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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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Mandrake 8.1 is called "Vitamin". It comes with a bunch of new features such as MandrakeFirstTime that lets users centralize their Internet parameters and subscribe to the new MandrakeOnlineServices (personalized updates advisories, depending on your system). Also this is AFAIK the first Linux distro to offer the journalized file-systems XFS, Ext3, ReiserFS at the same time! Last but not the least it offers the beautiful KDE 2.2.1 (with antialiasing in standard) and GNOME 1.4.1. While the previous releases were very oriented to end-users, this new one offers excellent features for server use.
My father-in-law lives in Japan and is very interested in breaking free of M$. The one thing that is really slowing him down is easy, out-of-the box Japanese support. That is to say, he wants to be able to create word processor files in Japanese--he's American, so he understands English just fine, but getting KWord or Star Office to understand Japanese text has not been easy for him.
He also has an ATI Radeon, which the beta version of 8.1 didn't seem to catch.
:Peter
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 been running 8.1 RC-1 for about a week. Yep, I've had a few bugs (the graphical login makes me login TWICE before it lets me in on my ThinkPad). However, KDE 2.2.1 is sweet, running XFree86 4.x.x is a HUGE improvement, and the whole thing feels more integrated than other distros I've dealt with such as RedHat (i.e.: the software packages are more likely to "play nice" with each other). Yes, it IS easier for novices to use, but that doesn't make it any less powerful than the distros that are a pain to install, configure, and maintain. Contrary to the view of some folks, Mandrake is not producing a "beginner's version". Hats off to Mandrake for a great distro!
Life is short: void the warranty.
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.
In the release notes, we read:
MandrakeSoft is proud to announce Mandrake Linux 8.1 as the newest alternative to Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
Wow. It's hard to find two operating systems as different as MacOS (pre-X, like the versions that videographers would use) and Linux. Pushing Mandrake as a "alternative to Microsoft Windows" or "Macinstosh" may be a little premature at this stage.
I think it would be more accurate to call Mandrake an alternative to RedHat, Debian, SuSE, etc. But not MacOS or Windows. Not until I can install fonts by simply copying them into a directory. Not until my TV-out works on my Matrox g450. Not until my wife can open up the PowerPoint files that her professor has on the class web site.
When we jump the gun like this, and people (I'm talking people like my parents, not my fellow engineering students) try installing it themselves (as an alternative), people in general will get a bad taste in their mouths when they perceive that they have less functionality from their computers than they had before.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
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!
Best Slashdot Co
If you don't like our menu structure, run menudrake and choose Action/Menu Style/Standard menu and you'll get KDE/GNOME original menus.
:))
And nobody forces you to use Mandrake tools
Come on people, we need more mirrors. Post em here!
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...
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
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.
I've been using Mandrake, loved it.
I've been using RedHat, loved it.
I am using LFS, married it.
You say something is good in this distro, something is bad in that distro. Make your lives easy and get the most out of your machines. Make your own distro! I did it and now I'm running the very latest, the very best, and only the things I want to run. Nothing more, nothing less.
May I suggest that you might have heard that BETAS are buggy (and such), not the final version. It's somehow hard to belive othervise, considering the fact thet:
1) 8.1 just came out
2) I haven't heard anything of the kind so far.
We don't have enough people to do PPC port paralelly to i596 port, but 8.0/PPC has been quite a success so far, so I bet there will be 8.1/PPC in a few months...
1. Do they check dependencies well?
/usr/local), both can co-exist. I guess they'd be equal here.
Well, no, not really. Mandrake is known for being 1st to market with new apps and new versions, sometimes there are problems with dependency checking. Generally, though, someone will send in a fix sooner or later.
2. Sometimes I like to compile from source, which distro is that more likely to break things or cause trouble on?
I've been compiling certain things from scratch without breaking the system (evolution, for example) on both RedHat and Mandrake. If you're careful (install into
3. Which one installs more stuff in total, RH or Mandrake?
Mandrake was started because RedHat didn't ship some useful apps. So, I think Mandrake wins here. Mandrake is also usually the 1st with any new app and the 1st with major (or even minor) upgrades.
Is it at all possible to use apt-get on RH, Mandrake easily? I know its been done but is it more trouble than its worth?
I know it's possible, but I've never tried it. Mandrake has a very nice tool, urpmi, which is very similar.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
GODDAMMIT! I downloaded the isos for 8.0 last night and installed it this morning. At the end of this install, the pc boots, I login, test the network connection by trying to go to slashdot. Set the gateway, get to /. and see THIS as the first story. Just wonder-fucking-ful. Oh well.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
An important point here
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
great I have to download a japanese version of redhat just so I can veiw kanji ?
No, the distribution is the same. The difference between the CDs is just the default intro screen before you select languages, and AFAIR also the text installer. Graphical install in Japanese works fine with the standard Red Hat Linux distribution - and if you select support for Japanese, you can view it without any problems in e.g. mozilla.
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.
IMO MandrakeUpdate should do the job just fine. Of corse, nobody from QA really tested this, because RC1 or betas were never considered "supported"
Btw, MandrakeUpdate is one of packages which actually got updated in the last moment, so it may be wise to update it manually before doing anything else.
I applaud them for leaving them out. They're terribly insecure. People should use ssh instead.
He was talking about the clients, not the servers. While I agree with your comment about insecurity you don't have security problems with the clients. I also happen to use ftp and telnet all the time. This does not make things any less secure (and I should point out that I am a security freak, choosing ssh over those almost 100% of the time).
An example: I was just using the ftp client to log into various anonymous ftp servers that I know of to see if they have the Mandrake 8.1 iso images before using wget to grab them.
I also use telnet all the time to debug http and smtp problems. When there's a problem with my e-mail, for example, (pop3 + fetchmail + postfix + procmail + pine) and it's not something obvious (like the net connection is down) then I'll check the mail server like so:
$ telnet mail_server 110
USER my_user
USER my_pass
LIST
....
RETR
....
QUIT
So if those tools are not present on any unix box that I'm using then there's a problem.
--
Garett
Did I miss something? Since when does someone have a right to complain when the run below the minimum system requirements recommended by the company that creates the product?
I'd be running Debian now if it had recognized by ethernet card (RealTek 8139).
I'm posting this from a machine running woody with a RealTek 8139. Works just fine. This message will be routed by another box running potato with a RealTek 8139. Works just fine. The drivers for that network card have been part of the kernel since at least 2.2, and Debian includes them by default, so I can't imagine what you're talking about.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Call me a hacker, but not having the standard BSD unix tools by default really annoys me to no end ( ftp, telnet, and many others were not installed without individual package selection ).
Personally I think Mandrake are to be gratulated for leaving these out. ftp and telnet are... well, not very good. There are far far better alternatives available.
ncftp is far more powerful than plain BSD ftp, even having command and file completion a la bash.
ssh is the way to go, and the more that people are discouraged from using telnet, the better. This alone (I think) merits removal of telnet from the standard install.
netcat is far more flexible and powerful than telnet.
Blind adherance to the notion that 'if it was in BSD 4.2 or SysV then we must have it in Linux too' is one of the things that holds Linux back. There are very often better tools and better ways of doing things today than were available 10, 15, 20 years ago. As Linux users and developers we should be evaluating what still works the best and what is better replaced by more modern tools and ideas. Whilst you can keep the old tools around for compatibility, sometimes it's better just to remove them in order to migrate people to the new tools, and to reduce the amount of cruft. I think ftp and telnet are perfect candidates for this.
Personally I can't wait until filesystem ACLs become part of mainstream Linux, then I can do away with the less-than-great traditional UNIX permissions scheme. :)
Well I dick taken this reply with we a voice and left me tell you, it's grape! Now I kin speak things at have the speed I can type them.
m00.
Only read if you completely understand the following rule.
I AM NOT TRYING TO START A FLAME WAR!!!
All will admit (ALL!) that Mandrake is the best of the lot. But for some reason I find Debian to be cleaner and quicker. But out of the box, Debian has no journaling fs support or support for my ATA100 card. Can this be done in Debian? Of coure. I don't think anything can not be done in Debian. But if I have to spend two days doing it.... then it just aint worth it. Hopefully SID release will resolve some of these issues, so for now....Mandrake it is.
It's alway this way. Mandrake has excellent hardware support, but it's loaded. Debian is clean...but less out of the box hardware support.
Such is the troubles of a geek.
Kudos to the two best OS Dist available.
Mandrake and Debian!!!
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
Until nVidia offers them, you can get them via MUO.
tom (mandrakesoft)
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
I keep seeing complaints like:
"Mandrake is too bloated and I'm a linux expert so I should know."
Actually if you're a Linux expert, especially a lazy Linux expert then Mandrake is quite nice. It ships with a lot of nice stuff and it's highly configurable at inatall and after. The kernal is very modular. The install is very tweekable. In fact Mandrake 8.1 is the only distro that I have been able to get to work correctly with ReiserFS as root on an ATA100 drive along side another ATA66 along side a SCSI software raid along side a SCSI CD writer and an IDE CDROM. All that with pmfirewall and freeswan working fine INSTALLED AS AN UPGRADE. Yes I had to tweek a few things but they were fairly minor.
Considering that I got to choose what I wanted to install, what services I wanted to run at boot, what runlevel I wanted to start at and what window manager I wanted to use (each preconfigured with menus for my installed components) Mandrake 8.1 is a dream. Plus Mandrake ships with some nice config tools and MandrakeUpdate so that I can easily update over the net. I admit that I edit config files by hand on occasion. This is not MacOS by any means. I also use webmin for some tasks and tweeks. That aside I think Mandrake 8.1 is a very friendly but powerful distro. It's not just for the desktop and never really was.
If you don't have the patience to roll your own distro (the only true way to escape Linux lib dependancy hell) and you don't have time for something like Rock Linux then I think that Mandrake should be considered along with Debian as the Lazy Linux Expert Distro TM.
Oh, and BTW, those complaining about Mandrake not running well on Pentium 120s with 64 MB of RAM... Why bother leaving the Linux 2.0 or 2.2 world at all? You don't see Win95 users complaining that they can't run WinXP - OK maybe you do. Anyway these people fall in that category and should actually use one of the many mini distros that are perfect for such a machine.
I just don't like the BS RH appears to be pulling with there RPMs. *VERY* few FTP sites are carrying there update RPMs. I think its on purpose, to get you to use the RH network.
This is plain not true. We don't control our mirrors any more than any other distribution does.
Everyone (yourself included) is free to mirror our packages, but we don't force anyone to do it.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I've had a lot of bad experiences with Mandrake 8.0 (as with most other Linux distros I've tried). Well, some good experiences too, but the bad ones are more annoying. Most problems are with the package tool that tries to imitate APT's functionality, but fails miserably.
For example, you type "urpmi kdebase" (or something like that), then it suggests about 50 additional packages, as it should, and starts downloading them. After downloading for half an hour, it tries to install them, but runs into RPM dependency problems or file conflicts. Installation fails. Ok, you resolve the conflicts manually, and try to "urpmi kdebase" again. It removes all the packages from local "cache" and downloads them all again for half an hour. Aaaaagh.
The software manager GUI totally sucks. It can perform operations for half an hour, but doesn't display a progress meter of any kind (just a "busy" indicator that flashes sometimes even when the program is not busy). The only way to get some status output is to run it from command line and watch the output of wget that the software manager uses internally... If the transfer gets stuck, you won't know about it. All operations take an eternity, and usually end up in conflicts, especially with the Cooker RPM repository. It's really frustrating.
It has dozens of other small problems. Most of them are just annoying, some are really confusing, some are just broken. For example, it uses the framebuffer console driver by default. Well, when I type "startx", it gets jammed, and only *reset* helps.
When I installed 8.0, I had to re-install it three times, I think. Once because in the last installation phase, it tested X, and it was ok, but when the test exited, my screen went blank. *sigh* I also noticed - too late - that installing the 2nd CD later with the software manager simply doesn't work. Takes eternity, produces conflicts, and all installation operations all slow as hell. I found it much much easier to re-install everything again than to struggle with the software manager.
Most other issues were mostly GUI-related useability problems. Many things are just confusing, not simple enough, or don't work as smoothly as they should.
Not that other Linux distros are much nicer. RedHat still misses ReiserFS, getting updates (such as KDE) takes quite long, and it's up2date sucks even more than Mandrake's urpmi. Debian might be nice, but its installation is hell. The APT-system seems to work much better than other package systems, but using it is everything but easy (and I'm not really a computer newbie). I'd rather do something productive than use days just learning how to use a package system. Corel Linux's installation was great, but it didn't have updates, and couldn't really be upgraded with Debian packages safely. SuSE...well, miscellaneous problems, but not terribly bad, about equal to Mandrake. The control center program...what was it again...oh, the "YAST2" (can't you just call it "control center"???) was rather bad - sluggish, couldn't configure my SB AWE32 sound card in any way, etc, etc.
Yeah, I reported some of the Mandrake 8.0 problems, but not all (writing even a few reports takes quite many hours).