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Mandrake 8.1 Released
Loke and several others wrote in with notes about Mandrake Linux 8.1. Release notes are available, or download an .iso, or just order it. Looks like it includes KDE 2.2.1, which is pretty impressive...
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I'm not a lazy user, but Mandrake is the first Linux distro that I have been able to use without calling a friend every 5 minutes to figure something out. I first installed 7.2, then 8.0, and I have been able to use it for most things. Now that I am getting familiar with it, I am starting to learn to compile my own apps, and set up some not-so standard hardware, like my scanner and sound card. I started as a newbie, but I am learning more and more about it all the time.
Mandrake is a great distro for beginners, but they don't hide everything, so that if you want to learn stuff more in depth, you can.
Lazy? No. Lack of knowledge because I have used Windows for so long? Yes. Learning more everyday about Linux, but I was still able to get the basic system up and running without help. Now instead of editing a stupid text file for 10 hours with no luck, I can go-back and figure that stuff out on my own time, instead of ripping my hair out.
I've heard from the Mandrake support lists that 8.1 is really buggy and has been bothering a lot of people. I'm hoping they got those bugs worked out and stable before releasing it. I'm currently using 8.0 and love it, but am weary of upgrading to 8.1 from all the problems that I've heard about. More than likely I'll just upgrade all the stuff manually. It's nice to see KDE 2.2.1 in there though. How much more memory does it use now though :)
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Even if Mandrake is very much desktop-oriented, this should not necessairly mean requiring a monster. I'm using a K6/2 350Mhz and the CPU power is fine. Not blazing fast, but ok. On the contrary, the 64Megs of RAM are way too little. I don't use GNOME/KDE (I prefer plain WindowMaker), but at the moment the situation is:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 62240 60456 1784 1056 1124 15232
-/+ buffers/cache: 44100 18140
Swap: 66524 27508 39016
27M of swap is not the end of the world, except that I'm using old recycled disks, with a throughput of 3-5 Mb/sec. And with this disks, you can FEEL the system swapping.
What suprises me is that I'm running the same stuff I was using with the old releases, but nevertheless RAM usage is going up!!
Even if RAM is cheap, I don't see any reason to go the Microsoft way. Featurithis is not a need.....
Please keep this in mind, all you software developers...better many small utils which do stuff than one big monster....
PS: I can't consider Mandrake a server distro, there's too much bleeding edge stuff. This is nice for the desktop, but stability is affected. I'd stick to Debian for a server.
They're usually in /etc/rc.d and most distros start things that aren't needed. Also, if you have a hackish bent, go to the source directory and "make xconfig" to see how the kernel was built. Are there drivers compiled in that aren't needed? Bloat can be fought!
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oh please no...
i think any version of linux becoming defacto standard (like red hat), would be a disaster. choices and competition are good. they all have their place, none have their place being the standard, not even my favorite (no i don't want a flamewar, i'm not saying which one it is).
add to that my personal opinion that mandrake is far to windows like and does way to many things without asking...
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"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
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A think it is an accurate statement. Linux in general IS an alternative to Windows and MacOS. Certainly the systems have differing capabilities, but just as you named a couple of things that Linux may not do that Windows or Macs do, that doesn't mean the reverse isn't also true. There are lots of things I can do on my Linux box that I can't AFFORD to do from Windows. I make my graphics for my web page in the Gimp -- what dabbler could afford to buy Photoshop? Likewise, I can run my own Apache web server to host my page if I want -- with the ability to do gobs of CGI scripts to boot. Running MS's personal webserver on Win 9x is a poor alternative to that. The point I'm making is that the OS's are all ALTERNATIVES to one another. The best choice for you is the one that has the most functionality FOR YOU.
A bicycle is an alternative to a car. No, a bicycle can't go 70 mph down the freeway. Then again, my car can't take me offroad through the woods. They are both forms of transportation, but the have different capabilities.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Could Slashdot please quit doing this. Those of that read this site generally know where to go to get downloads of linux distros. All you are doing is killing the site.
Bug fixes. If you don't notice any annoying bugs, don't bother upgrading.
One thing that I have never understood about Mandrake is why all the graphical setup tools are written using GTK+ rather than Qt?
It's plain that Mandrakesoft have tried very hard to make them look the same as the KDE Control Center, using a very similar theme to the KDE default highcolor style, and with KDE as the default desktop, I don't understand the choice of GTK+ at all.
Using Qt would make it far easier to integrate these setup tools into the KDE Control Center and provide a completely consistent look and feel across the whole desktop. Perhaps more importantly, it would reduce bloat. GTK+ is not a small library, and having to load it in addition to the Qt that KDE uses increases total memory usage quite considerably. If the setup tool used Qt, then they would use the same shared copy of Qt as KDE.
Both SuSE and Caldera (both of which also ship KDE as the default desktop) have Qt-based graphical setup and configuration tools, and they integrate seamlessly into the KDE Control Center, giving users a single place to look for all their configuration settings. Why is Mandrake different? From an engineering (and consistency) point of view, the choice of GTK+ just doesn't seem logical to me.
The upgrade treadmill they have people on is rather striking, they service they offer is compiling all your software for you and selling it every few months. Are they really adding anything new that can't be gotten anywhere else? no. Do some people like it that way? yes. Essentially they're just adding new software updating versions etc and saying "here's our latest greatest distro" which is fine, but people need to recognize it for what it is. Every couple months is a "new distro!" no it's not a new distro, it's the same stuff that was in the last just updated.