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Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Has Arrived

Posted by timothy on from the steady-improvement dept.

joestar writes "After 2 months of 10.1 Community polishing, Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official packs are now available for pre-ordering, but Mandrakeclub Members can already download these packs as CD or DVD ISO images. 10.1 Official provides improved hardware support, especially in the mobility area - with for instance full support of Intel Centrino-based laptops - as well as many other features. All in all, it's also certainly one of the most up-to-date Linux system currently available, and one of the most easy to use both for Linux beginners and Linux experts."

20 comments

  1. After a quick look at the features list by Stevyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    KDE is at version 3.2.3 and GNOME is at 2.6. Notice how they mention 3.3 is available, but only for people who join their club. They also mention how their packages have been optimized for speed. I'd like to see some benchmarks confirming this because I've found that Mandrake 10 was very slow compared to other distros I tried on the same machine.

    I don't want to troll on Mandrake because the features list also included some nice features for laptops, specifically ones that follow the Centrino specs.

    For someone who's considering switching to Mandrake 10.1, it's been my experience that while Mandrake 10 was easy to set up, it's slow and the packaging system is pretty slim and gets outdated soon if you don't pay for the membership. Though Fedora seems the opposite, very up to date packages, but things won't always work correctly out of the box (firewire) and their packaging system is very up to date.

    1. Re:After a quick look at the features list by aelbric · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm pretty impressed with Mandrake as a desktop distro, but I have to agree with your comments. I bought the "license" to keep myself up to date and to support their development. I especially like default support for the common desktop features that you see in that other O$.

      I can't see myself doing this for my servers though. Fedora has me pretty happy and RHEL is my choice for mission critical boxes. It doesn't support some of the more windows-like features out of the box (mp3, etc.) but it is rock solid and stable and that's all I need for a server. Updates come fast and furious if necessary as well. I want to have my servers at an N-1 patch level as quickly as we can manage it. If our regression testing is the holdup that's OK. If the provider is the holdup, that's not.

      I think a Mandrake front-end with a Fedora/RHEL back-end is where we will end up. Don't you love OS choice?

      --
      nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
    2. Re:After a quick look at the features list by Moby+Cock · · Score: 1

      RHEL is my choice for mission critical boxes. It doesn't support some of the more windows-like features out of the box (mp3, etc.) but it is rock solid and stable and that's all I need for a server. This is not a flame or a troll: I am wondering is you have considered OpenBSD for servers. It is the most stable OS I have ever encountered. And secure. I'm just curious. RHEL is a great release and will no doubt cover your needs perfectly.

    3. Re:After a quick look at the features list by Methuseus · · Score: 1

      My guess is that RHEL is better and more quickly supported. Also, RPM updates are very nice, especially since they are certified to work on specific implementations of the OS and hardware.

      For me, I probably won't use OpenBSD (or any other BSD at this point) because I'm a little lazy and don't like having to build from scratch, or even use tarballs that may not work 100% right away, when the RPMs usually do.

      --
      Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
    4. Re:After a quick look at the features list by aelbric · · Score: 1

      Precisely.

      Part of the cost of support, in my opinion, includes the fact that building the binary packages has already been done and tested. I see no need to repeat these activities. Although I really have no preference between BSD and Linux, the time saving and initial quality control are well worth it.

      --
      nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
    5. Re:After a quick look at the features list by Moby+Cock · · Score: 1

      Yeah, RPMs are pretty nice. But I will nevr give up OpenBSD for my firewall, even without RPM support.

    6. Re:After a quick look at the features list by plughead · · Score: 2, Informative
      Mandrake has an experimental distro as well, called 'Cooker'. It's usually very up to date and a bit unstable. (although at the moment, it has the same packages as the 10.1 Official release, i.e. KDE 3.2.3, but I expect that to change within days)

      Oh, and it's free to all...

      --
      If a giant oil company wanted an abortion, would W's head explode?
    7. Re:After a quick look at the features list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mandrake also doesn't include g++ unless you're a club subscriber, making it pretty hard to compile KDE (QT) yourself.

    8. Re:After a quick look at the features list by PianoComp81 · · Score: 1

      I've actually been using Mandrake 10.1 Community on my Thinkpad since it was released and have been impressed with the speed of Mandrake's programs. The GUI programs for 10.0 and before are great, but you're right they're slow. 10.1 on the other hand has very fast GUI programs (and they work much better than before).

      I don't find they get outdated too soon, but I'll sometimes switch to the cooker (development) packages. Not only that, but Mandrake comes out with a new version every 6-9 months it seems, so it's very easy to just upgrade your packages to that new version (without a reinstall).

      I'm still using 9.2 on my desktop, and except for Evolution, everything's pretty much up-to-date.

      About the club: the reason you have to pay for KDE 3.3 sounds like because Mandrake hasn't gotten it stable enough to be happy with it. If you really want KDE 3.3, then cooker has it. That's also why they haven't put out Gnome 2.8 yet. Those will both probably be in the 10.2. I also don't know what you mean by the package selection system being slim. The CDs actually have most of the packages, and you can get a few more if you put in FTP sites for the software sources instead.

      I've noticed that for non-x.0 versions (i.e. not 9.0 or 10.0), Mandrake has been trying to release stable products. 9.0 seemed rushed, and had many bugs, but 9.1 and 9.2 were very stable. The same goes for 10.0 as 9.0. It seemed rushed ("we have to get the 2.6 kernel out! oh, and udev, too), but they've actually integrated that all in like it should've been done for 10.1 (devfsd isn't used anymore).

      So all in all, Mandrake 10.1 is definitely something worth switching to. The Mandrake-specific programs are much faster, the system is very stable, and there are a lot of packages to choose from (as many as any other distributions, I've found).

    9. Re:After a quick look at the features list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      What are you talking about? That is 100% incorrect.

    10. Re:After a quick look at the features list by thegrassyknowl · · Score: 1

      Mandrake does seem painfully slow, even though they claim to have speed optimisations. I gather from what I have seen that they use the --march=i586 option on the X86 builds, whereas other distros don't.

      MDK puts a lot of guff in to try and keep your machine running smoothly. Msec is the one thing that springs immediately to mind. It runs once a minute and does a lot of security related checks (including firewalling newly installed network cards if you're in the higher security modes). It can become annoying.

      I have contemplated 10.1 for its (claimed) Centrino support on my laptop. If it can support the wireless, the bluetooth and the Lan in the lappy I might even have an excuse to draw the blinds on Windows.

      --
      I drink to make other people interesting!
  2. Re:Mandkrae is French by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, it's painful to support a French company, but quality is quality.

  3. Mandrake Criticism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to use mandrake. I found it unacceptably slow compared to win98, and I found gurpmi to be an inconvenient way to install packages.

    IMHO, using mandrake as our "newb distro" slows down GNU/linux adoption. The only reason they have Newb Distro status is because they were the first to have a modern installer back in the late 90's...

    1. Re:Mandrake Criticism by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IMO , they're a LOT better than SuSE or RedHat.

      Keep in mind, though, here's the versions I've used of each distro:

      RedHat 8 (didn't seriously use it, just played with it, and didn't like it one bit)
      SuSE 8.2 (HATED that thing - RPM hell in the worst way - then again, if you aren't RedHat or Mandrake, there just aren't any packages for you)
      Mandrake 9.2 (liked it, and I didn't even have URPMI working right (didn't know about Easy URPMI))
      Mandrake 10.0 Community (I do agree that the GUI tools were slower, but this is between an RC and a Gold Master, so making impressions from it isn't fair - URPMI is nice, though - just type "urpmi" and the name of a program, and it's installed)

      I do know that RH has yum, so that's available. However, I've never liked RH.

  4. Everybody Out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This thread has been cancelled due to lack of interest.

  5. Anyone know by opweirdisntit · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Anyone know if ATI Radeon 9700 pros (or any other 300 model) can easily be configured in this version. I hate switching to linux because its a big p a i n to set up fglrx properly, 60% doesnt work and 100% has bad preformance..if only ati would start to really support linux...

    1. Re:Anyone know by IncohereD · · Score: 2, Informative

      The last couple of fglrx packages have installed just fine for me, without even having to exit the GUI (except to reinitialize the driver). Basically you just need to install the ATI rpm with "rpm -i --force xxxx.rpm", and then run fglrxconfig, as it'll tell you to do on the console.

      Check out www.rage3d.com for more info...the linux forums have gotten really good.

  6. OK.... by Jsutton1027w · · Score: 0
    but Mandrakeclub Members can already download these packs as CD or DVD ISO images.
    ...And this means they'll be on Suprnova before the night is out (EDT). ;)
    1. Re:OK.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm waiting anxiously. Go free software!