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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 ;)
ARGH!!!...if you check out the Mandrake site they have a link of their homepage showing how 8.1 is alot like windows XP. Is it a good thing that a Microsoft OS and a Linux OS have so much in common?
Best of all, Mandrake truly does have a great setup procedure. For example, name one other distro in which you can easily setup ReiserFS, JFS, ext3, and ext2 filesystems during the installation. And afterwards, you have such tools as the Software Update utility, which is a decent way to keep up with security updates. And don't forget the custom user, printer, and other management utilities.
I know many people call Mandrake a newbie distro, but who said that having an easy to use distro is a bad thing? Plus, even though it's "easy to use", I can still setup and configure it however I want. Mandrake seems to be getting better and better, and I wouldn't be suprised to see it take over as the Desktop distro for both newbies and experts alike.
Remember, with devfs /dev/hdxx don't exist until the defsd program is run. Setting up linux to boot from /dev/hda1 will cause it to fail because /dev/hda1 doesn't exist. Also, you can download and run MAKEDEV without any problems to convert to non devfsd. I have yet to see a single device that doesn't work (Not that they are not out there mind you..) ReiserFS has no problems what so ever with devfs as long as you select the right partition (not /dev/hdxx!) its usually /dev/discs/disc0/part0 or something like that (I am at work so I can not verify). the /dev/hda1 link is acually created by the devfsd. =) Read the devfs how-to before starting and you usually have no problems whatsoever.
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.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
My solution to these problems was to wipe and reinstall. Most settings were stored in my home dir which I did not wipe and the rest of the programs were upgraded as a side effect. My RiserFS partitions were uneffected and when I was finished the strage problems I had went away.
I enjoy my Mandrake dist. but I'd caution those who are looking to "upgrade" via their installer.
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.
Why hasn't Mandrake yet provided KDE versions of the Drake tools? Am I the only one who strongly feels the need for this? As a paying customer I feel it frustrating that I am not being heard. Mandrake, are you listening? Please port those tools to KDE and give your users a choice!
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Once the few bugs get worked out - The whole Mandrake 8.1 sytem is really a Windows desktop replacement. I'm really excited to wipe out a secratary's Windows computer, replace it with Mandrake and watch what happens. My hunch is, after explaining to her that the Start button is now a "K" - and MS.Word is now called KWord, then she will turn to me and say "OK." And proceed to work as if nothing has happened. After a few hours , I bet she'll say :
"Wow, this new version of Windows sure has a lot of cool card games, Thanks!"
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I suspect MandrakeForum is using the Mandrake PostgreSQL RPMs. They're built with a (default) 32 connection limit.
/home/www/mandrakeforum.com/html/mainfile.php on line 24
Warning: Too many connections in
Unable to select database
- James
You could tell us how Red Hat is based on Mandrake, as well.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Hey, I thought Mandrake was based on Red Hat.
Well, the BSD licence forces you to release your code to the likes of microsoft who can take it, and use it for whatever they like, without merging the changes back.
>>>>>>>>>
Umm, if you license something under the BSD license, you implicitly OK that usage. Some people don't care if their code gets used in a closed commercial system, if it makes that system better for users. Are you saying that that's bad?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
I think you don't seem to understand the definition of a "restriction." The GPL might lead to freer code, but it does that by being more restrictive than the BSD license. Take a different example. As an employer, you can discriminate against people when hiring. This is more restrictive, but also leads to a freer society.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Netscape is in the process of being removed from Mandrake. For example Mandrake PPC no longer has Netscape. Besides rpm -e if you don't like it.
http://rugby.about.com/library/weekly/aa033101.htm
Great post, too bad so many people didn't get the joke.
It's never really worked, and it doesn't work with half of the drivers currently out there
Then that's the fault of the drivers. What is broken is not being able to consistently address hot pluggable hardware, and almost every other Unix has a DevFS-like system (at least Solaris, OSX, and FreebSD IIRC) they seem to have a fairly proven track record or working in a real world environment.
um. First, if RMS (Richard Stallman) heard you saying Debian "adheres to his definition of open source", you'd be in for the argument of your life. RMS has nothing to do with open source, he will tell you so if you ask him about open source, instead letting you know that he crafted the definition of "free software" and it applies to all GNU software. Debian, which could be called the "FSF-sponsored Linux distribution", uses exclusively free software. A program could qualify as "open source", but not as "free software", in which case it won't be in Debian (well, it might be found under the non-free section).
Second, who told you Red Hat is based on Mandrake? its completely the other way around, and actually, Mandrake has been the target of many comments stating how they are just a Red Hat ripoff adding nothing except a lot of cutting-edge but unproven software.
Finally, the BSD license might not be of RMS's liking, but it's a free software license (at least the version without the advertising clause), and altough it's not recommended by free software advocates, because it gives up some of the GPL's protection against appropriation of your work, it's certainly more free (freer?) than a lot of licenses that are OSI-approved, but which won't qualify as free under the FSF's definition.
Perhaps you were thinking ESR (Eric Raymond) when you wrote RMS (Richard Stallman)??
1. RMS talks about Free Software, not Open Source
2. ESR talks about Open Source.
3. 98% of the packages included with Red Hat are Open Source. Netscape 4 (the main non Open Source one) won't be included in the next release. Pine is still there, IIRC.
4. Mandrake was derives from Red Hat (2 words). Not Red Hat from Mandrake. Tho it harly matters, Mandrake's now quite distinct from Red Hat.
5. Free Software has a specific meaning. Freedom is an english world which also a well defined meaning and which is not exclusively to do with Free Softare. People use the BSD license precisely because is allows large corporattions (and small corporations, and small proprietary limited companies) the freedom to use the software as they see fit.
And no, I don't use BSD or particularly like the BSD license. But they're my own personal opinions and I present them as such, not as `facts'.
http://planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake/iso/i586/8.1/
btw, it's "Raklet" not "Rakel", from the filename.
cheers,
-jason
But I agree that the initial post was lame and uninformed.
I installed Mandrake 8.0, and I was amazed. Everything worked, and the install was easier than any version of Windows.
Sometimes bad hardware, or bad connections, can cause a difficult or impossible install. An adapter card that is not making good contact, for example, can confuse the install system. Bad contacts are cured by pulling the card or cable connector out a tiny amount, and pushing it back.
A spike in the power, if you are not using a battery backup, can put junk in memory. In this case, re-booting the machine and starting the install over fixes the problem.
Bush's education improvements were
I can't believe this got modded-up, it's an out and out troll, but I feel the obligation to respond.
>Well, the BSD licence forces you to release your
>code to the likes of microsoft who can take it,
>and use it for whatever they like, without
>merging the changes back.
Umm, no. The BSD license doesn't force you to do much of anything. You take the code, do whatever the hell you like with it - modify, sell, relicense to your heart's content, etc. and release whatever you please. If that means making changes, forking, and re-releasing under the GPL, so be it. Or taking and releasing in binary format. Whatever, so long as you maintain the copyright notice.
It gets me off to see GPL bigots talk about the GPL being more free than than the BSD license. Nope, it ain't - and I release my code under the GPL. Things start out in a state of freedom - one that allows total freedom of action or motion and by applying restrictions, suprise suprise, you move into a state of less freedom.
Whether that freedom is viewed in a positive or negative context, is irrelevant. By your argument, by making drugs illegal, we end up with a society that has "freedom from drugs" (ignore your stand on the War on Drugs here) or some such tripe. It may be a more desirable societal condition, but when you apply rules, you don't have 'more' freedom. It's just a moniker used by politicians to remove opposition by it look like rights are being expanded when in reality absolute freedom is being impinged on.
FWIW, most people who release code under the BSD license are quite aware what the freedom of the license implies. It may suprise a bigot like you, but sometimes people want to allow others to take and modify code without restriction. Some of them are even pleased if their code is useful to a corporation like Microsoft. The BSD license tends to maximize code use, the GPL code return.
For some reason FSF people seem to feel a need to make everything free and force it on everyone, willing or not. I don't agree with this, code is the property of the author, and it's up to him/her to decide what sorts of use and license should be allowed - BSD, GPL, or proprietary. Personally, I hate proprietary software and use vary little of it. I don't support proprietary software (outside of games) with my dollars, but I sure as hell don't campaign to put commercial software houses out of business. The right to my discretion as to how I license my code is a far more important right than how I choose to exercise it. Now respect the damn software authors choice.
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.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Since version 7.1 I had problems with app stability and core dumps and starting with mandrake 7.2 it became unbearable on my system. With 7.2 I had no modem, sound card, nic, and even cd-rom support on my system. I use standard parts like USR hardware based modem, creative labs awe32 sound card, netgrear nic, and a teac cd-rw. It was awefull. I even downloaded a later iso image of 7.2 hoping the bugs were fixed and still no luck.
I think your nuts to put that thing on a server! Hell even NT 4.0 sp1 would probably be more stable then any mandrake release after 7.1 and I am sadly serious too. Sure the linux kernel is stable but mandrake uses very alpha and bleeding edge apps and daemons.
An example is kde 2.0. It had alot of problems with the first release. If I recall mandrake finished their release of 7.1 or 7.2(don't remember which) just 3 days later with kde 2.0 included!
THen kde 2.1 came out and all the other distro's thought it was finally stable enough. Better but still buggy. Then kde 2.1.1 and then it was good. My point is that a distro with bleeding edge software and lots of bugs gives linux a bad name. Especially for those sick of windows and seeking alternatives.
Joe consumer: If kde crashes more then w2k, then why should I switch? Remember that ordinary users think if x crashes then linux crashes because they are use to thinking that the gui is the os. My cousin tried mandrake and switched to w2k sadly. Why? kde 2.0 and a few other apps kept crashing or were buggy and core dumped were generated left and right. Core dumps are everywhere and even NT can be fine for a week or two before it goes down or a bug here and there shows up. But thats not the case with mandrake.
I use to love mandrake alot. When I was a newbie I wanted the gui componets because I did not know the command line that well. After learning it I do not want to go back. I think most newbies would not trade stability for extra eye candies and nifty cool bleeding edge features and apps. I personally prefer debian or slackware because they are the most stable and use the most mature apps but I can't get good corporate support. Redhat has good support but a few of their apps are alpha like gvim. I might give mandrake a try just to "goof" with it. But I will not bet my job on using it in a server or any critical workstation.
Bleeding edge is not necessarily a good thing in a server/workstation oriented OS like linux/unix. Especially to corporate america curious about linux and checking its reliability and stability.
http://saveie6.com/
I would like to copy the comment I've just posted to Mandrake Forum:
/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.
---
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
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!!!!!!!!!!!!
yadda yadda
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.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Sorry about the bad example, it wasn't my intent to argue for absolute freedom but rather just refute the previous poster's assertion that the GPL is more free than the BSD using the logic that the GPL is the freedom not to get fucked by what he considers an abusive company.
Absolute freedom could exist in theory, it's just not practical for society.
I have learned over the years that quality components make ALL the difference in the Wintel hardware world.
This is EXACTLY correct, and very important. Often cheaper components are being sold cheaply because they are somehow incompatible.
Save yourself grief. Buy the best hardware. Buy Intel motherboards with Intel processors, for example. The easy install with Mandrake 8.0 (two comments above) was with an Iwill motherboard and a Pentium 200 processor. At the time the system was bought, these were conservative choices for hardware.
I own a small computer dealership, and could have chosen any hardware on which to test Mandrake, but I wanted to see if the reports were correct. Is Linux fast on less powerful machines? It is.
The big hardware manufacturers want new software to be slow, because that causes customers to buy more expensive machines. Linux doesn't have this conflict of interest. It runs fast everywhere.
Good-quality hardware helps you avoid problems caused by a BIOS or OS programmer not coding for your particular hardware.
Once a friend bought a sound card for $12 from Fry's, back when sound cards were expensive. After several hours, we decided we would never be able to get it to work. That was the most expensive sound card I've ever touched.
Bush's education improvements were
Let's check numbers:
zembla
516
zembla
888
It's true, but it is also true another way around: 98% of packages are Free Software, not just Open Source.
This shows 64% of packages are under GPL, if you add to this other free licenses you will get more.
You are correct that it will still be in 8.1 of the x86 version. However, netscape's support of PPC is fine. Linux/PPC had to ask them for source and work with them to get it compiled. Since Mandrake knew they were going to be removing Netscape further down the line they just didn't bother.
It's LZW compression that's the problem. CREATING GIF files without using LZW compression doesn't require any payments/licensing/etc.
Why do free software people who scream about CHOICE *LIMIT* my choice by refusing to support GIF at all, instead of just providing the simple workaround of supporting nonLZW GIFs? The situation with browsers is a bit better NOW than it was a couple years ago with respect to PNG, but all the 'awesome' features of PNG aren't anywhere CLOSE to being supported - and I can't do animated PNG files. I can display the SAME PNG in IE and NS, and the color representations are vastly different in some cases. PNG support is nowhere close to what GIF support was, but because a few zealots got on their PNG campaign the majority of the community suffers.
creation science book
Well said - I'd mod you up if I could. :)
creation science book
So who do you go after? The Big Money - PHBs. But in general PHBs are considerably less willing to ditch what they know in favour of some upstart OS like Linux, so you need to appeal directly to them.
Now, believe it or not, M$ have actually spent a large amount of money in the past figuring out how to make stuff user friendly - even basic things like buttons illuminated from the top and _left_ rather than top and right were decided on by focus groups. But since M$ can't really claim to have been first out of the blocks with the WIMP GUI (I imagine Apple, and Xerox would have a lot to say if they did), it's difficult for them to lay claim to a lot of the desktop elements that they developed. Which means that companies like Mandrake can rip them off.
All of which makes their OS more familiar to those PHBs with fat wallets. But while the PHBs may have fat wallets, they usually have a big padlock on them too. And if, for example, their current OS vendors decided that they were only going to rent the new version of the OS to them, the PHBs might finally start looking around for a cheaper option.
Enter Mandrake, stage right, saying "Look, we look like XP, only we're all stable and won't cost you nearly as much". It's just business. And hopefully it'll improve the market penetration in the lucrative corporate desktop sector. If you want to stay 1337 then you can always use a different window manager (IIRC, Mandrake comes with quite a few in the default install, and nothing's stopping you adding more).
Hmmm.... don't think they're being restrictive exactly. Nothing to stop you installing what you like on top of Debian.
They're just choosing an initial distribution based on a ethical/idealistic principle that they believe in. Nothing wrong with that.
Never used Debian myself, but I'm kinda pleased they're around just making the statement. All credit to people who do something good because they believe in it.