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Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1

Posted by michael on from the keep-both-pieces-when-it-breaks dept.

leviramsey writes "MandrakeSoft has released the first beta of the next version of its distribution. It features XFree86 4.2, KDE 3.0, GNOME 2.0, and is compiled with gcc-3.1, which (alas) makes it incompatible with a fair amount of commercial software."

8 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. Compiled with gcc-3.1 by rnturn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, someone had to be first to ship with this compiler. I wouldn't worry. Vendors will catch up.

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    1. Re:Compiled with gcc-3.1 by FU_Fish · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree, if somebody doesn't step up and start using 3.x, we'll probably all be stuck 2.9x forever. Thank you Mandrake (and Gentoo).

    2. Re:Compiled with gcc-3.1 by fmaxwell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, someone had to be first to ship with this compiler. I wouldn't worry. Vendors will catch up.

      I'm not worried about vendors catching up. I'm more concerned about users. Until Linux gets out of the habit of breaking huge numbers of apps with releases, Microsoft will continue to own the OS market. Recompiling and distributing apps costs money. Users don't expect to have to pay for new apps just because they upgraded from Mandrake 8.2 to Mandrake 9.0. So vendors either eat the costs or piss off the customer base.

      Microsoft has a much better understanding of "the real world" than does the Linux community. Microsoft, love it or hate it, understands that you can't expect vendors to support your product and customers to buy it if you regularly break their software with OS upgrades. And this is coming from someone who really wants to see Linux succeed. I find the security bugs, Product Activation, constantly tightening EULA, Gestapo-like software audits, and Digital Rights Management to be a threat to the entire computer industry.

    3. Re:Compiled with gcc-3.1 by nathanh · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I'm not worried about vendors catching up. I'm more concerned about users. Until Linux gets out of the habit of breaking huge numbers of apps with releases, Microsoft will continue to own the OS market.

      Do you think Microsoft does any differently? I have Win2k apps that won't run on WinNT, WinNT apps that won't run on Win2k, nothing worked on WinXP, and don't get me going about all the applications I bought for Win95 (mostly games) where WINE is my only hope of ever using them again.

      If applications support Win95, WinNT, Win2k, WinME and WinXP out of the box it's only because the vendors went through trials that would have made Heracles cringe.

      If anything, I'm more impressed by the Linux camp because Linus refuses to change for changes sake and the libc guys are positively anal about backwards compatibility.

  2. Which apps won't work with gcc-3.1? by Archie+Steel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is there a way to find out? I know it's still early, but I just want to find out if I should be excited about Mdk9.0 yet...

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  3. Mandrake all the way. by $criptah · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Although I am a FreeBSD dude, I loved my workstation running Mandrake. I think they do an excellent job by trying to make the system more optimized for an end user, rather than a professional sys. admin. For a while, I thought that RedHat was the most user friendly, but I was wrong. The installation process was very smooth and clean, that's where most of Linux distros lag behind. With this in mind, I am thinking of getting the latest Mandrake release and putting it on my moms computer. I've heard that she is sick of 'those blue screens' :)

  4. Re:Linux Useability by CJ+Hooknose · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The Mandrake CD contains everything he needs

    Wrong. Does it have games? Minesweeper? Nope

    Are you trolling, or just misinformed? The kdegames package (included with every distro that includes KDE) has "KMines", which is a Minesweeper clone. GNOME has "gnomines". Both these are included under the "games" tab in the K menu ("Start menu") in an installation of SuSE 8.0, and I'd certainly be amazed if Mandrake didn't put them in a similar place.

    Diablo?

    There's no Diablo for Linux, so it's not on the installation CDs for any distro. You can install Falcons Eye Nethack for something arguably better than Diablo, or Zangband for, again, something arguably better than Diablo.

    Falconseye Nethack is on many distro CDs, Zangband is not.

    MS Paint? Right. Paint Shop Pro for me. The same goes for default shipments of Linux

    GIMP comes with every distro, and is as good or better than PaintShop Pro. Curiously, you haven't mentioned any Linux applications in your half-formed rant, only Windows applications. What, praytell, are some examples of applications you think you need that aren't included in a recent distro CD or aren't available via Sourceforge/freshmeat.net ?

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  5. Re:Two options by DrXym · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Why not ship two versions of glibc and gcc? It seems like a fairly sensible way to maintain backwards compatibility while still allowing source-built apps the benefits of being built with a better compiler. It's been done before, I don't see what's different now.

    If necessary you could even write "java", "javac", "javah" etc. scripts in /usr/bin which fixed up the lib paths before invoking the real tools.