Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community Ready For Download

joestar writes "The new Mandrakelinux 10.0 Community has just showed up on Mandrake's FTP mirrors and through Bittorrent. MandrakeClub Members benefit from extra CDs downloads and even a DVD ISO for Corporate Memberships! Another good news for the Mandrake community is an announce from Mandrakesoft that due to the stock resumed trading on Euronext on last Monday, with a nice increase of +10.00% in three days." Update: 03/11 06:23 GMT by T : Cheap ISOs are also available from merchants like OSDisc.com and CheapBytes.

To quote LL Cool J

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years.

Great

[iantri]

I'm glad Mandrake switched their release system to this -- a general, maybe a bit buggy, Community release, and then an official release a few months later with the bugs worked out.

What Mandrake does is great; they produce a very nice desktop distribution, but it's no secret that their product tends to be incredibly buggy out of the box.

Let's hope this helps them improve the quality of their releases!

Re:KDE 3.2!

[frodo from middle ea]

it sure kicks the crap out of XP on the dark side of my pc.

Can you elaborate on this, please ? In what way does it beat XP ? speed , responsive ness , look and feel , usability ?

I use KDE too, but I don't use XP, So I can't compare, but I would sure like to know more, than a mere blanket statement like , "KDE kicks crap out of so&so"

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[Stevyn]

This could go on forever though. Including gimp and openoffice makes it even worse. Companies that put these out don't just wake up one morning and decide to compile and release their projects. It takes companies like mandrake a lot of time to put these together and test them. To make a negative about this release that it won't have bleeding edge releases of other software is kind of petty. Besides, most of their users won't care and the ones that do will update their software once the new 3rd party apps come out.

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but just remember that it already has made several radical upgrades, such as KDE 3.2, Kernel 2.6, Glibc with NPTL, Community Release process. Its far too much to do that all in one go.

If you would like all that stuff, then there are other distros coming out soon, such as Fedora core 2, SuSE 9.1, Slackware 10, and don't forget constantly updated distros such as Gentoo.

The Open Source Community is always rapidly changing, if Mandrake had waited for those packages to be released, then some other software would be around the corner and you would complain about that instead.

mmm...Money

[doublebackslash]

While I use Fedora, and previously RedHat, I do love to see someone mking money (or at least loosing less) on a Linux Marketshare.
The more money linux makes, the more money will get poured into it. So long as Linus doesn't sell out this is a good thing, and I like it.

Maybey its time to give Mandrake a try, hows the support (ie, is there an up2date style thing thats free like in fedora?)?

MandrakeClub

[mkro]

You know, I really think Mandrake is a nice distribution. I even considered paying for a membership, untill I saw what they offer [mandrakelinux.com].
One thing is the level system in general, giving special access to those who pay more, but when I see what they are trying to tempt me with:
Silver members can download (...) PowerPack along with its numerous proprietary drivers and plugins.
Their bold, not mine. Whoopeedoo, pay extra to ENCOURAGE prorietary drivers. They are also proud to present "commercial applications which are normally only available in retail packs", various other discounts, "Direct-trading program for MandrakeSoft stock, plus access to real-time trading information", and with a GOLD membership (600 Euros a year) you can even see their webpages WITHOUT BANNER ADS!

It is of course good they are able to make some money to PAY people for the good work they are doing, but it should be possible without turning the whole thing into something ugly.

Re:What's the legal status of the DVD?

[Florian Weimer]

Mandrake makes a point of it being a totally GPL distro.

They don't included SSL support, Apache and OpenSSH?

Re:MandrakeClub

[iantri]

What's ugly about it?

You pay them money, they give you stuff (software, drivers) that they can't include in the download edition because it's not free.

Unless you're RMS, what's the problem?

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[darkmeridian]

Oh, crap. This is probably a gentoo troll because he mentions "traditional distros". Well, I have gentoo and right now everything is pretty updated because I just installed 2004.0 from the binary sources. But am I going to reinstall everything to keep up to date?

No. I will update software only when it adds functionality or removes vulnerabilities. What is the difference between KDE 3.2.1 and 3.2.0? Not enough to effect me, I guess. But if you are updating from KDE 2.2, then you are making a large jump up. (Trust me!)

Anyway, you can always update with regular distros. And without compiling, mind you. But don't bother chasing version numbers. Just use programs that fit your needs. I mean, installing kernel 2.6.3, for example, killed my Cisco VPN client.

What does "Community" mean?

[blixel]

More importantly, what does "Community" mean in this Mandrake release? Is this a pre 10.0 release of some sort - made available to everyone for testing? Will there be a new 10.0 final after this made available only to club members for the first X number of weeks (like 9.2 was). I remember seeing that 10.0 Community as available only to club members just last week.

Re:Huh?

[joestar]

In order to understand the meaning, I think the best is to click on the Euronext link [euronext.com] provided in the story. It provides the price, the increase, the volume and many other informations about Mandrakesoft's stock...

I've given up on Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm presently a Fedora user. I used to be a Mandrake user. I look at Mandrake as a distro that strives to be simple enough for a newbie/former-Windows user, but seems to lack good QA processes. I've followed Mandrake's releases enthusiastically for years (I think version 5(?) was the first one I tried) until I found that version 9 *still* took forever to automount data CDs. I'd put in a data CD, and Konqueror would freeze for several seconds (30+) when I would try to access it. And you know what this equates to for the average computer user? "Linux is slow," that's what. And that doesn't help anyone. Heck, I even gave Mandrake Move a try, and the problem's STILL there! Knoppix doesn't do it, so what gives?

Don't get me wrong; my whole world doesn't revolve around automount; it's just a good example of Mandrake's operations. I'm of the mind that if you're going to put a convenience feature in the software, for God's sake make it work right, or just leave it out! Like it or not, if you're trying to get Windows users to switch, you'll need a working automount for CDs--forcing them to learn to use mount on the command-line when they shouldn't have to is not an option if you're serious about user-friendliness.

Oh, and another thing that bugged me--they included this autorun program on the CD that would supposedly allow one to begin the Mandrake installation from Windows, but clicking the "install" button never did anything. Good way to persuade Windows users to use your product! Why even include it? Typical Mandrake. I posted this to the bug tracker (and found I wasn't the first), but even as of version 9--and I think 9.1--they still didn't fix it. So I never joined the Mandrake Club (I came close), and just stopped using Mandrake altogether, because it seemed to me they would probably never get their act together completely. Maybe now that they're trying to emulate Red Hat's business model they will be able to limp along a while longer. Right now I've got a Fedora Core 1 install that works great, and Mandrake is just something I'd rather forget.

I'm sorry if this info is of no use to anyone; mod me down as you see fit. Who knows, maybe all the stuff I mentioned is fixed in this new Community release? Maybe, but given Mandrake's track record, I doubt it.

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[justsomebody]

I can'tsay about OpenOffice, but for sure I can for Gimp.

I don't know anyone that still uses Gimp 1.2, and Gimp2 is probably one of the most tested pieces of software out there.

I use it flawlesly now for almost half year. Ok, there were flaws but all I could find it is already patched now.

Companies mostly don't test software, at least in OSS comunity. And there is a fact that Mandrake always used experimental kernel patches. So I can't see Mandrake as company as you mentioned

Re:What am I paying for?

[Bull999999]

You don't pay for those software, you pay to have someone put it together for you. Hack, if you are willing to wait, you don't even have to pay or you can go with Linux from Scratch project and put it together yourself.

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[Stevyn]

I'd agree with you about mandrake if this was their final and official release of version 10.0. However, this is a "community" release which sounds to me a like a nice way of saying beta.

Stability

[solic]

You cannot delay forever software releases are hardly ever accurate, KDE 3.2 was originally on track to be released more than 3 months ago, should the distros have waited so long or was it better that they continued with their predictable release cycle? Furthermore, there are no worries, the rock solid version of 10.0 is sure to include these packages, it will probably be released in May with more packages than you have mentioned.

Re:Trouble with traditional distros

[RedBear]

(Reiterating parent and replying to grandparent)

Indeed, Mandrake patches almost everything up the yin-yang so that what you get when they make a release really is about the latest-and-greatest you could have gotten. Granted, GNOME 2.6 looks pretty awesome, to the point where this KDE-only user wants to try it out for a while to see whether it still makes me feel like I'm trapped in a box. (Anybody else feel that way about GNOME? It's the best analogy I can come up with for why I always reverted back to KDE. Nothing personal, just my perception of my past experiences with it.)

But the main thing I would like to point out and have everyone else re-point-out, is that the Official release doesn't actually come out for a couple of months! At which point it will most likely contain KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6.1, kernel 2.6.5, GIMP 2.0.x and whatever else has come out in the meantime, plus a whole bunch of bug-fixes, etc.

But all that aside, I betcha you can't find another distro release that includes half of what Mandrake has managed to stuff into 10.0. It's gotten a pretty good run-through by the community already through all the beta and RC releases. I'll feel perfectly confident putting this on my day-to-day machine, and I'll be renewing my Silver membership shortly to help support a decent Linux company that puts out an outstanding product.

That's right, I'll be "putting my money where my mouth is". Anyone who wants the next release of their favorite distro to be better should do the same instead of whining that a two-week-old release of a hugely complicated product doesn't contain software that was released two days ago.

This is where I've dropped Mandrake

[glMatrixMode]

I used to be a faithful user of Mandrake, and even bought them 3 powerpacks (7.1, 9.1 and 9.2) just to support them. But I've just dropped them in favor of Slackware (which, by the way, I now consider to be a much better distro except for beginners).

Why ?

Because Mandrakesoft is running a more and more weird policy to force us to suscribe to their "club" - for which we'd have to pay $5 or $10 a month - and to systematically buy their product rather than downloading it.

For example, the new "release scheme" they're running for 10.0 is just a PR-disguise of something that actually amounts to :
1) First, Community=Beta=Buggy version available in stores (only for brain-dead fanboys)
2) Then, Community=Beta=Buggy version available on BT/FTP
3) Then, Official=Stable version available in stores
4) Then, Download Edition = Castrated Edition on BT/FTP (but will you really want that ?)

Moreover, don't forget that *even* if you buy it, you don't get access to the upgrades. For this, you *have* to join the "club". Now this is getting more and more difficult to work around. I mean, as Mandrake adds more and more layers between the user and plain old UNIX, it's being more and more difficult to upgrade important pieces of software for a Mandrake system. If you want to update your kernel or your qt+kde system or (when the licences issues will be over...) your X server, unless you're very skilled, you'll have more and more problems to do it directly from the plain sources. Joining the club tends to be necessary. So here's an algorithm to help you choose your distro :

if (Level <= Beginner
&& OkToPayPerMonth >= 5 * __DOLLARS__
&& CareAboutIdeology == false
&& WantToReallyLearn (UNIX) == false)
{ return MANDRAKE_WITH_SUBSCRIPTION_TO_CLUB;
}
else
{... //Don't want to start a religion war here.
}

Re:I've given up on Mandrake

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right--that should have been supermount, not automount (sorry, no crack, just a plain ol' screwup). For what it's worth, I probably should explain myself better. I've always dual-booted, dreaming of the day I could do everything under Linux that I did under Windows; until that day, I would use Linux on a more-or-less trial basis. I gave Mandrake the biggest chance I've given any distro. For years it used to be the ONLY distro I considered. I first heard about it on ZDTV (now TechTV, of course) when Leo recommended it as easy-to-use. Up until that time I had tried both Slackware and RedHat. With Mandrake, it was the ease of installation that got me at first, back when that wasn't such a common thing. I also loved all the software that came with it and how current they were (they continue that even today with their KDE 3.2 and kernel 2.6.3). However, after I decided to stop using Mandrake, I found that Fedora installed just as easily, and for me, it "just works" better than *any* Mandrake release I've tried so far, and that's more important to me than all the latest bells and whistles.

Also, Mandrake's execution was just wrong. They liked to pump out product, but they didn't seem to pay attention to the little things that annoy users. Yes, they mastered the installation process, but there's a lot more to it than that. I got the impression that they were pushing features without any refinement, and when I gave my input, it didn't seem to matter. When they started publicizing their financial woes, I sympathized, but I could see where it was coming from, and unless they were really serious about getting their act together, I wasn't going to give them my money. Not much later, they filed for bankrupcy, and I figured that even though they were apparently busting their butts to survive, I probably needed to find another distro.

Of course, I don't speak for everyone, I'm just one person with particular hardware and particular needs, but I'm sure anyone reading this is aware of that.