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Mandriva Linux 2008 RC 1 Released
AdamWill writes "The first release candidate of Mandriva Linux 2008, codenamed Galilee, is now available. The release notes are also available via the wiki. A guide to major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate), and the detailed technical specifications are also available. This release candidate is available as a three CD or one DVD Free edition (containing no non-free software or drivers) for the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures, with a traditional installer, and as a mini-CD edition for both x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. A One combined live / install CD edition will be released in the near future (problems with unionfs prevented the One edition from being release at the same time as the other editions)."
major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate)
How does that work?
There's as much flaming for Mandriva as there is for Windows.
Not only do you HAVE to be a part of the Linux camp, but only for certain distros too it would seem. Slashdot really has gone backwards.
I like that they've called the product "2008"... in the larger OS world, where Linux is still a little fringey compared to Windows, anchoring the product to a time instead of a more abstract version number will make less savvy end users more comfortable with their understanding of the product.
This is a good move! More FOSS products aiming at the mass market should consider adopting a similar approach!
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
4. Official update mirrors would disappear for weeks at a time
What drove me away from Mandrake (as it was then) was that every time I wanted to install a new package I'd have to spend a couple of hours:
1. Searching for the new location for the repository. They seemed to constantly change the paths arbitrarily every few weeks or so, apparently because they 'decided' that the old path wasn't a good naming convention or something.
2. Downloading the updated package info.
In Debian/Ubuntu an apt-get update takes a little while, maybe a minute or so. In Mandrake the equivalent to apt-get update (using urpmi) would take an hour or so. On the same internet connection. Which was 100M.
I used the 'easy urpmi' site to keep track of the repositories but it was still very very slow and painful work.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Not sure why the original post is flagged as a troll right now. It's a perfectly fair comment. I've just got back into using Linux with Ubuntu and I love it. I used to use Mandrake in my previous Linux days. I always found it to be exceptionally good. Better than RedHat, Suse etc...
If I could be bothered I'd do a comparison of distros, but Ubuntu was largely painless, does everything I want, and is ludicrously popular meaning if there's a program I want and I don't want to cock about with source releases, I can invariably find a package of it.
NO, I don't like the French either.
This one sentence made your entire post utterly infantile. You don't like an entire nation??? Has every single person out of 60 million Frenchmen done something nasty to you so that you dislike them all?
Sorry for being off-topic, but I'll just never be able to understand how a rational, intelligent and Linux-using human being can make such statements of hatred on a public blog, which proudly displays his/her nickname and web site. Crazy...
You've described my experience with Mandriva exactly. Numerous bug reports just ignored. Being verbally belittled when trying to shed light on issues (even though I was a contributor).
It is far from a polished distro, and is leagues behind any other major distro due to the aforementioned issues IMO.
This seems to be an ongoing issue with Linux distros.
I started out with Slackware, moved on to Redhat, then Mandrake came along and made Redhat more usable.
I dipped out of Linux for a while, came back in, and moved right into Debian because I liked their package management better.
Then used Mepis for a while before settling on Ubuntu.
What seems to happen is that a new distro will come along and their user community will be galvanized into keeping the distro up to date with the features that the desktop user community really wants, then when they decide to try to grab a piece of the corporate market, their updates slow down and you end up having to hunt more and more through different webpages to try to figure out how to get component X and feature Y to work with the distro.
Right now, I'm really happy with the speed in which new Ubuntu versions are coming out and the focus they seem to give the desktop market. Additionally, software like Aptana and Eclipse are making it easier for web application developers to do their thing without having to worry about being tied to a specific OS.
The fun thing is that at the rate Ubuntu and some of the other distros are going, in 5 years or so when the desktop environments trully mature on a level with OSX and Windows, they really WILL have the superior OS from a technical AND usability standpoint. Not only that, but it'll give the average home user more choices as the abominable "software as service" trend becomes more mainstream.
I know I stopped using Mandriva (still Mandrake) when I realized after 2 years in their club at the basic level I was paying more than for Windows (by far) a still couldn't get the 64-bit download. I ended up not using Lnux for a while, then went SUSE 10 (when Novell started making ISO downloads available again), and now use Ubuntu as my only desktop.
I bet the popularity loss had to do with the requirement to join their club for ISO's with quick downloads.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg