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Mandriva 2007 Released

Posted by kdawson on Tue Oct 03, 2006 02:23 PM
from the ia-ora-to-you-too dept.
Businesses Mandriva Software Linux
moyoto writes, "Mandriva has announced today the immediate availability of Mandriva Linux 2007. This new version includes the latest Gnome 2.16 and KDE 3.5.4, as well as a 3D desktop with both AIGLX and Xgl technologies. You can download Mandriva 2007 in one of the several free versions available with bittorrent, or buy one of the commercial packs. You can easily test the new 3D Desktop with one of the 16 Live/Install CDs, Gnome- or KDE-based, available in more than 70 different languages." The distro features a new theme named Ia Ora ("hello" in French Polynesian).
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[+] Mandriva 2007 RC1 Released 142 comments
boklm writes "The first Mandriva 2007 release candidate (codename Mona) is out. The final version is due soon. 2007's new features include Gnome 2.16 with New 'Ia Ora' Mandriva Theme, parallel initscript (for faster boot), 3D desktop (with both AIGLX and Xgl to support more graphic cards). Installable Live-CDs including Gnome or KDE are available in different languages, and because it is a live-cd it is possible to try it without installing. Don't forget to report bugs if you find them, in order to get a solid final release."
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  • Bloated (Score:5, Funny)

    by millwall (622730) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:26PM (#16296017)
    This new version includes the latest Gnome 2.16 and KDE 3.5.4, as well as a 3D desktop with both AIGLX and Xgl technologies.

    With Mandriva it's probably easier to list what it doesn't include.

    • Re:Bloated (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy (595695) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:28PM (#16296065) Homepage
      But that's the way some of us like it. Why should I have to download and compile some .tar.gz files rather than just opening up the GUI, selecting the packages I want, and install. No need to worry about dependancies or weird compile errors.

        • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ronadams (987516) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:52PM (#16296529) Homepage
          There are always things like install media. No need to require everything be obtained from apt. It's a war of preference.
          • It's a pain in the ass to have to swap multiple CDs during an install. Especially when you get to #4 and the drive doesn't want to read a file off of it.

            Ubuntu has the right idea on this. The install media is a single CD that contains a usable desktop. Everything else can then be installed over apt (though they really need to make a n00b-friendly alternative to Synaptic). If you want a specific desktop, download the correct CD for it. Ie, Gnome (Ubuntu), KDE (Kubuntu), or XFCE (Xubuntu).

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by taylortbb (759869)
              Why choose? Mandriva has a multi-disk version and a single disk one. And the multi-CD version has a single DVD version. Not every location has a high speed internet connection, and even if it does it takes a while. As someone who installs most of what's on the DVD it sure beats waiting for everything to download. Sure I have to download it initially but when I've got 5 machines to install on it takes less time in the end.
        • But if there's room for it, then why not? It still all fits on a single DVD. If I have to download all the packages I want to install then it may take me ages to get the initial install done. Not everybody has a 5 Mbit connection. I'm on a 1Mbit connection, because it's fast enough for most stuff. But I don't want to have to download all the packages that I want to install.
          • A DVD/full-featured CD install is convenient for doing additional machines, and when it's a live disk you can take advantage of that for rescue, hardware compatibility checking, and having your OS of choice portable to any machine you like.
            My install media weigh the same if I burn Damn Small Linux or a full DVD worth of software. :)

        • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Informative)

          by meringuoid (568297) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @04:06PM (#16297611)
          There is always things like apt. No need to have it all on the install media.

          Yes... and it seems they've thought of this. There's a single-CD download, which installs a minimal system and then lets you get the rest over the network. I'll be getting this one, I think: I don't care to clutter up my room with unnecessary coasters!

          http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-fre e-2007-mini.torrent

          Soon as the ADSL contention clears tonight at about half-elevenish, I'll totally nab that.

    • Re:Bloated (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Svartalf (2997) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:31PM (#16296117) Homepage
      And to list what works 100% on all systems...

      Not everything in the past has worked right (There's a reason I'm using FC5 or Ubuntu
      right at the moment for my main systems...)- their SQA has left quite a bit to be
      desired in the past. To be sure, 2006-1 was probably one of their best iterations;
      but like before in the past, things like PCMCIA not working 100% of the time on 100%
      of the platforms just mar the whole experience. Oh, I'll continue to be a member and
      install on part of my platforms, but that's because I'm needing it for testing purposes.
      Unless it really shows up nice and stable, it's not going on everything.

      • Re:Bloated (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 03 2006, @03:06PM (#16296787) Homepage
        To be fair, what OS works 100% of the time on 100% of the platforms it supports? Maybe OSX comes close, but only by limiting the supported platforms quite a lot.
        • Yeah, OSX has bragging rights with hardware compatibility.

            "Our OS will run on every single supported platform. All 5 of them!" ;)

          • Laugh it up (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot.kadin@x ... t minus language> on Tuesday October 03 2006, @04:34PM (#16297969) Homepage Journal
            Make fun all you want, but I've said multiple times that the way Apple does peripheral hardware ought to be a model for Linux and any other non-Windows OS.

            Back before I just threw in the towel and started drilling holes in my walls, I would have killed a man for a "Linux 802.11 Card." When you want a wireless card for your Mac, you go into a store, and you buy it. Note that I said "it," not "one." Because there's only one. (Okay, at some points there have been multiple, i.e. Airport vs. Airport Extreme, but most computers could only take one or the other.) Yeah, it costs more, but there's no messing around with anything.

            I've wondered if maybe some Linux User's Group wanted to do this as a fund-raiser: do a bulk-purchase of some Linux-compatible peripheral (say a WL card or TV tuner) in OEM packaging, and then wrap it up with the appropriate drivers and sell it over the web at a 50-60% markup. I think you'd move product -- too often do you get recommendations for a product that works well, only to find that it's been discontinued or only sold in some other country, or it's nearly impossible to tell which products use it. (This was my experience finding Prism-based WL cards.)

            Laugh all you want, but "choice" isn't always good, particularly when it means just having a high signal/noise ratio. Having one and only one hardware configuration available is better than having a thousand hardware configurations available, if only one or two of them works perfectly. In the first case, you have a 100% chance of getting the 'good' config, in the latter, you might as well buy Lotto tickets.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Mad_Rain (674268)
              I've wondered if maybe some Linux User's Group wanted to do this as a fund-raiser: do a bulk-purchase of some Linux-compatible peripheral (say a WL card or TV tuner) in OEM packaging, and then wrap it up with the appropriate drivers and sell it over the web at a 50-60% markup.

              In case you haven't heard, there is a HDTV tuner card made specifically for linux [pchdtv.com], to receive Over-The-Air hdtv broadcasts, and analogue cable channels. I believe that as of kernel 2.6.12, driver modules are included with the kernel
    • ... it has a new, French Polynesian, "Hello World" theme!

      If only it were "Hello Kitty" I dould download it at once for my niece.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Liam Slider (908600)
      No, what's bloated is when you buy and install the lastest version of Windows, which is about the same size and takes just as long....only to find your list of applications is one web browser, a media player, one rather crappy shell, one e-mail program, a calendar, one built in photo gallery (finally?), one crappy DVD burning program, and a handful of crappy tools.

  • Pfffttt... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) (945888) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:29PM (#16296091)
    It's just like Mandriva 2006 only it has a new player roster...
    • The funny thing is that Linux might actually be more popular with Madden-esque voice overs plugged in as error messages. Like clippy, only openly farsical.

      EX:
      "OOOoh.... It looks like he's caused a segmentation fault. That's gotta hurt."
      "Wow. Now, that there's just some good old fashioned permissions problems. He's gonna need to log as root and run some chmod and chown commands."
      "You know, right there's where you really have the option of some good coding. The rehashing of that string with the library function would make your code quite a bit more efficient. Just like in the old days."

      And everyone's favorite,
      "Boy, that's a good little piece of code, but you could really use a run back to the manual on that one."

      I'd love to see the whiteboard-enabled screen on my code sometimes, and have someone who knew what they were doing scribble out what was wrong with it, but maybe that's just me.

  • Distibution Errors: #1 (Score:4, Informative)

    by bfree (113420) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:30PM (#16296103)
    Announcing a new release and having your web site melt under the load. Though I suppose it could be worse, they could be a hosting provider launching a new high availability service :-D

  • Today is the day of desktop linux! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Reverend528 (585549) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:31PM (#16296135) Homepage
    A new Slackware and a new Mandriva! What a time to be alive!
  • I dunno if this new oral theme will fly with my gf...

  • Mandriva/Ubuntu. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by haeger (85819) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:40PM (#16296321)
    I recently tested Mandriva (LiveCD) on my KUbuntu-box. I must say that I'm very impressed with how polished Mandriva is. KUbuntu isn't bad, far from it but Mandriva is just better. Atleast the latest version. Just like KUbuntu everything just works but there is a consistensy in Mandriva that I don't see in KUbuntu. I really recommend everyone to take Mandriva for a testdrive. It's really impressive. I was going to switch my old Mandriva2006-box to KUbuntu but seeing this new version I don't think I will. I'll just do the normal upgrade-dance and all will be well.
    One thing that annoys me though is the high price for the retail version. A silver membership will be more expensive than Vista in just 2-3 years. I think.

    I might have to re-evaluate running KUbuntu on my laptop. I do however remember that there was something that annoyed me so much about the packages in Mandriva that I just had to switch. I think it was the fact that new packages came to the distribution at such a slow pace.

    .haeger

    • Re:Mandriva/Ubuntu. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by l3v1 (787564) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:55PM (#16296587)
      A silver membership will be more expensive than Vista in just 2-3 years. I think

      Just one question: what do you think how many new releases Mandriva will live to see during those years ? And Windows ? I'm not saying it's cheap, I'm saying your comparison is flawed.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AdamWill (604569)
      Er, what? The kernel is 2.6.17. There isn't even a 2.4 kernel in the distro any more (we still had a legacy one in 2006).

  • I prefer SUSE, Fedora or Ubuntu (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Yahma (1004476) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:48PM (#16296471) Journal

    This will probably get modded down as flamebait, but honestly I prefer SUSE over Mandriva (Mandrake). I have tried Mandrake many times over the past few years, and even joined their "Mandrake Club" a few years back when they were on the brink of Bankruptcy to help them out; however, I have always felt that their Distro was never QA'ed as well as SUSE or Redhat for that matter. When you fire up the latest SUSE, you tell you have a professionally QA'ed product, as everything works out of the box. With Mandriva on the other hand, everything looks great on paper. They always have some of the latest packages, and include alot of the new technology; however, there are always a few things that dont work well with my system after I install it. In fact, on more than one occasion, I've even had trouble installing a new release of Mandriva.

    Now I have nothing against Mandriva, and I like urmpi, but I think I may pass on this release, or try it out on a Virtual machine first before getting rid of my SUSE and Fedora boxes.... Now there's a thought..

    Yahma
    Browse the web safely, use Firefox [getfirefox.com] and an Anonymous Web Proxy [blastproxy.com] to avoid spyware and viruses.
    • I found the exact opposite with SUSE. I recently tried SUSE 10.1, and after a new install, it wouldn't even update itself. And I couldn't even get the 3D drivers working with all I tried, and in Mandriva they just work by default. It looked really nice and polished, so much so that I really tried to get everything working, but there was just so many problems with things "Just Not Working" that I switched back to Mandriva. Now Mandriva has the 3D desktop too, and I have no reason to use SUSE.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From http://en.opensuse.org/Download [opensuse.org]:

      BEFORE YOU INSTALL READ THIS:

      The package manager in SUSE 10.1 is regrettably broken on most systems.

      I wouldn't be bragging about QA on a distro that ships with a broken package manager (sort of an integral part of the OS).

  • No distro comes close to Mandriva for ease of use. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IpSo_ (21711) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:50PM (#16296509) Homepage Journal
    In my opinion Mandriva still takes the cake as far as distro ease of use is concerned. The installer is dead simple (yet has an advanced mode) but the most important part is once you get it installed, it has the most complete set of utilities to configure and maintain your system which are accessible from a single "control panel". Everything from one click network printer discovery, to setting up TV cards/scanners, to firewall configuration.

    Sure some of the other distros are just starting to catch up now, they usually have a hodge-podge of utilties that work similar to the Mandriva ones, but few have a consistent interface and you usually need to know what they are called before you know what to click on, they aren't all located in one easy to find place. If you want a distro your mom can install and use, this is about as close as it comes currently.

    Here is the list of just some of the custom utilties Mandriva (Mandrake) offers for configuring your system:

    lsnetdrake,menudrake,drakbug,mandrakegalaxy.real,d rakconf,drakhelp,localedrake,drakoo,draklocale,man drakegalaxy,packdrake,userdrake,lspcidrake,diskdra ke,mousedrake,drakkeyboard,drakhelp_inst,drakconne ct,drakconsole,drakupdate_fstab,drakTermServ,drakn et_monitor,drakscanner,drakedm,drakids,draklog,dra knfs,drakx11,draksec,drakups,drakxtv,drakfirstboot ,drakconf.real,drakbackup,drakauth,drakboot,drakcl ub,drakconf,drakdisk,drakfont,drakperm,drakroam,dr akuser,drakautoinst,drakgw,keyboarddrake,drakonlin e,drakfirewall,draksplash,drakhardware,draksambash are,scannerdrake,drakxservices,logdrake,adduserdra ke,drakclock,drakhosts,harddrake2,drakmouse,drakpr oxy,draksound,drakxconf,userdrake,XFdrake,printerd rake,drakbug_report,drakprinter

    • Re:No distro comes close to Mandriva for ease of u (Score:5, Insightful)

      by opkool (231966) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @03:05PM (#16296781) Homepage
      +1

      Plus, there is the **other** configuration utility included in Mandriva that everybody forgets:

      vi

      Yes, you can use vi to configure your Mandriva and be happy.

      That's why I like Mandriva, choice:

      If I'm lazy or I want to show off, I use the Mandriva Control Center.
      If I want to configure something fast, screen + vi

      I wonder if those who call Mandriva a n00b distro have ever try it to use Mandriva as a serious distro. I do.

      Peace!
    • My experiance with setting up hardware using the Mandrake control panel a couple years ago, was that when it worked it was easy as cake, but if it didn't you were worse off then having nothing. For example, I was attempting to setup a hauppauge TV tuner card, which I knew was supported in linux. The rest of the install so far had been a snap and it recognized all my hardware with no problems. So I run the TV tuner card setup from the control panel, it pops up a dialog box saying it is setting up my card th
    • I'm glad it worked out for you, but I'm unconvinced that your experience is commonplace. Three (or was it four?) years ago, I tried to find a Linux distro that worked for me. I was fairly technically proficient, but I had no Unix experience and I didn't have the patience to spend more than a day (12~ hours) getting the basics to work. Red Hat (this was pre-FC) was first on my list--the installer inexplicably froze. Knoppix gave me all kinds of crap about my graphics card. I went down the list, including
  • Since the site is slow to respond, here are the download links for the 3CD version for i586 and x86_64, these are bit torrents . . .

    i586
    ------
    http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free- 2007-CD.i586.torrent [mandriva.com]

    x86_64
    ------
    http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free- 2007-CD.x86_64.torrent [mandriva.com]

    dual architecture DVD
    ----------------------
    http://qa.mandriva.com/torrent/2007/mandriva-free- 2007-DVD.torrent [mandriva.com]

  • Here's what I'd like to know:

    • How close does it get to solving the dependency hell problem? This is probably my biggest single problem with Mandriva.
    • How's Menudrake? That's one of my other big headaches with Mandriva. How easily can you modify the main menu now?
    • Where can I find a complete list of packages included? I have some very specific wants that the Mandriva website doesn't discuss.
    • Are the problems with SCIM resolved? A lot of people just basically unplugged it, but I have to use it because I use

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by papaia (652949)
      The reason is urpmi.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by AdamWill (604569)
          The new rpmdrake in 2007 is a combined interface - install / remove are in the same application again.

    • Re:Ubuntu has already won (Score:5, Informative)

      by AdamWill (604569) on Tuesday October 03 2006, @02:46PM (#16296433)
      Hmm, let me know how Ubuntu is doing with its easy 3D desktop configuration wizard that allows to pick either AIGLX or Xgl depending on what your hardware supports. How's their SMB, NFS and WebDAV mount wizards? Their graphical VPN configuration tool? Their FTP, web, mail, DNS, SMB, NFS, and proxy server configuration wizards? autofs and ldap configuration tools? Their redundant firewall configuration tool? How's their internationalization going, is Ubuntu available in over 70 languages yet? Yeah, no reason to use anything but Ubuntu, obviously. Feel free to let me know what apt does that urpmi doesn't, too. And if apt was the winner of the Linux desktop 'wars', why didn't Debian win sometime in 1999?
      • why didn't Debian win sometime in 1999

        Certainly not because of apt. I fully agree with you on the rest.

        Mandrake/riva has been a very friendly (I didn't write user-friendly on purpose) distro for much more years than Ubuntu has lived and it still is a very very nice distro. No reason to mock it, and certainly no fanboy ubuntuism can lower its merits.
         

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by RAMMS+EIN (578166)
        ``And if apt was the winner of the Linux desktop 'wars', why didn't Debian win sometime in 1999?''

        Plenty of things could be mentioned here.

        - Debian was doing a lot less marketing than certain other distros
        - People were still in the mindset that Linux == Red Hat
        - Many people refused to use Debian, because it had no graphical installer
        - Debian stable tends to be far away from cutting edge, and "unstable" sounds scary
        - Actually, _didn't_ Debian win around 1999? Do you ha

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by BiggerIsBetter (682164)
      I think Novell would beg to differ. SLED 10 is very nice, IMO. (Yes, I've tried Ubuntu).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Burz (138833)
        Gotta agree with that. SuSE is much nicer.

        Ubuntu is too minimalistic in its 'control panel' options. There's too many things you cannot do without nursing those activities from the CLI. Ubuntu has no security features recommended on laptops: WPA, VPN, firewall, encrypted partitions, etc. Even home folders are not set as private. You must configure them all from the CLI or at best with afterthought add-ons like Firestarter.

        The Ubuntu installer is complete amatuer-hour (no, really, it looks like a script that

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by technoid_ (136914)
        I second that. While at Ohio Linux Fest this weekend I was lucky enough to attend Ted Haeger's talk on "Desktop Innovation at Novell". I am excited about Linux on the desktop again. I already use Linux as my desktop OS, but it just seemed kinda blah until seeing Ted's presentation. The work that Novell is putting into SLED and openSUSE is really cool, and they are giving back to the community at the same time (beagle and f-spot for example). While Ubuntu is nice, don't count Novell out when it comes to
    • I agree with the sibling. URPMI (and the graphical interface to it) make Mandriva the best newbie distro there is. I don't like messing around with any unnecessary stuff, so even though I'm no a newbie I still use it. Also, search for EasyURPMI and PLF. add those to you list of sources and you can get just about any application without having to worry about dependancies or compiling things. I've tried ubuntu, and I actually find it much harder to use than Mandriva.
      • Though I haven't fiddled extensively with it, Ubuntu absolutely bugs me when it comes to doing "advanced" user tasks (like, oh I dunno, modifying GRUB or something from an X GUI front-end). SUSE 10.1 was a lot better for being easy on the maintenance side, while letting me easily find things in traditional places. Sounds like Mandriva might be similar, and XGL is a goodie I've kinda wanted to try.
    • Ubuntu looks really nice, but I'm still using SUSE, because AMD64 Debian eschews LSB and FHS, making it difficult to run 32-bit software.

    • Re:Ubuntu has already won (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg (145172) * on Tuesday October 03 2006, @03:38PM (#16297221)
      Seriously, isn't Ubuntu basically the "winner" of the "desktop Linux distro" wars?

      No.

      I just can't think of a reason to use anything *but* Ubuntu on the desktop.

      The Linux way might well be summed up as "To Each His Own."

      KFG
    • Mandriva's niche is also supposed to be user friendliness. What? you can't have 2 distros supporting the same niche?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AdamWill (604569)
        No. Mandriva Linux Discovery is for beginners. Mandriva Linux Powerpack is for experienced users. Mandriva Linux Powerpack+ is for SOHO users. Mandriva Linux Free is for just about everyone. =) We've never claimed to be a distro aimed specifically at beginners. We try and make the distro work for everyone. If we were all about beginners we probably wouldn't have an enterprise-aimed tool for setting up multiple redundant firewall machines, a comprehensive set of LAMP server packages, configuration tools fo

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RobertLTux (260313)
      the one thing you want to do is pick up a silver membership if you have hardware that needs nongpl drivers (ati and Nvidia chips) benefits:

      1 feeds a small group of monkeys that help a lot (HI ADAM)
      2 offical club benefits
      3 updates that won't (the monkeys hope) trash your system
    • I think they stopped doing PPC releases at version 9. And now with all the Macs being Intel machines, I can't forsee anybody supporting PowerPC. Unless you go to a PPC specific distro like YellowDog, I don't think you're going to find a lot of distros that support PPC.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AdamWill (604569)
      Yes. Always have, always will. Run MandrivaUpdate, there they are. We sell Online, but that's an update _notification_ service - it gives you the little panel applet that alerts you when updates are available (and, optionally, can install them automatically). It's just a little convenience.

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