Ah, that's what you mean... OK, that makes more sense.
Of corse, one doesn't get bothered by dependencies in Slackware, and the fact that debian packages can ask questions during update is IMO nice thing to have (though many disagree)...:-)
In the end it really boils down to "if I only had time to do everything by myself" i guess, but unfortunately we don't.:-(
IMO MandrakeUpdate should do the job just fine. Of corse, nobody from QA really tested this, because RC1 or betas were never considered "supported"
Btw, MandrakeUpdate is one of packages which actually got updated in the last moment, so it may be wise to update it manually before doing anything else.
Where is in your opinion that fine difference between SuSe and Mandrake distro, which makes Mandrake (and not SuSe) distro "bloated", "kitchen sink", and "newbie"?
Mind you, I'm not saying that SuSe is any of these, I just fail to see this great difference in before mentioned categories.
If you said things as "mandrake leaves you too much choice" (as in tons of different GUIs, or printer quieing systems to choose from), or "Mandrake evolves too much between releases", I could understand it, but I really don't understand why SuSe would be any less "kitchen sink" than Mandrake.
1) The fact that You you never bothered to learn anything about Mandrake does not automatically make it a newbie distro. It is just a distro which even a newbie can use (to an extent).
2) It is extremely easy to install a mandrake distro with very few things (just disable all groops during instaltion), and it is als extremely easy to add things later (or to remove them), thx to "MandrakeUpdate", alias "rpmdrake" (urpmi if you dislike GUI tools).
Wau, haven't thought of that before. Gee, We must quickly get more bandwidth for our servers, before the night falls, and we get hit by a wave of porn-surfers searching for a new stuff!
Thx for the warning, you just saved our collective asses!.-))
We don't have enough people to do PPC port paralelly to i596 port, but 8.0/PPC has been quite a success so far, so I bet there will be 8.1/PPC in a few months...
May I suggest that you might have heard that BETAS are buggy (and such), not the final version. It's somehow hard to belive othervise, considering the fact thet:
1) 8.1 just came out
2) I haven't heard anything of the kind so far.
First, they did next to no effort to sell computers with preinstalled Linux. Unless you really badly wanted to buy a PC with Linux, you would never notice that this is possible.
Second, they did not offer Linux-Mandrake as an option. Ahem... On a desktop, what else would you install? Yeah sure, for a geek debian will do, but a geek will not buy at Dell anyway. At least HP has a clue here...
First, Mandrake distros (with exception of "corporate server" and "MandrakeSecurity", which target different public) are always extremly up-to-date, while debian takes forever to issue a new distribution.
Obviously, slower developement cyclus means that there is more time to take care of details... Unfortunate side-efect is that many "stable" debian packages tend to be very obsolete.
Second, there is no such thing as third-party debian package, while third-party rpm packages are abundant. Quite obviously, updating a system with tons of third-party packages is a rather difficult task.
Third, average debian user is far more knowledgable than average Mandrake user. (He has to be, simply because getting a debian system up and running is by far more difficult than doing the same thing with Linux-Mandrake.) Therefore, things which some Mandrake user reports as "evil mandrake stuff" (like: I installed some cooker packages, had to force the install, because it kept requiring some "dependencies", and guess what? now my system is broken!!!) would never be reported as such by debian users.
There is more, but I think you got the message: things aren't as simple as they look from a high debian-guru ivory tower.;-)
As for apt-get and urpmi question, things ARE rather simple: urpmi is better than apt if you use Mandrake distro, simply because Mandrake distro and urpmi were built with each-other in mind. I can think of only two cases when using apt-get on mandrake distro makes sense:
1) ex-debianers which are familiar with apt will obviously prefer to use the known tool
2) urpmi (and co.) make a local database of all rpm repositories, and updating the DB takes some time. Therefore, apt may be a better tool for people who often update their systems using cooker rpms. (this may have been adressed already, I haven't checked lately.
In case you use Debian, there is no urpmi, so apt is definitively better..-) And.. do not bother porting urpmi to debian - it will be just as useless there, as apt is on a Mandrake system.
Hey, we aren't all froggies out there! Though I have nothing against eating a dosen or two of our green friends from time to time. (Unlike most of the real "Froggies" i know).
Ever since I arived to paris, I had this love-hate relationship: On one hand, I can't stand French bourocracy, baricades in front of metro, and constant strikes, but on the other hand
Frenchs really know how to do some things:
There are some things to keep in mind when working with elderly people:
when they were young, PCs did not exist. Therefore, they still tend to have somewhat strange ideas about computers. Most elderly people have fear of PCs - try to explain them that there is nothing to fear of.
These folks are used of learning from books. Give them something written on paper, like step-by-step instructions of how to perform some task. Homework would be good too.
When these folks were young, information was scarce and difficult to find. Today, information is aboundant, and most difficult part is to screen yourself from too much information, and to "fish" the right piece of info from a sea of unneeded stuff. Always keep in mind one thing: For you and me slashdot and search engines are great. For them, slashdot might be a little more than white noise, and search machines appear completely contraintuitive.
Keep in mind that their reflexes and vision aren't what they used to be. Do not jump from one theme to another, don't try doing too much. S L O W down! Use big letters, so that everyone can read and definitively show them a trick with "CTRL-ALT-+" - they'll learn to appreciate this primitive zoom function very fast (yes, you have to write that down on a paper)...
When I was in primary school, I run in problems with teachers on a regular basis, although I was by no mean a nasty kid. The problem was simple: some of the teachers came completely unprepared, other were simply incompetent, yet third simply had no interest in job they were doing. As a result, I was bored to death during classes, and started causing "problems". Some of these "problems" involved:
Starting to play with some toys in the middle of the class, or otherwise ignoring the boring teacher.
Stating things like "eer... I have a feeling you don't really understand this subject".
writing houseworks only if they looked "interesting", while ignoring the standard ones (I kept this habit all my life, it saved me a lot of time.)
I guess you can imagine other types of conflicts along these lines... Mediocre teachers did what the medicrits all over the world always do, and tried to blame the kid for their failures. First they "found out" that I'm a halfwitt, and should be moved to "special school". Schools "psyhologist" agreed with this idea, but my mother (who happens to be a medical doctor) didn't, so she took me to children psyhologist. I solved all of the tests they could find in record time and asked for more, so that problem was solved.
There we were back in school (for some reason, schools psyhologist didn't cross my path for rest of the schooling anymore), it's difficult to argue with a letter from central children hospital saying "extraordinary inteligent", but this didn't stop few extremely stupid teachers from summiting my parents and bothering them with details of how "nasty" I was and such. After some time I learned
that having an interesting teacher is a rare privilege, and learned how to ignore the boring ones while concentrating on other activities. By the time I went to secondary school, I was so well trained that I only got in conflict with chemistry teacher once-or-twice during four years i spent there. (OK, being in a "good" school helped)
I was lucky: My parents fully understood a problem, there were several inteligent teachers in the school who learned how to keep me buisy, and last but not the least important, my parents inscribed me on all kinds of out-of-school activities. Were it not for these three factors, I would have probably ended up doing something illegal myself: not out of any pressing need, or mischief, but simply because I would have been bored to death.
My advice to parents: don't let idiots ruin your kids life. Always double-check what teachers are telling you, especially in case one teacher complains a lot, while another one seams to be completely at ease with your kid. And, first thing to check in case you have a "problem kid" is how inteligent it is (don't trust your school authorities on that, search for independent expertise). If it turns out to be extremely inteligent, all you have to do is find out a way to keep it buisy. Punishments and such can only make matter worse.
I don't know much (allmost nothing) about presentation software, but I know one for sure: dual head G400 and G450 are supported under linux. In fact, Linux Mandrake 8.0 (Traktopel) will automatically recognise them and let you choose between "xinerama" or "separate screens" right at install time.
to be more precise, current 2.4 kernel in LM is troublesome on Thinkpads. There is also an issue with some ADAPTED SCSI controllers, but that would be it, as far as "big" problems go.
If only people would try to install with 2.2 kernel instead of default 2.4 kernel (bunch of floppy images with 2.2 kernel is available on install CD), most of these problems would suddenly become a non-issue, and world would be a better place.
Btw, Mandrake will have to issue the kernel update before packs hit the shops because of problems with firewall code in 2.4.3 kernels, and I bet Thinkpads will work fine once the update comes out..-)
Nay, I don't think you will change the club: as long as you are happy with BSD, you'll probably stick to it. But I do think that many other people will go for "MandrakeSecurity", simply because it will be easy to use as a firewall.
As of "security audit" question, that's an ongoing quest. All linux vendors spend more-and-more time auditing the code, that's why we have so many security updates this year.
You have only been planing to send the email, but dosens of other people have actually been DEMANDING this donation page since we published the MandrakeFreak.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, that's what you mean... OK, that makes more sense.
:-)
:-(
Of corse, one doesn't get bothered by dependencies in Slackware, and the fact that debian packages can ask questions during update is IMO nice thing to have (though many disagree)...
In the end it really boils down to "if I only had time to do everything by myself" i guess, but unfortunately we don't.
IMO MandrakeUpdate should do the job just fine. Of corse, nobody from QA really tested this, because RC1 or betas were never considered "supported"
Btw, MandrakeUpdate is one of packages which actually got updated in the last moment, so it may be wise to update it manually before doing anything else.
Where is in your opinion that fine difference between SuSe and Mandrake distro, which makes Mandrake (and not SuSe) distro "bloated", "kitchen sink", and "newbie"?
Mind you, I'm not saying that SuSe is any of these, I just fail to see this great difference in before mentioned categories.
If you said things as "mandrake leaves you too much choice" (as in tons of different GUIs, or printer quieing systems to choose from), or "Mandrake evolves too much between releases", I could understand it, but I really don't understand why SuSe would be any less "kitchen sink" than Mandrake.
Oh, viewing should work fine, it's printing I'm worried about. But printing in KDE has improved much lately, with some luck it may work fine.
As I said, I don't speak japanese (and I haven't got reports from our CJK developers yet), so just go and try it.
Well, if the level of support in RH 7.1 is good enough for you, I guess LM 8.1 will do too.
two things:
1) The fact that You you never bothered to learn anything about Mandrake does not automatically make it a newbie distro. It is just a distro which even a newbie can use (to an extent).
2) It is extremely easy to install a mandrake distro with very few things (just disable all groops during instaltion), and it is als extremely easy to add things later (or to remove them), thx to "MandrakeUpdate", alias "rpmdrake" (urpmi if you dislike GUI tools).
Wau, haven't thought of that before. Gee, We must quickly get more bandwidth for our servers, before the night falls, and we get hit by a wave of porn-surfers searching for a new stuff!
.-))
Thx for the warning, you just saved our collective asses!
LOL
We don't have enough people to do PPC port paralelly to i596 port, but 8.0/PPC has been quite a success so far, so I bet there will be 8.1/PPC in a few months...
CJK support in LM 8.1 should be much better than in 8.0, but chinese was the primary target, rather than japanese.
Unfortunately I don't speak any of CJK languages, but if/when you give it a try, please drop a note on mandrakeforum.com.
thx!
May I suggest that you might have heard that BETAS are buggy (and such), not the final version. It's somehow hard to belive othervise, considering the fact thet:
1) 8.1 just came out
2) I haven't heard anything of the kind so far.
Ah, we still have that "Mandrake is ONLY for beginners" FUD around? How amusing. ;-)
;-))
But then again, wasn't that what people were saying about windows years ago?
Bug fixes. If you don't notice any annoying bugs, don't bother upgrading.
First, they did next to no effort to sell computers with preinstalled Linux. Unless you really badly wanted to buy a PC with Linux, you would never notice that this is possible. Second, they did not offer Linux-Mandrake as an option. Ahem... On a desktop, what else would you install? Yeah sure, for a geek debian will do, but a geek will not buy at Dell anyway. At least HP has a clue here...
First, Mandrake distros (with exception of "corporate server" and "MandrakeSecurity", which target different public) are always extremly up-to-date, while debian takes forever to issue a new distribution.
;-)
.-) And.. do not bother porting urpmi to debian - it will be just as useless there, as apt is on a Mandrake system.
Obviously, slower developement cyclus means that there is more time to take care of details... Unfortunate side-efect is that many "stable" debian packages tend to be very obsolete.
Second, there is no such thing as third-party debian package, while third-party rpm packages are abundant. Quite obviously, updating a system with tons of third-party packages is a rather difficult task.
Third, average debian user is far more knowledgable than average Mandrake user. (He has to be, simply because getting a debian system up and running is by far more difficult than doing the same thing with Linux-Mandrake.) Therefore, things which some Mandrake user reports as "evil mandrake stuff" (like: I installed some cooker packages, had to force the install, because it kept requiring some "dependencies", and guess what? now my system is broken!!!) would never be reported as such by debian users.
There is more, but I think you got the message: things aren't as simple as they look from a high debian-guru ivory tower.
As for apt-get and urpmi question, things ARE rather simple: urpmi is better than apt if you use Mandrake distro, simply because Mandrake distro and urpmi were built with each-other in mind. I can think of only two cases when using apt-get on mandrake distro makes sense:
1) ex-debianers which are familiar with apt will obviously prefer to use the known tool
2) urpmi (and co.) make a local database of all rpm repositories, and updating the DB takes some time. Therefore, apt may be a better tool for people who often update their systems using cooker rpms. (this may have been adressed already, I haven't checked lately.
In case you use Debian, there is no urpmi, so apt is definitively better.
Yes there is: MandrakeFreq is a semi-stable release of Mandrake-Linux for folks who want to have the newest stuff, but do not dear installing cooker.
Ever since I arived to paris, I had this love-hate relationship: On one hand, I can't stand French bourocracy, baricades in front of metro, and constant strikes, but on the other hand Frenchs really know how to do some things:
- Good food
- Good wine
- Fast trains
- Cool airplains
- Best linux distribution
- Have I already mentioned food?.-))
Nice girls too, but do not tell my wife.There are some things to keep in mind when working with elderly people:
Yup, Tyan S2462 dual-athlon mobo has been tested with LM 8.0, and it works great.
When I was in primary school, I run in problems with teachers on a regular basis, although I was by no mean a nasty kid. The problem was simple: some of the teachers came completely unprepared, other were simply incompetent, yet third simply had no interest in job they were doing. As a result, I was bored to death during classes, and started causing "problems". Some of these "problems" involved:
I guess you can imagine other types of conflicts along these lines... Mediocre teachers did what the medicrits all over the world always do, and tried to blame the kid for their failures. First they "found out" that I'm a halfwitt, and should be moved to "special school". Schools "psyhologist" agreed with this idea, but my mother (who happens to be a medical doctor) didn't, so she took me to children psyhologist. I solved all of the tests they could find in record time and asked for more, so that problem was solved.
There we were back in school (for some reason, schools psyhologist didn't cross my path for rest of the schooling anymore), it's difficult to argue with a letter from central children hospital saying "extraordinary inteligent", but this didn't stop few extremely stupid teachers from summiting my parents and bothering them with details of how "nasty" I was and such. After some time I learned that having an interesting teacher is a rare privilege, and learned how to ignore the boring ones while concentrating on other activities. By the time I went to secondary school, I was so well trained that I only got in conflict with chemistry teacher once-or-twice during four years i spent there. (OK, being in a "good" school helped)
I was lucky: My parents fully understood a problem, there were several inteligent teachers in the school who learned how to keep me buisy, and last but not the least important, my parents inscribed me on all kinds of out-of-school activities. Were it not for these three factors, I would have probably ended up doing something illegal myself: not out of any pressing need, or mischief, but simply because I would have been bored to death.
My advice to parents: don't let idiots ruin your kids life. Always double-check what teachers are telling you, especially in case one teacher complains a lot, while another one seams to be completely at ease with your kid. And, first thing to check in case you have a "problem kid" is how inteligent it is (don't trust your school authorities on that, search for independent expertise). If it turns out to be extremely inteligent, all you have to do is find out a way to keep it buisy. Punishments and such can only make matter worse.
I don't know much (allmost nothing) about presentation software, but I know one for sure: dual head G400 and G450 are supported under linux. In fact, Linux Mandrake 8.0 (Traktopel) will automatically recognise them and let you choose between "xinerama" or "separate screens" right at install time.
I guess, I'm really getting old: my favorite writers have started dying. What a sad day. :-(
to be more precise, current 2.4 kernel in LM is troublesome on Thinkpads. There is also an issue with some ADAPTED SCSI controllers, but that would be it, as far as "big" problems go.
.-)
If only people would try to install with 2.2 kernel instead of default 2.4 kernel (bunch of floppy images with 2.2 kernel is available on install CD), most of these problems would suddenly become a non-issue, and world would be a better place.
Btw, Mandrake will have to issue the kernel update before packs hit the shops because of problems with firewall code in 2.4.3 kernels, and I bet Thinkpads will work fine once the update comes out.
nvidia drivers are where they belong: on commercial CDs. You do not expect us to put these binary-only bastards in the main distribution, do you?
But, don't worry: all nvidia cards work out of the box, you simply don't have full 3D acceleration until you have installed nvidia drivers.
Nay, I don't think you will change the club: as long as you are happy with BSD, you'll probably stick to it. But I do think that many other people will go for "MandrakeSecurity", simply because it will be easy to use as a firewall.
As of "security audit" question, that's an ongoing quest. All linux vendors spend more-and-more time auditing the code, that's why we have so many security updates this year.
You have only been planing to send the email, but dosens of other people have actually been DEMANDING this donation page since we published the MandrakeFreak.