Mandrake, SuSE Ready New Releases

Anthony Boyd writes: "At pclinuxonline.com, they are running an uncomfirmed story that Mandrake 8.2 will be released on March 18th. And of course, SuSE Linux 8.0 is going to be released in mid-April. Features for SuSE appear to include KDE 3.0 and a whole lot of games. Features for Mandrake appear to be a super small install and, well, stability. Sounds great to me."

Speaking of games...

[Ricky M. Waite]

Kinda offtopic, but I'm wondering if anyone has any links to some nice games for Linux. I've been playing LBreakout2 [sf.net] non-stop, but other than that (and of course Q2), I've yet to find any nice games that I like.

This isn't a troll or anything, I'm genuinely wondering if anyone has suggestions.

How about PPC?

[jchristopher]

I hope they aren't also claiming that the PowerPC release is ready... I tried it recently, and while promising, it has some show-stopper bugs.

Can anyone confirm/deny that it will be a later release? I have high hopes for using it as the daily OS on my iBook.

Fast and Easy...

[guamman]

The best feature about Mandrake 8.1 is that it took about half the time to install as Windows 2000 and was probably the easiest install for linux. This may not seem like much for computer geeks (the slashdot crowd), but it is vital for getting linux on more personal desktops. If linux is ever going to survive in its current form, it needs to be a viable competitor with Microsoft. I can only hope that Mandrake 8.2 continues the trend of the other Mandrakes before it.

Mandrake makes less money that way

[HanzoSan]

Buying the box means mandrake makes less money
if all you want is a free manual and a nice looking box, maybe you can find a printer

Re:Fast and Easy...

[mir]

I have tried all of Mandrake 8.2 beta and they look pretty good, and extremely easy to install. A couple of days after the ssh bug was found the patched version was included in RC1 and I expect a zlib-bug free version for the official 8.2. This itself makes it a good reason to upgrade (along with the fact that it detected my wireless card nearly-flawlessly on my laptop).

Re:Mandrake makes less money that way

[aminorex]

In the near-term, yes. But if the distributors
don't see demand for the boxes, they won't put
them on the shelves. If they aren't on the shelves,
Mandrake loses potential new customers.

On the other hand, if retail sales aren't doing the
trick now, why should they ever? If they can't
we're all better off with a pledge-drive model just
like PBS.

Re:Why now?

[LinuxGeek8]

A lot of applications that run on kde2 are not yet ported to kde3. It is nice to have a newer release of kde, but the major improvements are maybe just a better khtml and kjs, and maybe it is a bit faster.
But you want to run your applications too.

I believe you cannot run kde2 and kde3 apps at the same time. Here it complained that dcopserver was already running, and after killing kde2 processes kde3 apps woud start.

But if you want kde3, you have to wait for the final release of kde3. It will then be packaged for Mandrake 8.2 and I believe also for 8.0 and 8.1, and it will be available as a download.

For Gnome2; I do not know much about it, but it might still be a release for developers. And most gnome developers will run gnome from cvs I assume. Most gnome apps run fine on Gnome 1.4

Competitor, schmetitor

[leonbrooks]

If linux is ever going to survive in its current form, it needs to be a viable competitor with Microsoft.

1. no matter what you do, Linux will not survive in it's current form, and that's a good thing. Linux is a living, growing beastie. It has no current form, at least not for more than a week.

2. Linux doesn't need or want to compete with Microsoft, certainly not head on. If you focus on beating your competitors, the best you can possibly do is slightly better than them, and who wants to aim so low?

3. What Linux wants to do is its own thing, and do it so well that Microsoft will die of natural causes. IRL, Linux doesn't care about Microsoft all that much. Linux will continue press on without publicity, without major funding, without lawyers, without distributors as such. That's how Linux was born, that's how Linux will live, and when its turn comes, that's how Linux will die.

I'll stick with Gentoo

[Bladerunner2037]

I like being able to edit files to customize the compilation (no Gnome-core-libs-bloat? no problem. know I don't want kde/kdelibs? no problem.) and only installing what I want on my system - all of em in their cpu-optimized goodness.
I was using Sorcerer/Sorcery/Lunar-Penguin (aka, the "let's have a battle of egos and fork like there's no tomorrow" distros), until they factioned and started having all the stupid in-fighting; now I went with the solid, founded, Gentoo - a little extra time with set up and editing files, but worth the effort.

Re:Chalk and cheese

[Elbereth]

Mandrake is leaning more and more towards proprietary software. Just look at their "donation" situation. When you go to download the latest Mandrake, the two choices are

I have already donated
I promise to donate

There is no "No thanks, I choose not to donate" link. In effect, you are making a promise to Mandrake that you will donate.

I myself was a little annoyed by this.

When was the last time Mandrake donated money to me for writing software, finding bugs, or solving technical problems for their users? Never. But I'm supposed to donate to them, because a for-profit company is faultering? I think not.

The whole nature of a company is to make profit. If they can not do that, then perhaps they need to think twice about starting business ventures.

I'd rather donate to a Linux programmer like Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox than to a for-profit corporation.

Re:Chalk and cheese

[rseuhs]

SuSE seems happier on a more proprietary road, and some things like their X drivers occasionally shine for this approach.

Huh?

SuSE never released any proprietary X drivers.

The only thing SuSE develops that is not under the GPL is YaST and SaX, configuartion tools. Those are put under the YaST license which is identical to the GPL with the exception that you are not allowed to sell it for money (giving away is OK, modifying is OK, source-code is available, installing on one gazillion machines is OK)