Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta Underway

linuxbeta writes "Distrowatch is reporting that 'The beta testing process for Mandriva Linux 2006 is now officially underway. All the new features, which are not yet all included in this first beta version, will appear in the next test versions. You will see changes in the network management, especially WiFi, in security, on the desktop with the new versions of KDE, GNOME, new version of the kernel, GCC....'. Screenshots are available."

Comments

wow

[dotpavan]

and then we would have another story once the beta is out.. but with the same links and screenshots, what we call here a dupe!

Re:wow

[Mad_Rain]

Oh, wow! More screenshots of KDE menus! I can't wait!

Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[goldspider]

Figured this would be as on-topic as anywhere...

I'm thinkin of dropping Linux on a somewhat outdated computer I have lying around. It's a Celeron 533 w/ 256MB of RAM.

Which user-friendly distribution would be more friendly to that kind of hardware? And God help anyone that says Gentoo..

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[WilliamSChips]

Just for the heck of it, I'm gonna say Gentoo. :P

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[codesurfer]

I'd go with Ubuntu...I've run it on less, with no problems.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[XanC]

Actually Gentoo can be really good on low-end machines, because you can leave out everything you don't need.

You'll probably want to do the actual compiling on another machine, though.

Overall, though, I'd recommend Debian Stable. Fire-and-forget.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[goldspider]

I do appreciate the advice (from everyone). Perhaps it would help if I mentioned that I want to START learning Linux on this machine, but not necessarily get into the nuts-and-bolts of it quite yet.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[spaztech]

I'd say Ubuntu. I find that it runs better, has better hardware support out of the box and is easier to manage than Mandriva. However, I'm sure this is not always the case so your results may vary. Try them both, they're free and you'll learn something in the process.

Be sure to mess around with Nessus, nMap and Metasploit. They'll teach you a great deal about securing your systems.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[XanC]

hmm, in that case, I'd probably do either Ubuntu or maybe even Knoppix (which you can install on the hard drive). Something user-friendly but Debian-based, just because I like Debian. :-)

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[bad_outlook]

Ubuntu will run nicely on that machine. If Gnome feels too bloated on it, run Xfce and you'll be amazed at the full desktop you'll have, plus the speed. Of course I'd just use Openbox on it if it were me, and that would be a fine box for web/email. Also, with Gentoo you can do the install from stage 3, taking the apps straight from CD. It'd just a little longer than installing other distros, plus you'd have a system more tailored to your system. But just install Ubuntu, then add BUM *boot up manager* and strip out the startup apps you don't need (postfix, cupds, etc)

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, on a low end machine, I'd go with Debian (Gentoo be damned). As a newbie, I'd normally recommend Fedora or Mandriva, but on that machine I'm not sure what to recommend. Maybe Ubuntu??

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[sp0rk173]

Arch linux. You get most of the customizabilitiness of Gentoo without the compile times.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Mad_Rain]

Depends on what you want to do, and if you have a preference for Gnome vs. KDE and/or apt-get .deb files vs. urpmi .rpm files.

I'm going to presume you want a little desktop/fileserver type thing. Mandriva, once all cds are downloaded, supplies you with everything you need (and plenty you probably won't). The setup is pretty simple, hardware detection in my experience has been good, and is pretty stable. They include their own little GUI configuration tools for hardware detection, server setup, etc., and it can help you transition away from windows. It's default setup is for KDE (although you've got plenty of choices on the CDs) and uses urpmi and .rpm files to download and install new programs and update stuff.

Ubuntu is a little different - the download is only one cd, and it only offers you Gnome as default. (The Kubuntu project, also one CD, offers KDE, and is a "apt-get install" away). Because it starts out so simple, you have to be alittle more knowledgable about linux and how to go about setting things up. Ubuntu also uses apt-get and .deb files to install/update programs, and is much easier to use than urpmi in my opinion. It's also harder to "screw up" since it offers you some limited ways to mess things up.

And on that note, both distros as I recall , offer livecds to test-drive your system with. Try downloading those and checking them out if you have the time/bandwidth. (But if you don't, go with Ubuntu - they'll ship you cds for free!)

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[lowrydr310]

I was wondering the same thing. I have an old PIII 450MHz system with 128MB RAM and recently installed FreeBSD on it. Once Gnome is up and running, it's painfully slow.

So, ubuntu or debian is the way to go on older hardware?

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[tijnbraun]

I do not think that hardware will be the best the best discriminator for choosing the best distro.
I think (but I could be wrong) that your experience with linux would be a better indicator for the kind of distro you want.
If you have little experience with linux I would go for mandrake (or something other very userfriendly distro).
If you want to squeeze all the performance from your hardware go for linux-from-scratch (and as a bonus learn an awfull lot in the process).

I would say that most distro should perform about the same without tweaking.

Probably the most perceived performance difference will be in the window mananger you will install. (eg BlackBox(light) -> WindowMaker (some what heavier) -> KDE (heavy))

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Pxtl]

Well, if you're concerned about speed on that older box, there's a few little-known distros that could work - I looked into a bunch when trying to find something to run on a p166 - unfortunateley, they all kernel-panicked on it. Still, there were a few.

Vector Linux was a low-resource distro, but it cost money for their low-resource version (they had a typical high-power version that was free). Buffalo comes to mind, which is a free knock-off version of Vector that isn't as nerfed.

A similar lightweight is Libranet, which is a very feature-heavy distro based on lightweight IceWM desktop.

Alternately, there's Yoper, which is just designed to be a fast, binary-based distro. Basically, imagine if a nerd set up your Gentoo box for you. I didn't try that one myself - it has specific processor requirements my dusty old p166 couldn't handle.

Mind you, I haven't used any of these, just did a lot of research until I just accepted that my old box just wasn't meant for Linux. It died anyways recently - doesn't post anymore.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[rainman_bc]

Honestly, drop KDE and Gnome for something lighter.

Xfce is awesome for slower computers. There's tonnes of other desktops and WM's out there that are way more efficient than Gnome and KDE.

IMO they're just as bloated asp XP.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Frumious Wombat]

Ubuntu. I installed it on a PIII-933 recently, and the setup was flawless. Found the network card, video card, monitor, and configured everything pretty much correctly (monitor had to be tweaked to higher res) without any fuss on my part. The default theme and eye-candy are very pleasing as well. Has nothing to do with performance, but it does give it a pleasantly polished feel when you see it start running.

Alternately, I'm going to recommend the non-Slashdot option: CentOS, very similar to a certain OS that goes by the initials RHEL. No, it's not sexy, but it's supported by everyone. This may not matter for your apps, but it is the default when someone commercial (Intel's compilers, software from PNNL) thinks "Linux". The current install and hardware detection are also very solid, and if you need more Chrome and home-user apps, they're easy enough to find in pre-compiled RPMs. (or just build them yourself).

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[jm92956n]

I have a similar machine, only with less RAM (500 mhz Celeron, 128 mb, 10 gig HD). I've tried a number of different installations on it, including Gentoo, and thus far I've had the most positive experience with Ubuntu.

I have half the RAM, so I'm not sure if my experience will be similar to yours; I will note, however, that recent versions of KDE and GNOME are too "featured" to operate at a decent speed.

With Ubuntu I did a "custom" (with Hoary) or "server" install (with Warty) and loaded up a minimal install. From there I added Fluxbox and a small variety of other applications. It's still not a "fast" machine, though it performs adequately. On boot, it uses approx. 35 MB of RAM. After Firefox, XMMS, and Abiword are loaded (with their required libraries, of course), it'll start to hit the swap, and that's where a noticable slowdown occurs.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Bradac_55]

Ubuntu is the way to go for a painless install
and forget installation. While it lacks a lot in
customibilty during install it makes up for it in
ease of use, if someone has installed Win95/98
they can install Ubuntu.

While I use NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) for my
main workstation at home I have two small (PIII
500's with 128meg) machines running Ubuntu for
testing/thrashing new software. It's easy enough
to format and reinstall the OS if I screw
something up unlike the three to five CD's
needed for any of the major flavors.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[MirrororriM]

Personally, I had used Mandrake since somewhere in the 6.x era. I only recently switched to Ubuntu which was a snap to install, but I miss a few things about Mandrake (which are still configurable in Ubuntu). I find that "apt-get install" is just as easy as "urpmi --update --auto --auto-select", but things tend to not get broken like they do with RPMs. Using Synaptic is just as easy as using Mandrakes package manager (can't remember the name offhand) for comparison sake.

I'm also in the process of switching my web server (my last machine using Mandrake) to Debian. I have to say IMO that Debian/Ubuntu has a much larger package selection than Mandrake does (Debian's package list vs. Mandrake's package list) and I'm quite happy that I made the switch. I especially like the fact that I can use the most current Debian version (3.1) for my two Sun stations (one single-processor and one dual-processor) vs. using a way outdated (and not really supported) Mandrake 7.2.

Overall, it was experimenting with Ubuntu that turned me on to Debian even though I had been using Knoppix (Debian-based) in the past. What turned me away from Mandrake/Mandriva is the fact that they're turning into a Redhat-type organization. Meaning "For $$ we have the enterprise-level edition, and for free, we have the cut-down, shaved-off, download version". I don't forsee Debian doing that any time in the near future.

Just my 2 pennies.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Com2Kid]

• Alternately, there's Yoper, which is just designed to be a fast, binary-based distro. Basically, imagine if a nerd set up your Gentoo box for you. I didn't try that one myself - it has specific processor requirements my dusty old p166 couldn't handle.

It requires a 686+ IIRC, I used to run it, but then I Gentooified it by installing emerge, and ended up with everything just being Gentoo.

Which reminds me, Yoper is a great way to get a Gentoo box up and running. :-D

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[It doesn't come easy]

My opinion below is not exactly on topic for your question, but the end result is that I would recommend Ubuntu. They make a great distro and support it well without being focused on money the way Mandriva has become. And now for the rest of my rant...
--
In my opinion, Mandriva is no longer a viable option for anyone who wishes to try Linux for the first time. It has gone the way of many of the main distros in that they want money before you try. The problem with that of course is that if you decide you don't like the distro, you're still out the cash. Try three or more distros that require payment first and Linux quickly becomes prohibitively expensive for a single user. There is suppose to be a free, limited download of Mandriva available through the Mandriva club (and there is) but good luck finding it on their web site. I finally had to write to their tech support requesting they send me a link to the free "limited" version. Unfortunately for them, by the time they sent me a link to the limited version, I had already installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu works as well as any distro I have tried so far (in fact, better than most) and the Ubuntu community is MUCH less pushy when it comes to financial support.

The bottom line is, with many distros requiring payment up front, Linux is becoming at least as expensive as Windows, if not more so. I personally would not recommend anyone use any Linux distro that requires payment up front, no matter how good it is. If the distro is good, users will support it. If not, they won't. I believe this is what explains how Ubuntu has skyrocketed to the top of the distro popularity list. It is a great distribution and they don't ask for support until after you expect to stick with it. As it should be.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Drooling Iguana]

I think the problem there is Gnome, not which version of Linux/*BSD you're running. Gnome is a full-featured, resource-intensive DE that was never meant to run well on older machines. Try replacing it with something more lightweight like XFce.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[rbochan]

The laptop I'm typing this on is a Dell Latitude CP 233/128 cirica 1997 running Debian Unstable (Sid). It's also running KDE 3.4.1 - not by any means quickly, but the machine's rock solid other than the crappy pcmcia NIC I have.
I'm running Sid because of the later KDE packages than Sarge (Stable) has. This latest version of KDE is considerably better on the overhead than the 3.3.x versions, imo, especially if you minimize the eye candy you use. I could certainly be running a [sic] 'lesser' window manager likde Icewm, blackbox, or even XFCE, but my main desktop machine runs KDE and I like to be able to use those same apps when mobile. Since this laptop is what I've got to use for work, it's got KDE 3.4.1.

I have zero complaints about usability. Things take a bit longer to start up than on my P-III 800 at home, but it's nothing I can't deal with. The only thing that pains me to start is OpenOffice - I like to have a good book nearby if I fire that up, or take that opportunity to hit the bathroom.

I did try Ubuntu on this machine, but I wasn't satisified with their package contents in their repo's. And yes, I know I can mix in Debian's, but I prefer to stay supported when I can. I personally haven't seen an advantage in using Ubuntu, but I'm sure others (w)could argue with me about that until we're blue in the face. Ubuntu uses a bit of a modified Debian Installer, so if you can install Ubuntu, you can install Debian.

I can't say anything about Mandriva as I've not gone near them since a support fiasco way back with Mandrake 8.2. I haven't trusted them since then, and its likely I won't again.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Klivian]

No doubt Mandrive. Since the configuration tools it has are superior to what Ubuntu offers, making any tweaking necessary to get the best available performance out of the hardware much more user-friendly.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[damiangerous]

Mandrake 10.1 works fine for me on old hardware. The fastest system I own is this PII-866 with 256 megs (Rambus, unfortunately) and it has 10.1, as does my wife's old Dell Latitude CP (PII-233 with 128megs) and it runs acceptable there. Better than than Windows, certainly. The only thing I dislike is how long most KDE apps take to open, for no apparent reason. I seem to recall reading it was to do with a compilation flag Mandrake chose with KDE, and that it would be fixed in future versions, but I'm not certain.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

Try one of the minis like puppy or damned small or austrumi. they are live cd versions that loadup completely into the RAM and run from there, makes them *fast*. They also have one of each of semi normal apps so you can do most things you want to do with linux. And if you bork something, who cares? Just reboot, try another one. try several before you decide. That is what is nice about all the live cd versions.

Up until a few months ago I was running full bloat fedora on an old 200PP with similar RAM. It worked OK. In my experience, RAM is way more important than processor speed. 128 just won't cut it with most linuxes, 256 and above, it will work, basic bottom line there. Good luck!

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[markdavis]

>they want money before you try

BZZZT! Wrong! Mandrake/Mandriva have ALWAYS had both a free and commercial version. The free version is *EASILY* obtained from COUNTLESS mirror sites. The only difference between the two is that the commercial version includes support and copyrighted (non-GPL) packages.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a version that doesn't keep changing its name to something even more unpronounceable?

Next up: Linux Febubuvian.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[taylortbb]

Mandrake/Mandriva is a good choice. It's very easy to use and a simple setup. It was the distribution I started using Linux with, and after having tried other distros is still my favourite. The default desktop is KDE.

If you are coming from a Mac background you may want to use Gnome instead of KDE, it will probably be more familiar, Mandriva can be switched to use Gnome, or the easiest Gnome based distro out there right now is Ubuntu.

I reccomend KDE but I don't want to start a flamewar so that is all I'll say.

None of the user-friendly distros are known for their speed, the more GUI you put in the slower it goes. I however have a 550Mhz with 384 RAM running Mandrake and it works quite nicely, perfectly fast enough for most things and to get to know Linux. My first Linux machine was a 133 w/ 64MB RAM running a recent version of Mandrake, it was *extremely* slow, but it was still enough to convince me to switch.

If you want to try Linux you could try running it under VMWare if your primary machine is substantially faster (2Ghz+, 512MB RAM+).

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[bhalo05]

It's the eternal discussion, but when XFCE offers everything KDE has right now, we will be able to start talking about efficiency.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Penguinshit]

I loaded Ubuntu on a machine here at work (it's our "electronic receptionist") because the machine wouldn't be heavily used and I could afford to horse around. I found the installation and configuration to be brainless and painless. I had the system up and running in two days, complete with the "receptionist" program (Apache running a local version of our Corporate website with a big "Please Sign In" on the front page).

The thing is an old PII-400 with 256mb RAM and it's solid as hell. If the machine goes down, BIOS reboots as soon as power is applied. Using the desktop manager I set the "guest" user to login automagically and fire up the brower set to the internal home page. It took me longer to configure the IPTables script than it did to configure Ubuntu once I got it all loaded.

Given this, I'd recommend Ubuntu for a beginner.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[rainman_bc]

Yes, but the key is that this particular user wants to run a linux desktop on a rather weak machine. KDE and Gnome are both bloated.

I'm not trying to start an Xfce vs. KDE and Gnome flamewar, I'm only saying that Xfce is tonnes better on older machines, and there's even better desktops out there than that, just suggesting that one a bit lighter would be beneficial.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Tipa]

Just put Debian on an old Celeron 400 MHz that was previously running Windows 98 and it looks great and is solid as a rock. I want to make it a client for a custom Oracle app we run, but haven't been having a lot of luck there... However, as a Linux box - runs it better than it ran Win98. FC4 was a little clunky. SuSE didn't load at all.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Fred_A]

Maybe you should wait a bit and install Mac OS on it ? :)

Apart from that, you'll find most packaged distributions to be quite similar. They ship the same software after all.

Pick the one your friends/neighbour/local LUG uses. It will make your life easier in the immediate future. When you're more comfortable, start shopping around.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[bhalo05]

I agree with that, just got upset by the efficiency part ;)

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[ReinoutS]

I can't say anything about Mandriva as I've not gone near them since a support fiasco way back with Mandrake 8.2. I haven't trusted them since then, and its likely I won't again.

That must be an awful long time ago. Regardless, I never needed any more support for Mandriva than the free newsgroups, lists and fora offered. Besides, the technical qualities of the distro have nothing to do with the level of support from the company that produces it.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[HermanAB]

A 500MHz will run anything, but a lightweight distribution will certainly work better. Therefore I would suggest Ubuntu.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[ReinoutS]

I have to say IMO that Debian/Ubuntu has a much larger package selection than Mandrake does (Debian's package list vs. Mandrake's package list)

Really. Mandriva offers thousands upon thousands of packages in their main and contrib repositories, and then we haven't counted 3rd party repositories yet. What packages could you possibly be missing?

"For $$ we have the enterprise-level edition, and for free, we have the cut-down, shaved-off, download version"

Are you now actually blaming Mandriva for trying to make a bit of money to be able to employ fulltime Linux hackers? Hello?!

The download version (iso's) can be extended to be equal to the enterprise-level edition by simply adding the free urpmi repositories to the media manager.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[swv3752]

The Enterprise level doesn't have additional packagaes over the Mandrake Club Version. The Mandrake Club Version only has extra binary/non-free packages added.

To clarify, the Enterprise version is just a garunteed stable version, much like Debina stable. They also garuntee support for it for 5 years. There is nothing in it that you don't get with the regular version, except only security updates get applied to the Enterprise one for 5 years. For the small time user, big whoop.

To download the free version click here. It was like three clicks to find it.

I personally have found that Ubuntu does not have as good of hardware support as Mandrake/Mandriva. It is also a good idea to check the errata first as well.
EasyURPMI is a nice resource to add additional sources for packages.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

Kanotix. Works nicely on my PII 300 lappy.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[MirrororriM]

Really. Mandriva offers thousands upon thousands of packages in their main and contrib repositories, and then we haven't counted 3rd party repositories yet. What packages could you possibly be missing?

apt-get upgrade

There's one - an upgrade to the next version via network connectivity. Hell, you can install an entire Debian system over the net. With Mandrake, I got to download 3 CDs, hope they install properly (they actually were getting really good at getting no errors as of 9.2) and then you're off. With Debian, you can fire up the business card CD to set up the network, then unplug the monitor and ssh to the machine remotely for the rest of the install. Mandrake, several times, had you start from scratch just to upgrade to the newest version. I had to more than once. Last ones I recall were from 7.x to 8.x, and then again from 8.x to 9.x. "Wipe it clean and start over" isn't my cup of tea, so before I bothered with 10.x/2005, I decided to look at my options. Ubuntu nailed everything on my desktop and laptop - every piece of hardware just worked. From my cheap cheap firewire card, to both wireless cards on my laptop - two things that Mandrake could never seem to take hold of.

Don't take this wrong, I really did like Mandrake and it served its purpose well for several years. I thank Mandrake for turning me on to Linux. But when they decided to change, so did I.

The download version (iso's) can be extended to be equal to the enterprise-level edition by simply adding the free urpmi repositories to the media manager.

I would be very interested in finding these free urpmi repositories as every time I tried to find more, I kept running into "join mandrakeclub first". The closest I came was here, which took me to distro link, then to a list of alphabetical packages, then to a description of the package with a link of where to download the package (similar to rpmfind.net), and then you get to install it and hope you have the dependencies required for the package. ARGGG! If you have to jump through hoops to find/download several rpms, you're in for a long night doing it that way. With three checkmarks to configure what package lists to include, I was ready to go. Either use Synaptic or apt-get install in the terminal. There was no guessing as to "will this rpm have all the dependencies or do I have to search for those too?", apt-get simply grabs the most recent stable release and installs it with any dependencies needed.

Well, good luck with Mandrake/Mandriva anyways. I'm not looking back.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[It doesn't come easy]

Yes, I know they are out there. That's not what I said. Their whole web site is set up to Buy It! then try it, not try it and then buy it. So show me. What three clicks from their main page?

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[It doesn't come easy]

Easy enough to say without proof. Show me the clicks required to find the free version from their main page. A person looking to try Mandriva only sees "Buy now!" plastered everywhere. Even searching doesn't bring it up. To add insult to injury, they even try to get you to buy the free version. Searching for "limited" and "download", I quote from the web site: "If you like keeping one release ahead of the crowd, you've reached your nirvana! Mandriva Club members have privileged access to the newest system from Mandriva, including some bonuses. Learn what club members get and why you should subscribe right now! Subscribe to Mandriva Club | Purchase Limited Edition 2005"

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[ToddFFW]

I concur... gentoo

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[It doesn't come easy]

I'll add to my own post here: Apparently the free download version is called "Download Edition". Regardless, searching for "Download Edition" turns up no links.

Starting from the www.mandriva.com page, searching turns up 19 links (mostly FAQs) that mention the free download edition but provide no links. Then from the main page, clicking on "Mandriva Club" then "Downloads" you get to two links that look promising but are not...

The link "Download Mandriva Linux Distributions" gives a web page where every link leads back to buying a version of Mandriva or joining the Mandriva Club (for no less than $66 annually).

The link "Mirrors / Mirrors-list" leads you to a different page with the same link issue as the first. The only difference is that the "Download Edition" is mentioned but no link is provided.

After searching their web site for a good while, as far as I can tell you cannot find the link to the free download by searching. It is out there but if you don't already know where it is you can't find it.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[timbo234]

I would be very interested in finding these free urpmi repositories as every time I tried to find more, I kept running into "join mandrakeclub first"

The list is here: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/

This is the answer to about half of the Mandrake related questions on any discussion board 'just go to easyurpmi, setup your sources and then install it from there'. Also in the latest version (2005LE) they have a convenient button in the software sources manager to setup all these free repos automatically.

There was no guessing as to "will this rpm have all the dependencies or do I have to search for those too?"

Not if you setup your repositories (which you have to do with Ubuntu's apt-get too BTW).

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[timbo234]

www.mandrivalinux.com
Click Download (in left hand menu like on most websites)
It clearly lays out the 3 options you have for it (club membership, boxed set and download edition). Now look in the table on the row that says 'Download Edition' go across to 'Download from public FTP mirrors'.
The next page is a list of mirrors by location.

How simple is that? You obviously didn't try very hard.

Also once you've installed it you can setup your software source automatically to get all the rest of the software (more than is in the boxed set almost, except for closed-source packages) by going to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org./

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[timbo234]

Honestly, how do posts like yours get modded 'Informative'. You're anything but and you can't eve n navigate a simple website.
www.mandrivalinux.com
Click Downloads
In the table see 'Download Edition' look across to 'Public FTP'. Click on the link in the box.
Now select from list of mirrors whichever is closer to you.

So simple.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[It doesn't come easy]

I followed your instructions for the www.mandrivalinux.com site and they work. However...it is interesting to note I have been searching the www.mandriva.com site. So, www.mandrivalinux.com vs. www.mandriva.com

The www.mandriva.com is the main site (I assume) and there is no link that I can find to the free versions. The www.mandrivalinux.com site is the old Mandrake site, and it looks like they are moving everything to the other site (slowly to be sure). Is the issue that they are simply in a transition, or are they deliberately allowing the free version to fall off the site?

Regardless, the buy first then try is prevalent throughout their site. Even the support knowledge base requires a club membership (which is not free). On the support forums, you can browse the entries manually but to search the forums you (again) have to have a club membership.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good idea.

What if the user wants to use K3b to burn CDs? Ooops, no, that won't work. Want to use Konqueror? Forget it. Evolution? hahaha. Here's your Mutt, it's lightweight. Want to chat using Kopete or Gaim? no, sorry, we're a lightweight distro.

Because, you know, as soon as you start any of those programs, you are loading all of KDE/Gnome you'd have in your window manager.

KDE/Gnome are not window managers. They are development environments. Not using them simply leads to duplicating code a million times as each application implements its own widget system -- mozilla, openoffice...

Why people consider this more lightweight, I'll never understand.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[timbo234]

The www.mandrivalinux.com site is the old Mandrake site, and it looks like they are moving everything to the other site (slowly to be sure). Is the issue that they are simply in a transition, or are they deliberately allowing the free version to fall off the site?

mandrake.com was their corporate site and mandrakelinux.com was the site about the Linux distro itself. Its still the same - mandriva.com is their corporate site and mandrivalinux.com is the site about the distro itself. There is no transition and their not moving stuff between sites.

Even the support knowledge base requires a club membership (which is not free). On the support forums, you can browse the entries manually but to search the forums you (again) have to have a club membership

Yes of course the club forum is members only. If you want a good support forum try linuxquestions.org (they have a Mandriva forum) or mandrakeusers.org.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Master of Transhuman]

Well, while I agree with your points, there ARE other programs that do what the KDE/GNOME-based ones do and aren't dependent on the KDE/GNOME libraries.

He just has to be aware that these programs may not have been as heavily developed or feature-rich as the big boys. They might even be older or no longer under development.

For learning purposes, they might suit him very well.

The important thing would be, once his distro is selected (or before), to visit some of the forums related to the distro or distros he's considering and see who's using what for which distro to do what tasks. If a distro is seriously lacking a common utility (unlikely at this stage of Linux, I suspect), that would weed out that distro from consideration.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Master of Transhuman]

"Also in the latest version (2005LE) they have a convenient button in the software sources manager to setup all these free repos automatically."

Aah, now THAT was what I was asking for just the other day here! I complained about the easyurpmi bit just showing you the command lines you need to type to get the free repositories. I'm glad to see someone at Mandrake realized that wasn't the best approach.

Guess I should wait for the 2006 Mandriva and upgrade for sure. I'm still not doing enough with Linux on a day-to-day basis to upgrade to the 2005LE right now, might as well wait.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Master of Transhuman]

Well, other people have pointed out your error, so I'll only add that I'm running Mandrake 10.1 and it hasn't cost me a penny.

I agree they make it a little hard to see that you DON'T have to spend money to get it. But that's not quite the same as, say, Microsoft refusing to give you an update until they examine your PC down to the chipset to see that you don't have a "pirated" copy.

Not to mention that with Microsoft, you get an OS for the money - and that's it. With ANY Linux distro, you get TONS of free software that would cost you ten grand in the Windows world (or at least a lot of hours finding, downloading and installing freeware.)

So comparing Mandriva to Microsoft is overstating the case a bit.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu runs fine on my ancient Thinkpad 390. (P200 MMX, 96MB RAM, etc.) Runs faster than Mandrake 9 did. And I'd expect a more recent Mandrake/Mandriva distro to be more resource-hungry.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[moranar]

Because ghod forbid a company could actually make money out of its gpl'd contributions to free/os software (yes, all the software mandriva develops into the distro is GPL'd). And, as everyone else has pointed out, you were flat out wrong on the free availability of mandriva.

As for support, I use and always have used mandrivausers.org (was mandrakeusers.org). It has perhaps even better support than the "official" forums, and it's even linked from the mandrivalinux.com website. Mandriva acknowledges it as a free support website.

What's next? Complaining about where to get the docs?

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[ReinoutS]

apt-get upgrade

The Mandrake/Mandriva equivalent is

urpmi --auto-select --auto

. Mandriva always had the possibility of installing from the first CD and installing the rest over the network; the last few versions even offer a Mini-ISO for download for exactly this purpose.

The closest I came was here, which took me to distro link, then to a list of alphabetical packages, then to a description of the package with a link of where to download the package (similar to rpmfind.net), and then you get to install it and hope you have the dependencies required for the package.

Apparently you missed the 'URPMI setup' links next to the list of download locations. If you had clicked it and followed the instructions, you could have installed any package with urpmi or rpmdrake, and the dependencies would have been sorted out for you.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Azzhole]

I'd go and snatch the free version of Libranet. It has everything you need and if you find KDE to be too slow you can play with ICE WM and perk her up. It's stable as a brick and has interesting features that are Libranet specific. It has great hardware detection and a very simple installer. You'll need to know your DNS/IP to setup DSL/Cable. I run it on an old 466 celery with 256. It does well.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[leadsling]

Either should work fine for you. I think Mandriva has better hardware support, but then I've been using Mandrake/Mandriva for almost 3 years. I've given Ubuntu a spin and it's OK. Another distro to check out for lower-powered machines is Vector Linux. I've put that on machines as light as a Pentium II 266 with 128 MB RAM and a 2 GB hard drive and it works like a champ.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva

[Lumpy]

not ubuntu.

it is certianly not for newbies or people that do not want to dink with their computer. mandriva works great and is 100% effortless for a non linux user and the linux guru combined. hell it installed my 802.11g drivers automatically from the windows driver CD when I configured a wireless connection, which by the way is far simpler than in any version of windows.

your only problem might be in the ram department if you use gnome or KDE. I suggest trying xfce4 as your X manager although it's not very microsoftish so some users will have a fit over it.

if you buy a stick of ram ($20.00 last time I checked for 256 meg dimm) it will run much smoother....

Finally, if you really want to speed it up go into the control panel and shut down all services that are running that you do not need. I saw a 40% speed increase on a low end PC when I disabled all the default services that I did not want to use.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

what?

entire conversation:

[databyss]

"Mandriva Linux suxorz! The best distro is _____ biznatches!!"

"Yeah well all linux suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"

"Hey guys wait! MacOSX is linux and it's the best thing god ever handed down to humans!"

"No n00b, MacOSX is BSD."

"Yeah well all BSD's suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"

Re:entire conversation:

[ArsonSmith]

You forgot "This is a dupe of story _________" or "This store will be duped in _______ hours"

I'm sure it is somewhere.

Re:entire conversation:

[databyss]

Yeah, somebody already hit that before I posted.

I did forget to add some general nerds-can't-get-women statement.

Re:entire conversation:

[Swamii]

Yeah well all BSD's suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"

Never once have I heard anyone on Slashdot say anything positive about Windows, most likely because this peanut gallery would've modded such a post out of the discussion.

Re:entire conversation:

[aywwts4]

-A Test-

I personally like windows, it does what I need, and it isn't an OS on training wheels or a system for the programmers by the programmers. I spend the vast majority of my time being productive on my computer instead of maintaining it; and with some basic knowledge and tweaking (Tweak UI, some new drivers and some Regedits) a windows box runs very sweetly. The blue screen of death jokes are quite a dead horse, I have experienced a blue screen on three occasions since XP came out and that includes all five of my boxes. Once was because of a beta sound driver, another was because I tried to put in a video card for 98 only; and the other was a poorly made video game. Other than that most application crashes and gentle and no information is lost, The application that crashes most often (and even that isn't frequently) is Firefox; (its probably because of the extensions I have installed) I can't remember a time that I lost what I was typing or the work I was doing. I do my professional video and graphics work on a windows box, and I play and relax on a windows box; I have been a windows user since I tried an as yet unreleased on my grandfather's computer at Compaq. And to those that say windows has stopped progressing, go back and try 3.1.1 try 95; and try to say nothing has happened.

Windows gets its bad name from users who don't know to put up a firewall and current AV software; who willingly install Kazza or Hotbar or whatever Trojan horse of the day. And from poor software written for windows, doing what poor software does best. Crash.

Sure it has security problems, But with proper precautions taken I have never experienced them.

-A Test-

Re:entire conversation:

[Anonymous Coward]

One of these should be posted with every slashdot story. It seems to have a prophylactic effect.

Re:entire conversation:

[Khalid]

It's sad to admit it, but you are probably right. After being a big Linux fan for years, I must admit that it needs a lot of time to tweak and make it do what you really want. Yes Linux is really really powerful if you are a power user and have enough time, patience, and passion to explore it and learn it. But if you need are in the average, and you just want things to be done, just forget it, and this is the case for I believe 95% of people. Windows has a lot flaws but 95% of the time it just works ! and this is all what people need.

Re:entire conversation:

[noamsml]

hey, your'e not playing fair! that was a blanaced and sane!

Re:entire conversation:

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows gets its bad name from users who don't know to put up a firewall and current AV software; who willingly install Kazza or Hotbar or whatever Trojan horse of the day. And from poor software written for windows, doing what poor software does best. Crash.

Sure, but as a professional sysadmin, I spend an amazing amount of time configuring AV and firewalls -- and then cleaning up the machine when a user found their way around the safeguards I put into the system (SAV10CE seems to be an improvement, though).

This headache is not part of maintaining a computer -- at last Mac OS X and Linux (two other systems that I support for the users who prefer them) do the job admirably without bringing me in every few months to do an exorcism. With 250 machines, that time adds up to several competent student-assistants -- and good+competent+polite help is hard to find!

Patches are universal, though.

Re:entire conversation:

[renoX]

Well, while I agree that WinXP blue screen of death are rare, there are still big issue with system corruption.

A friend of mine had a registry corruption problem, and none of the backup could be used to solve it --> reinstallation.
Recently for some reason, I couldn't boot anymore and had to repair the installation, it worked, but I've never figured why the corruption appeared..

So while XP is very stable, sometimes it just blow up spontaneously, something that doesn't really occur with Linux: once it work, it'll stay working (except with filesystem corruption, but those are usually caused by faulty hardware).

Not to say that Linux is perfect: upgrades are sometimes risky.
And on both software still tend to crash a bit too much (on Linux, for a desktop, having the kernel running but being forced to logoff is as bad as if the kernel has crashed so uptime comparison is not good enough), and both must be patched for security far too often.

Re:entire conversation:

[CrossChris]

A proper operating system doesn't allow the ravages of viruses, trojans and spyware. The end user shouldn't have to deal with security issues like these - they should be dealt with automatically. MS have tried to do this, but it simply doesn't work, and simply cannot work due to the underlying structure of Windows. If you have really never suffered any security issues or had repeated crashes, you are either entirely unique or have a special version of Windows issued only to "friends of Bill".

Re:entire conversation:

[the_womble]

I spend the vast majority of my time being productive on my computer instead of maintaining it

What do you think users of other OSes do? It would hardly be in our interests to tolerate anything else. I would drop Linux and go back to Windows or buy Macs if I thought I would get my work done better in Windows or MacOS.

with some basic knowledge and tweaking (Tweak UI, some new drivers and some Regedits) a windows box

Sounds like more work than Mandrake/Mandriva needs

Windows gets its bad name from users who don't know to put up a firewall and current AV software; who willingly install

Linux gets its bad name from people who either tried and early version of Red Hat and found it difficult, and from people using inappropriate distributions (e.g. newbies using Slackware or Gentoo).

with proper precautions taken I have never experienced them

Time spent taking precautions is lost productivity. I have to maintain a small network (five PCs) and do my real work as well. I want to be able install quickly and tweak as little as possible. Mandriva does this admirably. I have only every had installation/configuration problems on my own machine which has more server and other less common/non-desktop software installed on it than the others.

I know there are utilities for making Windows networks easier to maintain and secure but I am not aware of any suited to small business.

You are assuming that people use Linux out of idealism. Plenty of people use Linux because it is what works best for us.

Re:entire conversation:

[databyss]

Then I guess I'm a friend of Bill too! I've been using windows for years since 3.11 Windows for Workgroups without any issues. I run XP now, I skipped over ME and ran 2k instead cause ME sucks. My computer hasn't crashed in recent memory, there's no spyware on it, and I haven't had a virus in over 5 years.

I try linux every couple years, but I can never muster the effort to fully switch over due to something reason or another each time. Either lack of supporting my hardware, or lack of software or configuration difficulties.

Some day I'm sure it'll be good enough and I will switch over, but until then I better give Bill a call... I've got some loans he could help me pay off.

Re:entire conversation:

[ookaze]

-A Test-

I personally like Linux, it does what I need, and it isn't an OS on training wheels or a system for the clueless by the monopoly. I spend the vast majority of my time being productive on my computer instead of maintaining it or calling support which costs money and time; and with no basic knowledge a Linux box runs very sweetly. The command line jokes are quite a dead horse, I have experienced having to go to command line on three occasions since Mandrake came out and that is because I don't use commercial versions, where all this is installed easily. Once was because of Java (proprietary), another was because of Flash (again proprietary, how strange); and the last was because of NVidia (proprietary, see a pattern ?). Other than that most application do NOT crashes and those that do (often experimental features, so I expect them to crash) are gentle and no information is lost. The only application that crashes sometimes is the Flash plugin (so it is Java in fact); It doesn't crash actually, it eats my CPU, which is worse, but is not always immediately perceptible in Linux, as Linux manages this so well you don't even notice sometimes. I can't remember a time that I lost what I was typing or the work I was doing. I do my professional work on a Linux box, and I play and relax on a Linux box (and sometimes one of my consoles); I have been a Linux user since I tried a Red Hat copy I bought in 1998. And to those that say Linux does not progress fast enough, go back and try Red Hat 7 or Mandrake 6; and try to say nothing has happened.

Linux gets its bad name from users who don't know how to follow some simple instructions on a site like "easy urpmi" (http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/); who willingly install development versions Firefox or Thunderbird by hand when stable and tested ones are available right from their distro. And from poor software packaged like in windows, doing what poor package does best : do not install or hose the package system for the worst ones (like Firefox).

Sure it has driver problems, but with proper precautions taken I have never experienced them.

-A Test-

First "Where are the Torrents?" whine!

[billstewart]

Sigh. ISO downloads instead of bit-torrents. Maybe they figure the beta won't be popular enough to get lots of downloaders at once, but they still ought to be efficient about it.

Re:First "Where are the Torrents?" whine!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they're just not trying to trick a bunch of nerds to waste their bandwidth for a slower than fatpipe download.

Re:First "Where are the Torrents?" whine!

[markdavis]

Mandriva offers torrents for all the current flavors of the distro, but not for the beta/Cooker versions (not typically).

My experience with torrents are mixed. Sometimes it is wonderful, other times it is a nightmare... Still, I do agree that there should be a torrent for it.

FREE as in FREEDOM BIATCH!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

FREE as in FREEDOM BIATCH!!!

# Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
# Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
# If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

Re:FREE as in FREEDOM BIATCH!!!

[WilliamSChips]

# Please try to keep posts on topic.

Don't put that in your /. post if you're posting an OT comment. *rolls eyes*

And the winner is...

[RelliK]

...and the award for the most ridiculous Linux distribution name goes to... Mandriva! Hounorable mention to the runner up, Kubuntu.

Re:And the winner is...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least kubuntu is actually a word.

Re:And the winner is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to recommend Mandrake to people, I couldn't recommend something with a name like 'Mandriva' to my worst enemy...

MANDRIVA

Nope, it still sounds more like car designed for homosexuals than a computer operating system. I can only assume it doesn't sound so stupid in French and Portuguese.

Re:And the winner is...

[Charles Jo]

It's as if they want to fail as a business with such strange names. Why play games? Just rename the company to Bankruptcia and get it over with.

Re:And the winner is...

[the_womble]

In what way is it worse than Red Hat, Debian or Gentoo? For that matter what could be worse than Vista?

Wifi support?

[Araxen]

You mean I might actually be able to use my linksys wifi notebook card now in linux without going through a million hoops to get it working?

I hope this is true as I've been dying for some good wifi support in linux.

Re:Wifi support?

[nb caffeine]

not having to resort to ndiswrapper and losing functionality i enjoy under linux would be nice

Re:Wifi support?

[markdavis]

If you purchased hardware that works with Linux then it would make things a lot easier. In any case, Mandrake/Mandriva includes ndiswrapper, which will allow almost all wifi cards to work under Linux that are not natively supported. This is nothing new.

why even bother posting screen shots

[Anonymous Coward]

of a new version of KDE when it looks like the last several versions?

Re:why even bother posting screen shots

[lphuberdeau]

KDE 3.4 has a lot of visual improvements. But from what I saw in the screenshots, the distribution is nothing more than Gnome and KDE with all their respective logos replaced by a yellow star. They should have placed the focus on their custom management applications and such. Looking at all those KDE screenshots is a waste of time once you've seen them before.

(I really like KDE, I use it every day)

Re:why even bother posting screen shots

[Chosen Reject]

Because the control center says "Mandriva Control Center" now. That is obviously different and thus deserves its own screenshot frenzy.

filesystems

[grahagre]

does this mean they'll finally switch or offer the option of ext3 or rieserfs filesystem during installation? i installed their latest one and they're still using ext2 for the '/' filesystem! pathetic.

Re:filesystems

[spinel]

Strange you would choose to install ext2. I have used rieserfs or ext3 on mandrake since about 7.2. Maybe it was 8.1 but that was very long ago. You didn't bother to read the release notes did you? DC

Re:filesystems

[moranar]

You mean I've been using something else for four years? I mean, my partitions have been reiserfs since I can remember, all the way from at least 'drake 9.2. And it hasn't changed with the latest release: you can choose between ext2, ext3, reiserfs, at the very least. Maybe you were thinking of Fedora?

Re:filesystems

[markdavis]

Your comments are completely WRONG. Mandrake was *THE FIRST* disto to offer journaling filesystems. For many years, they has offered reiserfs, then they added ext3 when it came out, then added xfs and jfs when THEY came out. The default filesystem has been ext3 for at least three years now. You may now crawl back under the rock that trolls live under.

Re:filesystems

[sconeu]

ReiserFS was an option at least as far back as MDK 8.1.

Re:filesystems

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you are dumb and do not understand a pull-down menu?

Re:filesystems

[Anonymous Coward]

I had my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop running Mandrake 8.1 with XFS as the root filesystem with a relatively painless install (it was far harder to reinstall Win2k on the same box after partitioning the disk). Mandrake was the only distro that I tried that got through an install at all, let alone so easily (Redhat, Slackware, one other that I've forgotten didn't work).

Unfortunately Mandriva 2005LE has been having some problems with my new XPS Gen2, I suspect the Hitachchi 7K60 drive has got bad firmware (XFS loses files once in a while, which never happened on the Mandrake 8.X distros). No luck root-causing the problem so far...

Re:filesystems

[Anonymous Coward]

> then added xfs and jfs when THEY came out

Indeed. I haven't kept up, but for a long time Mandrake was the only distro I could find that would let me boot off an XFS partition.

(BTW, if you want suspend support, don't use XFS on a laptop. I found out the hard way :). Not Mandrake's fault, but it doesn't work - resume locks up the system).

Re:filesystems

[leadsling]

I've been using Mandrake since 8.2 and have never had to use ext2.

Re:All the new features....

[Pxtl]

Or another UI concern - if you're going to support 2 different window managers, why restrict it to the coke/pepsi of window managers? KDE and Gnome are now full-featured enough that providing both is basically just doubling the workload of the package maintainers for little gain - you have to make sure all your apps and config tools get along with both. More sensible would be to pick one of the big, modern, heavyweight WMs and also include a low-resource WM for use on legacy boxen.

Of course, even distros that do include Ice or XFCE don't actually set up their tools to work with them, so using a low-resource WM just gets you a GUI-aided command prompt and not much else.

What about WiFi Chipset support?

[WindozeSux]

Will this contain support for Atmel and Prism built in or will we have to go and get Prism Drivers or Atmel Drivers? The only problem without having built-in support is that for the Atmel you have to patch the kernel(only 2.6 and greater) and recompile it(takes awhile on a 1.7Ghz). It would be major convience for built-in support for these commonly used chipsets. I hope that this new distribution includes full WiFi support.

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[general_boy]

Mandriva 2005LE (also known as 10.2) has both built in - I just checked, along with many other "3rd party" drivers, part of the default kernel install.

The enhanced WiFi support they speak of is AFAIK in the area of management of the connections. The WiFi driver support even in 10.2 is pretty good, if you don't count WEP being broken for the Centrino chipsets.

Disclaimer: I am a regular package contributor to the distro.

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[fitsnips]

you think it takes a while on a 1.7Ghz? Guess you have not been around long, go try it on a 486dx2 then you will know long.

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[FellowConspirator]

Dunno about Amtel, but prism support has been a basic part of Mandriva for quite some time. I checked 2005LE just now and the Amtel driver's right there.

I would point out for those not familiar with Mandriva, Wi-fi support's always been in there and has been pretty decent, but for the fact that you've got both the Mandrake control panel for wi-fi and kwifimanager -- not only redundant, but the Control Center config panel has text input boxes where there should be drop-downs and check boxes...

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[RobertLTux]

Umm I don't know why you seem to think that atmel chips require a kernel recompile i started 10.0 with a Linksys WUSB11 v 2.8 and it worked [more or less} I upgraded to 2005LE because it had better support (and it is setup for separate firmware not compiled in firmware) Now i will confess that the signal strenth meter is fiction but... it works

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[SPY_jmr1]

What? I don't know exactly which 1.7 CPU you have, but the last time I was doing a lot of compiling was on a pentium-m 1.4 Ghz, and a 2.6... I think I had from 2.6-pre1 through about 2.6.6 on that laptop, but anyway, with GCC 3.2, it never took it more then 15 minutes or so to rebuild. You can't wait 15 minutes? Maybe nice it, and surf /. for a while?

OR... (this is only a maybe, fwiw) If the atmel drivers can be built as a module, why not just build the specific module? Takes far less time, and is what I would have to do for acpi drivers for that horrid toshiba laptop. (Irony: Proper drivers are developed almost as soon as I sold it)

*shrugs* But yes, I agree, wifi should be better supported in the main tree. (Don't most of them require some userland firmware loaded, hence the trouble in supporting them?)

Re:What about WiFi Chipset support?

[leadsling]

The last version (LE2005) supported Atmel out of the box. I have a Blitzz USB wireless adapter that uses the Atmel chipset and was unable to get it running with a 2.6 kernel. When I installed LE, it worked from the get-go.

will it boot off a USB drive?

[Ohmster]

I wonder if it can boot off a USB drive...in which case it could be an interesting application for the "computers on a stick" that are starting to show up. see this post for more http://mp.blogs.com/mp/2005/07/on_computers_on.htm l

Re:will it boot off a USB drive?

[markdavis]

Booting from a USB device is determined by the computer BIOS, not the OS. If your BIOS supports booting off a USB device, then Linux can be booted that way, including Mandriva.

Re:will it boot off a USB drive?

[HermanAB]

That is largely a BIOS problem. Some machines can't boot off a USB drive, nothing to do with Linux per se.

Re:will it boot off a USB drive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a fairly trivial task to get any Linux booting off USB, if the BIOS supports it. Just partition and install on /dev/sda or whatever the USB drive shows up as. It might be a good thing to not make a swap partition, as some flash has a fairly low # of write cycles (100,000).

If you know a bit about Grub/Lilo, you can easily make a Live CD distro into a Live USB one.

As to BIOS's not supporting bootable USB, you would have to go a floppy or CD bootstrap way. Again, a little knowledge of Grub/Lilo will get it done. Or, all of Mandrake/Mandriva's distro's have an option at the end of install if you want to make a bootable disk that will boot into your installation, which installs Grub/Lilo with the correct parameters for your install.

As to an already done distro, I think Mandriva's Globetrotter is the closest thing, which is a bootable USB HD preinstalled with one of their distros. I don't think they have an image of this to download, though.

I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake 9.1 was the first Linux that I could use without 'issues'. I replaced all my Windows boxes (except one) with it and haven't needed to use a Windows box for more than a few hours since.

I liked Mandrake enough that I laid out the money for Power Pack 10.0. The trouble is that installing software has become such a nusance that I'm slowly switching to Debian based distros. I try to use urpmi and it asks for a cd. I insert the cd and urpmi refuses to believe that it's the right one. I try to ./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.

I haven't given up without a fight but apt-get works so much better for me.

Yawn

[snorklewacker]

Queue up more boring screenshots on OSDir's clunky image browser. Possibly the most telling image is how they put GNU Emacs in the KDE Kicker and didn't configure any reasonable default colors for it matching the theme (those are the out of the box for gnu emacs). The rest are just bog standard desktop shots.

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey-hey-HEY! Those are the *correct* colors for Emacs. You mess with my base colors and the source highlighting colors all look wrong. No, I don't want Emacs to be shiny blue-and-white, it would reduce its functionality.

Hole in the Head Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Like we need ANOTHER Linux distro with little to set it apart from the others, except the laughable name.

Re:Hole in the Head Linux

[markdavis]

There might be too many distros, but don't make it sound like Mandrake/Mandriva is something new. It is a major distro and has been for many years. And there is quite a bit of difference between Mandriva Linux and, let's say, Fedora Core, or SuSe. They use different installation methods, have different hardware detection capabilities, and different administration tools.

Re:Hole in the Head Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they didn't call it, "ManVista" as was originally planned. /end joke

Interestingly enough

[Sarojin]

Lonhorn beta 1 is out now too. I wonder how it compares?

Re:Interestingly enough

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Longhorn is much more secure.

Re:Mandriva

[jusdisgi]

Mandrake hasn't been based on RedHat since like the 6.x series. It's LSB compliant too. And though it did start out as RH+KDE, the automatic dependency checking/resolving was its important contribution.

That said, has anybody used recent Mandriva? Is it any good? I thought Mandrake was the best (binary) distro going until about 9.2, when I saw the release lose a lot of polish (vs. 9.1, which for its time I thought was really solid) and start having stupid things break. I haven't used anything later than 10.x, using gentoo and going through a bunch of debian-based distros since.

Ugly fscking icons

[lakcaj]

This is going to sound like a troll, but really it's not. Now, with all the talent and resources the linux community has, why can't someone come up with a beautiful default icon set for both KDE and Gnome? I don't care what anyone says, but those icons do not look professional and they are UGLY! First impressions matter, and to me, my first impression when I see a screenshot like that is, "What a POS". And before you say, "Well then, make your own icons", be assured that I would if I had the talent.

Now, it you want to see some examples of professional _and_ attractive icons, go to gnome-look.org and take a look at the Exquisite, Edge, or d3a icons.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[snorklewacker]

No accounting for taste, I guess. The icons for d3a look promising, but have pretty terrible contrast. Edge is elegant in its own minimalist way. Exquisite lives up to its name, though it's fairly noisy, but why on earth does everyone have to create such "shiny" icons? By that I don't mean bling, I mean all the specular effects. I'm sick of my desktop looking like it has a million candlepower spotlight shining on it.

Many of the icons in the screenshot (such as the gnu for emacs) were application-supplied. You just can't have a theme that accounts for everything.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[moranar]

Well, you're one of the few who doesn't like the Crystal theme. I'm not hot for it, but I don't find it "a piece of shit". Actually, if I wasn't able to do my own icon themes (and I am not) I'd watch what I say about them. Who knows, maybe you wouldn't like your own work to be called "What a piece of shit".

So you find Exquisite, Edge and d3a beautiful. Have you thought of filing bug reports on their inclusion into mandriva (or your distro of choice)? Perhaps they have some problems that void their use.

Like, what do I know, Exquisite is just the apple icons, and any commercial distro would be sued to bits if they included them?

Like, d3a has serious usability problems: it's too gray and silver, it's not very readable by people who don't see that well.

Edge is a bit too black n' white for my taste, apart from the fact that it imitates the apple icons too.

So, basically, you want a Mac and OS X. This is Mandriva Linux.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[Drooling Iguana]

All the talented artists use Macs.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[Monkelectric]

I was one of the original team members of a very well respected distro (establishing street cred here) and I COMPLETELY agree. I find KDE so gawdy and QT so ugly that I feel like an idiot using it. Gnome is tolerable but has a long way to go yet.

I am not window-manager bashing here.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[Anonymous Coward]

> All the talented artists use Macs.

Yes, unless they're talented and poor.

Then it's Linux.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[TexasDex]

I find KDE so gawdy and QT so ugly that I feel like an idiot using it.

and

I am not window-manager bashing here.

I'd really like to know how on earth the above statement not window-manager bashing. I am geniunely curious to know how you've justified this whole bashing-KDE-is-not-WM-bashing. Cause I can't figure out how on earth you can say that with a straight face. Or were you trying for +5 Funny?

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[FellowConspirator]

To be fair... The default icon set, crystal-svg, is there precisely because people liked it and said as much. You can use the GNOME icons with KDE too -- so you can have Exquisite if that's your taste. But, Exquisite isn't the default for GNOME either. The default GNOME icons are equally as chintzy as the default KDE ones...

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed some icons called "Umicons_2.0" on my Mandrake 10.1 box. I'm not associated with the author in any way, but I have to say those are the most beautiful icons I've ever seen for a desktop. Really nice!

They're for KDE (I just switched from gnome), but I don't see any reason you couldn't use them in gnome too.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[John Nowak]

Apart from maybe the home icon (it may just be similar, I can't tell), Exquisite does not have any icons in common with OS X from what I can see.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[moranar]

The home and trash icons are the ones of Mac OS X. The rest seems "heavily inspired by it". The "brushed metal" windows do nothing to appease that impression.

Re:Ugly fscking icons

[Monkelectric]

I'd really like to know how on earth the above statement not window-manager bashing. I am geniunely curious to know how you've justified this whole bashing-KDE-is-not-WM-bashing. Cause I can't figure out how on earth you can say that with a straight face. Or were you trying for +5 Funny?

Becuase the truth is the truth. Whether you like it or not. I don't believe in Politically Correct. I tried the newest KDE about a month ago to see how it was progressing... let me describe my experience. KDE starts up, plays some godawful sound and my desktop appears looking like a candy kid threw up at a rave. I do actually believe that KDE is a *better* window manager than Gnome, so instead of uninstalling KDE immediately,I end up at some KDE themes site trying to find a relatively low-key theme. I was 100% unsuccessful, after looking at all the top themes, each more gawdy, more filled with clashing bright colors then the next, I went screaming back to gnomes simplicity.

Mandrake on my laptop...

[Zweideutig]

I had Mandrake (9.2 IIRC) on my laptop (I would have installed Gentoo, or Slackware, but the broadband connection was out and my CDs were scratched badly.) There were packages available via a subscription, and there was urpmi. Urpmi was adequate for getting packages installed. However, the graphical Mandrake installer requires alot of RAM, and hardware was not supported out of the box. APM, sound, etc. were not well supported, even though it is a common laptop (Dell Latitude.) At one point, urpmi "broke" the system (I can't remember the details) and I ended up just putting Slackware on it. Will the new Mandriva distribution use urpmi, if not, could it be similar to apt?

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[N7DR]

Will the new Mandriva distribution use urpmi, if not, could it be similar to apt?

I've seen posted somewhere that it will support both urpmi and apt. I too have suffered from urpmi doing some weird things, and am looking forward to trying apt.

Actually, I wonder why no distro seems to be using autopackage (www.autopackage.org); it seems to claim to solve dependency hell in a distribution-neutral way. (I confess that I am pretty fed up of not being able to install newer versions of my favourite apps on my Mandrake 9.2 systems. Whenever I try, I enter dependency hell and quickly give up.)

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[biendamon]

I don't think apt and urpmi are really very different. If you type apt-get , it downloads from preconfigured sources the package and anything it depends on. If you type urpmi , the same thing happens. I've yet to see any real usage-level difference between the two. YaST, on the other hand, seems to have the ability to download and apply *patches* to RPMs, and that's pretty cool. If only SuSE worked on my main computer...sigh...

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[Zweideutig]

Suse didn't worked on your main computer, and another Linux distribution did? Can't you just figure out what hardware you need, and recompile the kernel in SuSE?

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[biendamon]

I suppose I could do that. But when the primary components that fail are your entire USB core and all networking components, it gets really difficult to go through all the hassle to download the correct patch, apply it, reconfigure the kernel, compile it, install it, and pray that you didn't screw something up.

It was simpler just to install Mandriva, which I already knew worked fine with all my hardware out of the box. And it it did.

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[damiangerous]

You can't really blame Mandrake for the sound problem. The Latitude sound chips aren't well supported by any distro, the CP anyway. They claim to be, but you have to tweak them all.

As for RAM, it's a python-based graphical installer, what do you want? Text based is available if you need to stay slim. It's not like it uses that much RAM anyway. top resports it using 37 megs right now.

Re:Mandrake on my laptop...

[timbo234]

Autopackage is not a packaging system to build a distro, their own FAQ says so: http://www.autopackage.org/faq.html#1_2

There's nothing wrong with urpmi (and its GUI equivalent in the Mandrake Control Centre) - they work just as good as apt for me. I've been using MDK since 9.2.

A Microsoft Beta for "Winix"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This is an "MS oriented" beta, deigned to demonstrate to Bill and Steve the attractiveness of Mandriva as an aquisition target over the rumors of a RedHat buy-out, earlier this summer.

This would be in line with past MS behavior. Microsoft often chooses "sloppy seconds" or "also-rans" as aquisition fare. This is a product of price conciousness, concerns of anti-trust action for snaring market leaders, and a disdain for anything not originating in-house. Past indicators ere were Great Plans Accounting, Interix,Connectix Virtual PC, RAV Anti Virus and Giant Anti Spyware. Mandrake/Connectiva/Turbo, with their miniscule commercial share (they are a sliver of RedHat - which is a fraction of a sliver of MS) is ideal.

The Winix Beta will not yet include Avalon or Indigo subsystems, although a rudimentary transplant of the .NET CLR and frameworks are rumored to be in the works once Redmond fully grasps this beast by the tail. Much of this work has been done on the BSD platform, and reputedly the internal Micosoft build - project Marklar - runs the Avalon-based Windows Dodge Colt Vista interface as flawlessly as XP.

Re:A Microsoft Beta for "Winix"

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwahahahaha, you replied to the gaybait troll! MANSCHEXX0R, indeed!

Re:A Microsoft Beta for "Winix"

[markdavis]

Your assessment leaves a lot to be desired. Mandriva releases betas all the time. I seriously doubt they have *ANY* interest at all in MS or any other type of aquisition. Mandriva is not a fly-by-night company. And desipte your anti-Mandriva "sloppy seconds" and "miniscule commercial share" drivel, there are probably just as many people in the world running Mandrake/Mandriva Linux as there are Redhat and Fedora combined.

You, sir, appear to have flammable pants

[biendamon]

The default file system for MD2005 is ext3. I just installed it on a new laptop, and accepted the defaults for file system configuration, and the root is definitely ext3.

Furthermore, the options for ReiserFS and ext3 have been there at least since 10.0, and I'm pretty sure ext3 has been available since 9.1.

Re:You, sir, appear to have flammable pants

[kebes]

I can confirm this. I have installed Mandrake 10.1 on many systems, and have used ext3. Never had any problems. I have not tried ReiserFS, but as far as I can remember, the option was there.

Re:You, sir, appear to have flammable pants

[timbo234]

This is correct - I've been using it since 9.2

Yeah but

[RingDev]

Will my graphics card work?

Will I have sound?

Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling to find solutions to my problems?

Will I have a consitant interface that doesn't change from one area of the OS to another?

Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used to in Windows?

I'm still partially on the Linux bandwagon, but my last series of experiences left me a little less excited.

-Rick

Re:Yeah but

[cybersaga]

At the risk of sounding like a bandwagonner, try out Ubuntu. I had the same past experiences with Linux, then just installed Ubuntu over the weekend. This is what I can say:

Will my graphics card work?
Chances are, yes. All I had to configure were the refresh rates my monitor could handle.

Will I have sound?
Unless your card is uber-obscure, yes, and out of the box.

Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling to find solutions to my problems?
For more complicated in depth stuff, probably. But that comes with learning anything new and different from the norm. But so much is already configured that there isn't much left.

Will I have a consitant interface that doesn't change from one area of the OS to another?
This depends on the window manager and the widgets prgrams use, so it isn't going to be much different between distributions, but I haven't found a problem with it.

Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used to in Windows?
Depends what you're looking for. You can always get themes to mimic Windows if you really want. Keep in mind that it's not Windows though. Some things are always going to be different.

Just try it out. I was impressed.

Re:Yeah but

[markdavis]

> Will my graphics card work? Worked fine for me on the dozens of different machines I have installed 10.2 on > Will I have sound? Worked fine for me on the dozens of different machines I have installed 10.2 on >Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling > to find solutions to my problems? It depends on who and how you ask, and what it is about... >Will I have a consitant interface that doesn't >change from one area of the OS to another? Yes and no. If you want to limit your choices, then yes. If you want to explore applications that use different libraries/toolkits, no. Linux has no single "GUI" or user interface. It is both a blessing and a curse. >Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used >to in Windows? Like what? I can do everything I want with Linux and have done so for a decade. Are there some types of applications missing? Yes, but not many. I would prefer more choices, but one step at a time. >I'm still partially on the Linux bandwagon, but >my last series of experiences left me a little >less excited. Your experience is going to vary GREATLY depending on the hardware you choose, which distro is selected, and how it is installed/configured. Your best bet is to hook up with a local user's group.

Re:Yeah but

[markdavis]

Yikes, my last comment looked like crappola! Let me try a little formatting...
> Will my graphics card work?

Worked fine for me on the dozens of different machines I have installed 10.2 on

> Will I have sound?

Worked fine for me on the dozens of different machines I have installed 10.2 on

>Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling
> to find solutions to my problems?

It depends on who and how you ask, and what it is about...

>Will I have a consitant interface that doesn't
>change from one area of the OS to another?

Yes and no. If you want to limit your choices, then yes. If you want to explore applications that use different libraries/toolkits, no. Linux has no single "GUI" or user interface. It is both a blessing and a curse.

>Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used
>to in Windows?

Like what? I can do everything I want with Linux and have done so for a decade. Are there some types of applications missing? Yes, but not many. I would prefer more choices, but one step at a time.

>I'm still partially on the Linux bandwagon, but
>my last series of experiences left me a little
>less excited.

Your experience is going to vary GREATLY depending on the hardware you choose, which distro is selected, and how it is installed/configured. Your best bet is to hook up with a local user's group.

Re:Yeah but

[RingDev]

To be fair to Mandriva, my experiences have been based off of Redhat and Ubuntu, and one of my Unix admin buddies keeps saying that I should drop Ubuntu and run as fast as I can to Mandriva. He also has the same video card as I do and said it works fine.

And on the up side, there ARE forums to troll for solutions to my problems.

And for the creature comforts, I want to be able to use my windows key as a augmentor and a key press. I want to hit the 'windows' key and have the primary desktop menu open. I want to hit Win-E and have Nautalis open, I want to hit Win-F and have the file searching tool open, hell, I want Nautalis to have the searching tool IN it so I don't need 2 seperate apps. I don't want to HAVE to use the CLI. Yes, some things can be faster, but for the most part, a good gui can be almost as fast and much easier.

-Rick

Re:Yeah but

[Zweideutig]

Will my graphics card work?

What do you mean by that? If you mean will it work with X.org for 2D, then probably the answer is yes. If you mean doing OpenGL stuff, then maybe. My 32 MB ATI Radeon in my Mac Mini will do OpenGL, and so will my 32 MB nVidia card in my 3.0 GHz P4 will do OpenGL.

Will I have sound?

I have sound on all my desktop machines, be it an old ISA SoundBlaster card, or the AC'97 chipset that comes on alot of boards. Even my Mac Mini has sound, only difference is the mixer doesn't work yet.

Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling to find solutions to my problems?

I have never had to ask a question on a forum to get something working in years. With a Google search or a man page I usually can solve my problem. Please don't troll forums.

Will I have a consitant interface that doesn't change from one area of the OS to another?

Why do you need that? I use icewm with a custom theme. X is not going to push a certain interface on the applications. That is the job of the window manager. That is a feature IMHO. And, applications can look like whatever they want, using any Xlib wrapper (that is what qt or gtk do) they want. I write my applications and use Xlib directly. Interface consistency is overrated. If you want that, put OS X on a Mac Mini.

Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used to in Windows?

I have used WINE to run many Win32 applications on my 3.0 GHz P4, and they run smoothly, even Internet Explorer. However, that was just for fun. I have found I would rather just use native applications. So you may find you are like me and the only X applications you need are icewm, rxvt (app dev, file management can all be done from terminal, and I prefer it that way) and firefox.

I'm still partially on the Linux bandwagon, but my last series of experiences left me a little less excited.

This may sound strange, but I wasn't excited either when I tried distributions like RedHat 9 (this was a while ago) and mandrake. In fact, I decided to forget Linux and go for FreeBSD (*BSD is not Linux.) Since then, I have discovered Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo are best for desktop use, and * keep *BSD on the server. Perhaps you should try Debian or Slackware? I am able to get everything I want working with these distributions. But keep in mind you will probably end up recompiling your kernel, but that isn't as hard as it sounds. I hope this helps.

Re:Yeah but

[markdavis]

Ubuntu is a nice distro. But it is not as easy (or pretty) to install, configure, and use. But that doesn't mean it is inferior, just different. It has other strengths.

Your key issue will depend entirely on the desktop environment you chose. If you use KDE, the MS-Win key (ug) will immediately bring up the "start" menu, regardless of which virtual desktop you are using. KDE is very configurable, so you can change the behavior of such keys as you see fit. As for Win-F, it pulls up the search for me. As for Nautalis... that is just but one choice for Email clients. Why not try Kmail?

Re:Yeah but

[Anonymous Coward]

Will I have sound?
Unless your card is uber-obscure, yes, and out of the box.

Well, I don't count Intel High Definition Audio as obscure, yet ubuntu doesn't recognize it on my system

Re:Yeah but

[John Nowak]

How is Ubuntu not easy to install? You pick your country, keyboard settings (American English for most of us), and *gasp* monitor resolution. If you've ever installed Windows 98 from scratch (not sure if XP is better), it isn't pretty either, yet most people seemed to use it just fine.

that's funny...

[bLindmOnkey]

from the screenshots, it looks like mandrake is starting to look more and more like WinXP, especially the system "control panel". Wasn't the point of moving to linux to move away from windows? Ah well at least it doesn't look anywhere near as bad as XPde

Re:that's funny...

[kebes]

Wasn't the point of moving to linux to move away from windows?

There are many reasons why someone might want to use linux instead of windows (ideology, price, power, etc.). With regard to the graphical control panel: the primary difference between windows and linux is that in windows you use a GUI to change system settings... which is sometimes fast and convenient, but other times you end up searching for hours to find the right box to click, or (worse) there is no way to change a given behavior. By comparison, in linux (or Mandriva specifically, if you prefer) you have a GUI available for system settings... this GUI is sometimes a fast and convenient way to change settings. When it isn't, you can open a console and directly edit the relevant files, use some other application (like webmin) to modify the system, or write scripts to automate these changes, or do whatever else you want.

My point is that in linux you have the choice of a GUI or a command-line. The power to edit the raw files is always there. Mandriva's GUI control panel is just a nice wrapper for the hundreds of text config files spread over the file system. For those new to linux, this GUI can be a great help. But for anyone who wants to control the guts of their computer, Mandriva won't stop you. In fact you can switch between using the two modes without much trouble.

That's why I use linux: because sometimes I want to quickly change a setting... and other times I want to do something more complex. In either case, linux makes this possible.

(Note: That's not to say that I think linux GUIs should reproduce all the mistakes that the windows GUI has made... but simply that linux should integrate whatever useful concepts it can without restricting the inherent power of the system.)

One of the Most Underrated Distros Out There

[Anti-Trend]

Mandriva (formerly Mandrake Linux) is one of the most underrated Linux distros I know of. Mandrakesoft did get off to a bumpy start, and early versions of the distro had their caveats. But the company is well in the black now, and the URPMI tool is equivilent to or (dare I say it) superior to apt. It runs well on the desktop or the server, has a myriad of useful GUI tools along with the standard set of GNU admin tools, and a *huge* repository of contributed software available. Also, unlike Red Hat or Fedora Core it's compiled out-of-the-box for i586, so it's substantially faster than either. Best of all, Mandrakesoft has made a covenant with the community to always have a 100% open-source version that is actually backed by Mandrakesoft (as opposed to Fedora), to maintain the spirit of the GPL. The mid-sized corp I work for has mostly Mandriva on our servers, and we have about 99.9% uptime, including the time our infrastructure was down due to our recent move. All in all Mandriva is a good representative of GNU/Linux in general. I am exited to see what the fruits of the Mandrake/Connectiva merger have in store for us.

-AT

Re:One of the Most Underrated Distros Out There

[Linegod]

How is this flamebait, and the Ubuntu whores are being moderated Insightful?

Re:One of the Most Underrated Distros Out There

[timbo234]

Glad I'm not the only MDK fan here on /. I wouldn't say that urpmi is necessarily superior to apt, but its definately just as good and better in some ways.

Punch! Sock! Pow!

[jrutley]

Doesn't it look like Tux just got a beating?
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=388&slide=22

Re:Mandriva

[tekiegreg]

Well, I'm using the 10.1 Club Special edition (I'm a Mandrivaclub member and I get the special club distro with KDE 3.4 already). So far it's impressive though hardly an improvement from where I started with Mandrake (10.0). Also my sound does not work for some reason (just been too lazy to troubleshoot that one).

However lots more appeared fixed, for example Azureus runs smoothly which was a problem in 10.1 for me (non-club edition).

Overall I'm a big fan of Mandriva in general. Easiest to use, but grows with you as you learn (I started Linux at Mandriva 10.0 so I'm still a little wet behind the ears).

Re:Mandriva

[fodder69]

I've used Mandrake 10.1 and 10.2 (2005 LE or wahtever) for work for the last year or so and haven't had any problems running it. Stable as can be and I use Codeweavers Office to run Office XP with Outlook et al. and it works great. Just moved to a Thinkpad T42 laptop and Mandrake works fine there too, all hardware supported (except WIFI, sigh... needed to download a driver from intel but it does work). Even goes in and out of Hibernation using the kde klaptop utility, very cool. Everything worked great with the port replicator for the laptop also.

No complaints here, I still think it's one of the best distros around for setting things up for you. I recognize the power of things like Gentoo and Ubuntu, and when I was young and had time maybe I would use those distros, but I am just trying to get my work done, and Mandrake is the easiest install with the least post setup package install/configuration tasks. It just works for the most part.

But I am not a big fan of urpmi, I enjoyed that brief period when apt-rpm worked on Mandrake. Although it does seem like urpmi has been reworked and it does seem much more stable these days, haven't run into any problems with it breaking my system or dependencies.

MS-Linux, seriously, we need it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the dirty little secret the Linux zealots do not want think about. A Micrsoft distro of Linux. For all the talk of how Linux will displace Windows, one fact is that this will NOT destroy MS. If anything, they will become richer. How? Here's the scoop.

For starters, Linux technically is just a kernel. Kernel develoment is done by the OSDL. Right there is money MS will not have to spend in paying programmers. More money in Bill's pocket, all at Linus' expense. The harder Linus works to make Linux better, the more moolah MS will make. Ironic, isn't it? What's even ore ironic is all security issues will now become Linus' fault, since MS will have NOTHING to do with coding the kernel. Behold your new whipping boy, he hails from Finland. Got a buffer overflow issue? Talk to Linus. Hackers getting their way around admin restrictions? Talk to Linus.

MS-Linux will contain components that no other distro will have, like DirectX, the easy to navigate Windows GUI, painless installation and updating, driver support for most every mainstream component, and best of all, tons of apps specifically coded for this distro.

Yes, Linux will probably displace Windows, but keep this in mind, all those Windows users will simply move on to MS-Linux. The other distros? They will remain marginal, even despised by mainstream computer users in a 100% Linux world.

So bring on Linux, I say. Just make it MS-Linux.

Re:MS-Linux, seriously, we need it.

[bmalia]

Oldie but goodie: MS-Linux

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I try to ./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.

The environment variables LIBRARY_PATH, CPATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH help out when libraries are installed and the compiler complains that they're missing. Export them with colon separated paths, just like the PATH variable.

Honest question...

[airjrdn]

Honest question, not trolling, etc. Why is it that every Linux distro looks the same?

Windows comes with theme management locked up so you can't do themes without "hacking" some DLL's, but with everything in Linux being open, why don't the distributions customize their looks more?

In the last couple of days, I've downloaded and tried 5 or 6 LiveCD's, utilizing mostly different underlying distro's, and they all look generally one of two ways, which I assume is either Gnome or KDE.

Re:Honest question...

[markdavis]

Because the general look and feel of the Linux GUI is going to depend on the desktop environment chosen. The two major ones are KDE and Gnome. If you keep trying different distro and notice similarity in KDE, for example, then that is because the distro has decided not to completely hack up the defaults. I will tell you that Knoppix doesn't look at all like Fedora, which doesn't look at all like Mandriva. Choice is usually a "good thing", and you can also customize your environment to no end.

Re:Honest question...

[Knuckles]

Honest question, not trolling, etc.

You sure?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/screenshots/document_vi ew
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_gallery.php?i mage=screenshot
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=110&slide=107

h, what the heck:
http://shots.osdir.com/

Looks as different to me as you can expect from themes and tweaks

Re:Honest question...

[mpapet]

IMHO, most of the people behind distro's are more technically minded.

So getting the distro to work well everywhere is what they do. They "just" rely on KDE/Gnome defaults because they look pretty good.

Getting all of the graphics to be pretty to many people is really hard and as time consuming as getting the OS working.

What both KDE and Gnome need to do is have a distro-independent apt-like repository full of themes. There are lots of themes for each desktop but rounding them up and checking them out is time consuming.

Re:Honest question...

[i_should_be_working]

Most distros just use the default Gnome or KDE theme. Through laziness or maybe they think it actually is the best default. I don't know.

Most people theme theirs though. It doesn't matter to me what the theme is that comes wih a distro; I'm going to change it. Some distros probably realize that we do this and don't bother putting an effort into the looks.

A few distros look different, like Blag. Hmm, that's not very pretty. Maybe that's why distros should stick to the KDE and Gnome default themes.

amazing how unamazed I am

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, it looks like all the other versions of mandrake/linux!

have you had your complete lack of innovation today?

Re:Mandriva

[markdavis]

It is obvious that you have not used Mandriva Linux, because if you did, you would know your comments are wrong. I think the best was to sum-up your TROLL is "opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink."

Re:Mandrake on my laptop... choices choices

[WillAffleckUW]

However, the graphical Mandrake installer requires alot of RAM, and hardware was not supported out of the box.

What's a lot of RAM? I've got 512MB on my laptop, and I was thinking of making it dual boot WinXP and a Linux distro - and, no, I didn't want to roll my own, but I did want a good laptop distro that works with 11g, DVD+CDR/W, Firewire, and USB ports without much fuss.

I have Mandrake on another box, so I'm not unfamiliar with it, but am waiting till I figure which one gets along nicely with other OS.

Re:Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

"opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink."

Except Taylor Rain's

Trouble installing EVERYTHING?

[Catamaran]

Has anyone succeeded in installing everything on Mandrake/Mandriva? I have never succeeded. The install menus are deceptive, and if I really dive in and select everything manually I get lots of conflicts.

Re:Trouble installing EVERYTHING?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike Fedora, Mandriva (and Debian does this too), incudes packages that conflict with other packages. For example, they offer 2 versions of the display manager: kdm, and also their own custom version.

So you dont want to install *every* package.

Re:Mandrake on my laptop... choices choices

[Zweideutig]

Well, my laptop has 64 MB of RAM. My desktop machines have 256 MB (all Gentoo Linux machines, except for one Debian) My servers only have 512 MB (which is okay for NetBSD + NFS Apache/PHP), but that may change.

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[damiangerous]

Assuming they're broadband connected systems, Easy UUrpmi will solve that problem.

I've never had that library issue you're talking about with compiling so I can't help you there.

What a dope!

[Trestop]

Can you be any more stupid ?
* Mandriva has a lively market share. They even got Wallmart to sell PCs pre-installed with their OS - had RedHat managed to do this?
* Winix is an old (and dumb) rumor which has never had any sort of credability - so stop being an ass.
* Project Marklar is Apple's (!!) x86 OS.

And make up your mind already ? either Microsoft will dump NT for BSD or for Linux , they can't have both dogs by the tail as your dumb add post suggests.

Re:What a dope!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

What is in the Wikkipedia article for "Dodge Colt Vista"

Re:All the new features....

[imemyself]

Yeah but more people probably want KDE/Gnome than any of the littler WM's. Just having either KDE OR Gnome would probably just turn either the KDE or Gnome people away from their distro. I'm not saying that there's anything (horribly) wrong with the smallers WM's, but not that many people use them on a day-to-day basis(compared to KDE/Gnome), especially considering that Mandrake, err Mandriva's target audience is probably more of the people that are newer to Linux(and would want more of a "complete package" feel that KDE/Gnome/Windows gives).

Re:Mandriva

[davidsyes]

For the most part, I like Mandriva 10.2 2005 Limited Edition. However, what I DON'T like is when Mandrake/Mandriva removed or crippled or obscured certain things that worked.

For example, I cannot figure out how to make the KDE/KDM login in screen user/password dialog shrink so that my 1-minute-rotation images can be seen while the login dialog is awaiting user input. What's the point of having the option to change background images every period when the damned login stars and blue background obfuscate the feature. This is not helpful when I want to show off the eye candy to prospective converts.

Mandriva, please QUIT DOING THAT! You have a database of what you are deprecating and what you're obfuscating, so please knock that off. If something works, then just because people aren't screaming to use it doesn't mean they aren't using it. I thought you guys were using the RPM stats thing to figure out usage stats and not as a tool to remove something. If something WORKS, then the RPM stats ought to be recommending fixes of other things, not removal of things that are used and not complained about.

Another example, then I'll move on to things I DO like: on the KControl interface you took away or obfuscated or broke functionality of displaying some of the previous 13 or so levels of Information. I used to be able to see disk/partition information without having to run KwikDisk. Admittedly, I see some things I like when running KwikDisk, but the sudden and unexplained (no list showing deprecations/deferrals to the new release) is jarring, disconcerting, and irritating.

Overall, I love the ease-of-use interface. I like that now my USB and PCMCIA devices automagically (for me, for once) appear and (occasionally) disappear based on connection or removal of devices.

I like that Mandrake (and maybe others offering KDE) loads up fast from power-on, at least faster than 10.1.

What I need to figure out, though, is why on an 800/900 MHz, Celery-based FIC computer, there are intermittent pauses in the system (maybe it's the Win4Lin-enabled kernel?), things which I can't recall having experienced in a number of releases/versions. For now, I've learned to synchronize my mouse/eye-coordination to cope with it. It's intermittent, though not a show-stopper for me.

I love the DiskDrake and HardDrake tool and wish you'd find a way to promote the appearance of them. Maybe a limited functionality appearance would do, prompting people to learn some sysadmin in the process of educating them.

What would be nice is if there were a script to show not just tips, but user-scheduled "tip/training sessions" to break the monotony of or habit of users who log in, do something, then brain-lock and start getting unproductive. Rather, this tool could counter or combat softening skills. The system could be set to run mini-pseudo live training. Not cripple a working net or drive attach, but simulating them and testing the user's troubleshooting skills.

I don't suggest this for the purpose of taking away tech support calls and income, but to ensure that users are challenged, educated, and made to or coaxed to love their OS. The more educated the user, the less the negative commentary and the less the chance of them switching back to another OS.

Also, what would be nice is an MPEG-4 reader/player that I could actually USE. I want to watch some of the Trek fan films that are available for download. I imagine only *doze and Mac users can enjoy them relatively easily. I can play them back, but I get no audio. I can watch "The Savage Universe" from Exeter but I cannot watch the subsequent files, nor those from other fan-producer sites.

I like the new audio sounds, but I wish Mandrake and others would create a facility to let us go "nostalgic" once in a while by using sound files from the previous Mandrake/KDE event associations. Sure, a savvy user would carry over the audio after upgrading, then maybe write a script to copy or move things around based on some chron job, but there

urpmi.removemedia -a?

[Original Buddha]

Why even have the CD's in the media list if you're having a problem?

I'm guessing you haven't seen Symphony OS

[Original Buddha]

http://www.symphonyos.com/

Re:I'm guessing you haven't seen Symphony OS

[airjrdn]

Thanks for posting that link. I tried it out, and it was ok, but on the page you linked to, there was a distro called Slax. I'm in it right now :)

What's interesting is, (and maybe this is common, but if so, I didn't know it) you can run this small but full featured distro completely in RAM. It even ejects the CD when during bootup. It's pretty fast to begin with, and even more so when it's running entirely from RAM.

Give it a shot if you haven't seen it yet. http://slax.linux-live.org/

too many freakin distros already!

[Chiminea]

WTF. We have 3 distros here at my site with each user picking the desktop du-jour. When software won't run on one flavor they try it on another flavor. Everyone is willing to standardize as long as its their flavor. The Linux community needs to have one base distro (hmmm, whatever became of that anyway...)I don't have time to deal with them all. Until that happens use a Mac or use Windows. //insert grinding teeth here

Re:too many freakin distros already!

[HermanAB]

So what? They have all standardised on Linux haven't they? Would you restrict Windows XP to the Tele Tubby Theme, just to keep all machines in the office looking the same?

Re:too many freakin distros already!

[Chiminea]

Linux Distros have become like the English language. The Queen's English, Amercian Southern, Yankee Vernacular and some of the American minority patois are all technically "English". The "standards" often vary slighty from place to place. An Englishman won't mind if you come by and "knock-up" his sister, a Southerner will shoot you. SGI and Sun are both UNIX systems but good luck on just picking up your code and going back and forth. The Mac and Windows boxes for the most part will work with applications written for their respective Operating Systems (don't get me started about linux drivers :) When my developers write for these platforms they spend their time on the functionality of the application for the user, not getting it tweaked to run on Mandrake (oops, won't run on Mandrake but works great on Debian). We would love to have a common Linux because we spend money on other OSes. This is not a flame or a religious position but rather an economic one. Hey, where can I get that Teletubbies theme!

As a wise man once said, "results may vary."

[biendamon]

Will my graphics card work?

Will I have sound?

Depends. Are you using a graphics card with at least VESA compatibility? Are you using a soundcard that ALSA supports? Are they on the hardware compatibility list? Have you checked to see if there are manufacturer's drivers for them, and whether or not they've made it into MD Linux?

Will it take 2 weeks and constant forum trolling to find solutions to my problems?

Wouldn't that really depend on the type and severity of these theoretical problems?

Will I have all of the creature-features I'm used to in Windows?

No. It's a different OS. It will have different creature-features.

I'm still partially on the Linux bandwagon, but my last series of experiences left me a little less excited.

I just installed MD2005 with KDE 3.4 on a laptop this Saturday. I had exactly one problem: The WiFi wouldn't work. A quick upgrade to ndiswrapper, and now it works perfectly. Took maybe half an hour of googling when I felt like it, and boom! Problem solved.

Will you have the same experience? Possibly, if you're careful to research your options. That's something Windows admittedly has over Linux right now: It ships already installed and configured, so you don't have to do anything yourself.

Re:As a wise man once said, "results may vary."

[calethix]

Speaking of problems, when I installed Mandriva2005 on my PC, it detected my monitor as CMC 17" LCD or some crap like that.

So I ended up with
Modelname "CMC 17" LCD"
in xorg.conf. That didn't work so well. :)
Other than that, everything else worked fine.

Oh, and I was a little disappointed that postgres didn't seem to come with the dvd download edition any more.

Re:Ubuntu Puhleese

[mpapet]

Don't mod me down yet.

Yes, Ubuntu is pretty. And I'd say it's directly related to the money flying out of the company coffers backing it.

Please do not claim it is the distro with no big problems. That's just enough to burn a potential switcher and Linux doesn't need that.

I have had problems in EVERY area the the Parent post mentions in Ubuntu's Hoary ProblemHog. And, like most distros, Grand Canyon sized gaps in community support regarding resolving them.

That is not to say MS equivalent OS/apps/hardware provide useful support, because they don't.

Let's see where Ubuntu is in a few more years when the deep pockets behind it stop throwing money at it and expect it to fund itself. Not to mention the software design flaws they are making today that end up being big problems tomorrow.

Okay, you can mod me down.

Honest answer

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>Why is it that every Linux distro looks the same?

They all start with pretty much the same sort of relatively neutral theme as the default regardless of whether they default to Gnome or KDE as the desktop. Not too many folks are going to want blinking magenta text on chartreuse background with borders in black and blood red and buttons that look like plucked eyeballs and nads. However, you can probably find a KDE theme that includes that. There are hundreds of them out there. See KDE Look or Freshmeat for examples.

Re:All the new features....

[markdavis]

That is exactly what Mandriva does. They were one of the first distros (or THE first) to support *ALL* the desktop enviornments seamlessly (Kde, gnome, ice, blackbox, fce, etc) and all the configuration tools work the same in all of them. Icing on the cake is Mandriva's menu manager which automatically creates a standard "start" menu for every desktop environment and keeps them all synchronized when you add or remove software.

Re:Mandriva

[markdavis]

Video player:
mplayer can play just about anything out there, as long as you obtain the correct codes. Check out plf.zarb.org and the "win32-codecs" rpm. With it, mplayer will magically know how to play all the things can can't do by default (because of copyrights on the DLL's or stupid software patents).

I predict you will find "much happiness"

It is really GRATE Security tho!!

[Halvy]

.. You will see changes in the network management, especially WiFi, in security,..

So nowwww I understand why I couldn't 'even' install the lastest 10.x on my less than 2 year old pc!!

And even more impressive is when NOONE even wrote me back about this problem!!

TOP SECRET security tooooooo!!

Re:MS-Linux, seriously, it ain't happening.

[Penguinshit]

*cough*GPL*cough*you dipshit*cough*

Re:Ubuntu Puhleese

[RingDev]

I mostly agree with you.

Ubuntu still has issues. Some of it is stuff they can fix, some of it is other people problems (FF,Gnome,ATI,etc). I think anoter year and they'll be looking good, expecially if they can get better driver support and keep getting funding.

-Rick

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[3vi1]

Instead of slowly switching to Debian, why not try version 10, or 10.1, or 2005LE? You're about four versions back now, and it sounds like you probably corrupted some path variables.

I've been using it since version 10 (now running the 2005LE club version, w/KDE 3.4) and am very happy with it.

RAM requirements

[dereference]

Text based is available if you need to stay slim.

You aren't kidding about slim--I've done a successful (text-based) install of Mandrake 9.2 on two Dell Latitude XPi laptops with only 40MB of RAM! This was even a network (NFS) install off of a PC Card NIC, because these ancient laptops don't even have built-in CD-ROMs.

Why is this modded flamebait?

[biendamon]

Mod parent up, folks. The poster makes some very good points, is factually correct on things like the PCs with Mandrake preinstalled, and this generally looks like a good post. This isn't flamebait, and doesn't deserve to be treated as such.

Re:Why is this modded flamebait?

[Anti-Trend]

Thanks for the support. I knew that since Mandriva is fairly unpopular with the majority of /.'s I'd be blackballed, but that's life. All in all though, the moderation of my post just serves to prove my point: underrated.

Peace,

-AT

Mandrake

[isorox]

What happened to "Mandrake"?

Re:Mandrake

[ReinoutS]

I guess you missed this story?

Re:Mandrake

[isorox]

I've missed a lot in recent years :(

Until about a month ago

1) I still though DevFS was cool
2) I still thought 2.6.x was a little flakey
3) I didn't know about the XFree86 problems

I don't know what I've been doing for the past 4 years, I found a post of mine from 2000 saying how I'd recompiled my kernel. 5 years ago. Now I'm afraid to touch the damn thing cause it might break.

I think I'd better turn my geek badge in :(

*cries*

Re:Mandrake

[GreatBunzinni]

What happened to "Mandrake"?

Mandrake and Connectiva merged (well... mandrakesoft bought them) and the name that was choosen that would simbolize the joining of the two companies was Mandriva (mandrake, connectiva...)

The name isn't bad and it makes more sence after it's origins are explained.

You haven't read the GPL, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll, put away the child porn mag for a bit, and read it, truly read it and comprehend it. As long as you wrap code AROUND the kernel (ex. a GUI) and not in it, you don't have to GPL it.

The GPL isn't the virus you think (or would like) it to be. Otherwise just simply opening a DOCUMENT with a GPL app would render our docs into GPL-land.

Re:You haven't read the GPL, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll. Pull your head out of your ass and truly have a look around. Your example is as lame as you claim the parent's post to be.

By the way, you seem to have confused the GPL with the BSD license.

Did you say Mandriver?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't be the only one who thinks "mandriva" sounds more like gay porn than a serious OS. Do stupid names actually help Linux brand recognition?

Suggestions please

[Insipid Trunculance]

if i wanted a linux installation for a home PC which would you recommend and why?

Re:Suggestions please

[HermanAB]

I'd recommend the one that works for you on your hardware. Honestly, with a typical old and slow home PC with limited memory and disk space, you may have to try a few distributions to find one that installs and runs properly. The best way to figure that out, is to try the CDROM versions of the majour distros first and see how they do.

Re:Suggestions please

[ilyaaohell]

Stick with Windows or Mac for at least another 2-5 years. Linux really isn't well suited for basic home PC type of stuff unless you want to spend the time learning it, teaching everyone in your house how to use it, and knowing how to deal with all it's issues if they were to pop up, which, unlike in the world of Windows or Mac, are usually NOT solvable through a GUI dialogue box and require more than rudimentary knowledge of command lines and at least some basic programming skills.

I mean, unless you already know what you're getting into. And since you're posting on Slashdot, you must already have some understanding for how Linux differs, right?. In this case, you should really only have one requirement for selecting the distribution: the one that works with ALL your hardware. Download a Live CD and try out your system's response to the distribution before installing anything. In my experience, everything else is secondary to just getting your computer to actually work properly under Linux... which is a MAJOR problem with most distros at the moment.

What made Mandrake great is still there.

[gukin]

I switched to Mandrake at mdk7.2. I was futzing around with RedHat 7.0 and not enjoying myself. The thing that did it for me was urpmi(not having to figure out RPM dependencies) and the fact that if I install tuxracer or any other app, it would be available under Gnome, KDE, Icewm, fvwm . . . twm via the pull down menus. That niceity is still there. What puts Mandriva on top of virtually everything else is the RPM repositories. With a broadband connection, you could just download the first ISO then use easy urpmi http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ for the rest of the media. There is the main distro, contribs and, best of all, PLF. PLF has RPMs that aren't as "free" as we like (like lame, libdvdcss etc.) but it makes building typically difficult things like mythtv easy.

I still believe that mandriva is one of the best distros for noobs but it's advanced enough to make the harder things easy.

I am a member of the club $60.00/year, that and the RPM repositories available through PLF, I'm set. $60/year is IMHO less than windows costs at least for what I do with my system. If I weren't a member, I'd have to wait three or so weeks for the free ISOs to become available. If three weeks isn't worth $60 then don't pay and just wait a little.

As for the ISO availability versus bittorrent, the beta distro is NOT supported and will very likely be superceded in a few weeks. There WILL be showstopper bugs in the beta versions and unless you're interested in helping out and making bug reports, the beta isos aren't really worth downloading.

Another time traveller...

[HermanAB]

I dunno what year you are from, but it is 2005 now you know. I have a Mandrake 9.1 machine that runs ReiserFS...

Re:All the new features....

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Mandrake was always good at staying consistent accross desktop environments. No matter what environment you were in, the app you were looking for would be in the same place, and that place being a simple, easy to find, common sense location to begin with. That's something other Linuxs never really have gotten right IMHO.

And they've tended to be, and gotten much better at, getting applications from different environments to work together well too.

Contrast this with, for example, SuSE. Where unless you paid extra, or did a manual install of GNOME, you were expected to run KDE by default, or perhaps a light window manager....but the assumption on decent hardware was just KDE, and everything optimised for it. Granted, YAST is nice, and it is a smooth distro. I'm not bashing SuSE, just comparing.

I've always liked Mandrake/Mandriva.

Am I stupid?

[sc0ob5]

But does it seem pointless to anyone else giving screenshots of KDE or gnome when a distro is released? I mean really... it would make more sense just to give screenshots of the configuration tools.

Re:Am I stupid?

[wildchild978]

There is always a possibility (however remote) the distro is going to provide a highly modified theme, in which case screen shots will be useful. You won't know until you check out the screenshots. It's kind of like when Niobi asks Ghost why he always checks his gun when they're getting their weapons in the construct.

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[quan74]

I try to ./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.

You also may need to have the -devel packages installed. Just having a library (eg libqt3) installed means you have the .so's needed to RUN an application compiled against it, to COMPILE an app, you also need the header files for the library, which are conviently in a seperate package (e.g. libqt3-devel). This is nice for people who DON'T need to have the development headers installed on their system :)

Re:You haven't read the GP post, huh?

[Penguinshit]

Hey idiot. Put away your blowup doll for a bit and read the original post. Truly read it, and comprehend it.

Drivers typically come in modules added into the kernel (if not outright compiled in). I just got through compiling a kernel a few hours ago that specifically included drivers for the NICs I was using. That means if MS releases an MS-Linux such as the grandparent posited, they would be required by the GPL to release their additional driver code.

Other than that, it was a nice little rant you had going there.

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[toddbu]

2005 Limited Edition is really stable. But I don't understand why they're building 2006 on an unstable kernel series. This is why 10.1 sucked.

Re:Mandriva... zarb

[davidsyes]

Thanks, Mark.

I think I recall having visited zarb, and having failed at installing the RPM. Since it was about a month ago or so, I can't be sure at this point if the failure was due to a dependency issue, or if it installed without complaint, or if I was going to sites that were congested.

But, once I ran some episodes, I got nice video (aside from having selected the low-rez file version for download speed), but no audio. I'll give it a whirl, for something might have changed.

Well, at least...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Mandriva is one of the few distributions out there packaging ibm-acpi > 0.8 (which is included in kernel 2.6.10 and up).

In case you havent guessed NSFW.

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you havent guessed not safe for work.

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[buchanmilne]

I try to ./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.

Yes, but the development library was most likely missing. If it was looking for (say) qt3, just 'urpmi qt3-devel',which should install the right package for you.

Or, if it's looking for a specific header file, urpmf the filename (ie 'urpmf ldap.h') and install the package it returns ...

Really, it's not that difficult.

You would have to provide more information for your urpmi problem, but for some reason people believe apt is better ... just because they haven't added any network media (ie apt sources) ...

mod this down plz

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is blatently incorrect. The "limited" download does not imply that something is limited at all in that edition. It was just a name "2005 limited edition", because they were in the middle of the mandrake->mandriva nameshift.

In addition, all mandr* versions have been completely free as in beer an speech. All iso's are downloadable from ftp mirrors or torrents. The only thing they do is ASK you to become club member if you search for a link via their site. If you do not, you can still download it. Recently the iso's became earlier available for club members (which I agree with since those ppl do deserve some additional service).

Heck, mandriva even tells you how to make your own custom CDs with the tools they provide.

Mandriva a great Distro for Beginners

[linuxguy27]

Mandriva has been a great distro for me as a linux beginner. The install was very easy and the install programs allow for ease of installation of other programs. However, I did have problems last night trying to get RealPlay to work with the Mandriva Distro 10.1 not sure if that had something to do with the rpm from the real.com website or a distro program. I have been working with mandriva for a week now. First time using linux. I used win3.1 win98, and winxp since than. As a beginner Mandriva has been great to me I do wish however that the install process would be a little easier. I also tried to install mplayer and it give me a list of other mdk 's that I must install first. Looking foward to the new 2006 verision of Mandriva and I do hope they make it easier to install various programs. Thanks for listening Linuxguy

Re:I probably won't bother with it. Too bad.

[leadsling]

Go to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ You can set up your sources for software with just a few clicks and a copy and paste into a terminal and away you go! Then you just remove the CDs as repository sources and you are all set.(do that through the MCC)

Re:All the new features....

[Pxtl]

Really? In that case, this could be the perfect distro for a n00b desktop to put on your legacy boxen (like an old P266). That's something that has been lacking for the switchers - a distro that will let a guy just take his old, outdated computer and wipe it and make it into a decent desktop so he can try out linux without screwing with his primary machine. There were only a few like that before (Vector, Libranet, Buffalo) and most of them didn't have widespread support (except Vector, but Vector's lightweight version was a retail product).

stop saying boxen!!

[John Nowak]

Please... please spare me...

Re:Mandriva

[Hormonal]

I think I started using Mandrake at about 9.0 or 9.1. I remember 9.2 being a little flakey, but later versions have been great. I've used it for my main desktop machines both at home and work, along with a few servers at home (MythTV backend, NFS, apache, etc)

Mandriva Torrent Available...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a torrent available....

Download it and help seed. This is all three of the beta discs.