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Mandrake 9.2b1 Released, 2.6 Test Kernel in Cooker

Posted by timothy on from the making-things-easy dept.

DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced 9.2 beta 1 of their distribution. More interestingly, Mandrake has included a test version of kernel 2.6 in cooker (their development version). It's dated 27 July so it should be on all the cooker mirrors in the RPM2 directory by now. If you can't find it on your favorite mirror, it's definitely on ftp.sunet.se." Better yet, Bruha points to BitTorrent files for the 1st 2nd, and 3rd ISOs, and a link to the Mandrake 9.2 wiki, writing "Note that the beta1 installation uses the same kernel as 9.1 did, so if you had problems installing 9.1, you may want to wait for beta2 (which will use an updated kernel)."

27 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Sweet... by GameGod0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will this be the first major distro running the 2.6 kernel?

    1. Re:Sweet... by MuParadigm · · Score: 5, Informative


      I think so.

      Word on various boards seems to be that the 2.6 kernel is much faster than 2.4.x. People are claiming improvements of up to 50% in some operations.

      Of course, these are early adopters, most of them with single cpu machines. I haven't heard of anyone testing it for robustness or stability in a high-end environment yet.

      Anyone else got word on it's performance or bugs?

    2. Re:Sweet... by MuParadigm · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sorry to post to myself, but I was wrong about Mamdrake being the first major distro to supply the 2.6 kernel. Red Hat has had an RPM for a few weeks.

    3. Re:Sweet... by Tirel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, not really, gentoo has had the option since 2.6.0-test1 came out. The portage tree is wonderfully updates within a few hours with the main branch and others (mm, aa, ac, ck, ...), so the only thing you need to do is check out /usr/portage/sys-kernel and decice which one you want to have at install time (or later, if you're upgrading like me)

    4. Re:Sweet... by mickwd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Well, not really, gentoo has had the option since 2.6.0-test1 came out."

      Yes, but all Gentoo does with a kernel is download the source and install it into /usr/src/linux, leaving you to configure it, build it and install it.

      Anyone who can download a file and use 'tar' can do the same thing, quite easily.

      And when you install a new kernel, Portage doesn't even tell you which ebuilds need to be re-installed (nvidia-kernel, i2c, lm-sensors, etc).

      Not knocking Gentoo (I run Gentoo and Mandrake), but the binary distributions do more of the hard work for you. To some people that is their strength, to others it is their weakness.

  2. 11 days late by peek-n-squeeze · · Score: 3, Funny

    Beta 1 was put onto the mirrors on 22nd July. So by the time you read this, it'll be at beta2

    --
    "My dog needs new ears"
  3. If you're running Redhat... by warmcat · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... note that this guy at redhat is tracking the test releases with redhat-installable RPMs, over RH9.

    If you try it, note that you must upgrade modutils and some other packages given in the link. Many modules have changed names, like usb-ohci.o -> ohci-hcd.ko so you will need to do some screwing around. I have been running test1 then test2 for a couple of weeks from the link on top of Redhat 9 and it has been working very nicely.

  4. Why is this on the front page? by groove10 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know a lot of people use Mandrake (myself included), but really is it necessary to annouce the beta version of a point release? C'mon... Not that many people are interested in burning the ISOs for a b1. When the point release comes out of beta, then maybe it deserves a front page article, but this is just wasted space on /.s front page.

    --
    MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
    1. Re:Why is this on the front page? by antiMStroll · · Score: 4, Funny

      What part of 'News for Nerds' do you find confusing?

  5. test kernels by Tirel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't be fooled by labels such as "beta" and "test", I've been running 2.6.0-test1-mm2 on a server for about a week now and it's extremely stable. If you need any of the features that the 2.6 branch introduces or if you just want to try it out, mandrake is the way to go.

    OTOH, the only thing I dislike about mandrake is that they force KDE down your throat like it's the next best thing after bread and butter, I really wish they would include mode optinons at install like wm2, ion, openbox, icewm, but also install the qt and gtk libs in the background so you could run gnome/kde applications. That way more people would find out about the alternatives to KDE (it's too distracting and relativealy slow for my tastes.)

    1. Re:test kernels by Tirel · · Score: 5, Informative

      read this

  6. Don't post to stories you don by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Please don't post to stories that you don't think are interesting. If you do, you will just post uninteresting comments. A new release of a beta of linux version is very important. That's how the news reaches those who would beta test. I'm very interested in knowing what to expect, even if I don't test the beta.

  7. Re:Unfinished product? by azzy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    New users shouldn't be using a beta

  8. What, 16 alternative WMs too few? by buchanmilne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    OTOH, the only thing I dislike about mandrake is that they force KDE down your throat like it's the next best thing after bread and butter, I really wish they would include mode optinons at install like wm2, ion, openbox, icewm, but also install the qt and gtk libs in the background so you could run gnome/kde applications.

    $ cat /etc/mandrake-release
    Mandrake Linux release 9.2 (Cooker) for i586
    $ urpmq --sources enlightenment windowmaker blackbox xfce olvwm waimea AfterStep amiwm evilwm fluxbox fvwm fvwm2 ion ion-metadome pwm ratpoison rox-session swm
    ftp://ftp.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/ Mandr ake/RPMS/enlightenment-0.16.5-13mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp: //ftp.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS/WindowMaker-0.80.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://f tp.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS/blackbox-0.65.0-1mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp. cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS/xfce-3.8.18-1mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.cae. co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/swm-1.2.5-3mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.cae.c o.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/fvwm2-2.4.16-2mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.ca e.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/amiwm-0.20.48-6mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.c ae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/waimea-0.4.0-3mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.ca e.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/olvwm-4.4-14mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.cae. co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/AfterStep-1.8.11-3mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ft p.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/ratpoison-1.2.2-2mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp .cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/fluxbox-0.9.4-2mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.c ae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/pwm-1.0-11mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.cae.co .za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/ion-metadome-20020605-3mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp ://ftp.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/evilwm-0.99.14-1mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp. cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/fvwm-1.24r-23mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.cae .co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/ion-20030627-3mdk.i586.rpm
    ftp://ftp.ca e.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586/Mandr ake/RPMS2/rox-session-0.1.20-1mdk.i586.rpm

    (this is our internal mirror, find your own)

    Is that enough? (oh, there's still qvwm in PLF, since it looks too similar to some other desktop we know).

    Mandrake has never forced a desktop on anyone, and all you need to enjoy the Mandrake configuration tools is gtk+2 and perl.

    Sure, not all the window managers are in the main distro, but without contrib, you're missing half of the distro anyway!

    1. Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? by buchanmilne · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sure, the default is KDE, usually with GNOME also (would you prefer newbies straight from Windows to be dumped into ion?), but you can uncheck KDE and GNOME during installation in the main package selection (this has been the case as long as I can remember, so at least since 7.0), and installing a different one is trivial. Plus, they all work out-the-box from whichever display manager you use, and most of them have the consistent Mandrake menus throughout.

      If you don't want KDE, all you have to do is uncheck one pretty obvious checkbox ...

    2. Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? by buchanmilne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd prefer they be started with something sensible that doesn't cause them to think 'Linux is slow and bloated' right off the bat, frankly.

      Remember that the competition now isn't Windows 3.11, it's Windows XP. We don't need to worry about bloat too much by default, but we are behind on features and usability.

      If speed was all that mattered, why don't we just give them twm, mutt, links and vi?

      Sorry, but there is no way you can put ice up against WindowsXP for a newbie, but you can with KDE, and maybe the latest GNOME release.

      I think it would give a better initial impression to most newbies.

      Riiight. Why can't I drag and drop to the desktop? Where is my "My Documents?", "Where is my CD-ROM drive?", "Why is the text in the menus so ugly?. Maybe 7 years ago, before Windows 98 ice could have competed with Windows ...

      Instead, these things are left exclusively for those of us that know about them, know how to find them and how to configure them on our own time, while the newbies are being given a very bad impression of Linux

      No, the people at mandrakeusers.org, mandrakeclub.com etc will quickly set them right.

      if they try to install it on anything but a brand new box at least.

      KDE plus OpenOffice.org plus Mozilla plus a few more utilities run just great on my 800 Duron which is now 3 years old (assuming you have about 192MB ram or more). My girlfriends 366 Celeron/128MB ram machine is a bit slow, but not noticably slower (except OpenOffice.org startup) than it was running Windows98.

  9. Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) by PeteQC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The simple fact is that no true partiot would use Linux at all. In these hard times we must rally around our companies, our economy, and our president. If we let the 'Linux Community' have their way, we will all be at the mercy of the Germans making KDE, or the Japanese with their desktop.

    What are you saying? Oh no, there's other country outside USA... We should not help them. Yeah, they should buy US products, but please don't buy their products?

    And after that, people will still be amazed that there could be an anti-american feeling in the old countries...

    --
    Montreal - Best city to live in!
  10. Re:Unfinished product? by snoozerdss · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mandrake Linux 9.2 Beta 1 has arrived to offer you the opportunity of an entertaining summer bug squashing. Ranking of this next Mandrake, as for level of refinement, is partly in your hands. Join forces with the Mandrake Development team! Install the Beta and send your reports. Remember however that this is an experimental distribution not suitable to everyday-tasks machines. Take care.

    Thats from Mandrake's website.
    Jeeze...RTFA next time. Or go look up the definition of BETA software.

    --
    Snoozer.
  11. Huh? by ErikZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I thought Mandrake needed millions of dollars in donations or it was going out of business? What happened?

    --
    Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
    1. Re:Huh? by t482 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There distribution was alway profitable. It was there other business which pushed them into the equivalent of chapter 11.

    2. Re:Huh? by buchanmilne · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I switched my attention from Mandrake to Red Hat when I read that Mandrake was doomed.

      Isn't that like kicking people when they're down? Here I was buying stuff from them (since I do generate spare income using Mandrake), and contributing to the distro, when I should instead have dumped and run for a distro that doesn't pay attention to the features *I* want?

      Now it looks like Mandrake is back on track

      They weren't ever off-track ... they have just had to cut down on cash-sapping activities, like expo-attendance etc

      or are they releasing work that had already been done and this is going to be the last we hear?

      Well, since they went into bankruptcy protection, they released 9.1, which was a pretty good release. And since 9.1, they have been making serious changes to allow greater community participation, to the extent that community contributors who know their stuff have commit rights into the main distro (although more recognition for the community work on maintaining the ports to alpha, hammer, sparc and ppc would be nice). But they have done a lot of work on GUI cleanups in the config tools etc, added more features in urpmi, and of course updated to the latest packages.

      And they are still innovating more than Redhat ever did (unless the only thing you use linux for is an Oracle cluster - in which case you're probably better off with SuSE anyway ...).

      Now, imagine what they could do if they had enough resources to employ more hackers?

  12. Re:Unfinished product? by rocjoe71 · · Score: 4, Funny
    is mandrake trying to push an unfinished product on us?

    Those *jerks*! The nerve of them shipping a BETA release with bugs in it.

    And here I am, sitting around like a fool thinking "beta" was short for "betar than the final release".

    --
    Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
  13. I would like to see OpenOffice 1.1 in mdk9.2 by t482 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have been using OO 1.1 now for 6 months or so. Its beta - but it is very stable. Some of the features (print to pdf) make it worth including it in the distro now.

    Also does anyone know if they have included the Ximain OO hacks for OO?

  14. Learn some econ, Troll-Boy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look, when I spend $50 on Red Hat instead of $2000 on Microsoft, the other $1950 doesn't just disappear. I spend it on other goods and services. So I still purchase $2000 of goods and services into the world economy, it just goes to more people than the ass-hats at Microsoft.

    Ironically, the name of this fallacy is the "broken window fallacy".

  15. Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) by coats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The simple fact is that no true partiot would use Linux at all. In these hard times we must rally around our companies, our economy, and our president... What are you saying? Oh no, there's other country outside USA...

    One of the most profound students of "what is different about America was the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. I*n his book Democracy in America describing what makes American culture distinctive, he said that the inclination of Americans to form informal, community-based non-government, non-corporate associations in order to do the projects the community needs. Volunteer fireman associations are but one common example.

    And now the Internet has expanded the notion of community past walking-distance geographic boundaries, has expanded those needed community projects to include Linux, Apache, and the like, and has exported the whole volunteer community association idea to the world.

    The sad thing is that now big government and corporatism -- and collusion between the two -- are destroying that uniquely American practice of volunteer community associations at home!

    --
    "My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
  16. I hope Mandrake doesn't burn it's self on this one by Mipsalawishus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The last Mandrake release ran a 2.4.21 prerelease kernel. I personally never had any stability problems with it. I also understand that Mandrake tends to gravitate toward the bleeding edge of the packages they include in their releases, but the kernel is one place I think shouldn't be included in this manner. I think Mandrake is a wonderful company who makes an awesome distribution. I even have a customer's server running Mandrake 9.0 for 7 months and they haven't had a single problem with it (they use it for Samba and DHCP primarily). I suppose if one is looking for the latest and greatest, look toward Mandrake. Otherwise stick to Slackware or Debian for more matured packages in a distribution release.

  17. Re:France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Since Red Hat is an American distribution, will it brutally murder innocent civilians after I install it? Will it leave dupleted uranium on your keyboard? Inquiring minds want to know.