Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake 9.2 RC1
RabidChipmunk writes "Mandrake 9.2RC1 is out. Go get it with bit-torrent and speed up my download. I like the idea that posting to Slashdot could actually speed up a download. It seems so wrong." If you're on a slow pipe, don't underestimate the throughput of the postal system. Mark Walker writes "Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC1 is appearing on mirrors as I type this. We're currently downloading it from Mandrake, for http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com."
The following message was presented by http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com for all your budget linux cds!
"Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC1 is appearing on mirrors as I type this. We're currently downloading it from Mandrake, for http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com."
I'm sorry, but this is a blatant advert. Why did the editors include that?
--matt from http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com
Go to http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com
Thats right folks, http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com
Don't forget, http://www.budgetlinuxcds.com
No content in the links....just a link to the .tor's and some cd seller. Hello editors?
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
RC1 = Release Candidate #1
Usually followed by RC2 etc ...
I know Mandrake absolutely rocks, but isn't this a bit to much, making a /. story out of the first RC ??
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
What's new with Mandrake in this release? I didn't see anything in the story brief and I am too lazy to search for the info. I don't follow this distro (Im a RedHat user) but I would like to know what warrants a RC release story on the front of Slashdot. Is there some sort of whizbang feature that I don't know I need to have? Enlighten me!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Dont just "steal" Linux, join the club and help pay for development of future versions of Linux Mandrake.
This company is in serious financial trouble right now and they NEED our help, so if you download and like Mandrake please join the club! By joining the club you are helping yourself, you are going to get better higher quality software so consider it an investment in your own future.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This has been out for ages. I would have played with it over a week ago but I couldn't face grabbing ISOs over a 56k line :-)
Actually, I'd just be finishing about now...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
So for home use - Mandrake has always been the sweet spot - excellent NTFS support out of the box as well just generally very user friendly interface... not the heavyweight server backend that other distros are... My 2 cents...
Changelog is here: http://www3.mandrakelinux.com/en/92beta.php3
Corrections from beta1 include:
- Rpmdrake now functional
- Upgrade from former versions now fully handled
- New windows are now conveniently centered
Urpmi and rpmdrake still complain about missing key. This issue should be fixed in the next beta.
Improvements:
- First version of Netprofile, the new network profiles manager designed for users who connect to multiple networks. Feedback is highly requested for this newly introduced feature.
- Complete rewrite of userdrake (user management) in Gtk2
- New bootsplash (graphical boot) with graphical design not completed
- Improved localization
- New font support for Indian
- Enhanced drakTermServ (terminal server configurator).
New software versions:
- KDE 3.1.3
- GNOME 2.3.5
- Evolution 1.4.4
- Openldap 2.1.22
- kerberos5 1.3
We're supposed to bitch endlessly about how this is an advertisement.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Linux is open source, its not a "product" its code. You pay for the development of the code, you dont pay for a license to run the prooduct.
You arent helping the open source movement or mandrake by buying from a store, they make more money when you pay them directly and you pay alot less money. Also its a more stable form of income for you to subscribe considering they open source they dont make money from license fees, so you have to support the developers.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So what does this story have to do with Apple!?
If you guys are gonna run a mac site you need to run Apple stories!
(for the humor impaired, that was tongue in cheek)
If the /. editors keep this up, Slashdot will loose its reputation for only reporting on important social issues and touching human-interest stories!
Yes if you want to support Mandrake give them money.
But if you want to support the various apps and projects give them money directly.
I think the work done on gnome, kde and X are more likey important to a typical user.
If you want that to improve put your money there, not on the guys making a distribution.
I guess the "hurtling down the highway" part is where you get the bandwidth. A station wagon full of tapes sitting in the driveway is just storage space.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
That quote actually is by Andrew Tanenbaum (from "Computer Networks"):
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
Instead, this one has been attributed to Linus:
Real Men don't make backups. They upload it via ftp and let the world mirror it.
The ability to do that is all built-in to the BitTorrent protocol. You just need a client which doesn't suck.
On Windows, I use this. I'm sure you can find equivalent clients for other operating systems with a quick Google search.
...when it's masquerading as journalism.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"Looked like it would be nice and simple for people who were just starting out with Linux.....but unfortunately all that only gets in the way when you're actually trying to do something meaningful with your installation."
Eh?
You're not compelled to use all of Mandrake's GUI and command-line tools all the time. If you find the GUI tools restrictive, then use the normal vi/emacs/iptables/ifconfig/whatever...... provided in exactly the same manner as on every other Linux distribution.
Mandrake's tools are provided in addition to the standard unix/GNU/Linux utilities - not instead of them.
with the blatant advert in that post I am wondering if they paid for the post?
Hrm.. that might be a new marketing angle from slashdot..
News for nerds, stuff that people paid 'us' for 'you' to look at.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I don't get these types of posts. First its as if there's a presumption that Linux should be hard to use in order to be taken seriously. Then there seems to be the insinuation that because its easy(er) to use its somehow lost the 'power' of other less user friendly distributions.
I'd be curious to hear what exactly are the lacking features? I've been using Linux since 1998 and tried quite a few distro's before deciding on Mandrake (Redhat, Debian, Caldera *long before SCO*, FreeBSD, Gentoo, etc). They all function basically the same. My desktop has always been Blackbox, bash is set and gcc is standard.
If your don't like Mandrakes configuration tools you've got all the standard tools: XFree86configuration, Netconf, Vi. I'm not sure of a single package that you can get on another distro that you can't on Mandrake and you can certainly compile anything else you'd like.
To me Mandrake is simple a better thought out distribution, but with all the flexibility of a Linux distribution it can be as full featured or as limited as you'd like.
Quack, quack.
Without a lot of experience with various distributions I cannot agree or disagree, but I can say this:
We are using Mandrake 9.1 to push (finally) into some Linux installs at work in a classically Windows only environment. Overall, it has been a success.
We have two basic flavors of machines we build with Mandrake 9.1: "surveillance" boxes, and LAMP servers.
Surveillance boxes have 6 to 8 LCD monitors and are running icewm, or KDE (not decided yet), with Xinerama enabled. These boxes are replacing Windows NT machines that used Exceed to run X applications. Now they natively run on the Xfree86 server, and they work great with Xinerama and all those monitors. POW! No more Windows licenses! POW! No more Exceed licenses! These boxes use a single (AGP) Matrox G550 running two heads, and then four to six (PIC) TNT2 cards to bring the machine up to six or eight monitors total. These machines are appliance like, if one dropped, we build another to replace it, lickety split.
Our LAMP servers are more simple.. built in (single head) motherboard video, networking, and a single IDE hard drive. Cron'd rsyncs back up our data off the LAMP servers and onto another Linux box for "up to the hour" protection.
Installing Mandrake is interesting! You can do the same sequence of events on different motherboard types, and end up with different packages installed on the machine. (I kid you not.) "Ummm, no rsh this time!" etc. So, we have carefully written installation procedures which also check that every package we use was installed, and install if it not.
Overall, I've got to give Mandrake Installer a B+ or A-, it does work, it's fast. Just gotta watch which packages get put on. By the way, we dont let Mandrake install the LAMP stuff, we do that manually after the machine is up and running.
i have used drake since 7.0. i have bought 7.0, 7.2, 8.0, and 9.0 so feel that leeching an iso or two is not horrible. however, are they still viable? i love it. i can just use it like a mind numbed idiot, or use it like a geek, and not have to worry. and urpmi is awesome. but with RH snarfing up most of the server biz, and suse seeming to get most of the rest of the press, is drake commercially viable. deb, gentoo, slack will always be around. but their not "commercial" distros. drake does such great jobs with their wizards and hardware, but is investing time and effort into drake pissing into the wind. i hope not, since i've used drke for years. but...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
As a casual linux user I like Mandrake. It supports everything on my laptop (including my Sony R505 - IEEE1394 DVD-ROM drive) right out of the box. It is great for anyone who is thinking of moving to Linux but does not know where to start (or have time dealing with compatibility issues that can pop-up). We all know it is bloated, but I don't have the time to work some of the other compatibility challenged distros.
For now I cannot go to linux all the way because of what I do for a living (anyone want to talk to Avid about porting XpressDV to linux), but I love it for all of my "office work" and emailing. I will give RC2 a try, and I support Mandrake as a company. To me they are they closest to "Linux on the Desktop". They support the latest packages and builds along with good hardware support. Last Friday I had over 300 SoBig.F viruses in my inbox before I got a chance to filter it out with my host's email server configurator (hosting service thing). I did not fear downloading them at all. I pop-ed them, then trashed them, while my co-worked was freaking out trying not to get infected... can't beat that with a stick, thanks Linux... Mandrake made this possible for me.
personally, I almost never burn a CD anymore for linux installers.....too much hassle. its much easier to me to create the network install floppy and pick a mirror(now a torrent-based install floppy would be uber-cool) the most complicated thing about this is writing down the server host name and the URL that contains the RPMs. once that's done, you begin the normal install process and you're only downloading exactly what you need in order to get a proper installation. creating the floppy is easy, just download the images/network.img (pcmcia.img for laptops) and use dd (winrawrite for windows) to create the boot floppy this is a very old practice, I know. but I'm mostly writing for those who don't. so conserve plastic/aluminum, bandwidth, and time and use the network install instead
Please keep in my that my ADHD keeps me a little scatter brained and I sometimes can't focus long enough to
Myth #243
AFAIK you don't end up with a million and one useless daemons starting a la RedHat or Mandrake (yes, they are bad for this.)
Reality
They don't make that much a difference and there aren't that many of them. Of the ones there are you can disable whatever you want simply from the commandline or from a nice gui. What makes distros "slow" is when you try to run Gnome or KDE on a older machine. These daemons only take a few megs and most of the time simply idle.
Red Hat running Blackbox or XFCE is a fast as Gentoo running Blackbox or XFCE. Carve that into your chest with a knife and then show every Gentoo you can find. We need to get the word out...
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
So, is this going to be a worthwhile investment of my time, or is some/most of the above going to stop working? While I'd like to get off my MS Habit, I have this need to use most of the above that keeps pulling me back :-)
If you "just" want to give it a try, please, PLEASE, don't install the RC, but wait until the final release is made. Even better, wait some weeks (2-3) after final release for the most important glitches to be known and read the errata before you are going to install.
The RCs aren't for "newcomers" to try out. They for are testing and bug fixing by people willing investing the time to do so.
But if you want to get the best chance that the final will support as much as possible on your notebook and you are willing to invest some time, then by all means, install it, test everything that matters to you and report any bugs you find (but be sure to look beforehand if the bug is already known).
So, whether the investment of your time is worthwhile depends on your view. If you are not willing, are not interested or simply don't have the time for testing/bug reporting, the RC isn't for you. Well, it wasn't ever meant for you.
Else, now is the time to get involved before it is too late (for getting any updates in before the freeze gets to freezy - they are already in version freeze).
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
New web site up on how to set up mandrake 9.1 to ease the configuration pains of the new linux user. Written and catered for the moderate computer user. It covers how to get and install mandrake and add in most of the needed applications. Covers most of the major software included in the distribution, other freely available applications, newbie command line tutorial, how to handle some common and annoying bugs peculiar to each application.
PART I
1. Introduction
2. Indispensable Tools for the Linux User
3. Useful links
PART II - Mandrake Installation
1. Getting Mandrake 9.1
2. Installing Mandrake 9.1
3. Going through the install sequence
4. Using Mandrake
5. Nice things to add easily
6. Configuration with Mandrake Control Center
7. Configuration with Gnome Control Center
8. Important Configuration of Menus and MIME Types
9. More Advanced Configuration
PART III - Linux Shell and Apps
1. Navigating around terminal
2. Shells -- bash, csh, rsh, sh
3. Environments and Paths
4. File Permissions
5. Editing files
6. Linking
7. Finding Files
8. Using grep
9. Basic bash scripts knowledge
10. Running Remote X applications
11. Mounting Remote File Systems
12. Language setup for man pages
13. Handling Print Jobs
PART IV - Software Packages
1. What are packages?
2. Specifying Sources For Online Downloading - Mandrake Mirrors, Texstar, PLF
3. Packages to be installed from Mandrake CDs - Mesa, mplayer, Timidity, pan, gaim, mozplugger
4. Packages to install from Texstar - Macromedia Flash, nano, Real Player
5. Mplayer and Codecs
6. Other essential packages- Open Office, Sun Java, Adobe Acrobat 5, BitTorrent
7. Setting up SMB share for Windows
8. Using vncserver for remote desktop applications
9. File Sharing - p2p networks - Limewire, edonkey, lmule
10. Running M$ Office under Linux.
11. Games - SNES, MAME, WineX
PART V - Advanced FAQ
1. How do I get DRI 3D acceleration to work?
2. Mandrake Fonts Deuglification and Anti-aliasing
3. Email Clients and Web Browsers (Handling mailto: and http:)
4. Full Mozilla Plugins Configuration (Quicktime, Java, Flash, Mplayer)
5. Konquerer Plugins Configuration
6. X Windows xmatrix screensaver
7. How to adjust the sound volume permanently
This HOWTO is my first contribution to the linux user community, and since I have found documentation sorely lacking for the total newbie, I have decided to write one myself. It is based on my experience in the past month trying to install everything from scratch. This HOWTO will be short, brief and to the point. Further information can be found in documentations on other websites, this one is just for the impatient, and users who want to reduce their startup time. Why Mandrake? Firstly, it is easy-to-install, and the first distribution that I've tried that has come very close to the ease-of-use of windows. If you can install and customize windows, you will not have much trouble with the Linux installation. Who is this HOWTO written for? This document is meant for the average user who is at least accustomed to tweaking and customizing their own OS. It will definitely not be a tutorial on how to point and click or use GUI interfaces.