Since urpmi.setup (see the web version) went into main, it will actually be even easier.
Just hope they install it by default and put an icon in the menu and Mandrake Control Center. Will mean urpmi is trivial to setup.
To those mentioning apt/apt4rpm, remember that you have to install non-RH tools to get this functionality. For people looking for an ultra-stable distro (apparently the only reason for subjecting yourself to RH), you would not want to install 3rd-party software that you don't need.
Mandrake comes with it's own tool, integrated into all the other tools (will RH-config tools install software via apt when it realises you need something? - I would guess not), plus the genhdlist tool to generate your own urpmi sources.
Plus, there are a number of guaranteed sources for additional software that can be used with urpmi, including all the commercial software that normally ships on the CDs at Mandrake Club.
Sorry, apt on RH just does not measure up to urpmi.
Plus, there are many advanced features (and more coming), such as parallel installation (via ssh for real networks or ka-run for clusters), usage of ssh or rsync for accessing urpmi sources, plus in 9.1 the ability to install (with solved dependencies) directly from a url (if you just want a few packages without setting up a source).
Finally, one important aspect security-wise, is that if you keep your urpmi sources current (specifically updates sources), Mandrake tools will always install the most up-to-date package, so you should never have an old (ie potentially compromised) package on your system.
Many cooker users and all the Mandrake developers keep their systems up-to-date with urpmi. Do RH developers use apt in-house daily?
I'd be more impressed if I could get in the Mandrake club by purchasing a boxed product from a retail outlet. Right now that's not possible (to my knowledge).
According to Deno, boxed sets of 9.1 will include a trial membership for MandrakeClub. I have almost no details, but remember a standard set (at $30) costs a lot more to produce, and generates less income than a 6-month membership.
IMHO, membership is worth it, and Deno is planning a lot more.
Think about it. Most people criticise Mandrakesoft for not having a business plan, while complaining that the music industry has not kept with the times. It seems like Mandrake free-loaders and music pirateers are all the same, just want everything for free. Distributing your product via the internet at almost no cost to you (ignoring original development/recording cost) is a viable business plan, if a substantial fraction of your "clients" become paying customers.
Here (195kB PNG) is a screenshot of Mandrake 9.1rc1 running Gnome with the Galaxy theme. I hae done almost no changes to Gnome (I don't usually use it), so this is pretty much how it looks currently out-the-box after changing to the Galaxy theme (which I assume will be enabled by default on rc2). The window decorations for KDE went in only a few days ago, wait till I update some stuff from cooker for a KDE screenshot.
My USB flash disk was detected automatically, just had to right-click on the desktop and check "removable" (in KDE an icon appears which you can just double-click). ACPI works (though I am not sure how much functionality my Thinkpad 600X supports). Note the ACPI is not enabled by default (acpi=off is in the default append for the bootloader) due to problems with desktops. Zeroconf works (ie over a crossover to a windows box I get a "auto-configuration"-compatible IP address and can resolve my own hostname via "dns"), but the gui tools need a bit more work (config only works during install currently), but my NIC does not support ifplugd, so I do not get automatic interface management.
I did make some changes to the fonts in Mozilla, which may have affected how Galeon displays.
We just hope that freetype-2.1.4 will be out in time to make it, since the maintainer will not agree to shipping CVS versions (which Redhat seems happy with, even with glibc to the point of breaking things like winbind - for those of you who think Mandrake is not stable).
It would appear that at present samba-tng isn't ready for production use (as with samba3), since it doesn't support: -ACLs (which we rely on with samba-2.2.x) -Locking -Advanced printer support.
I'll continue testing samba3 and keep samba-2.2.x in production for the next few months.
can samba-TNG be a real PDC and comunicate to a NT BDC all the information such as the userlist AND when it falls over and comes back up (system maintenance) take back the PDC status and any changes from the BDC ?
AFAIK, this is what TNG was aiming for.
acting as a PDC and syncing with a NT BDC is what SAMBA really lacks IMHO
You mean samba-2.2.x. Samba-3.0alpha does support this, and has a better NT->Samba migration tool, 'net rpc vampire'.
Samba3 is due out in about 2 months (hopefully).
What I want to know is, have they got all the samba-2.2.x features?
We run samba-2.2.x with ldap support for samba-only PDC/BDC operation.
Sitting back in a chair and ruminating about "properly coded" sites is not an option.
Yeah, some people take the only option that will help reduce the number of non-standards-complian sites, and that's increasing the number of non-MS browsers. What are you doing about the situation?
Our users like mozilla (after they have used it for a while and see how much better it is). Why should they have to use something else to access a website?
More on topic, I think that it is a huge mistake if the original poster forces his [ahem, non-standard] choice on the unsuspecting users. As IE is already installed on all Windows desktops already, and since all websites are written with IE as the target, he is setting himself up for a rude awakening.
How so? Since IE is *still* on the desktops, the users can use IE if they get to a site that sucks. And they can do the evangelisation.
Remember that supporting IE has it's own headaches (security vulnerabilities go unfixed for months). It's the admin's choice what he wants to support, unless management has directed what to use, which normally isn't the case in small companies (since management doesn't know enough to choose).
I don't know how Redhat operates, but Mandrake update packages are only signed with the Mandrake security GPG key, which ships on the installation CD and is installed into root's keyring. If you can't trust the isntallation CD, then you have bigger problems. This is a good reason to buy a distro...
All advisories are signed with this key, so you have some way of ensuring you do have the correct key.
Mandrake update / urpmi does not automatically install new keys (were you implying that apt will??)
So, on recent versions of Mandrake (where urpmi checks the sigs on packages), you can simply have 'urpmi.update updates; urpmi --auto-select --auto --update' in cron, and the only problem you will have is if the secteam managed to get trojaned source from the orginal site, and this fact wasn't discovered in testing.
Why? Simple. The file manager [xandros.com] is brilliant in terms of what it does, how it looks, and how it can be incorporated with existing machines, and especially, domains. You ever wonder what Linux has been missing? Well, this is it.
Does anyone else here, especially those bitching the loudest, actually administer users? I don't know about you, but any tiny change will cause an uproar. A rollout of Mandrake, Redhat, or SuSE would cause numerous heart attacks where I work,
FYI, Mandrake 9.0 installation allows you to join a windows domain. After installation, any domain user will be able to log into the machine.
Then, fire up konqueror, hit the services button, and double click the Network browser, and you will be able to browse Windows/samba shares, FTP servers, web servers, and with KDE3.1, ssh servers (via kio_fish).
The only thing needed now is a true, open source Exchange-connecting email client
Await next KDE release...
I know everyone's balking about the cost, the GPL source tinkering, and the rest, but from a sys admin's POV, this OS has done more in one release than Redhat did in five.
Off the backs of all the other distros, contributing none of their stuff back to the community (ever wonder how they do the windows domain thing?, they use winbind from samba, just like Mandrake).
It's a good thing they are around (provide focus to other distros), but it's not where money should be spent, it would be much better spent on a fully open-source distro.
Mandrake is probably the best desktop distro out there (or, at least one of the top 3), plus all the tools (config and installer) are GPL, so you can customise to your heart's content.
There are people on the development list who use this for commercial systems. You can set it up so that (if you write your own ISO) it will boot up and auto-install the machine (assuming there aren't any partitions you want), and you can customise all the actions that get run.
See what the XBox team did.
Apparently you can try this (on a disk that has not data you require) by booting with the 'oem' option (after getting to the syslinux prompt by hitting F1 at the boot screen on the CD).
Also, if you don't have CDROMS to install with, you can do network installs, especially if you use a boot server (dhcp or dhcp + PXE), which you can customise in the same way.
Of course, locking down a box will always take experimentation, but Mandrake's msec tools (in conjunction with a/etc/security/msec/levels.local file) will allow you to do this easily, and will keep enforcing the permissions if you want it to. Plus, there's a gui for configuring this.
I think the local linux distributors (such as Obsidian) have or are in the process of registering.
Now the question comes, what happens if I write and sell (for a negligible fee) copies of Mandrake 9.0? I guess then I will need to register also...
P.S. All people who have commented on the South African government should consider whether they know enough about it before they make comments, some conceptions are about 10 years out of date...
Anyway, I am not in jail, and I think my PLF mirror should be ok too (until we get software patents)...
If Mandrake is so good with computer systems, why are both links slashdotted?
Maybe because they think it's better to keep one more developer than pay his salary in bandwidth?
In the post-dot-bomb era, companies don't need to prove uptime to be successful, they need to make a profit! Redundant servers and bandwidth waste money most of their life, and are bad for generating profit.
I like Mandrake, but... it makes me think.
Rather think on the increasing market share Mandrake has on web servers....
Then, in future, just run: # urpmi.update updates # urpmi --auto-select
You can also do it with the normal distro (but doesn't need urpmi.update), new RPMs in the new MandrakeCLUB unsupported directory in the mandrake-devel mirrors, and some peoples RPMs (like Texstar and me).
You can customise what will not get updated (/etc/urpmi/skip.list), and what will be installed instead of updated (/etc/urpmi/inst.list). For example, you will need to manually specify the kernel to install:
# urpmi kernel-2.4.18.13mdk
Of course, you can do this all with the rpmdrake gui, but some people were whining about no console-only support...
The whole issue with Java is that, being built with gcc2.9x, it can't interface to C++ code compiled with gcc3.2.
So Mandrake 9.0 ships with Mozilla compiled with gcc2.96, so Java works fine. Been using the plugin on cooker quite a bit in the last few weeks (webCDwriter, which really rocks).
The enigmail plugin is a seperate package, and not in the default install (IIRC).
And the only crash I have had with it was when decrypting or verifying an encrypted or signed mail, so I think that's pretty obvious to the user that they should uninstall mozilla-enigmail (which they must have selected, since it's not default).
Of course, the best option would be to ensure that this is fixed.
If you're going to compare a soure-based distro with a binary distro, you probably need to compare with the publicly available beta tree (if there is one).
Enigmail was added to Mozilla-1.0.0 in cooker on 17 July 2002.
The only problem is, I am not totally sure if it's working now (it worked in 1.0.0, it worked in one of the 1.0.1 releases, but it seems broken now, even if using the XPIs from mozdev.org).
It crashes mozilla when reading a signed or encrypted mail for which you have a key. Encryption and signing seem to work fine.
As with many things in life, your opinion will depend greatly on your perpsective.
To my knowledge (which may be biased living in a so-called third-world country where software is really expensive), the biggest customer of commercial software is big business.
Granted, quite soon open-source solutions will extend from the file/print/web/mail server to the desktop, and include the basics the average administrative user needs (email, documents, spreadsheets, simple databases).
But, currently there are no real solutions for the business-critical software that actually pays the bills (unless you do web design or server hosting, which may not pay the bills either).
I imagine other high-tech industries will also have software they depend on, for which there is currently absolutely no viable open-source solution.
Fortunately, a lot of this software does already run on free OSs (notably all the CFD software I listed, and also most of MSCs structural analysis software), and Pro/E will apparently be coming soon. But, of course, there were not ports from windows, rather ports from commercial Unix (in many cases, so were the windows versions).
The problem for us is that we can't migrate until all the tools one person will use are available, since work often requires interaction between at least two pieces of software. But, presently Pro/E is the biggest piece missing, and we hope that this will be addressed by the end of the year.
Please, don't do other linux (and OSS) users a disservice just by stating that all your home computing needs are catered for by current OSS software, thus there is no need for proprietary commercial software.
Having more linux users around is a good thing, since that will mean that hardware vendors and website designers will have to take notice, and hopefully the number of HTML emails will drop;-).
The quickest way to do that, is to ensure that businesses can migrate easily to linux/OSS without losing the functionality they currently have, at which point they will start to see the additional advantages they hadn't considered.
Problem 5. Ohhh, there's a new cool USB 2.0 gadget out for the computer at my local store. I'll buy it and connect it to my system. Hmmm, Linux doesn't recognize the new hardware and there's no Linux install software included with the gadget.
Of course, they're going to have to get an off-board USB controller in this scenario, since the machine ships with only two USB 1.x ports.
OK, so an Unknowning customer buys this Linux machine and takes it home.
Don't know how they would unknowingly buy it, since they have to but it from Walmart.com, and the description tells you it's linux.
Problem 1. Connect to the Internet. The customer calls his local internet provider, Cable, DSL, or dial-up and says he want's to setup his system to connect to the net. The Internet provider sends him the software. Hmmm, where's the Linux install. Call back the provider. The provider asks what Operating system he's running. Customer repsonds "Linux". Click!
User gets sent hardware, connects it, boots machine, during boot, the hardware is detected, and the user is prompted for settings, adds them, and continues booting. When he logs in, the connection works. Better than windows (no reboot necessary).
Problem 2. Swapping files. The customer's best friend just downloaded this cool program and wants him to try it. Hmmm, just stick the disk in and and run setup?
But the user would already have 3 programs under linux that do the same, but in different ways, and easier to install.
Problem 3. U.S. Federal Income Tax Software, Quicken for Linux, MS Office for Linux, Wheel of Fortune for Linux? While there are alternatives, they aren't mainstream.
Buy Crossover Office or Win4lin from the mandrakestore.com, if they aren't happy with OpenOffice.org 1 (actually 641c), StarOffice 6.0, Gnumeric, or KOffice or one of the accounting apps that ships with Mandrake 8.2
Problem 4. Computer crashes. No problem take it to the local computer repair center. Ooops, they don't support Linux.
How often is this going to happen??? And it's probably installed on ext3, so no problems. Hardware problems are hardware problems, so the shop can boot a diagnostic tool from a floppy to test the hardware. Anyway, they can probably return it to Walmart.com and get a replacement.
Problem 5. Ohhh, there's a new cool USB 2.0 gadget out for the computer at my local store. I'll buy it and connect it to my system. Hmmm, Linux doesn't recognize the new hardware and there's no Linux install software included with the gadget.
USB 2.0 won't work on Windows XP either. So, the user might have to upgrade to Mandrake 9.1 or whatever release first has a kernel with usb2 support.
The point is, that Linux, at this time, is only for people that want to download it/buy it, install it, and spend alot of time learning Linux. It's not for people that just want to use it as part of their computer and don't really care what's running in the background as long as they can e-mail, surf, do finances, play games, etc. We Linux zealots often forget that the majority of the population could care less if they're running Wndoze, Linux, or Mac, as long as they can do what they need to do with their computer.
I would disagree, and say that at the moment, linux is restricted to those who are geeks or know geeks, because they don't know that they are capable of installing it. My girlfriend now uses Mandrake 8.2 (though she has win98 dual-boot, atm only used for downloading photos from my camera which is not well enough supported by gphoto2), and prefers it, mainly because a lot of things come with the distro that don't come with windows. For example, she would have to get a new version of winamp to play music she got from a friend, whereas xmms plays it fine - and she has no network connection).
Sure, I had to install Mandrake for her, but I had to do that with Win98 also. She did the installation/upgrade to Mandrake 8.2 from 8.1, and I don't know if she would manage win98.
So, now we will really see how difficult linux is to use, now that a decent distro comes pre-installed, which IMHO was the only major obstacle before.
Because package management is a breeze. I don't have to know the difference between/bin,/sbin,/usr/bin.
When is there ever a time (as a USER, not a DEVELOPER or ADMIN) when you need to know the difference between/bin and/sbin and/usr/bin? What, do normal users type the full path to all the binaries they run?
Because I can drag a program I'm tired of to the trash can..
Which is exactly why I will NOT allow a Mac onto our network. If users can write to system files, they can install trojans (whether they know it or not), and that's a BAD THING.
Because I can go to one location - the Applications folder - to find any new program I install.
Why do you need to find it? Why don't you just run it when it appears in your menu after installing it?
Or, if it's a command-line app, I can go to one location -/bin - for everything.
Why do you need to "go" to/bin? In any case, 97.5% of the binaries on your mandrake box go in/usr/bin, the rest (except for mozilla and openoffice.org, which are so big they get their own directory in/usr/lib/) you shouldn't have to know anything about (as a USER).
Anyway, why don't you run Mac OSX now? You can't, while your wife could also be running Mandrake...
There is a way to go yet before linux is the eaiest OS in the world to use, but IMHO, it's not because software is hard to install.People confuse compiling software from source with installing binaries. When do normal users compile something from source on MacOSX or Windows? Installing software on (most distributions of) linux is much easier than on any other OS (especially if you have packages available locally or via a network, so you don't have to change CDs), but of course compiling from source is a different thing, and people forget this when comparing installation of software under linux to other OSs.
IMHO, the thing that needs to be sorted out most is a good API to configuring all aspects of the machine. GConf has mostly sorted out Gnome, but something still needs to be done so that a normal user can configure samba, apache, postfix, openldap, and many more without having to fire up an editor. And I don't mean webmin or linuxconf.
Slashdot Mirror
since that is what RH8.x looks like (ie too childish for a corporate network).
Since urpmi.setup (see the web version) went into main, it will actually be even easier.
Just hope they install it by default and put an icon in the menu and Mandrake Control Center. Will mean urpmi is trivial to setup.
To those mentioning apt/apt4rpm, remember that you have to install non-RH tools to get this functionality. For people looking for an ultra-stable distro (apparently the only reason for subjecting yourself to RH), you would not want to install 3rd-party software that you don't need.
Mandrake comes with it's own tool, integrated into all the other tools (will RH-config tools install software via apt when it realises you need something? - I would guess not), plus the genhdlist tool to generate your own urpmi sources.
Plus, there are a number of guaranteed sources for additional software that can be used with urpmi, including all the commercial software that normally ships on the CDs at Mandrake Club.
Sorry, apt on RH just does not measure up to urpmi.
Plus, there are many advanced features (and more coming), such as parallel installation (via ssh for real networks or ka-run for clusters), usage of ssh or rsync for accessing urpmi sources, plus in 9.1 the ability to install (with solved dependencies) directly from a url (if you just want a few packages without setting up a source).
Finally, one important aspect security-wise, is that if you keep your urpmi sources current (specifically updates sources), Mandrake tools will always install the most up-to-date package, so you should never have an old (ie potentially compromised) package on your system.
Many cooker users and all the Mandrake developers keep their systems up-to-date with urpmi. Do RH developers use apt in-house daily?
I'd be more impressed if I could get in the Mandrake club by purchasing a boxed product from a retail outlet.
Right now that's not possible (to my knowledge).
According to Deno, boxed sets of 9.1 will include a trial membership for MandrakeClub. I have almost no details, but remember a standard set (at $30) costs a lot more to produce, and generates less income than a 6-month membership.
IMHO, membership is worth it, and Deno is planning a lot more.
Think about it. Most people criticise Mandrakesoft for not having a business plan, while complaining that the music industry has not kept with the times. It seems like Mandrake free-loaders and music pirateers are all the same, just want everything for free. Distributing your product via the internet at almost no cost to you (ignoring original development/recording cost) is a viable business plan, if a substantial fraction of your "clients" become paying customers.
Here (195kB PNG) is a screenshot of Mandrake 9.1rc1 running Gnome with the Galaxy theme. I hae done almost no changes to Gnome (I don't usually use it), so this is pretty much how it looks currently out-the-box after changing to the Galaxy theme (which I assume will be enabled by default on rc2). The window decorations for KDE went in only a few days ago, wait till I update some stuff from cooker for a KDE screenshot.
My USB flash disk was detected automatically, just had to right-click on the desktop and check "removable" (in KDE an icon appears which you can just double-click). ACPI works (though I am not sure how much functionality my Thinkpad 600X supports). Note the ACPI is not enabled by default (acpi=off is in the default append for the bootloader) due to problems with desktops. Zeroconf works (ie over a crossover to a windows box I get a "auto-configuration"-compatible IP address and can resolve my own hostname via "dns"), but the gui tools need a bit more work (config only works during install currently), but my NIC does not support ifplugd, so I do not get automatic interface management.
I did make some changes to the fonts in Mozilla, which may have affected how Galeon displays.
We just hope that freetype-2.1.4 will be out in time to make it, since the maintainer will not agree to shipping CVS versions (which Redhat seems happy with, even with glibc to the point of breaking things like winbind - for those of you who think Mandrake is not stable).
It would appear that at present samba-tng isn't ready for production use (as with samba3), since it doesn't support:
-ACLs (which we rely on with samba-2.2.x)
-Locking
-Advanced printer support.
I'll continue testing samba3 and keep samba-2.2.x in production for the next few months.
can samba-TNG be a real PDC and comunicate to a NT BDC all the information such as the userlist AND when it falls over and comes back up (system maintenance) take back the PDC status and any changes from the BDC ?
AFAIK, this is what TNG was aiming for.
acting as a PDC and syncing with a NT BDC is what SAMBA really lacks IMHO
You mean samba-2.2.x. Samba-3.0alpha does support this, and has a better NT->Samba migration tool, 'net rpc vampire'.
Samba3 is due out in about 2 months (hopefully).
What I want to know is, have they got all the samba-2.2.x features?
We run samba-2.2.x with ldap support for samba-only PDC/BDC operation.
Sitting back in a chair and ruminating about "properly coded" sites is not an option.
Yeah, some people take the only option that will help reduce the number of non-standards-complian sites, and that's increasing the number of non-MS browsers. What are you doing about the situation?
Our users like mozilla (after they have used it for a while and see how much better it is). Why should they have to use something else to access a website?
More on topic, I think that it is a huge mistake if the original poster forces his [ahem, non-standard] choice on the unsuspecting users. As IE is already installed on all Windows desktops already, and since all websites are written with IE as the target, he is setting himself up for a rude awakening.
How so? Since IE is *still* on the desktops, the users can use IE if they get to a site that sucks. And they can do the evangelisation.
Remember that supporting IE has it's own headaches (security vulnerabilities go unfixed for months). It's the admin's choice what he wants to support, unless management has directed what to use, which normally isn't the case in small companies (since management doesn't know enough to choose).
I don't know how Redhat operates, but Mandrake update packages are only signed with the Mandrake security GPG key, which ships on the installation CD and is installed into root's keyring. If you can't trust the isntallation CD, then you have bigger problems. This is a good reason to buy a distro ...
All advisories are signed with this key, so you have some way of ensuring you do have the correct key.
Mandrake update / urpmi does not automatically install new keys (were you implying that apt will??)
So, on recent versions of Mandrake (where urpmi checks the sigs on packages), you can simply have 'urpmi.update updates; urpmi --auto-select --auto --update' in cron, and the only problem you will have is if the secteam managed to get trojaned source from the orginal site, and this fact wasn't discovered in testing.
There needs to be some kind of utility that figures out dependencies, then goes and DOWNLOADS AND INSTALLS THEM for you
You must have only ever used Redhat, since both Mandrake and Debian have their own tools which do this.
Mandrake users can use the Mandrake Control Center or urpmi , Debian users use Apt.
SuSE uses Conectiva's port of apt to rpm, so that really just leaves Redhat and slackware.
Dependencies? What are those? Never see them (besides the few extra packages that get installed when I want something new installed).
Why? Simple. The file manager [xandros.com] is brilliant in terms of what it does, how it looks, and how it can be incorporated with existing machines, and especially, domains. You ever wonder what Linux has been missing? Well, this is it.
...
Does anyone else here, especially those bitching the loudest, actually administer users? I don't know about you, but any tiny change will cause an uproar. A rollout of Mandrake, Redhat, or SuSE would cause numerous heart attacks where I work,
FYI, Mandrake 9.0 installation allows you to join a windows domain. After installation, any domain user will be able to log into the machine.
Then, fire up konqueror, hit the services button, and double click the Network browser, and you will be able to browse Windows/samba shares, FTP servers, web servers, and with KDE3.1, ssh servers (via kio_fish).
The only thing needed now is a true, open source Exchange-connecting email client
Await next KDE release
I know everyone's balking about the cost, the GPL source tinkering, and the rest, but from a sys admin's POV, this OS has done more in one release than Redhat did in five.
Off the backs of all the other distros, contributing none of their stuff back to the community (ever wonder how they do the windows domain thing?, they use winbind from samba, just like Mandrake).
It's a good thing they are around (provide focus to other distros), but it's not where money should be spent, it would be much better spent on a fully open-source distro.
Mandrake is probably the best desktop distro out there (or, at least one of the top 3), plus all the tools (config and installer) are GPL, so you can customise to your heart's content.
/etc/security/msec/levels.local file) will allow you to do this easily, and will keep enforcing the permissions if you want it to. Plus, there's a gui for configuring this.
There are people on the development list who use this for commercial systems. You can set it up so that (if you write your own ISO) it will boot up and auto-install the machine (assuming there aren't any partitions you want), and you can customise all the actions that get run.
See what the XBox team did.
Apparently you can try this (on a disk that has not data you require) by booting with the 'oem' option (after getting to the syslinux prompt by hitting F1 at the boot screen on the CD).
Also, if you don't have CDROMS to install with, you can do network installs, especially if you use a boot server (dhcp or dhcp + PXE), which you can customise in the same way.
Of course, locking down a box will always take experimentation, but Mandrake's msec tools (in conjunction with a
There are lots of linux/gpg/openssl users around
...
...
...
I think the local linux distributors (such as Obsidian) have or are in the process of registering.
Now the question comes, what happens if I write and sell (for a negligible fee) copies of Mandrake 9.0? I guess then I will need to register also
P.S. All people who have commented on the South African government should consider whether they know enough about it before they make comments, some conceptions are about 10 years out of date
Anyway, I am not in jail, and I think my PLF mirror should be ok too (until we get software patents)
Greets Gotz.
Buchan
The commercial distro ships with NVidia drivers.
There will be drivers on Mandrakeclub soon.
Otherwise, you must download and rebuild, install, and run XFdrake again.
There were some rumours that the GF4 was working with the latest XFree86 (4.2.1) packages, but haven't tested myself.
If Mandrake is so good with computer systems, why are both links slashdotted?
....
Maybe because they think it's better to keep one more developer than pay his salary in bandwidth?
In the post-dot-bomb era, companies don't need to prove uptime to be successful, they need to make a profit! Redundant servers and bandwidth waste money most of their life, and are bad for generating profit.
I like Mandrake, but... it makes me think.
Rather think on the increasing market share Mandrake has on web servers
I maintain a number of Mandrake servers and desktops, and also run cooker on one machine, and have run RCs on a few more.
../base/hdlist.cz
...
In the end, set up an updates source:
# urpmi.addmedia updates ftp://mirror/path/to/RPMS with
# urpmi --auto-select
Then, in future, just run:
# urpmi.update updates
# urpmi --auto-select
You can also do it with the normal distro (but doesn't need urpmi.update), new RPMs in the new MandrakeCLUB unsupported directory in the mandrake-devel mirrors, and some peoples RPMs (like Texstar and me).
You can customise what will not get updated (/etc/urpmi/skip.list), and what will be installed instead of updated (/etc/urpmi/inst.list). For example, you will need to manually specify the kernel to install:
# urpmi kernel-2.4.18.13mdk
Of course, you can do this all with the rpmdrake gui, but some people were whining about no console-only support
The whole issue with Java is that, being built with gcc2.9x, it can't interface to C++ code compiled with gcc3.2.
So Mandrake 9.0 ships with Mozilla compiled with gcc2.96, so Java works fine. Been using the plugin on cooker quite a bit in the last few weeks (webCDwriter, which really rocks).
There are a lot of compatability issues with SP3, for example profiles on a samba server.
...
So, I would revert to SP2.
Also, have you tried removing the FAT32 partitions from Windows 2000s disk management first, then installing.
Of course, you might have considered backing the Mandrake install up with something like partimage
The enigmail plugin is a seperate package, and not in the default install (IIRC).
And the only crash I have had with it was when decrypting or verifying an encrypted or signed mail, so I think that's pretty obvious to the user that they should uninstall mozilla-enigmail (which they must have selected, since it's not default).
Of course, the best option would be to ensure that this is fixed.
mozilla-spellchecker is in, and it has been patched to use the myspell-* dictionaries which are included for use with OpenOffice.org
# urpmi mozilla-spellchecker
should prompt you for your choice of dictionary, if you don't have one installed yet.
If you're going to compare a soure-based distro with a binary distro, you probably need to compare with the publicly available beta tree (if there is one).
Enigmail was added to Mozilla-1.0.0 in cooker on 17 July 2002.
The only problem is, I am not totally sure if it's working now (it worked in 1.0.0, it worked in one of the 1.0.1 releases, but it seems broken now, even if using the XPIs from mozdev.org).
It crashes mozilla when reading a signed or encrypted mail for which you have a key. Encryption and signing seem to work fine.
As with many things in life, your opinion will depend greatly on your perpsective.
;-).
To my knowledge (which may be biased living in a so-called third-world country where software is really expensive), the biggest customer of commercial software is big business.
Granted, quite soon open-source solutions will extend from the file/print/web/mail server to the desktop, and include the basics the average administrative user needs (email, documents, spreadsheets, simple databases).
But, currently there are no real solutions for the business-critical software that actually pays the bills (unless you do web design or server hosting, which may not pay the bills either).
Coming from a mechanical engineering background, the software that we spend the real money on (one license can often pay the entire balance of all the other non-technical software) are things like 3d associative Computer Aided Design Software, software for Finite Element Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics.
I imagine other high-tech industries will also have software they depend on, for which there is currently absolutely no viable open-source solution.
Fortunately, a lot of this software does already run on free OSs (notably all the CFD software I listed, and also most of MSCs structural analysis software), and Pro/E will apparently be coming soon. But, of course, there were not ports from windows, rather ports from commercial Unix (in many cases, so were the windows versions).
The problem for us is that we can't migrate until all the tools one person will use are available, since work often requires interaction between at least two pieces of software. But, presently Pro/E is the biggest piece missing, and we hope that this will be addressed by the end of the year.
Then, we only need to replace the stuff the use, but I think that's going to require a different kind of solution, unless it's easy to port VB on MSSQL software to linux.
Please, don't do other linux (and OSS) users a disservice just by stating that all your home computing needs are catered for by current OSS software, thus there is no need for proprietary commercial software.
Having more linux users around is a good thing, since that will mean that hardware vendors and website designers will have to take notice, and hopefully the number of HTML emails will drop
The quickest way to do that, is to ensure that businesses can migrate easily to linux/OSS without losing the functionality they currently have, at which point they will start to see the additional advantages they hadn't considered.
Problem 5. Ohhh, there's a new cool USB 2.0 gadget out for the computer at my local store. I'll buy it and connect it to my system. Hmmm, Linux doesn't recognize the new hardware and there's no Linux install software included with the gadget.
Of course, they're going to have to get an off-board USB controller in this scenario, since the machine ships with only two USB 1.x ports.
OK, so an Unknowning customer buys this Linux machine and takes it home.
Don't know how they would unknowingly buy it, since they have to but it from Walmart.com, and the description tells you it's linux.
Problem 1. Connect to the Internet. The customer calls his local internet provider, Cable, DSL, or dial-up and says he want's to setup his system to connect to the net. The Internet provider sends him the software. Hmmm, where's the Linux install. Call back the provider. The provider asks what Operating system he's running. Customer repsonds "Linux". Click!
User gets sent hardware, connects it, boots machine, during boot, the hardware is detected, and the user is prompted for settings, adds them, and continues booting. When he logs in, the connection works. Better than windows (no reboot necessary).
Problem 2. Swapping files. The customer's best friend just downloaded this cool program and wants him to try it. Hmmm, just stick the disk in and and run setup?
But the user would already have 3 programs under linux that do the same, but in different ways, and easier to install.
Problem 3. U.S. Federal Income Tax Software, Quicken for Linux, MS Office for Linux, Wheel of Fortune for Linux? While there are alternatives, they aren't mainstream.
Buy Crossover Office or Win4lin from the mandrakestore.com, if they aren't happy with OpenOffice.org 1 (actually 641c), StarOffice 6.0, Gnumeric, or KOffice or one of the accounting apps that ships with Mandrake 8.2
Problem 4. Computer crashes. No problem take it to the local computer repair center. Ooops, they don't support Linux.
How often is this going to happen??? And it's probably installed on ext3, so no problems. Hardware problems are hardware problems, so the shop can boot a diagnostic tool from a floppy to test the hardware. Anyway, they can probably return it to Walmart.com and get a replacement.
Problem 5. Ohhh, there's a new cool USB 2.0 gadget out for the computer at my local store. I'll buy it and connect it to my system. Hmmm, Linux doesn't recognize the new hardware and there's no Linux install software included with the gadget.
USB 2.0 won't work on Windows XP either. So, the user might have to upgrade to Mandrake 9.1 or whatever release first has a kernel with usb2 support.
The point is, that Linux, at this time, is only for people that want to download it/buy it, install it, and spend alot of time learning Linux. It's not for people that just want to use it as part of their computer and don't really care what's running in the background as long as they can e-mail, surf, do finances, play games, etc. We Linux zealots often forget that the majority of the population could care less if they're running Wndoze, Linux, or Mac, as long as they can do what they need to do with their computer.
I would disagree, and say that at the moment, linux is restricted to those who are geeks or know geeks, because they don't know that they are capable of installing it. My girlfriend now uses Mandrake 8.2 (though she has win98 dual-boot, atm only used for downloading photos from my camera which is not well enough supported by gphoto2), and prefers it, mainly because a lot of things come with the distro that don't come with windows. For example, she would have to get a new version of winamp to play music she got from a friend, whereas xmms plays it fine - and she has no network connection).
Sure, I had to install Mandrake for her, but I had to do that with Win98 also. She did the installation/upgrade to Mandrake 8.2 from 8.1, and I don't know if she would manage win98.
So, now we will really see how difficult linux is to use, now that a decent distro comes pre-installed, which IMHO was the only major obstacle before.
Now, we can only hope that these sell well.
Because package management is a breeze. I don't have to know the difference between /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin.
/bin and /sbin and /usr/bin? What, do normal users type the full path to all the binaries they run?
/bin - for everything.
/bin? In any case, 97.5% of the binaries on your mandrake box go in /usr/bin, the rest (except for mozilla and openoffice.org, which are so big they get their own directory in /usr/lib/) you shouldn't have to know anything about (as a USER).
...
.People confuse compiling software from source with installing binaries. When do normal users compile something from source on MacOSX or Windows? Installing software on (most distributions of) linux is much easier than on any other OS (especially if you have packages available locally or via a network, so you don't have to change CDs), but of course compiling from source is a different thing, and people forget this when comparing installation of software under linux to other OSs.
When is there ever a time (as a USER, not a DEVELOPER or ADMIN) when you need to know the difference between
Because I can drag a program I'm tired of to the trash can..
Which is exactly why I will NOT allow a Mac onto our network. If users can write to system files, they can install trojans (whether they know it or not), and that's a BAD THING.
Because I can go to one location - the Applications folder - to find any new program I install.
Why do you need to find it? Why don't you just run it when it appears in your menu after installing it?
Or, if it's a command-line app, I can go to one location -
Why do you need to "go" to
Anyway, why don't you run Mac OSX now? You can't, while your wife could also be running Mandrake
There is a way to go yet before linux is the eaiest OS in the world to use, but IMHO, it's not because software is hard to install
IMHO, the thing that needs to be sorted out most is a good API to configuring all aspects of the machine. GConf has mostly sorted out Gnome, but something still needs to be done so that a normal user can configure samba, apache, postfix, openldap, and many more without having to fire up an editor. And I don't mean webmin or linuxconf.