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Mandriva Linux 2009 Released
Adam Williamson writes "Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list."
It includes a kernel that hasn't been released yet?
Wow!
I touch computers in naughty places
I had Mandrake installed some time back, and was happy with the package manager they had at the time since it finally dealt with some of the dependency hell issues that Red Hat suffered from. But at some point a software update and server migration went funny (on their end), and the package manager couldn't find the right site to update itself, and since I couldn't be bothered to dig into the internals to fix it (some of us use Linux to do other things :) and a reinstall looked like the easiest course, I opted to jump ship and tried out Ubuntu instead. But I'm curious to see what's happened in the intervening years.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Really, I love KDE 4.x. The work they have done is magnificent and a great achievement. I cannot, however, use it (at the moment) day-to-day. At least Mandrake has waited for a while before including it (KDE 4). At the end of the day though how is it helping Linux? Supposing I was a new Linux user (I'm not, been using it since 1994 and Yggdrasil) I would have to assess Linux on it's "interface". Say I am interested: I will grab the latest "linux version" and install it. I will be presented with KDE4. As an average user, would I judge linux, overall, on the interface. Most LIKELY I WOULD. Distro's have to be current, yeah. But if we want to make linux attractive to joe six pack, we have to start deciding WHAT goes into a standard distro. Including unfinished stuff (IMO) is a show stopper.
This comment is not meant to detract from the great work the KDE people have done for 4.x. They are building a GREAT system and I admire their work.
ween is near...
Maybe it's a TREAT?
(Silly rabbit, Trix are for kid... And, NO, no Lucky Charms for YOU! hehehe)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
i've been waiting for Mandrive 2009 for KDE 4.1 as 4.0 was supposed to be for developers.
mandriva, and mandrake before the merger with conectiva, was the distro of choice for me. mandrake 6.something was the first distro i was able to install, i still have that disk somewhere. for a little while i flirted with ubuntu but kept coming back for one reason or another. actually, i kept returning because i have a dell vostro 1500 laptop, honestly, i'd been better off with an abacus than this garbage, but anyways. mandriva 2008 was the only distro that would even load without doing voodoo incantations.
mandriva 2008 would work very nicely, but bluetooth was a little flaky for me. mandriva 2008.1 fixed that and fixed the multimedia keys on the front of the laptop (fixing the last little thing that didn't work out of the box).
so, with high hopes i downloaded mandriva 2009. ugh, what happened?!? my bluetooth is back to being troublesome. the mouse would say 'connected' and not do anything. power cycling the mouse would, well, 2 times, actually, make it work. then, kbluetooth would disconnect and reconnect to the mouse and the mouse would not work again! ugh!!!1!! the multimedia buttons stopped working!
most vexing for me was wireless. now, this P.O.S. laptop has a broadcom wireless module that needs ndiswrapper to work. now, mandriva 2009 recognized it, so said the control panel. couldn't use it but it was there! oh well, install the driver using ndiswrapper... 'wireless-tools could not be installed'!!! ok, hook up the wired connection and install wireless-tools. setup wireless > error! 'could not connect to ndiswrapped interface'!!! wow! ok, check to make sure ndiswrapper is installed. yup, there it is. uninstall ndiswarapper. check. reinstall ndiswrapper. check. install wireless card. smae error message!!!!
ok, noobie time (though i've checked in on linux for many years, it was mandriva 2008 that i switched permanently to linux). reinstall mandriva 2009. go through the same mess. still no go.
ok, install mandriva 2008.1. happy again!
now, don't count me out yet. i'll just wait for 2 weeks before retrying. bye then, these bugs should be worked out. i have faith in the mandriva team.
***
i was looking forward to trying kde 4.1. i know it is quite a bit different than 3.X. T-minus 14 days :-)
***
btw, the revamped installer is fanatastic! the artwork is simply incredible, you have to see it!
***
i hope mandriva 2009 works better for you than for me. I FULLY BLAME THIS DELL VOSTRO MONSTROSITY THAT HAS GIVEN ME NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS SINCE I GOT IT. the windows cd they gave me WITH this system COMPLETELY CRAPS ITS BRITCHES. god damn vostro...
--iggy_mon - www.ananonymouskiller.com - Die Trying -
I gave a spin to 2009-RC2 and I found it very lacking in many aspects, including general theme, while KDE4 implementation of the mandriva theme was mostly there small details (but important ones) like desktop icons where left out, if you look at the 2009 errata outstanding issues where not handled, like multimedia keyboard support on KDE4, it reasonably works on 2008.1 why should it stop working in 2009?, passing the blame to kmilo is no way to handle it (they would be better of with KDE3 for now).
I like the few new improvements, boot time is fast, intel wifi works better now, new kpowersave is nice, I can finely set the monitor brightness if supported, however, the damm thing won't suspend when closing the laptop lid.
I think is a good release for a new KDE4 migration, I think I will give the final release a spin but most probably I will stay with 2008.1 which is way more usable today than 2009, just think it.
C-x C-c
Each distro includes OpenOffice.org, Gnome, KDE, etc. I can get Gnome 2.24 by upgrading packages within my existing distro. openSUSE 11.1 and Fedora 9 will ship with it. So what actually sets this apart? I haven't used Mandriva since it was Mandrake, and I'm curious.
I hear they got a great "Control Panel" that rivals Yast. What is it like? What unique features does the distro have?
Wouldn't that be the pertinent information to have?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Looking at the Torrent list, I can't see an x86-64 version of Mandriva One. ( Free has it though). Any ideas on where to find it?
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
But does it run on Ubuntu?
Until they got merged into Mandrake, Conectiva was the best distro, IMHO. They had RPM with Apt, the best of both worlds. After the acquisition, they opted to drop that feature, keeping the vastly inferior Mandrake package management. Sorry, guys, I wento to Ubuntu, and never looked back.
The main thing I miss now is the Conectiva keyboard mapping. There are some subtle but significant differences in the way US-style keyboards handle accented characters, and Conectiva had the smartest setup (easiest to use, less keystrokes needed).
My major concern is going to be Pulse Audio. When 2008.1 came out, I migrated from 2008.0. I found out there were patches made to SDL that broke compatibility with many Linux games. It took weeks of "digging them out." to solve the problems. Now sound works the way it should. I'm frightened that it will mean more digging up bad patches in SDL to stop annoying crackling effects in games.
Also, not every computer I own has a "nice" Nvidia FX5200. A few of them have older Sis, Matrox, Intel, and my Cooker Box which has one of the 2009.0 release candidates on it has a Voodoo 3. The Voodoo 3 card crashes when DRI is enabled. Not due to a proprietary driver, but due to some older cards development falling by the wayside.
I'm not sure how it could take you weeks - SDL is just one source RPM, so all the patches applied to it are right there...
http://svn.mandriva.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/packages/cooker/SDL12/current/SOURCES/
there's two Pulse patches.
We provide the latest code X.org has for all drivers, and the hardware detection database is maintained. Aside from that there isn't an awful lot we can do to help older neglected drivers - even if we had the time to devote to maintaining ancient X drivers (which we mostly don't), we don't have the hardware around to test. But we do what we can.
Once upon a time this would have been big news on Slashdot. Now there is only about 45 comments. Mandrake/Mandriva really lost their mojo when they decided to go commercial.
Don't be smug. Not everyone can solve problems at the rate of a hard drive write, right?! He did solve his problem which is an accomplishment. And no he'll have to do it again. It's the Linux way in which nothing ever stays the same.
Well, I downloaded the CD and am now in the process of installing it. On the CD, it ran very quickly, especially for a live CD. The usual Folder View slowness in KDE4 that I've experienced in every other distro just did not exist in Mandriva. I'm assuming they used a later nVidia driver. A nice touch. I can already tell I'll like it much better than SuSE.
SSC
Just when I finished downloading 2008.1!
..the year of the Linux desktop.
I found out there were patches made to SDL that broke compatibility with many Linux games. It took weeks of "digging them out." to solve the problems.
For SDL: Did a packaging of the pristine upstream source have the same problems? Did you identify which specific patches which caused the problem?
Also, the sound stack for Linux seems overly complicated at the current time. There is some guidance here, but if you need to have a talk at the Linux Plumbers Conference that says, "Application developers, do not write directly to the hardware interface," you have already failed. Of course, there's some controversy about this guide because a bunch of OSS programmers can't accept any opinion of their API different from theirs.
There are issues with QT apps running really slow on boxes that use the proprietary Nvidia driver because that driver can't handle xrender calls very well. Yesterday Nvidia released a new driver that is supposed to fix the xrender issue. People are reporting that KDE 4 apps now fly on their boxes.
Conversely, I've seen people with low-end systems claim that KDE 4 flies on their boxes if they have onboard Intel graphics, because that driver is so good with xrender calls.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I've found Mandriva to be easier to use and administer out-of-the-box than Fedora. Since I've never cared for the non-SysV init way, I've never tried doing anything with *buntu except install it, so I can't comment on those.
Mandriva does offer very nice admin tools; they preferred perl over python (the RedHat preference) to write them.
If you prefer SysV and RPM, I'd recommend Mandriva.
Hoyt Duff
former co-author, Fedora Unleashed
Tried it.Half baked. The ath5k driver caused my wireless card to go haywire. Switched to Kubuntu. Looks like my card is damaged. I used to get 80-90% signal. Now I get 30% on my atheros card. Stay away. I am guessing all the noise floor diagnostic messages caused a problem.