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.

Comments

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the kernel panics it's the users fault.
If the user panics it's the kernels fault?
;-)

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

:)

Re:FR1ST PS0T AGAIN!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!)

Maybe it's Microsoft's one good idea:

[Paul Crowley]

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 Sure, to some extent it's a cynical attempt to make it sound modern at launch time but out-of-date when the next version rolls around.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...
--

Re:Maybe it's Microsoft's one good idea:

[Croaker]

Err... except for the fact that there are so many releases of a Linux distribution that the "yearly" numbering scheme just wouldn't work when it comes to telling "how different" one release is from another.

For example, Mandrake '00 would be basically Mandrake '99r2 (or was it r3?) with a new installer. Then, maybe mid to late in the year, their next release (00r1) would probably have the 4.0 version of XFree, the 2.4 kernel, and who knows, possibly one of those journaling file systems. Now, that seems like a pretty major leap to relegate to a 'r' release.

Even Microsoft doesn't really follow the year scheme very well. Win95 came in a few flavors, the more recent of which (I forget the designation, something like OEM 2.0) used a new filesystem.

For some things, it does work. Quicken, for example, has yearly releases.

I think, overall, the idea behind the whole "year" numbering scheme is more marketing than anything sensible. Intuit would like me to believe that using the "old" 98 version of their product is bad. Since we're in 2000, I should be using the 2000 version! It's a way to fool people into forking over money on a regular basis. It's one step closer to that Big Corporate Software Holy Grail: software subcriptions.

Re:Maybe it's Microsoft's one good idea:

[jetson123]

I don't know who proposed it first, but it certainly wasn't Microsoft's idea. The idea of using year-based version numbers was kicked around in the PC press for a number of years before Windows 95, and I think even some HCI expert proposed it in one of his books.

Hmmmm....

[jd]

Does this mean Mandrake is "seperating" from Red Hat, to become a wholly independent distribution? Or are there "betas" of RH 7 in existance, with Mandrake 7 based off those?

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.

Re:Hmmmm....

[slashdot-terminal]

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

Well if we assume that businesses are the main target of redhat and that most of the really neat commercial packages are produced with Red Hat in mind then therefore we have to believe that compatability with Red Hat's commercial partners would be a very smart thing to do to increase a customer base.

Supermount

[Hrunting]

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?

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[IRNI]

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.

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[Dagmar d'Surreal]

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.)

Mirrors...

[pen]

Here's a list of Mandrake mirrors. I checked a random one, and the ISO was there. PLEASE USE A RANDOM MIRROR, NOT THE FIRST ONE ON THE LIST!

http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3

--

I love it.

[Lord Kano]

It's great that Mandrake can get to a higher version number than the distro that it's "Based" on.

LK

Re:I love it.

[Shadowlion]

It's all marketing.

This was all very clearly explained when Slackware made the jump from version 4 to version 7. Patrick Volkerding made the huge number leap because of all the people who kept asking him if why he wasn't supporting (at the time) "Linux 6," and who basically didn't understand that distribution version numbers and Linux versioning numbers were two separate entities. You can read the statement he made about it on the Slackware web site, under the FAQs section.

Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.

*shrug*

Re:I love it.

[Arandir]

"Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number."

If you look at the number of actual releases Redhat made versus the number Slackware made, you'll understand why Slackware should really be at version 42.

And perception is everything. A neighbor wanted to try out Linux, so I gave him SuSE 6.0. He had a rough time of it and wanted to know if there was something easier. I had just got a Caldera 2.3 disk in the mail so I gave it to him. He replied "don't you have anything newer?"

Re:I love it.

[Arandir]

Actually, with a new graphical installer, disk partitioner, and hardware manager, as well as numerous other major changes, I would think that Mandrake deserves a major version change. A 6.1->6.2 just doesn't cut it.

And moreover, I think that this is the version that will make Mandrake more than just a Redhat clone.

Re:I love it.

[slashdot-terminal]

Perhaps, because Slack jumped ahead of all the other distributions, others felt it necessary to "keep up with the Jones" and match the version number.

At least debian is sane enough to not do that. I want logical version numbers not marketing trash. My opinion of Mandrake has been lowered if they think they really need to just up the version number. Does Mandrake such that much in terms of Red Hat?

Re:I love it.

[Foogle]

Although true a year ago, that statement is just FUD now. Mandrake has come into it's own as a distribution - they're *way* more than just RedHat + KDE now. Have you run Mandrake 7? Do you know for a fact that it's nothing more than RedHat 6? Give these guys a chance; they've done great work in the past.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

partition resizing patent?

[jetson123]

PowerQuest have a patent (1, 2) on the partition resizing method used by PartitionMagic.

Does the method used by Mandrake for resizing partitions infringe on the patent? This could be a problem for distributing in the US.

Re:partition resizing patent?

[jallen02]

what about fips.. its been around for god knows how long.

Re:Answer: What's the difference?

[Skeezix]

Huh? Have you actually used Redhat 6.1. KDE works great. You don't have to *do* anything to get it to work. Either install as a KDE workstation or do a regular install and select KDE as your desktop from gdm.
----

Re:quickie review

[Skeezix]

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.
----

Re:quickie review

[Skeezix]

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.
----

Regarding Versioning, Stability and the like...

[Skeezix]

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...
----

Re:Version Inflation

[Industrial Disease]

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.

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[Roundeye]

Not saying there aren't problems with Mandrake (in my experience Mandrake's been rock solid), but generally when one sees numerous kernel panics one is looking at *bad* hardware. If I were you I'd start checking my components -- start with memory, then drives and controllers, NICs, video, and then the motherboard. Do it under another distro or OS if you think it's Mandrake specific.

Re:FUD, feh

[blkwolf]

Linux Mandrake "6.5" is Macmillans version of mandrake 6.1 but renumbered by Macmillan and other than being based off the Mandrake distro really has nothing to do with Linux Mandrake directly. Also the install interface between Mandrake 6.0/6.1 and 7.0 is completely different with the Drak install routine. I've been running 7.0 beta 5 now for about 4 days and am highly impressed with all the Drak programs for system configuration etc available on the system now.

As far as differences between Mandrake and RH go? well at version 5.2 of both the only difference was that Mandrake included KDE as the default X Window enviornment while at the time RH said they would refuse to use it at all do to the QT license at the time.

6.0 still pretty close in what apps they carry etc though Mandrake throws in a few extra I believe. A big difference here is that 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 computer on penitum class machines there will be some speed improvments over standard RH. Another difference again is desktop enviornment RH still concentrates on Gnome + Enlightment and inlcudes KDE as an after fact, while Mandrake bascially reverses that. This lets Gnome people have a preferable distro while letting those people like me who actually like KDE have a distro we can enjoy.

6.1 small improvments by both company's to their own distro's. Note though that at this point Mandrake is no longer just copying and building off of RedHat (in fact they released 6.1 before RH did in this case), but is now concentrating on making their own quality distro in their own right. At this point they've opened up development of the upcoming 7.0 distro to beta tester's and the public allowing the community itself help desinge and build it.

Mandrake 7.0 (beta 5 since that's what I'm actually running until I download the new ISO):
While Mandrake still shares base filesystem etc compatibility with RH this just means that rpm's made for each distro are very compatible with each other. 7.0 comes with a whole slew of new tools for installing and managing the computer, the Drakconf and drakxtools packages are by far the easiest things I've seen for changing system settings. Also comes with kernel 2.2.14 and X 3.3.6 so there's some nice improvments their right out of the box.

Re:I, too, question their versioning

[trcooper]

I've tryed the beta, and would have to say that this deserves a major version number. I believe the ISO is just the beta ISO (I hope) as I downloaded it and found quite a few problems, but overall was very impressed with the improvements made to the install process.

The diskdrake program was fantastic. Great interface, and easy to use. I may actually use that over fdisk.

The install actually detected my Voodoo Banshee and X worked without any modifications on my part, very nice.

The install detected my ESS Maestro Soundcard and sound worked out of the box... Normally I have to get AC's beta stuff to make this thing go...

There were some bugs with the actual package install, sometimes it would bomb out or sometimes it would report that it was going to install more (MB) than it should have. And the mouse left me after the X install... Kinda nasty...

IMNSHO, I think that this could be the release of a Linux Flavour that really opens up the desktop market (provided they get the bugs out of the install). Its not intimidating, and just about anyone should be able to handle a install. All they need now is a prettier version of LILO (even something like the BeOS loader would be cool) and I think they would have some real success selling to the average joe... Back to the point... It may not be a new kernel, but the Install is what can make it worth a new Major version... or at least a 6.5...

Re:Answer: What's the difference?

[Arandir]

"MNDRK seems to be after the almighty buck and that's about it."

I'm starting to question whether you even live on the same planet I do.

At the last LWCE in San Jose, Redhat had a glitzy marketroid booth staffed with drones. Mandrake had a stool in a corner of someone else's booth (PickSys?). Didn't even have free demos to pass out, only photocopies of an info sheet. The Mandrake "booth" even made the Slashdot compound look like Las Vegas casino in comparison. Guess who won distribution of the year there though?

Huh?

[QuMa]

I thought mandrake was a redhat derivative? How can they go to 7 while redhat's at 6?

Re:Huh?

[slashdot-terminal]

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.


Are the packages for RH and it's upates newer or older in general to Mandrake? You have to look at this and ask which is really better? I would think that if updates were newer Mandrake would be better.

Re:Nothing on Mandrake's web page... mmmh...

[mindstrm]

Well.. thre is an announcement there now...

Even worse...

[barzok]

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.

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

I don't particularly care if one particular product decides to accelerate their versioning, but it's a bad trend for the industry. Espcially with lay people read version numbers (higher is better!) compared with techies reading the same numbers (ah, this is a point release, a minor upgrade).

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

Re:what the fuck

[GoNINzo]

What I was pointing out is that higher numbers get noticed as more developed by people who just care about the name on the product, not what it actually does.

Newbies to Linux can look at all the distributions and go: "Hrm, Mandrake 7.0, Slackware 7.0, RedHat 6.1, SuSE 6.2, ... whoa, Debian 2.1 and OpenLinux 2.3 are way behind!" They won't take the time to consider the two low version numbers...

This is how version numbers are designed to be used, and when we have distributions totally running wacky with their version numbers, the other distributions will try to keep up, just so they can appear to be current, even if they are just doing point releases on incorporated products.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

So you're saying that people who don't care about technology don't need to protected from companies such as microsoft?

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

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

If the change of kernel's from 2.0 was to 2.2 required a whole number change, why didn't Linus change 2.0 to 3.0? I mean, if it was that major of a change?

And I don't think the people at RedHat know Linux better than Linus.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

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

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

glibc changed from 2.0 to 2.1.
Obviously a minor change. only a .1 change for the glibc people.

And they added GNOME.
A new X component. Which could have been added by an RPM.

I stand by this example.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

See, that's my arguement.

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

Re:Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

ugh. this is more an aspect of the fragmentation of Linux than a version inflation issue.

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

Re:Explanation!

[m3000]

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.

Re:Bad things

[dsplat]

There is no text based installer.

According to the INSTALL file there is a text based install:

-----------------------------------------
Text Install
-----------------------------------------
DrakX supports a text mode installation. To use it, type :

linux text

at prompt of syslinux. (it's on the boot just after the graphical
logo). If you want to use the old text mode install use :
txt_bootnet.img:
install from FTP and HTTP
txt_boot.img:
install from CD-Rom or Hard Drive

And farther down:

================================================== =================== =
TEXT INSTALL INSTRUCIONS

1 - insert your installation floppy disk and your Mandrake CD (if
needed) in your drives and restart your machine.

2 - press 'enter' until the 'boot:' prompt appears and carefully
follow the instructions which appear on the screen.

3 - after having chosen the installation language (such as French) and
the keyboard (such as fr-latin1), chose " Disk Druid " in order to
create/chose your Linux partitions. The minimum requirement is to
create at least two distinct partitions:

* your main Linux partition, which will need to be loaded on " / "
("Mount point : / "). This will be the root directory (" root
directory "). The size of this partition will need to be at least 300
Mb. More experienced users may load the /usr and /home directories on
supplementary partitions.

* a swap Linux partition. This partition will need to be equal to
approximately twice the size of the available RAM (Random Access
Memory), or more for a server.

4 - after the installation of all the partitions, you may configure
your machine. Carefully follow the instructions and don't forget to
correctly install LILO (Linux Loader) on the MBR (Master Boot Record)
of your hard disk.

5 - when the installation is complete take out the floppy disk and the
CD-ROM and restart your machine.

6 - Linux should start. " Log in " as " root ". If X-Window is
correctly installed, you should be able to start up KDE by typing
"startx " on the command line.

Important note : the " root " account will give you unrestricted
access to your Linux system. Do not use it except to configure or
administer Linux. For every day use, use a normal user account with
the " adduser USER " and " passwd USER " commands.

Re:pgcc and the kernel?

[slashdot-terminal]

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.

Re:I, too, question their versioning

[slashdot-terminal]

Why is everyone questioning the versioning?? Mandrake is *not* RedHat -- they're a very different distro and just because they were originally *based* on RedHat does not mean
we should treat them as followers forever. Moreover, they're advance in numbers was nothing like Slackware's. Mandrake went from 6.1 to 7; that's pretty normal versioning. Slack
went from like 4.0 to 7.0; that's padding.

I actually thought that slackware's major problem was a smoth upgrade (or any upgrade at all). I ran slackware from 3.4 to 3.6 and each and every time I had to blast away the partition and do all the manual configuration and such. Nothing like 10+ hours of swearing at your computer to get you into the mood of getting another upgradeable distribution.

Re:egcs-1.1.2, gcc-2.95, pgcc, gcc-2.7.3.2

[slashdot-terminal]

FWIW, egcs-1.1.2 is generally considered to be the most recent compiler available which should work safely for just about everything, including the kernel. Heck, if RedHat uses it
as their default compiler, the advantages must outweigh the disadvantages of gcc-2.7.3.2. My own personal experiences reflect this.

I took my information from the last look at the Linus Kernel Mailing list faq at lkml faq Apparently the fact that egcs was not stable for a long time I guess influenced the decision for not having it being in more common use for kernel compiling.

Re:Huh? (version numbers)

[slashdot-terminal]

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.

I dont think you understand

[Kamel]

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.

Nothing on Mandrake's web page... mmmh...

[Ma�djeurtam]

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

Have you tried THIS release?

[DiningPhilosopher]

Are you commenting on the Oxygen beta or on the actual 7.0 release (dated yesterday, Jan 13 2000)?

Re:I, too, question their versioning

[Foogle]

Why is everyone questioning the versioning?? Mandrake is *not* RedHat -- they're a very different distro and just because they were originally *based* on RedHat does not mean we should treat them as followers forever. Moreover, they're advance in numbers was nothing like Slackware's. Mandrake went from 6.1 to 7; that's pretty normal versioning. Slack went from like 4.0 to 7.0; that's padding.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:quickie review

[RNG]

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)).

Explanation!

[Thrakkerzog]

http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/oxygen beta.php3

Here's a link about what this really is. It's a beta.

quickie review

[Signal 11]

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

Version Inflation

[GoNINzo]

This is a rant.

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:

• Redhat 4.2 to 5.0 - glibc2
• Triarch 3.0 to 4.0 - Completely different distribution method
• GameSpy 2.1.8 to 3.0 - Back and front end revolution
• Linux 1.2.13 to 2.0 - completely reworked
• Solaris 2.7 to 2.8 - IPv6 added
• NetHack 3.1.1 to 3.2 - Monsters, code, and items reworked.
• Half-Life 1.0.0.6 to 1.0.0.10 - bug fixes

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:

• Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 7 - Sun is forced to keep up by redoing their numbers. ugh. This is the absolute worst example I can think of in this 'Version inflation'.

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.

--
Gonzo Granzeau

This is old news

[pyrosoft]

Mandrake 7 ISOs have been available for at least a couple of weeks. rpmfind.net has 'em, sunsite has 'em, everybody has 'em. Individual RPMs are available for download as well. This is the start of Mandrake beginning to pull away from a mere "Redhat with extras" and actually put some original stuff in the distro. I quote from their website:

• New perl/gtk based graphical installer Drakx, including many languages support and DiskDrake partitioner (lets one change the size of Ext2, FAT... disk partitions).
  
• Use of supermount (integrated in kernel 2.2.14) in order to suppress the need of mount and umount for most removable medias (cdrom, floppy, zip): Mandrake easier to use than ever!
  
• Several security levels that let you use your Linux box like a jail (extremely high security, restricted use), or like a very common proprietary OSes (very poor security, no constraint in use). Default is medium security level like in most standard Linux distributions.
  
• Improved desktop integration with new tools like DrakConf and rpmdrake that let the user manage its Linux-Mandrake box like a charm.
  
• New hardware configuration tools like lothar and XFdrake.

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

pgcc and the kernel?

[cxreg]

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?!

I tried the beta.

[lubricated]

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.

Mirror sites

[dsplat]

Mandrake's site is swamped right now. The official list of mirror sites is here. The ones listed as doing hourly updates are:

• ftp://mandrake.mudspace.com/pub/linu x/mandrake (Michigan, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/linux/Mandra ke (Utah, USA) ++
• http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/linux/Man drake/ (Utah, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.cee.odu.edu/pub/CEE/linux/ma ndrake (Virginia, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/m andrake/ (Virginia, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.wtfo.com/pub/linux/mandrake/ (Washington, USA) ++
• ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linu x/Dist/Mandrake/ (Pragua Czech Repubic) ++
• ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linu x/Dist/Mandrake/ (Pragua Czech Repubic) ++
• ftp.informatik.hu-berl in.de/pub/Linux/distributions/Mandrake (Berlin, Germany) ++
• ftp://msj.u-3mrs.fr/pub/linux/distr ib/mandrake/ (Marseille, France) ++
• ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/ (Nancy, France) ++
• ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake (Oslo, Norway) ++
• ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/d istributions/mandrake/ (Sweden) ++
• ftp.linux.org.tr/pub/Mandrake (Turkey) ++

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.