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LinuxMandrake 7.0 ISO Images Available
Marius Kjeldahl writes "I noticed a local LinuxMandrake mirror got the 7.0 directory a couple of days ago but without anything in it. Today I checked again, and there is an iso image for LinuxMandrake 7.0 there. " Gael Duval from Mandrakesoft sent us
an overview of whats new and improved in Mandrake 7. Check it out to see if you really want to download a whole ISO ;) Graphical Install, Disk Manager, new config tools, compiled with pentium optimizations. Lots of nice bits.
fried bananas, yum
If you're too lazy to change a small little file, you have no right to complain, methinks.
Well, hurry up before you modem cools down again, they run better when they're warmed up you know :)
How can you question the version numbering going from 4 to 7? It clearly had a major change, going from libc5 to glibc. I think a version number change to 5 would have been apropriate, but I can see why they did 7 (even if I don't agree with it).
ahem.
but what version # did Mandrake start at?
Interesting, you mention using gcc 2.7.2.3. I tried building that on my RH 6.1 and it failed horrible. What's the trick getting this verion built ?
This attitude of "I'm too smart to fall for this, but others are too dumb, so I better run out there and protect them" is the worst sort of elitism.
> Microsoft thinks it can jump from 3.1 to 2000 in around a decade :) Well, that's just a number to keep track of how many new bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures they've introduced from the last release.
Mandrakesoft make a big effort to compile everything with the new gcc 2.92-2 and don't use anymore pgcc.
I would reccomend not using "first post" as the title though, as that is what most first posters are looking for, that #1 next to their subject. Adding "First Post" to that would only add positive reinforcement. Perhaps "Loser(1st)" or "Segfault Reject" would be a better label. The rest seems pretty good however ;)
Boy did they get enough detail on what I was doing. Heheh.
;-)
Maybe they didn't finish reading the mail yet.
> I note the comment that they don't provide a
> compiler that's safe for compiling a kernel.
If you don't like gcc-2.95.2, egcs-1.1.2 is in the distro
> If it's like Mandrake 6.1, they also don't
> provide all the drivers with their kernel source
> that come with the full distribution
All drivers were in 6.1 and are also in 7.0
> And the Mandrake Netscape is set through an
> obscure file
It's not an "obscure file". You're free to remove it (delete the file or change Netscape preferences). Please not that all distro do that. It's not a bad idea: link to support are in.
> but the rest of their business model is like
> Microsofts: lock the customer in and make it
> hard for them to customize/stablize for their
> needs.
??? Are you crazy? Linux-Mandrake is free software (open source). You can do what you want with it. It's not the case with Microsoft sofware.
> Does Mandrake come with a default SMP kernel?
If you have a SMP computer, of course
Right, and Linus should have waited for GNU/HURD to come around, when he was working on the first linux kernel back in 1991.
I note the comment that they don't provide a compiler that's safe for compiling a kernel. If it's like Mandrake 6.1, they also don't provide all the drivers with their kernel source that come with the full distribution - someone there seems to have said, for instance, "Ah, there's more than one SymBios SCSI driver, so we'll leave out a few of them" - but there's more than one for a reason - some cards are only happy with a driver they've left out in their wisdom. 6.1 was also set up so that if you grab a copy of Netscape from Netscape, rather than their own upgrade, it won't run. And the Mandrake Netscape is set through an obscure file (not the normal Netscape conf) to always show a Mandrake page first (hint: find the file, somewhere under X11, named netscape.something, and just delete it). Mandrake got a couple things right: kde and compiling optimized for faster CPU's - but the rest of their business model is like Microsofts: lock the customer in and make it hard for them to customize/stablize for their needs.
I hope you feel better now that you've gotten that off of your chest.
One really cool thing to do with your bad burns is put them in the microwave for about 5 seconds. Hit the stop button once you see the cool lights, and you have this really neat pattern on the coaster, and as an added bonus don't have to look real close to see if you tried burning on that one already.
Your results may very. The anonymous coward assumes no responsibility for damaged or destroyed merchandise, use at your own risk.
> There were TONS of corrupted RPS
Only on some mirrors. Air's RPMS aren't corrupted (of course).
> This release is a lot like Red Hat 6.1 in that
> it has the same GNOME style graphical install
Hu? Style is different, code too. DrakX is write in Perl/GTK, not RedHat's install.
DrakX require less memory (16 Mo but 24 Mo are better) than RedHat's install (32 Mo)
Last time I heard of the P5 optimizations it merely said if you ARE running a P5+ it'll be faster but it didn't say it wouldn't run on a 486 or lower machine.
Does this release support the SBLive cards yet?? I havent had any sound ever since RH5 came out and i'm still stuck without my mp3s playing. Please help!
It's not a Beta. It's a final release
I think the version number fits the release, I downloaded and installed a beta and it is very different from the the Mandrake 6.x series. Sure most will view it as an improved RedHat, but I think this is the first move away from the redhat type setup and install. OK, so you say it has a gui install just like RedHat (and how many others), but it far out shines RH's (I've installed RH 6.1 using the GUI, but only once, after that I used the text based install--I really love the slack method though). I really think the Mandrake install is steps ahead of the RH, much easier too. I am at the moment torn between Slack and Mandrake. To me the number on the CD means little, as it does to most users (and as the number of progs for linux grows each reinstall causes my Windows partition to get smaller). Functionality counts, as does stability--slack is rock solid on my box, but then so has Mandrake 7.0b). Nearly every install (with the exception of RH 5.2)of RH has been a large letdown, I would expect great things (like configured menues, a few bells and whistles, etc.) but would kick off the box for the first boot and get in there and play a bit and be disapointed with the stuff there (perhaps I'm not being fair, since I think RH is kind of like M$--but that's not fair either), where mandrake includes the toys, RH want you to pay extra for the delux version. Anyway, it comes down to this, Mandrake has matured to a point now where I think they deserve to be viewed, not as an easy knock off of RH, but instead as a viable distribution, worthy and proven. I'll use it, but ultimately I'll most likely find my way back to slack. Slack still rocks, but Mandrake is nice too. Dennis
Well, I'm running the mandrake cooker (7.0 beta) vintage jan 11 and the standard compiler is gcc 2.95.2. Not pgcc. pgcc is in the contrib section. Maybe they didn't learn their lesson, but at least they seem to have revised their thinking :-) My upgrade experience was initially bad, but then I discovered the mirror was out of date. There are a few quirks left but to me they are bearable.
Perhaps the commenter was reffering to the MacMillian Mandrake distribution, their repacked Mandrake 6.1 disk. Mandrake never even had a 6.2.
first one I saw was 5.3, first one I used was 6.0.
> I had a USB mouse, and it worked fine with
> redhat 5.1
^^^
On a out of the box 5.1? Are you really sure. I think you're wrong
Your answer's right there, Tex. The software (Win98 mouse driver) is the same. My guess is that your motherboard is cranky.
I think Mandrake 6.5 is MacMillan's (sp) distro. Don't think it's officially supported by Mandrake.
You seem to be forgetting about the second major facet in your complaint about Mandrake 7 (which is what brought this on). Sure the first facet, the generic stuff, is not a big improvement for Mandrake 7 over 6.1. But the distribution specific stuff is in a big way. It dropped RH's installer, added hardware detection, wrote a partion utility (that can resize existing partitions), wrote a new X configuration utility, wrote other configuration utilities. You might think all these things as minor - but these are the things that make Mandrake Mandrake, and not Suse, Caldera or Red Hat. They nearly completely rewrote the part that makes them Mandrake.
Install and use Mandrake 6.1 for week or two and then install and use Oxygen (v.7) for a week or two and see what you think.
I think sun explained what they were doing with their version numbers nicely. 7 is really 2.7 and 8 is 2.8. Since there won't be a solaris 3.0 they felt the 2. was extranous. It is all just marketing. Numbers really shouldn't matter.
I demand the iso be put on kernel.org especially with all the bandwidth that site has!
Mandrake-Linux 2000!
i am going legit so give me a chance
God to hear that Mr. Face, but if you're serious I'd reccomend just starting a new account, as from the looks of things you maybe be digging your karma out of the hole it's in for quite a while...
Fist Prost
The freindly and largely inactive (hey, I'm lazy!) first poster.
You answered your own question. People *don't* care. Only you do.
stupid stupid stupid, it was the little bugs in RH that caused me to hate them and love Mandrake, if they release something with little bugs, they will no longer be the superior RPM based distro. People at Mandrake, you're a bunch of dolts if you package a version with known, anoying, little bugs. Idiots I say, a bunch of idiots... bow now ye to the market whores.
Oxygen beta / cooker.
Well, I am not a huge Linux guru but I know that the current stable kernel does not allow for USB. Do not worry though, the 2.4.x series is supposed to come out fairly soon and that should give you favorite distrib the resources needed to auto-detect your mouse. You cannot expect something to work if there is not support for it- that simple.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
I disagree with one of your bad examples:
- RedHat 5.0 to 6.0 - new X components. whoo
First off, it was Redhat 5.2 to 6.0. Second of all, there was a lot more than new X components suck as glibc 2.1 and GNOMEReal men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Mandrake parted ways with Redhat before 7.0. In the very beginning Redhat was not offering KDE on their distrib because of a little open source fling, so the Mandrake distrib was just Redhat with KDE. But Redhat eventually had to listen to the consumer and started includeing KDE- but by this time Mandrake was becoming distinctly its own. Some of the difference are that Mandrake has all of its packages compiled for atleast pentium optimazation (meaning you can't run it on older machines) and Mandrake also includes a whole shitload of software that I would consider suspect because of it is considered to be beta or even alpha.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
New kernel too!!
Perhaps by themselves the 2.2 kernel, glibc 2.1, and GNOME are that impressive but when rolled into one major ball well that is something significant. It should also be noted that 6.0 was the first Redhat release to include KDE so that should thrown into the pot as well.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Don't you ever learn about Mandrake? How many times did /. wrongly annonce the Mandrake 6.1 release? I think atleast twice!!! I am not saying that 7.0 is not out but I just heard of the public beta yesterday
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Uhh NO
Slackware jumped from 4 to 7 and it had a very good reason, going from libc5 to glibc is a **HUGE** change for slackware!!
Gee imagine that, bugs in a beta release... What is the world coming to.
As someone who has used the Linux-Mandrake 7 beta (which I think is what people have found), I can say that they have made some radical changes from the 5.x and 6.x lines. Granted alot of the utilities and apps are just latest releases, the Mandrake part of the distribution - the part that makes it Mandrake is definitely a new generation. Lothar (Hardware detection), DrakX (graphical installer), DrakSec (security level chooser), XFDrake (X configurator), DrakConf (software configuration), etc...
Mandrake has really set itself apart with this release - it is a big change in the distribution and deserves a major version number bump. Not because of a slightly newer kernel and XFree, but because of the software that they put around the kernel and X. Slothmonster, King of Lost passwords
Mandrake 7.0 uses gcc 2.95.2... not pgcc.
Not that I've ever had problems with pgcc on my systems...
Unless this is a different image from the one that came out about 5 days ago, then this is a Beta of Mandrake 7. Also I downloaded the Beta image a few days ago and tried to make a CD from it, got errors when burning. Made a coaster in the process, but I finally got a working CD. What I'm tyring to say is that I think the image has some errors.
I've got a copy of the supermount patch for 2.2.14 final here:
http://www.fargocity.co m/~ccondit/supermount-2.2.14-1.patch
This is modified slightly from the original supermount code, which doesn't compile cleanly against 2.2.14.
Redhat 5.0->6.0 changed the kernel from 2.0 to 2.2. That's pretty major
John
John_Chalisque
If your system locks up during a Win98SE install, then your hardware has a problem. No problem you ever have with your PC can ever be reliably blamed on the software, at least until you fix what is wrong with your hardware.
While I haven't tried any Mandrake newer than 6.1, I've done maybe 75 installs of Win98SE, and never had a problem. *shrug*
I'm sure my Mandrake friends will be happy to hear about this release, but I'll stick to Debian for now.
After 7 hours on the University's line and :(
20 minutes to write the CD. 7.0 is out before
I have instaled the BETA
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This was the case when Mandrake was simply RedHat with some additional packages added, but it hasn't been true for a while. Mandrake X.Y has not simply been RedHat X.Y with some added stuff since X == 5, and even that started to break down towards the end (witness the Mandrake 5.3 release while RedHat never had a 5.3). Mandrake 6.1 was released before RedHat 6.1, so certainly wasn't based on it (it was the second version of their update to 6.0 really).
Nowadays, with 7.0, I'm not sure you can say Mandrake is based on RedHat any more than Caldera, SuSE, or any of the other RPM-based distributions are, except perhaps as a matter of historical trivia. Well, and also they stick with RedHat's directory structure and incorporate any updates from RedHat that they need in order to make sure any RPM that claims to be for RedHat also happens to work with Mandrake. Essentially, Mandrake has forked, and now maintains compatibility not by simply enhancing the latest RedHat but instead by tracking their changes and making sure they stay compatible. With this new methodology, the old version numbering scheme no longer makes sense.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
First of all, there are a *lot* of differences between Mandrake 6.1 and 7.0, a heck of a lot more than there were between 5.3 and 6.0. It's *not* just a new installer.
And secondly, who gives a fuck? People who obsess about version numbers need to get a life. There is one and only one requirement a good version numbering scheme needs, and that would be that the newer version numbers are greater than the older version numbers. Anything beyond that is unnecessary and not worth loosing any sleep over...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Windows 95B, also known as OSR 2.0, included FAT32 support, as well as other things. The most recent version, Windows 95C, also know as OSR 2.5, included Active Desktop, among other things (it's the most visible feature, though -- your taskbar looks exactly like it does in Windows 98 and unlike what it looked like in previous versions of Windows 95 -- in fact, the differences between Windows 98 and Windows 95C are smaller than the differences between Windows 95C and Windows 95B as far as I can tell).
Incidently, I still run Windows 95C. It's the last version of Windows I own a legal copy of. (In Minnesota, we consider a preposition to be a perfectly fine thing to end a sentence with. Apparently, this makes sense if you're Norwegian.)
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I think that a lot of stuff (but not necessarily all stuff) compiled with i586 optimizations will still run on a 486, but not as fast as it would have if it was compiled for the 486 instead.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
You know, I may be nuts (that's another thread altogether), or maybe I don't push my machine hard enough, but on my Mandrake 6.1 box (k6-III/400) and the official (ftp.kernel.org) 2.2.14 source compiled with pgcc, I have no stability problems whatsoever. Now, if someone could give me a satisfactory explanation of the seemingly innocuous "neighbor table overflow" errors I get, I'd be a happy man.
While I'm here, I'd like to say that I like Mandrake quite a bit, what with all of the windowmanagers and stuff (IIRC) RH no longer includes, like SVGATextMode. Hi-res 100x37 consoles ALL THE WAY!!!
--Ben
"Yes, wood is good food." -SpaceGhost
--Ben
With this version of the Distro - I'd say that about the only thing in the Mandrake Distro that is RH like it the file-system layout nice and RH utilities (do like sndconfig ;-)
Also - the new GUI install is NICE! I'd rank it 3rd behind Caldera and Corel as far as easy of use. The neat thing is it isn't totally dumbed down. They've also added there own disk tool, and new administration tools. Lastly - if I recall correctly, they are compiled for Pentium hardware. This is the distro for folks who know what they're doing - and want a nice desktop to boot.
Also - I've looked at the new Suse 6.3 GUI -it's primitive and extremely limited. It won't install into a great variety of hardware situations ....stick with the original YAST install - don't bother with the new one!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Granted, I am not new to Linux, but I am not a guru either. However, one of the biggest things I feel that these distros should wait for before they reach the Big 7.0, is XFree86 4.0. I mean, isnt that comming out in about 2 months anyway? With that, games or any other 3D application will be possible for idiots (like me) to configure. Its a HUGE step (imho) that Linux will take, and 7.0 would reflect this change.
My two cents.
War Linux!
Out.
++Om
Alright, I had to clear my name! :) At the time of writing my original post, the news release from Mandrake outlining the features wasn't out yet. I just finished reading the news release including the features and I now see the USB configuration utility thingy! Woohoo! I definately will try it when I get home.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Really!? Cool! I'll have to download the ISO and try it tonight. You better not be lying! :) As for the others. That's what I feared! :) I have a 2.3.x kernel compiled for my USB mouse, but I just wanted a distro. that had an option of using the devel. kernel so that it can pick up the USB mouse. It's not so much for me as it is for my friends which I help install linux on. I guess they'll all have to wait unless they want to compile their own kernel! :)
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I was hoping that by version 7.0 (RedHat or Mandrake) that it'll be able to find my USB mouse upon setup. I didn't see word of that. Anyone know if/when/how this might ever be done?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Unless this choice of 7.0 is in direct response to Patrick Volkerding making comments to the effect of "leveling the playing field" with respect to versioning, I'm afraid the Mandrake team have just lost quite a bit of respect in my eyes.
I am hoping that they will comment publicly to shed some light on this in the next few days. If not, by mid-summer I'm going to release a small distro loosely based on Slackware being recompiled with new targets (and most of the cruft sliced out) and just start the goddamn versioning at 12.4.
(grumble grumble *schills* grumble)
Or the Windows version of Word: 1.0, then 2.0, then 6.0 to sync up with the version number of DOS-Word, then 97 because year-based versioning schemes are cool or something. *sigh*
I've tried a couple of kernels with gcc-2.95, but every time I do, weird things start happenning after a day or so, so I revert back to the same kernel compiled with egcs-1.1.2.
I wouldn't trust pgcc to compile my kernel unless it was a test machine where I didn't care how stable it was. It's good for squeezing the last ounce of performance out of a program, but make sure you benchmark!
I used to keep gcc-2.7.3.2 around for testing certain things, but deleted it after it wasn't getting any use.
My current setup now includes gcc-2.95.2 as the default compiler, and I installed egcs-1.1.2 into /usr/local/egcs-1.1.2/ for those kernel recompiles. Works great!
--
Why must it be a hardware issue? My MS mouse worked fine, but the logitech one was hostile towards windoze.
Cool. I'd take the special label in place of a beanie award. Can I? =)
RH safely compiles all their apps and kernel for i386 making it compatible with any iX86 machine out their. Mandrake re-compiled all the applications etc for i586 or higher, so while your not going to install it on that left over 486
I read this too, but not until I'd successfully installed and run Mandrake 6.0 on my old 486/66. I have had only one problem so far where I didn't know what the cause was, but it seems to run just fine otherwise.
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
They have been saying "Red Hat Compatible" for the last few versions. I believe that started with 6.0 IIRC. They stopped being a Red Hat knock-off after 5.x
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Check out the main page: http://www.linuxmandrake.com.
As of today (Jan. 14, 2000), Linux Mandrake 7.0 is available for download, with a boxed version appearing in February for $55 US dollars.
Mandrake 6.0 is my distro of choice, but when Mandrake is using RedHat as a base, they should at least use a similar versioning system.
I've got RedHat 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, and 6.1 yet I still prefer Mandrake. I was NOT bashing mandrake.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
For older machines I use RedHat. 5.2 was wonderful on older slower machines.
Then again, I didn't use 6.0 or 6.1 on anything slower than a PII-300
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I don't see how you can use this news item to infer that Mandrake continues to become less stable. The post to which you're replying describes this as alpha software; there's no reason to think that the released Mandrake 7 will be as bad.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I'll echo that non-trouble report: K6-2/350, 2.2.14, Mandrake 6.1 ==> no problems. I did get kernel oopses at the end of the init 0 sequence with the 2.2.13ish kernel that came with the 6.1 release, but after moving to 2.2.14 even that works fine. My only complaint is that Linux+X+KDE w/o any extra themage+Netscape and no servers running still uses about 56M of my 64M of memory, so it swaps a little too much. But another 64 or 128 that I've been planning on should fix that.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I had a USB mouse, and it worked fine with redhat 5.1 and up, until the mouse or the port broke, and it wouldn't work under linux or windows. I think it was like an emulated PS/2, but it was still a lot more accurate than the current mouse I have, a microsoft ergonomic mouse, connected to a comm port.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
I may be wrong, but I believe you may be refering to the MacMillian 6.5 relase, which uses Linux-Mandrake.
This version uses the 6.0 (6.1?) release of Linux-Mandrake. MacMillian just refers to it as 6.5 for some reason unknown to me.
Does anyone have some idea of whether Mandrake 7 (the real one, not the
beta) is better than its predecessors in the bugginess department? I like
Mandrake for a number of reasons, but the last one was disappointingly
buggy. For example, the floppy tape driver was broken, XEmacs' info-mode and
gdb-mode were FUBAR-ed, the glibc reference went AWOL, an X server was
miscompiled and IBM's JDK did not work. I would hope that this version is
less buggy, as I am reluctant to go through that pain again.
Chris
Frankly, I'm not particularly fussy about version numbers on distribution releases. Once upon a time, version numbers actually meant something; given the way things are going, it's fast becoming that the only thing sticking to a sane versioning scheme is the Linux kernel itself.
:)
Frankly, I'm not going to make a choice of software simply because Mandrake is at version 7 and Red Hat is at version 6.1. I'm going to look at the software on each, where they differ, and which one is more apt to suit my needs. Based on that, I'll choose a distribution.
Further, just to due to my personal preferences, neither Mandrake nor Red Hat would be on my list of distributions. I'm currently attempting to decide between Slackware and Debian - and the vast disparity in versioning numbers between them has absolutely nothing to do with my decision.
"Pgcc is just an excuse to make something that isn't compatable with others machines."
Ten years from now, when Itaniums are obsolete, will distros still be compiled for a i386?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The installer worked great. The customized setup has some excellent tools for folks getting into *nix for the first time. Very simple GUI(purdy even) that is well laid out and easy to follow. BTW did I mention my 7 year old nephew was able to do the install all by himself? And is surfin' around on his cable modem right now? My USB mouse is working just fine. My GeForce DDR Is rockin' the house. Users _can _ have other default desktops including E (my fave). Over all ease of use Automagic support for some of the newest hardware. Obviously "some" users can't get past..."Where do I put the disk all I got's this dang cup holder". But for the rest of us things should be sweet.
One good thing about music... when it hits you, you feel no pain. So hit me with music. -Bob Marley
The version of PGCC and Gcc 2.95 that they were using in the past were buggy (I myself submitted three separate code generation bug reports for things that were affecting my own development). The latest version, 2.95.2 seems much better, and is what is being used for 7.0. So perhaps that will help a bit with stability. I myself have been using Mandrake for well over a year, and enjoying it very much.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
so Mandrake jumps to 7 and slackware jumps from 3 to 7....why not???
A little more research would show numerous 3.xx releases of Slack and a 4.0 release prior to the 7.0 one. But then it's always easier to insult the distro you don't use...
First they burn books, then they burn people.
someone correct me if I'm wrong buit I beleive mandrake "forked" at 6.1. I don't remember RH6.1 and Mandrake 6.1 being related release wise ....
I just finished downloading 6.1 iso over a 56k link. I mean JUST finished. Like two minutes before updating /. to find this article.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I've got the same crash symptom as yours. Only that mine is a Redhat 6.1. It's also a K6-2 350 btw, make that 2 k6-350s(I have two of those machines.
Went away once I upgraded to to 2.2.14.
It may not be the distribution's fault.
Even though I have always been a great fan of Mandrake I think it is sad that they couldn't wait a couple of days before releasing this, it just isn't ready.
Hardware that claims to be supported (such as i810) just doesn't work. Many of the configurations tool are really buggy. There is no text based installer. Support for kickstart installing is missing.
If the mandrake guys just had waited a couple of weeks more to squeze out the bugs this would have been a _great_ distribution. But today it isn't , it is just another example of "feeping cretureism"
(And YES, I have tried it, I have been on the cooker beta-tester list for more then half a year now).
I hope there will be a mdk 7.1 within a couple of months where most issues have been worked out.
Mdk 6.1 was a great distro though.
so Mandrake jumps to 7 and slackware jumps from 3 to 7....why not???
:)
Microsoft thinks it can jump from 3.1 to 2000 in around a decade
hehehe
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Version numbers are not terribly informative. In many companies they are nothing more than a marketing tool. Mandrake may have a cool explanation for going to 7, but there's no rule that says they have to stick to some one else's scheme.
Code is garbage in garbage out.
Languge is garbage in, non-sequitor out.
Code is garbage in garbage out.
Languge is garbage in, non-sequitor out.
The beta wasn't the point. Presumably, they have fixed many of the problems you described with the release. If not, then certainly they should be reviled. Anyhow, I think your information needs to be prefaced with a disclaimer that you are talking about a BETA version of the product under discussion, and not the full release, which is what the announcement was concerning.
Juln
If I were to make big improvements to Redhat 6.1 I'd be changing the version number as well. It's got a new kernel, all new libraries, and everything's been optimized and compiled for Pentiums. I was kinda hoping they'd hold off until XFree4 and other Good Things were finished THEN release, but hey, it's a great distro at any time. They've added alot of new, mandrake-bred tools for hardware configuration and a badass GTK setup screen that includes visual partitioning. I've gotta get this ASAP.
Try reading the homepages for stories before you guys post, it enlightens you.
We run a few machines with Mandrake 6.1 and some of our machines run fine, others seem to crash for no reason. Not sure it can be blamed on the kernel and glibc2.1.2 being compiled with pgcc or not though.
In 6.0 though, we did have problems with some self-compiled kernel's not being able to be loaded by lilo!!
Now accepting sig suggestions.
I've used Mandrake 6.0 and 6.1, as well as bits of 7.0 for quite a few months now. I've built all the kernels from 2.2.9 onwards with this setup, and I've only had I believe 4 kernel panics, all of them related to the file system (losing power and forgetting to fsck my HDs). I've used 2.2.13 and 2.2.14 the most, done a lot of wacky things, and pgcc hasn't let me down yet. I've also built probably 40-50 other packages with it, and haven't seen any problems yet. I am running a true Intel box and not AMD/Cyrix, so that could be a factor as well. I think pgcc is actually maturing now :)
Matt
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein
That was the Beta (Oxygen). This is the official release (Air).
Oh, my CD-RW not working has nothing to do with Linux. Either my BIOS or the drive itself is broken, since Windows and Linux can both see it, but neither of them can read anything off of it.
I care what others think, don't get me wrong. I just objected to the way you presented your info.
:)
I agree with you now. People naturally think of the higher number as the better choice. I feel sorry for those poor souls that buy Win2000 because it "must be better than Win98".
By the same token, though, marketing has to be done. It's a cheasy way to do it, but otherwise people wouldn't see as much of a 'need' to upgrade.
Probably the only way to change things is to educate people to this obvious way of luring them away from their money. How 'bout a Dateline piece?
Who are you? Who made you Lord of the version numbers? If a distro wants to change their versioning, let them. If you don't want it, don't get it.
I have been using Mandrake 7.0b for a while. There were TONS of corrupted RPS at first but I think that has all been ironed out. This release is a lot like Red Hat 6.1 in that it has the same GNOME style graphical install but like always Mandrake has greatly improved it. They have there own partitioning software in the install and the install goes fairly smoothly, the only thing they missed was a game at the end like Caldera's Tetris (that was a Great idea). There are a lot of good things to say about it but I dont really have the space or time right now, try it out yourself, just stay away from Tucows ISO download. That thing thkes forever, they must have set up some sort of download bandwith limit :-(. Well... have fun.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
There was also the jump from glibc 2.0 to 2.1.X. This was very major and even caused a reliance on RPMs until samba, ssh, and apache were reworked so that they would compile correctly.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
We also need "ModerationWhiner -1", for people that make comments about nothing but moderation. I think it's better if it's a little more transparent.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I purchased Mandrake 6.5 recently, and after seeing the Redhat 6.1 distribution's default installation, I'm not so sure it's an improvement
IIRC, they say it's 'enhancements' to RH 6.1, but it doesn't look like it.
What really is different, other than saying it is different, anyway? I'd like to see a written document somewhere that lists why Mandrake is better.
At present, I'm gonna try RH 6.1, and see if I can determine a difference.
On a different note, I also prefer Mandrake, but what sometimes ticks me off is the Pentium compile optimizations, as I must hack things, or use a differnt distro, for 486 machines.
make world, not war
If you want support or help, try the mailing lists, they're really informative! One of their techies, Axalon Bloodstone, slaves away to answer multitudes of questions posed by newbies and experts alike. Find the link from their site
make world, not war
I've used RedHat 5.2 and 6.0, and Mandrake 6.0 and 6.1. The way Mandrake was introduced to me, which seemed correct, was like RedHat, but with the bugs fixed and extra goodies included.
make world, not war
How do the rest of you guys feel about the year numbering scheme. Minor versions could be like MyLinux 2000.0, and MyLinux 2000.1, or similar. Maybe even something akin to the WINE packages.
Are there other schemes that may be better than just Mandrake 7.x or Mandrake 2000?
make world, not war
I installed RedHat 6.0 on my 485 66. I tried calling X once, but the whole box went into a massive paging mode, and just kept accessing and reaccising the disk. I couldn't even use a virtual terminal to kill the process. Other than that (i'll soon change from the default E/GNOME to a more simple WM and not use gnome) it's been okay.
make world, not war
Has anyone been able to get this to install via
FTP or NFS after booting from a floppy? It was never able to conect to a server for me. I was able to do this under 6, but no more. I don't
have a CD burner so I am bumming a bit...
before mandrake beta7.0, mandrake WAS a clone of Red Hat... (the GPL license allows you to do this) PLUS some additional tools like Partition Magic, Boot Magic, etc. and, packaged in the store with tech support included, it cost $35 instead of RH's $70.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Newer kernel than RH 6.1, newer drivers than RH6.1, newer utility builds than RH6.1, newer X-Server than RH6.1... et.c. Plus their use their own installer et.c.
Just because the distro is -based- around RH doesnt mean its the same, nor that it should follow the same versioning...
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
I also tried the beat, and was thourgly impressed. Lothar was amazing, as was GNOME, which, as always, I used for my Wm (without problem i might add). I think you must have gotten a pre-alpha copy or something.
Actually, when Mandrake first came out they publically stated that their version numbers were the same as the version of RedHat that it was based on.
I've been rather unimpressed with Mandrake's quality control. 6.1 had a bug in the initscripts that prevented you from configureing IP Aliases. It took them several weeks to release a "fixed" initscripts, which didn't work for me. I can certinally understand a distro having bugs, but to me this one would be a show stoper for many people. Many of the SRPMS that I've tried to recompile failed (including the SRPM of the kernel *sigh*) I never had problems recompileing the SRPMS when I was using Redhat. I've not had any significant stability problems (unlike some other posts). I still use Mandrake for most of my systems though. They seem to use slightly more recent versions of the software included in the distro.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
That poll has been up there forever. I think it does them more harm (by giving the impression that it is just RH "plus some stuff") than good. Of course I also wish they would ditch the pastel colored logo but I suppose you can wish in one hand and...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
Why the hell would anyone want to use a distro that comes from a company that hasn't IPO:ed? That would be bleeding insane! You have no guarantees that they'll be in business a month from now. Go with a safe choice such as Red Hat, or for that matter LinuxOne (as soon as they IPO).
W S B Being popular is more important than being right (or wrong for that matter).WSB
Tell you the truth, I downloaded and burned the beta ISO and have been recommending it unreservedly to everyone in earshot ever since. There was a quirk or two with the installer but this is the best Linux distribution I've seen, bar none. (It's about the 5th I've tried - Slackware 1.x being the first.) My copy of Air will be burned onto a CD by 6 PM tonight. (I get home at 5:30.)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
i didnt see anything about it in the offical release statement from mandrake. for those of us that can't afford scsi, this would be a huge plus. i just got all my unsupported hardware working with all kinds of patches and hacks and i dont want to have to do it again if i can avoid it.
I noticed a lot of stuff is missing from Mandrake 7.0. Like MySQL 3.22.x (retrograded to the GPL 3.20 version), midgard, etc. Also the PHP modules for LDAP and MySQL aren't there. Does anyone know where these have gone?
AFAIK, Mandrake was an improved version of Red Hat 5.x, when it came out more or less one year ago.
But in the meantime, they became quite independant from Red Hat, in terms of contents as in terms of version number.
IIRC, Mandrake 6.1 was available long before RH 6.1
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Incorrect.
Word 6.0 for Windows NT was identical to 6.0, except recompiled to support all the shiny new Win32 stuff and long filenames.
Word95 took NT Word 6 as a starting point, and added several man-years of work. There were several (IMHO) worthwhile features added.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Uhg... Sickening... Getting a patent and using two freeware/sourceware programs as a reference (FIPS and presizer). From the way US5675769 reads, I'm not sure what exactly they're patenting. From the looks of it, they've covered everything from the partition operation to the error recovery situation to the PartitionMagic GUI. Oh, what a wonderful world this would be if software patents did not exist. How can anyone find any sanity in a patent system that takes 2-3 years to grant a patent that lasts for 17 years in an industry that can drastically change in less than 6 months?
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
You forget that before that Word has just taken a version number leap from version 2.0 to 6.0, because the old DOS version was at 5.0 and people assumed the DOS version Word 5.0 was newer than the Windows version Word for Windows 2.0. Microsoft's been playing the "Version Number Game" for far longer than anyone else. I doubt they'll stop anytime soon, either. Word is probably not more than 6 (major) versions old, and has already had 3 version marking changes made to it (2.0 -> 6.0, 6.0 -> 95, 97 -> 2000).
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
it's only a good idea if you update the software once every several years. look at postgres95 which was changed to PostgreSQL v6.0 (postgres95 would've been v5) when they decided that good software gets updated more than once a year...
With the good people at Mandrake working towards a "7.0" release, they're really showing that they've come out of the shadows of Redhat, and can now stand on their own as a great distribution which most anybody could use.
It's also not a bad idea at all to get the beta program rolling now. Who knows, it may be weeks or months before a 7.0 final comes out; that's not so important. They just might be waiting for Xfree86 4.0... and once that's all set and ready to go, the remainder of their distribution will already be looking sharp. This sort of extended program is needed, considering that Mandrake also enjoys the pleasure of sitting on a lot of store shelves (often enough in places where Redhat isn't!), so they have more to live up to than the average geek's-paradise distribution.
They deserve your support.
Daltorak
Visual J++ (an abombination of a name in and of itself) Hee Hee
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
They annouced that this was coming out on the 5th. The announcment is here.
Debian is better anyway...
Munky_v2
Jay
The only real difference is that KDE is a pain to get working in RHAT 6.1, and it works right off in MNDRK. That and some of the packages that they include in the distro are different. All in all, I would stick with RHAT though. MNDRK seems to be after the almighty buck and that's about it. When you purchase their boxed sets, the docs stink and there on-line info center is vague. I prefer RHAT in this arguement.
But Debian or Slackware is better than either.
Munky_v2
Jay
I've heard similar comments relating to pgcc. I'm wondering what the Mandrake people use to compile their kernel, libraries etc... Do they use pgcc in-house to compile it? If so, how do *they* get a stable release for their distro? Or, is it just that when you *upgrade* to pgcc on an existing distro problems arise? Just wondering, cause I'm thinking of switching to Mandrake from COL. Anybody know? Thanks.
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
I hate to sound stupid, but what is the difference between Mandrake and Redhat?
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
SMP kernel: rpm in the distrib, configured by default if smp detected
APM suspend under X: it automagically switch to console before suspend, and the other way on restore
APM suspend to disk: at least works on a desktop i tested
the ``starts kdm even if it is not installed whereas gdm is'' is fixed now
does a number have to do with the quality of software? I could give a shit if they started at negative 20 and worked towards zero. What exactly is a "correct version"? Look at HP-UX, aren't they at like version 10.x now? Version numbers don't dictate what types of software I use, I use it for reasons more important than that.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
...I thought it was to witty to resist. I guess I'm not that witty.
Also, has anybody had much experience with Mandrake on laptops? My hardware is all supported by RedHat 6.1, but sound is a little flaky on boot until I run sndconfig (Crystal Sound 4232), and APM can't suspend to disk or within an X display (I have to switch to a console first.) Plus for some reason modprobe runs every couple of seconds, spiking the CPU... haven't found an obvious parent process for that yet, but it's likely hardware related, probably something in the kernel.
I looked at some of the installation programs. I tried Caldera's and was unimpressed. It was a M$ Windows installation style. This one was nice because it shows all the steps in a column on the left and you can jump between them if you forget something (which I have done many times) in a previous screen. The round buttons change colors depending if the step is completed or not. The installation I tried worked without a hitch. I didn't test it much but what I saw worked like I thought it should.
Maybe offtopic, maybe you already know this, but a little advice from someone who's suffered through it can't hurt, can it?
1. CD-R / CD-RW support has only recently become useable, so you want to make sure you have the latest kernel (at least 2.2.13) to do it.
2. If you have an ATAPI (IDE) burner, run "insmod ide-scsi". For me, it will only work if the "ide-cd" module is not present, so also try "rmmod ide-cd".
3. "blank=fast" seems to work only if the CD is in perfect condition, so if you halt the CD-RW burn then you'll need to do a "full" erase before cdrecord will listen to you again.
The HOWTO and the cdrecord man page provide just about everything you need to know beyond that.
here's a current list of ISOs that we currently have on the server:
Caldera
col23_full_install.iso:
col23_min_install.iso:
Corel
corellinux-oc_1.0.iso.gz
Debian
2.1_r2
m68k
binary-m68k-1.iso
binary-m68k-2.iso
2.1_r4
alpha
binary-alpha-1.iso
binary-alpha-2.iso
i386
binary-i386-1.iso
binary-i386-2.iso
source
source-1.iso
source-2.iso
sparc
binary-sparc-1.iso
binary-sparc-2.iso
slink_test
alpha
alink1-alpha.raw
alink2-alpha.raw
i386
slink1-i386.raw
slink2-i386.raw
slink3.raw
slink4.raw
m68k
slink1-m68k.raw
slink2-m68k.raw
sparc
slink1-sparc.raw
slink2-sparc.raw
Mandrake
mandrake70.iso
Mandrakebeta
air.iso
RedHat
6.1-alpha-SRPMS.iso
6.1-alpha.iso
6.1-SRPMS.iso
6.1-i386.iso
6.1-sparc-SRPMS.iso
6.1-sparc.iso
Slackware
install.iso
source.iso
Slackware-current
slackcur-01052000.iso
Stormix
Entire_Image
rain-i386-Storm-Linux-2000-dled.iso
Split_Image
(multi-files)
SuSE
evaluation-6.3.iso
YellowDog
ydl-cs1.1-install.img
Also, the poll the Mandrake's web site seems to indicate that they want to differentiate themselves from Red Hat, but maybe I'm reading too much into it.
This explanation was for the beta. I think I remember that the beta was clearly labeled as such at the mirrors, and now seems to have been replaced with the final 7.0.
Now it's official. http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/announce-air.php3
If the kernel panics it's the users fault.
If the user panics it's the kernels fault?
;-)
You must have erred in someway... I'll refrain from calling you an idiot, but as anyone on slashdot knows, Linux is perfect and if the kernel panics it must be a problem between the chair and they keyboard.
:)
I think it's time for some new moderation labels:
- FirstPost -1: self-explanatory
- Loser -1: reserved for "First Post" in message 2 or higher
- Katz-bashing -1: self-explanatory
- Katz-bashing +1: sometimes needed
- Signal11 +1: dear lord, this guy's been moderated up so often he deserves his own label
- KarmaWhore -1: see above
:-) - Beowulf -1: for clueless references to Beowulf clusters
- Whiner -1: for people who complain publicly about a lack of options on Slashdot - oops, I guess that would be this post!
I think these new labels would allow moderators to express their true feelings, instead of having to deal with generic labels such as "Interesting", "Off-Topic", and "Funny".Seriously, though - one change I would like to see in the moderation system is to allow users to set their own bonus/penalty values to labels. For instance, those with a humor impairment may define "Funny" as a 0 or -1. I wouldn't mind being able to set "Troll", "Flamebait" and "Off-Topic" as -2 or more.
(P.S. - Signal11 - only kidding! Keep up the good work!)
Windows 95.
No, not the operating system, the version number. Sure, to some extent it's a cynical attempt to make it sound modern at launch time but out-of-date when the next version rolls around. But:
* unlike most version numbers, it means something
* it can't suffer from version inflation
* it means you don't forget when it was launched.
I think it would have caught on if it hadn't been the Evil Empire behind it...
--
Xenu loves you!
Personally, I think if Mandrake has produced a viable fork, it's a Good Thing if they stick with it, rather than re-sync with Red Hat & have to do all the hard work over again.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Mandrake says that supermount has been integrated into kernel 2.2.14. Does anyone know where the patches are for this so that people don't have to download Mandrake to get this incredibly useful technology?
Yes I can say that when I ran Mandrake 6.0 (last week) odd things would happen. The kernel would panic more so than I have ever experienced. Other programs would freeze alot more. It was just an odd sort of experience. While things ran a alot faster on my ancient P200 I still would rather stability over speed.
Oh yeah and cxreg likes to wear his mom's bra.
I would suggest *not* using pgcc on anything but completely "experimental" machines right now. I have yet to see it build a version of glibc-2.1.2 that will pass it's own test suite. Apparently I may be a bigger compulsive compiler than the guys who put pgcc together, since I've gotten no responses to my emails to them asking for confirmation of this, and that was well over a week ago. (Boy did they get enough detail on what I was doing. Heheh.)
Anyway, if it can't build glibc, then I would not expect to be able to safely use it on the kernel at all. (Well, it compiles, but the self-tests that come with glibc fail miserably--and although it did build 2.2.14, it did not appear to be stable. Could be a K6 "thing", but I doubt it.)
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3
--
It's great that Mandrake can get to a higher version number than the distro that it's "Based" on.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Does the method used by Mandrake for resizing partitions infringe on the patent? This could be a problem for distributing in the US.
With each release since about 5.3, Mandrake has gotten worse and worse in terms of producing a stable product. I love what they are doing in terms of the sort of packages they include, the fact that they are branching out from Red Hat, writing their own installer, and coming up with some great new ideas like Lothar and MSEC, for hardware detection/configuration and security levels. But Mandrake has been extremely buggy. They are too quick to release, and do not test adequately. Mandrake has so much potential, I hate to see them ruin it.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
I hope for the best, but I fear the worst. If they iron out the bugs in 7.0 and test adequately, it should be a fine product.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
I keep hearing people complain about Mandrake's versioning and stability, and I just want to make a few comments. First of all, given the number of changes made in 7.0 compared with 6.1, I think the jump to a major number is logical. 7.0 introduces a graphical install utility, DiskDrake for handling partitions (including resizing), Supermount, DrakConf, Lothar, MSEC (a security level chooser), a Mandrake Update agent, and other improvements. This is a major overhaul. Definitely worthy of a major number change.
However, having said that, I think what Mandrake should have done is released an incremental release, 6.2, with minor changes. Basically iron out bugs in 6.1, update some packages, that sort of thing. Then they'd have a rock-solid release to spring off of. All the while, they could be thoroughly testing the 7.0beta. Then in a few months it would be ready for the world. As it is, I think releasing 7.0 in the state it's in is a mistake. I don't think it's ready. I hope I am wrong...
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
I'll have to disagree with you on the worst example. My choice is Microsoft's habit of clumping a group of programs together into a "suite" and then matching up the version numbers of all the components. For example, Visual J++ (an abombination of a name in and of itself) leaped from something like 1.1 or 2.0 to 5.0 when it was thrown into Visual Studio along with Visual C++ 5.0. Similarly, I believe Visual InterDev leaped from 1.0 on its introduction in Visual Studio 97 to 6.0 in Visual Studio 98.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I thought mandrake was a redhat derivative? How can they go to 7 while redhat's at 6?
Well.. thre is an announcement there now...
Word95 was almost identical to Word 6.0, except it was recompiled to support all the shiny new Win32 stuff and supported long filenames. Yippee. Probably the absolute worst version number change possible.
It's just a bad trend that I don't want to see used in the future. I think Linus has it down pretty well, with many releases between whole number changes. The differences between 2.0 and 2.2 are actually pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but the actual number of differences are staggering. This is more the idea I want to enforce.
And if you don't care what I think, *shrug* life goes on.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Or that standards that have been in place for a long time that are getting ignored were not put in place for a reason?
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
And I don't think the people at RedHat know Linux better than Linus.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Once again, if there was a change from glibc 2.0 to 2.1, and it required a whole number redhat change, why didn't they change glibc from 2.0 to 3.0? Obviously the glibc people didn't feel it required a whole number change.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Obviously a minor change. only a
And they added GNOME.
A new X component. Which could have been added by an RPM.
I stand by this example.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
The numbers should not matter, but they are still taken into account by users. For instance, someone telling me redhat was more developed because they were already up to 6.x.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
I don't believe the addition of a few installation scripts warrant a whole version number. And yes, that might be what makes Mandrake unique, but doing things in custom ways is another 'issue' i have with the linux community.
I guess I feel they should abide by the 'release early and release often' philosophy, because a decent linux installation should be upgradable between the different versions. And you won't get 10 billon small changes incorporated into a major release, and 10 billon things that can go wrong.
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Actually, this page is the real explanation of what is new and improved in 7.0. Pretty cool stuff, I can't wait till I can get my CD-RW to work so I can install it.
Its nice that there are distro[s] out there using pgcc to get the performance boost but I work with a guy who has tried several versions of Mandrake on different machines, and when
he compiles the kernel it invariably causes some problem. It may go weeks or even months without problem but then just crashes for no apparent reason. The linux-kernel guys say
not to use pgcc on the kernel because its known to be unstable when you do. However if this is the compiler that comes with Mandrake how are you expected to safely upgrade your
system?!
Mandrake uses rpms right? Well so does Red Hat and they don't force you to use the pgcc compiler so therefore the simple solution is to just drop in the standard gcc compiler (make sure it's the older 2.7.3 version because egcs can also make havoc on your system at least back in the 2.1.x days when I compiled kernels and 2.2.x as well) and then do the compile. Pgcc is just an excuse to make something that isn't compatable with others machines.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Version numbers are not terribly informative. In many companies they are nothing more than a marketing tool. Mandrake may have a cool explanation for going to 7, but there's no
rule that says they have to stick to some one else's scheme.
If you don't think version numbers matter just look at debian. I can't stress this enough there is usually a difference (as seen in debian changelogs) between linux-package-3.4-56.deb and linux-package-3.4-57.deb even in commercial software the differences between version numbers are important enough because they usually involve change in the user interface or added bug fixes or design improvements. If you want support from the vendor or the community a new version is usually a must and this includes linux.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
This is a FINAL release of Mandrake 7. It isnt the beta anymore. The beta RPMS was released officially last month. User created ISOs followed.
This version is in fact FINAL. They still have many bugs to fix, but they are releasing it anyway.
Everyone here seems to think this is an extension of the beta program. It is not. They are going to use the ISO images they are distributing now in the retail copies they will start selling in february.
That not the first time an ISO image is available on an FTP (and its mirrors) before the official announcement. Sometimes it is the real thing, sometimes it is not.
I'll wait one or two days for an official announcement on http://www.linuxmandrake.com before downloading it. Safest.
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
Are you commenting on the Oxygen beta or on the actual 7.0 release (dated yesterday, Jan 13 2000)?
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Hmm, my experience with Mandrake has been quite positive. I started using them with verion 6.0 because they were Pentium optimized and have not regretted it.
Right now I have 2 machines running Mandrake 6.1: my development machine were I surf the net and code as well as my web server, which also doubles as a firewall for my cable modem connection. Uptime on the 2nd machine just recently jumped the 100 day mark and the system is rock solid.
Of course your milage may vary, but I have found Mandrake to be a very nice/good distribution for my needs (which is basically surfing the net, hacking code and producing some documentation in various formats from time to time (as well as playing Civ:CTP from time to time)).
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/oxygen beta.php3
Here's a link about what this really is. It's a beta.
A word of caution --
Unlike many betas us linux geeks use, this one is not ready for general use. It's not even really ready for your personal use. Think "Windows 2000" here. The installation has many bugs and large chasms with a sign before it that says "your code here".
The rpms themselves are fairly workable, but there are simply too many things in this distribution that require tweaking to get yourself a useable system. Hell, it took me 5 attempts to get a *bootable* system.
I don't have time for a complete review for slashdot, but here's what to look forward to, and what to avoid:
Pros --
- New partitioning utility. Worked great, and seemed faster than partition magic. Didn't get a chance to test it on NTFS but it worked flawlessly on FAT32.
- Installation - I gotta love how this auto-detected my PS/2 mouse and gave me a graphical installation which looked kinda nice. It also let you go back in the steps to re-do something if you decided you didn't want to do something. W98-SE, for comparison, locked up during install - I could not use a mouse for my W98 install. Just think about that. =)
- Fast. Very fast. They recompiled alot of stuff for speed and it shows. My system boots faster, X-windows renders faster, etc.
Cons --
- Installation can be painful. think "windows 3.0" painful. When it goes bad... *it* *goes* *bad*
- their lilo installer can fail for any reason or no reason. I like having a system that boots.. even if the installation aborted. The common one was pointing it to an empty partition and saying "windows will go there".
- support. The cooker list is high volume, and cries of "it won't work!" are common. While the mandrake guys do respond thoughtfully, there's just too much stuff to search through to see if your question was previously posted. It doesn't help that it's an open list and spammers have found it.
That about does it for now, hope you found it useful. - Sig11
I am so freakin' tired of people using a poor numbering scheme of their products! Numbers do help keep people notified of which version they are using, but they are also used to signify just how different the product is. For instance, if I'm using version 3.0 and version 5.0 is out, there should be some signficant differences!
Good examples:
But many people in the industry have forgotten this fact. They put out a new release all the time, and just name it whatever. and what's worse is that people use these numbers to indicate how much more advanced it is! I was told that RedHat was better than Debian just because it was on version 6.0 already and Debian was on 2.0!
Bad Examples:
- Mandrake 6.1 to 7.0 - a new installer. whoo.
- RedHat 5.0 to 6.0 - new X components. whoo.
- Windows 1995 to 1998 - was this really revolutionary?
- Windows 2000 - ugh. I hate year based distributions of all sorts.
Worst example:Now, I know that all you Zealots out there have your arguements of 'major changes' in the way your favorite product handled it's numbers, and quite a few relgious pamphlets to give me about it, but the fact of the matter is there are very few people who are following the correct versions for products any more, and we should encourage correct usage of the version schemes we have been using for years.
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Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
So that's about it...I can't wait until this is stable...from the packages I've installed already, this is going to be awesome.
Matt
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. Albert Einstein
Its nice that there are distro[s] out there using pgcc to get the performance boost but I work with a guy who has tried several versions of Mandrake on different machines, and when he compiles the kernel it invariably causes some problem. It may go weeks or even months without problem but then just crashes for no apparent reason. The linux-kernel guys say not to use pgcc on the kernel because its known to be unstable when you do. However if this is the compiler that comes with Mandrake how are you expected to safely upgrade your system?!
God Fucking Damnit
The beta that was there a couple weeks ago sucked. First of all the required desktop for all users was kde. I hate kde. /usr/local/bin/ is not in the path!! Editing /etc/profile doesn't do anything. lothar crashes alot. XFdrake doesnt work. Good thing I backed up my XF86Config. kdm was the default startup. That wouldn't be so bad but kdm didn't work neither did xdm. Only gdm. I posted these bugs to their mailing list and had not heard anything.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I haven't gotten through to any of those servers to find out if they have 7.0 on them yet, but I expect they will soon.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.