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Mandriva Businesses

Mandrake 7.1 Released 162

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-relation-to-mandrake@mandrake.net dept.
Frodo writes: "It seems that Mandrake 7.1 has started to appear on various mirror sites. No news on Mandrakes homepage so far." Update: 06/06 08:36 by CN : Alix from Linux-Mandrake just emailed me to tell me there's an official release note available now on their web site.
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Mandrake 7.1 has been released! More

Mandrake 7.1 has been released!

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  • Re:OT: +1 bonus moderation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I, for one, mark all downward moderation of ACs as "unfair" in metamoderation. As far as I'm concerned, 0 is low enough, and if people don't like it uncensored, they should browse at 1 or above. Anyway, if there's anyone else like me, and you moderated ANY ACs down, that would explain your gradual karma loss.

  • Re:Mandrake Problems (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I had similar problems with an older CD ROM and I have read of others with problems too. There was a patch to fix it on the Mandrake site. If they are now releasing 7.1, I would assume the patch would be incorporated. At any rate, if you can't wait, check out the site. You have to boot with a floppy with the patch rather than try to boot from the CD. It worked for me.
  • Try loading the bootnet.img floppy image. With that you can either do a full install or uprgade. You will choose "Upgrade." Upgrading is essentially just looking at the list of rpms you have, looking at the list on the ftp site, and upgrading what's new.
  • ... until it gets to the configuring stage. I've always had about 1 in 10 or so packages segfault while running the scripts there. Also, what is the criteria for holding packages back? Are they upgrades that are so incompatible they want you to remove the pack completely first (the only way I have found around it)?
  • What?? Slashdot is in the business of making and being the first on news. You don't want LinuxToday to beat Slashdot now, do you?? Imagine what would happen if that were to occur. *shudder*
  • I love Mandrake. cant seem to find a ftp server.

    Anyone find a ISO mirror?

  • I subscribe to the idea that upgrades are junk on pretty much every type of operating system: AIX, HPUX, Linux, and even Windoze.

    I've been burned in the past by failed upgrades, so I'd rather just backup my critical files (usually /etc and /home) to something safe and do a full-blown install. Sure its a hassle, but I don't have to worry about garbage that still may be lingering around from the previous release plus if something were to go wrong, I can do a reinstall with little worry.

    The nice thing about AIX, BTW, is the ability to make a snapshot of the system (rootvg at least) and dump it to tape with mksysb. If for any reason the upgrade goes wrong (compatability reasons etc), boot off the tape and you are back in business. I sure wish Solaris and Linux had this.
  • Yeah, I've had the exact same problem.
    It was discussed in alt.os.linux.mandrake . Hopefully 7.1 doesn't suffer from it anymore!
  • Get a clue. Slashdot has been around for a long time, and a lot of the news deals with linux. Quit whining. This seems to be the overwhelming comment now.

    Whine, whine, whine. "slashdot is news for nerds, I use xxxx OS, which rocks more than the pseudo Linux OS, put together by wannabees"

    Nothing wrong with not liking the linux emphasis. However, show some respect for the people who put together a site that you enjoy. They happen to like linux, and have for a couple of years. I'm sure they're not the only nerd site on the web.

  • Penix vs. N(eutered)T(echnology)

    All you have to do is pay $xxx,xxx.00 to get your parts reattached. I'd rather keep mine. Shall we say our Penix is bigger than yours? what's the best remote admin tool for NT?
    A CAR bahdabing...

  • Why are huge downloads necessary if you are just upgrading? Do I have to get on a bunch of mailin lists to figure out what is new and hunt down those files myself?

    Err, is there something wrong with the "ls" command? Mandrake RPMs are named in such a way as to make it rather obvious which ones on 7.1 are newer than the ones from 7.0.

    Not that this will help you avoid huge downloads. I believe nearly all of the 925MB worth of RPMs in Mandrake 7.1 are either brand new or newer versions than 7.0.

    How would you suggest they make it easier to keep current?

    --

  • Please be careful about moderating. Someone said my post was over-rated, and I get the feeling that was because I have an automatic +1.

    That's what's supposed to happen. When you use the +1 bonus, you're effectively choosing to moderate yourself up and moderators who feel the comment doesn't deserve a +2 should knock it back down. The risk to your karma encourages you to reserve the bonus for cases where you feel you deserve the extra point.

    It's in the FAQ. I'd post a link but I'm in a rush to get home before I miss another period of the Devils-Stars game...
  • I tried to go back to the distribution I started with to go back to my roots... But I can't find an updated copy of SLS anyplace... (Actually, I can't even find an original copy of SLS anymore...) I want to see if I can make 0.99.5 run on a newer machine. Anyone have a mirror? My floppies are long since deceased.
  • Works fine in XF4, but quite slower then XF3. (3D mode anyway)
  • Have you ever read the moderator guidelines? If you metamoderate all downward moderation of AC's regardless of content then you are hurting the moderation system by denying some future moderation points to those who are trying to weed out some of the trolling here.

    From the guidelines:
    "What is a Good Comment? A Bad Comment?
    Good Comments are insightful. You read them and are better off having read them. They add new information to a discussion. They are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.

    Average Comments might be slightly offtopic, but still might be worth reading. They might be redundant. They might be a 'Me Too' article. They might say something painfully obvious. They don't detract from the discussion, but they don't necessarily significantly add to it. They are the comments that require the most attention from the moderators, and they also represent the bulk of the comments. (Score:0-1)

    Bad Comments are flamebait. Bad comments have nothing to do with the article they are attached to. They call someone names. They ridicule someone for having a different opinion without backing it up with anything more tangible than strong words. Bad comments are repeats of something said 15 times already making it quite apparent that the writer didn't read the previous comments. They use foul language. They are hard to read or just don't make any sense. They detract from the article they are attached to."

    Notice that the _average_ comment is listed at 0 or 1. You, according to your own words, are not following the moderator guidelines. If you had posted as your user account rather than AC, I would forward your post to Mr. Malda. By posting as AC to make these comments, you seem to display a certain lack of confidence in your words. Then again, you could just be another troll and not even have a regular account.

    Have a good day.
  • You know, there's a reason they don't publish stuff like that on their homepage. There's this thing called "mirroring" that can't happen if the primary site gets slashdotted. Secondly, it is completely irresponsible to post a link to a directory that may not even be fully populated and ready for download. Anyone remember the Service Pack 6 fiasco?

    Pull the story guys.

  • There is no announcement yet.

    Perhaps they shuld use a truly private directory on the mirrows, then mv it across on the third stroke.

    Prepare TWO blank CDs and write yourself a full Cooker. It's worth it.
  • XFree86 v4 works better, faster and cheaper (less CPU cycles) on my Banshee, S3 (hawk, spit) and SiS6326 (hawk, spit) cards than 3.3.6 (Mandrake 7.0) ever did (not that it ever crashed, but, for example, I can now run the SiS with all acceleration on and bzflag works in a window in realtime), although I had to muck around with the config to make my Banshee happy.

    It has up-to-date patched (black-hats nick off) versions of the network stuff. And lots of new toys. Lots of stuff fixed besides the installer.

    xkobo works, but (especially in double-size mode) schlurps up *heaps* of X resources, really needs rewriting.
  • This is being typed from Netscape on my Banshee, which uses the same drivers as the Voodoo3. My (Banshee, crappy monitor) config is at http://firestation.fdns.net/~leonb/XF86Config-4

    The config as installed did not work. I did XFree86 -configure as root and edited the /root/XF86Config.new file from there, testing with XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86Config.new (which the -configure option tells you to do). When I was satsfied wit my changes, I cp'ed it over the top of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, made it world-readable and all was well.
  • Forgot to mention (don't know of this helped), I downloaded the latest drivers from http://linux.3dfx.com/ (if you want to rebuild from source, you save about 17MB of download, ie about halve it, but need about 400MB free on /usr/src/ and several hours (K6-II-300+64M)).
  • I haven't tried a 4.0preX kernel yet. There's a few things that you need to get besides the later kernel (which is absolutely necessary for the Sony camera).

    Searching for the page again now...
  • Here's the page I mentioned above:

    It's for the Sony DSC-F505, but the directions are likely to help other USB camera owners as well.

    If you're looking for a digital camera, BTW, don't go past the 505. It's light, well-balanced, fits everywhere, has automatic everything (and the automatics can each be totally switched off). One nice feature is that it can take shots in total silence. I believe the latest incarnation has 3.3 megapixels and just about brews your coffee as well.

    If you have a relative with a sewing machine, there are two accessories I recommend having them make:
    1. A simple square of black cloth (maybe 40cm a side) with a lens-sized hole near one edge, to help visibility in bright light.
    2. a padded carrier (use "doona" stuffing) which velcroes around the camera and has a pocket alongside the lens for the black cloth and maybe spare SIMMs and batteries. Stitching a canvas carrying strap securely to/around the outside is good.
  • And Netscape crashes faster than it did on 7.0
    As a matter a fact it crashes right away if
    ran as a user in 7.1

    It works fine under SuSE.
  • Later, when it starts to rain, you find that you've only got a windshield wiper on the passenger side. So, you pull over to the side of the road, and discover that there's no hazard lights either. Hey! There aren't any lights on this car at all! Luckily, brakes seem to have made the cut.... hope the airbags are there....

    Funny but not quite applicable. How difficult would it be to pull out the CD again and install the specific app that you need? Compare that to trying to get an airbag retrofitted on a car.

  • Getting the "lastest" version prior to a new release within a few days via a d/l sucks, but how about my timing on purchasing OpenBSD 2.6 and *2* days later they release 2.7! Ugh...., and then to top it off, they still send me 2.6. Life sucks.
    But I still like it. ;)
  • "How important are the following packages: bind, gimp, emacs, lsof, apmd, pump/dhcpcd?"

    Well, to you and I, very. These packages are probably not at all important to someone who is installing Linux for the first time, likely at home, for a bit of word processing and dialup internet access.

    I think it's impossible to make an installer that pleases everyone, but at least Mandrake are trying.

    Personally, I think this system (let the system throw away packages it deems to be less important) is a little dangerous - unless there's a baseline below which you cannot go in order to always provide a functional system.

    A *really* cool way of doing this would be to have minimum, typical and full installs of packages - for example, KDE. The minimum install would be really quite bare - no themes, no sounds, no wallpaper, no games, few apps. A typical install would included a moderate amount of all those things. And a full would hit you with everything.

    This could be one way of reducing unnecessary disk space usage, I suppose.
    --
  • Oh right. Sorry. I just wasted an hour getting half of 7.0, which is what I'm running. Slick. :-)
  • ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Lin ux/distributions/mandrake/iso/ [sunet.se] is working for me. I'm getting 78K/sec, which is about what I usually max out at on my DSL.
  • I guess they could not wait for KDE2.

    Any ETA on a stable release yet?
  • and I thought

    # cd /usr/src
    # cvsup -g -L 2 /etc/cvsupfile
    # make buildworld
    # make installworld

    was easy.
  • Bah, he kind of has a point. Slashdot is something of a Linux ghetto, and who can keep track of the zillion and "MeToo Linux" distros?
  • Debian has not had a stable release in well over a year. This makes it Unsuitable for business use. I used to use Debian for my business and I dropped it because of their inablilty to get a stable product out the door.

    I now use Mandrake for the business. IT is Fast and Fresh. Their management tools are not as slick as say SUSE's are but they are conforming to the mantra of 'Release Early & Often'.

    The Pentium optimizations just rock! Upgrades are not as AutoMagic as Debian's but then the systems don't periodically- AutoMagically break either ;-0
  • Argh... that's why I should preview :).

    apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade are separate commands, in case you couldn't figure that out :).
  • maybe it was just me, but i saw no notice to mirrors, so this whole thread is just a furphy in terms of "letting mirrors get in first and mirror before a release is made".

    noone told me (a downstream mirror for *.au) and
    the first i knew about it was

    o the story appeared in slashdot

    o i checked and the SRPMS directory which we update automatically was wiped - weeeee, a gig to download from scratch which we have to pay for

    o the 7.1 directory started to appear on the norway site.

    fun.

    -jason
  • Does anyone know the kernel version included?

    What I would love is the ability to choose, during install time, a precompiled kernel with ATAPI support. Yeah I could go and compile it myself afterwards, but with the increasing number of people with CD burners, this should be an option.

    Maybe another approach would be a Wizard for kernel compilation/configuration - hide the fact that there is any recompilation going on.
  • It is. I just remember having a problem with 7.0 on the screen where one selects individual packages. The way 7.0 handled things, It was not immediately obvious that I had selected/deselected a package properly.
  • And for those who will be using the graphical installer...
    It appears that they've listened to at least some of the feedback and have really improved their installer. (Especially in the area of package selection.)

  • Good old days? I quote from a newspaper article about Lincon's death: "Details unclear. There is much confusion here."


    It rhymes! I envy that reporter for that statement. I'd almost bet that that rhyme is a major reason the reporter wrote that article.

  • Problem is, the mandrake kernel is relatively heavily patched, and you need to be sufficiently with it to apply all the extra patches yourself (such as supermount) if you don't want to lose functionality when compiling from a different source tree. Mdk Initscripts also make a stab at detecting what features you've compiled in, and disable various things based on support - whcih means that you're more likely to be able to boot successfully, but a novice user who manages to recompile from a virgin kernel tarball will be left wondering, for example, why he can't mount floppies just by clicking on them anymore...

  • They already thought of this. They use rpmdrake. It will automatically take care of the dependencies for you. If you remove a program others depends on it will tell you what will also be removed and you can decide. The converse is also true for adding components. It really is very easy to do. You start rpmdrake and it builds a complete list of all rpms you have and where they are. If you elect to install a package it tells you which cd to insert and fixed all deps.
  • Found here [mail-archive.com]:


    we didn't announce to flood the ftp server.


    And now it's probably too late.
    --

  • Mandrake's website now says "We are very pleased to announce the immediate availability of Linux-Mandrake 7.1 (Helium)"

    Terry
  • Not to mention it's so wonderfully compiled with pgcc. Or at least I think it still is, heh. Oink,
  • You almost have half a point, except that you seem to forget that slashdot is not a journalistic community, It is a nerds community. It was started by a bunch of CS geeks, not a bunch of journalism majors. I wish slashdot itself would mirror articles before they post. (but with recent lawsuits...) I sometimes wish they would take the more professional approach but then we already have (cnet, msnbc, zdnet), and the moment they go "professional", it will no longer be slashdot, of course I will be singing "Sayonara and many more people will be too".

  • Perhaps they shuld use a truly private directory on the mirrows, then mv it across on the third stroke.

    It's a nice idea, but it also requires extra effort on the mirror admin's part. Most of the sites will be mirroring more than just Mandrake and don't have the time to implement this for every package mirrored.
  • Seriously though, it's been frozen since the middle of January. Isn't it time to release it already? What's the holdup? Debian developers please reply!

    I'm not a debian developer(though have been thinking about it), but this page [debian.org] has information about release-critical bugs (i assume in potato/frozen), currently at 83.
  • Even obvious AC trolls, FIRST P0ST and inane derrogatory comments about people (j00 5uX0R H0M0, etc...)? Shit like that deserves far less than a 0. I can stand the hit to my karma - but if it's abuse of the M2 system (like you are claiming), then that's unfair to everyone...

    I usually moderate upward, but if I see a bunch of crap sitting there, sure - I'll blast it out...

    You are probably a troll, too - posting as AC... no attempt to back up your words with a userid? Or maybe you're just blowing smoke (IHBT)?
  • Yes - the default should be 1 instead of two... it doesn't seem to matter too much to some, though...

    The other 'problem' is the loss of massive amounts of karma after moderating. I mod'd last week, and since then I've magically lost a number of points each of the last few days...

    Others have experienced this, too...
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=lostkarma
  • So if I mod 4 good posts up, and 1 troll down, I lose 8-10 karma points? Hmm, sounds like a load of $h17 to me...
  • I feel your pain. I just finished installing 7.0 today, after I upgraded from 6.1. All well, with a cable modem, it won't be too bad.
  • >journalistic responsibility has to extend to >thinking about the ability of servers to take >an increased hit before they are ready. I don't need slashdot to hold my hand and decide for me when the servers are "ready" They can tell me what they know and I will decide for myself what I consider to be responsible behaviour. We are not (all) children. I actually agree with most of what you say but I think I'm right when I say that (at least) a significant number of people do not want you or me or slashdot deciding for them what is of is not responsible. MartinG.
  • Well, i happen to have a pioneer 24x ide cdrom. (pioneer dr-a24x) Adding "hdc=cdrom" in the lilo prompt fixed it and let me install and run linux just fine. (have worked with any distro i have tried but corel linux which didnt let me add boot time arguments during install) And after i stuck it into lilo.conf it have worked flawlessly, making me only have to deal with it when i was upgrading/reinstalling the system.

    "Microsoft Windows brings you the power of yesterdays computers TODAY" --Unknown
  • They say it has started to appear on some mirrors (which does not equate to say go fetch it from the main site). As long as you got your +2 insightful eh Bojay?
  • Perhaps this should be moderated down as there is no such thing as a 696 computer, nor Mandrake 4.5 (started at 5.2).
  • Ok, i'd like those scripts (post the link here or send it to me by email to dodge the /. effect)
    And as downloader, may i suggest wget? it works well, supports resuming (the -c option) and is included by default in almost any distro.

    "Now you can see that evil will triumph, because good is dumb!"
  • To tell the truth, I would rather have the news system that is hunky dory and polite. In my opinion, to many idealistic jackasses have made a mockery of the concept that "people deserve the news NOW." I think striving to deliver the truth, (or in this case not making an annoyance of yourself to mirror sites) is more important than getting the "scoop" on something. Slashdot has a lot of power. They cannot act like a small site does and post things without some forsight.
  • Sorry, it's hard. The damn default is +2.
  • Wow. I've been dual-booting Redhat 6.0 with Windows 2000 -- I want to expand my horizons beyond just Windows stuff -- and I've been pretty happy with it.

    I'd been planning to upgrade to Mandrake when kernel 2.4 was released -- now it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to hold out that long. :) Guess it's time to visit cheapbytes...

    Out of curiosity (and slightly off topic, sorry), anyone know how hard it is to set up a voodoo3 with XFree 4? A friend of mine is running SuSe 6.4 on a Voodoo Banshee and wasn't able to get XFree 4 working with it at all.

  • You know exactly what would happen.

    An entire different set of people would be bitching about how "this is *such* old news, Slashdot is so far behind, LinuxNews posted that X(random amount of time) ago".

    It's a no-win situation. Post news early, and people will complain about the site being slashdotted. Wait, and people will complain about how you're not "cutting edge" anymore and how "behind the times" you are.

    So whaddaya gonna do?

    john
  • But the 7.1 distro is on the Norway site. And it's not labeled hydrogen.
  • i was jsut at the PRIMARY ftp site for linux mandrake and there were only 43 out of a possible 250 people logged on. maybe that means something


    "The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear." [microsoft.com]

  • Re:Why RedHat? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mandrake was born out of the controversy concerning the QT license originally used with KDE. At the time RedHat and alot of mainstream distro's refused to include KDE because it wasn't GPL compatible. Mandrake came about because some of us didn't really care about the QT license at all and we "liked" KDE, so they basically took their distro of choice, included KDE with it and then repackaged/sold it as Linux-Mandrake. Mandrake 5.x-6.0 were really nothing more than RH with KDE, from that point they started some of their own development projects and even took an active role in letting their userbase help develop the upcoming distro's (Cooker). Now while it remains 99.9% fully compatible with RH, Mandrake is a true distro of it's own right, and a damn fine one at that.

  • Mandrake 7.1 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What's New: RiserFS XFree 4.0 Installer has been slickified even more. Problems: This is the same iso as the BETA3. After the Beta 3 was released there were still bug reports on the cooker (Development) list about: Voodoo 3 problems. ATA 66 Hard Drives working correctly. Some mail server configuration issues. Other than that it's a slick ass distro. (Typing this message from 7.1B3 install right now.)

  • Quick, make new ads! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    On the front page of /. when I first saw the 7.1 announcement, I got this banner ad [slashdot.org] for Mandrake 7.0. :)
  • "Grub is now supported as the default bootloader, no more 1024-cylinder limit"

    The 1024 cylinder limit of LILO was fixed and reported back in April [slashdot.org]

    Of course I can't get the new LILO to work. I have a 8GB Win2k Pro installation, followed be a 8GB Win2K Adv. Srvr. installation. I cannot get LILO to boot them independently. The best that I managed with the new "LINEAR" option was a boot error message from Win2k Adv. Srvr. telling me that some file in the system32 directory was missing or corrupt. So here I am, back to chaining my Microsoft operating systems together through boot.ini. I DO NO want them to see each other... it causes to many problems with badly written software that makes assumptions about driver letters, etc. Win2K won't even let me change or remove the driver letters on these drives :(

    Maybe "grub" will allow me to use my machine the way that I want....
  • Thanks for the info. I think that confirms my point -- namely, the importance of a package is arbitrarily selected by Mandrake.

    This slider concept might make sense within highly focused areas ("C Development") or perhaps even within broader use-for-machine categories ("Graphics Workstation") but it's difficult to the point of impossible for a whole Linux distro. How important are the following packages: bind, gimp, emacs, lsof, apmd, pump/dhcpcd?

    --

  • I don't think this is user-friendly at all. It might appear so on the surface, but it leaves the user with no concept of what might be installed on their system, leading to long term confusion.

    Imagine if this feature were available when buying a car:

    Sales system: "100%: Car costs $16,000".
    You: "Oh my, I can't afford that. Let's slide
    the bar down to 50%."

    Later, when it starts to rain, you find that you've only got a windshield wiper on the passenger side. So, you pull over to the side of the road, and discover that there's no hazard lights either. Hey! There aren't any lights on this car at all! Luckily, brakes seem to have made the cut.... hope the airbags are there....

    --

  • ALSA. *3* IDEs. Roxen. XFree86 V4. SDL and some apps for it. Updated PySol (now over 300 games). QT-2. Eterm on the KDE menus (which are all much better organised). ixterm. Gphoto. Roby. ocaml. oscope. QCAD. Lotsa other stuff.

    Still on GIMP 1.0.4 though, would like to see that updated.

    Well into two CDs' worth in Cooker now, makes over 2G in /usr when installed. "Praise the Lord for fat uplinks!" (-:
  • If you want ease of upgrading, use Debian [debian.org]. Apt is really nifty. Here's an example of how to completely (well, except for your kernel :) upgrade your system to the latest development version:

    Change all occurrences of 'stable' to 'unstable' in /etc/apt/sources.list (it doesn't mean it will crash, it means that things are constantly being updated). Only have to do this once. apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade

    and sit back and watch the magic :).

  • Hopefully they included the numerous updates for security that they've been doing as of late. And also fixed the slightly broken install of PostFix. There was something else that was broken but I can't remember what else I had to fix.
  • If you choose the expert install option then it allows you to choose exactly the packages you want to install. The Customized option allows you a little less flexibility in what you want install, but insulates the inexperienced user from what might be a very confusing experience. The Recommended option is even more limited.
  • When I downloaded Mandrake 7.0, I first pulled Mandrake/base, which has the package lists. Then I wrote a set of Perl scripts to read in a copy of the complete package list from which you can remove or comment out packages you don't want. The scripts checked the dependencies, created new copies of all the package lists (comps*), and produced an HTML list of all the packages you've chosen to download. Then I took the HTML file to work (fast connection) and used GetRight (still looking for a Linux replacement) to grab all the files at night). I'd imagine it would be even more useful to modem users. If anyone's interested, I can release the scripts. I'd prefer if Mandrake actually maintained them, so I don't have to keep up with their crazy installation scheme.
  • But it is a good idea. If you are a new user and don't have the space for everything then you can install as much as you have space for and not need to know what you need. It's a tradeoff but it could be very useful.

    --Ben

  • Go to Mandrakes FTP page [linux-mandrake.com] and in big bold letters they have:


    Linux-Mandrake 7.1 is not yet available. Please wait

    Whoever posted this article was on crack.
  • Oh, I get it. They should put that on the moderation, or make 1 the default instead of 2.
  • Um... MandrakeUpdate doesn't update NEARLY as many packages as are upgraded between distributions. Since the time I installed Mandrake, I've only seen a couple dozen packages on there, ever.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
  • Mandrake is a distribution of Linux, sort of like RedHat, but with certain improvements. One of the best is that they compile EVERYTHING for Pentium or better processors. They have also put a lot of thought into hardware detection and a simple installation process.

    I recommend it.

  • I used the beta version for little over a month before weird stuff started happening. One day I logged on and noticed that my computer was only recognizing 64 MB, I couldn't get ftpd working ever again, and mpg123 (via gqmpeg) failed to ever work again.

    Instead of solving these three 'minor' problems, I just said, "screw the beta-version!" and went with the newest RedHat. I've always been partial to gnome anyway and installing a new distro is easier then figuring what was wrong with all that stuff.

    I know that both RedHat and Mandrake offer gnome and KDE, but you gotta stick with your roots man.
    ...and your roots say...
    gnome=RedHat
    KDE=mandrake

    --
  • I upgraded from 6.1 to 7.0 and found that 7.0 was even more stable. Somethings that used to crash misteriously didn't anymore, but a number of applications just wouldn't start up under 7.0 and it took me a lot of mucking around to fix it. I still haven't got xkobo to work and that one of my favorite games. I read up on what new in 7.1 and it's mainly improvements to the install program (like I really need that when I've already installed it). The other thing it includes is a Beta of KDE version 2.0 personaly I am going to wait until KDE 2.0 is released properly and then get the version of Mandrake which includes that.
  • (It seems Mandrake only has two mirror sites; this one [sunsite.uio.no] and this one [sunet.se]).

    Oops, my mistake. Those are the sites mirrors are supposed to mirror from. The official list of mirror sites is here [linux-mandrake.com].
    ---

  • ATA66 hard drives working correctly.

    Hey, that's great news! Finally, a Linux distribution that's easily available and is compatible with my computer's hardware. My computer has an ABit BE6 motherboard with four IDE buses: two ATA-66 and two ATA-33. The ATA-66 buses are controlled by an onboard HPT366 controller (by High Point Technologies). The ATA-33 buses work just like the two IDE buses in most "normal" PCs. I have five IDE peripherals, so I can't just use one set of buses. My main hard drive is ATA-66-compatible and is very fast, so it's a shame not to use that capability. Most versions of Linux can only "see" the ATA-33 buses.

    I bought Corel Linux version 1.0 but couldn't install or use it except on the two ATA-33 buses on my motherboard. Unfortunately, all my non-hard-drive IDE peripherals (interal Zip drive, CD burner, etc.) are normally connected to the ATA-33 buses, so I had to mess around with the connections inside. It really sucks to have to have to mess around with the innards of my computer to switch between Windows and Linux. (I would have gotten ABit's Gentus Linux, but I don't have time to download a huge 650-meg CD image and anyway, I heard that the licence agreement with Gentus Linux violates the GPL (is this true?).)

    So, has anyone tried installing Mandrake 7.1 on an ABit motherboard with peripherals on both the ATA-66 and ATA-33 buses? How did it go?

    Er, hang on... The Anonymous Coward just said ATA-66 hard drives work, not necessarily the ABit motherboard... Well, still... Does it work with ABit?

    I'm tired of using Windows98 all the time... I hope Mandrake will be my saviour...

  • Could you /. article posters put a little more information in about Linux topics? I personally use Solaris as my work and home UNIX environment, and don't know what the hell some of these Linux specific things are.

    Just a little line like 'Mandrake is a package of the Linux environment that is geared towards friendly home and office use, see www.mandrake.org for details.' would be real nice for a change.

    /. is supposed to be news for nerds, not news for Linux-only nerds. :-) Many of us non-Linux geeks will recognize things like Red Hat, Debian, and sometimes Suse, but that is generally the extent.
  • I originally bought Mandrake 6.5. When I upgraded to 7, I tried to find just the update on Mandrake's site but could not. So I ended up buying a whole new set of CD's. I would have rather just downloaded the new stuff and installed that, even if it was more complicated, just to avoid having to push 600 MB of files around.

    I took another look at Mandrake's site now, and in their download area, it clearly states You must at least download the "Mandrake/" and "images/" trees from the "7.0/" directory. It's about 600 Mb.

    Why are huge downloads necessary if you are just upgrading? Do I have to get on a bunch of mailing lists to figure out what is new and hunt down those files myself?

    Its a nice system, but they should make it easier to keep current.

  • They've added Helix stuff, a new QT, XF86 4.0, new versions of the Mandrake tools (DiskDrake, etc.), and better hardware support. Still not enough to make me switch from Slackware. According to P.V., they're getting ready to start testing for a release.
  • Good old days? I quote from a newspaper article about Lincon's death: "Details unclear. There is much confusion here."

    Thing is, the good old days weren't. There has always been ambition on the part of the media to get the best scoop. Always will be. /. is no different. We have a few hundred thousand free software afficandos looking for a data rush or whatever, so /. gives them a chance to get at what they want.

    This is no worse than crowds of people flocking around a paperboy who is crying, "Extra! Extra!" It isn't just /., it's just that /. has a larger audience than many sites, so the effect is much more visible. Watch the usage on kernel.org whenever some rumor drifts across the digital wind. While there is something to be said about letting mirrors "gear up", you can always set it up so that the mirror gets priority access to the new version over the anon logins.

    /. provides a service: it gives the people what they want when they want it. In this case, "the people" want a peek at the latest software, and /. tells they when they hear it coming.

  • why is it more irresponsible than for mirror sites to allow downloading of incomplete distros? It's human nature to want to grab as soon as possible. There are any number of simple ways that the high priests could hide the mirrors till they are ready. convincing a small number of high priests should be a lot simpler than reeducating tens of thousands of new downloaders... I plan to grab it just as soon as I can.

    ----
  • Does anyone have any *good* reasons why so many distributions (such as Mandrake) use RedHat as a base? As I see it, there are two ways that RedHat differentiates itself from other distros: package management and installation (both of which are closely related).

    The RedHat installation as far as I can tell is not that different from any other menu based installation. And their addition of Disk Druid might be a step up from fdisk (depending on who you talk to) but really isn't all that different from cfdisk.

    As for package management, I have used rpm (.rpm files), dpkg (.deb files), and .tgz (slackware) packages. rpm and dpkg clearly beat .tgz files in terms of ease of install/uninstall and dependencies but I really think that dpkg is superior to rpm (my main reason being better dependencies and that nice update checking feature).

    So, basically if the RedHat installer is nothing that great and dpkg beats rpm why do so many distros (Mandrake being the most mainstream) copy RedHat? And if you don't believe me, go to any distro list and see how many are based on RedHat.

    By the way, I realize that two of the more recent distros have been based on debian (Storm and Corel).

  • My feeling is that users who are able to pull out the CD and install specific apps (including resolving dependencies) are not the ones who would be intimidated by selecting packages (or broad groups thereof).

    Another way when my analogy fails is that most people know enough about what should be in an automobile to notice if the windshield wipers are gone. But what if the selector decides not to install something less obvious -- a timing chip, or some sensor or another? ("It's just a tiny little sensor; it can't be very important.")

    And it's not just about critical things. A new user who is too intimidated to go through lists of packages is likely to learn what's available by looking through the application menus, or maybe by typing (at the advice of a friend) "ls /usr/bin". The people whom this is supposed to help are going to be more lost later, because it'll be harder for them to know what they could have. I learned a lot about Linux during my first few installs by reading the descriptions of every package that I didn't immediately recognize. Sure, it took more time, but it was worth it -- ultimately reducing the learning curve.

    Not knowing what's on the system also makes the job harder for the people who have to support the machine. This is part of why Red Hat's base component set is so large.

    --

  • Pioneer sucks (Score:3)

    by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @04:09PM (#1023749)
    I had a Pioneer 24x cdrom and I had major problems with it. Not only did any distribution not read the CD during the installation, it wouldn't even boot off of the CD! (btw, win98 wouldn't boot off of it either). I also had lots of problems with it just reading stuff from it. It often made the system unstable and caused all kinds of other intresting problems.

    Later on I found out that this is typical of *all* Pioneer cdroms. It is well documented in the Linux kernel documentation. Apparently Pioneer cdroms violate the ATAPI protocol somehow which makes them very unreliable. They still work with windoze because it does not try to multitask them. I got rid of this piece of crap a long time ago, bought a 32x Creative and never had problems since. I don't know if their DVD-roms or SCSI cdroms have similar problems, but I am definitely never buying any more Pioneer crap -- one was enough for me.


    ___

  • Re:weirdest install concept i've ever heard of (Score:3)

    by m3000 ( 46427 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @05:44PM (#1023750)
    On the Mandrake Newbie mailing list this was discussed. Here's what one of the Mandrake people said about it:


    Re: [newbie] DISCUSSION: My first Suggestion (Installer Problem)Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:00:23 +0200 (CEST)
    From: Denis HAVLIK
    To: newbie@linux-mandrake.com
    Reply to: newbie@linux-mandrake.com

    :~>Here is my first input:
    :~>
    :~>The install program is very slick. However at one point in the install,
    :~>after you have partitioned the drive you are shown a slider bar and asked
    :~>to pick how much software you want to install. (you choose the amount of
    :~>megabytes to install). I find this very confusing. If i pick 800mb what
    :~>is being installed? Am I getting all the packages I need??

    Here is what happens: We have a list of packages with their "value". Very
    valuable packages have number asociated with them which is close to 100,
    while "junk" packages have a number close to 0 (well, junk packages do not
    make it into the distro, but you get the picture)

    When you move the slider to left, you efectively "raise the bar", so that
    packages with lower "priority" drop out of the selection.

    Personally, I think this is a great way to make a compromyse between
    having some controle over instalation and not having to browse trough
    1000+ packages at install (horror!)

    What we miss at the moment is a tool which would use a symilar logic to
    help you install|uninstall packages on already installed system, but Pixel
    is working on it right now.

    cu
    Denis
    --
    ------------------------------------------------ -----
    Dr. Denis Havlik
    Mandrakesoft ||| e-mail: denis@mandrakesoft.com
    Quality Assurance (@ @) (private: denis@havlik.org)
    -------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------- -----

  • Re:No news on website. (Score:3)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:54PM (#1023751)
    Actually, not anymore. Mandrake 7.0+ has branched off RedHat, and 7.1 is QUITE a bit different from Redhat. (It has ReiserFS, it has XFree 4.0, and the other packages are up to date.)

  • Re:Why RedHat? (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero@reCOMMAdhat.com minus punct> on Tuesday June 06, 2000 @04:00AM (#1023752) Homepage
    Here's why I based BeroLinux on Red Hat Linux (quite far back, I know) even though I had tried pretty much every distribution that was available:
    • Red Hat was (and definitely still is) a nice distribution to start from
    • Unlike the other commercial distributions, it's freely usable.
    • While dpkg has some advantages, rpm is much more of a standard format (most packages that are not part of any distribution are packaged as rpms if they're available in packaged form at all), it's easier to program for, and it's easier and faster to build packagages for.
    • dpkg has a few features too many - it is hard to build a good distribution that is based on Debian but doesn't have Debian's post-install stuff, which is sometimes hard for a newbie to handle

    I've probably had a few more reasons - but these are the most important ones.

  • weirdest install concept i've ever heard of (Score:4)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:50PM (#1023753) Homepage
    The beta had an extremely strange user interface concept in its installer. After you were done selecting packages, you were given a dialog box with a slider: "Installing 100% of the packages will take N MB". Changing the slider lowered the percentage of packages to be installed based on their (arbitrarily selected by Mandrake?) relative "importance". So if it were going to take 1.5GB to install everything, but you only had 750MB, you could drag the slider down to 50%.

    It's a very interesting idea, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good one! Has this made it to the final release?

    --

  • You almost have a point.. (Score:4)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:26PM (#1023754)
    Except... from an idealistic technical point of view, (as in, how we did it in the old days) you found things by watching ftp sites...
    so.. if mandrake 7.1 is appearing on mirrors, and you want to bitch about people announcing this fact before mandrake does...
    if mandrake or the mandrake mirror community cared, they would have a different way of mirroring things, whereby you couldn't actually see things until the transfer is complete.

    Oh.. and as for /.ing it... I bet a lot of people don't rush out to download mandrake 7.1 immediately....

  • About the /. effect. (Score:4)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:08PM (#1023755)
    People who think that /. has every right to post messages before people have a time to mirror piss me off. There is a thing in this country called "responsible journalism." Since the journalistic community these days is in such a rut, I'm not surprised that most of you haven't heard about it. In traditional media, responsible journalism takes the form of corroberating your evidence to make absolutely sure that you're giving the correct news. Until recently, all respectable establishments did this. Those that didn't are called tabloids. Because of their rush to get the dirt, tabloids often post too early about a story. If it turns out to be true, then the tabloids will often have the news before any of the papers, but if it is false, then it ultimately hurts those that the story is about. In the new electronic media, journalistic responsibility has to extend to thinking about the ability of servers to take an increased hit before they are ready. It is analagous to allowing a defendant to prepare his case before the prosecution starts. In the good old days, the media had responsibility. They would rarely post a news story about, say, a president before he had made a public statement about the situation. The rumors and such were left to the tabloids. This situation is similar. You don't attack somebody (the /. effect is certainly an attack, though unintentional) before you give them a chance to prepare. It is just not decent. /. posting new files before the mirrors have a chance to gear up is not just impolite (or I'm I just a dinosaur and curtousy is passe?) it is also detrimental to the community, which wants to be able to download the software.

  • Number of Linux Distributions Surpasses Number of (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:58PM (#1023756)
    Number of Linux Distributions Surpasses Number of Users

    Somewhere in California - At 8:30 PDT with the release of Snoopy Linux 2.1 and Goober Linux 1.0, the number of Linux distributions finally surpassed the number of actual Linux users.
    "We've been expecting it for some time," Merrill Lynch technology analyst Tom Shayes said, "but this is a little sooner than most expected. We've seen explosive growth in the number of Linux distributions, in fact my nephew just put out Little Tommy Linux 1.1 last week."

    Long time Linux guru Bob Tallman said, "This is great for the open source movement. I have 7 different versions installed on my computer at home. Some guys I know have over 30."

    Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said, "Microsoft will have to play catch up with the number of versions that Linux has, but we think we can do it. With the break up of Microsoft imminent that will instantly double the number of Windows versions available."

    Microsoft also announced the release of Pocket PC for Workgroups, Windows GT special edition and Windows 2000 - the Director's Cut with special code added by Bill Gates himself that wasn't in the original release.

    http://bbspot.com/News/2000/4/linux_distros.html

  • What's New in Mandrake 7.1 (Score:5)

    by QBasic_Dude ( 196998 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @02:39PM (#1023757) Homepage
    • i810 based video cards now supported
    • Wheel mouse is now fully functionnal with most applications (netscape, gnome, KDE, etc.)
    • Better powersaving support on Laptop computers
    • Enhanced USB support for modems, printers, Zip drives
    • Better symmetrical multi processing support
    • All Helix Code GNOME improvements incorporated
    • Enhanced default settings for GNOME & KDE environments
    • Modified Qt library (foundation of KDE applications) supporting Chinese, Korean, Japanese
    • New menu system. Menus look now the same under every graphical environments and updates automatically when new packages are installed.
    • System organization benefits from reordered packages in coherent groups, usable by most package-management tools, including RpmDrake.
    • DrakBoot allows for easy graphical configuration of boot loader (lilo and grub)
    • DrakBootdisk, a new graphical boot-floppy creation tool.
    • PrinterDrake (printer configuration) now supports more printer types and options.
    • DrakX now fully handles multiple-CD installation.
    • Linux4Win now runs automatically when CDROM is inserted under Windows (autorun)
    • DrakX user interface has been improved to ease installation : User can now choose an icon representing his/her user under Linux-Mandrake, more powerfull packages selection options, etc.
    • Installation can now detect high resolution video modes and use them during install
    • Urpmi, the text-mode rpm tool now handles local rpm installation.
    • If Windows is present on the computer, DrakFont gives the user access to his Windows fonts under Linux.
    • Distribution is now shipped with a fully functionnal rescue floppy.
    • Grub is now supported as the default bootloader, no more 1024-cylinder limit.
    • Now includes brand new XFree 4.0 servers, with new modular architecture.
    • For professional environments, the new journalized file system ReiserFS is included
    • Main distribution is now on 2 CDROMs, the second one also including contribs.
    • Koffice and QT2 beta now available in contribs.
    • GnuCash, personal finance manager, now included.


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