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Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1
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."
* Java support is broken. Reason: The currently available Java is not compiled with GCC 3.1 and therefore does not work with our packages.
What is so imperative about going to gcc 3.1 that you have to break java?
I've seen the beta ships with gcc 3.1.1. If this holds for the release, that means there's going to be yet another C++ ABI incompatibility when gcc 3.2 comes out. I just hope RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0 both ship with the same compiler.
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It's the same situation that Windows users find themselves in all the time, but this time it happens in the Linux world and we wonder what the fix is....
Really? There are programs compiled for Windows 3.1 that still work perfectly on XP. And Windows users certainly don't end up with incompatible software every time Microsoft updates VisualC++/C#Studio6.5.NET (or whatever the hell they call it nowadays).
Incidentally, could someone who understands the issues a bit better explain why every upgrade of GCC breaks binary compatibility? And, more importantly, will I be able to run Quake III on Mdk9.0?
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no way. when i downloaded mandrake 8.0 it came with version 2.95 i believe of gcc, and it made a ton of stuff really hard to install. so much that i went with slackware. i got mandrake becasue even though i'm a little linux saavy, i wanted a trouble-free, easy-to-use solution that would stand up on its own. it's not what i got, and the gcc shipped with 8 got them quite a bit of flak. don't see why they'd do it again.
No one ever notes this, but Mandrake isn't just for newbies. It's actually a very good distribution for experienced sysadmins. Yeah, I know the've made their big rep on the "user friendly" front, and most people assume that a distro can't cater to both newbies and sysadmins... I used to think that, and never cared about giving Mandrake a look.
Then I got tired enough of trying to find a distro that really was what I as a sysadmin wanted (after trying redhat, slackware, debian, and suse, which back then were the main options), so I went ahead and gave Mandrake a whirl. I was very pleasantly surprised. Not only have they made sure the experienced users can disable the GUI stuff and not have it break the distro, they actually do active development in the areas that sysadmins care about. And their cooker development area is full of lots of good action for the bleeding edge types, whether you care about the latest GNOME & KDE or just ncurses & xterms.
Not to be flamebait, but I found in a nutshell that they contained all the source-y and sensible goodness I expected to get from Debian's policies and package management (the meatspace components of it, not dpkg itself), without some of the stuff I didn't like (which will remain here unnamed to avoid a distro war).
Mandrake was good enough that when I switched years ago I was able to use it as a base to compile everything on my home box from scratch and go from there ("why?" because it was there). Now that Gentoo & others are around, I'm planning to check those out and probably move on, but at least time when I switch distros it won't be because the one(s) I'm leaving behind are inadequate for someone that wants lots of control over their system.
Yeah.. wait 12 hours for KDE and X to build, when I can have it installed and expertly packaged by Debian developers in less than 15 minutes (i'm on DSL). The, at most, 5% speed increase to me isn't worth the wait of compiling EVERY SINGLE PIECE Of software on your computer.
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Incidentally, could someone who understands the issues a bit better explain why every upgrade of GCC breaks binary compatibility?
Short answer: the gcc crew is lazy, inconsiderate, or both.
Long answer: they keep changing the way they do C++ name mangling, keep changing the GNU-specific extensions, and keep changing the API for their "standard" C++ library. Once the ISO Standard for C++ was released a few years ago, the g++ ABI should have been finalized and set in stone. Yet g++-3.2 is not going to be backwardly compatible with g++-3.1. Aaargh!
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Save that I dont use Mandrake and still love my Slack but its nice that Drake guys used gcc 3.1 . Why ?
e l_gcc_bench2.html ) showed that gcc 3.1 produces killer c++ code as intel's compiler and msvc++.
Benchmarks ( http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/intel_comp/int
C++ code was a bottleneck for gcc 2.9x series thats why our pretty Mozilla is slower than its is on Windows. But with gcc 3.1 and upcoming gcc releases this is no true anymore. After this we will have killer c++ code . So this means faster kde & mozilla etc etc.
And gcc 3.1 is more ANSI/ISO C++ compliant see http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.1/changes.html
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Currently I have about half the stuff on my system compiled with gcc 3.1 and have not had a problem.
Someone who knows more about this please explain.
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i see the number 4:20 alot...
Uh-oh...but I should still be able to use my Loki games, right?
LDD tell me that myth 2 for example are linked against:
libX11.so.6
libXext.so.6
libpthread.so.0
libdl.so.2
libm.so.6
libc.so.6
ld-linux.so.2
No C++ libraries... Does that mean that it's safe to assume that myth2 will work then?