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Mandriva Businesses Software Linux

Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta Underway 237

Posted by Zonk from the new-way-to-play dept.
linuxbeta writes "Distrowatch is reporting that 'The beta testing process for Mandriva Linux 2006 is now officially underway. All the new features, which are not yet all included in this first beta version, will appear in the next test versions. You will see changes in the network management, especially WiFi, in security, on the desktop with the new versions of KDE, GNOME, new version of the kernel, GCC....'. Screenshots are available."
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Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta Underway More

Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta Underway

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  • wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by dotpavan ( 829804 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @03:54PM (#13169097) Homepage
    and then we would have another story once the beta is out.. but with the same links and screenshots, what we call here a dupe!
  • Figured this would be as on-topic as anywhere...

    I'm thinkin of dropping Linux on a somewhat outdated computer I have lying around. It's a Celeron 533 w/ 256MB of RAM.

    Which user-friendly distribution would be more friendly to that kind of hardware? And God help anyone that says Gentoo..
    • I'd go with Ubuntu...I've run it on less, with no problems.

    • Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva (Score:4, Informative)

      by XanC ( 644172 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:00PM (#13169172)
      Actually Gentoo can be really good on low-end machines, because you can leave out everything you don't need.

      You'll probably want to do the actual compiling on another machine, though.

      Overall, though, I'd recommend Debian Stable. Fire-and-forget.


    • I'd say Ubuntu. I find that it runs better, has better hardware support out of the box and is easier to manage than Mandriva. However, I'm sure this is not always the case so your results may vary. Try them both, they're free and you'll learn something in the process.

      Be sure to mess around with Nessus, nMap and Metasploit. They'll teach you a great deal about securing your systems.
    • Arch linux. You get most of the customizabilitiness of Gentoo without the compile times.

    • Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mad_Rain ( 674268 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:13PM (#13169319) Journal
      Depends on what you want to do, and if you have a preference for Gnome vs. KDE and/or apt-get .deb files vs. urpmi .rpm files.

      I'm going to presume you want a little desktop/fileserver type thing. Mandriva, once all cds are downloaded, supplies you with everything you need (and plenty you probably won't). The setup is pretty simple, hardware detection in my experience has been good, and is pretty stable. They include their own little GUI configuration tools for hardware detection, server setup, etc., and it can help you transition away from windows. It's default setup is for KDE (although you've got plenty of choices on the CDs) and uses urpmi and .rpm files to download and install new programs and update stuff.

      Ubuntu is a little different - the download is only one cd, and it only offers you Gnome as default. (The Kubuntu project, also one CD, offers KDE, and is a "apt-get install" away). Because it starts out so simple, you have to be alittle more knowledgable about linux and how to go about setting things up. Ubuntu also uses apt-get and .deb files to install/update programs, and is much easier to use than urpmi in my opinion. It's also harder to "screw up" since it offers you some limited ways to mess things up.

      And on that note, both distros as I recall , offer livecds to test-drive your system with. Try downloading those and checking them out if you have the time/bandwidth. (But if you don't, go with Ubuntu - they'll ship you cds for free!)
    • I do not think that hardware will be the best the best discriminator for choosing the best distro.
      I think (but I could be wrong) that your experience with linux would be a better indicator for the kind of distro you want.
      If you have little experience with linux I would go for mandrake (or something other very userfriendly distro).
      If you want to squeeze all the performance from your hardware go for linux-from-scratch (and as a bonus learn an awfull lot in the process).

      I would say that most distro should per
    • Well, if you're concerned about speed on that older box, there's a few little-known distros that could work - I looked into a bunch when trying to find something to run on a p166 - unfortunateley, they all kernel-panicked on it. Still, there were a few.

      Vector Linux was a low-resource distro, but it cost money for their low-resource version (they had a typical high-power version that was free). Buffalo comes to mind, which is a free knock-off version of Vector that isn't as nerfed.

      A similar lightweight is
    • Honestly, drop KDE and Gnome for something lighter.

      Xfce is awesome for slower computers. There's tonnes of other desktops and WM's out there that are way more efficient than Gnome and KDE.

      IMO they're just as bloated asp XP.
    • I have a similar machine, only with less RAM (500 mhz Celeron, 128 mb, 10 gig HD). I've tried a number of different installations on it, including Gentoo, and thus far I've had the most positive experience with Ubuntu.

      I have half the RAM, so I'm not sure if my experience will be similar to yours; I will note, however, that recent versions of KDE and GNOME are too "featured" to operate at a decent speed.

      With Ubuntu I did a "custom" (with Hoary) or "server" install (with Warty) and loaded up a minimal instal

    • Personally, I had used Mandrake since somewhere in the 6.x era. I only recently switched to Ubuntu which was a snap to install, but I miss a few things about Mandrake (which are still configurable in Ubuntu). I find that "apt-get install" is just as easy as "urpmi --update --auto --auto-select", but things tend to not get broken like they do with RPMs. Using Synaptic is just as easy as using Mandrakes package manager (can't remember the name offhand) for comparison sake.

      I'm also in the process of switchin

      • I have to say IMO that Debian/Ubuntu has a much larger package selection than Mandrake does (Debian's package list vs. Mandrake's package list)

        Really. Mandriva offers thousands upon thousands of packages in their main and contrib repositories, and then we haven't counted 3rd party repositories yet. What packages could you possibly be missing?

        "For $$ we have the enterprise-level edition, and for free, we have the cut-down, shaved-off, download version"

        Are you now actually blaming Mandriva for tr

    • Re:Ask Slashdot: Ubuntu vs. Mandriva (Score:4, Insightful)

      by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:27PM (#13169487) Journal
      My opinion below is not exactly on topic for your question, but the end result is that I would recommend Ubuntu. They make a great distro and support it well without being focused on money the way Mandriva has become. And now for the rest of my rant...
      --
      In my opinion, Mandriva is no longer a viable option for anyone who wishes to try Linux for the first time. It has gone the way of many of the main distros in that they want money before you try. The problem with that of course is that if you decide you don't like the distro, you're still out the cash. Try three or more distros that require payment first and Linux quickly becomes prohibitively expensive for a single user. There is suppose to be a free, limited download of Mandriva available through the Mandriva club (and there is) but good luck finding it on their web site. I finally had to write to their tech support requesting they send me a link to the free "limited" version. Unfortunately for them, by the time they sent me a link to the limited version, I had already installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu works as well as any distro I have tried so far (in fact, better than most) and the Ubuntu community is MUCH less pushy when it comes to financial support.

      The bottom line is, with many distros requiring payment up front, Linux is becoming at least as expensive as Windows, if not more so. I personally would not recommend anyone use any Linux distro that requires payment up front, no matter how good it is. If the distro is good, users will support it. If not, they won't. I believe this is what explains how Ubuntu has skyrocketed to the top of the distro popularity list. It is a great distribution and they don't ask for support until after you expect to stick with it. As it should be.
      • >they want money before you try

        BZZZT! Wrong! Mandrake/Mandriva have ALWAYS had both a free and commercial version. The free version is *EASILY* obtained from COUNTLESS mirror sites. The only difference between the two is that the commercial version includes support and copyrighted (non-GPL) packages.
        • Easy enough to say without proof. Show me the clicks required to find the free version from their main page. A person looking to try Mandriva only sees "Buy now!" plastered everywhere. Even searching doesn't bring it up. To add insult to injury, they even try to get you to buy the free version. Searching for "limited" and "download", I quote from the web site: "If you like keeping one release ahead of the crowd, you've reached your nirvana! Mandriva Club members have privileged access to the newest sy
          • I'll add to my own post here: Apparently the free download version is called "Download Edition". Regardless, searching for "Download Edition" turns up no links.

            Starting from the www.mandriva.com page, searching turns up 19 links (mostly FAQs) that mention the free download edition but provide no links. Then from the main page, clicking on "Mandriva Club" then "Downloads" you get to two links that look promising but are not...

            The link "Download Mandriva Linux Distributions" gives a web page where ever
      • The Enterprise level doesn't have additional packagaes over the Mandrake Club Version. The Mandrake Club Version only has extra binary/non-free packages added.

        To clarify, the Enterprise version is just a garunteed stable version, much like Debina stable. They also garuntee support for it for 5 years. There is nothing in it that you don't get with the regular version, except only security updates get applied to the Enterprise one for 5 years. For the small time user, big whoop.

        To download the free vers

      • Well, other people have pointed out your error, so I'll only add that I'm running Mandrake 10.1 and it hasn't cost me a penny.

        I agree they make it a little hard to see that you DON'T have to spend money to get it. But that's not quite the same as, say, Microsoft refusing to give you an update until they examine your PC down to the chipset to see that you don't have a "pirated" copy.

        Not to mention that with Microsoft, you get an OS for the money - and that's it. With ANY Linux distro, you get TONS of free
      • Because ghod forbid a company could actually make money out of its gpl'd contributions to free/os software (yes, all the software mandriva develops into the distro is GPL'd). And, as everyone else has pointed out, you were flat out wrong on the free availability of mandriva.

        As for support, I use and always have used mandrivausers.org (was mandrakeusers.org). It has perhaps even better support than the "official" forums, and it's even linked from the mandrivalinux.com website. Mandriva acknowledges it as a f
    • Mandrake 10.1 works fine for me on old hardware. The fastest system I own is this PII-866 with 256 megs (Rambus, unfortunately) and it has 10.1, as does my wife's old Dell Latitude CP (PII-233 with 128megs) and it runs acceptable there. Better than than Windows, certainly. The only thing I dislike is how long most KDE apps take to open, for no apparent reason. I seem to recall reading it was to do with a compilation flag Mandrake chose with KDE, and that it would be fixed in future versions, but I'm not
    • Mandrake/Mandriva is a good choice. It's very easy to use and a simple setup. It was the distribution I started using Linux with, and after having tried other distros is still my favourite. The default desktop is KDE.

      If you are coming from a Mac background you may want to use Gnome instead of KDE, it will probably be more familiar, Mandriva can be switched to use Gnome, or the easiest Gnome based distro out there right now is Ubuntu.

      I reccomend KDE but I don't want to start a flamewar so that is all I'll
    • A 500MHz will run anything, but a lightweight distribution will certainly work better. Therefore I would suggest Ubuntu.

  • entire conversation: (Score:5, Funny)

    by databyss ( 586137 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @03:57PM (#13169137) Homepage Journal
    "Mandriva Linux suxorz! The best distro is _____ biznatches!!"

    "Yeah well all linux suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"

    "Hey guys wait! MacOSX is linux and it's the best thing god ever handed down to humans!"

    "No n00b, MacOSX is BSD."

    "Yeah well all BSD's suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"
    • You forgot "This is a dupe of story _________" or "This store will be duped in _______ hours"

      I'm sure it is somewhere.
    • Yeah well all BSD's suxorz! Windows is teh roxorz!"

      Never once have I heard anyone on Slashdot say anything positive about Windows, most likely because this peanut gallery would've modded such a post out of the discussion.
      • -A Test-

        I personally like windows, it does what I need, and it isn't an OS on training wheels or a system for the programmers by the programmers. I spend the vast majority of my time being productive on my computer instead of maintaining it; and with some basic knowledge and tweaking (Tweak UI, some new drivers and some Regedits) a windows box runs very sweetly. The blue screen of death jokes are quite a dead horse, I have experienced a blue screen on three occasions since XP came out and that includes a
        • It's sad to admit it, but you are probably right. After being a big Linux fan for years, I must admit that it needs a lot of time to tweak and make it do what you really want. Yes Linux is really really powerful if you are a power user and have enough time, patience, and passion to explore it and learn it. But if you need are in the average, and you just want things to be done, just forget it, and this is the case for I believe 95% of people. Windows has a lot flaws but 95% of the time it just works ! and t
        • hey, your'e not playing fair! that was a blanaced and sane!
        • Well, while I agree that WinXP blue screen of death are rare, there are still big issue with system corruption.

          A friend of mine had a registry corruption problem, and none of the backup could be used to solve it --> reinstallation.
          Recently for some reason, I couldn't boot anymore and had to repair the installation, it worked, but I've never figured why the corruption appeared..

          So while XP is very stable, sometimes it just blow up spontaneously, something that doesn't really occur with Linux: once it wo
        • I spend the vast majority of my time being productive on my computer instead of maintaining it

          What do you think users of other OSes do? It would hardly be in our interests to tolerate anything else. I would drop Linux and go back to Windows or buy Macs if I thought I would get my work done better in Windows or MacOS.

          with some basic knowledge and tweaking (Tweak UI, some new drivers and some Regedits) a windows box

          Sounds like more work than Mandrake/Mandriva needs

          Windows gets its bad name from users

  • First "Where are the Torrents?" whine! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @03:58PM (#13169147) Journal
    Sigh. ISO downloads instead of bit-torrents. Maybe they figure the beta won't be popular enough to get lots of downloaders at once, but they still ought to be efficient about it.

  • And the winner is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:01PM (#13169190)
    ...and the award for the most ridiculous Linux distribution name goes to... Mandriva! Hounorable mention to the runner up, Kubuntu.
  • Will this contain support for Atmel and Prism built in or will we have to go and get Prism Drivers [linux-wlan.org] or Atmel Drivers [sourceforge.net]? The only problem without having built-in support is that for the Atmel you have to patch the kernel(only 2.6 and greater) and recompile it(takes awhile on a 1.7Ghz). It would be major convience for built-in support for these commonly used chipsets. I hope that this new distribution includes full WiFi support.

  • Yawn (Score:3)

    by snorklewacker ( 836663 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:07PM (#13169254)
    Queue up more boring screenshots on OSDir's clunky image browser. Possibly the most telling image is how they put GNU Emacs in the KDE Kicker and didn't configure any reasonable default colors for it matching the theme (those are the out of the box for gnu emacs). The rest are just bog standard desktop shots.

  • Ugly fscking icons (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lakcaj ( 811907 )
    This is going to sound like a troll, but really it's not. Now, with all the talent and resources the linux community has, why can't someone come up with a beautiful default icon set for both KDE and Gnome? I don't care what anyone says, but those icons do not look professional and they are UGLY! First impressions matter, and to me, my first impression when I see a screenshot like that is, "What a POS". And before you say, "Well then, make your own icons", be assured that I would if I had the talent.

    N
    • No accounting for taste, I guess. The icons for d3a look promising, but have pretty terrible contrast. Edge is elegant in its own minimalist way. Exquisite lives up to its name, though it's fairly noisy, but why on earth does everyone have to create such "shiny" icons? By that I don't mean bling, I mean all the specular effects. I'm sick of my desktop looking like it has a million candlepower spotlight shining on it.

      Many of the icons in the screenshot (such as the gnu for emacs) were application-suppl

    • Re:Ugly fscking icons (Score:4, Insightful)

      by moranar ( 632206 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:54PM (#13169906) Homepage Journal
      Well, you're one of the few who doesn't like the Crystal theme. I'm not hot for it, but I don't find it "a piece of shit". Actually, if I wasn't able to do my own icon themes (and I am not) I'd watch what I say about them. Who knows, maybe you wouldn't like your own work to be called "What a piece of shit".

      So you find Exquisite, Edge and d3a beautiful. Have you thought of filing bug reports on their inclusion into mandriva (or your distro of choice)? Perhaps they have some problems that void their use.

      Like, what do I know, Exquisite is just the apple icons, and any commercial distro would be sued to bits if they included them?

      Like, d3a has serious usability problems: it's too gray and silver, it's not very readable by people who don't see that well.

      Edge is a bit too black n' white for my taste, apart from the fact that it imitates the apple icons too.

      So, basically, you want a Mac and OS X. This is Mandriva Linux.
    • All the talented artists use Macs.
    • I was one of the original team members of a very well respected distro (establishing street cred here) and I COMPLETELY agree. I find KDE so gawdy and QT so ugly that I feel like an idiot using it. Gnome is tolerable but has a long way to go yet.

      I am not window-manager bashing here.

      • I find KDE so gawdy and QT so ugly that I feel like an idiot using it.
        and
        I am not window-manager bashing here.
        I'd really like to know how on earth the above statement not window-manager bashing. I am geniunely curious to know how you've justified this whole bashing-KDE-is-not-WM-bashing. Cause I can't figure out how on earth you can say that with a straight face. Or were you trying for +5 Funny?

  • Punch! Sock! Pow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by jrutley ( 723005 ) on Tuesday July 26, 2005 @04:29PM (#13169507)
    Doesn't it look like Tux just got a beating?
    http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=388&slide=22 [osdir.com]
  • Honest question, not trolling, etc. Why is it that every Linux distro looks the same?

    Windows comes with theme management locked up so you can't do themes without "hacking" some DLL's, but with everything in Linux being open, why don't the distributions customize their looks more?

    In the last couple of days, I've downloaded and tried 5 or 6 LiveCD's, utilizing mostly different underlying distro's, and they all look generally one of two ways, which I assume is either Gnome or KDE.

    • >Why is it that every Linux distro looks the same?

      They all start with pretty much the same sort of relatively neutral theme as the default regardless of whether they default to Gnome or KDE as the desktop. Not too many folks are going to want blinking magenta text on chartreuse background with borders in black and blood red and buttons that look like plucked eyeballs and nads. However, you can probably find a KDE theme that includes that. There are hundreds of them out there. See KDE Look [kde-look.org] or Fresh [freshmeat.net]

    • Honest question, not trolling, etc.

      You sure?
      http://www.ubuntulinux.org/screenshots/document_v i ew [ubuntulinux.org]
      http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_gallery.php?i mage=screenshot [linspire.com]
      http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=110&slide=107 [osdir.com]

      h, what the heck:
      http://shots.osdir.com/ [osdir.com]

      Looks as different to me as you can expect from themes and tweaks
    • IMHO, most of the people behind distro's are more technically minded.

      So getting the distro to work well everywhere is what they do. They "just" rely on KDE/Gnome defaults because they look pretty good.

      Getting all of the graphics to be pretty to many people is really hard and as time consuming as getting the OS working.

      What both KDE and Gnome need to do is have a distro-independent apt-like repository full of themes. There are lots of themes for each desktop but rounding them up and checking them out is
    • Most distros just use the default Gnome or KDE theme. Through laziness or maybe they think it actually is the best default. I don't know.

      Most people theme theirs though. It doesn't matter to me what the theme is that comes wih a distro; I'm going to change it. Some distros probably realize that we do this and don't bother putting an effort into the looks.

      A few distros look different, like Blag [blagblagblag.org]. Hmm, that's not very pretty. Maybe that's why distros should stick to the KDE and Gnome default themes.
  • Has anyone succeeded in installing everything on Mandrake/Mandriva? I have never succeeded. The install menus are deceptive, and if I really dive in and select everything manually I get lots of conflicts.
  • What happened to "Mandrake"?
    • I guess you missed this story [slashdot.org]?
      • I've missed a lot in recent years :(

        Until about a month ago

        1) I still though DevFS was cool
        2) I still thought 2.6.x was a little flakey
        3) I didn't know about the XFree86 problems

        I don't know what I've been doing for the past 4 years, I found a post of mine from 2000 saying how I'd recompiled my kernel. 5 years ago. Now I'm afraid to touch the damn thing cause it might break.

        I think I'd better turn my geek badge in :(

        *cries*
  • if i wanted a linux installation for a home PC which would you recommend and why?

    • I'd recommend the one that works for you on your hardware. Honestly, with a typical old and slow home PC with limited memory and disk space, you may have to try a few distributions to find one that installs and runs properly. The best way to figure that out, is to try the CDROM versions of the majour distros first and see how they do.
  • I switched to Mandrake at mdk7.2. I was futzing around with RedHat 7.0 and not enjoying myself. The thing that did it for me was urpmi(not having to figure out RPM dependencies) and the fact that if I install tuxracer or any other app, it would be available under Gnome, KDE, Icewm, fvwm . . . twm via the pull down menus. That niceity is still there. What puts Mandriva on top of virtually everything else is the RPM repositories. With a broadband connection, you could just download the first ISO then use

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