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Mandriva Linux 2009 Alpha 2 Released
AdamWill writes "The Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Alpha 2, marking the first public pre-release of the upcoming Mandriva Linux 2009. This alpha introduces several significant changes, most obviously the inclusion of KDE 4 — 4.1 beta 2, specifically — as the default version of KDE, and the latest development version of GNOME, 2.23.4. The kernel has also been updated to release 2.6.26rc7. Another feature of interest to many users will be the addition of orphan package tracking (and optional automatic removal) to the urpmi package manager. Of course, many applications have been updated (although the default version of Mozilla Firefox is still currently 2.0.x), and most of the distribution has been rebuilt with a new GCC version, 4.3. Mandriva warns that this is a true alpha, likely to contain many bugs related to the new version of KDE. Please install it only in a test environment, and especially do not use it as an upgrade from any earlier Mandriva Linux release."
Back in the day, when I started using Linux, Mandrake (now Mandriva) was a great distribution that helped newbies like me hit the ground running. But now it seems like Ubuntu has gobbled up that market. Afaict, they don't have much of an "enterprise" market, and they don't have much of a "hacker" market... or am I wrong? What market is Mandriva serving these days?
http://mediagoblin.org/
Not to start a distro flame war, but...
How is an alpha release of Mandriva news?
BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME! Name me another distro that:
- installs easily and with lots of options
- has integrated configuration utilities for GUI AND console that don't mind personal hacking of the config files
- has bleeding edge packages, if you choose
- doesn't exclude dev packages in pursuit of user friendliness
- has native packages for nearly every application you'll use
In other words, they provide a professional, up-to-date Linux environment that is simple enough for newbies, flexible enough for advanced users, and hassle-free for those of us who have no time to waste on configuration and compilation.
Also, it appears to be a rare example of a major distro that still supports multiple desktop environments out of the box.
I'm stoked for Mandriva 2009 and I'm glad to know it's coming...
That said, there's no way in hell I'm installing an alpha of it, so you may have a point. :) But at least I can start prepping my hard disk partitions! WOOO MANDRIVA FTW!!!
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Alphas are released for developers (which don't have to be "in-house"), while betas are released to testers.
http://www.mhall119.com
I just came back from the Philippines last week where I set up an Internet cafe with Mandriva 2008.1 version Power Pack edition. During the winter this year I tried every version of the major distributions on my systems at home and chose Mandriva for the cafe because it is so well set up for administrative control, firewall control, etc .. I have been using SUSE for over 8 years and the Mandriva looks fantastic visually, has all the software you need and offers CEDEGA to run Windows based games for online gaming. I mention this aspect since all the main users there are young guys who play on line games in the cafes. Almost all of the MMORPG games were Windows centric and CEDEGA allows you to play them with Linux. This is a clear case for better Linux gaming capability needing to come about to make Linux a real options for game players who spend a lot of money in cafes in the Philippines. I was actually forced to creat dual boot systems with four of the computers with XP so that CONQUERONLINE would play on the machines. I was quite distrubed to be forced to buy XP for those machines but ECONOMIC REALITY overrode my real desire to have Linux only cafe computers.
Doesn't have anywhere near MDV's range of configuration utilities, which is what the OP was getting at. Also we'd argue our centralized backports repository system is rather better than Ubuntu's "seventy billion PPA" system, for bleeding edge packages. (Yes, for anyone who didn't get the memo yet, I work for Mandriva).
I have come across several packages with minor problems (such as missing dependencies) which has hardly ever happened to me with Ubuntu. RPMDrake is also not as good as Synaptic, or even Adept, but I have complained about that before on the Mandriva forums.
The problems with packages is something I have come across more recently. I hope it is just a bad patch rather than showing an underlying lack of QC.
One more thing Adam, you and a few other people do a great job on the forums. Thanks.
It does usually happen in contrib not main. Unfortunately a lot of useful stuff is in contrib.
I don't know either, wasn't trolling, just answering the parent and expressing my honest opinion.
Anyhow, I've got to agree with you, documentation is not only a poop, but practically doesn't exist. You've got to use the forums. But when it comes to configuration... I don't know, may not be as smooth as on Mandriva, but was straightforward... at least for me.
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."