Mandrake 9.1 should be fixed.

Mandrake 9.1 should be fixed.

I've been a long time Mandrake user and supporter (including a Mandrake club membership and supporting them on my companies hardware), but I've been frustrated by 9.1. 9.1 broke support for the PCMCIA slot on my VAIO (Z505JS) so fundamentally that I couldn't install with the CDs. I was able to work around the problem and install, but the PCMCIA slots still don't work. By the way, this is hardware that is listed as "working" on the Mandrake web page.

This bug is a regression from 9.0 functionality. The regression itself is not so bad, (stuff happens), but what's really frustrating is that there's really no way to file a bug against this problem and get it fixed. Even having a Mandrake club membership doesn't provide a way to file bugs against existing releases. Filing a bug against cooker didn't help; it was closed with "will not fix" and a comment along the lines of "regressions happen".

I just don't see the value add for a Linux distro if they don't do a lot of regression testing, and at least funnel bugs back to the source maintainers. I'm used to new hardware not working, but the (not so) old stuff should. I'm not even going to mention issues such as regressions in Xfree86 server functionaliy, and a pile of other annoying but fixable problems. I pity the non-technical user that get's pulled along by the "year of the Linux desktop" press and tries to install an "easy" distro...