Mandrake Releases 8.2 Beta

joestar writes: "As seen at Mandrake's website, Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta seems to be available for download at different places. The new features include the ability to install a Mandrake as small as 65Mb on the HD, and encrypted file-system support. I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version. Very promising release, worth a look at!"

Comments

Noooo ....

[Anonymous Coward]

You killed my ISO download. You bastards!

Re:Noooo ....

[Anonymous Coward]

probably thought you were kenny...

Re:Noooo ....

[jo42]

Ya man, get it right:

Youdrake killeddrake mydrake ISOdrake downloaddrake. Youdrake bastardsdrake!

*drake to them. Blech.

How do I respond to this?

[FortKnox]

3 options:

• Post the release notes, and hope to be the first (easy karma!)
• Post an "ohhh... ahhh" post
• Post a troll/crapflood

Are there any other possible posts? What do the editors wish us to discuss with this?
Maybe there should be an "Announcement" for /. frontpage. It links to the info, without any comments allowed...

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

option 1 is the best...

the site appears to be well on it's way to a slashdotting.

Here's the important info.

The look and feel of 'Mandrake Control Center' has been reworked with 'better ergonomy' in mind. If you do not like it, or do not find it clear, or such - say it now.
Several new features are available during the installation:
The ability to download and install updates after the packages installation.
Minimal installation mode, which installs nothing but the basic system. This installation mode leaves you with a functional linux installation taking only 65 MB on your HD.
Encrypted filesystem support.
In addition , there is a new rescue mode, with a help menu to automatically mount your old system, rewrite lilo and more.
New tools have been addded to the 'drakxtools' family:
Drakbackup helps you keep your data safe, and restore them if something goes wrong.
Scannerdrake helps you configure the scanner.
rfbdrake lets you easily perform a remote control of an X session. Helping your friends get started with linux has never been easier.
New file sharing function makes it simple to export local files.

Obviously, these new tools need a lot of testing. In particular, scannerdrake has only been on the little number of scanners we got in the lab...

Other tools have been reworked (bugfixes, ergonomy, additional functionality):
Diskdrake got support for encripted and network file systems
urpmi and its graphical interface, rpmdrake got a face lift: New 'synthesis file', is almost 100 times smaller than hdlist, which makes urpmi.update -a (reloading the urpmi/rpmdrake database) a pleasurable experience - even with a slow modem connection! Rpmdrake will also work faster, and handle 'exceptional' situations better than in ML 8.1.
MandrakeOnline got now the updates warning feature, i.e. it will warn you whenever you have to upgrade some package.
Finally, 'msec', is more powerfull than ever. Use with care: in paranoid mode, msec will let you happily secure your box from yourself now (been there, done that).

Of course you will also find all the newest versions of famous packages:
kernel 2.4.17, celebrating the comeback of kernel-secure, and a more robust supermount.
XFree86 4.2, with support for many video cards only supported in 3.3.6 version until now.
glibc 2.2.4
Window Maker 0.8
apache 1.3.22
evolution 1.01
kde 2.2.2
galeon 1.0
mozilla 0.9.7

Re:How do I respond to this?

[gazbo]

Nope, 4 options. You forgot the 'I predict these posts' post. That about wraps it up for possible posts.

I guess this counts as a crapflood - my previous post as AC must have counted as a troll.

Honestly, I want an intelligent discussion (see posting history). But if this is the subject material then hell, what's a boy to do but troll?

Re:How do I respond to this?

[MikeyLikesIt!]

3 options... Are there any other possible posts? What do the editors wish us to discuss with this? Maybe there should be an "Announcement" for /. frontpage. It links to the info, without any comments allowed...

4th option: Instead of just NOT posting a message since you have nothing to say, post a message that says "maybe there should be an announcement page".

:-)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend a high quality troll. Unfortunately, trolling is sort of like open source software development:

Everyone (including me) wants to see a high quality product - in this case, an excellent troll that garners a lot of results while in open source's case, they are looking for a high quality product that garners market share.

However, since there is no money in either venture, people start out with these grandiose ideas but quickly find better things to do with their time (such as looking at pr0n, playing Deus Ex, or getting back to work) so what ends up getting produced is exceedingly similar to the feces I launched this morning after a day of beer, chili and football yesterday.

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could comment that you think Mandrake is a piece of shit and get into a holy war with the fans of all the other distros. Add KDE/GNOME and GNU/NotGnu and even a bit of Linux/*BSD to the mix, remind everyone that unless it supports Ogg Vorbis it's totally and completely useless, and you'll have a good old-fashioned flamewar on your hands.

Just saying.

Re:How do I respond to this?

[mESSDan]

Yeah, I understand exactly what you mean.

[sacrasm]After all, it's not RedHat, or Debian, or Slackware (one of the good distros). [/sarcasm]

All kidding aside, this article is also good for a good "my distro is better than yours" flamewar, a nice discussion about how Mandrake has come along way and how the 8.2beta shows it, how a 65mb install really is a good thing. C'mon, if it didn't mean anything to you, why post?

And as for not allowing any comments on an announcement, how else would you see other people's (often insightful) reactions to the announcement?

Re:How do I respond to this?

[LinSux]

Oooh, Ahhh, Linux is that shiznitz.

NOT! It's a third-rate tinkertoy operating system. It may be good for that sever in your coat closet, but It's useless as a desktop OS. Windows already has a huge userbase and lots of well-written (not shoddy, half-completed open-source crapola that linux) useful and productive applications. But, the zealots are blind. They have closed minds and would never believe it, for MS is the Evil Empire (tm) Watch this post go down in flames HAH!

Re:How do I respond to this?

[joestar]

Don't whine: I'm the author of the story and I'm not sure my Karma gets boosted for that :->

Re:How do I respond to this?

[yota]

Of course you will also find all the newest versions of famous packages:
kernel 2.4.17, celebrating the comeback of kernel-secure, and a more robust supermount.
XFree86 4.2, with support for many video cards only supported in 3.3.6 version until now.
glibc 2.2.4
Window Maker 0.8
apache 1.3.22
evolution 1.01
kde 2.2.2
galeon 1.0
mozilla 0.9.7

Hope they upgrade their Mozilla version then, 0.9.8 should be out this week. ;)

Andrea

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

You forgot the "Isn't Mandrake just a rip off of RedHat anyways?" posts.

Goddess, I am tired of those.

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was right

this post gets (Score:5 informative)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[volsung]

Sometimes I wish we had moderation options like:

• -1 Stupid
• -1 Arrogant
• -1 Poor use of Reverse Psychology

Re:How do I respond to this?

[nice]

Let's just make it +1 Effort :)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buhuhuhuhu... I can't resist it anymore. :-(

You also forgot the:

- it's useless reporting anything to them, they do not listen.

and

- who cares, mandrake is only good for newbies.

These are my favorites. (grmble, what's my password...)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[LinSux]

What, you don't like my post?

Could you please critique it, line by line, so that I may make better anti-linux posts in the future.

Thank you! Come again!

Damn, I think the moderators agree with you, but I can't understnad why. Is it because I said "MS Rools Linux Sux?"

Re:How do I respond to this?

[volsung]

No, it's because you act like saying "MS Roolz, Linux Sux" is sufficient for getting modded down, when in reality you are just being annoying.

Please make anti-Linux posts in the future without making references to the moderation system or how Slashdot represses people who hold your opinion. We all prefer a good, old-fashioned "Linux sucks!" post to a "Linux sucks, and I'll get modded down because the moderators are all Linux fanboys!" post.

We need to get back to basics here...

Re:How do I respond to this?

[LinSux]

But, the truth is the moderators are all Linux Fanboys.

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the biggest flamebait of all, that Mandrake is made by Frenchmen. If they distribute KDE, should they have to rename konqueror to konquered? :-)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that there are more Windows zealots on slashdot than Linux zealots. Quite why they choose to spend all their time on a predomenantly linux site remains a mystery.

Re:How do I respond to this?

[volsung]

Perhaps, but I wish people would be less self-conscious about it. :)

Re:How do I respond to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't post under my name anymore.

So, anyway.. here goes:

My post rampage has been mostly because I'm sick of all of the anti-MS banter going on lately. I've used both Linux, and Windows. People just need to realise that MS has a much larger applications base than Linux. The quality of apps I have seen on the Linux platform leave alot to be desired.

It seems that being modded down 3 times w/o any positive moderation is too much bad posting (and I made several posts ...)

Anyway...

-LinSux

KDE 3.0?

[sgtron]

Why didn't they just wait until April for KDE 3.0 to come out? Or are they going to release Mandrake 8.3beta at that time?

Re:KDE 3.0?

[fobbman]

They had to get the .2 release out the door so that they could be ready to take Mandrake to 9.0 when KDE3 comes out.

Re:KDE 3.0?

[Dalroth]

Maybe because people don't want to wait till April for KDE when 1000s of other applications can be updated now.

Re:KDE 3.0?

[FPhlyer]

I think when Mandrake includes KDE 3.0, they will jump the version number up to Mandrake 9.0, much the way the release of KDE 2.0 signified the jump from the MDK 7.0 series to the 8.0 series.

Remember, Mandrake was originally known as being "RedHat with KDE added." I think that Mandrake will continue the trend of linking it's release numbers to KDE releases.

I think that providing a Mandrake 8.2 without KDE 3.0 is a good move for Mandrake. This allows them to produce a fully mature 8.X release that will be (hopefully) free of the majority of the bugs found in 8.0 and 8.1

Once mandrake releases 9.0 with KDE 3.0, I'm sure the bug cycle will be back up.

Re:KDE 3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they made their debut as "RedHat compiled with Pentium optimization" -- which is why even today most of your Mandrake RPMs are of the package-1.1.1-1.mdk.i586.rpm naming variety.

At the time, a common complaint was that 386-"optimized" packages weren't taking advantage of all the new, uberfast MMX/SSE TLA extensions, which as the neon-spacesuit-clad Intel spokesmen informed us, would allow us to enjoy the Internet so much more.

I guess that hype has pretty much subsided now, but that was Mandrake's original schtik, not KDEism.

Re:KDE 3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.
There was that also.
Mandrake made it's in-roads by providing what was basically a pentium-optimized version of RedHat that included KDE (which RedHat refused to include due to the licensing issues at that time.)

Re:KDE 3.0?

[Afrosheen]

While Cooker is being stabilized right now, I have a strong feeling kde3 will be part of the final release. A beta is a beta after all...one of the hallmarks of Mandrake 8.1 was kde 2.2.1 (or was it 2.1.x?). At any rate, each of their releases usually reflects the current cutting edge of KDE as long as other packages are equally new.

Don't expect a beta preview iso to contain every new package that the final will have.

Re:KDE 3.0?

[efgbr]

Actually, Mandrake 7.2 had KDE 2.0 (release candidate).

Distributions are going to use KDE 3 only when they switch to GCC 3 too. Otherwise they have to break binary compatibility twice (KDE 2 -> KDE 3 + GCC 2.95 -> KDE 3 + GCC 3).

Wonderful

[unred]

Mandrake has always been good to me on the install, (it autodetected my weirdo soundblaster board, that RH would have nothing to do with).

My mother actually read the handbook that came along with Mandrake 8.1, when i came home one day she asked me for an account. All i can say is that Mandrake definately has quality, i can't wait to see 8.2 in the stores :)

Re:Wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

You really should find something more productive for your mom to day. I mean get her set up with the EFF reading through and summarizing court cases or something.

No

[NiftyNews]

"I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version.

No, it's time for you to report all the bugs that shouldn't be in my final version. Now get back to work testing my future software.

Re:No

[joestar]

So you have to pay me... How much can you? :-)

Re:No

[Eccles]

I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version.

Are you suggesting there are bugs we *do* want to see in the final version?

Re:No

[Happy go Lucky]

Well, if a "bug" is really a "feature," then I want to see the bug that encrypts the filesystem. I'd also like to see the bug that makes KDE stable.

Not that I'm holding my breath...

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

He is suggesting that mandrake has no QA and their final versions are buggy as hell. Which if you knew anything about Mandrake you would know is true.

Re:No

[deno]

May I have a list of your hardware please? 'lspcidrake' output would be fine.

Just to make absolute sure everything works for you in the final... ;-)

Re:No

[Beltec]

The big difference with mandrake is they are known for the latest software, and not so much the most stable. To me it kinda looks like a testbed for a lot of applications. Because of this it won't ever be like Debian or anything, and I don't think they are even wanting to..

Re:No

[Keith_Beef]

A bug that encrypts the filesystem is fine, if you like that sort of thing.

Personally, I'd like to see that bug accompanied by the one that decrypts the filesystem, too!

I like their attitude

[Uttles]

Before we could react, the beast managed to mirror itself on a multitude of public FTP servers, which makes any attempts to capture it futile. All we can do at the moment is to keep an up-to-date list of public FTP servers on which the first beta has been sighted so far on the "downloads" page of the Mandrake Linux site.

I don't know if they just made the whole "accidental release" story up or not, but either way their attitude is pretty funny about this. Apparently they didn't mean for people to get their hands on it, but now that it's out there they are helping everyone download it, giving out the specs, and encouraging bug reports. Sounds like a good development team.

Re:I like their attitude

[Nachtfalke]

I think RedHat did something similiar when they released Roswell (7.2 beta), but they were denying the release outright :-)

Re:I like their attitude

[GrenDel Fuego]

Redhat released a planned beta.

The webpage denying the release is a play on the name, and the constant denial that anything happened at Roswell.

Re:I like their attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show you how innovative Mandrake is.
Pioneers, I tell you!

P.S. Naming everything |insert task here|Drake is getting old.

Encrypted File Support

[nixadmin]

One word: YAY! I love Mandrake, and the only obstacles keeping me from running it on my laptop have been 1. no JFS and 2. no EFS. Now, the combination of EXT3 and Encrypted File Support make Mandrake the distro of choice for me more than ever!

Re:Encrypted File Support

[GigsVT]

With the loop-aes kernel version-independant module, it's not hard to add encrypted loopback to any Linux.

The only PITA is that you have to compile a kernel without loopback built in the kernel or compiled as a module, but you don't have to patch the kernel or anything.

Re:Encrypted File Support

[leviramsey]

One word: YAY! I love Mandrake, and the only obstacles keeping me from running it on my laptop have been 1. no JFS

Uh, Mandrake's had Reiser support since 7.1 (at least). It's had ext3 since (iirc) 8.0. XFS has been in a while, also.

Re:Encrypted File Support

[GigsVT]

XFS? Are you sure? XFS requires a pretty drastic kernel patch last I checked.

Re:Encrypted File Support

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using XFS in Mandrake 8.1 since late October/early November without problems. I hope I never have to find out if it will take my XFS scsi hard drive from my indigo2...

Re:Encrypted File Support

[Max von H.]

Last time I installed Mandrake 8.1, it did actually offer me XFS during install. IIRC, it also offers JFS (as well as an arm-long list of filesystems). I stick to ext3, so can't tell you how XFS behaves on this distro.

All I can say is LM8.1 can get really nice with some cooker and textar rpms (KDE 2.2.2 etc), but the stock install has quite some bugs. Can't wait for the final 8.2 (the .2 releases have always been the best)!

Mandrake converted me to Linux, it's a sweet distro with lots of well organised user support (IMHO, MandrakeUser is prolly better than any personalized "support")

just my .02

/max

Re:Encrypted File Support

[deno]

XFS works fine, I've used it at home since 8.1 beta 2. Same with ext3, with additional bonus that /boot partition can be ext3, and that ext2 can be transferred into ext3 on the fly (diskdrake knows how to do it...).

Don't know about Reiser, I got annoyed by it last year, and decided to skip it completely this time.

JFS was included in 8.1, but we discouradged the use because of some problems we've seen during the beta testing. Should be fine in 8.2 though.

Re:Encrypted File Support

[MCZapf]

XFS? Are you sure? XFS requires a pretty drastic kernel patch last I checked.

Yes, indeed. They must be kernel patch-happy over at Mandrake because they do in fact have XFS available as of Mandrake 8.1. I'm using it on my computers now. Works great, as far as I can tell.

Before I switched to Mandrake 8.1, I was using RedHat 7.1 with the XFS install program from SGI. The thing I like about Mandrake is that XFS is already included. My XFS partition moved over to the new installation with no trouble.

Plus, they compile Samba with XFS support - so you can manipulate the ACLs from NT/2000/XP machines. (To do that with Red Hat, I had to recompile. No big deal, but I like having it taken care of.)

Why does this always happen?

[MattBaggins]

I just got about 95% done downloading cooker.

Advantages of Mandrake?

[crow]

So what are the real advantages of Mandrake? I'm currently running Red Hat. I have a friend who is religious about SuSe because it confoms more to the old-school Unix configuration scheme. What makes Mandrake popular?

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[evilmonkey_666]

"What makes Mandrake popular?"

Its piss easy to install

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[chas7926]

Ease of install, and massive autoconfiguration. Mandrake is probably the most newbie friendly linux distro available. During the install you answer questions that are easy to understand (similar to a windows install process), and Mandrake just does the rest from there. I have had Mandrake install drivers for several sound cards, network cards, and video cards that I could not get RedHat or slackware to recognize. It also has one of the slickest installs I have seen.

This of course can be pretty trying at times for more advanced Linux users. Mandrake defaults an install without telnet, ssh, or ftp servers, and a High Security firewall. Mandrake is geared more towards a workstation machine, so if you are looking to run a server you will have some work to do after the install.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[leviramsey]

This of course can be pretty trying at times for more advanced Linux users. Mandrake defaults an install without telnet, ssh, or ftp servers, and a High Security firewall. Mandrake is geared more towards a workstation machine, so if you are looking to run a server you will have some work to do after the install.

It's easy to get ssh up (I had it installed from the start on Mandrake 7.2-8.1). Just do an Expert Mode install (which is the install that any self-respecting advanced Linux user would do). Select the proper class of packages (network computer server for ssh, for instance) and individual package selection. I think telnet has to be explicitly selected, but who in their right mind uses telnet in lieu of ssh?

This is a Good Thing. The average newbie shouldn't be running ftp or telnet because it's a service through which they can easily be h4x0red. If their machine gets h4x0red, they blame it on Linux, especially if it was through a service that was activated by default.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[seann]

Old school unix configuratin scheme?
I'm glad I'm young, for if I ever encounter a unix/linux distribution that yells at me for editing the config files instead of using a "hold-your-hand-or-get-raped" gui/ui config tool, I would kill a small kitten.

SuSE had me for a month, then lost me after 6.whatever

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Anonymous Coward]

word... I thought SuSE was pretty dope, even bought the 4 CD set... after a few months of YAST, I had enough...

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[aquarian]

That's why they have the "expert" install. You can choose *exactly* what you want. I can't believe how people complain about default installs- one size cannot fit all.

Plus, if you do need to add or remove anything after installation, it's easier with Mandrake than anything, except maybe Debian.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Rich0]

Not to mention that it is also easy to keep updated with the Software manager - it will keep you updated on various security rpm updates. RH has something like this, but you have to be a paid user to use it. Other distros make the process a little more difficult (at least the ones I've seen - I'll admit I don't install a new distro each week)... Their secured firewall package is quite nice - there are HOWTOs on how to set up any distro of linux on a boot floppy as a firewall, but the boot-a-CD-and-setup configuration of the Mandrake firewall edition is hard to beat.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Afrosheen]

Nobody in their right mind should be using telnet anymore anyway..can you say plaintext root password? I knew you could.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[diamondc]

telnet is a good network tool to have.. just to test out open ports, usually. also to check for open mail relays, and see which version a server is running on.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[okie_rhce]

Netcat is a great tool for that. A "network swiss army knife" if you will.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Explo]

Not to mention that it is also easy to keep updated with the Software manager - it will keep you updated on various security rpm updates. RH has something like this, but you have to be a paid user to use it.

No. For single computer, the RedHat software update service is free. However, for several your point is valid.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Olinator]

I think telnet has to be explicitly selected, but who in their right mind uses telnet in lieu of ssh?

I do, all the time:

[olc@hex olc]$ /usr/bin/telnet supai.oit.zumass.edu 25
Trying 128.119.175.6...
Connected to supai.oit.zumass.edu.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 supai.oit.zumass.edu -- Server ESMTP (PMDF V5.2-32 #38130)
helo hex.zoomass.edu
250 supai.oit.zumass.edu OK, hex.cs.umass.edu [128.119.243.169].
mail from:
250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
rcpt to:
250 2.1.5 security@oit.zumass.edu OK.
rset
250 2.5.0 Ok.
quit
221 2.3.0 Bye received. Goodbye.
Connection closed by foreign host.

This is a cut'n'paste -- adulterated slightly from an xterm I used not 15 minutes before skimming this thread. I couldn't remember whether our upstream had a "security" address as well as the standard "abuse". VRFY is disabled, so...

I suppose I could use nc, but old habits die hard.

Installing and enabling the telnet server, now, *that* is in a category with behaviors such as dancing about on a hilltop during a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting "All the gods are idiots!"

Ole, friendly neighborhood postmaster
(and rabid pterrine)

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Anonymous Coward]

The time for YAST has past at last. After my initial install of SuSE, I tried to use YAST but found it too limiting. I soon reverted to the tried and true CLI. I like SuSEs organization, but I find there RPM package naming frustating. I try to keep my system RPM pure, which means creating my own RPMs or waiting for SuSE RPMs to finaly, if ever, show up. Chasing down the package name changes get old fast. Lately, I have just been nuking the SuSE package, and replacing it with my own ( using the "standard" Redhat name.) My other gripe is with SAX. It botches up the XFree86.conf for Wacom tablets. I always end up editing it manualy, so whats the point of SAX?

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[__past__]

I started using Linux with SuSE (no surprise, it's by far the most used Linux distro in Germany). The "configuration scheme" was what made me switch.

Not only I never understood why they attempt to get the disadvantages from both BSD- and SYSV-Init, obviously SuSEConfig is intended to familiarize former Windows lusers (like me back then) with the new environment in that it randomly destroys your work. It is frankly the crappiest piece of shitty software I ever met - and hey, I develop shitty software for a living!

The one thing it did that made me look for alternatives to SuSE was it happily fixing my sendmail.cf. I just had gotten it right after several days of work (I really was a newbie right then, remember). Then I dared to install some random RPM using YaST. Of course, installing something as important as an additional set of fortune cookies means that you have to run SuSEConfig, and scince SuSEConfig is quite dumb, it changes everything in some random way - including, of course, /etc/whatnot/sendmail.cf. A nice example for the bad quality of closed source software.

However, this made me try other systems - first Debian for a while, with short interjections of RedHat and Mandrake (come on - you don't want to use a system made by people responsible for that /etc/motd, do you?). When Debian once ate my package database, rendering apt unusable, I looked at the BSDs.

So, at the end of the day, now I'm using FreeBSD and OpenBSD depending on my mood, and learned a lot on the way (I really was surprised that "Have a lot of fun" wasn't somehow compiled in the kernel...). I guess I somehow have to thank those bavarian morons for producing the worst software mankind ever encountered...

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Andrewkov]

Red Hat Network completely toasted my Red Hat 7.0 system .. Has it improved recently? Is Mandrake's better?

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[deno]

so install defaults at a desktop. Which is I suppose bad, because 95% of the computers in the world ARE desktop machines.

And if you decide to install a server, you actually have to press on a button labeled 'install me a server' (not exactly, but close) during instalation. Supose that's too complicated. Or amybe not complicated enough, so it's trying on more advanced users.

Well... It's hard to make everyone happy...

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[opkool]

urpmi

urpmi solves rpm hell. And it lets you install security fixes in a controlled, working way. CLI or GUI is your choice.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Afrosheen]

We're talking about the telnet server, not the telnet client. It's present by default, however, telnet SERVER isn't. I give them props for this and also for encouraging people to stay out of the root account on the desktop (makes the desktop red, no icons, etc.).

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Explo]

Red Hat Network completely toasted my Red Hat 7.0 system .. Has it improved recently?

At least for my RH 7.1 system it has worked quite nicely, with no trouble that I can trace back to it. However, I admit that one person is a rather meaningless statistical sample, so don't make your future decisions about usage of RHN update service with only my positive comment as data. ;)

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[fanatic]

I do, all the time:

[olc@hex olc]$ /usr/bin/telnet supai.oit.zumass.edu 25



Picky, picky, picky.

He meant telnetd.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[DavittJPotter]

Oh, man, I wish I had some mod points left for your line about the copper armor. I was literally crying from laughing so hard. Just struck me as damned funny. :)

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[saarbruck]

My first Linux install was RedHat 5.0, and I worked my way up to 6.2. I started tinkering with web, email & ftp servers, and found that RedHat's defaults (sendmail and wuftp) were among the more insecure choices.

I tried RH 7.0, but they shipped with an unofficial version of gcc (which broke my OS project) and trying to replace sendmail with postfix was a an absolute bitch.

I decided to give Mandrake a try, and I have been very pleased. IMHO, no linux distro is perfect, but Mandrake just does more things right than anybody else. And they don't insist on being so bleeding edge that they fsck things up. Bundling a useful version of gcc, postfix for email, and proftp for file transfer were exactly the bullet points I was looking for at the time. It was a good switch.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[leviramsey]

Gotta love ZooMass! I still haven't found an active LUG out in this neck of the woods...

I added your view of telnetd to my fortune-cookie file...

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[dylan_-]

It's an adaptation of the quote:

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a mountain in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."

from "The Colour of Magic", by Terry Pratchett

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?

[Olinator]

Gotta love ZooMass! I still haven't found an active LUG out in this neck of the woods...

Have a looksee at the Western Mass. Linux and Unix User's group.

Ole

Linux By The Pound?

[lunenburg]

Does Mandrake still have the neato-keen "Linux By The Pound" feature in the installer? Where, instead of selecting packages, you choose the total number of MB to install via a slider.

"I'm feeling saucy. I'll try 456MB of Linux today."

"Oh, I better take it easy. Only 95MB of Linux for me."

It just struck me as really funny for some reason.

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[gordzilla]

Agreed, that feature turned me off mandrake.

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[lunenburg]

Now that I think about it, that was my first and last Mandrake install, too.

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[Rob Simpson]

No, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. What is does have (or at least 8.0-8.1) is a selection screen that lets you check off various types of packages for what the computer going to be used for, eg: "games machine", several types of servers, "office machine", then a more detailed mode lets you select/deselect specific rpms. (The amount of memory the install will take up is shown in the lower right corner, along with the total memory available.)

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[kaisyain]

Having a choice turned you off?

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[jd142]

I miss the "Welcome to Crackers" security setting. Oh well.

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[volsung]

Hahaha! I'd mod you up, but I already vented in this story. :)

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[deno]

Unfortunately it doesn't

I loved the option, but unfortunately hordes of trolls who couldn't understand the concept of 'more important' and 'less important' software killed it.

On the other hand, 'minimal install' + rpmdrake will do for me.

Re:Linux By The Pound?

[Stacdaed]

It is still there you have to be 'expert' tho.

Minimal?

[grammar fascist]

Minimal installation? Ooooh...n33t. I never thought of putting Mandrake on my firewall before now.

Re:Minimal?

[crazyprogrammer]

Mandrake makes something called "Single Network Firewall". The latest one has a 2.2.19 kernel. I don't know when/if they plan to update it. As the name suggests, it is a firewall/router only dist of Mandrake. If I remember correclty the latest version is 7.2 and the ISO image is about 350 MB.

go to Mandrake's site when they are done being /.ed today and search for "Single Network Firewall" and you should find it.

Re:Minimal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually 8.2 contains all the bits and pieces of SNF....

Re:Minimal?

[LinuxGeek8]

Yes, SNF it is updated to a 2.4 kernel with iptables.

At install, deselect all the packages, I believe by choosing minimal install or basesystem.
Then in package selection, select snf_en.
That package defines some other packages and you should be fine.

Re:Minimal?

[Arricc]

I installed the SNF7.2 iso on a box at home, and everything worked fine.

However, after a couple of reboots, I noticed that although the web interface listed the ports it was forwarding to my internal network, it wasn't. To cure the problem I had to remove and reapply the rules using the web interface.

My first trip through the land of ipchains to work out what the hell was wrong there, still looses the rules though :-(

mandrake woes

[nege]

Hopefully Ximian will support 8.2...
My friend (at my advice that Mandrake was easy to use) installed Mandrake 8.1 and it completed fskced his computer...MBR and all. Now he cant boot windows OR linux. Maybe this is because of XP? Any one have ideas? (and its not like you can mess up the Mandrake install that much)

Re:mandrake woes

[stipe42]

I had a win98/mdk8.1 dual boot that died similarly. I didn't tweak the mandrake settings at all. All I used it for was tinkering around with perl and c++. One day it refused to boot into mandrake anymore, claiming that the partitions were damaged. I tried using the mandrake install (Disk Drake I think) to reinstall mandrake just in the partition it was already in, but the utility claimed the partitions were completely fscked and wanted to format the entire hard drive.

Thankfully, I was still able to boot into windows and was able to get all my files off before wiping the drive.

Now it dual boots Windows and RH7.2. Two months and no problems at all.

stipe42
www.pcwatch.com

Re:mandrake woes

[Strog]

I'm triple booting win98/XPpro/MDK8.1 and haven't run into any MBR issues. I always take the expert install but usually take a lot of the setup defaults on the bootloader (might play with labels and default OS). What kind of hardware was he installing on?

Re:mandrake woes

[Afrosheen]

You obviously didn't try very hard to fix it. All you had to do was boot from the install cd, choose rescue, fsck your partitions, and get back to work. You can thank ext2 for that crap, Reiserfs doesn't have these problems.

Re:mandrake woes

[stipe42]

I tried the rescue option. It told me that partitions were hosed and the only option was to wipe the entire hard drive and rewrite all the partitions.

Re:mandrake woes

[ender-]

I had a similar problem. I installed Mandrake 8.1 as a dual boot with WinXP. And somehow Mandrake hosed my second partition [20 gig D drive space where I kept most of my stuff in Windows]

Luckily I have a program called Restorer 2000 Which managed to recover all the data from the corrupted NTFS partition.

It will be awhile before I trust Mandrake as a second OS again...

Ender

Re:mandrake woes

[Anonymous Coward]

That was some lovely FUD. Tell me, does it hurt to be such an idiot?

Re:mandrake woes

[jaavaaguru]

I think the mistake was trusting an incomplete NTFS driver. I was under the impression that Kerlnel NTFS support for Windows XP's NTFS was at the beta stage or something and had known problems. I use FAT32 for the things I need to share between Linux and Windows on my dekstop (XP and RedHat).

What most people will probably find surprising is that I have Mandrake running on a server. My choice was not due to the extremely simple install, but simply because they include the new things before other distros do. Yeah I know people have had experience of this causing instability, but I've had no problems. My main file/print/mail/dns server at home has been running Mandrake 8.0 and has never crashed or become unstable or needed rebooting since I installed it a couple of days after the ISO was available. It's behind a NAT router so I'm not too bothered about having the latest Kernel and its running on a Pentium 100 without many performance problems. Mandrake has served me well but on a machine in that situation I have no need to upgrade to the latest version of the OS.

As for my RedHat desktop, well I'll be putting Mandrake 8.2 on the second hard disk as soon as I get it downloaded. There are very few things that annoy me in RedHat 7.2 (and some nice things RH has that MDK doesn't), and I'd like to think that Mandrake will have a neat solution :-)

Re:mandrake woes

[ender-]

I think the mistake was trusting an incomplete NTFS driver. I was under the impression that Kerlnel NTFS support for Windows XP's NTFS was at the beta stage or something and had known problems. I use FAT32 for the things I need to share between Linux and Windows on my dekstop (XP and RedHat)

I don't believe it was an issue with the NTFS support in the kernel though. I didn't even mount the NTFS partitions at all, and I've NEVER mounted an NTFS partition as writable. I KNOW that's bad ju-ju! :)

I think it was just the partitioning during the Mandrake installed that killed my NTFS partition. I have a 40 gig drive. The first 20 gig is split into two partitions for NTFS. The rest was partitioned for Linux [had Slackware running].

When I went to install Mandrake, I simply told it to use the already existing linux partitions. But somehow it corrupted the NTFS partition. Actually after I fixed it, I tried installing Mandrake again, and it corrupted it a second time. So It's in the install partitioning that the NTFS part got corrupted, not from the kernel NTFS driver.

I really have no problem with Mandrake, the best, most stable, usable desktop I've ever had was an old Mandrake 7.x beta. And I would happily use Mandrake again, I simply will only trust it as the sole OS on the box.

Ender

Encrypted filesystems

[Troed]

This is really good. We've had them for a long time, but people don't use them. Now, some say this is no big deal - "why, I've got nothing to hide - I'm not a criminal" etc.

Well. Have you, like I, had an ex-girlfriend who got all her personal files check out (and copied I'm sure) by "friends" who did that when she was in the bathroom/cooking/on the phone etc .. ?

That's why you have them. I archive lots of stuff that really are personal - I don't want others to be able to lay their hands on them. I have my computer on 24/7 and I want to be able to have friends stay there if they need to - even use my Internet connection - and still have my personal data safe.

Encrypted filesystems are great, all that's needed is to make them simpler to use - what's the point in having them if you mount them at boot and leave them open thereafter? ;)

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[greenfly]

Well, the unmounted archived stuff might be safe, but the mounted stuff would still be accessible. If you have your computer on 24/7 and have friends over, you can always lock your window and have a second instance of X running with a guest account setup, then they could do whatever they want and your files (and your system) would be safe.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[wurp]

Can you direct me to where I can learn more about this? I would love to be able to lock my session instead of having to log off every time someone else wants to get onto the PC.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[greenfly]

Just use the xlock program to lock your X session whenever you want to. It's included in basically every Linux distribution that includes X applications.

To set up a second X session, assuming you are using a graphical boot manager (like gdm, kdm, xdm, etc.), just run the following:

X :1 -query localhost

Then you can hit ctrl-alt-F7 and ctrl-alt-F8 to switch between the two X sessions.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Jagasian]

Nice site. Thanks for the link. I guess you could say that I already supported the Palestinians since I don't support the Israeli occupation and all of the other bad things done to the Palestinian people.

However, just as I do not support Israeli violence, I do not support Palestinian violence. For a gross cutting to the point. Both sides should immediately stop fighting, and Israel should be force by the international community (especially the USA), to give the Palestinians back their land and money made from use of their land.

Still, its very sad to see the horrid bias in our nation's media. Palestinians are terrorists, while Israelis are soldiers protecting their land. *sigh* things couldn't be so far from the truth. Well, I am just a lowly American citizen, and so I will hand that link to everyone I know.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[juha0]

This is also very good for laptops. Many companies do not allow empoyees to have laptops that are not encrypted.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Shabazz]

The fact that you say "Give them back their land" shows that you should do some more research before recommending foreign policy. It never was the palestinian's lands. "palestine" was under british mandate before the Israel was lawfully formed. And if you did some research you might be surprised to learn that Baron Rothschild (the french wine baron) purchased much of the land and donated it to the Jewish people. As for the Palestinians getting money made from the land, how do you propose this to happen? Do you think it's sitting in a vault somewhere?:

As for biased media, Palestinians who bomb marketplaces are terrorists. Israelis who bomb terrorists are not. Same there as it is everywhere. There have been times in the past where Israel has targeted civilians, and it's not condoneable (sic?) but the Palestinians primarily target civilians.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Dog-Cow]

There is no time in recorded history that Jews did not live in the same area currently called Israel. They certainly had a national identity and country in that area that was recognized by the powers-that-be of the time. In this I refer to the Roman government. They conqured Israel, and it's hard to conquer a country that isn't a country. On the other hand, the Arabs (and palestinians are simply Arabs) never had an established state in that area of land. Even when controlled by Turkey, it was not an independant state.

Given that most of the nations of the world ackowledge Israel's existance as a State, with it's own government, I would think that it would be safe to say that Isrealis are indeed just defending themselves.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[wurp]

Thanks much!

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could post at -1 cuz I know it's offtopic, but here goes.
To say the french stole the land is ridiculous. What happened to the money the Palestinians got when they sold the land?
At the risk of offending people, I think it's safe to say the chances of any more remuneration for the profits from the land the Israeli's have reaped is slim to nil. Look at what has become of the rest of the middle east. Without oil it would be the worst region in the world, economically. Nothing of value has come out of there, with the exception of the businesses started by the Israelis. Look at the palestinian settlements. Look at neighboring countries. The Palestinians wouldn't do anything productive with that land. I guess praying 5 times a day takes it's toll somewhere.

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Anonymous Coward]

I second, thanks. I was recently wondering if I could run multiple instances of X but hadn't investigated any further than, "Hmm.. I wonder..."

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[hrstrand]

sounds like you need more trustworthy friends before you need an encrypted filesystem !

Re:Encrypted filesystems

[Savage Henry Matisse]

OK, I guess I'm just following this whole mess down troll lane, but:

The first thing that needs to happen is that corrupt american politicians need to stop voting more and more free money to israel. They wont because then the jewish interest groups will stop giving them money, but that would be a good start.

OK, I'm a little confused about these vast Jewish interests groups that are controlling all of the US Gov with money. Jews currently account for less than 2% of the US population (around 5 or 6 million Jews nationwide-- about the same as Arab/Arab-Americans in the US, in what is a dicededly convenient co-incidence.) If money is what talks-- and the above statement seems to pretty explicitly point out that's where you're coming from-- then where are these 6 million members of ZOG getting the wherewithall to make themselves heard?

Look, since '97, Big Tobacco alone has given around $18 million in political contributions. I find it hard to believe that a vast minority of Americans is going to compete with that-- and that's just Big Tobacco. What about the Auto Industry? Coal and Oil? the NRA? From '89-'98 the NRA dropped something like $14 million on Congress alone.

Maybe if every Jewish man, woman and child put a dollar in a special fund in order to get certain US officials elected . . .

List of features of the first ML8.2 beta

[nam37]

In case you can't get to it...

• The look and feel of 'Mandrake Control Center' has been reworked with 'better ergonomy' in mind. If you do not like it, or do not find it clear, or such - say it now.
• Several new features are available during the installation:
  1. The ability to download and install updates after the packages installation.
  2. Minimal installation mode, which installs nothing but the basic system. This installation mode leaves you with a functional linux installation taking only 65 MB on your HD.
  3. Encrypted filesystem support.
• In addition , there is a new rescue mode, with a help menu to automatically mount your old system, rewrite lilo and more.
• New tools have been addded to the 'drakxtools' family:
  1. Drakbackup helps you keep your data safe, and restore them if something goes wrong.
  2. Scannerdrake helps you configure the scanner.
  3. rfbdrake lets you easily perform a remote control of an X session. Helping your friends get started with linux has never been easier.
  4. New file sharing function makes it simple to export local files.
  
  
  Obviously, these new tools need a lot of testing. In particular, scannerdrake has only been on the little number of scanners we got in the lab...
  
  
• Other tools have been reworked (bugfixes, ergonomy, additional functionality):
  1. Diskdrake got support for encripted and network file systems
  2. urpmi and its graphical interface, rpmdrake got a face lift: New 'synthesis file', is almost 100 times smaller than hdlist, which makes urpmi.update -a (reloading the urpmi/rpmdrake database) a pleasurable experience - even with a slow modem connection! Rpmdrake will also work faster, and handle 'exceptional' situations better than in ML 8.1.
  3. MandrakeOnline got now the updates warning feature, i.e. it will warn you whenever you have to upgrade some package.
  4. Finally, 'msec', is more powerfull than ever. Use with care: in paranoid mode, msec will let you happily secure your box from yourself now (been there, done that).

Of course you will also find all the newest versions of famous packages:

• kernel 2.4.17, celebrating the comeback of kernel-secure, and a more robust supermount.
• XFree86 4.2, with support for many video cards only supported in 3.3.6 version until now.
• glibc 2.2.4
• Window Maker 0.8
• apache 1.3.22
• evolution 1.01
• kde 2.2.2
• galeon 1.0
• mozilla 0.9.7

Re:List of features of the first ML8.2 beta

[Anonymous Coward]

• New tools have been addded to the 'drakxtools' family:
• 
  
  1. Drakbackup helps you keep your data safe, and restore them if something goes wrong.
  2. Scannerdrake helps you configure the scanner.

I am really disappointed that they didn't call these tools Drakup and ScanDrake

old news

[asv108]

Although it may have been posted on the website for the first time, the Cooker 8.2 beta ISO's have been available for a couple of weeks now on a few mirrors. In the future, just scroll down on the download page. Luckily, the psu mirrow is only a few blocks away from my house :)

Re:old news

[GigsVT]

You would probably get better sneakernet bandwidth than anything else in that case!

Re:old news

[deno]

Nop.

Those were 'alpha' images, or 'cooker snapshots'. We did quite a lot of in-house bugfixing on these before releasing the beta.

Re:old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully this will be better than the christmas ISO. That didn't even get past the booting process.

comments on what I saw.

[garcia]

* rfbdrake lets you easily perform a remote control of an X session. Helping your friends get started with linux has never been easier.

The fact that it really looks like XP frightens me. The fact that it notes that you can help your friends setup Linux from remotely also frightens me.

While this may not come as a default setting (as it best not) what happens if someone who is not all that saavy (isn't that what Mandrake is designed for?) turns it on and next thing you know we have some large security issues.

I like the fact that it has the option to install it minimally only taking up 65mb but you would lose all the fancy dancy shit wouldn't you? Isn't that what Mandrake is? All the bells and whistles?

It comes w/2.4.17, XFree 4.2 (which is very nice), and some other excellent utils.

Sounds nice.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[WildBeast]

I've been saying this for a long time now. In order for Linux to be a viable Desktop alternative, it must sacrifice security. For a Desktop OS, it's fine, no big deal. If you're installing it as a server, go with the 65MB install without the unneeded "user friendly" features.

There's nothing to complain about.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[Andrewkov]

The fact that it notes that you can help your friends setup Linux from remotely also frightens me.

It won't be wide open like certain MS products, surely it will require the root password to do any admin work, preferably over a secure connection. I've never used it myself, though. However, I've often had to connect too newbie friends Linux systems to fix stuff, so this feature sounds cool, although a bash prompt is really all you need.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote control software has been around for ages. I can't remember and epidemics with any of them. I don't think it's anything to fear.

I think packaging as a help me tool is fine. I didn't see it yet, but probably the person needing help would prob. place the call.

I know VNC is in at least the last couple versions. I suspect it's something similar.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh and what if someone enables ftp or telnet by "accident". Or some other server. This is just as vulnerable as any other remote login services. NO more No less.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[deno]

No.

Mandrake is about making the best possible distribution. We ship for the newbies, on a desktop, but we ship for the experts, and for servers as well.

A 65M version is obviously 'bare bones' one, and you need to know what to do with it. 'Gimme a lot of eye candy' install version is for newbies.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[__past__]

Um, the size a system takes is not that directly related to security. You can stuff quite a lot of remote exploits in 65MB.

If you want an insecure system, Linux already does more for you that it's distributions being bloated. If you chose Linux for security relevant systems - and I consider pure desktop use as one of the most dangerous ones - you should probably think of better using a system made by people who care about security more than they care about cloning the most insecure operating system available.

Re:comments on what I saw.

[deno]

It's true to a certain extent (more security == les comfort), but completely off in this particular case.

FYI, mandrake installs with no servers per default, and few mouse clicks are enough for any newbie to get a reasonable firewall.

The fact that something CAN be done, does not mean that it will be done on default instalation. Furthermore, the fact that some functionality can be made with a few mouse clicks, does not mean that this particular function is less secure than before. Usually it's even the contrary.

RedHat

[An Ominous Coward]

When is RedHat 7.3 expected? After KDE3 in April?

Re:RedHat

[dead_penguin]

When is RedHat 7.3 expected? After KDE3 in April?

I would imagine so. In fact, I'd go so far as to speculate that the next version of RedHat is not going to be 7.3 but rather 8.0 (yikes!).

If you take a look in the rawhide directory on your favourite mirror of the RedHat ftp, you'll see packages for KDE3 cvs builds, gcc3.1, and lots of other big changes that could break compatibility in not-so-surprising ways.

Many of the packages in there aren't simple installs on a 7.2 system anymore; the dependencies amongst them are too much. Either they require tens of core rawhide packages (i.e. a new glibc) to be installed, or in the case of the core packages, current 7.2 packages show incompatibilities.

Of course I may be completely wrong and the next RedHat *will* be 7.3 and all compatibility issues will be resolved by then (hey, rawhide *is* very beta!), but I wouldn't be surprised...

Re:RedHat

[moZer]

Actually, I am pretty sure the next RH release will be 8.0. The RH release policy is to increase the major number when binary compability breaks, something that is closely linked to the glibc and gcc packages. If you look in Rawhide, you will notice that glibc is 2.2.90 (pre-2.3-release) and gcc is 3.1-0.x (pre-3.1-release), both of which break binary compability with the 7.x releases.

Re:RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

The RH release policy is to increase the major number when binary compability breaks..

Then why was RH 7.0 released instead of 6.2?? RH just changed around the placement of some config files from thier previous release. The kept the 2.2.x kernel, glibc, etc... I think its just marketing. Which sounds more appealing...RH 6.3 or RH7.0? Besides didn't redhat always have a x.0,x.1,x.2 then a (x+1).0,(x+1).1,(x+1).2, then (x+2).0, etc... I think they just don't want to break the cycle.

Re:RedHat

[moZer]

Check your facts: gcc 2.96 (RH 7.0) is not binary compatible with 2.95 (RH 6.2). Also, glibc 2.1.92 (pre-release of 2.2) is not binary compatible with 2.1.3. Follows the pattern quite well.

Re:RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference, as I'm sure you have noticed, is of course that from 2.95 to 2.96 is a minor version update whereas 2.x to 3.x is a major version update. Also I have the feeling that the changes in glibc from 2.2 to 2.3 will be a bit bigger than those for 2.1 to 2.2.

Greetings,
Jasper

Re:RedHat

[moZer]

The "major version update" refers to the distribution as a whole, i.e. 6.x -> 7.x or 7.x -> 8.x. Even though 2.95 -> 2.96 is a minor version increase of the package gcc, it breaks binary compability, and thus the major version number of RH is increased. I did not say that "when a package that breaks binary compability increases its major version number by one, the distribution also increases its major number by one", but rather "when binary compability breaks (for what ever reason) , the major version number of the distribution is increased by one".

Re:OH GOD, DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!!!

[gazbo]

What did you expect from a link that reads 'distended anus' and is followed by [goatse.cx]?

PS. Has anybody else noticed that -ve mods seem to be having no effect? Wonderful!

65 megs

[Ed Avis]

Who would have thought that *Mandrake* would be the distribution to slim down to such an impressive size? Up to now I've run Slackware on small boxes because it was the only thing I could fit into 60 or 120 megabytes. But I'll consider switching to Mandrake - it should be possible to get a system with X and ssh in under a hundred megabytes.

All I need to do is recompile the whole distribution without Pentium opcodes :-(.

Re:65 megs

[2Bits]

I'd hate to say that a slim pinguin does NOT really look good. Personally, I still prefer a chuby one.

Re:65 megs

[gmhowell]

All I need to do is recompile the whole distribution without Pentium opcodes :-(.

Ditto. I've got some 486 laptops I'd like to put Linux on. I guess I can always use Debian now that I've got cable at home.

Re:65 megs

[deadgoon42]

Umm.. try Vectorlinux. It is small and has a distro 'optimized' for pre-Pentium processors.

Re:65 megs

[jdmmmmm]

Has anyone tried installing the bare minimum and then selectively added what you wanted? For instance, I would like to have the minimum plus kde, a web browser, etc. for my old laptop (w/ small hd).

Re:65 megs

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when people bitch and moan about the moderation on slashdot but whoever marked this as a troll is a grede 1 spazz.

65Megs!

[gordzilla]

WOW, when was the last time one of the bigger
distrobution makers release a version that could
install in that small a footprint.

Too bas it's RPM based.

Re:65Megs!

[dead_penguin]

I think most distros will install in a small footprint if you're careful and know what you're installing. I haven't tried Mandrake in a while so I can't comment there, but it's pretty easy to shoe-horn a RedHat 7.x release into about 80 megs.

Obviously that's with no X, but that still includes apache + mysql + some other useful things. Manually tearing out /usr/share/doc will also save a surprising amount of disk space. With a bit of tweaking, it should be no problem to get *any* distro to run (and be useful!) in ~50 megs. Of course that depends on what your definition of "useful" is...

Re:65Megs!

[Glytch]

Right here. "Configure-make-make install" friendly, too.

KDE 2.2.2 w/ prelink?

[ober37]

Is KDE built with object prelinking this time?? If not, do they plan on doing so for the final
release??

Which GCC?

[Bill Currie]

I really hope they're not shipping with gcc 2.96 as it's still got some subtle bugs and gcc 3.0 has been out for some time.

Why do I say 2.96 is buggy? Even when disabling strict aliasing optimisation (-fno-strict-aliasing), it produces broken code for quakeforge even though code compiled using gcc 3.0 (with -fstrict-aliasing) does work properly.

Re:Which GCC?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.96 has gotten a bad rap. I can't comment on that particular issue, but in most of the cases where people have complained about gcc 2.96 being buggy, it has actually been buggy code (that just happens to compile ok with another version of gcc). Check this out for details: http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html

Re:Which GCC?

[flink]

MPlayer also reportedly has issues with 2.96 (shipped with mdk-8.1). I never ran into any problems, but the configure script issues all kinds of dire warnings.

Re:Which GCC?

[Bill Currie]

Going over that document, there are no known cases of any of those problem areas, and I've checked for the aliasing issues (and since qf works with 3.0 with -fstrict-aliasing, I'm pretty sure it's not that). However, not having access to a gcc 2.96 box doesn't help :/

Re:Which GCC?

[Afrosheen]

Time to check your facts. 8.1 shipped with 2.96 AND 3.0x, and I imagine 8.2 will do the same.

Re:Which GCC?

[BlueGecko]

GCC 3.0 isn't capable of compiling KDE. That will take GCC 3.1, which isn't out (at least as far as I know). Probably a bad idea on a KDE-based distro...

Re:Which GCC?

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPlayer developers are whiny bitches. Go look at their site for the latest round of childishness.

Requested Feature: Streaming Media Server

[BRock97]

If anyone from Mandrake is reading these, I do have a humble, not-so-top-priority-but-would-be-cool, request. One thing I have enjoyed about the Windows 2000 setup is that it makes setting up a streaming media server super easy. This is one area that, although I have done so on a Linux box, would benefit greatly from an automatic install during the system install/upgrade. Again, just something that I believe would help make a distro more popular and would make my life a lot easier.

looking forward to it...

[flez]

This is going to replace my 7.2 install, I think.
(of course, that's what I said about 8.0, 8.1...)

Re:looking forward to it...

[Anonymous Coward]

7.2 *was* a fine/clean number...
Watch bug-board and newsgroups first for problems.

Briefing in 4 little words

[WildBeast]

Who better than Mandrake?

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[bastard01]

Well, in my personal opinion, redhat, others it is suse, and then there are those who dislike RPMs so they go for Debian or slackware, and there are also those people that prefer *BSD to linux all together.... it is all up to the opinion of the person that is asked.

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[Apreche]

Nobody better than Mandrake. I ran red hat, because I knew the name. However, it didn't work with all my hardware, and it didn't work with all my software, and it sucked. One day I switched up to mandrake. Holy crap! It works with all my hardware and all my software. The installer is amazing, and everything is automatic, and it doesn't crash. I runs the mandrakes on all my boxen.

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[johnburton]

After several years of linux I finally tried freebsd a week ago for the first time, and it's great! Much of the clutter of typical linux distributions is not there, but you can still get much of the same software.

I recomment that everyone thinking of linux at least has a look at it before deciding for definate that linux is the right thing for them

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[__past__]

Oh my god, please not everyone!

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[SlideGuitar]

What won't I be able to do with a bsd desktop/workstation that will make me wish I had stuck with linux?

Re:Briefing in 4 little words

[Anonymous Coward]

Install it and boot to a configured desktop and a working soundcard? This is a Mandrake story after all.

Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[bryanbrunton]

Mandrake has lost their position as "Newbie Linux of Choice".

While I use Mandrake and have purchased every standard version that they ever released, I really feel that Mandrake is being left behind in the useability department by the likes of SuSE and many of the upcoming newbiew friendly distros like Redmond Linux. The real nit that I have with Mandrake is total lack of cohesion between the Drake Applications. Many of these applications really pioneered new functionality for the linux desktop, but they haven't grown together like applications from KDE, Gnome, Ximian, etc. They all function/look/act differently.

Why hasn't someone inside of Mandrake taken pieces from the KDE and Gnome design standards and attempted to apply some uniformity between the applications that Mandrakes designs? It simply boggles the mind that tools like RPMDrake can be so poorly designed.

And what about ICONS!!!! The Mandrake icons and the menu system itself are both totally unprofessional. Can Mandrake afford to pay an icon designer who knows how to make icons in more than two shades of blue?

So what do we attribute the stagnification of Mandrake to? Is Mandrake's development model too open? No one within Mandrake has the guts or the brains to stand up and say: "No, we shouldn't be designed 20 applications that all look and function differently. There is a reason why KDE and Gnome came into existence." Then again, perhaps it is just the bureacratic chaos and momentum that surrounds Mandrake.

Re:Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[matthewn]

Absolutely true. All the useful extras that come with Mandrake work well (for the most part...DrakFont...cough, cough), but they are ugly, unintuitive, and make newbies scratch their heads. They need just one "GUI nazi" in-house to take a look at everything and clean it all up, or they're going to get left behind.

Re:Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[Nailer]

And what about ICONS!!!! The Mandrake icons and the menu system itself are both totally unprofessional. Can Mandrake afford to pay an icon designer who knows how to make icons in more than two shades of blue?

They do employ a professional designer, who has more than enough experience designing playrooms for four year old children in over thirty different child care centers, thank you very much...

Re:Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely.

It was the ugly icons (and the neatness of apt-get) among other things that drove me from Mandrake to Debian. However, I miss the working default setup that Mandrake has. With Debian you have to work hard to get things like usb wheelmice or IP masquerading set up, at least if you are a relative linux newbie.

Re:Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[Anonymous Coward]

in my opinion, all of the Mandrake tools are far more intuitive than dselect.

Re:Mandrake is evolving too slowly

[__past__]

And what about ICONS!!!!

Icons? cat /etc/motd, and you will love the icons...

8.0 vs 8.1

[javacowboy]

Mandrake 8.0 was the very first distro that I got to install cleanly right off the bat and allowed me to connect to my DSL immediately. I tried other distros, like Red Hat 6.2 and Mandrake 7.0, but I had serious problems.

8.0 was the PERFECT distro for a newbie like myself. It spared me the pain of having to configure my DSL and allowed me to immediately post questions and get responses from Linux help sites, like LinuxNewbie to get the answers I needed to my important questions. Although they are exlusive to Mandrake, I was quite impressed with the GUI tools, which, although I should really use the command-line equivalents, were of great help to me just starting out.

8.1 seemed even better than 8.0, but I later found out that it wouldn't automount my CD-ROM or floppy, and I couldn't use my CD-Writer at all. I tried all kinds of tricks, but nothing seemed to resolve the problem. Reluctantly, I switched back to 8.0, which I'm still using.

Now I'm debating whether to try out 8.2, or go for a more "pure" Linux distro, like Slackware. I feel as though I've hit a dead end as far as learning Linux goes. I have an old PC on hand, which will really help me to experiment.

I think even if I decide to switch to Slackware, I want to try Mandrake 8.2, for purely sentimental reasons :)

Re:8.0 vs 8.1

[Tim C]

I later found out that it wouldn't automount my CD-ROM or floppy

This is a known problem, and is fixed in an update available either through the MandrakeUpdate tool, or in the updates dir of your favourite mirror site.

Beware, though, that if you do what I did and use the update tool to upgrade your kernel, you *will* have to fix some dangling symlinks in /boot and rerun lilo in order to have a bootable system. To be fair, the details of the update said not to use the tool, but to download the package, but the page it directed you to said to use the tool, so I did... :-)

Cheers,

Tim

Re:8.0 vs 8.1

[javacowboy]

Thanks for the tip. Has this problem been resolved in the final version, or would it still be present if I downloaded the ISO today?

Re:8.0 vs 8.1

[Kakemann]

s/Slackware/Debian/g

Sorry. I can't help it. :)

great installer idea

[nlabadie]

Unlike 99% of the other operating systems out there, Mandrake 8.2 actually included updates as part of the install process. When Joe User goes to install 8.2 six months from now after X number of holes have been found, it'll automatically bring the system up to the current patch level _before_ bringing the entire system online.

Re:great installer idea

[hatter3bdev]

Wasn't this what people were *COMPLAINING* about when windows xp was released. I seem to remember something about MS tracking installs with it.

It was a good idea, though.

Re:great installer idea

[megacia]

isn't that already a feature in windowsXP? :)

Re:great installer idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that would be great if the piece of shit would recognize my modem or my NIC.

Re:great installer idea

[rjch]

Not quite... as I remember what people were making noise about was the feature that forced security updates down your throat, whether you wanted 'em or not. Good idea for Aunt Ethyl, but not terribly realistic for those who like to review the patches *first* (especially considering M$'s habit of releasing patches that break things)

Re:great installer idea

[Rentar]

it'll automatically bring the system up to the current patch level _before_ bringing the entire system

Wow, now this would be great! Bringing it up to a secure patch level before going online ... buthow will they do this? Do you have to call a number and they dictate you a hex-dump of the RPMs to enter into the installer? (Yes, I did realize, that he probably ment that they wont start all the "here-I-am!-crack-me"-services, while doing the update).

Re:great installer idea

[Dave_bsr]

yeah but the problem is that winXP's updates went down, there were way too many of them, and that was just when it first came out. imagine installing winXP in 6 months...whew. what a pile of downloading that will be.

But with mandrake I think this feature will in theory do the same thing, in reality it seems it will be for several smallish security patches and upgrades to new software (we are talking about hundreds of OSS packages here) right off of the bat. a very useful feature, imho.

-dave, posting from mandrake 8.1 : )

Re:great installer idea

[volsung]

Having recently tinkered with XP on a friends computer, I can give the following reports:

• Windows Update does not download and install patches unless you tell it to. It puts an icon (and pops up a message bubble) into the notification area when updates are available. You have to click on the icon to review the list of patches and authorize their download/installation.
• Yes, Microsoft's updates sometimes break things. :) We just recently realized that the UPnP security patch accidentally broke part of the Internet Dial-up process.

Re:great installer idea

[deno]

eer...

And how are we suppoesd to track folks who download updates from 3-rd party ftp servers?

Re:great installer idea

[bigjocker]

The updates are on the installation CD, not on an FTP server.

Re:great installer idea

[bonzoesc]

How the hell is Mandrake going to predict the updates that they'll need in two months and put them on the CDs?

Re:great installer idea

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but the problem is that winXP's updates went down, there were way too many of them, and that was just when it first came out. imagine installing winXP in 6 months...whew. what a pile of downloading that will be.
I'm not sure if you're mistaken or not, it was kinda ambiguous, but WindowsUpdate was down for a few days a while ago due to a DNS error, not due to being overloaded because there were too many of them.

Re:great installer idea

[Anonymous Coward]

They've contracted the psychic friends network to make this magical piece of software that updates you to unreleased patches at the time of cd mastering, DUH.

Re:great installer idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's why they make a new version of windows every 2 years or so. That way you get the same damn thing plus patches and no one is the wiser.

Sure sometimes they throw in a new fangled 32 bit only kernel in there that's the core of win nt, and maybe some extra firewall junk and a bubblegum ui, but is anything really all that different? Nah...

Re:great installer idea

[bonzoesc]

Maybe they could pay Ms. Cleo for her free help?

Re:great installer idea

[tunah]

When Joe User goes to install 8.2 six months from now after X number of holes have been found, it'll automatically bring the system up to the current patch level _before_ bringing the entire system online.

Where is it going to get the patches without going online?

Re:great installer idea

[bigjocker]

The CD for the same version of MDK is always changing. They add all the patches needed

Kylie likes it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kylie Minogue said that Mandrake is her favorite flavor of Linux. The Song "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" is really about mandrake.

Re:Kylie likes it!

[TheGeneration]

You know what, I totally agree with you. But you are totally off topic! I'm sure you can find a Kylie Minogue forum somewhere. And I really doubt that "Can't Get Yout Out Of My Head" (CGYOMH) is about Mandrake. I mean, it'd be nice if it were... but come on. You really just wanted to plug Kylie. Or maybe you were just trolling I dunno. I do know she looks good in her bathing suit. I bet she'd look better in her birthday suit.

Do any distribution use ALSA as default?

[Phantasmagoria]

I have a question. Are there _any_ distributions that set up and use ALSA as the default and main sound system? I mean, from what I've gathered, it's sure better than OSS in many departments, and even has OSS compatibility. With distributions switching to using GRUB for bootloading and other changes, why haven't we seen a trend towards using ALSA? Just a thought.

Re:Do any distribution use ALSA as default?

[be-fan]

SuSE uses ALSA as the default sound system.

Re:Do any distribution use ALSA as default?

[dr_dank]

Yep, SuSE 7.2 does. Not sure about 7.3 though. While Lilo is also the default bootloader, I think Grub is an option.

Re:Do any distribution use ALSA as default?

[leviramsey]

I have a question. Are there _any_ distributions that set up and use ALSA as the default and main sound system?

Mandrake includes the alsa patches in their kernels, iirc. They also include OSS, because there are a variety of apps that can't use ALSA.

Mandrake also wants you to use esound a fair amount (mpg123 and a few of the other sound programs have been compiled to use esound). The problem with this is that esd is started only when GNOME/KDE start. I had to tweak my /etc/rc3.d/S99local to get esd started automagically. While this is no problem, per se, the newbie installing Mandrake would not be able to do this.

Re:Do any distribution use ALSA as default?

[Afrosheen]

The problem with this is that esd is started only when GNOME/KDE start.

Not true. ESD is the Enlightenment sound daemon, therefore it only starts when Enlightenment does. Running esd under arts (kde's sound server) is as easy as typing artsdsp esd -trust. Pretty easy actually.

mandrake only likes some hardware

[subgeek]

i have talked to people who had wonderful esperiences with mandrake, but i am not one of them. they do not answer their phone. it takes them a month to send you something you order online. they do not respond to email.

and my favorite part is that all of their manuals assume that x will run with the default install settings. all of the trouble shooting tips involve clicking a button on the desktop. so that's all pretty useless when all you have is a command prompt. i was lucky that when i tried to install 8.1, i was not afraid to do a lot of tweaking to the xf86config and hardware settings. then mandrake would attempt to "fix" my changes. so now there is no more mandrake for me. (switched to SuSE - their install is also super easy)

Re:mandrake only likes some hardware

[deno]

Ahem. Don't know about the first part (shit happens), but the part about X configuration is outright false.

Moreover, proving that your assertion is false is very simple: there is a copy of our manual on linux-mandrake server... There is also a troubleshooting article on MandrakeForum, for those who are too lazy to RTFM:

http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1354&la ng =en

Re:mandrake only likes some hardware

[opkool]

Ahem,

Actually it is SuSE the one that "fixes" the changes you might have made to the config files.

On Mandrake, you can happily hack with ed/vim/emacs your config files and they will remain just as you left them.

What kind of moderators rate "Informative" a false post?

Re:mandrake only likes some hardware

[subgeek]

i did not intend to post anything false. the first part i know is true from my experience.

for the second part i am willing to admit that i am not a super-genius of linux.

at the time of my attempted installation, i had limited access to the internet (internet access not available on the system i was installing). so i was limited to what i could find in the manual. maybe i was too lazy to read the whole thing, but i did make an attempt to find a 'what to do if x does not work' section. i hadn't had trouble with x before, so this was a new area of exploration to me. if you can tell me what chapter it's in, that would help me. right now i have a retail copy of mandrake 8.1 that is sitting idle in my closet. making it useful would make me happy.

another problem i had was tring to get mandrake to recognize my gainward gf3 vid card. i could add a new piece of hardware with harddrake, but it still listed an unknown device geforce3 that i couldn't figure out how to make it configure.

my deepest apologies. what i wrote i percieved to be true through my experience.

Re:mandrake only likes some hardware

[subgeek]

see also my reply to deno above.

i have had good luck with SuSE so far. I used their tools to get a working X configuration and then edited with vi where necessary. (although it does say not to do this in the SuSE generated Xfree86Config file)

my post was not intentionally false, if it was. to answer your last question, i think it's a case of moderators going with the perceived confidence level of the poster. i thought i was right, so i guess they did, too.

i guess this post and my reply to deno are meant as an apology to mandrake and the /. community if i mislead anyone. if i make mistakes, i would like to admit them and try to ammend my wrongs.

Re:OH GOD, DON'T CLICK THAT LINK!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I just like giving the goatse.cx links more of a spotlight :)

only 65 meg?

[tallbloke]

Coo, so I could install mandrake on a really old disc.

What is the point. Base installs have been around for a while.

Re:only 65 meg?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to know what you get for your 65Mb...

It strikes me as providing a base for more exotic builds.

supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[Sloppy]

kernel 2.4.17, celebrating the comeback of kernel-secure, and a more robust supermount.

Hey, anyone know where to get supermount for 2.4.x, besides Mandrake?

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[redcliffe]

Yeah, I'd like to see that as well. Maybe Mandrake have just taken the most recent release of supermount and reworked it to work on 2.4.17. I wish the maintainer was still working on it. It really looks like something that should be included in 2.5.

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[deno]

One of our kernel hackers spends a lot of time working on supermount. I'm not avare of anyone else working on it, but I may be wrong.

Other distros (AFAIK) aren't interested, because there is no point in putting supermount on a server.

On the contrary, it's not only unnessesary, but even dangerous. On the desktop, enabling the supermount is cool (when it works), but you know how much interest RH and co. have in desktop...

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[Yottabyte84]

Supermount is nice for cdroms and whatnot, but using it on writeable media is bad. When I used it with floppys it wouldn't finish writing for a while, and if you remove it without syncing things get fucked. I guess this is why macs do software eject for floppies.

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[redcliffe]

Are there any other patches available that just work on CD-ROM's mounting them when inserted and umounting them when ejected? I've played with autofs, but it's not the best for this purpose.

David

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[Anonymous Coward]

"mount -o sync" - I've no idea why people don't mount their RW removeable media that way - if you do that, all you need to remember is not to take the floppy out when the drive light is on, like it was an Amiga or DOS PC.

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[Yottabyte84]

*modifies his /etc/fstab*

I know that will work for fat, but what if for some reason I'm using an ext2 floppy?

Re:supermount and kernel 2.4.17

[deno]

No. "supermount" is AFAIK the only such patch.

Second-best is "autofs", but you have seen its shortcommings.

I love MDK

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

I love MAnsdrake. I've been using their distro for a few yeas now but I installed the lastest Freq (dated 12-24-01) and have only one problem:

checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes
checking for c++... c++
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ -O2 ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executables.
[root@set kvirc]#


All compiler libraries, devel packages, etc. are installed. I hope this is fixed in this beta.

P.S. On this same machine it compiled perfectly fine until I installed this release... :-(

Re:I love MDK

[MicroBerto]

I had that problem when beta testing 8.1. Many of the important packages for that are the db* packages, I THINK:

db3-3.1.17-1mdk
db2-2.4.14-3mdk
libdb3.2-3.2.9-2mdk
db1-1.85-6mdk
db3-utils-3.2.9-2mdk
libdb3.3-3.3.11-5mdk
libdb-devel-3.3.11-5mdk
db2-devel-2.4.14-2mdk
db1-devel
db1-tools

and so on... maybe try seeing if you have those, or drop a bug report to cooker.

For me, my gnome is a bit messed up (i did a bunch of weird things with libpng and now png's don't display), so I want to try this!!

Re:I love MDK

[Anonymous Coward]

checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes
checking for c++... c++
checking whether the C++ compiler (c++ -O2 ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executables.

Try running ./autogen.sh again. I remember once ./configure insisted on running a certain version of the compiler, and running autogen reminded it of the correct version...

This happened soon after switching from GCC 2.9.x to 3.0.x, with a completely unrelated program, but my method may still work.

Screenshots?

[crivens]

Are there any mirrors that hold screenshots of the changes?

Re:Screenshots?

[plavigna]

MandrakeForum has much of the same info (and hasn't been hammered yet).

First beta of Mandrake Linux 8.2 escaped!

And how I am supposed to report bug for this 8.2 beta 1?

Re:65Megs! whass so bad 'bout RPM?

[Anonymous Coward]

everytime there is a distro thread, someone is blasting rpm... what is so bad about it? am I missing some part of the picture? enlighten me...

Encrypted FS question

[Nova]

hey, I'm already using a patched version of a 2.4 kernel with encrfs support. I have a loopback filesystem all encrypted with AES (rijndael). Does anyone have any info/experience on how this might translate over if I upgrade to 8.2?

Thanks!

Re:Encrypted FS question

[Apostata]

Quote: Does anyone have any info/experience on how this might translate over if I upgrade to 8.2?

Yes. Don't.

Mandrake has never had a very effective system of updating from previous versions, especially if you've been grabbing lib files from Cooker or other sources that it may not recognize as current.

I may be wrong...they may have fixed this, but I'd be prepared to back up /home and reinstall.

Ironic..

[diamondc]

that Mandrake was originally known as the RedHat with KDE, and is still very KDE-centric, writes most of their config tools using GTK

Re:Ironic..

[deno]

The fact that people have prejuduíces against mandrake distro does not mean that we have to do things the way their prejudices tell them we should...

drakxtools aren't bound to any GUI, and can be run on a terminal just as well as under X. X interface uses GTK+ because that's convenient for developers.

Re:Ironic..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not ironic. Smart, because not all people use/install kde so they do it in gtk so all people can use them (because gtk is that important, in or out of kde)

raisethefist.com is not a slashdot sponsor. (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

(anti-filter text only)

What about LVM?

[navindra]

LVM really ought to be supported in every modern distribution install. For those of you who don't know, LVM basically lets you resize your partitions (and filesystems with resize2fs) on the fly.

This is really sweet, and a godsend to those of us who find it hard to predict how much diskspace one will use on a certain filesystem in the future.

Mandrake 8.1 GE didn't support LVM in the installation, so I had to install it in a round-about bootstrapping manner. The Mandrake "rescue" cd boot does not seem to include LVM support either.

-N.

Re:What about LVM?

[Junta]

LVM and Software RAID are beautiful. Unfortunately, the benefit of LVM is completely lost on a great deal of the community. The strategy seems to no longer be to partition nicely, but rather, put all your space in / and don't worry about it. These are the people Mandrake is catering to, and it doesn't seem like it is worth their effort to support a type of configuration that has no benefit to their target users...

Re:What about LVM?

[deno]

Eer.. What are you talking about?

I've installed 8.0 with LVM way back, to see what's that about. Haven't tested in 8.1, but It would REALLY surprise me if it weren't there.

Re:What about LVM?

[grytpype]

I'm almost absolutely positive that the 8.1 install recognized my LVM volume groups and did the appropriate things with them.

Re:What about LVM?

[LinuxGeek8]

DrakX can do LVM or raid installs for you.
It is not offered as an obvious option, but if you know LVM, you should be able to set it up.

Re:What about LVM?

[navindra]

I could create an "LVM partition" but 8.1 didn't know how to format it. If it's there, I really couldn't figure out the GUI. I didn't have any of the LVM tools from the boot prompt.

The rescue boot option most certainly does not recognize my logical volumes.

Re:What about LVM?

[navindra]

Recognized, sure. Does it let you create them from scratch? The farthest I could go was to create an LVM partition type, but it didn't seem to know how to do anything with it. I couldn't find any command line tools in the install either.

Oh well, I guess I missed something.

My Mandy 8.2 Wish

[Apostata]

Dear Mandrakesoft,

Regarding the Beta of Mandrake 8.2, please read my wishes for the final version:

1) kill bugs, kill bugs, kill bugs...then release it.

2) don't you dare ship 8.2 without KDE 3.x.

3) try setting up a bugzilla-type system instead of discouraging the bug-submission process by forcing the great majority of users to either subscribe to the Cooker mailing list or submit bugs via the very inappropriate route of MandrakeExpert.

4) how about a way to upgrade from previous versions of Mandy that works?

Thanks!

Re:My Mandy 8.2 Wish

[Happy go Lucky]

1) kill bugs, kill bugs, kill bugs...then release it.

2) don't you dare ship 8.2 without KDE 3.x.

Seems to me these are just a little mutually-exclusive.

When KDE 3.0.0 comes out, it'll probably be buggy as all hell. Huge-assed packages with version number x.0.0 usually are. And it'll take half of forever for all of them to be stomped on.

How long should they wait before releasing 8.2? And shouldn't 8.2 just be the bugfixed version of 8.2 beta?

I seem to remember that Linus et al. got their nuts jumped on last fall for deviating from that path and including new code in the 2.4 kernels instead of just fixes.

4) how about a way to upgrade from previous versions of Mandy that works?

Two ways to do it:

1) My way. MDK 8.0, with kernel 2.4.17, KDE 2.2.2, OpenSSH 3.0.2, gcc 3.0.3, et cetera. It's called downloading stuff, compiling it yourself (if it involves crypto, you'd be a fool not to compile it yourself or to take source from an untrusted supplier).

RPM -Uvvvv to get the dependencies that need to be installed. For something like KDE where you need a new kdebase to install kdebase-devel, and vice-versa, add the --nodeps flag and get them both. But it can be done. I'm religious about "latest stable version of everything that plays nice with the rest of my system."

2) Buy a CD for $2-3 from cheapbytes.

"I guess it's the good time to report all bugs"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea that will do you a lot of good. Mandrake has the worst QA ever. All of these newbies think mandrake is so great. When in reality its the least stable and least tested distro out there. I gave up on it when a bug in their install wiped out my windows partition. Thanks Mandrake.

FYI if you work closely with the beta groups, you'll see that there are many critical bugs that will make it through to production. I used to try and help, but they are way beyond that. Severe bugs that are reported several times don't get fixed. There MO in the past was always a super quick beta period and no testing. Hell they have put of distros in the past where you click items on the menu that won't even launch.

So if you want flash with no QA use mandrake, otherwise use something else.

Re:"I guess it's the good time to report all bugs"

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up on it when a bug in their install wiped out my windows partition.

Payback's a bitch, ain't it. :-)

Distro versioning

[be-fan]

With todays update systems like urpmi and apt, is there any point to having distro version numbers anymore? I have urpmi pointed at cooker, and basically my current distro is something in-between 8.1 and 8.2-beta. Getting rid of version numbers might make things simpler for the user as well.

Re:Distro versioning

[Junta]

But then you have nightmares in support and distribution. Not everyone has a fast, convenient net connection through which they can run an update nightly. Additionally, of those that do, not all *want* to update. Releases allow for a checkpoint to be available in which the user is assured some amount of testing has gone into that exact configuration. When you have a system where you just update packages at will, you end up with strange configurations that few have tested and will likely break. For a seasoned user, this may be workable, but especially for a new person, this would really be disappointing.

Imagine providing support where the number of revisions in common use is comparable to the days that have passed with updates to the codebase.

Re:Distro versioning

[Andrewkov]

Updating constantly is also dangerous .. I toasted my Debian system doing an update from the "Testing" branch, which is something I had been doing every day with no problems for several weeks. I'm not familiar with Mandrake, is the cooker equivelent to Debian's testing branch (basically all the latest cutting-edge software).

I don't blame Debian for my problems, updating from the Testing branch is bound to cause problems sooner or later, and I should have spent more time learning how to use apt properly.

Do It will install on my old laptop?

[GdoL]

I have a old Compaq with pentium II with 1 Gb hard disk. I tried to install Mandrake 8.1 there and it never run. It installed ik, but start was other story. It never started. I finally installer the rh 5 but it lacks a proper drivers so it was a poor graphic display.

Re:Do It will install on my old laptop?

[deno]

Ever heard of 'troubleshooting' articles at mandrakeForum?

Re:Do It will install on my old laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you instal redhat 5? they are up to version 7.2 now, probably have alot of improvements to the graphics

Re:Do It will install on my old laptop?

[GdoL]

I tried and had the same result than Mandrake 8.1, (RH 7.2 has the same behaviour than Mandrake 8.1).

Re:Do It will install on my old laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,I've installed Mandrake 8.0 and 8.1 on an old Toshiba 220CDS (Satellite) with a Pentium-133, 32mb ram, and 1.4 gig harddisk. I had to use the text installation however, but it sounds like your laptop is just having hardware conflicts and not suffering from "the old computer" syndrome.

I used to use Mandrake

[rnd()]

but now I use LFS

Re:I used to use Mandrake

[abdulla]

so we know he's keepping it in the family and not after our sisters/mothers/dogs

Re:65Megs! whass so bad 'bout RPM?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't get how to use tools like rpmfind and up2date on Red Hat to solve dependancies. That seems to be the number 1 reason people don't like RPM, they don't know how to use it right.

I used to fuck your mom

[Anonymous Coward]

but now I fuck your sister

Ease of install- the test

[Night Goat]

Yes, I agree, Mandrake's very easy to install. I have a test that I do often. Don't laugh, it's actually a very good indicator. Basically, if I can install an OS or do some work on my computer while drunk/stoned off my gourd, it's an "intuitive" process. Mandrake's actually easier to install than Win98/2K in this respect. I haven't tried with XP yet. Red Hat's not bad, at least the more recent releases, but pretty much all of the other distributions that I've tried this test on don't do so well. I usually foul something up, or get discouraged or lost and give up.

Does anyone else recall the install pictures that Mandrake was showing for one of the 8.1 beta installs? Basically, just snapshots of a raging party that the dev team had. Funny stuff.

Re:Ease of install- the test

[Aparthy]

Mandrake 8.1 was extreamly easy to install. When my laptop arrived, I set my father up an account on it. I also left the install CD in the drive with that drive set to boot. My father, wanting to see what linux was all about, turned my computer on and ended up reinstalling the entire thing not knowing what he was doing.

Now that's an easy install!

Re:Ease of install- the test

[minus9]

I conduct similar intuitiveness tests at work. Coincidently we now have a couple of servers running Mandrake.

Re:65Megs! whass so bad 'bout RPM?

[Strog]

URPMI works wonders on Mandrake. Just type urpmi packagename and it download and installs it and all the dependencies. If you type part of a package, it will give you a list of all packages that match. You can choose your source if you want the cutting edge or the standard release. There have been some issues with previous releases but I have it working well on my systems.

Sure you can do the same thing in Debian but is that really the point (I like both)? Whichever way you go, it sure is nice to be able to just install a package and dependencies with one quick command and a good connection. I liked Progeny Linux because it was a great balance of polish and easy of maintaining. I hope Debian proper continues to refine the install.

^^^^ please mod up ^^^^

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Mandrake user and I am deeply troubled by these issues. Bryan is right on. Why is Mandrake so unprofessional when their are open source efforts like KDE/GNOME that show it can be done differently?

They have not changed in ages, they just rush out buggy releases one after the other.

I would switch to SuSE in an instant if their Personal distribution was not crippled and the Professional version were not so expensive.

Re:65Megs! whass so bad 'bout RPM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I found that mandrake's rpms the easiest to update/install, especially to solve dependencies.
It never gave me any problems. If there are technical quarks with it, fine. I haven't seen any.

my 2 cents

[SigmundK]

this distro rocked for me 3 months before, but i've since progressed to debian. bonk the dependency problems, i say!

but not a new idea...

[Forrestina]

i'm not terribly impressed... debian has been doing this for years.

Re:but not a new idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea debian has a real easy to use installer.

I like it cause its really newbie friendly.

LOL

Re:but not a new idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Debian rocks. They update constantly. Woody/Testing is still being updated daily, and is more stable than any Mandrake release after 7.2

Then what about Sid/Unstable. It is updated in almost realtime. And it somehow stays working without too many problems.

distribution upgrades

[brer_rabbit]

So how do people go about installing a new version of their favorite distribution? I typically ditch the standard "upgrade" route and choose "install" instead. Too many bad experiences with the former. Has this changed in recent Mandrake / RedHat / Suse releases?

On the up, upgrading a unix box is much easier than windows. Just keep /home on a partition and don't reformat it and most users are ready to go. System stuff is a bit more difficult for me -- keeping track of stuff I've compiled, changes to files in /etc, making sure similar services are installed on the new machine. I've been somewhat careless and haven't kept track of every single change I've done. What do most people do?

Re:distribution upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, running Windows Update from Internet Explorer is so hard *rolls eyes*. Or, run BigFix.

Re:distribution upgrades

[quan74]

Can you upgrade from windows 98 to Windows XP using windows update? Didn't think so. Can you update from office 2000 to office XP with office update? Didn't think so. So anyway, what exactly was your point?
Mandrake Update doesn't JUST provide patches/fixes, it lets you install newer versions of all packages as they come available.

Re:In other news that Slashdot rejected...

[Anonymous Coward]

They also rejected a story informing Slashdot readers that yesterday(up until this morning) was the last day to submit comments to the USDOJ regarding the Microsoft case.

So if you missed out, well at least you can claim that Slashdot didn't inform you! (we now return you to relevant news about a .1 incremental beta release)

Re: "two ways to do it"

[Apostata]

I agree that syncronizing KDE 3.x with Mandy 8.2 would either delay the release of 8.2 or doom Mandy with a timely release but a less-than-perfect KDE. However, Mandrake releases a point-version every year and KDE releases a point-version much more frequently and can be upgraded within the distro easily. If 8.2 comes with a less-than-perfect KDE 3.x, chances are that it would be easier to upgrade KDE shortly afterwards with the 3.x base already installed than hoping KDE 2.2.2 can upgrade seamlessly (which it very well may).
It's a choice between patience or pleasure, and both have their virtues.

As for your way of upgrading...it doesn't make sense. "It's called downloading stuff, compiling it yourself...". If you're going to go to that extent, why bother with Mandrake? Just go to www.linuxfromscratch.com and forget about Mandrake.
Your second option simply doesn't make sense at all: buy a cheap CD...okay, and then...? How does that solve the fact that Mandrake doesn't make it easy to upgrade from point-releases? In fact, how do either of your choices make it easier?

Hmm

[twilight30]

Don't know about drunk, but I used to regularly install loads of Mandrake baked out of my skull. I do believe that I work better this way, but that's just a personal observation.

I may come back to Mandrake with this release. Left for Debian unstable and have enjoyed it immensely, but wouldn't mind going back on occasion (not to mention recommending it to newbie friends) if they had a sturdier release. 8.1 was such a mess quality-wise I had to leave 'em.

Smooth upgrade

[Wokan]

Actually, my move from 8.0 to 8.1 was done with nothing more than urpmi, urpme, and rpm commands. Everything went fairly smooth and I lost no data whatsoever.
I don't know how the addition of an encrypted filesystem changes that formula, but I would imagine that changes to the underlying filesystem would be a good reason for a full backup/reinstall.

new feature

[austad]

Mandrake finally figured out how to put linux on the Desktop of just about every home machine in the world. They have created a new tool called MasturDrake.

Don't worry about it.

[Jonny Ringo]

and even if there are security issues... don't worry about it.

Sorry, I'm just taking the Cheech and Chong aproach on this.

Not true either

[Anonymous Coward]

"ESD is the Enlightenment sound daemon"

No, ESD is the *Enlightened* (not Enlightenment) Sound Daemon.
It doesn't have anything to do with Enlightenment.

Re:Not true either

[Afrosheen]

You're right about the name, but wrong about it having nothing to do with Enlightenment. Enlightenment uses it as the default sound server, on Mandrake at least.

The people speaks: RedHat is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly RedHat is better, which is why it's the
most popular of the gadzillions of Linux
distributions out there. The people have spoken
with their wallets.

Re:The people speaks: RedHat is better

[leonbrooks]

Clearly RedHat is better, which is why it's the most popular

By your own reasoning, Windows is much better than Linux. Since this is evidently not the case, I suggest you try replacing your reasoning with something that works, and rebooting.

Had the same problem; here's the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a brand new Compaq 700Z laptop. Mandrake 8.1 would install beautifully, but it would never boot. I was forced to try SuSE 7.3. What a terrible install, but it worked.

I'm still working on issues, though. I had to install and repair lvcool to stop the fan. I'm still desperately trying to get the sound to work. NFS is broken (I bought the laptop to be a silent server). Unloading the wireless LAN driver hangs the machine so I can't shut the machine down cleanly.

Marko

Re: a couple requests

[Ozwald]

After installation on my laptop, what would be cool for a new release of Mandrake is:

- better PCMCIA support, seems to hang in M 8.1

- support for Wireless network cards, it would be nice to have a handy Linksys rpm than having to midgit-net a tarball from another workstation.

Ozwald

gcc?

[Phocker_]

I know that mandrake 8.1 used the broken redhat gcc 2.96, since I cannot connect to the changelog anyone know if that has changed in 8.2

Re:gcc?

[LinuxGeek8]

Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2 come with 3 compilers; 2.91 (egcs), 2.96 (default), and 3.0.3.
The ppc version comes with 2.95 instead of 2.96.
Through /etc/alternatives you can choose whichever you want.

Btw, please read up on gcc2.96.
That should teach you complaining about 2.96.

Re:gcc?

[Anonymous Coward]

No mysql++ or mplayer with gcc 2.96/3.01/pre-3.1. Who knows how many other apps have broken inline assembler optimizations and binary compatibility issues? Mandrake's decision include multiple compiler collections is fantastic. Mandrake would have saved me the trouble of installing 2.95.3 over Redhat snapshots to compile some of the coolest Linux apps out there, while giving me Redhat's package manager,etc.

Good mirror

[professortomoe]

Since Mandrake's site is /.'ed to high hell, a mirror list isn't accessable, and, well, not everyone who wants it frequents a mirror with mandrake. I'd recommend ftp.sunet.se. I'm the 937th person on, and still getting 120k/sec. Just thought ya might like this. Professor Tomoe

Re:Good mirror

[gatesh8r]

ftp.sunet.se FTP server ready.
Sorry, there are too many anonymous users using the system at this time. There is currently a limit of 1000 anonymous ftp users.

Um, not any more... honestly, you should of not mentioned it on /.

even simpler.

[deno]

Install whatever you feel like installing, and when the machine comes up again log-in as root, and type 'urpmi openssh-clients openssh-server'

Concerning urpmi on 8.1

[NDPTAL85]

Can you guys PLEASE fix the urpmi/MandrakeUpdate issues with 8.1? Whenever I add a source (specifically a cooker source) to the database it can never find the source again when I go to update it (urpmi.update) returns this each and every time:

[root@Dreadnaught ndptal85]# urpmi.update
the entry to update is missing
(one of K)

Now I've re-installed and others on the expert mailing list have also spoken up to say the bug exists.

Re:Concerning urpmi on 8.1

[Anonymous Coward]

hey jackson, make a bug report to Mandrake, don't just throw a post somewhere in the depths for the /. forum. try mandrakeforum at least. tia.

cb

Re:Concerning urpmi on 8.1

[LinuxGeek8]

The error:

the entry to update is missing
(one of K)

Means you need to specify a source.
You can use urpmi.update -a. Which will update all sources.
Or choose urpmi.update K. That source seems to be your only one so that should do just the same as -a.

Re:Concerning urpmi on 8.1

[NDPTAL85]

THANKS! That -a flag worked. But a few weeks ago it would have just asked me for which source to specify instead of just telling me there is none at all. I wonder why/how/ & when it changed.

I think this is a newbie question...

[Dave_bsr]

Ok, from a newbie Mandrake user, I did that, and got a grey X screen. now what?

Re:I think this is a newbie question...

[Sunda666]

enlightenment -display localhost:1

enjoy ;-)

Re:I think this is a newbie question...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the file /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc

under the section
[Xdmcp]

change enable to true
Enable=true

now it should give you another login screen
(after you restart kdm/or reboot)

Finally, the feature that Linux needs....

[cnelzie]

...I have mentioned this many times before. Linux needs a simplistic method of Left-Clicking on a folder and simply sharing that out over a network, much like Windows.

Now, Mandrake delivers! That is awesome. I would have done it myself. The only thing is, I am unable to code myself out of a box and I can barely code my way into a box for that matter.

The next step that Mandrake should take is to generate a small-end, medium-range server install and Linux has the chance of becoming the server of choice for small to medium sized businesses. This will take competition to the one place that Microsoft truly excells in. (Please, this is not a flamebait or a troll. That is the truth, just look at most small to medium sized businesses, it is what they run.)

While I recently switched back to Red Hat, due to the lack of CLI tools that I love and the fact that Red Hat has had better laptop support for sometime, Mandrake may again grace one or more hard drives on my network. Of course, now I will need to take time to load up all the tools I love.

Shouldn't be any problem though.

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Re:Finally, the feature that Linux needs....

[SCHecklerX]

No offense, but...

People who can't spend the few minutes needed to read the comments in smbd.conf, should NOT be able to simply share something. This is how systems get owned.

Yes, it is nice. But making it a little 'harder' helps insure that somebody actually understands what they are doing before they do it.

Re:Finally, the feature that Linux needs....

[cnelzie]

If Linux, or any other OS and or OS component stays terribly comlpex, it stands a lower chance of moving forward in usage.

There are a few notable exceptions, like Apache. Although, I can hazard to guess that most of those setups of Apache are with default settings and thus may have many features active that the web page being served is not taking advantage of.

Many people like componitized GUI configuration tools that explain how hings function. Many of these tools have a hierarchical and logical layout that can often explain how the components interact with one another with visual cues as well as with words.

While I am able to understand both, I have to say that I much prefer to see the visual cues. There are many people out there that only understand the visual cues.

While they probably shouldn't be administrators, that is not for you and I to say. Well, unless of course you are the certifying authority for every single administrator on the planet.

Besides, since when does making something easier to setup exclude security? If you are concerned about it being unsecure, then simply find out how it is insecure and help make it secure. Like or not, that is the future of Linux.

There are two things you can do about it. You can sit on the sideline grumbling about how GUI tools are so insecure (While spending 8 hours manually configuring systems, while a GUI/CLI-Oriented Admin sets the whole thing up in about 2 Hours.) The other thing you can do is help test those GUI tools, help insure that they are secure and limit the possibility of making systems insecure.
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O/T - SlashDDoS !!

[heretic108]

Talk about the Slashdot Effect.
I can't even get to the Mandrake site just now.

*sigh*

[dunkelfalke]

just downloaded and burned mandrake 8.1 and now this.

*Yawn* but the crypto idea is cool

[Ogerman]

So.. other than XFree86 4.2, I've been using everything 'new' included in MDK 8.2 for about 1-2 months now. (using Debian testing/unstable). On the other hand, I'd have to give the Mandrake people a thumbs up for the increasingly rich-featured installer. Allowing newbies to set up crypto filesystems with no effort is a great idea.

Re:*Yawn* but the crypto idea is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Like that awesome Debian Control Center you mean ;-)
Seriously you have to give them some credit for trying to make administration a bit more comfortable for people without a lot of experience.

Greetings,
Jasper

Re:*Yawn* but the crypto idea is cool

[greening]

Just out of idle curiousity, where do I go to download debian? I mean, should I download the potato, 2.2r5, testing, unstable... which? I have downloaded 2.2r5 but was wondering which I should get... thanks.

Re:*Yawn* but the crypto idea is cool

[Ogerman]

Just out of idle curiousity, where do I go to download debian? I mean, should I download the potato, 2.2r5, testing, unstable... which? I have downloaded 2.2r5 but was wondering which I should get... thanks.

You don't 'download' testing/unstable. You add it to your package sources.

/etc/apt/sources.list

Add something like:
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb ftp://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

The second one is for crypto software. Duplicate but replace testing with unstable if you want to live on the edge. (-:

problems in the comment

[xah]

As seen at Mandrake's website, Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta seems to be available for download at different places.

That should be "from different places."

The new features include the ability to install a Mandrake as small as 65Mb on the HD, and encrypted file-system support.

It's not clear what number "65Mb" represents. The combination "a Mandrake" is nonsensical. One way to fix these problems would be to rewrite the phrase as, "to install Mandrake in as little as 65MiB." There should be no hyphen in "file system."

I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version.

It should be "a good time." The use of the word "we" here is unnecessarily inclusive.

Very promising release, worth a look at!~

This is a fragmentary sentence that I would expect from a commercial advertisement. What is the tilde doing at the end of the sentence?

Grade F.

Re:problems in the comment

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Mandrake is a European company, right?

English might be a secondary language for the person that wrote this up.

Is cool writing style though.

Re:problems in the comment

[xah]

The Slashdot editors are all fluent in English. They should edit comments before posting them. That's standard journalistic practice here in the US.

My comments on spelling and grammar are all directed at Slashdot, not individual posters who, as you state, may not be very fluent in English, or have the time to sit down and write something without errors. These excuses do not apply to Slashdot's editors.

Re:problems in the comment

[Inthewire]

The Slashdot editors are all fluent in English

I demand proof - a mere assertion will not convince me in this particular case.

Re:problems in the comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, MB was the proper way of abbreviating MegaByte. I don't know where you got the 'i' in MiB from....

That, and:
I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version

it would sound downright silly to take we outta there.

Yes, but....

[HiThere]

If you are going to do this, you had better be VERY sure that the upgrades won't break something. One of the problems with auto-updaters that I have experienced with unfortunate frequency was that the updates weren't checked anywhere nearly as carefully as the main distribution. So frequently the system would be working fine, until it was updated. And then ... something (varied) would break. Fortunately the "something" has usually been the automatic updater, but I can remember a time or two when it was the file system, or the internet connection.
.

Re:Yes, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the good things about Mandrake since 7.2 - I'v never had an update break something - even if you updata glibc, it makes sure that compat-glibc is still there for older binaries. All the library versioning is carefully coordinated, with a standardised RPM naming system for libraries that RH later adopted.

Aaaaarrgh!

[josquin9]

Ximian Desktop only just came out for Mandrake 8.1 today . . . about 3 months after originally promised.

I know my father eventually got fed up with trying to keep up with all the upgrade cycles and just decided to get a stable system that he understood thoroughly that did what he needed (medical database programming) and stop worrying about upgrading. I think it was an SCO Unix (pre-Open Desktop) on a 486-66 with a half a gig of HD space and maybe 64MB memory. He always seemed to have a look of contentment on his face after that. I'm beginning to think that was a sign of maturity and sanity, rather than senility.

Re: "two ways to do it"

[Happy go Lucky]

As for your way of upgrading...it doesn't make sense. "It's called downloading stuff, compiling it yourself... ". If you're going to go to that extent, why bother with Mandrake? Just go to www.linuxfromscratch.com and forget about Mandrake.

For most stuff, I do use MandrakeUpdate and RPM. However, I'm a little twitchy about backdoors. If something involves crypto or backdoor-prevention (SSH, SSL, GPG, iptables, etc.) I figure that the source is going to be a little more trustworthy.

And I'm not going to use an RPM-binary kernel.

Life with a computer is all about balancing convenience vs. security. If something doesn't have obvious security implications, I'll take the convenience. If there's a clear reason to prefer the code, I'll take the code instead. IMHO it beats the snot out of a one-size-fits-all approach of RPM for everything or apt for everything or the Slackware method (Package management is for the weak!)

Your second option simply doesn't make sense at all: buy a cheap CD...okay, and then...? How does that solve the fact that Mandrake doesn't make it easy to upgrade from point-releases? In fact, how do either of your choices make it easier?

Spend two bucks. Put the CD in the drive. Click on "Upgrade" instead of "Install."

And frankly, the only thing that's still 8.0 about my system are the message at login and the version of Netscape that I never use. I'm only on dialup, but you can download a lot of stuff when you let it go overnight.

./ed

[giantsfan89]

dang... slashdotted

But what about... And if only ...

[gessleX]

Hmmm....beta 1 realeased and we are only on the threshold of Gnome 2.0 and KDE 3. I would think it would be better to begin debugging when the two big ones hit the scene.

Now if only Mandrake can fix there package issues. Mandrake is great for installs, hardware detection, and configuring the like, but dreadfully lacks care in package building. RPMs with missing files, docs, etc. Was this symtomatic only of 8.1 which in MHO was too rushed. Beta 1 one week, Beta 2 the next, then RC 1, and bam! full version. 8.1 was nasty. I regressed to another distro with that one.

I currently use Mandrake 8.0 for my Powerbook. After tweaking for the resolution for my display, it works great.

More research nix

[Afrosheen]

There have been many jfs's to choose from starting with 7.2. 7.2 included Reiser (journaling), 8/8.1 included Reiser, Ext3, SGI's JFS, etc. Guess you should've hit mandrakeuser or mandrakeforum before you assumed it was missing. That or hit expert during the install and chosen your partition types...

Mandrake 8.2 boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!

the mandrake team rox.

[7-Vodka]

I reported 3 bugs during the 8.1 beta. 2 of them were fixed within 24hrs. The result was that when the final 8.1 came out, my modem and printer worked flawlessly. Please report your bugs, it makes a difference. thanks.

Not what caused jump

[vondo]

Mandrake 7.2 used KDE 2.0. The 7.2->8.0 jump was either glibc or 2.2->2.4 kernel (by default).

The wierd jump was 6.1 -> 7.0 which as far as I can tell was about their graphical installer.

Whatever you do..

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't download this!

It includes butt-ugly icons, they renamed every package SOMETHINGDRAKE (I hear that they renamed rpm to drakepm), and the icons are ugly as hell!

Do yourself a favor and buy a name brand soundcard (sure, it costs $10 more, but it's well worth it!), get RH7.2, and install Ximian.

Thanks!

nVidia?

[sconeu]

Will it include the 2313 nVidia drivers?

Mandrake vs. Debian vs. RedHat - RPM vs. APT?

[DavittJPotter]

OK, but here's my question: Is Mandrake's update system so pissy about dependencies like Red Hat? I installed Ximian Gnome and apt-get RPM on my RH7.2 box, and now Red Carpet and apt-get constantly bitch at each other - apparently because Ximian's RPMs aren't the same as the apt-repositories.

Granted, maybe I shouldn't use both of them, but Christ, my Red Hat 7.2 machine is borked. I installed Debian 2.2 last night, compiled the new 2.5.1 kernel, ran apt-get update, apt-get install &packages_I_wanted& - and zoom, updated and shiny new and pretty. Damn, that's slick.

The install, however, was *far* from "Mom-intuitive."
Does Mandrake handle their dependencies any better/as well as Debian seems to?

Re:Mandrake vs. Debian vs. RedHat - RPM vs. APT?

[leviramsey]

Does Mandrake handle their dependencies any better/as well as Debian seems to?

In my experience with Mandrake only, Mandrake doesn't get pissy about dependencies, as long as you pretty much stay with the Mandrake made rpms. They seem to do a good job of keeping all the packagers on the same page.

On a related note, that is the only real advantage apt has over rpm: the fact that there are stringent guidelines for apt. But Mandrake rpm is very close in functionality and quality to apt (what with urpmi, rpmdrake, etc.). The only apt-get option that has no Drake equivalent is dist-upgrade, at least of the apt-get options I know.

RPM's problem, in essence, is how much of a crappy job Red Hat did with its implementation./p

Re:Mandrake vs. Debian vs. RedHat - RPM vs. APT?

[chmouel]

> The only apt-get option that has no Drake
> equivalent is dist-upgrade, at least of the
> apt-get options I know

Humm urpmi(8):

--auto-select:

automatically select all packages that have to be upgraded according to already installed package and packages listed in various media registered.

Re:Mandrake vs. Debian vs. RedHat - RPM vs. APT?

[leviramsey]

I'll get me coat then...

Re: Use cron jobs or else switch to Blowfish.

[Self-Important]

...but *don't* mount them at boot.

Whoo Hoo 65MB Install

[jamesconf]

I am glad a distro has finly put a small install option. Now I can use it on my 486. Oh wait stupid i586 rpms. Now if only thay had Athlon rpm's Its a pain install the base and remove everything or install below the base and add everythinh i had sex with an rpm.

PARENT IS A TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Please read the fucking subject!

Why distro numbers?

[horza]

Things that spring to mind:

* tech support - it makes life a lot easier if a user quotes a distro number, which can then instantly correlate to a list of known problems. This can cut out a number of problems before resorting to finding out upgraded package versions etc.
* keeping mirrors up to date - it would be a real pain if you downloaded 600MB of Mandrake and found it was so old that the update had to download approximately the same amount again
* marketing - selling new versions keeps Mandrake in business. Windows98 didn't launch with the marketing slogan "Pick up a 2nd hand Win95 and do a Windows Update" :-)

Phillip.

Re: "two ways to do it"

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Actually I trust Mandrake more then the source becasue I trust Mandrake...if you know what I mean. I don't know the guys who did a program originally but have dealt with Mandrake more regularly then the developers. Also, a Kernel is a kernel. Sure, I can compile my own but why? Only reason I see for doing that is a very specific reason. Say to get a certain feature not available in RPM form yet. To fix a rather heinous securty issue until a RPM has been available.....things like that. One other reason is if you were devloping for a embeded device where memory use is an issue. I have found thru experience that RPM can be a friend and an enemy. If you start compiling tarballs and installing over your existing binaries, good luck removing anything! People think Windows is bad...Linux proggies put crap ALL over the file system. I find on a RPM based system it is WAY to easy to fark things up by NOT using RPM. RPM's ain't all that hard to build from source especially if a spec file is in the tarball or it's a source RPM. AT least this way your RPM db does not get hosed too bad and if you install something and it breaks something else, you can easily back it out. For that matter, I like the way Debian lets you do kernels as well through deb's. If you grab the source deb you can build a kernel real easy.

(OT, NT) Modding Option: Whiny Bitch (-1)

[copponex]

Take my karma away!

Re: "two ways to do it"

[cduffy]

Eh? How does RPM cause problems for embedded systems development?

I work for an embedded systems company (MontaVista Software) that provides a pre-packaged set of development tools and such for embedded systems, and which distributes these packages as RPMs. The RPM database is kept out of the target filesystem, and the packages are already compiled to keep out expensive options like NLS (indeed, using RPM macros makes it easier to compile such things out automatically).

As for filesystems getting messed up when you /don't/ use rpm... that's why you use something like STOW to track those packages, and keep them all under /usr/local. Good dicipline makes such things easy.

Just a few thoughts. (FWIW, I run Debian on my home machines).

wooowwww

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 65 megabytes needed for a minimum install???!!! WOOOWWWW!

Wonders never cease(chuckle).

SuSE?

[Anonymous Coward]

when is SuSE 7.4/8.0 (which one?) coming out?

Nvidia

[Anonymous Coward]

Installed 8.1 as my third distro ever (after RH 7.1 and 6.2). Worked great except for my NVidia card..Good G@D! do a search for NVIDIA on mandrakeuser.org's forum and see what I mean.
I hope they fix all that mess in the new XFree88/ mandrake release.

Re:Advantages of Mandrake?-URPMI

[Anonymous Coward]

After updating from cooker for the past two days.
Urpmi is useful, but it's no apt-get. Basically to get what I needed. I had to manually uninstall a couple of packages. Urpmi what I wanted, then urpmi back what I manually uninstalled. Lather,rinse,repeat a couple times. I still get that libfreetype.so.7 even though I have the latest freetype installed. So Urpmi will not help on broken packages. On the bright side, I got a boot error to go away.

That is some naaasty shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I much prefer the hamster dance.

Where to find the ISO...

[Fnkmaster]

Try www.linuxiso.org if you are looking to leech an ISO of the 8.2beta and finding the official mirror sites a bit packed for your taste. I'm only getting 46KB/sec, but at least you can connect, unlike the ftp mirror sites.

mad as hell... offtopic

[Kraft]

that qoute... where is it from? Some old techno song, right? Can you tell me which one, cause I would love to hear it again.

Re:mad as hell... offtopic

[fobbman]

Actually it originates from a movie called "Network", which was shot in the late 70's. Brilliant movie that had amazing foresight into what the television networks have since turned into. Highly recommend the $.99 rental, if you cannot find it at your local library.

Back on track?

[simong]

8.0 was (and is) a great release. I still use it, patched with KDE 2.2.2 and various other upgrades principally because I couldn't get 8.1 to install on my laptop either by CD or by HTTP install. I never found a solution for this at Mandrake and it's not like my laptop is anything strange (Acer Travelmate 524). I had no problem with older, sometimes weirder desktop machines.

My one worry for 8.2 is that it's going to get more commercially oriented. 8.1 was the first release by Mandrake as a listed company and the website has subtly changed in the past few months to encourage donations or buy something in return for code or services. No different from many other companies in the same situation these days but it feels like Mandrake are trying to enforce it more than others, quite possibly to the detriment of the quality of the product.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting there are bugs we *do* want to see in the final version?

Sure, we want to see the documented bugs we can work around easily in the final version so that we can claim to be linux gurus, how people can't get mdk working are fools, how everything is solvable by RTFM etc.

Son of a ...

[Gossy]

Last night I installed 8.1 on my nice freshly built dedicated Linux machine, and I was going to get sorting everything out this week..

And now 8.2 is just around the corner? Grrrrrr.

Not upgrading would seem wrong, wouldn't it :)

Re:problems in the comment, you too

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's not clear what number "65Mb" represents. The combination "a Mandrake" is nonsensical. One way to fix these problems would be to rewrite the phrase as, "to install Mandrake in as little as 65MiB." There should be no hyphen in "file system."

Geeze, and what is "65MiB" supposed to be? Sixty-five Men In Black?

Everybody (should) know that Mb = megabit and MB = megabyte.

Re: "two ways to do it"

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Note I did not say it was impossible to keep a nice filesystem when compiling software and the like, just that it's hard. Tools like apt, RPM and deb's make it easier to install, decide it's crap, then uninstall it. At worst after uninstalling a deb you may have files you created with the package and config files left over. Just rm em. I also did not mean you should not use RPM when doing an embedded system either. I meant that it makes more sense to actually compile a kernel instead of accepting a Red Hat or Mandrake kernel RPM because when your designing an embedded device, it does not make sense to waste space by including things you'd only use on the desktop like parallel port support or support for a usb scanner. Now if you were the compilee, then you could use RPM to package it, if you want. I guess what I am really saying here is that I do not understand what the big deal is to compile your own kernel when standard kernels work too (unless the standard kernel doesn't work then I understand completely! ;)). I mean it's not like memory and hard drives are REAL expensive anymore (I know...I hate bloat too....but binary rpm kernel packages ain't that huge).

Mandrake 8.1 even went onto a Dell 8000 no worries

[leonbrooks]

Given that Dell officially don't support Linux on the beast, this was excellent. Sound worked wonderfully, video, DVD, the whole nine yards.

Three caveats: you *must* run the screen at full blast (2000x1600 OTTOMH) or you get a ripping effect about 1/3 of the way across it and an unstable system; the ``standby'' which should happen when you close the lid simply results in catatonia (machine still on, black screen, no response); you have to download and install the modem code yourself, since it's non-free.

You get about 3 hours of battery life on ``boring'' games like NetHack, PySol or JezzBall, but only about 90 minutes of 3D+noisy games like TuxKart, TuxRacer and Chromium.

Oh, and Windows XP reacts really badly when you run out of batteries while resizing its partition. (-: 1,$cLinuxZZ :-)

Slackware? Why not Debian?

[leonbrooks]

Now I'm debating whether to try out 8.2, or go for a more "pure" Linux distro, like Slackware.

Not to start a distro-Jihad, but if I dropped Mandrake, it would be for Debian. Mandrake takes a lot of the hard work out of installing a system (many of the defaults are useful, you can tweak stuff en bloc, and a novice will generally have more success with installing Mandrake 8.1 than Windows 2000), but doesn't (nobody does, AFAICT) take as much care with dependencies as Debian, and makes some assumptions (such as: performance is top priority) which don't sit well with older hardware.

Usually, I can wear the disadvantages with little pain, but if I can have my ease-of-installation cake and eat it (better dependencies, 486 CPUs) as well, fabulous, let's do it.

I have yet to see someone make a clear case for Slackware, other than ``the packaging system is really simple at heart'' or ``I'm used to it.''

For the record, I started with Slackware, soon switched to RedHat, and picked up Mandrake as a default/favourite when 6.0 was released.

Re:Slackware? Why not Debian?

[Cro Magnon]

In my experience: Not only is Debian much harder to install than Slackware, but several attempts to upgrade from stable to "testing/unstable" broke my system, whereas I have yet to break my system installing packages from slack-current. OTOH, though reliable, Slack is not particularly easy. If you want "better dependencies" you probably don't want Slackware.

It's all about the Pentiums, baby!

[leonbrooks]

All I need to do is recompile the whole distribution without Pentium opcodes

I think someone (a user) either has done or will do this. Follow the bouncing links to the Mandrake Cooker list archives and see if I'm right.

Re:It's all about the Pentiums, baby!

[Ed Avis]

Looking through the Cooker archives I can't find the de-Pentiummed Mandrake you mention. Let me know if you find it.

The users asked for - nay, demanded - this

[leonbrooks]

the website has subtly changed in the past few months to encourage donations

On user request (ie, they listened to and obeyed their users), Mandrake put a Donate link on their front page. On request from corporate partners and other corporate-image-sensitive businesses, they moved the link one level off the front page lest they tarnish their, er, professional look.

To most of the whingers: (1) if you don't even *ask* them to fix stuff, why do you complain when it doesn't get fixed? (2) if you want something fixed, why not pitch in and fix it yourself or at least make constructive suggestions instead of ``it's broken, Mandrake fscked up''? Do you have a *right* to have stuff fixed for free? Would Microsoft fix the same bug in their stuff if only one user (you) asked? (3) a very few of you did actually post useful bug reports and got trampled or triaged in the rush; I've had both bugs fixed and bugs not fixed, them's the breaks, welcome to Real Life, try again this time in case it works.

``Depentiummed'' Mandrake

[leonbrooks]

The biggest flurry of discussion was about two months ago. You can apparently grab a normal CD plus a source RPM (SRPM) set from the same version and do the entire rebuild yourself, there was some discussion about the arcana needed to glue all of the needed utilities together.