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Mandrake Linux... Not Dead Yet?
bloodeu writes "Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike, but this new release of Mandrake may hold many promising Linux users
what they have been waiting for, like NTFS resizing(which is a first), Automatic Network config(zeroconf), Supermount, and
many more. You can download the Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Here"
The obligatory Monty Python reference. I'll go sit quietly now.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
So we can all go download it and not pay them a cent.
uhhhhmmmmmm
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
Um, okay. Maybe I've been out of the loop when it comes to Linux/NTFS compatibility. I thought we were still kinda' afraid to write to NTFS partitions. Now we can resize them.
Can someone please elaborate?
Yes, so it's the really simple distro for thickies and n00bs. It's also by far and away the easiest Linux distro to set up and use that I've tried (and I'm from the days of Yggdrasil, me) so it's my distro of choice - it has (or is easily made to have) all the power of "proper" distros but isn't as condescending as Lycoris and friends.
Mandrake should be kept alive, it would be a loss to the Linux world if it were to die.
-Mark
Trying to out live apple
I tried it (9.0) for a few weeks and the only thing I didn't like was that wine wasn't installed/configured like in RedHat (7.3). Is this another case of some linux people hating a distro because it's too easy to use?
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Operating system distro Mandrake was found dead in it's Paris siege this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you didn't enjoy their work, there's no denying their contributions to the free software movement. Truly a French icon.
It's worth pointing out to anyone thinking of installing this as their main OS that this is an initial release candidate and is nowhere near prime time.. be warned unless you want to find and report bugs.
Mandrake is great. They've really built something that's useful in its own right, and provides many useful things back into the community. Maybe it's not for you, but it's a great place to start for a lot of people. A nice introduction.
The problem is, Mandrake as a business is like a comedy of errors. All sorts of crazy problems, some of which were outside their control, and some that could (and should) have been avoided in the first place. 20/20 hindsight is nice, so I can't carp too much, but if they could get their shit together for just one release (no distribution problems; keep the paying club members happy, and get them a box before it's been on shelves for 3 months), I think things could turn around in a hurry.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Now all the new stuff I"m looking forward to, zeroconf network, kde 3.1, gnome 2.2, XFree86 4.3, 4.21 kernel and a cornacopia of other programs, are in mandrake 9.1. While in the end I intend to move over to debian completely, IMO mandrake is the best of the others for me. I can't wait for 9.1 to become available.
I do security
I've Been Using ...
....
9.1 Beta 2 for about a month and I have to say
it rocks
it is much beter than Mandrake 8.0....
it is by far the easiest distro I have ever used
and with the exception of Knoppix the easiest to install...:)
I personaly hope they survive....
all of the needed aps are there I only have few complaints....
1. I had to specially select Vi for install and emacs auto installed...(Flame away)..
2. Gnome meeting was not installed...by default
3. I am having trouble changing some of the default loggin, and boot manager stuff....
other than that....I give the 9.1 Beta 2 an A+
give it to any newbee they will be happy
--meh--
Mandrake was a French distro....so it will never die.
Surrender, yes, but die? Never (pronounced: Nev'air!)
{SEG}
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike
Ok. I'm a Linux, more specifically a Unix "expert" and I can see nothing wrong with Mandrake:
A easy to install, easy to use, full featured Linux desktop? How horrible! Oh the humanity! When will it stop!
It's not like Mandrake Linux pissed in my Wheeties this morning.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Even if you don't use Mandrake, you've probably benefited from the work they've put into "making the Linux desktop user friendly."
:) [And I could be wrong -- perhaps they also had Red Hat, dunno.]
(That's a category I'm in right now: I don't currently have any systems running Mandrake, but for about three years running -- until about a month ago -- I did.)
- Mandrake concentrates on ease of install. Not that everyone's intuition is actually the same, goes the past-the-nipple argument, but Hey, Mandrake 6 did a lot better job with *my* intuition (and hardware) than did any of the contemporaries I can remember putting on.
- Automount. Yes, it's come and gone strangely (back now?), but Automount is a very good thing. Try explaining to a Mac user the procedure of mounting a CD drive, or a simple %$#@ USB memory key thing.
- Mandrake (afaik) was the first and so far only Linux distro to be sold as a standalone product in Walmart, and I bought several versions there (as the king of Swamp Castle says "... just to show 'em!"). Software specifics aside, this is another good reason to be grateful to Mandrake, whether you use their distro or not. Lindows was *not* the first Walmart-associated Linux
Mandrake started to fade off my systems when I discovered how nice Red Hat 8 is, and then when I used Knoppix to convert some machines to Debian. (And since I need to reduce the number of machines floating around here, there are fewer computers with which I care to purely experiment.) However, I plan to try the 9.1 release candidate to see where it falls.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So it's easy, when is the linux community going to drop this attitude of "Linux is supposed to be hard".
In the last three weeks I've tried RedHat 8.0(too slow on a 366mhz machine), Yopper, Knoppix (lots of stuff) and Mandrake 9.0. Of them all, I'm using mandrake. Why? because everything worked, first time, everytime. So I went out and bought a copy. Voting with my wallet, the easiest thing to do. I hope they make it out of Chapter 11 or whatever the french equivalent is. They're providing the gateway to make it easier to switch, without the cost overhead that Lindows requires.
~corporate tool, but employed~
Since some posts appear to be made in ignorance of this fact, Mandrake apparently is no longer going to be the best distro to freeload off of.
Only members will be able to download the new version, or order cheap cd sets when it is first released. Depending on what kind of member you are (I am a Silver member) will determine what kind of bandwidth priority you get. I think the free download version for 9.1 will only be available after the package version is in stores for a while. Maybe the free download to the public will not even be available until the first RC of the next distro is out.
Complain all you want, but you brought this upon yourself. I became a member and was willing to let my membership fees go, in part, to allowing freeloaders download at the same time as everyone else. However, there were too many of you and too few of me, so now if you don't want to pay but want the newest version you will have to just use an RC (sounds fair to me).
Anyway, Mandrake not being dead is not news to me or any other members. It is just news to the people who don't care enough to get involved. Why such people would even care about weither Mandrake is dead or not eludes me.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Distributions keep getting larger and larger, but now they come with promising Linux users? Wow! What will they think of next?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Just like Loki software is dead, no more games, the entire "linux game industry" collapsed when loki went away. All those great developers disappeared off the face of the earth never to think about a penguin again. Dan Vogel (the Really Smart Guy who ported UT to OpenGl) just disappeared, oh yeah except he ported UT2003 to OpenGL and got a Linux installer on the retail media. Loki is all gone, they've gone to the great icculus.org in the sky.
Yes Mandrake is dead, the IT (Ironed Tee shirts) pissed off all the money and Mandrake is dead. Oh, there's still that 10-12 guys who put together the release candidates, and the betas. The guys who are busting their humps as we speak to put together the hippest easiest bestest distro ever to be released. Yes it's dead, RedHat 8.0 just cleaned it out. Nobody needs Little Mandrake anymore, nobody ever cared about DRI working immediately after installation, and EVERYONE is listening to ogg media instead of MP3's. Sure Mandrake is dead, nobody even cared that Redhat 8.0's kernel didn't work right with WineX.
Dead dead dead, nobody needs an easy to use, easy to install, distro which can be installed on a computer with XP pre-installed without having to destroy the XP partition.
Everyone is pure, everyone runs Pure Linux, nobody needs games, nobody dual-boots, nobody is a noob, nobody needs to RTFM.
I renewed my Mandrake membership last week, did you?
The biggest difference between Mandrake and Red Hat is urpmi. urpmi is the packaging system that Mandrake employees, and just about every desirable program is available (after a little setup) with a simple:
a ke/9.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz
a ke/9.0/contrib/RPMS with synthesis.hdlist2.cz
urpmi (packagename)
First though, it's very handy to setup urpmi so that it never requests the installation CDs, but rather gets the packages via the internet. Here's what I do immediately after installing Mandrake:
1. Remove the three CD-based package sources:
urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 1 (x86) (cdrom1)"
urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 2 (x86) (cdrom2)"
urpmi.removemedia "International CD (x86) (cdrom3)"
2. replace them with an FTP source:
urpmi.addmedia base-ftp ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandr
(That's a single command. It may appear wrapped.)
3. add the contrib source:
urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandr
(That's a single command. It may appear wrapped.)
4. add the plf software source:
urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://plf.chem.yorku.ca/pub/plf/9.0 with hdlist.cz
(That's a single command. It may appear wrapped.)
After those four steps (don't forget to su to root before you run them) you'll be able to easily install just about any program that you run across . It brings the installation ease that Debian users enjoy (via apt) to linux newbies in Mandrake. Redhat has nothing that can touch urpmi. The term "RPM Hell" exists for a reason -- RedHat.
Apache 1.3 is still present, but it's in the Contribs (separate download or extra CD in PowerPack).
What's more, you can install *both* versions, and with a simple command (advxrun1.3 or advxrun2.0), change from one to the other.
PHP 4.3.1 has been tested a lot, and we fixed most major bugs. I use it on production on several servers, and I find it more stable than the 4.2 series.
The parent post is complete B.S.
Yes, the Club Members will have a more complete list of mirrors, possibly including Club-Only mirrors.
But as far as I know (and I am a Mandrake employee, so I should know), Mandrake Linux 9.1 will be available for everyone on public mirrors.
Don't forget that it's 100% open-source, most of the stuff is GPL, so it has to be distributable by everyone.
That said, I strongly suggest our users become members of the Club, it's the best way to support our work.
Ah, how quickly we forget where the Statue of Liberty comes from, which way it faces, and *why?*
Oddly enough the American armies who "saved" France did. That's one of the reasons they were there in the first place, to honor a debt that was defaulted in fact and unrepayable in philosophy.
I live in upstate NY, just a couple blocks from the occasional local residence of a young French gentleman whom both Pershing and Patton are reputed to have payed homage to when first setting foot on French Soil.
LaFayette, we are here, and some of us haven't forgotten.
And don't forget the old saying, 60 million Frenchman can't be wrong. Hell, maybe when they became "Cheese eating surrender monkeys" it's simply because they knew something we didn't.
Go figure.
As for Mandrake. Good distro in its way. If the company deserves to live it just might pull it off. If it doesn't well, millions of Frenchman have died while singing La Marseillaise rather than surrender.
Did you know that proper protocol for handling a French flag is that once it's raised it is never taken down again until reduced to rags? Think about it.
KFG
"
- Allocate addresses without a DHCP server.
- Translate between names and IP addresses without a DNS server.
- Find services, like printers, without a directory server.
- Allocate IP Multicast addresses without a MADCAP server.
"Apple already uses this technology under the name RendezVous in Mac OS X.
As a Mac OSX user I can say that this techno does exactly what is supposed to (since RendezVous is deeply embedded in the system and some third party software, and Rendevous-enable products are available, it's a true real world benefits, not just a lab's experiment)
It's easy to understand the point when more OS, network devices, Consumer Devices (Philips is already doing prototypes), and P2P softwares (the mac version of Limewire is RendezVous enabled) will adopt the technology.
Without touching off a flame war, I will have to disagree with:
Redhat has nothing that can touch urpmi.
There is a version of apt for RedHat-- Here's how to install and use it in RH 8:
Download and install these:
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/psyche/apt
Make sure you're online, then, as root (or sudo)issue the following commands:
apt-get update
(You will see apt download package listings)
apt-get -f install
(This is to fix dependencies that will prevent apt from working.)
Your output should look something like this:
Reading Package Lists... Done
Collecting File Provides... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 removed and 0 not upgraded.
If your output is different, make sure that you know what you are doing before you let apt make changes to your system.
Now, do:
apt-get install synaptic
and run synaptic as root or sudo root. You now have a gui tool to resolve dependencies and install packages.
This was shamelessly stolen from an excellent article by Robert C. Dowdy on OSNews:
http://www.osnews.com/printer.php?news_id=1890
God is imaginary
Here (195kB PNG) is a screenshot of Mandrake 9.1rc1 running Gnome with the Galaxy theme. I hae done almost no changes to Gnome (I don't usually use it), so this is pretty much how it looks currently out-the-box after changing to the Galaxy theme (which I assume will be enabled by default on rc2). The window decorations for KDE went in only a few days ago, wait till I update some stuff from cooker for a KDE screenshot.
My USB flash disk was detected automatically, just had to right-click on the desktop and check "removable" (in KDE an icon appears which you can just double-click). ACPI works (though I am not sure how much functionality my Thinkpad 600X supports). Note the ACPI is not enabled by default (acpi=off is in the default append for the bootloader) due to problems with desktops. Zeroconf works (ie over a crossover to a windows box I get a "auto-configuration"-compatible IP address and can resolve my own hostname via "dns"), but the gui tools need a bit more work (config only works during install currently), but my NIC does not support ifplugd, so I do not get automatic interface management.
I did make some changes to the fonts in Mozilla, which may have affected how Galeon displays.
We just hope that freetype-2.1.4 will be out in time to make it, since the maintainer will not agree to shipping CVS versions (which Redhat seems happy with, even with glibc to the point of breaking things like winbind - for those of you who think Mandrake is not stable).
Let me get this straight...you consider a "free ride" like the ability to go from Windows to Linux frustrating? You want people to be "self-sufficient" and "figure things out for themselves?" In other words, you want them to take time out of their days learning to use their system in order to be productive, when they could be using that valuable time to actually BE productive?
If everyone operated like this, then there would be very little time wasted explaining the documented solutions to common problems, which would free everyone up to concentrate on the real problems, in order to make progress.
Instead of this ass-backwards view, how about developers get around to FIXING those common problems, so they don't need to be explained? Expecting people to make tinkering with their OS a hobby in order to use it--lest they get a "free ride"--is ridiculous to me. It reaks of the "smug feeling of superiority" you say isn't so prevalent. Linux being difficult to set up isn't a fault of the users. I am so tired of people who imply such. Some out there need to spend some time away from their command prompt and Emacs sessions and interact with the rest of the world and see how they use computers. Otherwise, Linux will forever remain just a nice file and web server.
Sorry for the frustrated tone...I just want Linux to succeed, and I see so many attitudes holding it back.
Is knowing you downloaded The 3 ISOs before it was posted on slashdot.
arcane for life