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Mandrake 9.2 ISOs Available
joestar writes "Since LG has released updated firmwares and a recovery procedure for all so-called ATAPI LG cd-rom drives that were "destroyed" by a feature of Mandrake 9.2, MandrakeSoft has publicly released the set of Mandrake 9.2 ISO images which are now available on a number of FTP mirrors. Mandrake 9.2 is one of the few remaining 100%-OSS major Linux distributions, so considering a MandrakeClub membership or joining Cooker - Mandrake's open development version - is certainly an excellent idea."
Here's the feature list.
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/download/MandrakeLinu x-9.2-DOWNLOAD-3CD.torrent
I'm so glad they got this fixed, and I hope this whole sorry incident can be swept right under the rug. I've always said that Mandrake would be the distro to cause MS users to seriously consider switching. I started my Linux oddysey on Mandrake (hell, I still use it!) and fully believe that it offers the widest spectrum of a Linux experience.
The average user can get it working right out of the box (or download). That's something you can't say for most Linux installs -- or even some Windows installs. The hardware support is phenomenal.
And the ease of use doesn't have to detract from its power -- Mandrake gives you plenty of choices, from a fully-loaded, app-laden KDE or Gnome interface to light, fast WMs like Fluxbox. And best of all, it's Linux, pure and simple, so that all our favorite apps are still there.
I originally switched away from Mandrake because of the poor package management they used to have, but the implementation of urpmi in 9.1 convinced me to scrap my Debian install for Mandrake. Package management is a breeze once you get your sources configured. It's still not as developed as apt, but at least it doesn't break things the way apt is wont to.
Mandrake is Linux's best hope for widespread adoption, but not if it's screwing up people's cd rom drives. Thanks for the speedy fix, guys.
BitTorrent link from Mandrake. It's located on the download page right before the FTP mirror list:u x-9.2-DOWNLOAD-3CD.torrent
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/download/MandrakeLin
or Fedora
or Gentoo
or Debian
or SuSE (ftp install)
or Slackware
or Vector
or Knoppix
or one of the thousands of others
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
The drives re-implemented the FLUSH_CACHE command to update the firmware. The standard allows either to implement it (and do nothing on a CD-ROM drive) or to not implement it (resulting in an error), but not to use it for something else (and they chose to do something potentially catestrophic with it).
;-)).
So, drives with older firmware aren't compliant, and their degree of non-compliance results in the drive erasing it's own firmware (I mean, they could instead have re-used the command to open the drive tray
Destroying the firmware wasn't a bug in Mandrake, it was a bug in the CD-ROM firmware -- the company decided not to implement the ATAPI "clear cache" command, as very few CD-ROM drivers use it. Instead, they decided to re-use that command for uploading firmware -- not a good idea.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
He means one of the only 100% free software distros remaining. The only other two I'm aware of are Fedora - not yet at release stage, and GNU/LinEx, a spannish distro.
Most of the other distros contain things like Pine, Netscape, the Flash Plugin, Real Player and Sun's Java packages. None of these are free software.
Go to http://us.lgservice.com/ and click on "Device Driver".
They have a 9.1 release for PPC but no 9.2 sadly.
- is o/ppc/
http://public.ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/mandrake
- I can't unplug my Dell 5800 laptop while running or it locks up, same with plugging it in while running. Working on the cause.
- BE SURE to check your MD5 sums. I've had more bad disks with this release than the last 3 or so releases combined. One bad disk would not only fail to install a package, but would break and remove several others unless the offending package was removed. Then voila! the broken packages return to the menus and functionality.
- Handles 3d hardware acceleration fine for my ATI 9500 card, but no 3d for my 9700 pro (5 install attempts and dozens of fixes) I will not give up... Must..get...CWET...working.
- K3b is the default burning software, so just change your cd drives to ide-scsi and save yourselves some headaches over "unusable" drives
- Mandrake-galaxy is a theme that actually appeals to me. And I generally can't stand themes no matter the platform.
Other than these major points, I think this is the best Mandrake yet. I can't wait for kde 3.2 and the 2.6 kernal. I'm just not feeling that adventurous yet.... but i will soon.
--sigs are like giraffes, they can look cool sometimes, but they don't make any noise.
Here's the torrent:
u x-9.2-DOWNLOAD-3CD.torrent
:-)
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/download/MandrakeLin
Make with the downloading...I'm only getting 160k/sec so far
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
Fedora is actually 100%. Even stuff with borderline licenses, like pine, is out.
The download really is 100% OSS/Free Software, ie no pine, netscape, flash etc.
The Free Software Foundation have a list of approved free software licenses. The Open Source Initiative have a list of approved open source licenses.
A 100% Free/OSS distribution is one where all the software in the distro is licenced under one of these approved licenses.
I can't unplug my Dell 5800 laptop while running or it locks up, same with plugging it in while running. Working on the cause.
Broken local APIC. Boot with 'nolapic' to workaround it.
Handles 3d hardware acceleration fine for my ATI 9500 card, but no 3d for my 9700 pro (5 install attempts and dozens of fixes) I will not give up... Must..get...CWET...working.
There are updated ATI driver packages on the Club, you may want to try those.
which they explicitly state is not part of debian, but merely using their facility for the sake of convenience.
right from their social contract:
Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards
We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs that don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this software. The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system, although it has been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD manufacturers to read the licenses of software packages in these directories and determine if they can distribute that software on their CDs. Thus, although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages.
Major commercial distribution. Gentoo, Debian and Fedora are great, but for a commercial player Mandrake has been a surprisingly upstanding member of the OSS community. Not only in keeping Mandrake free (as in beer and freedom) but actively using alternative funding methods in an attempt to reasonably sustain that freedom (in a commercail marketplace).
I've got a lot of respect for that.
Quack, quack.
RTFA. The problem affected a few specific revisions of the firmware that shipped with a few, specific CD-ROM drives only - CD-R/RW and DVD-* drives were apparently not affected.
When was the last time you bought a Dell (or any other name-brand PC) that shipped with a plain CD-ROM drive?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I am posting this because, believe it or not, there are a lot of /. readers that have no experience with Linux but are curious to try.
I am one if the inexperienced Linux users. I tried several distros and the one that was hands down the easiest to deploy from the noob prospective was Mandrake.
My first try was with release 8.0. I loved the installer and the docs available for learning to setup my machine for dual boot and proper Linux partitions.
The installer is a work of art. It made the installation as easy as *gasp* Windows. It walks you through the proper options to choose so you get the setup you want (in my case I wanted to try workstation, not server). I had no trouble with my systems hardware being compatible.
My plea to anyone who has never tried Linux but is curious is to try Mandrake. It's the most noob friendly distro around.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Don't get me wrong. Most of what I know about GNU/Linux I learned on Mandrake. Implying that it's the last of the free software distros is comical though.
The downloadable version is free, as in unencombered. Thats important. I think its also important that as much as we complain here about everything we try to give credit where credit is due. Heres a simple quote from the Mandrake website:
"All improvements and add-ons introduced by MandrakeSoft are published under the General Public License (GPL)."
So I think calling their software free isn't very missleading at all. Including packages with none OSI certified lisences is nothing to crow about when they've made both their distribution and contributed code free.
This is the only company I know of that actually puts its money (and its business model) where its mouth is (and it might even work).
Quack, quack.
The reason they broke is because the weren't following the ATAPI specification fully. When Mandrake tried to use a function that works with the standard, the drives choked. After the firmware upgrade, they seem to be fine. According to the article anyway.
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
I just upgraded from 9.1 to 9.2. First thing, it is still nice but there are some bugs in the system right off the bat, primarily concerning KDE. You will immediately want to download the updates to fix them. You will likely experience some problems with kmenu items. Updating fixes it. If you have an LG cdrom, download the fixes from the mandrake website. It apparently isn't mandrake's fault, this problem, but they have a fix.
There are a LOT of updates. If you have a modem connection...it's going to take a while. I downloaded all the updates to my laptop over my job's ethernet connection so they would be on hand immediately after installing 9.2 on both my laptop and desktop. I suggest something like this for others with modem connections at home.
After the updates, no problems at all.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I'm afraid you're not aware of what Open Source Software/Free Software is. Please read the definition of Open Source software: "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code."
;-)
And of course Free Software.
Never flamed about Qt license in the past?
I wouldn't equate Mandrake and Lindows. Mandrake will be secure out of the box unless you tell it otherwise during installation. Lindows runs as root by default and should not be promoted by Linux users, IMHO.
I am not an authority on Slack, but I will give you my impression from using it just a few weeks, after using RedHat for many years, and having SunOS and Solaris shell accounts for MANY years.
Slack seems more Unix like. Things are in very standard places, where you would expect them to be on a real Unix system. This is still a little confusing to me because I am used to them being in the wrong places with RH, but my SunOS and Solaris experience helps. I found it to be quite easy to install Slack 9.0. Some parts are a little confusing, but only because they are different, not necessarily harder. Unlike many, I prefer a menu based text based install, which Slack has. After roaming around it a few minutes, it all made sense. My second install took 10 minutes to get started, and then I just walked away while it copied files.
It handles groups differently, it doesn't just create a group for every user independently (which I never understood why RH does). The security is a bit more important, and you will find it defaults to a bit more secure of a systems, especially compared to older RH distros (7.2 and older). It does require some getting used to, and I am still not ready to commit the servers to it (looking at Debian also, waiting for a new MB to arrive for testing). But its in the hunt.
I can easily see that Slack is NOT for people who just want to click pretty widgets to configure their systems. My experience with pretty widgets on Linux is a mixed bag, from linuxconf trashing an install (on RH 6.1 default install) to all the crap included with Gnome (which I don't like) and KDE (which I do like, but dont use the widgets). I can see why real hardware/os minded people like Slack, because of its elegant simplicity, power, and security.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
According to Mandrake's site, they provide Mandrake Packs of Acrobat, Flash, Real, nVidia drivers, and other non-OSS software. Not 100% OSS.
That are the commercial boxes, e.g. the PowerPack edition. Yes, they accomodate people who prefer a commercial package for ease of use (no need to handle nVidia drivers etc. yourself) or other reasons.
The "100% OSS" applies to the Download editition (a comparison).
The latter is the one you can download for free. The former has been made available for download only for MandrakeClub members (silver and higher) and contributors as of ML9.2, and is sold as boxed set, too, of course.
But I doubt that Mandrake itself would use the 100% OSS label. IMHO, it's not really technically correct. They don't require all licenses to be OSI approved. AFAIK, they require the license to allow the software (source and binary) to be (re-)distributed freely on the the download edition. Which basically boils down to: the licenses usually fit into the OSI spirit, but aren't necessarily officially OSI approved.
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.