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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!