Mandriva 2007 RC1 Released

boklm writes "The first Mandriva 2007 release candidate (codename Mona) is out. The final version is due soon. 2007's new features include Gnome 2.16 with New 'Ia Ora' Mandriva Theme, parallel initscript (for faster boot), 3D desktop (with both AIGLX and Xgl to support more graphic cards). Installable Live-CDs including Gnome or KDE are available in different languages, and because it is a live-cd it is possible to try it without installing. Don't forget to report bugs if you find them, in order to get a solid final release."

Comments

Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[Conorb]

There was a time, when Linux distros were measured by how close they were to in terms of functionality to MS Windows. Now they are inovating like crazy and this 3D desktop from Mandriva beats anything that will ship in Vista.

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[kestasjk]

Well OS X got Widgets right out of KDE's Konfabulator, and Finder and Safari's tabs out of Firefox (which got it from Opera, which got it from ...). Good ideas spread around, get improved upon and integrated with other ideas, which spread around further. This is a good thing, and it's not one way.

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[ZakuSage]

Unfortionitely, until they start working with ATI's proprietary drivers, roughly half of all computer users (myself included) won't care about AIXGL or XGL since they won't be able to run them.

Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[cloricus]

As a long time user of Mandrake till about two years ago I'd like to ask a very simple question; what is its place in todays modern Linux desktop world?
 
This isn't a troll or a flame as I enjoyed using MDK back in the day though really it is still as bloated and confusing as when I used to use it (I've played with the latest version extensively). Ubuntu and Novell SLED seem to serve the purpose that Mandrake used to fill far more effectively and I can't help but think that those still working on the free parts of Mandrake are wasting resources that could be more effectively used to help other areas in more up to date (philosophy wise) distros...Like decent GUI tools for wireless networking!

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[toddbu]

I'm with you on this one. I ran Mandrake / Mandriva for a long time, but finally gave up last year and switched to Ubuntu. One huge problem for Mandrake is that they've never been able to put out two good releases in a row. That wouldn't be so bad if you could just skip every other release, but at one point their end-of-life policies didn't cover the last stable release. At that point I just gave up and switched distros.

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[opkool]

As a long time desktop Linux user, I have tried recently Kubuntu, SuSE/Novell SLED and Mandriva, and I still like Mandriva better over the others.

For one, Kubuntu feels so dated and so empty of configuration tools... feels like Mandrake 8.2 all over again.

Then, I like better a 1 year release cycle. I want to WORK with my Linux. I don't want to be installing Linux all the time: is extra work and I'm lazy.

Yes, RHEL/CentOS have a long life. But then RHEL/CentOS for me doens't cut it. up2date/yum are awful, it's a horrible multimedia station and it's a pretty bad desktop overall.

Fedora, well, it's a joke. Not useful as a stable desktop for a lazy Linux user that doesn't want to install a new reease every 3 months and, if you bink too much, your release is out of support.

Sure, SLED is prety good. Mostly. But then I find it to be a slow distro (compared with Ubuntu and Mandriva). And the fact that Novell is more or less trying to ditch KDE is not good for me:

Novell: "KDE is not included in SuSE anymore!"

(Users scream in horror)

Novell: "Well, we'll include KDE"

(Users cheer)

Novell : "Actualy, we'll kinda include it on the OpenSuSE version"

(Users give up German distros and go to get a German beer instead)

Peace

It's too hot

[12ahead]

Man, I ran it on my Macbook Pro and shit it got hot....

Release candidate == final release

[BadAnalogyGuy]

A 'release candidate' is equivalent to a final release in all respects except name. It is a candidate for release. The development team believes that this build is as bug free and featured filled as it needs to be and is branded a release candidate. It is then sent over to testing (or to users as is more frequently the case) where it undergoes final testing. If it passes final testing, it is rebadged as RTM, but THE SAME BITS GO INTO AN RC AS TO AN RTM. This isn't a testing release or a beta release where you are expected to find and squash bugs. The bugs are expected to be worked out of the system or are so uninteresting as to not warrant further development time.

If you find a serious bug in an RC, someone, somewhere fucked up royally.

Crappy video

[also-rr]

While their video does show (some) of the things that the 3D desktop can do, it's actually *far* smoother in real life. Possibly they recorded it on a machine that was too slow to run the app and xvidcap at the same time.

Up to this point it's been a bit of a pain in the backside to set up but now distros are integrating it the next batch of releases should make it trivial.

Compiz and co are really slick and I find it rather amusing that everyeone *except* the world's biggest software company has managed to get their next generation desktop released prior to 2007.

Mona?

[giano]

Mona means "c**t" (female reproductive organ) in an italian dialect...

Re:Madriva's old news

[ErroneousBee]

I still recommend it to newbies for the following reasons:

• Suse makes it a bit harder to install media players, and makes it hard to update the system from the command line.
• Suse has fewer 'entertainment' packages.
• Redhat is even more business oriented than Suse.
• Mandriva's partitioning tool has the best useability. and this is the step a newbie is most likely to get wrong.
• Ubuntu, in its vanilla install, has very inferior configuration tools. To do anything sophisticated (E.g. A static IP address) you need to vi stuff in /etc.
• Ubuntu is gnome based, I think KDE is better. I think new users will get confused over kubuntu, edbuntu, etcbuntu.

Note that I do not dis any of Suse, Redhat or Ubuntu. These are all mighty fine distros, and I run Suse and Ubuntu on a laptop and server. I even think Ubuntu is better than Mandriva for some newbies, as they wont want to do any configuring after the install.

I dont recommend gentoo as I have tried it twice. Install took days, common hardware was unsupported out of the box, configuration was all about editing /etc files, and there were regular fuck-ups that just broke the system when you tried updating packages. Its also increasingly pointless to compile now that 64bit is here and distros produce 64bit versions.

Manriva's weaknesses are:

• Horrible artwork.
• Some poor decisions to use bleeding edge releases of KDE (2006 had quite a few niggles caused by going to 3.4 with its API changes).
• Some configuration dialogs have poor useability (e.g. setting up printers).
• A seriously deficient layout to the club pages. Its really hard to find anything useful on them, and the whole site is confusing.