# rpm -qlp RedHat/RPMS/xorg-x11-libs-6.8.1-23.EL.i386.rpm|gre p -Ev '(locale|.so\..\.0\b|.so\..\b|man\d?\b)'/usr/X11R6/lib/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XErrorDB/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
So, the lib package consists only of libs, locale data, man page directories (no man pages though), and 3 more files.
The situation with Fedora Core 4 is almost identical (just 6.8.2 vs 6.8.1 in RHEL4).
The situation with Mandriva is quite similar: # ls/mnt/nas/pub/linux/mandrake/official/2006.0/i586/m edia/main/*xorg-x11-*|wc -l 16
(Mandriva doesn't bundle font utils in xorg packages, but in freetype, and ships Mesa in Mesa-* packages, and doesn't ship the "deprecated-libs" packages, so the rest of the package split is very similar).
The original poster seems to have been mentioning client-side aspects of samba use, where IMHO GNOME is quite a bit behind. Saying something "works great" when you set it up by hand, in a thread about desktop usability is a bit weird...
Samba and LVM with GUIs etc etc have worked great in Mandriva since it was Mandrake 8.0...
Except that Ubuntu's Kickstart emulation is a bit lacking (AFAIK no LDAP support).
However, Mandriva has all of these features and more out-the-box (auto installation, easy addition of custom repos to all machines - via urpmi-ldap - ldap authentcation setup available in auto install, GUI tool for admin'ing automatic installation).
But yes, I agree, a "small business" of 50 users could definitely do with automated installations, I think this should have been covered better.
I'm not sure if there's a GUI grub configuration tool or not, but you can install Webmin and edit stuff like that through your web browser.
How does this make it easier for the user than on any other distro (almost all ship Webmin, but at least Mandriva and Red Hat have reasonable bootloader configuration tools, SUSE's was too technical for non-experts last time I saw it)?
I mean, the Mandriva review (which is quite pathetic IMHO) could have used webmin (or, the CUPS web interface) to configure printers when they couldn't figure out how to add a network printer (which is actually quite easy IMHO).
and nothing about the old version of OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 which is included
1.1.5 is/was current stbale. And of course, 2.0 (well, last milestone, which was all that was available at the time) is also included (but not installed by default):
Mandriva ships sudo built with LDAP support, which is even more useful for a business than just blanket sudo for every user... and also has things like rurpmi (restricted urpmi) which is perfect for allowing users to install packages (since it prevents some possible exploint mechanisms and makes it relatively safe to let users install packages).
I honestly don't believe Ubuntu's use of blanked sudo rights is a good idea, a more "targeted" configuration would be better.
It would probably be quite trivial to write an enticing script that used sudo to compromise Ubuntu machines...
The Mandriva installer also failed to advise us as effectively as it should in the matter of security. Where SUSE's YaST2 prompted us to create secure passwords, Mandriva let inadequate passwords stand (dictionary words, all in lower case), without question.
Select a security level other than "Standard", which is aimed at home users, and a lot of security considerations (besides password strength) will be enforced.
As usual, we chose the GNOME interface
KDE is actually the default desktop, it may be better to review the default desktop on each distro rather than your preferred one.
Clicking to Add a printer gave us options to add local printers only. The tool seemed to be unaware of the possibility of a networked printer, or to communicate its abilities in that area.
When I run MCC->Hardware->Printers without any local printers attached, it prompts me with "Do you want to enable printing on printers on the local network", then gives options for a local CUPS server or an existing CUPS server on the network (choose local), it will install some more packages and then search for network printers. If it doesn't find any printers, use Actions->Add printer, if it still doesn't, enable the expert mode which will let you choose between JetDirect, CUPS, SMB etc etc.
We were disappointed with the Evolution client, too. It works well, but in Mandriva is supplied without the Microsoft Exchange connector
Maybe it should be installed by default, but it *is* on the CDs.
So, that deals with all the cons listed in the conclusion.
I would also point out that most real businesses won't be doing manual installations, and with Mandriva (as with SuSE and RedHat), all of this additional configuration can be avoided by doing automated installs. Ubuntu's support for automated installs still lacks (maybe this is why it wasn't mentioned at all)?
I've worked in large scale corporate environments (400+ workstations) configured for RIS and there's no equivalent.
Maybe you meant to qualify that, ie with "for Windows".
Since, all the major linux distros support this, all you need is a DHCP server and a TFTP server, and pxelinux, all of which ship with any distro.
We deploy all our Linux servers this way, including deploying all software required on the server (dependant on its role), hardending and configuration, so that it is ready for production on first boot.
In fact, we deployed the DR site for a new ISP yesterday morning.
While we don't have any diagnostic tools to boot, we do have an image on the PXE server for flashing the BIOS of the QLogic cards.
Mandriva also has a GUI tool for setting up a server for this purpose, as well as for managing the images/distros etc.
So, there are equivalents, Kickstart for RedHat (and Ubuntu has some support for the kickstart file format), Auto Install for Mandriva, and I forget what SUSE calls theirs.
Now that lots of Linux distros are fairly easy to install, what's the motivation to go with a commercial
While the reviewer was using the commercial/Club version of Mandriva, the distribution is free, with real community participation. IMHO, only Debian (not Ubuntu) is more free.
RPM-based distro?
Vs a dpkg-based one? Who cares, you don't use dpkg to install packages, neither do you use rpm (you use apt for.debs, or urpmi for rpms, or smart for either).
To me, the hard part about Linux now is not the install, it's stuff like getting sound and printing to work. Is that any easier on Mandriva than on Ubuntu, or vanilla Debian?
Dunno, but it all works out-the-box, as does wireless (people using the free version may have to download the firmware for some cards though, but Ubuntu is not as free in this aspect, AFAIK they include the non-free firmware).
Re:So .. why doesn't Linux come setup with all thi
on
Hardening Linux
·
· Score: 1
Which is why we do our hardening during install, via the mechanisms provided by the distribution (ie %post section in kickstart files for RedHat).
Thing is... there is always a toss-up between security and convenience. The hardenings we apply for production servers wouldn't make a very useable workstation, and default installations have to consider both.
Thus, distributions which allow for flexible yet easy to manage policies may be better. Although not commonly considered a server-grade distribution, Mandriva actually has a good framework for managing this, msec. Choose msec level 5 during installation (aka "Paranoid") will result in quite a hardened installation. Try it, but remember to add users to the wheel, xgrp, ctools, ntools groups or you will find it quite unuseable...
Firstly, lets cover the reasons for MS needing software management via group policies:
1)different roles for machines 2)Software dependant on users who use the machine 3)licensing issues 4)pushing software updates (there may be more... feel free to add any)
Now, the first one can be handled quite easily at OS installation time by any current distribution that supports automatic installation (ie kickstart on RH/Fedora, auto_install on Mandriva, AutoYast on SuSE, semi-kickstart-compatible support in the Ubuntu installer). It's quite trivial to have a machine-specific "kickstart"-file, and then assign (via symlinks or similar, or by using PXELINUX's IP-address-dependant bootloader config file selection) it to a group of machines.
We manage a number of machines doing entirely different roles, so we generate our kickstart files on-the-fly from a configuration database (handling everything from machine role to VLANs etc). RHN's bare-metal provisining should also be able to do basic per-host configuration, but its not practical without an RHN satellite, which we didn't have time to investigate (or even if we did, and decided to take it, wouldn't have had time to get through acquisition, and probably wouldn't support VLANs and many other features we need and have in our own solution).
Usually, if (1) can't satisfy (2), it's an issue of (3), which is largely irrelevant on Linux anyway (at least for software that you would be able to deploy automatically).
Now, for the case of adding software that wasn't installed initially, Mandriva has "park-rpmdrake", which basically supports the "--parallel" option to urpmi (which installs software on all the hosts configured for the "group").
I think RHN should also be able to do this (but, we don't use RHN for this ourselves... we use pseudo-packages for a specific role which require everything they need to operate).
Finally, software updates are supported by almost all distros, even if you may have to write a one-line cron job (ie 'urpmi.update --update && urpmi --auto-select --keep --auto --update').
However, I think directory integration could make this even better... and urpmi has some LDAP support, specifically media/repo configuration in LDAP, hopefully there's more to come...
Whatever tool you used to upgrade can only upgrade packages that are available to it.
So, if you installed 2005LE, added media, and then did an upgrade via the installer, additional packages from the media you added to 2005LE wouldn't have been upgraded.
But, all you need to do is ensure you have updated all your media for 2006, and run 'urpmi --auto-select'.
The case of the gimp could be related to the fact that there have been multiple versions available simultaneously...
Anything else would be a bug, please file one with sufficient information to track it down (if you are sure it is a bug).
Mandriva doesn't continue wasting space on all mirrors on obsolete unsupported releases (such as 9.0 which must have been obsolete at the time you installed it). Instead, old releases are moved into the "old" section of the tree, which not all mirrors keep.
However, there are a number that do. Find one, add the media, and you will have no problems.
But... use of the 'old' tree should be avoided, it means you are using a distro which is no longer supported and no longer gets security updates. If you had installed a current version, you would still have had updates and working repos...
Firefox is too much of a high-profile application and web browers are an easily hit target.
And firefox has a lot of issues on Linux, all distributions patch it to work sanely. Porting all those patches, and testing all the features, layout etc on thousands of locales is non-trivial. So, I don't agree it is "easily hit".
IMHO, Apache and SSH among others, should be treated similarly.
And, I think samba, openldap, and amarok should be too.
But, other users will have other favourites.
So, where do you draw the line?
Everything? No.
Some? Most? The most popular? The ones that prove to have a good track record? The ones that consider the distro a primary platform?
Firefox only qualifies as one of those -> it shouldn't be special.
Thus, I support the policy. Firefox devs need to get a clue. They aren't the only software a user installs.
This version of Mandriva still has Mozilla FireFox 1.0.6
Why are version numbers important? Do you check the version number of every single package you use, and always update it even if it is one point release behind?
Realise that a distribution has a release schedule, and usually that involves imposing a version freeze, to prevent new bugs creeping into an otherwise well-understood release (with it's known bugs that must still be fixed etc). Regressions have occured in Firefox releases... so there is no reason Firefox should be exempt (though the Firefox team seems to believe all linux distros should treat Firefox differently to the other 5000 packages they ship).
I think that major work should have been done on Heimdal Kerberos Support
So do I, but there are more important issues. And, since we don't build any packages against the heimdal libraries at present... it's easy enough to provide updated packages for the distro later.
Because better LDAP backend support for Kerberos is critical to doing thinngs like Linux's "Almost but not quite" Active Directory.
Well, part of that requires a stable, supported LDAP server, which was one of those more important issues. The OpenLDAP packages we ship are quite decent, and all packages were rebuilt against the new major version, plus we are committed to shipping updates as 2.3.x matures (although most users of 2.3.x seem to find it more stable than 2.2.x already).
Of course, real "Active Directory" features will come with samba4, which won't be available any time this year.
So, delaying the release for one aspect would not compare to the commercial comittments Mandriva has to shipping this release in time for stocking shelves ahead of the festive season.
But, the work in preparation for samba4 will continue, and as always, packages for older releases will be made available as well.
Come on, you can read, you should know by now that: 1)Mandrakesoft tested on LG hardware (including affected models) for this release, but none of the CD-ROM drives they tested had an old enough firmware to be affected 2)Gentoo had the same bug in their ready-for-the-world live gaming CDs (and hadn't tracked it down). 3)The bug was on LGs side, using a valid CD-RW command to flash the drives on their CD-ROM drives, violating standards 4)LG replaced/fixed drives 5)Mandriva did their bit in tracking down the issue, re-issuing installation media, providing a list of affected devices 6)If Mandriva hadn't merged the patch, some other popular distro would have, and would also likely not have picked it up until the release was out the door. Since Mandriva found it, the packet-writing patch was fixed to use another means to check if the drive has write capabilities, and now all linux users can have the feature without danger.
Stop bringing this up, hardware problems due to a vendor's faulty firmware is irrelevant.
yum may verify the signature, but then... this is (and has been for a long time) common practice across all rpm-based distros and tools (urpmi/apt etc).
e17 has been in Cooker for quite a while, and thus will be in Mandriva 2006 (in contrib), which will be out in less than a month.
Which distro gets the newest version of particular software first depends more on how their release cycle matches the release of the software in question, than how quickly they can package new software.
I try to./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.
Yes, but the development library was most likely missing. If it was looking for (say) qt3, just 'urpmi qt3-devel',which should install the right package for you.
Or, if it's looking for a specific header file, urpmf the filename (ie 'urpmf ldap.h') and install the package it returns...
Really, it's not that difficult.
You would have to provide more information for your urpmi problem, but for some reason people believe apt is better... just because they haven't added any network media (ie apt sources)...
I point out that Mandriva 2005LE does everything (at least on my HP NX7010) this apparently "highly configured system designed especially for HP notebooks" does out-the-box, including:
-LAN (8139too) -WiFi (ipw2100 in my case) -Modem -Sound -Bluetooth (I use it with a Logitech MX900 and my Nokia 6600) -Graphics adapter (fglrx or radeon) -Battery usage meter (ie acpi) -Suspend to disk -Hotkey configuration (new in 2005LE, keyboarddrake should choose the right keyboard layout )
I don't have any Firewire devices, and I all the IR devices I have have a faster medium (bluetooth or cable), so I haven't tested them, but the firewire modules get loaded fine.
(On the download edition of Mandriva, you would need to download the firmware for the ipw2100, you would get the radeon driver, and the modem may not work out-the-box... but that's the price of Freedom... Ubunto isn't Free!)
So... I see this more as Linux becoming more mature in support of features we all want working out-the-box (which previously requried manual setup).
when what they could really be doing is adding tsig-gss support to it (and while they're at it, bind), so that they can actually inter-operate with AD's DNS (and not create their own little world).
Slashdot Mirror
What distro are *you* referring to?
e p -Ev '(locale|.so\..\.0\b|.so\..\b|man\d?\b)' /usr/X11R6/lib /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XErrorDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt
/mnt/nas/pub/linux/mandrake/official/2006.0/i586/m edia/main/*xorg-x11-*|wc -l
. cvs20050915.2mdk.i586.rpm |grep -Ev '(\.so\..\.0\b|\.so\..\b|modules/dri)' /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/lib /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/lib/common
...
...
On RedHat (RHEL4 ES):
# ls RedHat/RPMS/xorg-x11-*|wc -l
18
So, there are 18 packages for xorg-x11
# rpm -qlp RedHat/RPMS/xorg-x11-libs-6.8.1-23.EL.i386.rpm|gr
So, the lib package consists only of libs, locale data, man page directories (no man pages though), and 3 more files.
The situation with Fedora Core 4 is almost identical (just 6.8.2 vs 6.8.1 in RHEL4).
The situation with Mandriva is quite similar:
# ls
16
(Mandriva doesn't bundle font utils in xorg packages, but in freetype, and ships Mesa in Mesa-* packages, and doesn't ship the "deprecated-libs" packages, so the rest of the package split is very similar).
# rpm -qlp official/2006.0/i586/media/main/libxorg-x11-6.9-1
So, Mandriva ships libraries and the dri modules in their lib package.
This is a good thing, because even on a headless/X-less server, you may need something like libgd, which requires libX11
Lets not flame RPM-based distros just yet
The original poster seems to have been mentioning client-side aspects of samba use, where IMHO GNOME is quite a bit behind. Saying something "works great" when you set it up by hand, in a thread about desktop usability is a bit weird ...
...
Samba and LVM with GUIs etc etc have worked great in Mandriva since it was Mandrake 8.0
That said, being able to install a complete desktop with a full set of desktop apps from a single CD ...
they thought it'd take several hours rather than about 30 minutes.
30 minutes for CD? Mandriva will install with both GNOME and KDE in half that time, using 3 CDs. Where's the advantage?
Except that Ubuntu's Kickstart emulation is a bit lacking (AFAIK no LDAP support).
However, Mandriva has all of these features and more out-the-box (auto installation, easy addition of custom repos to all machines - via urpmi-ldap - ldap authentcation setup available in auto install, GUI tool for admin'ing automatic installation).
But yes, I agree, a "small business" of 50 users could definitely do with automated installations, I think this should have been covered better.
How does this make it easier for the user than on any other distro (almost all ship Webmin, but at least Mandriva and Red Hat have reasonable bootloader configuration tools, SUSE's was too technical for non-experts last time I saw it)?
I mean, the Mandriva review (which is quite pathetic IMHO) could have used webmin (or, the CUPS web interface) to configure printers when they couldn't figure out how to add a network printer (which is actually quite easy IMHO).
1.1.5 is/was current stbale. And of course, 2.0 (well, last milestone, which was all that was available at the time) is also included (but not installed by default):
$ urpmq --sources openoffice.org-go-ooo
/mnt/cdrom/media/contrib/openoffice.org-go-ooo-2.0 -0.m129.3mdk.i586.rpm
and which is buggy (it crashes on SXI files it has created itself).
Upstream bug, occurs with OO.o packages of 1.1.5 too apparently. Apparently, creating a new presentation first, *then* opening the saved file, works.
Mandriva ships sudo built with LDAP support, which is even more useful for a business than just blanket sudo for every user ... and also has things like rurpmi (restricted urpmi) which is perfect for allowing users to install packages (since it prevents some possible exploint mechanisms and makes it relatively safe to let users install packages).
...
I honestly don't believe Ubuntu's use of blanked sudo rights is a good idea, a more "targeted" configuration would be better.
It would probably be quite trivial to write an enticing script that used sudo to compromise Ubuntu machines
Select a security level other than "Standard", which is aimed at home users, and a lot of security considerations (besides password strength) will be enforced.
KDE is actually the default desktop, it may be better to review the default desktop on each distro rather than your preferred one.
When I run MCC->Hardware->Printers without any local printers attached, it prompts me with "Do you want to enable printing on printers on the local network", then gives options for a local CUPS server or an existing CUPS server on the network (choose local), it will install some more packages and then search for network printers. If it doesn't find any printers, use Actions->Add printer, if it still doesn't, enable the expert mode which will let you choose between JetDirect, CUPS, SMB etc etc.
$ urpmq --sources ximian-connector
/mnt/cdrom/media/main/ximian-connector-2.2.3-2mdk. i586.rpm
Maybe it should be installed by default, but it *is* on the CDs.
So, that deals with all the cons listed in the conclusion.
I would also point out that most real businesses won't be doing manual installations, and with Mandriva (as with SuSE and RedHat), all of this additional configuration can be avoided by doing automated installs. Ubuntu's support for automated installs still lacks (maybe this is why it wasn't mentioned at all)?
I've worked in large scale corporate environments (400+ workstations) configured for RIS and there's no equivalent.
Maybe you meant to qualify that, ie with "for Windows".
Since, all the major linux distros support this, all you need is a DHCP server and a TFTP server, and pxelinux, all of which ship with any distro.
We deploy all our Linux servers this way, including deploying all software required on the server (dependant on its role), hardending and configuration, so that it is ready for production on first boot.
In fact, we deployed the DR site for a new ISP yesterday morning.
While we don't have any diagnostic tools to boot, we do have an image on the PXE server for flashing the BIOS of the QLogic cards.
Mandriva also has a GUI tool for setting up a server for this purpose, as well as for managing the images/distros etc.
So, there are equivalents, Kickstart for RedHat (and Ubuntu has some support for the kickstart file format), Auto Install for Mandriva, and I forget what SUSE calls theirs.
Now that lots of Linux distros are fairly easy to install, what's the motivation to go with a commercial
.debs, or urpmi for rpms, or smart for either).
While the reviewer was using the commercial/Club version of Mandriva, the distribution is free, with real community participation. IMHO, only Debian (not Ubuntu) is more free.
RPM-based distro?
Vs a dpkg-based one? Who cares, you don't use dpkg to install packages, neither do you use rpm (you use apt for
To me, the hard part about Linux now is not the install, it's stuff like getting sound and printing to work. Is that any easier on Mandriva than on Ubuntu, or vanilla Debian?
Dunno, but it all works out-the-box, as does wireless (people using the free version may have to download the firmware for some cards though, but Ubuntu is not as free in this aspect, AFAIK they include the non-free firmware).
Which is why we do our hardening during install, via the mechanisms provided by the distribution (ie %post section in kickstart files for RedHat).
... there is always a toss-up between security and convenience. The hardenings we apply for production servers wouldn't make a very useable workstation, and default installations have to consider both.
...
Thing is
Thus, distributions which allow for flexible yet easy to manage policies may be better. Although not commonly considered a server-grade distribution, Mandriva actually has a good framework for managing this, msec. Choose msec level 5 during installation (aka "Paranoid") will result in quite a hardened installation. Try it, but remember to add users to the wheel, xgrp, ctools, ntools groups or you will find it quite unuseable
I don't like mandrake too much because of the intense amount of preinstalled mumbo jumbo
...
Uncheck all the software categories at installation time, and there isn't any.
Ubuntu.. and their hardcore promotion of the word "Free" is also quite a plus..
But, doesn't help people understand the difference between price and freedom (ie access to source code etc etc).
i'll be damned if i ever pay a flippin' dime to RedHat, Mandriva, SuSE, or whoever else makes you pay for their crap..
Neither Mandriva nor SuSE make you pay for their normal distributions, although they do make money off selling them.
And, Mandriva's development model/process is more open than Ubuntu's (or Fedora's, or SuSE's).
Ubuntu is a prime example of how LINUX is supposed to be idealogically.. and they certainly execute that idea..
We'll still have to see how long they can survive on Mark's money
Firstly, lets cover the reasons for MS needing software management via group policies:
... feel free to add any)
... we use pseudo-packages for a specific role which require everything they need to operate).
... and urpmi has some LDAP support, specifically media/repo configuration in LDAP, hopefully there's more to come ...
1)different roles for machines
2)Software dependant on users who use the machine
3)licensing issues
4)pushing software updates
(there may be more
Now, the first one can be handled quite easily at OS installation time by any current distribution that supports automatic installation (ie kickstart on RH/Fedora, auto_install on Mandriva, AutoYast on SuSE, semi-kickstart-compatible support in the Ubuntu installer). It's quite trivial to have a machine-specific "kickstart"-file, and then assign (via symlinks or similar, or by using PXELINUX's IP-address-dependant bootloader config file selection) it to a group of machines.
We manage a number of machines doing entirely different roles, so we generate our kickstart files on-the-fly from a configuration database (handling everything from machine role to VLANs etc). RHN's bare-metal provisining should also be able to do basic per-host configuration, but its not practical without an RHN satellite, which we didn't have time to investigate (or even if we did, and decided to take it, wouldn't have had time to get through acquisition, and probably wouldn't support VLANs and many other features we need and have in our own solution).
Usually, if (1) can't satisfy (2), it's an issue of (3), which is largely irrelevant on Linux anyway (at least for software that you would be able to deploy automatically).
Now, for the case of adding software that wasn't installed initially, Mandriva has "park-rpmdrake", which basically supports the "--parallel" option to urpmi (which installs software on all the hosts configured for the "group").
I think RHN should also be able to do this (but, we don't use RHN for this ourselves
Finally, software updates are supported by almost all distros, even if you may have to write a one-line cron job (ie 'urpmi.update --update && urpmi --auto-select --keep --auto --update').
However, I think directory integration could make this even better
Whatever tool you used to upgrade can only upgrade packages that are available to it.
...
So, if you installed 2005LE, added media, and then did an upgrade via the installer, additional packages from the media you added to 2005LE wouldn't have been upgraded.
But, all you need to do is ensure you have updated all your media for 2006, and run 'urpmi --auto-select'.
The case of the gimp could be related to the fact that there have been multiple versions available simultaneously
Anything else would be a bug, please file one with sufficient information to track it down (if you are sure it is a bug).
Mandriva doesn't continue wasting space on all mirrors on obsolete unsupported releases (such as 9.0 which must have been obsolete at the time you installed it). Instead, old releases are moved into the "old" section of the tree, which not all mirrors keep.
... use of the 'old' tree should be avoided, it means you are using a distro which is no longer supported and no longer gets security updates. If you had installed a current version, you would still have had updates and working repos ...
However, there are a number that do. Find one, add the media, and you will have no problems.
But
Firefox is too much of a high-profile application and web browers are an easily hit target.
And firefox has a lot of issues on Linux, all distributions patch it to work sanely. Porting all those patches, and testing all the features, layout etc on thousands of locales is non-trivial. So, I don't agree it is "easily hit".
IMHO, Apache and SSH among others, should be treated similarly.
And, I think samba, openldap, and amarok should be too.
But, other users will have other favourites.
So, where do you draw the line?
Everything? No.
Some? Most? The most popular? The ones that prove to have a good track record? The ones that consider the distro a primary platform?
Firefox only qualifies as one of those -> it shouldn't be special.
Thus, I support the policy. Firefox devs need to get a clue. They aren't the only software a user installs.
Yep ... this is still the issue, but it is something that can probably now be addressed more easily (since OL2.3 and back-config).
...
... if I have time.
In the end, it just requires someone to write such a tool
I hope to start getting somewhere with something like this
This version of Mandriva still has Mozilla FireFox 1.0.6
... so there is no reason Firefox should be exempt (though the Firefox team seems to believe all linux distros should treat Firefox differently to the other 5000 packages they ship).
... it's easy enough to provide updated packages for the distro later.
Why are version numbers important? Do you check the version number of every single package you use, and always update it even if it is one point release behind?
Realise that a distribution has a release schedule, and usually that involves imposing a version freeze, to prevent new bugs creeping into an otherwise well-understood release (with it's known bugs that must still be fixed etc). Regressions have occured in Firefox releases
I think that major work should have been done on Heimdal Kerberos Support
So do I, but there are more important issues. And, since we don't build any packages against the heimdal libraries at present
Because better LDAP backend support for Kerberos is critical to doing thinngs like Linux's "Almost but not quite" Active Directory.
Well, part of that requires a stable, supported LDAP server, which was one of those more important issues. The OpenLDAP packages we ship are quite decent, and all packages were rebuilt against the new major version, plus we are committed to shipping updates as 2.3.x matures (although most users of 2.3.x seem to find it more stable than 2.2.x already).
Of course, real "Active Directory" features will come with samba4, which won't be available any time this year.
So, delaying the release for one aspect would not compare to the commercial comittments Mandriva has to shipping this release in time for stocking shelves ahead of the festive season.
But, the work in preparation for samba4 will continue, and as always, packages for older releases will be made available as well.
Come on, you can read, you should know by now that:
1)Mandrakesoft tested on LG hardware (including affected models) for this release, but none of the CD-ROM drives they tested had an old enough firmware to be affected
2)Gentoo had the same bug in their ready-for-the-world live gaming CDs (and hadn't tracked it down).
3)The bug was on LGs side, using a valid CD-RW command to flash the drives on their CD-ROM drives, violating standards
4)LG replaced/fixed drives
5)Mandriva did their bit in tracking down the issue, re-issuing installation media, providing a list of affected devices
6)If Mandriva hadn't merged the patch, some other popular distro would have, and would also likely not have picked it up until the release was out the door. Since Mandriva found it, the packet-writing patch was fixed to use another means to check if the drive has write capabilities, and now all linux users can have the feature without danger.
Stop bringing this up, hardware problems due to a vendor's faulty firmware is irrelevant.
rpmbuild -ba --sign ...
...
... this is (and has been for a long time) common practice across all rpm-based distros and tools (urpmi/apt etc).
or
rpm --addsign rpm
yum may verify the signature, but then
e17 has been in Cooker for quite a while, and thus will be in Mandriva 2006 (in contrib), which will be out in less than a month.
Which distro gets the newest version of particular software first depends more on how their release cycle matches the release of the software in question, than how quickly they can package new software.
I try to ./configure, make, make install and I get messages that I am missing a library. The library is there and is installed correctly.
...
... just because they haven't added any network media (ie apt sources) ...
Yes, but the development library was most likely missing. If it was looking for (say) qt3, just 'urpmi qt3-devel',which should install the right package for you.
Or, if it's looking for a specific header file, urpmf the filename (ie 'urpmf ldap.h') and install the package it returns
Really, it's not that difficult.
You would have to provide more information for your urpmi problem, but for some reason people believe apt is better
Because their Desktop Operating System (NLD) can't easily be configured to authenticate to:
...
-Their own Directory Server
-The competition's Directory Server (AD)
?
Other competitors can at least do the 2nd
I wonder why an OEM vendor shipping Linux pre-installed on laptops only signals "The Future of Linux on Laptops" when it's Debian^WUbuntu ?
... but that's the price of Freedom ... Ubunto isn't Free!)
... I see this more as Linux becoming more mature in support of features we all want working out-the-box (which previously requried manual setup).
HP first started shipping Linux preinstalled on NX5000s with SuSE.
And, Mandriva ships pre-installed HP laptops (looks like an NX9030) in Europe
I point out that Mandriva 2005LE does everything (at least on my HP NX7010) this apparently "highly configured system designed especially for HP notebooks" does out-the-box, including:
-LAN (8139too)
-WiFi (ipw2100 in my case)
-Modem
-Sound
-Bluetooth (I use it with a Logitech MX900 and my Nokia 6600)
-Graphics adapter (fglrx or radeon)
-Battery usage meter (ie acpi)
-Suspend to disk
-Hotkey configuration (new in 2005LE, keyboarddrake should choose the right keyboard layout )
I don't have any Firewire devices, and I all the IR devices I have have a faster medium (bluetooth or cable), so I haven't tested them, but the firewire modules get loaded fine.
(On the download edition of Mandriva, you would need to download the firmware for the ipw2100, you would get the radeon driver, and the modem may not work out-the-box
So
when what they could really be doing is adding tsig-gss support to it (and while they're at it, bind), so that they can actually inter-operate with AD's DNS (and not create their own little world).