Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
--
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.