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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."
How is an alpha release of Mandriva news?
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
[a@localhost firefox]$ ./firefox ./firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[a@localhost firefox]$
Would this happen in windows or mac? No
Says their including KDE4. Is KDE4 really ready for the limelight yet? I mean, from what I can tell, kde4 doesn't feel like its quite ready for regular users yet. Perhaps we'll see with the 4.1.x release branch. I'm sure looking forward to 4.0, once its got all its nice applications from 3.5.x migrated over.
Having taken a look at this latest release, I'm convinced that THIS IS THE YEAR that Linux will be the dominant desktop OS. Easy installation, advanced package manager, FREE!, and tons of community support; there's really no reason that it won't win the hearts and minds of users everywhere.
And with the cost of oil skyrocketing, people have less money to shell out to Microsoft, so a free OS is just what this ailing economy needs. It's surprising. Just a few months ago I was mentioning to someone just how good Linux was, but at that time he scoffed and said his grandmother still wouldn't be able to use it. However with this latest Mandriva Alpha (cool name) release, I think we're looking at a watershed moment here.
I'm looking forward to upgrading my systems post haste.
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/
isn't vista still at the alpha stage?
Have the definitions of alpha and beta changed? An alpha used to be an in-house test, while a beta was released to outsiders.
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how an open source project can have an alpha phase?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Seriously wondering if this is a paid ad by someone in the Mandriva camp to get exposure... Are they even a relevant distro anymore?
Instead of just releasing another hosed major version?
Anyone remember back when it was Mandrake and it actually worked?
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
As Keoni Morrell, trucker extraordinaire, would say: "YaY, YaY, YaY!!!!!"
BYe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Congrats /. has really outdone itself now. Hmmm... Maybe I could submit a post about my pocket lint.
I've been able to put together a better gaming Linux setup on Mandriva than Ubuntu. Mandriva has alot of things Ubuntu doesn't.
A beta version of KDE4? A development version of Gnome, and a RC of the kernel?
At least this is only an alpha.
Which makes me wonder how this got to the front page of /..
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
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.
The name is too close to "Mangina" for my comfort.
I LOVE PCLinuxOS, but am seriously checking out MDV2008.1 Spring FREE (and, that could be where my problems lie...). However, NONE of the current kernels intercepts the shutdown/suspend buttons on my laptop to do proper/graceful shutdowns. PCLOS (from 2007) does, and my VirtualBox install runs just fine...
I am having a HELLUVA time getting MDV 2008.1 to run my .mdi files as my own user account. I can open another user account, open konsole, su to myself, and THEN run my VirtualBox instance of vista, so, after a few days of head-banging, i've decided i must create a new instance of my user account, copy the .vdi in, and re- chown -R (just in case) my VirtualBox files, and then try again. Failing that, reinstall Vista and all my apps and re-register them. Presumably that is all unnecessary.
Likely, my problems also lie in minor changes tween VirtualBox 1.5.4 and 1.5.6, like in Free there is no set of extensions readily apparent. I had to copy them from my other drive.
But, I am reallllly tempted to plunk down for the Powerpack. In my past experiences with MDK/MDV, the Powerpack tended to resolve in one go all my issues with Free.
Another potential area of my problems is that the install disk that came with Linux Magazine might be damage, or it could be my wonky DVD burner, since the install aborts EVERY SINGLE TIME at the same place, forcing me to copy the entire DVD with auto-skip-on-error of a file copy. After that, I managed to create a local repository from which to install and upgrade in place the Mdv 2008.0 Spring I installed back around February.
Not knocking Mandriva. But one of the best personal reasons for me to avoid Free is I am sick of the crippling of the rotating background, and when I show off Mandriva, I hate having the Free background overriding the settings i made.
Nicely, the 3D Compiz works, tho, humoursly, Metisse DOES NOT, on my laptop. I ran a DVI (Azumi 2 for those interested) in LinDVD (which, now makes me care less and less whether it's Xine or VLC or Kaffeine as long as I can damned watch damned legally-paid for DVDs, and as long as having LinDVD mitigates or obviates the fracking risk of the federales confiscating my laptop for having dvdccs on my machine JUST to watch DVDs I legally paid for.)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Mandriva sucks, Slackware rules, end of story, move on...
against vigorous ero5ion of user Reformatted legitimise doing don't feel that least I won't FreeBSD at about 80
getting together to Been siiting here is dying.Things not anymore. It's to download the have the energy 40,000 coming These early Since then. More
DOH!!
I've been running Mandriva since MDK 7.2, I had a few issues with 8.2 but everything "just works".
Yes I've tried Ubuntu, it's very shiny but I can't get into the guts of the beast; besides I'm better at using Mandriva.
What I really like best is I can use my Power pack (yes I'm a silver member) or I can use Mandriva-mini and, once I"ve set up the repositories, I can type "sudo urpmi mythtv-backend" and it all goes and works.
To me, that's a pretty damn neat trick. That's a lot neater than going down to Best Buy and buying whatever TV tuner they've got and trying to make it work on Vista.
By crippled background I meant the LOGIN screen. It's REALLY kewl to me when in public having my login screen up, but in the background having the images rotate every 60 seconds. This is neat advertising of Linux when in kiosk situations.
Usually, when it comes time to upgrade, I usually do a quick assessment of what I could not handle having broken, and then i often go ahead with a complete new install. Often, for me, things are just "cleaner" that way.
As for VirtualBox, I found that one of my Lotus Approach "apps" I created is running gnawed-dog-slow and now I have a reason to miss Win4Lin in my previous installs on my desktop. But, on my laptop, Win4Lin (3x) won't run in the latest kernels. And, installing win98 in VirtualBox is painful in the end because the f*ker refuses to STICK with 1020x768. Same ole crappy problems I hated win98 for in the past when I was in IT. Sucker only sticks to 640x480.
So, I cannot fall back on win98 for its relative leanness and speed over vista when running Lotus SmartSuite. (No, there is NO WAY IN HELL that anything in OpenOffice can one-for-one replace my Lotus SmartSuite addiction, functionality, or other aspects that make SmartSuite a smart suite. It's aged, but SmartSuite is what IBM should have morphed into Symphony, and it would have paid a helluva better homage to the lineage of Lotus when it was cutting edge.
Now, I'm contemplating having to plunk down some $170 for xp pro cuz vista just PLAIN SUCKS. Well, so far. I probably will see gains if I get ahold of a patch to it, but I only want the patch if it's not requiring me to hook my machine (vista) to a LAN. I only want a single download, and I hope the bandaid/patch is under 500 MB, or something REASONABLE.
After all, on my Gateway having an extremely (relatively) limited Intel i810 chip with a max of under 300 MB shared RAM, the speed gains from using XP in VirtualBox will trump anything Vista Home claims to offer. Moreover, the Compiz 3D graphics on my laptop are spiffy, impressive, and snappy and offer more than Vista does for the eye candy sugar's worth. Now, if only Compiz didn't compress KDE multiple desktops into ONE desktop. It should automagically create the number of cube sides matching the number of virtual desktops already present, and then match them to the cube's sides. I am suspecting that many of my past and current issues in Compiz have something to do with .kde config files being munged here and there.
Xrandrtray was crashing on EVERY SINGLE BOOT of KDE, well, until this AM, when I chose a different Mandriva-modded kernel from the Grub list. I was surprised to see KRR running without crashing. Interestingly, my virtual desktop display was behaving as if ~~2000x6000, because it was HUGE, but I right-clicked and disabled auto start of KRR, and reduced it to my preferred 1440x900.
Some of you might have issues where Vista DOES start, but then your disk just thrashes for 4 hours (mine did for longer, and when I woke up I had to shut it down so I could bag up my lappy and head for work) with sluggish mouse response, where 10 seconds would pass before the mouse would move. VBox menus didn't respond, so maybe 5 times in the past 4 days I had to reboot the laptop. But, for $80, before I pay for MDV 2008.2 Spring, I sure as hell want a FULL install (maybe timed demo modded disk) that I can put thru the motions and then send in the USD $80. I'm all for rooting around in Linux, but mostly at the power user, but not hacker or anywhere NEAR hacker level.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Mandriva is great. It is quite smooth. Suse is the only other distribution that it can be compared to. Graphical interface for configuring everything on a Linux desktop. Ubuntu does not have that. Samba works better out of the box than it does out of Ubuntu as well as zeroconf. It connects well with OSX.
However, it does have it's own quirks. I haven't been able to run it on my laptop since the 2007 release. I have to recompile the kernel to get it to run smoothly. Mostly because I have a craptastic hardware in my laptop. On the other hand Ubuntu runs quite well on my laptop. I'm not quite sure what the difference is since they use similar kernels.
But, I am reallllly tempted to plunk down for the Powerpack. In my past experiences with MDK/MDV, the Powerpack tended to resolve in one go all my issues with Free.
I will never ever spend money to buy an upgrade because it fixes a bug.
I have in the past made contributions to software, and will do so again. I may even pay for targeted bugfixes. But this just doesn't seem right.
Incidentally, Metisse is pretty nifty-looking, but it doesn't support GL redirection and it's unclear when that is coming. So don't be too sad. Compiz is more important. Ever tried to build Metisse? It's exciting and the instructions don't work. (The authors of Nucleo and Metisse, however, are more than willing to provide assistance on the mailing list.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With OpenSUSE, I have never had to modify any configuration file for most of my server/client/desktop activities either at work or at home. I use 10-15 OpenSUSE machines almost every day. How would one compare Mandriva with OpenSUSE?
As exciting as eating 3-day-old/room-temp mayonnaise? Hehehe.... Somebody left some out here at work, and one co-worker said, "Anybody eat that and they will have a REAL exciting night..."
Actually, I saw Metisse work in 2006 Nov on a card i "rented" (bought/returned) from CompUSA, and in my old Gateway Select, 800 MHZ CPU/256 MB RAM, ~64 MB (I think it was 64 MB) PCI card, got Metisse... I showed Metisse and Compiz to the Comcast technician who was inspecting my cable (i think I was having probs getting TV out of the cable). Needless to say, he was bedazzled by KDE/Compiz/Metisse/Linux...
I think before I buy Mandriva 2008 I need to get another, bigger laptop drive. I have a 160 GB and an 80 GB, and PCLOS is on my 160 and it's nearly full, what with having the recovery version of vista in a partition, and all my Linux and other files in another partition.
-----
Oh, boys & Girls, if you're looking for Linux-friendly CAD that is quite like AutoCAD, see:
http://www.bricscad.com/en_INTL/bricscad/features.jsp
The Linux version, as can be expected, lacks some of the windows version's features, but.... Well, I still like Punch! ViaCAD. And BricsCAD is out of my budget limits. Still, it's nice to see Linux-supporting companies out there....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm glad Mandriva is around. Ubuntu seems to have more momentum (and I use it a lot too), but what if Shuttleworth stops his efforts and some follower tries to cash in or make deals with companies which are less philanthropic, but help to control a competitor. We have seen other distributions like RedHat, Suse make rather drastic changes in the past and not all to the benefit of the distribution community. Its good to have choice and I found Mandriva an excellent distribution too which minimizes the amount of time to spend with sysadmin work.
sounds like you were lucky, i bought a tv card cause some guy said it worked with linux, and apparently he had the earlier (like 6 months, damn it!) version than me and the current one has no linux driver yet... all i can say is the neighbors are now well aware of my swearing like a trooper capabilities.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
I've used it on my laptops (Dells and Thinkpads) for about 3 or 4 years after getting impatient with Red Hat's slowness in releasing packages and lagging hardware support. MDV tends to be months ahead in this regard. Always seems to have some kind of installer bug or other but so far nothing that can't be overcome with my quite shamefully minimal Linux juju. Ubuntu's really nice but I find Mandriva more convenient. Perhaps that's just a case of the devil you know. They're a good bunch and I pay for Silver just to help them keep on keepin' on.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
I have been a Mandriva (Mandrake) user for years. The thing that bothered me the most in recent years is the bloat of the distribution. I finally turned in Mandriva for PCLinuxOS and have never looked back. Small to the point packages that just work, with the ability to add on as needed. Mandriva had been throwing everything including the kitchen sink in to their default install, and that has increased instability. It has become increasingly hard to run it on older computers without problems. PCLOS gives us all the benefits of what works in Mandriva, without the experimental stuff (unless you add it later). It is what Mandriva should be, and what Ubunto never will be. Everything to all people (new users, geeks, servers, and so on).
Living in Chile
Mandrake was the first distro that really worked for me. I started with Debian but it's not good for beginners. It's too easy to mess things up. apt-get hose-my-computer happened a bit too frequently so I switched. It worked great until a new KDE came out and then OMFG it was a nightmare trying to get it upgraded. I've used several different distros since then and they all have their good and bad. My favorite by far is Ubuntu and that's what I run on my server. I don't have the time to fuck with it. I want something that is there and if not up to the minute, at least reasonably close without me having to hunt anything down. I run two commands and my system gets upgraded, keeping me with newer versions of everything I need. Contrast this to my experience with other distros... went something along the lines of, oh look XYZ has shiny new feature that would really help in this situation. I'll update my system... ok, that's all done, oh look, I'm a full major version back on XYZ. That's ok, I'll manually upgrade it. Three hours later I'm still trying to get all of the rpm dependencies taken care of. It's nuts. I don't know how things are on the desktop as I haven't had the time to use Linux on a desktop in a couple years. I need Windows for a few things and I just leave it at that. Once you get married and have a kid your fucking around time is completely shot to hell. On servers though, it's Ubuntu or bust for me.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
It'd be strange for PWP to really resolve a bug in Free, because the only difference is that PWP includes non-free and commercial packages. All the non-free (but redistributable) stuff is available from the public /non-free repository, so the only packages you actually can't get anywhere but the PWP are commercial packages - ones we aren't legally allowed to distribute to the general public. It's a very short list, these days - basically Cedega, some Fluendo codecs, and stuff like Acrobat and RealPlayer that you can get free from the original creator anyway.
Usually when something seems to be 'solved' by Powerpack it comes down to someone not realizing that Free doesn't include any non-free drivers (but you can easily get them post-install), or just that they happened to make some change during the install process.
if you're a fucking faggot. no one in the real world of legitimate computing wants anything to do with that dick smoker's os. keep sucking it fags, it's what you do best.
fucking queers.
"sudo apt-get install mythtv" or if you want to dedicate the machine for mythtv stuff only.. you can use the packages mythbuntu-desktop / mythbuntu-diskless-client / mythbuntu-diskless-server / mythbuntu-diskless-server-standalone / mythbuntu-live depending on what you need.
Or if you prefer, download the specific Mythbuntu ISO images (it uses the ubuntu repositories for everything, it's just a different 'default setup' ISO).
I used to be a silver member in Mandrivaclub (two years back I think) - but I got a bit fedup having to pay for access to repositories that provide DKMS versions of proprietary nvidia drivers and such and I didn't like the 3rd party repositories for that stuff because they were messy. I stopped my subscription when I just got fedup of the whole thing and did my own packages. Then just started using Kubuntu instead of Mandriva on my desktops because installing those things was just a simple apt-get install command or using the graphical adept manager.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Just for the record - non-free packages that can legally be redistributed to the general public (including NVIDIA and ATI proprietary graphics drivers) are now in a public repository, /non-free . They're also included in the One edition of Mandriva. Not trying to argue you out of Ubuntu or anything - just posting for the record in case anyone thinks things are still as they were when you left. :)
I used to be a silver member in Mandrivaclub (two years back I think) - but I got a bit fedup having to pay for access to repositories that provide DKMS versions of proprietary nvidia drivers and such and I didn't like the 3rd party repositories for that stuff because they were messy.
This policy has been abandoned. All repositories except the commercial software ones are available to all at no charge. That includes the repository with the proprietary drivers.
This might not be a big news, but if you do try out the distro then you will know how impressive it is. I am very excited about the final release and am planning on replacing my Ubuntu 8.04 installation on my laptop to Mandriva 2009, as I find Kubuntu Remix 8.04 a bit buggy (this might changed with 8.10 release). The theme for Mandriva 2009 just looks very good and really give out a very good impression.