Mandriva 2007 RC1 Released

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."

Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[Conorb (443598)]

There was a time, when Linux distros were measured by how close they were to in terms of functionality to MS Windows. Now they are inovating like crazy and this 3D desktop from Mandriva beats anything that will ship in Vista.

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[jack_csk (644290)]

Why am I getting such a weird feeling that they are copying Mac OS X?

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[kestasjk (933987)]

Well OS X got Widgets right out of KDE's Konfabulator, and Finder and Safari's tabs out of Firefox (which got it from Opera, which got it from ...). Good ideas spread around, get improved upon and integrated with other ideas, which spread around further. This is a good thing, and it's not one way.

Re:

[kestasjk (933987)]

Another better example came to mind just after I posted that; OS X's Spaces. Many X11 WMs have had workspaces for ages, but who isn't glad to see Apple's take on the idea?

Re:

[montyzooooma (853414)]

"Good ideas spread around, get improved upon and integrated with other ideas, which spread around further."

Yup. Once the patents on the good ideas expire. :-p

Re:

[Dan Ost (415913)]

This is an excellent reason for open source projects to publish early and often.
Get as much prior art out there so that there are fewer ideas patentable by the
private sector.

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[ZakuSage (874456)]

Unfortionitely, until they start working with ATI's proprietary drivers, roughly half of all computer users (myself included) won't care about AIXGL or XGL since they won't be able to run them.

Re:

[jcupitt65 (68879)]

XGL works OK on my ATI laptop. It did take a bit of annoying fiddling to get it started six months ago, I imagine it's easier now.

Re:

[markdavis (642305)]

Actually the Club version of Mandriva will automatically detect and use the proprietary drivers for both ATI and NVidia. That is in addition to Acrobat Reader, Flash, etc.

Re:Mandriva's 3D Desktop beats anything from Vista

[markdavis (642305)]

I have played with the 3D stuff, and it is quite impressive. But it is also not very stable yet (at all). Plus, KDE's kwin doesn't "do" 3D yet, so you have to use an alien window manager, causing other issues.

Unfortunatly, I think it will be another year before the 3D desktop option will really be ready for general use.

Re:

[afd8856 (700296)]

I wouldn't mind extra eye candy on my Dapper desktop. Eye candy is good as long as it doesn't slow the desktop and it doesn't keep you from getting work done just as fast as before.
But, for example, I find that shadows on windows are extremely important when dealing with lots of small windows, at it makes them easier to distinguish.

Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[cloricus (691063)]

As a long time user of Mandrake till about two years ago I'd like to ask a very simple question; what is its place in todays modern Linux desktop world?
 
This isn't a troll or a flame as I enjoyed using MDK back in the day though really it is still as bloated and confusing as when I used to use it (I've played with the latest version extensively). Ubuntu and Novell SLED seem to serve the purpose that Mandrake used to fill far more effectively and I can't help but think that those still working on the free parts of Mandrake are wasting resources that could be more effectively used to help other areas in more up to date (philosophy wise) distros...Like decent GUI tools for wireless networking!

Re:

[at_slashdot (674436)]

"I can't help but think that those still working on the free parts of Mandrake are wasting resources"

I can't help but think that those people would not work on some tools if there would be some other free tools that did the same job, the same way, so if there's a need for those tools than it's a good thing that somebody works on them, moreover, being free anyone can use them so is not really a waste.

Re:

[theantix (466036)]

Anything that could be salvaged by another project would not be a waste, granted, but there is a heck of a lot that is just plain duplication. Testing/Bugs/QA, distro-specific documentation, packaging -- those things are largely wasted if the poster was correct that Mandrake is a dead end it really would be a waste of effort.

Re:

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

Anything that could be salvaged by another project would not be a waste, granted, but there is a heck of a lot that is just plain duplication.

Exactly. It's the same with car manufacturers. They all go off and develop their innovations separately - Different traction control systems can work by either cutting the ignition, reducing fuel or braking the wheels, for example.

Now it's true that each has advantages and disadvantages, but if all car manufacturers standardised on the same system it would reduce

Re:

[also-rr (980579)]

Like decent GUI tools for wireless networking!

Linux already has a decent GUI tool for wireless networking, nm-applet being rather more slick at handling mixed wired/wireless and roaming environments than OS X.

It was however mostly polished after the last round of distro releases and so it'll probably be in more of the next generation released in the autumn.

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[toddbu (748790)]

I'm with you on this one. I ran Mandrake / Mandriva for a long time, but finally gave up last year and switched to Ubuntu. One huge problem for Mandrake is that they've never been able to put out two good releases in a row. That wouldn't be so bad if you could just skip every other release, but at one point their end-of-life policies didn't cover the last stable release. At that point I just gave up and switched distros.

Re:

[markdavis (642305)]

A better comparison would be Kubuntu, not Ubuntu. Talk about silly though, the two projects (K/non K unbuntu) SHOULD have been merged together. It is just silly to have to do a separate install, just because you want a nice KDE environment or Gnome environment. Mandriva addresses that MUCH better (and always has... and long before any other distro did with as much elegance).

In any case, you are correct that Mandriva faces stiff competition from not only Kubuntu, but also SuSe and Fedora. They all have t

Re:

[Budenny (888916)]

Mandriva is still one of the only distros one can install for a naive user, and be sure that any issues that come up can be handled by you and him/her over the phone - thanks to the drak tools. Its the real strength. Backup, printers, networking, everything is available simply and immediately.

Re:

[BeeBeard (999187)]

What is Mandrake's place these days? That's a tough question. It didn't used to be much of anything: Mandrake originally started as a file-by-file Red Hat clone that included KDE, back when Red Hat Linux in all it's RPM glory was the hottest thing on the block. Seriously. There were some misunderstandings with the old Qt licensing (that have since been resolved), and Red Hat made the logical choice of backing its own pony by putting Gnome in their distro instead. But there was a problem--people still l

Re:

[mavenguy (126559)]

As have some other repliers, I feel the same way. I've used mdk from, IIRC, 7.x and have upgraded since, up to 2006. At the time it was a great distro for someone who lacked the skill set to run a more "hardcore" distro, but allowed me to, on a very selective basis, get into the guts for study, and modification. It offered a great install that (mostly) ended up with lots of things "just working" (well, again, mostly). I was rather enthusiastic, and decided to support the Mandrake effort, even through their

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[opkool (231966)]

As a long time desktop Linux user, I have tried recently Kubuntu, SuSE/Novell SLED and Mandriva, and I still like Mandriva better over the others.

For one, Kubuntu feels so dated and so empty of configuration tools... feels like Mandrake 8.2 all over again.

Then, I like better a 1 year release cycle. I want to WORK with my Linux. I don't want to be installing Linux all the time: is extra work and I'm lazy.

Yes, RHEL/CentOS have a long life. But then RHEL/CentOS for me doens't cut it. up2date/yum are awful, it's a horrible multimedia station and it's a pretty bad desktop overall.

Fedora, well, it's a joke. Not useful as a stable desktop for a lazy Linux user that doesn't want to install a new reease every 3 months and, if you bink too much, your release is out of support.

Sure, SLED is prety good. Mostly. But then I find it to be a slow distro (compared with Ubuntu and Mandriva). And the fact that Novell is more or less trying to ditch KDE is not good for me:

Novell: "KDE is not included in SuSE anymore!"

(Users scream in horror)

Novell: "Well, we'll include KDE"

(Users cheer)

Novell : "Actualy, we'll kinda include it on the OpenSuSE version"

(Users give up German distros and go to get a German beer instead)

Peace

Re:

[Air-conditioned cowh (552882)]

Agree with all that!

Mandriva's control centre is what sets it apart. Most other distros have a similar looking desktop (if they're KDE based), a bunch of apps etc but if the auto-hardware-detect of these distros can't tell what monitor you have then you only get 1024x768 and there is nothing short of editing your xorg.conf file to fix it. And what do you do to get your WLAN card and DVB tuner working?

This is why I settled on PCLinuxOS which is Mandriva based but seems to be more polished and uses Synaptic i

Re:

[Jugalator (259273)]

I don't get it... How would a cube / 3D monitor help you here.
With a 2D interface, you have to rotate the metaphor for a cube, with a 3D interface, you have to rotate the real thing.

It's too hot

[12ahead (586157)]

Man, I ran it on my Macbook Pro and shit it got hot....

Re:

[RuBLed (995686)]

The article was just posted... you just made one of the fastest download and installation of a new linux OS on a Macbook Pro and run it long enough to make it hot.

Re:

[70Bang (805280)]

You forgot to point out the problem Macbook Pro seem to have with non-Apple OSes [in general].

That would have been better deserving of the Insightful mod you got.

Both reported this weekend, no less.

First, this [slashdot.org], and now this.

Wow.

Let's hope all of the standard eBay sales of special software to cool off your PC are redirected to deal with this problem with Macbook Pro until it can be fixed at the root level.

Does anyone know if it gets any better after six weeks of boot camp?


(please tell me I

Re:

[Heir Of The Mess (939658)]

I just laughed my ass off at this. Should be modded up. It helps to show what a stupid article it was about how RC1 of Vista heated up a Mac laptop more than OS X.

Release candidate == final release

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

A 'release candidate' is equivalent to a final release in all respects except name. It is a candidate for release. The development team believes that this build is as bug free and featured filled as it needs to be and is branded a release candidate. It is then sent over to testing (or to users as is more frequently the case) where it undergoes final testing. If it passes final testing, it is rebadged as RTM, but THE SAME BITS GO INTO AN RC AS TO AN RTM. This isn't a testing release or a beta release where you are expected to find and squash bugs. The bugs are expected to be worked out of the system or are so uninteresting as to not warrant further development time.

If you find a serious bug in an RC, someone, somewhere fucked up royally.

Crappy video

[also-rr (980579)]

While their video does show (some) of the things that the 3D desktop can do, it's actually *far* smoother in real life. Possibly they recorded it on a machine that was too slow to run the app and xvidcap at the same time.

Up to this point it's been a bit of a pain in the backside to set up but now distros are integrating it the next batch of releases should make it trivial.

Compiz and co are really slick and I find it rather amusing that everyeone *except* the world's biggest software company has managed to get their next generation desktop released prior to 2007.

Re:

[howlingmadhowie (943150)]

you know, microsoft is targeting people, just as apple is. these are both companies that see a financial benefit from selling their products.
linux isn't targeting users to the same extent, linux is about making the best possible operating system. and for this reason, linux is steam-rolling a path through the competition. we have a situation now, where a shoe-string project started in the early nineties is technically light-years ahead of anything else.
i imagine in the future our idea of the relationship b

Re:

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

Tell that to the users of Xandros; there is no OCE with version 4 and it features full-fledged product activation, ala Windows XP. I kinda feel like you're right about a lot of distros, but not with a few others. Many have a "deluxe" or "professional" version for sale and claim that they charge for it to cover their costs, but then they keep jacking up their prices -- like the Mandrake community, memebership in which costed more on a yearly basis than Lindows CNR (which went down in price and is now free).

Mona?

[giano (1001702)]

Mona means "c**t" (female reproductive organ) in an italian dialect...

Re:

[AxminsterLeuven (963108)]

I have a theory that every word in any language refers to some part of the human reproductive system in some other language. This of course works the other way around as well: 'cunt' probably means distribution in some language or other, so that's okay.

Re:

[Nuffsaid (855987)]

Mona means "c**t" (female reproductive organ) in an italian dialect...

I know, I'm from Venice. We don't giggle when the word comes up in other languages or in a Renaissance context, because we know it's a medieval contraction of the word "madonna", itself coming from the Latin "mea domina".

What would make me laugh would be the face of Miguel De Icaza discovering that in some other language "Mono" means "male reproductive organ".

Re:Madriva's old news

[ErroneousBee (611028)]

I still recommend it to newbies for the following reasons:

• Suse makes it a bit harder to install media players, and makes it hard to update the system from the command line.
• Suse has fewer 'entertainment' packages.
• Redhat is even more business oriented than Suse.
• Mandriva's partitioning tool has the best useability. and this is the step a newbie is most likely to get wrong.
• Ubuntu, in its vanilla install, has very inferior configuration tools. To do anything sophisticated (E.g. A static IP address) you need to vi stuff in /etc.
• Ubuntu is gnome based, I think KDE is better. I think new users will get confused over kubuntu, edbuntu, etcbuntu.

Note that I do not dis any of Suse, Redhat or Ubuntu. These are all mighty fine distros, and I run Suse and Ubuntu on a laptop and server. I even think Ubuntu is better than Mandriva for some newbies, as they wont want to do any configuring after the install.

I dont recommend gentoo as I have tried it twice. Install took days, common hardware was unsupported out of the box, configuration was all about editing /etc files, and there were regular fuck-ups that just broke the system when you tried updating packages. Its also increasingly pointless to compile now that 64bit is here and distros produce 64bit versions.

Manriva's weaknesses are:

• Horrible artwork.
• Some poor decisions to use bleeding edge releases of KDE (2006 had quite a few niggles caused by going to 3.4 with its API changes).
• Some configuration dialogs have poor useability (e.g. setting up printers).
• A seriously deficient layout to the club pages. Its really hard to find anything useful on them, and the whole site is confusing.

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

Ubuntu, in its vanilla install, has very inferior configuration tools. To do anything sophisticated (E.g. A static IP address) you need to vi stuff in /etc.

Very true. I temporarily switched to Mandriva at 10.1 and found the configuration tools to be very nice, but I ended up switching back to Redhat (Fedora) after a few months. Fedora also has decent config tools (system-* are quite nice). Fedora pissed me off for the last time a few months ago, so I'm now an Ubuntu user. I was really supprised by the la

Re:

[Lumpy (12016)]

I used to reccomend Mandrake to everyone.. then when they switched the mandriva release was so buggy and broken I had to start suggesting something to the LUG members so I tested and started suggesting Ubuntu.

Mandriva did a bone headed move and really screwed up MAndrake on their first mandriva release. it was crap, buggy installer and it sighup'd more than any other linux install I ever saw.

I'll try it again if it's back up to the quality that mandrake was noted for.

Re:

[Mistshadow2k4 (748958)]

He started with "I'm really not trying to troll or flame" or something similar. That's the internet equivalent of "I'm just sayin'", which some people follow up rude or instulting comments under some illusion that it makes their statement less insulting or rude. Apparently, it works.

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

ubuntu has firestarter for configuring a firewall, although its a standalone application which isnt installed by default.

Re:

[opkool (231966)]

That's nice from Ubuntu to let you use an open source program available to all Linux distributions.

In Mandriva you can choose firestarter, the "wizzard-guided" firewall set up tool (great for newbies), shorewall, raw iptables and others.

I't like saying "Fords are superior to other car brands b/c I can install an aftermarket radio on my Ford".

Peace

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

i wasnt saying it was superior, i was just pointing out that a simple to use graphical firewall config system is available to use under ubuntu, which the parent to my post seemed to overlook. i qualified it by saying it was a seperate application, and that it isnt installed by default. i never claimed it was a product of the ubuntu project, just that it was availabe with ubuntu, in case people got the impression there was nothing at all.

people are so suspicious and aggressive on this bloody forum.

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

i wasnt arguing, i was just making sure people didnt get the impression that there was no graphical firewall config available for ubuntu, because there is.

Re:

[Anarke_Incarnate (733529)]

So how, then, is this better than SuSE? SuSE has all this plus Novell behind it and people using it.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

I've been a solid Mandriva user for about 4 years now. I keep on looking for something better when I get a little annoyed, but really, I haven't been able to find anything better. There's always little stupid things that don't work in other distros that really start to annoy me. Recent problems include:

SUSE 10.1 not being able to install any updates because of some weird error.

SUSE 10.1 not being able to install packages and reporting that it could not resolve dependancy XXXX where XXXX is some stup

Re:

[ajs318 (655362)]

The problems with graphics card drivers are not unique to Mandriva.

Graphics card manufacturers are blatantly flouting the law which says that a person is privy to every secret embodied in every article they rightfully own, by simple virtue of the fact of ownership, even if that article be a graphics card and the secret be how to program it. Both ATI and nVidia licence their drivers on egregious and legally unenforcible terms which ride roughshod over the user's common law property rights. They get away

Re:

[W2k (540424)]

windows XP also doesn't come with ati or nvidia drivers... it uses a vesa driver by default, too

Um, I call BS. I installed a Windows XP system from scratch as late as yesterday (from an original retail disc with SP2 slipstream'd) and it gave me proper nVidia drivers. Old ones, mind you, but the chipset had gone out of production and I couldn't find any newer drivers from nVidia's site. The ones included in Windows supported everything essential, though.

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

Ubuntu includes Nvidia's (it's in linux-restricted-modules).

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

If you're still stuck with dialup (which I unfortunatley am in this damn area), buy a 3com 5610. It's a full hardware modem and works out of the box and every distro I've tried. It's a bit of a bitch to get working on Windows, though (2000 at least).

Re:

[Linegod (9952)]

Ah yes, because if Ubuntu has a DVD download, only Ubuntu has a DVD download. This is number two on my list of annoying this Ubuntu users do. The other is the happy land of the average Ubuntu user - where replacing the word 'Linux' with 'Ubuntu' in any post gets you a quicker path to OT III.