Mandrake 8.1 Beta1 (Raklet) Released

keegnotrub writes: "Mandrake just dumped 8.1 Beta on their servers. Along with updated software (KDE 2.2, kernel 2.4.8, etc) they have reworked their control center to include many new features." Word to the wise: there are some reactions to this beta -- as well as a list of known bugs and fixes -- at mandrakeforum.com. What I'd like to know is if a Wacom Intuos USB tablet will work out-of-the-box on 8.1, since I just bought a refurbed one ;)

Comments

Mmmm Fresh Release...

[lifebouy]

New Mandrake releases are like nose-candy for newbies. I've been hooked for a while now. I love Slack, and Debian is where its at. But I still love to get my hands on the latest ML releases just to see what new things they put in the distro. But it makes ya lazy, everything(generally) works right out of the box.(Some might consider that a feature;) Mandrake Forum seems to be turning into a little community. Kudos particularly to Deno for that site. There's lots of nuggets to ferret out of that site if you have problems.

Problem?

[tankrshr77]

Mandrake is into making polished linux distro's for Newbie users.
Mandrake releases buggy beta versions on their website.
Newbie uses download beta version and have major problems, and get mad at mandrake.
Bad descision guys.

Too Many Connections (Poorly made packages)

[gengee]

I suspect MandrakeForum is using the Mandrake PostgreSQL RPMs. They're built with a (default) 32 connection limit.

Warning: Too many connections in /home/www/mandrakeforum.com/html/mainfile.php on line 24
Unable to select database

Re:Mandrake is cool, but surely Debian is better.

[breser]

That's the developers decision. The vast majority of people who use Mandrake aren't developers. They have no intention of making any code modifications. Probably never will look at source.

Freedom is about letting developers decide how they want to license their works in a way in which everyone can use them. And if developers don't care if someone like Microsoft uses their work without compensation, then let them.

Keeping their work from the world is merely because you as a developer wouldn't want to give up that right is silly. I can understand you not wanting to work on that code. But nobody is forcing you to make any changes.

So frankly this whole BSD license is bad has nothing to do with freedom but everything with RMS not liking anything he didn't invent.

Why Slackware is Better

[CtrlPhreak]

I'm really a newbie. I'm not newest of the new, I can compile and have my own kernels/etc, but I still feel I have alot to learn before I can pull myself out of the newbie catagory, maybe low middle user or whatever...

I have used mandrake since 7.0, bought the power pack and upgraded since all the way to 8.0 every increment. Mandrake allways gave me a feeling of bloat and being unfinished. The install was nice, but all the setup and configure tools afterward seemed half done. They would work some of the time but not allways and not ever flawlessly. I allways ended up going and configuring everything manually. It also filled up my HD with programs that weren't documented or linked to anywhere. Just wasting space, not letting me know they were there or what they could do for me.

Also has anyone tried compiling a new kernel on a mandrake machine? It's a pain. They include all these extras in the kernel that if you give the system a new one it craps it's pants. I applaud their efforts in making a newbie distro, but I love my Slackware. The install is slightly less user friendly, but it is easy, quick and best of all it works. The system runs perfectly and it has just the software that I want and use, no crap . I have recompiled many kernels on it, mostly recompiles because I have forgotten something or another, and never have had any problems. It's also the little things, like having fortune run in the login script. It's just a slick and wonderful distro.

As soon as anyone gets their feet wet with Mandrake I highly recomend using Slackware. The best distro.

I better start tracking the source..

[sinator]

I've made some suggestions and I'd like to see them come to fruition.

As a longtime Mandrake user, one of the major problems I have with them is their stalwart insistence on including the most cutting edge software with *all* options installed, and then the inconsistencies begin to flow.

Good examples include the following:

* By default on 8.0, iptables is installed (and not ipchains). portsentry is installed, but its default ${KILL_ROUTE} is to use ipchains. A minor, one line fix to portsentry.conf is all that is needed.

* Speaking of iptables, it's safe to say that one shouldn't include all options for iptables in a generic kernel. Some of the options aren't compatible with each other. Some of the options are from patches for various versions of the kernel. ipchains support and ipfwadm support are compiled in as modules, but the default ipchains package is, i think, statically linked, because it doesn't work when ipchains.o is loaded anyway.

* Modules for devices like /dev/rtc, /dev/nvram or the major/minor 36 (routing devices) are standard and configured, but the devices aren't made with default MAKEDEV. This isn't really critical to the system, but it is messy AFAIK.

* I swear, some of the patches are doing crazy things with the spinlocks. On 7.2 and above, when I compiled the system with USB support, 'apm suspend system' would freeze. This would make going into PhoenixBIOS hibernation (which worked with 7.0/7.1, and redhat) freeze as well. Without USB compiled in, everything is dandy.

* Various minutia: when one installs VNCServer, it prompts for a password from stdin, but by default, Aurora is installed, thus capturing keyboard and mouse input. Thus the system blocks on input.

This is NOT me bashing Mandrake. I love mandrake. Repeat: I LOVE MANDRAKE. I think it's very customizable, I think it's very easy for the newbie but quite configurable for the non-newbie (it should be noted that I was able to solve all of the above problems with a little bit of tinkering). It's just that these little blemishes should be addressed on minor point revisions (most weren't between major point revisions 7.2->8.0).

RANT

[socialist fish]

I would like to copy the comment I've just posted to Mandrake Forum:

---
I didn't test this release, and I think I wouldn't even try mdk 8.1. I'm too tired from problems with Mandrake. Specially with upgrades, I've trashed my computer twice: upgrading 7.1 to 7.2, and later upgrading 7.2 to 8.0. Both times I ended with MANY problems, for example, with the upgrade to 8.0 you folks decided to change packages names, and didn't have any precaution with that. So, before the libs for some package came included in the "main" rpm and the development stuff came in the "devel" rpm. Now, the libs came in the "lib" package, so yada.rpm won't install because it required yada-lib.rpm and my computer didn't have that package before. So the system kept yada-old.rpm which won't run with new glibc and that.. So I had to install/upgrade about 200 rpms by hand.

Also, I had infinite problems with ReiserFS because you included it when it was WAY too beta in 7.1, and then never checked if the filesystems created under 7.1 would run with a kernel upgrade. Well, it would not. I had to spend many days in the reiserfs developers list to find out how to fix the problem. And I did the big mistake of installing mdk 7.1 with reiserfs on many of my servers at work.

For ending this long rant, I would comment that in 7.1 pam had a structure which didn't used the "pam_stack.so service=system-auth" trick. And when you upgraded SSH for a security problem, you sent the 7.1 upgrade with a /etc/pam.d/sshd file which required the system-auth file. The result: I can no longer ssh to any of the upgraded boxes. At the same time there wasn't any upgrade for PAM available at the time, and the 7.2 rpm used a diffrent version of RPM so them were incompatibles, so I had to create /etc/pam.d/system-auth by copying it from newer boxes.

Mandrake folks: you made a beautiful and easy to use distribution, but you aren't paying any attention to reliability, nor upgradability.

I suspect many people now will have problems with XFS and ext3 as I had with ReiserFS.

PD: AND PLEASE: document in the package itself when it has non standard patches. I mean, specially, kernel. But also on others, for example CVS: nowhere it says that it has a shell script wrapper to pserver!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:That's because it's the best thing out there

[jonathan_ingram]

Additionally, GCC 3.1 will not be binary compatible with GCC 3.0 (for C++ anyhow), so it's not a bad idea to wait. Sadly, I can see Red Hat releasing a new major release (8? it's up to 8 already?) with GCC 3.0 as the compiler, a couple of months before GCC 3.1 is released, purely to keep their continual upgrade cycle going. We'd then have to wait for ANOTHER release cycle for a compiler with (please please please god) precompiled headers and a stable ABI.