Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake 7.1 Released
Frodo writes: "It seems that Mandrake 7.1 has started to appear on various mirror sites. No news on Mandrakes homepage so far."
Update: 06/06 08:36 by CN : Alix from Linux-Mandrake just emailed me to tell me there's an official release note available now on their web site.
Mandrake was born out of the controversy concerning the QT license originally used with KDE. At the time RedHat and alot of mainstream distro's refused to include KDE because it wasn't GPL compatible. Mandrake came about because some of us didn't really care about the QT license at all and we "liked" KDE, so they basically took their distro of choice, included KDE with it and then repackaged/sold it as Linux-Mandrake. Mandrake 5.x-6.0 were really nothing more than RH with KDE, from that point they started some of their own development projects and even took an active role in letting their userbase help develop the upcoming distro's (Cooker). Now while it remains 99.9% fully compatible with RH, Mandrake is a true distro of it's own right, and a damn fine one at that.
What's New: RiserFS XFree 4.0 Installer has been slickified even more. Problems: This is the same iso as the BETA3. After the Beta 3 was released there were still bug reports on the cooker (Development) list about: Voodoo 3 problems. ATA 66 Hard Drives working correctly. Some mail server configuration issues. Other than that it's a slick ass distro. (Typing this message from 7.1B3 install right now.)
On the front page of /. when I first saw the 7.1 announcement, I got this banner ad for Mandrake 7.0. :)
"Grub is now supported as the default bootloader, no more 1024-cylinder limit"
:(
The 1024 cylinder limit of LILO was fixed and reported back in April
Of course I can't get the new LILO to work. I have a 8GB Win2k Pro installation, followed be a 8GB Win2K Adv. Srvr. installation. I cannot get LILO to boot them independently. The best that I managed with the new "LINEAR" option was a boot error message from Win2k Adv. Srvr. telling me that some file in the system32 directory was missing or corrupt. So here I am, back to chaining my Microsoft operating systems together through boot.ini. I DO NO want them to see each other... it causes to many problems with badly written software that makes assumptions about driver letters, etc. Win2K won't even let me change or remove the driver letters on these drives
Maybe "grub" will allow me to use my machine the way that I want....
This slider concept might make sense within highly focused areas ("C Development") or perhaps even within broader use-for-machine categories ("Graphics Workstation") but it's difficult to the point of impossible for a whole Linux distro. How important are the following packages: bind, gimp, emacs, lsof, apmd, pump/dhcpcd?
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Imagine if this feature were available when buying a car:
Sales system: "100%: Car costs $16,000".
You: "Oh my, I can't afford that. Let's slide
the bar down to 50%."
Later, when it starts to rain, you find that you've only got a windshield wiper on the passenger side. So, you pull over to the side of the road, and discover that there's no hazard lights either. Hey! There aren't any lights on this car at all! Luckily, brakes seem to have made the cut.... hope the airbags are there....
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ALSA. *3* IDEs. Roxen. XFree86 V4. SDL and some apps for it. Updated PySol (now over 300 games). QT-2. Eterm on the KDE menus (which are all much better organised). ixterm. Gphoto. Roby. ocaml. oscope. QCAD. Lotsa other stuff.
/usr when installed. "Praise the Lord for fat uplinks!" (-:
Still on GIMP 1.0.4 though, would like to see that updated.
Well into two CDs' worth in Cooker now, makes over 2G in
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Change all occurrences of 'stable' to 'unstable' in /etc/apt/sources.list (it doesn't mean it will crash, it means that things are constantly being updated). Only have to do this once. apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade
and sit back and watch the magic :).
Hopefully they included the numerous updates for security that they've been doing as of late. And also fixed the slightly broken install of PostFix. There was something else that was broken but I can't remember what else I had to fix.
If you choose the expert install option then it allows you to choose exactly the packages you want to install. The Customized option allows you a little less flexibility in what you want install, but insulates the inexperienced user from what might be a very confusing experience. The Recommended option is even more limited.
When I downloaded Mandrake 7.0, I first pulled Mandrake/base, which has the package lists. Then I wrote a set of Perl scripts to read in a copy of the complete package list from which you can remove or comment out packages you don't want. The scripts checked the dependencies, created new copies of all the package lists (comps*), and produced an HTML list of all the packages you've chosen to download. Then I took the HTML file to work (fast connection) and used GetRight (still looking for a Linux replacement) to grab all the files at night). I'd imagine it would be even more useful to modem users. If anyone's interested, I can release the scripts. I'd prefer if Mandrake actually maintained them, so I don't have to keep up with their crazy installation scheme.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
--Ben
Go to Mandrakes FTP page and in big bold letters they have:
Linux-Mandrake 7.1 is not yet available. Please wait
Whoever posted this article was on crack.
I did.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Oh, I get it. They should put that on the moderation, or make 1 the default instead of 2.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Um... MandrakeUpdate doesn't update NEARLY as many packages as are upgraded between distributions. Since the time I installed Mandrake, I've only seen a couple dozen packages on there, ever.
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No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I recommend it.
I used the beta version for little over a month before weird stuff started happening. One day I logged on and noticed that my computer was only recognizing 64 MB, I couldn't get ftpd working ever again, and mpg123 (via gqmpeg) failed to ever work again.
...and your roots say...
Instead of solving these three 'minor' problems, I just said, "screw the beta-version!" and went with the newest RedHat. I've always been partial to gnome anyway and installing a new distro is easier then figuring what was wrong with all that stuff.
I know that both RedHat and Mandrake offer gnome and KDE, but you gotta stick with your roots man.
gnome=RedHat
KDE=mandrake
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I upgraded from 6.1 to 7.0 and found that 7.0 was even more stable. Somethings that used to crash misteriously didn't anymore, but a number of applications just wouldn't start up under 7.0 and it took me a lot of mucking around to fix it. I still haven't got xkobo to work and that one of my favorite games. I read up on what new in 7.1 and it's mainly improvements to the install program (like I really need that when I've already installed it). The other thing it includes is a Beta of KDE version 2.0 personaly I am going to wait until KDE 2.0 is released properly and then get the version of Mandrake which includes that.
-Jasa -- Linux - The SOURCE will be with you, ALWAYS
Oops, my mistake. Those are the sites mirrors are supposed to mirror from. The official list of mirror sites is here.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
ATA66 hard drives working correctly.
Hey, that's great news! Finally, a Linux distribution that's easily available and is compatible with my computer's hardware. My computer has an ABit BE6 motherboard with four IDE buses: two ATA-66 and two ATA-33. The ATA-66 buses are controlled by an onboard HPT366 controller (by High Point Technologies). The ATA-33 buses work just like the two IDE buses in most "normal" PCs. I have five IDE peripherals, so I can't just use one set of buses. My main hard drive is ATA-66-compatible and is very fast, so it's a shame not to use that capability. Most versions of Linux can only "see" the ATA-33 buses.
I bought Corel Linux version 1.0 but couldn't install or use it except on the two ATA-33 buses on my motherboard. Unfortunately, all my non-hard-drive IDE peripherals (interal Zip drive, CD burner, etc.) are normally connected to the ATA-33 buses, so I had to mess around with the connections inside. It really sucks to have to have to mess around with the innards of my computer to switch between Windows and Linux. (I would have gotten ABit's Gentus Linux, but I don't have time to download a huge 650-meg CD image and anyway, I heard that the licence agreement with Gentus Linux violates the GPL (is this true?).)
So, has anyone tried installing Mandrake 7.1 on an ABit motherboard with peripherals on both the ATA-66 and ATA-33 buses? How did it go?
Er, hang on... The Anonymous Coward just said ATA-66 hard drives work, not necessarily the ABit motherboard... Well, still... Does it work with ABit?
I'm tired of using Windows98 all the time... I hope Mandrake will be my saviour...
Could you /. article posters put a little more information in about Linux topics? I personally use Solaris as my work and home UNIX environment, and don't know what the hell some of these Linux specific things are.
:-) Many of us non-Linux geeks will recognize things like Red Hat, Debian, and sometimes Suse, but that is generally the extent.
Just a little line like 'Mandrake is a package of the Linux environment that is geared towards friendly home and office use, see www.mandrake.org for details.' would be real nice for a change.
/. is supposed to be news for nerds, not news for Linux-only nerds.
I took another look at Mandrake's site now, and in their download area, it clearly states You must at least download the "Mandrake/" and "images/" trees from the "7.0/" directory. It's about 600 Mb.
Why are huge downloads necessary if you are just upgrading? Do I have to get on a bunch of mailing lists to figure out what is new and hunt down those files myself?
Its a nice system, but they should make it easier to keep current.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
They've added Helix stuff, a new QT, XF86 4.0, new versions of the Mandrake tools (DiskDrake, etc.), and better hardware support. Still not enough to make me switch from Slackware. According to P.V., they're getting ready to start testing for a release.
it's green.
Thing is, the good old days weren't. There has always been ambition on the part of the media to get the best scoop. Always will be. /. is no different. We have a few hundred thousand free software afficandos looking for a data rush or whatever, so /. gives them a chance to get at what they want.
This is no worse than crowds of people flocking around a paperboy who is crying, "Extra! Extra!" It isn't just /., it's just that /. has a larger audience than many sites, so the effect is much more visible. Watch the usage on kernel.org whenever some rumor drifts across the digital wind. While there is something to be said about letting mirrors "gear up", you can always set it up so that the mirror gets priority access to the new version over the anon logins.
it's green.
why is it more irresponsible than for mirror sites to allow downloading of incomplete distros? It's human nature to want to grab as soon as possible. There are any number of simple ways that the high priests could hide the mirrors till they are ready. convincing a small number of high priests should be a lot simpler than reeducating tens of thousands of new downloaders... I plan to grab it just as soon as I can.
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Does anyone have any *good* reasons why so many distributions (such as Mandrake) use RedHat as a base? As I see it, there are two ways that RedHat differentiates itself from other distros: package management and installation (both of which are closely related).
.tgz (slackware) packages. rpm and dpkg clearly beat .tgz files in terms of ease of install/uninstall and dependencies but I really think that dpkg is superior to rpm (my main reason being better dependencies and that nice update checking feature).
The RedHat installation as far as I can tell is not that different from any other menu based installation. And their addition of Disk Druid might be a step up from fdisk (depending on who you talk to) but really isn't all that different from cfdisk.
As for package management, I have used rpm (.rpm files), dpkg (.deb files), and
So, basically if the RedHat installer is nothing that great and dpkg beats rpm why do so many distros (Mandrake being the most mainstream) copy RedHat? And if you don't believe me, go to any distro list and see how many are based on RedHat.
By the way, I realize that two of the more recent distros have been based on debian (Storm and Corel).
Another way when my analogy fails is that most people know enough about what should be in an automobile to notice if the windshield wipers are gone. But what if the selector decides not to install something less obvious -- a timing chip, or some sensor or another? ("It's just a tiny little sensor; it can't be very important.")
And it's not just about critical things. A new user who is too intimidated to go through lists of packages is likely to learn what's available by looking through the application menus, or maybe by typing (at the advice of a friend) "ls
Not knowing what's on the system also makes the job harder for the people who have to support the machine. This is part of why Red Hat's base component set is so large.
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I had a Pioneer 24x cdrom and I had major problems with it. Not only did any distribution not read the CD during the installation, it wouldn't even boot off of the CD! (btw, win98 wouldn't boot off of it either). I also had lots of problems with it just reading stuff from it. It often made the system unstable and caused all kinds of other intresting problems.
Later on I found out that this is typical of *all* Pioneer cdroms. It is well documented in the Linux kernel documentation. Apparently Pioneer cdroms violate the ATAPI protocol somehow which makes them very unreliable. They still work with windoze because it does not try to multitask them. I got rid of this piece of crap a long time ago, bought a 32x Creative and never had problems since. I don't know if their DVD-roms or SCSI cdroms have similar problems, but I am definitely never buying any more Pioneer crap -- one was enough for me.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
On the Mandrake Newbie mailing list this was discussed. Here's what one of the Mandrake people said about it:
- ----- - -----
Re: [newbie] DISCUSSION: My first Suggestion (Installer Problem)Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:00:23 +0200 (CEST)
From: Denis HAVLIK
To: newbie@linux-mandrake.com
Reply to: newbie@linux-mandrake.com
:~>Here is my first input:
:~>
:~>The install program is very slick. However at one point in the install,
:~>after you have partitioned the drive you are shown a slider bar and asked
:~>to pick how much software you want to install. (you choose the amount of
:~>megabytes to install). I find this very confusing. If i pick 800mb what
:~>is being installed? Am I getting all the packages I need??
Here is what happens: We have a list of packages with their "value". Very
valuable packages have number asociated with them which is close to 100,
while "junk" packages have a number close to 0 (well, junk packages do not
make it into the distro, but you get the picture)
When you move the slider to left, you efectively "raise the bar", so that
packages with lower "priority" drop out of the selection.
Personally, I think this is a great way to make a compromyse between
having some controle over instalation and not having to browse trough
1000+ packages at install (horror!)
What we miss at the moment is a tool which would use a symilar logic to
help you install|uninstall packages on already installed system, but Pixel
is working on it right now.
cu
Denis
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Dr. Denis Havlik
Mandrakesoft ||| e-mail: denis@mandrakesoft.com
Quality Assurance (@ @) (private: denis@havlik.org)
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Actually, not anymore. Mandrake 7.0+ has branched off RedHat, and 7.1 is QUITE a bit different from Redhat. (It has ReiserFS, it has XFree 4.0, and the other packages are up to date.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It's a very interesting idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good one! Has this made it to the final release?
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Except... from an idealistic technical point of view, (as in, how we did it in the old days) you found things by watching ftp sites...
/.ing it... I bet a lot of people don't rush out to download mandrake 7.1 immediately....
so.. if mandrake 7.1 is appearing on mirrors, and you want to bitch about people announcing this fact before mandrake does...
if mandrake or the mandrake mirror community cared, they would have a different way of mirroring things, whereby you couldn't actually see things until the transfer is complete.
Oh.. and as for
People who think that /. has every right to post messages before people have a time to mirror piss me off. There is a thing in this country called "responsible journalism." Since the journalistic community these days is in such a rut, I'm not surprised that most of you haven't heard about it. In traditional media, responsible journalism takes the form of corroberating your evidence to make absolutely sure that you're giving the correct news. Until recently, all respectable establishments did this. Those that didn't are called tabloids. Because of their rush to get the dirt, tabloids often post too early about a story. If it turns out to be true, then the tabloids will often have the news before any of the papers, but if it is false, then it ultimately hurts those that the story is about. In the new electronic media, journalistic responsibility has to extend to thinking about the ability of servers to take an increased hit before they are ready. It is analagous to allowing a defendant to prepare his case before the prosecution starts. In the good old days, the media had responsibility. They would rarely post a news story about, say, a president before he had made a public statement about the situation. The rumors and such were left to the tabloids. This situation is similar. You don't attack somebody (the /. effect is certainly an attack, though unintentional) before you give them a chance to prepare. It is just not decent. /. posting new files before the mirrors have a chance to gear up is not just impolite (or I'm I just a dinosaur and curtousy is passe?) it is also detrimental to the community, which wants to be able to download the software.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Number of Linux Distributions Surpasses Number of Users
l
Somewhere in California - At 8:30 PDT with the release of Snoopy Linux 2.1 and Goober Linux 1.0, the number of Linux distributions finally surpassed the number of actual Linux users.
"We've been expecting it for some time," Merrill Lynch technology analyst Tom Shayes said, "but this is a little sooner than most expected. We've seen explosive growth in the number of Linux distributions, in fact my nephew just put out Little Tommy Linux 1.1 last week."
Long time Linux guru Bob Tallman said, "This is great for the open source movement. I have 7 different versions installed on my computer at home. Some guys I know have over 30."
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said, "Microsoft will have to play catch up with the number of versions that Linux has, but we think we can do it. With the break up of Microsoft imminent that will instantly double the number of Windows versions available."
Microsoft also announced the release of Pocket PC for Workgroups, Windows GT special edition and Windows 2000 - the Director's Cut with special code added by Bill Gates himself that wasn't in the original release.
http://bbspot.com/News/2000/4/linux_distros.htm