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.
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:
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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...
I've probably had a few more reasons - but these are the most important ones.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
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