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Mandrake Releases 9.1b1, New Packaging Model
DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced version 9.1 of their distribution. While there are some interesting choices for new packages (like kernel 2.4.21pre2 and XFree86 4.3 beta) the most groundbreaking thing about this release is the way in which they decide which packages are "high priority" for development and inclusion in the standard install. Any registered user at MandrakeClub can vote. Their opinion is that no one knows where development effort needs to be spent better than the end-user." Update: 01/10 19:38 GMT by T : That's "distribution."
To me, that was a damn confusing summary..
What exactly are they talking about?
There is absolutely, positively NOTHING bad about the RPM. It's all in the tools around it. Have you ever thought what would be so special about *.deb if it wasn't for apt-get ? Right, nothing. And you can have apt-rpm for RedHat.
Next thing you know, they'll be making money.
I think these are the innovations that the linux distros need even more than new drivers, other technical advances.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Personal Strap-On Aircraft for Auction on eBay A What?
Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart
Playing devil's advocate here; I'll venture that most of those machines get reformatted with a warez'd copy of Windows.
Trolling is a art,
The line I find most interesting is this one:
I guess since I run it on my desktop, and finally convinced my wife to run it on her laptop, I should cave and make that 19,999 users.
Never confuse volume with power.
I think not. I doubt millions went to walmart.com and ordered these. Anyone got sales numbers?
to remind everyone who has used or is interested in using Mandrake to become a Mandrakeclub member? The Slashdot community has been pretty critical of Mandrake recently, so here is your chance to become a member and do something about the distro you spend so much time bitching about.
.?
Otherwise, people might get the idea that slashdoters are a bunch of whining freeloaders who complain for the very sake of complaining.
Er, or is that me . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Playing devil's advocate here; I'll venture that most of those machines get reformatted with a warez'd copy of Windows.
If I was aware of that happening, I'd turn them in. Not out of Linux zealotry per se, but because I don't want M$ to have a good reason to squash the market for PCs without the M$ tax.
Of course, I like manually installing RPMs; it's really not that much of a hassle for me, and it means I always know exactly what's being installed and why. If there were an automated system, it'd probably just display a progress bar saying "Satisfying Dependencies" and not tell me anything useful, which would be annoying.
Note that there's still approx. 3 months before a scheduled release, so I'd expect the kernel and XFree86 versions to be later.
/etc/fstab or whatever... hence, a distributionthat appeals to new users, and also can be used by developers.
The package management tools have also been evolving fast -- if you follow the cooker list, you'll know that the gtk+ 2 version of rpmgrake is out, and it's much faster and improved. (and there's an update to urpmi, too).
At this point, urpmi is approaching the usefulness and robustness of apt-get, albeit with slightly fewer features -- e.g. no "suggested other packages". It's possible those willl come later, at least in principle: there's nothing inherent about RPM that prevents such features.
If 9.0 crashed for you, the right thing to do was to report the problems one by one, and help get them fixed for everyone -- not wait 3 months and then whine on slashdot that there were problems. Maybe the Mandrake developers didn't have your hardware. Maybe the XFree86 developers didn't have a machine with your video card, soundcard and disk controller, and couldn't reproduce the problem.
In general I think Mandrake is going in a good direction: making a Linux distribution that's easy to administer and use, but that is powerful enough for experienced users and admins (e.g. distributed package management, command-line configuration possible), has reliable automated package downloading and installation (including dependencies), and yet that uses the standard config files for everything, so that you can still administer it the "old fashioned way" be editing
Some of Mandrake's tools (e.g. draksync, a graphical front end to rsync that can use ssh) could do with being moved to sourceforge or somewhere and being more widely used.
Having a Linux distribution that most people can install in 20 minutes to an hour, with no difficult questions, makes a big difference. People moving from MS Windows are often used to reinstalling frequently: this way, wen they can't fix a problem, instead of going back to Windows, they go reinstall Linux, until they learn more about reconfiguring and fixing stuff. And if they never learn how to reconfigure, and always reinstall, it's still a win if it doesn't crash, is Free, open, and they can have a say in what packages are available.
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
..I have to admit I don't live in any major urban area nor visit and shop much. I honestly don't know what's on the shelf any longer at any of these various electronics stores. I got a chinamart and a small office supply to look at locally. If lycoris is on the shelf there at Fry's for 20$ that's better than nuthing,it's a good thing, I hope they do well, or maybe decide to merge efforts with another company, which is a better idea, IMO.
Best I can do in an individual effort is to encourage my real world and cyber world friends to try something "new" out, which I already do. Every time they get nailed with the daily virus, they get a polite razz. When people tell me this or that is "too hard", best I can say is to just freeking try getting out of first gear with your computer. I tell them you would at least learn how to hit all the gears on your car, your brane ain't gonna explode to give it the same effort with a computer. You got more than first gear and "engine stop". I know it's a real tough nut to crack, I can see that readily, so all I can say to the various distro guys is hang in there, less releases but better quality,get togerther and see if ya'all can't AT LEAST pick A desktop and some way to update, pick a freeking set of normal apps and make sure they work well,and keep it very reasonable in cost, and do your best to get the pc makers to at least give their customers an option. And if that means to some of the programmers and orgs and companies etc, who contribute code for profit or free, to swallowing some pride and going to help out the closest existing to your point of view major effort instead of "yet another effort-wasting branch" of this or that OS or app, then do it. Just do it. From the outside looking in, there's way, way, way more than enough "distros" and "apps" out there that strive to do the same exact thing. That's about it.
I like the voting model going in the parent article. I'd like to see that concept go to some sort of even higher level, to consolidate some of the branches back into a stronger effort. Maybe that's impossible, I just don't know, but the extremes are that-extremes- one OS and one function app ain't enough, 50 lebenty dozen is "too much". Cooperation is not a cuss word, it actually "works".
Railroads got to be a good deal from standardizing on at least a track size and width.