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)."

Comments

Hopefully

[fleshball]

This will reignite interest in mandriva... I o not know why people always go for the less polished distros, like ubuntu, over something supported nad stable like mandriva.

Re:Hopefully

[CastrTroy]

I've been using Mandriva for 6 years and I am thoroughly unimpressed with Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and all the other Linux distros that seem to be garnering so much attention. Ubuntu especially unimpresses me because it's supposed to be some big jump in desktop usability, but doesn't seem to offer anything that Mandriva doesn't offer, and actually tends to be lacking in quite a few areas.

Re:Hopefully

[betterunixthanunix]

Too late for me. I used Mandrake for years, then the shift to Mandriva occurred, and then the problems started. The repositories got screwed up (I know, they were required to change the name, but they could have done it more smoothly), then packages became even more out of date (it was still running a 2.6.12 kernel for MDV2006 last time I checked), and finally I just got too fed up and switched to Fedora Core 5, and have been running Fedora ever since. I will probably upgrade an old file server that is still running Mandrake, just so I can get updates (right now, updates are not even possible).

Re:Hopefully

[N7DR]

I o not know why people always go for the less polished distros, like ubuntu, over something supported nad stable like mandriva.

I can tell you why I switched to Kubuntu after six years with Mandr[ake,iva]:

1. 64-bits was relegated to very-low-priority (an inordinate number of supposedly-supported 64-bit packages had dependency failures)
2. A large percentage of bug reports would lie untouched not just for months, but for years. I have within the past couple of months received acknowledgements for bugs that I filed nearly two years ago -- and those acknowledgements basically came down to "this bug report is filed against a version that is no longer supported".
3. When a bug report was acknowledged in a timely manner, it was almost always to the effect of "this bug does not exist in 32-bit version; unable to test 64-bit" (or the fact that it was filed against 64-bit was simply ignored)
4. Official update mirrors would disappear for weeks at a time
5. Security updates would be made available weeks after exploits became known.

My experience with Kubuntu has not been painless, but I have found none of the above to be true for Kubuntu. It was with considerable reluctance that I switched, but in any case those were my reasons.

YMMV, of course (and probably does).

Re:Hopefully

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, things got decidedly better since the 2006 version. If 2008 is anythink like the 2007 Spring edition, then it will be suuuuuuupuuuuuuuurrrrb...

Re:Hopefully

[mahlerfan999]

I have to agree that Mandriva's team responds to bug reports too slowly, and do not do enough to fix them. I think that is simply due to lack of man power. But they are making better and better distros since they came into being (I mean Mandriva, not Mandrake). Perhaps if they pick up popularity, they will also make more money and then they can hire enough man power to do it right. Right now though they are far away from being there. I hope to see them improve to get to see better times though.

Re:Hopefully

[Steel Shepherd]

I used Mandriva for a few years and switched, eventually to Kubuntu. I tried Suse, Fedora, and Mepis. I really liked Mepis (based on Ubuntu) but switched to Kubuntu based on a sound driver problem. The switch was almost effortless. There is no question Mandriva is a polished distro. Desktop usability is certainly it's forte. My problem with it was package availability, especially when it's popularity began to slide. I ended up running cooker to try to keep up to date and try packages that were not available as stable. Switching to Mepis, based on Ubuntu, solved that for me. The management tools are not as good or as complete as the drake tools, but they are generally sufficient. I can't say though that I recall desktop usability being a strength of Ubunutu's. It's for everyone, as in many languages and affordable to all. If Mandriva gives you what you need, VERY COOL! If something isn't there, doesn't work, or isn't being kept up to date, a switch to Ubuntu will probably solve the problem.

Re:Hopefully

[fyoder]

When the name change occurred my account with their Mickey Mouse... make that Mandrake... rather Mandriva Club broke. My emails went unanswered, in spite of the fact I'd shelled out money to them. Switched to Fedora and haven't looked back (though am looking forward to trying Kubuntu). Frankly, I'm surprised they still exist.

Re:Hopefully

[myowntrueself]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[Goldberg's Pants]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[ricegf]

I too used Mandrake / Mandriva for years (it was my first full-time distro), but wandered away a few years back. I lost track of the company once Gaël Duval left. Partly, I was disappointed by the website, which I never quite understood (perhaps I should have studied harder in French :-). Partly, I kept falling into dependency hell - when I tried Ubuntu, installing new packages Just Worked, and I couldn't bring myself to return to my first love.

But I remember Mandriva fondly, and wish them all the best with 2008.

Re:Hopefully

[quadfour]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[imr]

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.
This is now done interactively from the package manager, you just click "add" and it gets a list of mirrors over the internet, you choose one, and your medias are automagically configured:
main + contrib + non-free which countain most of the stuff and their respective updates, backports, testing directories. (backports and testing being ignored by default without you having to configure anything).
So all this is transparent to the user now.

2. Downloading the updated package info.
there has been for years a synthesis version of this which is just a few Ko heavy.
With the procedure above, the synthesis version is chosen by defaut, you can choose by media to use or not the synthesis version. So info updates takes only a few seconds unless you really want the extra infos that are in the complete info file.

All this is of course possible from the command line too.

Re:Hopefully

[the_womble]

I agree completely. I tried Kubuntu and went back to Mandriva.

There is one thing that is better in Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Package installation. The repo is a bit larger, Synaptic has a lot more in the way of search and filtering than RPMDrake, and apt has suggested and recommended package relationships as well a required.

Other than that, Mandriva is better in every way. Configuration, in particular, is way ahead of Ubuntu, and more ahead of Kubuntu.

Re:Hopefully

[Greg_D]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[flyingfsck]

An hour??? Obviously your setup was wrong. The Mandriva update mechanism is the same idea as the Ubuntu one - updates are done from world-wide mirrors, so if it is configured right then it cannot be any better or worse than Ubuntu.

Re:Hopefully

[AdamWill]

Mandriva 2008 introduces Suggests: support, actually. :)

Re:Hopefully

[buchanmilne]

I ended up running cooker to try to keep up to date and try packages that were not available as stable.

This problem has been solved since the release of 2007.0, which introduced new media on the mirrors, and at the same time changes to the build system allowing maintainers to easily submit testing and backport packages from cooker.

At present, selection of packages to backport is mainly done by the maintainer, but requests are often taken on IRC and mailing lists.

IMHO, there is almost no advantage Ubuntu has over Mandriva (besides hype).

Re:Hopefully

[urbanradar]

My problem with it was package availability, especially when it's popularity began to slide. I ended up running cooker to try to keep up to date and try packages that were not available as stable. Switching to Mepis, based on Ubuntu, solved that for me. The management tools are not as good or as complete as the drake tools, but they are generally sufficient. I can't say though that I recall desktop usability being a strength of Ubunutu's. It's for everyone, as in many languages and affordable to all. If Mandriva gives you what you need, VERY COOL! If something isn't there, doesn't work, or isn't being kept up to date, a switch to Ubuntu will probably solve the problem.

For the record, another good distro to try in situations like these is PCLinuxOS -- it's originally based on Mandriva, so it includes many of the Mandriva management tools, but has incredibly comprehensive package repositories of its own (easily accessible through Synaptic) and the best hardware support out of any distro I've tried. The community is generally also very helpful and friendly. Style-wise, the default theme is a little tacky IMHO, but that's certainly no show-stopper.

(I'm not associated with the PCLinuxOS project, by the way -- just a happy user.)

Re:Hopefully

[AvitarX]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[CastrTroy]

I'm not sure about the Mandriva Repositories, which are quite large, but once you use Easy URPMI to add the contrib and PLF sources, then I don't think there's a piece of software that I haven't been able to find.

RC is the new pre-alpha?

[Anonymous Coward]

major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this release candidate)

How does that work?

Re:RC is the new pre-alpha?

[man_of_mr_e]

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Release cycles have changed a lot in the last 10 years or so. With the advent of iterative software development cycles, you can often times get betas that are not feature complete (the idea is to test the iteration cycles that are complete) but a release candidate should be feature complete most definitely.

Re:RC is the new pre-alpha?

[pieleric]

I'm using this version right now and the only listed feature that seem missing is the hybrid suspend mode. IIRC, this feature is mostly implemented but there is still a little more work required. All the other features seem already here, excepted of course gnome 2.20 which is currently 2.19.92!

So, no this is not a pre-alpha version ;-)

Re:RC is the new pre-alpha?

[Anonymous Coward]

The marketroid mindset is increasingly prevalent in the open-source world these days. Mozilla publishes misleading statistics in their press releases and drops features to meet deadlines. Slackware skips version numbers to "keep up" with the competition. And people abuse the terms "alpha", "beta" and "release candidate" to mean what they want them to mean rather than something sensible.

People who are thinking of labelling something a "release candidate", ask yourselves one question: if major new bugs aren't found with it, would you be comfortable simply renaming it to be the final version? No? Then it isn't a release candidate!

Re:RC is the new pre-alpha?

[AdamWill]

Honestly, I've been copying and pasting the same release announcement since Beta 1 and I forgot to take that bit out. :)

Almost everything on that page is now included. However, it's true to say that Mandriva RCs are not really true release candidates - they're not builds that we honestly believe could be the final release unless someone finds a bug (well, the *last* one usually is, for 2007 Spring that was RC3, for instance). They should really be considered more as late betas. We didn't even hit version freeze yet (it's tomorrow). It's always been this way with MDV, it's a bit odd but we're used to it...:)

Re:RC is the new pre-alpha?

[Petrushka]

So, to summarise your post: there is a feature missing; therefore it is not pre-alpha. Well, OK, if that premise necessarily implies that conclusion for you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and back away slowly and quietly.

Just to clarify, it is surely obvious that this is not an RC but an alpha version. "Alpha" is after all the standard way of denoting "not feature complete". That's what "alpha" means.

I trust no one is going to claim that "one feature missing" = RC. RC should mean "finished in absolutely every conceivable respect, and completely absolutely bug-free as far as we are able to tell (and believe us, we've tried), but we just want to make extra extra quintuply sure that there's nothing wrong before we really release for good". That is clearly not the case here.

Re:I just noticed something

[betterunixthanunix]

Welcome to UbuntuDot/SlashHat.

Crikey

[werdz]

I read the headline first as "Microsoft Linux 2008 RC 1 Released" and nearly spat my tea out at my screen...

Actually

[obeythefist]

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!

Re:Actually

[MightyMartian]

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!

Agreed. We should put chrome condoms on and run around declaring "I'm the Big Meat 2008!"

Fuck, but I hate marketers.

Re:Actually

[setagllib]

Ubuntu does this too, where 7.04 means "month 4 of year 2007". It's not very obvious.

Re:Actually

[imr]

anchoring the product to a time
You are so right. And it was really thought as a representation of the technical reality and timeline of the distro, not for pure marketing reasons.
Here is the complete story that is behind this names, if that interrests you...

The naming convention came from the switch to a one year release cycle for the 2006.
Since the distro was going to be there for one year, and since most of this year was going to be 2006, it made more sense to call it 2006 and have it called 2006 for 3 months in 2005 than the other way around.
The decision to switch to a one year cycle came from users requests for more stability.

Unfortunatly, this move, despite having been made at the users requests, wasnt a popular success. Just read the comments on this page and you will see that a lot of people want the last version of many apps as soon as possible. Which has some sense in the free software world where some apps just move so fast and sometimes a newer version means more stability.
So with the 2007.0 the distro came back to a 6 months cycle.

But some aspects of the one year cycle remained in order to have the best of both world and again, it had to be reflected in the naming convention.

So, 6 months later the 2007.1 was built from the 2007.0 with no revolutionnary change to its foundations (like kernel, glib, gcc) but instead with many improvements and polishings in the desktops, fixing all those little bugs that were so irritating with every mandrake/mandriva release up to now, and a lot of work has been put into improving the existing mandriva tools, like the package manager and now the connexion manager.
So the 2007.1 was a really stable yet up to date distro.

Another nice aspect of the distro since that time is the backporting infrastructure.
Since the distro was going to stay for one year, in 2006 a lot of work has been put into making the softwares from the development version available easily to the previous version of the distro through a process that should not be a burden for the contributors. So the distro was back to a 6 months cycle, but this infrastructure was and is still there, and now important fast evolving apps like firefox can be backported quicker, which was one of the complaints made often to the distro. (You can see the importance of backporting in MEPIS recent swith to debian).

So all this led to chosing a name that would convey the fact that the 2007.1 was very close to the 2007.0, an evolution in time: "2007 spring".

Take all that with a grain of salt, I'm managing the Mandriva french forums for Mandriva, but I'm coming from the mandriva community and it really is my distro of choice.

Same boat...

[msimm]

I'd almost like to give it another shot, but I'm happily running Kubuntu on my laptop and really can't justify pulling a solid system to scratch that itch. To date, personally, Kubuntu and the rest of the Ubuntu family have the most cohesive feel to a Linux based distro I've known. Mandriva's user tools used to shine, but unless they've done something remarkable I just don't see much advantage. And the breakage in the last version (specifically the x86_64) left a very sour taste in my mouth. Maybe on day at work I'll pluck about with a spare server, but if Ubuntu can continue on it's current path I'm probably hooked. It feels like a system.

Re:Stay Away From My Bum, Mister...

[MightyMartian]

At least you weren't modded a troll by the no-humor idiots who seem to get all the mod points these days.

My complaint still stands. It's a lousy name for a distro. Not that Ubuntu is much better.

Weeks after exploits available? I call BS

[vdanen]

5. Security updates would be made available weeks after exploits became known.

Care to provide some proof on that one? A general and very broad statement like that calls for some proof to back it up.

Unless you're referring to the kernel itself (which there were issues with, due to a certain kernel developer that's no longer with Mandriva), most (and I do say most... there are exceptions, just like any other distribution unless you're using Gentoo and can emerge the latest upstream version the moment it's released) updates were released in a very timely manner. Unless it was a "0-day" vulnerability, updates from Mandriva are more often than not released within ~24hrs of other major vendors if not earlier.

I'd love to get some proof on this one.

Re:We use it for a reason

[ladislavb]

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...

For all those who haven't tried Mandriva lately

[AdamWill]

For all those who haven't tried Mandriva in a while, quite a lot has changed. It'd be great if you could try Mandriva again before posting comments. For instance, managing remote repositories is far easier than it used to be: you can configure a full set of official repositories from within the Mandriva package management tools. Instructions are at http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Docs/Basic_tasks/Insta lling_and_removing_software#Making_more_applicatio ns_available .

We've made big improvements in overall polish and stability since the releases that many people remember badly (2005, 2006). 2007 Spring looks much better, has far fewer package quality problems and runs more stably than those releases on most systems. 2008 will be better again, there's been a lot of work done on improving overall package quality, and it includes a very good and recent kernel build with very good hardware support. For instance, we have probably the best graphics card detection and configuration system in a major distro. I'm pretty sure that 99% of cards from major manufacturers (Intel, NVIDIA, ATI) will be correctly detected and configured in 2008. Our support for VIA / S3 (Uni)chrome chips (which are used on VIA's popular mini-ITx motherboards, for e.g.) is better than any other major distro to my knowledge.

Since 2007 Spring, we have a public non-free repository (that is configured when you set up repositories following the instructions above), so it's easy for anyone to get stuff like the NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, Intel wireless firmware, Sun Java and so on. For instance, for the NVIDIA / ATI drivers, just enable the repository and then re-run the graphics card configuration tool, and it will give you the option of using the proprietary driver.

Since 2007, we have official /backports repositories (in 2007 Spring and later, these are configured when you set up repositories, but not enabled by default for stability; you can enable them with a single click in the repository configuration tool). These contain up-to-date versions of popular applications. For instance, the 2007 Spring /backports repositories have amaroK 1.4.7, Compiz Fusion (0.5.2), VirtualBox 1.5.0, k3b 1.0.3, pidgin 2.0.1 (will update to 2.1 soon), avant-window-navigator latest SVN, brasero 0.6.0, deluge 0.5.4.1, gimmie 0.2.7, jokosher 0.9, mediatomb 0.10.0, miro 0.9.8.1, ntfs-3g 1.516, powertop 1.3, seamonkey 1.1.4, smplayer 0.5.21, tovid 0.30, transmission 0.72 and a *huge* amount of other updated packages (these are just some examples I picked). These are not officially supported, but they *are* built in a clean environment on the official Mandriva buildsystem and all built against each other, so they represent a contiguous set of packages that you will never have trouble using together, which is far better than the case on many other distributions where you have to use dozens of single-purpose or tiny third party repositories that are unofficial, not necessarily cleanly built, and often conflict with each other. There's a couple of other distros with /backports repositories to my knowledge, including Ubuntu, but Mandriva's are far bigger than any other distro and include far more useful packages.

so, yes, Mandriva is changing, quite a lot in fact. It'd be great if you'd give us another chance with 2008, read up on the forums - http://forum.mandriva.com/ - and the Wiki - http://wiki.mandriva.com/ - and see if your issues aren't improved.

On the Bugzilla situation - N7DR is not at all wrong in his criticism as it relates to earlier times. During the 2008 release cycle, we created a Bug Squad and I was appointed Bugmaster. The Bug Squad now triages all bugs reported, which has helped immensely with the response rate and time for newer issues.

Re:For all those who haven't tried Mandriva lately

[AdamWill]

Well, let me give you more concrete examples, then - during the 2008 development cycle, I personally have gone through and rebuilt almost every package (there's a few which simply can't be built any more, but over 95%) in the main repository with a mdk* release tag (indicating that it hasn't been built since Mandriva 2006 or earlier) or a 2007.0* release tag (indicating it hasn't been built since Mandriva 2007), making sure they build, run, and are compliant with our current packaging policies. This has never been done for any previous release. I'm hoping to get quite a lot of the 2007.1* packages (those that haven't been built since 2007 Spring) before we ship, too.

As I wrote in the post to which you're replying, we provide up-to-date packages in the /backports repositories. These aren't part of the Club, they're alongside all the other public repositories on the official mirror sites. The Club is not really used for providing packages any more, except for a very few packages that are non-free and that we cannot legally redistribute to the general public for license reasons (the most significant here are Flash and Acrobat Reader). You absolutely don't have to join the Club to use Mandriva: apart from that small group of packages, everything is available to non-Club members.

The admin tools are written in perl for a couple of reasons: it's what our coders know, it works, and we have a rather neat system which lets us write the tools once and have them work in both graphical and console (curses-based) mode. Rewriting them all in some other language and toolkit would be a lot of work for no real return.

I find they generally work pretty well. If you find problems in them, please do file bug reports. We do fix the bugs, honest. :)

Thanks for the good luck wishes.

Re:Got Torrents??

[AdamWill]

Where are you?

In North America, I'd recommend ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/ mandrivalinux/devel/iso/2008.0/ . In South America, ftp://ftp.c3sl.ufpr.br/MandrivaLinux/devel/iso/200 8.0/ . In Europe, ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/linux/Man drivaLinux/devel/iso/2008.0/ , or ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrakelinu x/devel/iso/2008.0/ if that one's slow.

We don't do torrents for beta releases as the demand is not usually high enough to warrant it - the FTP mirrors usually cope with the demand easily.