Also it does not hurt to copy over your fstab and grub menu.1st as well as any other files you had to "hack" to get your system to work.

If you do not have a /home partition backup to a DVD-RW or something.

Thanks Debian Users!
Luckily I do have a separate /home partition.
Where are all the Slackware gurus!?
I thought they'd be keen to welcome another convert to their flock!

This seems to me like your problems are partly as a result of you not understnading your Mandrake system. If you want kmenuedit, you can use that but there is a reason why its not installed by default in Mandrake (think Mandrakes menu is not the defult KDE menu). The Kmenu button can be replaced with the original KDE icon, the solution is all over google. Mandrake has its own hardware detection tools so how can it interefere with Kinfocenter? Userdrake has nothing to do with kuser, they are two seperate tools. As for documentation, its there, you just have to install it using urpmi.

I am a Slackware user, but felt you were misrepresenting Mandrake. Anyway as for Slack, good luck with that.

Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed (mostly) using MDK, and it has served its purpose. I know that I can modify the bad stuff, like the Kmenu thing, but what I was getting at was the fact that MDK does all this modification by default, and it's not always easy to change. I'd rather use clearly defined desktop tools and clearly defined command line tools. As far as I understand, the Kinfocentre - hardware detection issue is caused by MDK using a different set of device files to other distros. I prefer using the KDE tools to the MDK tools: In my opinion they're less confusing than MDK's. And as for the docs, they don't come as standard with a downloaded version. Fair enough, but this delays new users in the attempt to learn how to use their system, until such times as they learn how to download and install them. The documentation I do have is poorly written, only sometimes useful, and some of it has been lost in translation. Maybe this is where I could help...
As a (relatively) new user, I still have a lot to learn about Linux. The fact that everyone does it differently is good for freedom, but isn't always good for learners.

I switched to Slackware after a few months of using RH9 and FC1 because I was frustrated with them.

It is a learning curve, but a very rewarding one and the help available for Slackware is awesome.

As stated above you can opt to not reformat the /home partition during installation, so this is a good place to back up any .conf files etc that you will want to copy when Slackware is installed. Remember that Slackware does not boot to a GUI by default so after the install you will have to play around with the xorg stuff before you can startx.

The good point is that the .conf etc files that Slackware installs are very well comented so it is not *that* hard to work through them and get things working.

If you have the time and inclination you will fall in love with Slackware once it is happily up and running. Best of luck!

Your issue regarding documentation is not Mandrake specific. Many people working on opensource projects seem to prefer to code rather than write documentation, so most distros and apps suffer from lack of, or poor documentation. To be fair to Mandrake, if you search in their software repository there is a lot of documentation for Mandrake itself as well as specific apps. You will find the same to be true with Slack, there is very little documentation installed by default but the Slack website has a lot of useful documentation and examples. Remember that individual application developers are responsible for providing documentation for their apps, so the distro is not to blame where none is provided or it isn't good enough.

Mandrake has its own tools that are seperate from the KDE tools because obviously not everyone who uses Mandrake uses KDE. You can opt not to install most of the Mandrake tools and use the KDE tools if you are comfortable with those. In Slack, there are even fewer gui tools than Mandrake, so the learning curve can be a bit steep, but at least you will become competent enough to administer your system from the command line if for some reason you can't run a gui.

Good luck using Slack

You make a fair point, reddazz.
Yup, I'm gonna give it a go, probably over the next few weeks, as I have exams coming up.
I just get the feeling that installing/ configuring/ using Slack will be a more educational experience - I definitely don't want to go back to Windows. Maybe I could contribute by writing documentation aimed at learners like myself.

Thanks for the support!

Saltire, if you are going to give Slackware a try you will certainly want to check LQ member Shilo's superb site:
http://shilo.is-a-geek.com/slack/

I was quite positively surprised about the latest Mandrake documentation. It has a help center with the normal KDE help plus many installed apps help plus all of the manuals in the same place. The first linux I used had so little documentation that I can say it resumed to just the manuals. It would be great to have some tutorials as part of the distros.

Worse is when they don´t even do good documents for using the libraries =(

Many times I have to read the functions to know what they are doing....

just made a similar switch (except I have outdated distros- 10.0 to 10.0)

and boy! I love it. Slackware makes me feel like I did when I first picked up linux, the awe, the wonder, the expectation, the excitement at learning stuff. I LOVE slackware. Really, you won't regret it. The install is a doddle, and, for some funny reason, seems to make you want to find the solution to your own problems instead of tearing hair, smashing monitors and cursing, etc.

go slack. you won't want to go back.

titanium_geek (one very happy slacker)

EDIT: I second the reccomendation for shilo's site - very very good.
EDIT EDIT: I'm thinking of dropping mandrake altogether and going for debian on the other partition- then I'll be a true linux guru (ha!)