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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,"
Does this actually matter? How many Madrake Users get their ISO's from Mandrake anyway? Torrents will probably have 10.1 within the day.
Open Source Sushi
My experience has been that you really need to be an enthusiast of this distro to bother installing the Community version of it. For some reason, I ended up with the Comminity version of 10.0 when downloading it via BitTorrent, and boy did it need some work. KDE crashing every ten seconds, weird bugs like the SDL segfault when the wacom tablet module (evdev) was loaded, etc.
Point being, don't try this out as a stable release. Only try it if you have time to kill and really want to see what Mandrake has done with their release this far. Otherwise, wait for the Official ISOs when they become availible to the public.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I started with MDK with 6.0 (*after my time with Red Hat 5.0*) and really loved it. After years of playing with it on the desktop and using it for an MP3 FTP server, I got tired of the RPM depenancy hell and I made the jump to Slackware. A few years of playing in Debian and now Gentoo, I feel I've learned a ton more than I did before, and with YUM and apt-rpm I think it may be time to install/try out this latest version on a sandbox for desktop testing.
I used to enjoy seeing what they 'smoothed out' over the prev release. The MDK Club turned me off as Deno started getting stinky about support for 'non-users' but I understand they're just trying to make a dollar (or euro in their case).
Regardless, nice to see a major Linux Distro still in the running.
CCBB
free ipod and free gmail!
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.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Ok, I see that improved laptop support is one of the touted features here. My question is, how good is it?
/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.
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
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.)
One of the best resources in the Mandrake community has been an individual called Texstar who ran a Linux news site called www.pclinuxonline.com and also in his spare time created RPM packages for Mandrake systems. Texstar's packages became justly famous and were widely used. Thanks to his efforts, many reallly nice RPMs were made available to the MDK commmunity, and eventually went into 9 and 10 from what I've heard. This kind of 'community support' is what I'm most happy with.
Thanks Texstar!
CB@#$
free ipod and free gmail!
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!
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
Also, it's easy to update to Xorg 6.8 for MDK users, and I think it's worth the trouble, especially to see those dropshadows. I'm somewhat surprised that MDK didn't wait for 6.8 to go into 10.1, but the dropshadow business isn't completely stable outside of GNOME, and they have to make a cut off soon.
Regardless, MDK users can update rather easily, just update your YUM repository!
CBV
free ipod and free gmail!
Been a silver member for better than two years, IMHO it is worth it.
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.
This problem is common with the 2.6 kernel and has been verified in Mandrake 10.0 Community, Red Hat FC1, Red Hat FC2, and others.
/dev/hda, and of=(output dir) should point to where you want to save the bootsector as a file. Restore the MBR by reversing the input and output.
Read about it here.
Basically, if you touch the MBR with a 2.6 kernel bootloader, XP or Windows 2000 is gone, and can't be restored. So backup your MBR first by using
"dd if=(input device) of=/(output dir)/hda-img.mbr bs=512 count=1"
where if=(input device), should point to your first drive, eg.
Even if you do this to restore, your Windows partition may still be toast, depending on how much you messed with the partition table.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
I was in the Club as a basic member but forgot to renew my membership - I will though.
Yes it's worth it, largely just to support Mandrakesoft though, I have used them since 7.0 when it was the only distro which recognised all my hardware. You also get to vote for various things you want packaged and access to rpm mirrors.
pretty good mirror (speed wise)l inux/de vel/iso/10.1/
http://ftp.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake
I'm going to see what new things are out on the Desktop.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Those two are pretty different : Mandrake is designed for the newcommer or someone who want to install a system in less than 30 minutes without being bothered by hardware problems (autodetection wizard). The obtained system is quite rigid and require to enjoy GUI config tools (cause some of them cannot be bypassed). Gentoo is tailored by the user himself which results in a longer installation (can be up to 2 days) process, and a minimum of automatisation (some kind of autodetection but you are encouraged to avoid it), all this in order to get the system you want (ie most of the time faster than any precompiled distros). To compare distros with cars Mandrake would be an easy to drive automatic and Gentoo would be a custom car ...
*nix is userfriendly
I am a member and I like having the access to the Betas and early releases. I have a 'test' computer that I install various distros and see how they behave. My big server has MDK10 on it - no real reason. I also have the SuSe, Knoppix and MDKMove DoDs (Distro on Disk) that I pop in the laptop when I need to get 'Net.
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
You never know...
I'd say club membership is worth it, if you happen to prefer Mandrake as your primary distro. I appreciate the dedicated mirrors for club members quite a bit. Makes patch times much faster.
I also like the repositories for software that are available to club members. I have yet to find a piece of software out there that someone didn't turn into a Mandrake RPM, and the club mirrors seem to have it all. Sure, you can find them other places, too, but all in all it's nice to have everything in one place.
Just use urpmi. Once you've setup your servers at http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ it's a great solution, both the commandline version and the GUI tools.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because it wasn't released until after the freeze on updates for this release of Mandrake perhaps?
Just because something has a new version out doesn't mean that people putting together a distribution are going to alter the package contents to add it. Gnome 2.8 is out too. It's not in Mandrake 10.1 either. Why not? Because 2.8 was released yesterday (or this week) the freeze for 10.1 happened several weeks ago, about the time that 10.1Beta1 came out I am pretty sure.
-Rusty
You never know...
Thanks dude. I've been going back and forth on Linux distros for a while now. I've found Mandrake to have some real merits, so if it's what I settle on I probably will follow your advice and do the Right Thing.
[Mandrake] is quite rigid and require to enjoy GUI config tools (cause some of them cannot be bypassed).
/etc/hosts for my 3-machine home LAN) ... and the systems I do this cover most of the common gamut a normal person would need to bother with.
I'm curious what tools you're referring to. I'm far from any expert on any distro, but I've never had a problem dumping out to a console window, su'ing to root, and tweaking the odd config file by hand (mainly in that I still don't understand where some things are at in the mdk gui tools ; seems like I always have to hand-edit
Here is a cooker mailing list post refering to the bug being resolved.
Well, children, the GPL says you have to release source code to your USERS when you distribute binary code. That's how this isn't a violation of any licenses.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The first rule of Mandrake club is that you DO NOT TALK about Mandrake club.
Mandrake seems to be pulling itself up by it's bootstraps financially. Which is great - because I think Mandrake is Linux's great hope to take on MS.
And they're doing that by doing what MS does - but based on a stable OS. With Mandrake you can get install your desktop from a couple of CD's, with about as much tech knowhow as you need with windows. With Mandrake you get a nice looking desktop right out of the box. And now with Mandrake you can spend $25 a year and get a windoze like auto-security-update feature.
Sure - you can get scatterings of that in other distro's - but not in a format that is good for non-tech loosers such as myself. Mandrake seems to be the last prominent distro that is really focussed on the desktop and doing it right (i.e. dumbed down, but still working.
even their auto updating feature is a fabulous. Yes, we all know you can get that elsewhere - and for free - but by charging for it like MS would, there's a lot more going on. First loosers believe there likely to get a fully tested easy to use product (heck - I believe it myself, I'm just waiting for their server version - and if you think people won't buy the server version of this, then you don't understand why people by MS), and secondly it focusses attention on it - people will buy it just because it's offered and it's a good idea. Offer it for free and it's hard to see the value in it.
And before the purists hack me to tiny little pieces, I'm speaking as a tech manager type who uses mandrake on their desktop. I'm the next wave of converts, and Mandrake is going to do the converting
Life Insurance in Canada
I didn't know they were being held hostage.
I blame Microsoft.
The premium customers get to test it out and find the bugs. The regular customers get it after the bugs are fixes. Sounds good to me ;)
I'm more thinking of the LG CD-RW drive bug with 10.0 Community. There was a command in Mandrake's kernel that wiped out the firmware in some of LG's CD-RW drives. The people trying Community found the bug, had to go through some long process to get their CD-RW drives working again and then when 10.0 Official came out, those who downloaded it for free have no more bugs! So we can pay to test Mandrake!
The site loadux.com is a pay service ($6.99) not actually associated with Mandrake. In other words, you pay them for something Mandrake will soon be releasing to everyone for free, and Mandrake gets nothing.
You want the new Mandrake NOW NOW NOW? You've got six choices:
1) Get a club membership. You get tons of apps prepackaged as Mandrake RPMs and dedicated mirrors, too.
2) Make a friend with someone who already has a club membership. Nothing wrong with making copies of the CDs.
3) Learn the art of patience, and wait for the general release.
4) Download the current Cooker. It's gonna be essentially the same.
5) Download the sources and compile it yourself. Pain in the butt, but no one ever said the GPL means they have to provide you binaries, only source.
6) Pay these guys $6.99 to download the images from them. Please note: This option will automatically make you an asshat.
See the results for yourself here.
In short: MandrakeSoft is out of "Chapter 11" (March 30th - 2004: Mandrakesoft Exits Bankruptcy). MandrakeSoft is back making profit. MandrakeSoft shares are back being actively traded.
Quoting latest report:
----
During the third quarter of 2003/2004, Mandrakesoft produced a consolidated revenue of 1.50 M and a gross margin of 1.25 M, a respective increase of 39.1% and 66.7% compared with the same period of the previous fiscal year. The gross margin is the highest on record, and quarter by quarter there is an acceleration in its rate of growth (Q1 +29.8%, Q2 47.7%, Q3 +66.7%)
During the quarter, the company registered an operating income of 0.17 M (0.04 per share) compared to an operating loss of 0.47 M during the same period of the previous fiscal year. The net income increased to 0.19M (0.04 per share) compared to a net loss of 0.37 M during the previous fiscal year.
----
So it's all good.
Peace!
The obtained system is quite rigid and require to enjoy GUI config tools (cause some of them cannot be bypassed)
This is a false statement.
All GUI config tools ("wizzards") can be bypassed... modifying text config files.
Also, most of GUI config tools have a text-version as well.
MandrakeLinux is also a good Linux distribution for those Linux old dogs (like myself) that do not need to prove "31337ness". I already have succesfully installed and used LFS and Slackware (last century, when it came in floppies).
I do not need to endure the pain anymore. My time is more valuable than to missuse it wasting time in a 2-day install and 10-day configure. I just need to use any Linux distribution.
Peace
It's all about priorities. If homework and your job are more important to you than having kde 3.3, which they should be, then do your fucking homework and go to your fucking job.
I concede, you're the smarter jackass.