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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!"
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?
No todo lo que es oro brilla
"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.
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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.
~ now you know
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.
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...
Of course you will also find all the newest versions of famous packages:
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
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.
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.