Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake 8.2 Available
Jester998 writes "Linux Mandrake 8.2 is out! Check out the official
annoucement
or head off to your closest mirror to grab the ISO images.
The release is bound to be amazing, with the return of kernel-secure, a 65MB minimum install, hotplug device support, encrypted filesystems and more!"
A portrait of the Mandrake user from a collection of Linux User Caricatures:
This chap (baby) is the new distro on the market(compared to the others anyway). He is always seen as a new lunix user hence the baby look, and the distro is regarded as one best for beginners to learn who might be migrating from windows to linux.
I have to say I'm really impressed by how MandrakeSoft, a small and rather fragile company, is keeping on going its own way. They prefer doing more efforts in building and improving a dream OS everyday, keeping the right open source software way, and they try to avoid laying offs by requesting financial contributions of its users (see the Mandrake Club announcement). I don't know what this company is going to become in the next ten years but really, Mandrake Linux and MandrakeSoft are more exciting product and company than Red Hat or SuSE!
When are we going to get a nice little "cached" (ala Google) link under a story that takes us to a version cached locally on slashdot's servers. Items in the cache could easily expire after only a day(or even a couple hours). Salshdot's readers would appreciate this as would the poor IT people in charge of the oft-slashdotted servers...
I am very impressed with the tools that they are inlcuding in this release. The best is the ability to RIGHT-CLICK on a folder and then LEFT-CLICK on SHARE!!!
That is the greatest feature to add to Linux. The medium sized computer manufacturer that I work for is very interested in being able to use Linux in their Server products. Since most of their technical staff and clients have no interest in learning how to configure Samba, this will be a great help.
Now, all they will have to do is have me or a few of the other techs, go by the machines, or SSH into them to update them on occasion.
Mandrake is truly bringing Linux to the masses.
With this one feature, the market share and thus the potential number of commercial products for Linux can and hopefully will increase dramatically.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
So what's a big problem with Slashdotted ISO releases??? To quote MC Hammer: Hammer time. Those poor distros get nailed so hard that you can't get to an ISO at a reasonable speed for a week. And companies like Mandrake really need all the support they can get. It's great product and I'm sure they have to pay for massive bandwidth with ISO releases (even with all the mirrors from edu sites and the like). Looks like we need a p2p distribution system a la fasttrack network that allows multiple downloads from multiple hosts so that we can waterfall these ISO's. I just hope someday it will be implemented (and more importantly: used by the masses).
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
IMHO of course. Actually Mandrake is great. There's no such thing as the "best" distro, whatever works for you. I think SuSE is getting limited acknowledgment 'cause you can't download the ISO's. It is free to copy and you can install via ftp if you'd like. SuSE's YOU (Yast Online Update) and Yast package manager seem far easier to newbie's than Mandrake's equivalent. (haven't tried urpmi, which looks good). You can get SuSE Pro version for $49 bucks including the full DVD and 8 CD's if you buy the "update" version (full without manuals). Some may still prefer Mandrake, but really TRY SuSE. It'll surprise you. I know quite a few Windows "power user" discussion boards where people try Mandrake (as of 8.1) and come back swearing off linux for good. These are the same people that change winXP themes twice a day. SuSE is just easier to get going in 3D gaming (if you've got nvidia at least), make online system updates (as easy as windows updating) and 8.0 comes with KDE3. I've been running KDE3 beta 2 on my 7.3 PC since its release and I'm amazed at how quick and stable it is. If SuSE actually tries to start requiring licenses (mentioned online somewhere today) than I'll be bailing the distro pretty quickly though. Until then I've found my linux distro.
OpenOffice version numbering does not follow this pattern (current OpenOffice version is build 641C).
And StarOffice 6.0 is about to be officially launched (this week or the next). So I think it is really SO 6.0.
Or you could DL is the ISOs and donate to Mandrake directly, through a credit card, like what I did today (not to trump myself up... but it's good to give support to the industry).
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.