Slashdot Mirror
Mandrake 6.1 Is Out (For Real This Time)
Several readers have written in with the news that, yes, Linux-Mandrake 6.1 (Helios) is out. The ISOs, and the whole bit are availible from their site as well as mirrors around the Web.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I've been using Linux-Mandrake 6.0 as my main distro for several weeks now, and I like it a lot. BUT... I'm not about to upgrade to a release based on a pre-patched kernel, especially considering the memory leaks that have been in the last couple of stable kernels.
IMHO, Linux-Mandrake should have waited until Linus released 2.2.13.
TedC
Corporations may be effectively targeted by Red Hat, though. I noticed a post yesterday where someone said he was choosing Red Hat to push at work despite those problems for the very reason that the PHB's have seen it mentioned in a good light in the standard PHB-oriented publications. Of course, given that Mandrake won the Linux product of the year award at LWCE, which had a 'suit-friendly' aroma, and that Caldera also won an award, I wouldn't regard Red Hat dominance in this segment as a given.
I think consumers could easily sway between Mandrake, Red Hat or Corel (once released), as they tend to be more about pushing the envelope on "new user gui friendliness", which recently has necessarily meant releasing quickly. For instance, the new kernels and X support evermore devices.
I think Red Hat is really blowing it the hardware certification area, though. That the only machine they've certifed was one that contained a winmodem demonstrates a profound lack of ethics, imho.
Of course, this is from the geek "big picture" and not from the business "big picture".. I'm guessing the businessmen at Red Hat thought it would be great to further legitimize themselves by having a hardware certification program and to grant IBM a favor to promote good relations with a huge industry player. But, as their IPO risks statement said, they risk losing the support of the community. I think this is a risk that could have easily been avoided by picking a different model to certify. (Was the Thinkpad really doing that poorly against competing laptops that IBM felt they had to push this one for Red Hat certification? Do they really think this will affect their future sales positively?)
I think it's critical that any of the doors Red Hat is given credit to for opening should really be opened. Speaking from experience, it really sucks walking into a screen.
Not to be pedantic, Aaron, but the default RPM build target for Red Hat is the 486. The 'i386' that appears in the names of the packages refers to the architecture, which is a different parameter in RPM and doesn't necessarily reflect the actual compiler flags being used for the binary.
:) . /. Comment Ever:
I just wanted to clarify this, since many people see the i386 in Red Hat's RPMs and think RH binaries are the opposite of optimized (pessimized?
---------------------
Most Annoying
"If I use Red$at Gnulix to make a Beowulf,
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
Competition is vital to having a good product, right?
Let's never forget that competition brings innovation. A common idea these days is that Linux should be the end-all of Operating Systems and we should just have one "distribution". But what would we have then? Just another "microsoft" product. There'd be none of that push to innovate anymore. The only innovation being done would be only that needed to sucker in "users".
But what do we have now? Red Hat and Mandrake. Gnome and KDE. And others. Let's not meld the KDE and Gnome projects together. They should always exist as different projects. They provide innovation that we wouldn't have otherwise. The LSB is good, but let's not make it something that forces distributions to all be identical. That would stop innovation.
Hey, Microsoft even need to be here. Microsoft provides strong innovation in the Linux market. Not their idea of "innovation" of course, but real innovation.
-Brent--
Mandrake is not as RedHat based as it used to be. Mandrake has tried very hard to make sure it remains 100% redhat compatible though. All programs that are designed and compiled to run with RedHat should work without any problems on Mandrake. Mandrake has split off from RedHat in a few respects, most notably the look and feel (which it has been for a long time), now the install routine has been GUI-ified, and the kernel and underlying driver sets have been hand tuned and optimized.
I have personally found the Mandrake distribution to be RedHat but better. That's just my opinion of course. I think whereas RedHat spends more time in the marketting of their Linux, Mandrake spends the time in making their Linux better and easier to use for the common user.
Cheers!
You have a valid point. I too would feel more comfortable with a non-pre kernel. The problem is that there is no way to know how long it will be until 2.2.13 comes out. Were are on pre-9 already.
And going back to the last stable kernel 2.2.12 really isn't a good idea either. 2.2.12 (and 2.2.11) was riddled with wide spread problems. I respect Mandrake for trying to stay on the cutting edge as well as ensuring that their distributions are stable.
Please remember, 2.2.13-pre3 has been out for a while and we have been hammering it pretty hard to make sure it is stable. And, of course, as soon as 2.2.13 finally is released it won't be long before Mandrake release a small update package.
It's not that I disagree with your observations, I just don't think the issue is so big as to scare someone off from a much improved distro release.
Cheers!
I've been following the development of Mandrake's latest release from 6.0 to 6.1 very closely. I strongly encourage anyone running an older version of Mandrake to upgrade.
There are major changes in this release which are very much worth taking advantage of. Most people will enjoy the new graphical installer and graphical disk partitioner. These things make it nicer for the average user to install. But more importantly than that, 6.1 is the first release benefitting from Mandrake's "cooker" process.
Mandrake 6.0, while being very good, was chock full of small annoying and disruptive problems. After the experience with 6.0, Mandrake opened it's development process up to the public. Thos of us who have chosen to participate have been able to download and intall development versions of 6.1 and make suggestions for improvements.
This means that 6.1 has the inputs and suggestions of far more people than any previous release. Hopefully we have all found the "gotcha" issues before the official release this time. I am confident that the 6.1 release is far more stable and gotcha-free than the 6.0 release.
Once again, I enourage all Mandrake (or KDE based distribution) enthusiast to give the new distribution a try.
Cheers!
...But don't take my word for it..try it out. I plan on ordering a CD from CheapBytes as soon as it's available.
--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org
Celebrate the finer things in life
- Linux-Kernel: 2.2.13 (pre4)
- Enlightenment 0.16-dev5
- GnomeICU 0.66 (according to the GnomeICU Homepage, 0.66 hasn't been released yet..it's still in developement!
And there are other examples of software that has barely been tested...
And while I respect the fact that they are no longer basing their distribution on RedHat, they do claim compatibility with RedHat. I fear that by releasing their distribution prior to RedHat's release they risk some incompatibility.
Redhat now has a chance to "one-up" Mandrake's distribution if they choose to.
Just a few thoughts...
--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org
Celebrate the finer things in life
... is here, with info on the major updates and changes.
Its only to be expected that we will be seeing floods of first time or new users eager to try out Linux with the media profile of our favourite OS being what it is nowadays. But what will happen as the userbase matures ?
I'm sure I'm not the only Linux user who has started to move away from using the shrink wrapped stuff. You install a Red Hat, or a Suse or a Mandrake or whatever, you spend a few months setting loads of stuff up , tweaking it , installing all of your favourite gizmos and libraries from source, graudually making your box as comfortable as a pair of well worn slippers. Then six months down the line attracted by the shiny new box on the shelf at PC world you buy a updated copy and do the upgrade thing. Then you spend the next 2 weeks in mild shock getting everything working the way it used to again.
And after doing that once, how inclined are you to to fork out your dollars to go through that experience again ?
-- Oh Well
The pgcs project takes releases of egcs and optimizes it to use pentium, pentium II, and other newer processor instructions.
:)
:)
Kind of like Mandrake does with Redhat if you think about it
I like it for most applications, but it is a little more risky to use as it can optimize away crucial code that was written using poor syntax. (read: linux kernel).
I've been using a kernel compiled on it for months now, however, and never had a problem, but let the buyer beware
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
However, yesterday morning I upgraded from RH5.2 to RH6.0, the second such upgrade I've done on this PII, and it went much more smoothly than the equivalent changes by hand
Sure, an experienced user like me has 20--30 minutes of tweaks to apply after the install finishes, but RH makes it easy to see what they've changed (.rpmsave files) and what they didn't risk changing (.rpmnew files)
The user-side configuration, thanks to the beauty of Unix, is untouched and remains ready to go.
Almost all the changes RH made would have improved the system for a newbie, and wouldn't have needed tweaking if I didn't fiddle.
e.g. They added procmail rules to sendmail.cf, thus voiding my old
The new settings seemed tighter, and the install process itself was flawless (500+ packages updated in 1 hour over FTP, much quicker than by hand)
Even for Linux power users, RH/Debian/Mandrake/ whatever are *much* easier to keep up-to-date than any other OS I've seen.
They already had kde 1.1.2 packed as a lovely RPM at Rpmfind.net quite a few days before I could read the announcement of the Tarball release on /.
For Red-Hat : if they're suicidal enough to depart from Mandrake, they'll regret it sooner or later. The guys at Mandrake really do a hell of a job. Red Hat may decide to benefit from it (Open Source mind : Good Thing) or they just may close up and lock themselves into some ivory tower (MS mind ; Bad Thing).
Tell me : what would be the gain of consciously cutting compatibility with all the nifty things the Mandrakers are doing right now ?
Thomas Miconi
Karma Police - Please be calm, be quiet, be at ease, please don't try to escape...