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Mandrake 9.0 (Dolphin) Is Available [updated]
joestar writes "What else to say? I've tested the RCs and they were great... There are two very interesting links: the Press Release, and a very nice presentation. From the presentation: 'Affirming its leading position in the Linux desktop arena, Mandrake Linux 9.0 introduces many newly redesigned graphical desktops and configuration utilities. The famous "Mandrake touch" is evident throughout the many clean, attractive and friendly desktops to make everyday tasks easier for all users of a Mandrake system.' And apparently it's already LSB-1.2 certified!" Update: 09/25 23:57 GMT by T : Apropos new releases, an anonymous reader writes "Parts of Red Hat's next OS have been unofficially leaked, as news.com reports
here. The official release date is scheduled for next Monday, 9/30/02." Update: 09/26 00:29 GMT by T : Gaël Duval points to less-swamped links to the press release and to the Presentation & Features page. Thanks, Gaël.
So it comes down to either wait 8 hours for it to compile (portage), or wait 8 hours to figure out the dependencies (rpm), or wait 8 months for someone to package it (deb).
MDK 9 uses KDE 3, which is supposed to be slightly faster than KDE 2.2.2 which is used in MDK 8.2. Also it uses gcc 3.2, which also is supposed to produce faster code than older gcc versions. So probably it will be faster. Noticably faster? Go figure.. If you want a noticable improvement in speed, change to a lightweight wm instead of heavy desktop environments like kde or gnome.
kde 3.0.3 runs great under Gentoo on my p266, 64MB RAM laptop. Not to troll, but Mandrake is bloat. KDE works just fine.
They break binary compatiblity, because of the new version of gcc (the older Redhat and Mandrake versions used gcc 2.9x). Breaking binary compatiblity is a very good reason to start over with a new major number.
I pre-ordered the Mandrake 9 DVD release about a month ago. It looks like it'll ship by the end of October.
Having run (GNU/)Linux for just about 4 months, I'm still very new to it, and I'm proud to support Mandrake financially for providing a distro that's making my transition easier. If you download Mandrake 9, and end up using it, consider buying the next boxed version. Good developers deserve our support.
(I'm not affiliated with Mandrake in any way other than as a user.)
"It's very sad that such an influential news website as /. is lowering itself to promoting incremental upgrades of individual distributions".
No, it isn't. It's interesting techie news, and news that will interest a lot of people here. Let's watch and see how many comments get posted to this article, to find out whether I'm right.
"The focus should be on the overall effort of the Linux development community".
Then why don't we talk about the excellent community that exists around Mandrake (more so than some other distros), and let's discuss whether this has helped make Mandrake 9.0 a superb release or not.
"I understand how important Mandarke is.....since it is for 'n00bs'".
Not just for n00bs. I use it, I'm pretty happy with it, and I've been a Unix programmer (and system administrator) for 15 years, and a Linux user for many of those years. If Mandrake can stop the occasional QA howlers, it'll be even better. But they've really made an effort with 9.0 - let's find out whether they've succeeded.
"...the focus should still be on the overall development of the kernel".
Why ? Of course it's of interest, but it's not the only thing. The kernel, on its own, is more-of-less useless - it doesn't do anything on its own. But what is does do is enable everything else to work. It is a means to an end. That end is a may be a work tool, a plaything, a communication tool, or a hobby (for some even a cause). Any of those ends, or the means to those ends, is worthy of discussion.
My verdict is you shouldn't mod someone down because you don't agree with their opinion. Make a reply explaining your side, try to make others believe you're the one in the right, but, for example, to call someone a troll because he likes Windows more than Linux is assinine, and counter-productive to everything this page is supposed to stand for.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Sure, its not for the more Advanced so much as the Newbies, but atleast the Newbies have something that can get them started. We should be promoting switching to Linux not scaring them away with something complicated(not that Linux is complicated but still the command-line scares people). So stop being Anti-Mandrake and be more accepting. *Gets a garbage lid and waits for rotten fruit to be thrown*
Just to say, from here (Paris) I have fast and responsive connection to them, so maybe the bottleneck isn't at theirs ...
One of those Europeans...
It would seem to me that this is the perfect opportunity to show of legit uses of P2P. Anyone who downloads Mandrake successfully over the next week should share the ISO's on gnutella, kazaa, etc. Not only would this reduce server load, but it would prove that not all P2P traffic is RIAA/MPAA owned content.
I agree for most posta. If a Windows user posts and lists reasons why he prefers windows to linux, that isn't always a troll. If he comes out and gives reasons why linux sucks, then there is reason to mod down that post. I feel that the whole modding system on Slashdot has become a way to promote Linux and to dismiss Windows. I haven't ever seen a pro-windows post that was modded up. Slashdot keeps giving the same people mod points when it should instead give different people those points. Instead of giving 20 people 5 points each, maybe 100 people should be given 1 point each. More people= more points of view. Mod me down, I don't freaking care. I'm not a Karma Whore, I'm just a whore.
--Forest C. Adcock--
Are you unfamiliar with the fact that GNU/Linux distributions are maturing at a rate faster than other operating systems and software? Since an operating system contains more components than say, a web browser, it has a much greater chance of reaching a major revision than a minor revision. Consider the transition from win95--win98--wimME. None of these could be truly considered Major revisions from Win95. They should, therefore, been named Win95 1.0, Win95 1.2, Win95 1.3. Some people exhausted huge amounts of money "upgrading" from Win95 to Win98 just to get USB support. Then they screwed their systems up completely by installing winME. Lets not forget there were also TWO versions of Win98 , OSR2 should have been a free patch to Win98 OSR1 but M$ got greedy. Sure, some OSs go by kernel revision, but the kernel is, of course, only one component of a complete distro, so it has less chance of becoming incompatible with previous components. Mandrake has, in my opinion, brought Linux to the masses by making it feasable for a non-CS major to actually use a computer in conjunction with Linux to do WORK. Sometimes we all have to remember that the function of a computer is to retrieve, manipulate and send data. Everyone needs to be able to use their data, and isn't quite so interested in doing things the most difficult way possible.
The commercial distro ships with NVidia drivers.
There will be drivers on Mandrakeclub soon.
Otherwise, you must download and rebuild, install, and run XFdrake again.
There were some rumours that the GF4 was working with the latest XFree86 (4.2.1) packages, but haven't tested myself.