Mandrake 10.1 Community Released

MohammedSameer writes "Mandrakesoft released MandrakeLinux 10.1 Community, As usual it's only available first to the club members The new release features Kernel 2.6.8.1, Xorg-X11 6.7, KDE 3.2.3 with 3.3 as an install option,"

Comments

No longer a fan of 'traditional' distros

[tod_miller]

I would like to see a partial distro, a yoper like base, less packages, more configuration.

Then a hole chunk (SuSE like) impors of packages. All required development for simple confmakemakeinstall's and perhaps simple walk throughs for these common actions. For newbies trying to get onto the bandwagon, this would be a diamond!

What was the thing you got stuck on at first? write it down, and think how you could solve it for another newbie.

Out of interest Moore's Law finally buried?

Ok enough shameless plug, it was for a good cause.

acpi support for laptops?

[tongue]

Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?

I just switched back to windows (rather painlessly, thanks to the excellent QtParted and, strangely enough, a windows ME boot disk [for an XP machine--needed to restore the MBR]). I can't tell you how greatly it pains me to do so--as far as i'm concerned, linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for some time. ACPI-based laptops though, are another story. I've been trying for weeks to get my battery life to come close to what's possible under windows, and while the Software suspend project seems to work for a lot of people, i could never get it to work on my laptop (or maybe just my kernel). I've tried various distributions, from suse to xandros to straight debian to knoppix and even the simpler ones such as DSL and none of them allow me to really use my laptop for more than about an hour (give or take a quarter) without plugging in, which is just unacceptable for my purposes.

So i finally gave up and dropped the linux partitions and reinstalled the boot sector (oh how that final 'fdisk /mbr' pained me!) but at least i can spend three and a half hours at a coffee shop without needing an outlet. cygwin takes the edge off, but its a bit like methadone if you asked me.

so anyway, for anyone who's tested and/or used the new version of MDK on a recent laptop, what's your experience with the ACPI support? Battery life? Suspend functionality? dare i ask--functional keys? (yes, i know that's not really related to acpi, but mandrake is generally pretty conscientious about things like that, i thought perhaps they might have integrated a solution.)

Re:acpi support for laptops?

[chundo]

I've got Mandrake 9.2 running on my Dell Inspiron 8600. Works great. A couple things I had to tweak though:

• It screwed up the acpi detection on install, so I had to manually add "acpi=on" to my lilo.conf
• Installed acpid to capture events from my hardware buttons / functional keys. All buttons work for me.
• Althought suspending to RAM (sleep mode 1) works, it didn't shutoff my screen or backlight before doing so. I had to write a custom script to do that.
• Suspend to disk doesn't work for me. At all. Didn't spend much time on it though since it's not a big deal for me.
• Installed cpudynd to manage CPU power consumption. My laptop easily lasts 3-4 hours on one battery, with WiFi.

Community vs. Official

[Linzer]

I've been running the development version for a little time now, and AFAICS all show-stopper bugs have been properly squashed by now. It has been running quite smoothly for a few weeks now. However, as parent says: don't use it if you want something rock solid, wait for 10.1 Official. But if you want all the shiny brand new stuff, a streamlined install with an excellent hardware detection, and are not afraid of a few weird things happening now and then, then give it a try!

It has the potential to be THE distro for laptop

[gsasha]

If their claims hold water, that is...
1. Centrino wireless support integrated, Wi-Fi roaming.
2. ACPI support - finally! I'm sick with rebooting the laptop.
But, good as it sounds, I'm still waiting for the Official.

Re:The Club

[rusty0101]

It kind of depends upon whether you think supporting Mandrake is a good idea, and whether you think that the OS is worth paying someone to continue working on their favorite distribution.

I have been a Club member in the past, and probably will be again. Asside from the default USB drivers not supporting the Via USB 2.0 chips, easily fixable by replacing the usb-uhci with huci-ohc (or something like that), I have had no significant problems with the 10.1rc1 package.

If you think that it is worth purchasing, to the point where you would pick up a copy at your local computer superstore whenever they get around to carrying it, joining the club gets your money to the developers at a much higher percentage of what you spend.

There are other advantages as well, which you can read on their web page if it really interests you. If not, then the above probably won't be of much interest either.

-Rusty

Re:2.6 kernel may blow away NTFS.

[Dot.Com.CEO]

This is most definitely NOT a problem with the 2.6 kernel since things work fine on both gentoo and Suse with a 2.6 kernel. It is most likely a problem with the implementation of grub or lilo in these distros. And, in my opinion, it is totally unacceptable.