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Mandrake Linux Development Process Changes
joestar writes "Just found at MandrakeLinux.com: 'MandrakeSoft today announced a major evolution in the way that future Mandrake Linux distributions will be engineered and released. The purpose of this new development process is to provide the highest level of new features, as well as maximizing the quality of new products.' In short: for each release, there will be a 'Community' release, equivalent to a common Mandrake release, with all latest features. Several months later an 'Official' release - based on the 'Community' - will be available. Both of them will be released publicly and supported. The new process will start with the upcoming Mandrake 10.0."
It's interesting to see the different distributions slowly moving towards Debian's release policies. My question for the Fedora and now Mandrake is, why not utilize a very organized and effective "community" that exists right now of free software developers?
Certainly Debian's release schedule could be improved, but Debian is hard to beat in "stuff just working" when it is released.
http://www.talknerdy.org
How many /. type folx are actually paying for linux distributions these days? I'm not seeking flamebait, but just curious. With distro's like Mandrake, Suse, and Redhat all starting to charge some cash for their production releases, are more people starting to look to alternatives such as Gentoo and Debian? Are others starting to scrap the idea of Linux and move to OSX?
What gets you stoked about Linux? The price tag? Quality? Security? or the fact that it isn't M$.
I'd be willing to pay for a distro like SuSE (or whatever) if I knew that the quality was uber-superb. But even my latest go-round with RedHat 9 has left me fairly unimpressed... Maybe I just love OS X too much?
java guy, tech blog...
"2) Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker project, which started... 5 years ago."
Nope sorry Fedora is NOT the same as Cooker. Ever heard of Rawhide? Who is copying who again?
Second off Fedora releases go through a LOT of public testing unlike Rawhide and Mandrake Cooker. Fedora IS designed to be a stable release. Cooker, "Cooker is an experimental distribution, it's not for daily use!". Contrast that with "The goal of the Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software.". Pretty dam big difference.
The ONLY difference between Fedora and Mandrake's new "community" product is the respective QA of each company and how long the releases are supported.
Good Troll, but *Red Hat* is the one innovating here.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
One of the main things I like about Mandrake is the up-to-dateness of everything in a standard release. I disagree about it being a renamed beta. After all, a beta can (and does) have changing versions the included software prior to release. Also, with betas, you're using software that is subject to serious change without much suport going from point A to point B. From what it looks like, this will be more like the FreeBSD -release branch, where only bugfixes and security updates are made to the previous release. And, there is a continual update path - just apply the update packages and you're there. No need to run the installer to install/upgrade each time as with a new beta.
I think this move helps reconcile the differences between catering to people like me, who use Mandrake at home and don't mind a few rough edges here and there (which I didn't even notice this time around) in order to get the latest and greatest with serious computing environments (i.e., servers) that need stable, tested software in order to effectively serve their purposes.
I think no matter what amount of pre-release testing they put into a release, it won't become seriously stable until it has been in the wild serving real-world needs. This just acknowledges that reality and solidifies it into a process.