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Not stupid, but badly informed, because it is very easy to install new repositories (among them PLF, with problematic packages, such as libdvdcss):

http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/
and this guide shows how to do this graphically:
http://www.zebulon.org.uk/ICML0.HTML

The link for 10.2 does not yet appear on EasyURPMI. Might want to drop Trem a line and ask him to include your favorite mirror.

No cigarette or a helmet, but does this come close?

DMCA, you mean that little law that *specifially* allows reverse engineering for interoperability?

If the DMCA really allowed interoperability, then it would be legal for a USA-based Linux distribution to include DVD-player software in their default install. But, it's not.

Mandrake stopped including Pine.

FUCKING PINE!!!!

My *nix console email app of choice was absent from Mandrake 10.x, I had to get it from PLF because the source wouldn't compile straight away on a plain old Mandrake install.

With that small annoyance, Mandrake is still my distro of choice.

LK

If you search around in the Google Cache, you can find a link to a Mandrake Wiki that has several bootchart images.

- Tash

If you search around in the Google Cache, you can find a link to a Mandrake Wiki that has several bootchart images.

- Tash

You don't even have to uninstall it. It's called Easy URPMI. Follow the directions, then do 'urpmi --auto-select' as root, and maybe once a week do 'urpmi.update -a' and then the auto select thing - if there's updates, it updates, if there aren't, it doesn't.

Or add "deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main" to /etc/apt/sources.list and install mplayer from there. That repository also has DeCSS and all that fun stuff. Debian and Mandrake are extremely convenient for that sort of stuff, with the above repository for Debian and the PLF for Mandrake.

Just use urpmi. Once you've setup your servers at http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ it's a great solution, both the commandline version and the GUI tools.

I've had people walk up to Mandrake machines, use them for a day, and walk away not realising that it wasn't MS-Windows. If I switched those boxes to XPDE instead of KDE and did a little tweaking, I'm sure it would be easy to fool ten times as many people - if that was my aim.

I was using my laptop (running Mandrake Linux) at a private function last week, and a 10yob I know came up, looked oddly at the screen for a few minutes, then asked "Which Windows are you using?" It took about 15 minutes and much repetition to mostly-convince him that it wasn't running MS-Windows at all, but rather KDE on Linux. This is the level of ignorance we face. This kid knows his own machine inside out, as well as a non-programmer possibly could, but had no clue that anything other than MS-Windows ever existed.

Both Mandrake and SuSE do the font thing well, including different aliasing at different sizes.

I haven't seriously tried other distros for a while but seem to remember some of the Debian-based distros (Gentoo, Knoppix) being happy out of the box nowadays, and probably Lin{spire,dows,insertsuffixhere} but that has other issues you don't want to have to deal with.

If you use the download edition of Mandrake, set it up with the Contribs as a URPMI source, and manually pull down a few things (Flash player, Win32 CoDecs and the like) from the Penguin Liberation Front sites. Using PLF wide throttle is a bit risky, but cherry-picking only extras instead of replacing standard packages as well seems to work well. I've also tacked together a few extras of my own here, but that's a skinny DSL line; please don't melt it down.

Use easy urpmi to select cooker sources. You may also might to "rpm --import" the GPG signatures found in the cooker tree (I don't remember which directory). After that just "urpmi --auto-select".

Seems to work quite good, but for some reason I can't intall galeon or epiphany.

I frequently grab Mandrake RPMS from glarb.org's Penguin Liberation Front and see many a warning about lack of GPG signatures.

I frequently grab Mandrake RPMS from glarb.org's Penguin Liberation Front and see many a warning about lack of GPG signatures.

I'm excited to hear that urpmi is available for Fedora. It will give me renewed reason to install it on one of my machines here and play more with Fedora. I've always had a pet peeve for systems that lacked the kind of package installation software such as apt/get, urpmi, etc. Fedora has finally solved that.

However, to make urpmi truly useful, there needs to be a repository of good source trees for ftp download for the particular distribution. Thus the folks at zarb.org created easyurpmi.org to help folks out in configuring source media on Mandrake. Loaded with lots of different mirrors carrying Mandrake RPMS from the various different sources (main, contrib, updates, plf, etc), this tool generates a commandline that will add a urpmi source media entry to the urpmi database.

Now, someone needs to get on the stick and start compiling the sources for Fedora urpmi sources. Hop to it, kids.

Mandrake has official sources and 'non-official' sources. Because of licencing issues you would have to use the PLF source to get all the codecs, which you should have configured anyway.

Mandrake tries to keep the content of it's "download edition" to be all Open Source licensed software. If you want decss, or even pine, you have to get it from another source... like by adding a plf urpmi source.

.haeger

1)pclinuxos is Mandrake 9.2 + updates + some PLF packages, + some updates from contrib + some custom packages by Texstar, generated using mklivecd, which is in Mandrake 9.2 contribs (and easy enough to use that there are already about 5 other Mandrake 9.2-based live CDs made with it).

2)Quicktime playback is only possible with the win32 codec, which:
-is not open source (thus can not go in the Mandrake download version which must only consist of open-source software)
-probably not commercially distributeable without a license
-has other potential legal problems
-trivially installable from PLF.

I am running Mandrake 9.2 with some packages from PLF, and I just double click on the Quicktime movies on my digital camera, and they play, no mess, no fuss.

3)The slowness of your machine is likely due to a miscofigured hostname, to test, try:
$ time getent hosts `hostname`

If that takes more than about 2 seconds, that's your problem, you can probably fix it by running:
# echo -e "127.0.0.1\t`hostname`" >> /etc/hosts

4)Never had printing problems with 9.2, quite a few printers, and a live CD I made based on 9.2 worked out-the-box with all printers I tested with. Your CUPS problem could be related to your problem above if it is indeed name resolution issues.

I wonder if you think about all the other people who contribute the thousands of packages available in Mandrake ...

Why'd you need to compile DVD playing? Use PLF, where you can find prebuilt RPMS (by many of the same people who contribute to MandrakeLinux) of all the software of questionable status you want.

Yes, I had these problems with the invalid file list as well. They disappeared after choosing a different mirror. Don't know why though. Configure your mirrors for urpmi here: http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/

With urpmi and Easy Urpmi and Thac's configured properly (follow instructions). You can install it in a few minute, with no compiling.

urpmi mythtv

Thats xmltv and everything.

Mandrake users should try PLF, which has all those binary codecs packaged. If you like urpmi or the graphical Mandrake package tools, use Easy Urpmi to add the PLF package tree.

Mandrake users should try PLF, which has all those binary codecs packaged. If you like urpmi or the graphical Mandrake package tools, use Easy Urpmi to add the PLF package tree.

True, but if you compare that to the time it might take to fix the problem another way, then upgrading might be the cheapest route. Remember, I said the "easiest" that also means "the fastest". Furthermore, now that we're completely off topic and talking about non-linux users, I use mandrake. I added plf and textar to my urpmi database.. I am completely confident that when I install a package, it won't break my system and it will work without the upgrade. I've been happily using mandrake 9.0 on this computer for some time, and I still use mozilla 1.5. Textar and plf will support the packages I want that Mandrake doesn't want to supply. That's the "Strength of OSS". I know that if Mandrake were to shift its support position to "corporate only" and drop the free urpmi access, textar and plf would pick up the slack and give me my security patches.

Are here on the preorder page. I haven't downloaded the beta yet, but in the past Mandrake included things like stock (vanilla) versions of Xine *without* css support. They may still, but I'm so in the habit of installing the PLF files before doing anything that I couldn't honestly tell you if 9.2 came with being able to read encrypted DVD's out of the box. FWIW not all DVD's are encrypted and having a non-css DVD player *is* useful, just not as useful.

Mandrake's developers have really done a great job with their rpm system. Urpmi can be used just like apt-get, but it works with rpm's instead. You can configure multiple sources and run it with their great looking gui (rpmdrake) or their command like app urpmi. So on my multimedia system I can install the basics then run (after configuring urpmi as described at plf.zarb.org and thacs): urpmi mythtv, then have a nice functioning PVR to record my episodes of The Shield on.

The apt/rpm arguments are pretty dated, dependancies used to be a real nightmare with rpm systems, but I've been using Mandrake for years without trouble. Not to gush, but its nice to have something that actually makes my life easier, I can see why you debian users love it so much.

for Mandrake go to easy urpmi to get the correct lines to enter to sort out your local mirrors and then you're sorted... It works with Mandrakes Software Installer and any software you search for using that tool that isn't on your distro CDs but exists out on contribs or PLF etc. and you've got configured as a source for urpmi will be downloaded along with all the required dependencies and installed for you.

oh and by the way... using tar.gz files and compiling from source is what screws up your system... cos what you're doing is sticking libraries in that are not covered in the rpm database. No wonder your system gets it's knickers in a twist and you consider rpms to be unreliable... stick with using urpmi and wait for the package to be built for you and put up on the contribs site... otherwise, learn how to build your own rpms cos that way your rpm database will not get messed up when compiling from source.

On the subject of filesystem "standards": Mandrake has always followed the RedHat "lump-everything-under-/usr" "standard" :).

On the RPM issue, I meant third-party, NOT system RPMs. RedHat's system rpms don't really work because it seems Mandrake has gone to a much saner Debian-style naming system for their packages, which basically makes urpmi (an apt equivalent) work better. Besides that, they are different distributions: you can't really expect many system-level rpms to be interchangeable. Any third party RPMs I've tried for Mandrake work (this includes things like Mozilla binaries, Sun's Java, codeweavers wine (long ago), and some other things I can't recall). I'm sure there are third-party rpms out there that don't work, too; but I haven't found any that don't also have source packages.

You say I'd have a lot more trouble finding an apt repository? That doesn't really matter; Mandrake comes with urpmi and their own large repository; which works just as well (or better; it's officially supported!). There are also other URPMI sources for Mandrake that provide anything else you'd probably want, this site will help you configure them easily, and pclinuxonline.com has a list of around 6 of them. No need to use apt, it's got urpmi!

As for docs, I haven't used them extensively but what I have had to use seemed up-to-date (though honestly I can't really make an informed opinion about this). I have always found the configuration panel to present a useful amount of options; it would be overkill to go much further than they did (and in some cases I think it could be simplified).

As for hardware detection, what exactly didn't it detect for you? (This is an honest question). Anyone I have heard talk about it says it has great detection, and indeed it worked perfectly on both my desktop and laptop.

I have used RedHat on and off between Mandrake (RedHat used to be my distro of choice). RedHat always seemed to be a little behind in terms of its software selection and user-friendliness (which was why I switched in the end). What was the latest version of Mandrake you have tried?

As a final PS: You seem to be getting pretty worked up over this. Did Mandrake do something to you? Relax, really; it's just a distribution :)

I'm sorry but how in the hell can you not get mplayer to work properly? Go to Easy Urpmi and add the plf source. Then "urpmi mplayer". It's that simple... I have no idea what your problem could be. Do you have a wacky video card? Even the default mplayer that comes with Mandrake will play nearly everything but wmf and rm files. Oh I see, you're using RH8 for some reason. Just toss MDK 9.1 on that box and quit your bitching. RH is fine for a server but since all you seem to want to do at "work" is listen to mp3s, watch video, and no doubt read /. then you should use a desktop distro like Mandrake.

You have to update the package repository so that it points to new 9.2 sources and then run

urpmi --auto-select --force

I've had success installing Mandrake using the network install floppy. Here are some simple instructions, but the gist is that you download the network.img and note the location of a rpm mirror for when it asks you. It downloads a 45mb cramfs image and uncompresses it to memory so you should ideally have 90+mb of ram, or mount a swap partition from one of the other terminals.

I would recommend doing a very minimal install consisting of nothing but GNOME or KDE and any servers you wish to run. Then after the install, use urpmi to install any other packages. With 9.1 I would get lynx and use it to grab a list of mirrors from Easy Urpmi. I recommend using Texstar's repository whenever he starts packaging for 9.2. The page currently only has 9.1 and earlier sources, but expect people pestering him from this link to illicit an update.

AOL allows you to get "content" that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else.
Gator allows all sorts of useful searching and ads on your computer.
MSN explorer A very nice web browser that takes over your whole web experience.
Webshots is a very nice background rotator that hogs bandwidth and proccesor time and whaterver else it does.
Weatherbug is a handy little sys-tray app that shows the weather, and watches your every move.


So if you are willing to listen to all the "help" given here on /. You will have the buggiest bulkiest computer there is.

Although some essential programs include...
xmms,Mozilla (most incarnations are great), Gimp (The best FREE image editor)
Also check out Easy URPMI for obtaining linux software.

Windows:

Kerio /or Sygate for firewall (both are good)
Aladdin's free StuffIt Expander (unpacks a lot of different compressed files, including SIT and Gunzip's)
AVG antivirus (free for personal home use)
QuickClear lite (deletes IE cookies/cache/empty's trash)
StartPro (well, it used to be free. Gives you a nice list of programs set to load at bootup, including registry keys.)
Ad-Aware everybodies favorite adware/malware answer.

Mandrake is (of course) easy:

Got the Easy Urpmi and follow the directions to install all the different media sites. Once you do that (its just a cut and paste job) you can fire up rpmdrake and search for software by name/description/type/etc. Mandrake installs with a lot of the right stuff already. I'd recommend maybe installing nano (easy command line text editor if you hate VI/VIM/EMACS/ETC) and of course if you running a system with a NVidia card get the NVIDIA drivers (rpmdrake, but if their not listed NVidia will have them).

You should grab the package from LinuxTLE. If you are on RH8.0, it should drop in without a problem.

If you get dependency problems when running Mandrake Linux, you're probably not doing it right :-)

Seriously, the urpmi command will download an RPM for you, together with everything it needs that you don't already have, and install everything. Automatically.

See plf and the main urpmi web page for more info; Mandrake comes with urpmi, and it's also used by the GUI package manager (rpmdrake).

The trick to keeping Mandrake Linux running heppily is to avoid rpmfind. Always start by looking for packages in Mandrake's main and contrib (you can add them as sources for urpmi, and then it's automatic, just, urpmi package).

If you can't find a package, try searching with rpmdrake (you can search based on filenames too), or use urpmq -y some-substring such as, urpmq -y apache to see all packages that provide things containing that string.

if you use urpmi for package management, you should find that dependency and version problems becomre very rare. I won't say they'll go away (any more than they go away entirely with apt-get) but they will become very rare.

If you do get problems with urpmi, look in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms for the downloaded RPM files.

Ok, and their Click-N-Run software to distribute what most of us pull from our distro CD's or the net.

Visit this page, add a few URLs with it, then type "rpmdrake" and tell me if Mandrake doesn't have something at least as easy to use as click-n-run - for free. It'd surprise me if there wasn't at least as nice a GUI tool for Debian.

You support how many users?

Totting up all of the users who directly interface with machines I've set up, probably about forty. Solo. Indirectly (as in, I might see one call a year from or on behalf of each), probably about 200. Extra staff is hard for a small place (the difference between one and two is huge, two and three still large but not so drastic, and from there to about a dozen it's no sweat), PFY tend to be incompetent when it counts, and the next notch of competence above that tend to be independent enough to run their own show.

easier to just image machines from a generic install image

Evidently they've not tried automated network installs of Linux. (-:

Windows Update kicks the snot out of any linux distro update that I've seen so far (Red Hat, debian, SuSE)

That surprises me. While apt-get does require command-line fiddling to set it up, after that it's fire and forget. URPMI is the equivalent Mandrake tool.

I'll try putting Mandrake along side XP Pro and see if I change my mind.

Add some toys from here or the "Mandrake RPMS" section of this site's "RPM/DEB Outlet" and see if it helps. I recommend Thac for audio toys, the Penguin Liberation Front for video CoDecs and Drakian if any particular Debian package took your fancy.

...in fact, any of the top distros typically come with at least three of anything Miss Blonde Secretary might need, with the possible exception of stuff that cannot be GPLed (video codecs and the like), and even most of that's just a URPMI (or three clicks) away.

...or in debian...

apt-get install nameofpackage

...or in MS-Windows...

Aaaah! Where do I click? How do I pay for this? I want my paperclip!

urpmi and texstar are the reason that I absolutly LOVE mandrake. For a while after I installed 9.1 there were a bunch of things that just weren't working right, and my kernel source was out of sync with my actual kernel so I couldn't compile some drivers (like my linmodem driver) - in short, it sucked. Then I found easy urpmi which help me get urpmi up and running, including Texstar's rpms. Well, now my system is running the best it ever has in my 6 years of running Linux. That Texstar guy, he must just sit around all day adding cool new goodies to his RPMs, I swear he comes out with updates faster than my poor modem connection can download them!

-micah

I've been using Mandrake for a while, and I would hate to see this company go - they have many great tools, and they put every single line of code they wrote under the gpl (unlike YAST for instance, even though I love SuSe too). They probably need as much PR as they can get, and this was a good idea.

Its time for some features, like their excellent urpm* tools to get more attention (I wonder why it received such scare coverage, for it is the only package management tool that is on par with apt-get among rpm-based distributions - maybe with the exception of apt-rpm). Another great tool, excellent in large deployments is draksync.

Check out these sites:
urpmi mini-howto and easy-urpmi

URPMI looks great, but is only available for Mandrake?

Don't know about the dependencies, you might have to rebuild the .src.rpm, but it should work on anything RPM-based and even close to normal (e.g. RedHat, SuSE).

See here for some interesting uses of it. It's almost enough to make you want to switch distros, and (as they say) craps on LindowsOS's aplication warehouse from a great height.

I feel like a broken record lately..sorry. But your describing Mandrake and their urpmi/rpmdrake set. I agree, dependencies are a huge pain but a properly setup Mandrake box will handle those with rpmdrake (a gui frontend) which includes a really good index (by group, name, source, etc).

Think of Mandrake as Sid with less crashing and almost everything else you just asked for. Just don't forget to configure urpmi with Easy Urpmi with all available sources first off (Nvidia drivers, Macromedia plugins, all sorts of good stuff!) so you can get those apps! (and remove the Mandrake Mplayer and replace with the PLF..wink, wink)

I'm with the above author. Mplayer beats the pants off any other media player, bar none. Except at DVD playback (because of the DVDNAV) where XINE is *perfect*.

I've had a lot of gripes about Linux usability, but this is not one of those areas. If your having trouble with either project I'd suggest either installing from source with all depenancies or installing Mandrake 9.1 +/- and using urpmi and the available PLF binaries (easy as apt-get!).

Really, two amazing projects.

Real nerds should have most of the parts lying around! (jk)

$54 Geforce 4 mx
$29 5.1 Sound
$99 Clear pc case
$50 Cordless keyboard with built in mouse
$99 120 Gig hard drive
$219 DVD Burner
$43 512 Meg memory
$137 1800 XP AMD / Soyo Dragon MB combo
$25 Zalman cpu cooler
$69 Zalman quiet power supply
$74 +/- Various Case Lighting
$16 Fan controller (slow down!)
$0 OS
$0 Multimedia software

$914!

Coolness factor..priceless.

Plus, on the bright side after your wife/lover/puppy figures out how much this all cost you can remind them that its totally upgradable! Plus you can install next years features an 1/3 the cost (intead of throwing it away)!

Well, Mandrake has a policy against including software that's not Open Source in the main distro (they made an exception for Netscape back in the day, though). However, PLF (the repository for patent or license-encumbered Mandrake packages) could be a place to find them, in which case it's just a urpmi away.

Don't forget nanardon's site. For you who want additional media's added to urpmi , not supported ,
java , plf , contrib , ....

urpmiweb

Yes, you can use urpmi --auto-select after adding a suitable source. Seee www.urpmi.org or aso plf.zarb.org for more info on setting up urpmi.

At the very least you'll want to add sources for security updates (Mandrake Update will do this automatically) and for contributed software.

Urpmi howto
the urpmi sources
The MandrakeClub rpms repository