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Mandriva Businesses

Mandrake 8.0 Comes Out 222

Posted by Hemos from the here-comes-the-submissions dept.
Boban Acimovic writes "New Mandrake 8.0 is finally out. Official announcement will come today, but new ISO files are already on some of mirrors. Main improvements are kernel =2.4.3, KDE =2.1.1, GNOME 1.4, Nautilus 1.0, Evolution 0.9, XFree86 =4.0.3, RPM 4.0, improved installer with pictures and other nice stuff. Enjoy!" Thanks to Gael Duval, from Mandrake for letting me know - the main features are listed as well as the new features page. But one of the cooler parts is a new part with Mandrake-Linux that will let you donate to the Free Software project of your choice in Mandrake - that's at at Linux-Mandrake.com. Update: 04/19 12:27 PM by H :Newsforge has got a article with more mirrors as well.
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Mandrake 8.0 Comes Out More

Mandrake 8.0 Comes Out

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  • Re:anti-aliasing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try http://www.kde.org [kde.org]. Right now, most of the apps that support AA text use the QT toolkit (e.g. Konqueror).

  • You are so clueless (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First, Mandrake was forked from Red Hat, but that was years ago. They build their distro on "cooker", their own development branch, not on Red Hat's latest release.
    Second, the fact that their release is right after Red Hat's is purely coincidental.
    Third, Mandrake supports free software projects, for example they pay the salaries of David Faure (KDE hacker), Jeff Garzig (kernel janitor) and I think they are looking at hiring a Gnome hacker.

    A happy SuSE user.

  • Oh no (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yet another Mozilla syndrome. ("Yeah, I know last release sucked beyond all belief, but the latest nightly builds have changed everything, try them!")

  • Re:Yay! My favorite desktop flavor! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But even a fully updated debian box doesn't have software that has been available for months. What good is an "update" if the updates are all obsolete?
  • > BTW: I noticed a tiny bug in slashcode. That link I submitted above has no space in it between winmag.ne[here]t.

    No you did not. It is a feature to avoid us trolls to destroy the formatting of /. by posting very long words.

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • Re:Mandrake 8.0RC1? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    *Very big* difference. mod_ssl and php are not working in RC1. I know, I package them ;-) Too lazy to login.
  • We are just testing to see if two big announcements in one week can bring complete internet infrastructure down. LOL! .-)

  • Awesome! (Score:1)

    by deno ( 814 )
    And I told Kadjo about diference between kernel and Xfree yesterday. .-) Don't worry, it's still April 2001 and 2.4.3 kernel.
  • You have only been planing to send the email, but dosens of other people have actually been DEMANDING this donation page since we published the MandrakeFreak [mandrakeforum.com].
  • Nay, I don't think you will change the club: as long as you are happy with BSD, you'll probably stick to it. But I do think that many other people will go for "MandrakeSecurity", simply because it will be easy to use as a firewall.

    As of "security audit" question, that's an ongoing quest. All linux vendors spend more-and-more time auditing the code, that's why we have so many security updates this year.

  • nvidia drivers are where they belong: on commercial CDs. You do not expect us to put these binary-only bastards in the main distribution, do you?

    But, don't worry: all nvidia cards work out of the box, you simply don't have full 3D acceleration until you have installed nvidia drivers.
  • Just wait untill you see our new "MandrakeSecurity", you may change your mind about the firewalling and/or "servers" part. .-)
  • Mandrake 7.1 supports reiserfs on / just fine. Or at least, if it doesn't then I'm really luck since I've been using it and it's been rock solid. :-)
  • Great plan; too bad Mandrake is based on RH.
  • As subject... I tried beta 3 after being happy with Mandrake 7 and 7.1, but found the installer to be very buggy. Half the time it would stop with a random error message, sometimes it would miss questions out, and I never got X working properly.

    Is the release version okay? (Although I'm reluctant to change now I have Debian working okay!)
  • Unless you're using IMAP which is really pretty broken still... (even in nightlies).
  • This is not a way to run a successful business in the long run.

    It depends on how you define "successful". Is Mandrake ever going to be a huge multi-billion dollar corporation? Probably not. Can they make enough money to fund themselves and their activities going forward and have a huge following of devoted users who love what they do? Most likely yes.

    I think most Mandrake users would consider the company very successful by the latter senario.
  • ... Has anyone tried doing a freshen update from RH6.2 to this?

    I'd like to move my home server over to Mandrake, but I need to find a big enough dump medium to do really tricky stuff, plus my situation (I boot off the BP6 primary master ATA66, where IIRC tboot support for highpoint chips isn't "supported") is a little too custom for a reinstall to be worth the hours of tweaking (pulling the HDD, putting it on the secondary onboard IDE, doing the install, disabling the secondary onboard IDE, booting) that a simple RH->RH freshen would obviate.

    Your Working Boy,
    - Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
  • Oh well, I'll save the download for my new job then.. Hopefully the mad rush to the mirrors will have petered out somewhat..

    Thanks tho! (and I don't worry, anything critical on that box is built from source anyway, and it's fairly tight...)
    Your Working Boy,
    - Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
  • I'm just interested in the built-for-586 and up stuff.. Maybe RH can generate a 'modern PC'
    build?

    I'll probably go with the RH7.1, as soon as the mirrors stop locking up :p

    Your Working Boy,
    - Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
  • Awesome, thanks!

    Mandrake80-inst.iso: ETA: 77:56 6.25/645.91 MB 140.09 kB/s

  • The last thing we need to do is legitimize a rogue patch. IMO it was a bad move for them to release "gcc 2.96". Suffice it to say, I'm disappointed. I switched to Mandrake *because* Redhat used the rogue patch, and now Mandrake do the same.
  • The ftp.linux.cz [linux.cz] has Mandrake 8.0 as well. Feel free to slashdot my mirror, it has lots of bandwidth even with Red Hat release downloads in progress.


    -Yenya
    --

  • I've used RedHat for a long time, but I'd much rather use KDE than Gnome (I don't like the style of the GUI and it has some annoying inconsistencies which KDE doesn't). I like Mandrake's approach in that they're pretty up to date (I'm using this for notebooks and desktops, so features are a lot more important than a server installation), they use RPM (which makes my life easier since it's becoming the de-facto standard, it seems) and they're very KDE friendly... I'm starting to get the feeling that it's time to move to a different distribution.

    How easy is it to do an upgrade from, say, RH7 to Mandrake 8? I've yet to find conclusive evidence that it works well and I don't want to do a clean install (mostly due to laziness: Any extra time needed would be a big inhibitor).

    DS
  • Maybe you're not aware of it but Mandrake contributes quiet a bit to the community as well. Have you looked at their projects page? And have you tried urpmi? It's the rpm equivalent of apt-get. I don't see that anywhere in Redhat (granted, I haven't used Redhat in a while). I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Redhat, but Mandrake differs greatly from them and IMHO, they are vastly superior.
  • I just saw 8.0RC1 yesterday on the mirrors and burned the ISOs. Is there any difference between that and the final release? Since there is only a one-day difference, I can't imagine it would be much if anything.
  • At least post a copy of their mirror page.
  • java also seems not to install !

    I had problems with the redhat betas and this mandrake boxen is really takeing the p^&*

    IBM will sort it out though dont trust Sun is what I have learnt in doing java on linux
    (havent tryed the 1.3.1 tho will have a look soon)
  • like I said they ship 4.0.2 and redhat ship 4.0.3

    so which has the more up to date ?

    work it out this was said in my first post

    regards

    john jones

  • erm I know you dont provide them

    theyll work without a problem NOPE

    error /usr/bin/cut not found

    please try and have some experance before you tell me "oh just apt /download rpm from here" you have not downloaded them with this version or you would get errors !

    oh and linux 2.4.3 has massive probs with FS cruption but hey that dont matter !

    regards

    john jones

  • why has mandrake fallen behind

    did they bais what they did not what redhat was doing in the betas ?

    redhat seem to have newer versions of things like XFree86 and the only thing that makes mandrake good id the KDE support

    also the download cypto option has gone that was in 7
    so what gives ?

    regards

    john jones
  • Forgot to mention that they are working great in RC2 and final 8.0, of course!
  • Most of the tools that you mention are on *CD #2*. Apache is present, so is gdb, talk, uudecode, etc...

    So if you have problems compiling stuff, that's because you only installed the 1st one, or had the desktop version sold in Wal-Mart.

    And xchat is working, I use it all the time to go on IRC...

  • [root@ADVX jmdault]# rpm -qf /usr/lib/libdl.so glibc-devel-2.2.2-4mdk [root@ADVX jmdault]# cat /etc/mandrake-release Linux Mandrake release 8.0 (Traktopel) for i586 [root@ADVX jmdault]#
  • So I can directly use my old copy of Matlab (like in Mandrake 7.1, unlike Mandrake 7.2). It was an hassle having to dig around to get it.

    If not, it's one more reason to try Debian.
  • But I guess that /usr/lib/libdl.so is a sym link to /lib/libdl.so.2, not /lib/libdl.so.1, just like in Mandrake 7.2.
  • Nautilus support for Debian would be amazing. It would make locating software in debian format easier - and be even more incentive for novices to try the distribution. Unfortunately, Eazel has a tough time supporting even mdk rpms and the Mandrake system, which is in the Redhat family.

    "come off crisp and play up to the cynic
    clean and schooled right down to the minute"

  • Main improvements are kernel >=2.4.2, KDE >=2.1, GNOME 1.4, Nautilus 1.0

    Nautilus is a whore to manually install on Mandrake, so this is a godsend to the Mandrake update utility IMO. Does this mean Eazel [eazel.com] now fully supports the Mandrake architecture, or do users continue using Redhat rpms? I notice the Nautilus installers are still for Redhat exclusively.

    "come off crisp and play up to the cynic
    clean and schooled right down to the minute"

  • FYI, unlike some other companies Mandrakesoft lets people download the ISOs as soon as they are finished.

    "Some other companies" being SuSE, eh? :-)

    FYI, Red Hat is exactly like Mandrake in this respect, you can get the ISOs immediately when the new release is announced, and have to wait for some weeks if you want to buy the box. I really like that trust in the users.

  • In the past, it has been posted that Mandrake is "Redhat that works"

    I'm curious, what doesn't work in Red Hat? :)

    One nice thing with Mandrake vs. Redhat is they are quite good at supporting newer things without breaking old stuff. For example, I have had good USB support in Mandrake using the 2.2.17 kernel. 2.2 didn't have usb support directly. Mandrake backrevved the newer code into it....sweet stuff. Just yesterday I plugged a flash card reader into my USB port, and after probing the appropriate usb-store module (doesn't get done by default), I had a working flash device. That simple!

    Uh, Red Hat had 2.2-backported USB with Red Hat 7 too. So it's not exactly an advantage over the other.

  • Why would you try to do a RH 6.2 -> LM 8.0 upgrade on your server? Wouldn't it be better to do a RH 6.2 -> RH 7.1 upgrade?

    I'm serious. As other people have pointed out, RH -> LM upgrades are not supported and may not work at all, but RH -> RH upgrades are supported and are at least supposed to work flawlessly. And, for a server, I don't see any reason that makes it worth to switch to Mandrake if you already have a working Red Hat: Red Hat 7.1 and Linux-Mandrake 8.0 are very similar, closer than any other distros.

  • That must be a relatively new thing then.

    No, it has been that way for several years now. I believe it started with 6.0.

  • The first Red Hat install that works on my desktop is 7.1, because of the lack of support for ATA/66.

    You mean the previous lack of support, do you? :-)
    I'm glad it works for you now.

    Or how 'bout ReiserFS (in since at least 7.2)? Yeah, yeah, we know, it isn't good enough for a production environment. That's why we say it's a good DESKTOP distro. I ain't exactly serving the Yahoo! homepage. The power outage frequency here in SF means that I'm better off taking a little risk with Reiser than sticking with ext2.

    I'm not understanding the logic here. Is potential unrecoverable fs corruption better than e2fsck running once in a while at startup? I believe this is even more important for desktop systems, what's on my /home on my desktop is really important to me, but I can't afford expensive backup systems like in "production environments". So avoiding massive data corruption seems important to me in *any* environment.

  • I'm just interested in the built-for-586 and up stuff.. Maybe RH can generate a 'modern PC' build?

    Optimizing for 586 won't give you anything more than a few percents of performerance boost at the best for most packages. That's not even noticable. What's worse, compiler optimization is often a dangerous business, because you might actually optimize too much and introduce instability. The compiled program might turn up unpredictable under certain circumstances, even if it was fine when everything was normal. So if you care for stability (like all server administrators should do) then you really want to be careful about optimization.

    Red Hat doesn't optimize all packages for i586 or above. If you look at the CD, you will find that what they have optimized is where it's really needed and where optimization would really be noticable. I just browsed my CD and some packages that are optimized are packages like the kernel (available in i386, i586, i686 and enterprise flavor, the enterprise kernel is appearantly for systems with more than 4 GB RAM), glibc (called very often, so it makes sense to optimize that), and heavy computational packages like gzip and friends.

  • I have used just about every version of windows and loaded it on countles systems but I have also bought more versions of linux then I can remember even though I download the iso's as soon as they are available

    Isn't it odd that I steal the nonfree software and pay for the free software?

  • Is this pretty much the way everyone feels, or are people more dedicated to a particular distribution?
    I dont't know...
    I use Debian for the firewalling
    Debian for the servers
    and Debian for the desktop

    But I'm not dedicated to a particular distribution... or am I?
  • I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but look at these pages: http://www.mandrakeforum.org/article.php?sid=730&m ode=thread&order=0&thold=0 [mandrakeforum.org] and http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/18267.html [theregister.co.uk]

  • Re:tp (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's awfuly slow. Here's the feature list.

    Linux-Mandrake 8.0 provides a completely graphical installation process including "point and click" disk partitioning. Define disk partitions, including Windows partitions, with just a few clicks of the mouse. And, depending on the power of your system, a typical Linux-Mandrake 8.0 installation can be performed in 30 minutes or less. View demo [linux-mandrake.com]

    Automated hardware configuration Linux-Mandrake is widely known as the Linux distribution with the best hardware detection and configuration abilities. Thanks to built-in hardware detection, Linux-Mandrake can detect and automatically configure many of the most recent hardware devices. Kernel 4.0.3 provides enhanced support for USB, Infrared and FireWire devices, as well as better performance with AMD and Cyrix CPUs, support for sound cards based on ESS Solo1, NeoMagic 256AV/256ZX and VIA 82Cxxx chipsets, improved SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support, and much, much more. View demo [linux-mandrake.com]

    Simplified system maintenance The new user-friendly Mandrake Control Center makes it easy to manage and configure your Mandrake box. View a demo [linux-mandrake.com]


    Linux-Mandrake 8.0 main benefits

    ">Graphical environments
    The famous Linux desktops GNOME 1.4 and KDE 2.1.1 are fully integrated with Linux-Mandrake 8.0. Discover these and many other graphical environment such as WindowMaker, Sawfish, Enlightenment, and six other favorites.

    ">Installation
    DrakX is our famous Open Source graphical installer. DrakX provides built-in hardware detection and two installation modes for the various skill levels of users. Internet and network connections can be configured during installation with full support of ADSL and RNIS technologies. Additionally, nearly 50 different languages are available in DrakX.

    ">System maintenance
    With the new Mandrake Control Center, all tools are now located in one centralized environment. From this one location you can easily perform most system tasks including customizing the video display, setting the system clock, configure network settings, install & remove software, take control of running services, and dozens of other crucial system tasks.

    ">Kernel
    Linux-Mandrake provides the latest Linux kernel 2.4.3. You'll also find two customized kernels "kernel secure" (for servers that need added security) and "kernel enterprise" (for high workloads).

    ">Graphical interface
    Xfree86 4.0.3 is the default graphical server which includes many new features and support for additional video hardware.

    ">MandrakeUpdate
    Mandrake Update lets you easily update your system automatically through the Internet. You'll find MandrakeUpdate a great help for staying current with the latest security releases.

    ">MandrakeExpert
    Direct access from the desktop to MandrakeExpert.com [mandrakeexpert.com] (MandrakeSoft's e-support website) allows you to obtain answers directly from registered "experts". With the purchase of Linux-Mandrake 8.0 you'll receive 30, 60, or 90 days (depending on the product) of MandrakeExpert installation support with 48 hour response time. With Linux-Mandrake 8.0, you benefit from the help of the best Open Source experts in just a few clicks.

    ">Development tools
    Integrated Development environments: Linux-Mandrake includes the latest visual environments KDevelop, QtDesigner and Glade.
    Programming languages: Choose from over 10 programming languages including C, C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Fortran, Pascal, etc.
    All source code included: Open Source gives you the opportunity to view and modify, debug or add functionalities to software.

  • stormpkg is a nice gfxial installer for .debs - it can be found in unstable, if memory serves me correctly.

    not as slick as red-carpet, but more flexible.

    works for me, anyway.

    ...j
  • There is a world of difference AFAIK. However these differences are all in "bug-fixes" domain, and may not concern you at all. FYI, RC1 may be one day old for you, but it has been out since April 09-th [mandrakeforum.com]
  • I would be very surprised to see anything more up-to-date in RH than in LM distribution (well, I'm sure one could find a few proggies, but definitively not important ones like X). As for "download crypto" option, it's gone because it isn't needed anymore. "Crypto" has been legalised in USA, so we have no reason to omit it from ISOs anymore.
  • FYI, unlike some other companies Mandrakesoft lets people download the ISOs as soon as they are finished. This means that people will have ca. one monat of time for downloads before boxes hit the shops. This doesn't seam to hurt our sales, and we hope that at least some of people who download the ISOs will be happy to donate some money [mandrakeforum.com] for further developement of their favorite distribution.

    Hardly compliant with your paranoic idea, isn't it?

    Reality is much simpler: it's hard to find people ready to mirror tons of different ISOs and directories. If you are willing to offer your super-ultra ftp server as a mirror, feel free to contact us imediately.
  • Actually, the whole point of MandrakeFreq was to help people with limited bandwidth.

    You can find MandrakeFreq at Cheapbytes [cheapbytes.com] for $4.99.

    There is also supposed to be a list of other resellers at this page (according to the news at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ ) - http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/range/mandrak efreq [mandrakesoft.com] (As I write, that page is currently down, though (looks like they moved their webservers to a system on a faster network, which broke mandrakesoft.com)

  • Hi (Score:2)

    by Enahs ( 1606 )
    Looks like you managed to find an old screenshot of mine. That one's a few months old; maybe I'll update it later today. For now, though, keep in mind that that screenshot dates back to at least January (back when Cooker was still numbered 7.3.)
  • ...as long as you're tracking stable. If you track testing or unstable, there are some "issues" with the Ximian debs. There's a rather thorough discussion of the issues on the debian-user list. The general consensus seems to be if you're tracking unstable, stick with the unstable Gnome debs - if you're tracking testing, you're on your own.
  • 0.9 is pretty bad, but the latest nightlies ROCK. Seriously... go give them a try. Much, much more stable than anything that has come before. I'm using evo as my full time mailer now and (especially in the last week or so) am very, very happy with it.
  • Yeah. And the business model behind PBS is lame because they have to ask for handouts. The same is true with NPR.

    Just because you "ask for handouts" doesn't mean your business model is unsound. It simply means you prefer to give your stuff away. As I understand it, Mandrake is a rather successful company. They may not be making 40% profit margins, with 30,000 employees worldwide, and its two founders as two of the three richest people in the world. But that doesn't mean their business model is unsound. It simply means they have different goals.
  • I have been using the nightlies. They're just as bad. I'm not dissing anyone's work, Evolution has great potential. But I can't yet trust it to handle my everyday mail here at work, which is where I'd get the most benefit from it.
  • I know that Mandrake was based or is based on redhat, so I have a few questions maybe someone can answer here.

    IS Mandrake 8 using gcc 2.96 like RH or 2.95 like a good distro would?

    Can you upgrade a RH system to a Mandrake system?

    Is pppoe as easy to configure as ppp (and how easy to configure is ppp)?

    Lastly how is Mandrake about rearranging your system? I.E RH moved the /etc/rc.d/init.d scripts in RH 7.0 to /etc/init.d???

    How easy are the upgrades? I.E. Will I spend a day reconfguring my system??

    Seriously I am not trying to start a flame war I am looking for real answers here.....

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • This is my favorite desktop Linux flavor. I still prefer OpenBSD for the firewalling, and Slackware for the servers, but Mandrake is my favorite desktop flavor.

    Is this pretty much the way everyone feels, or are people more dedicated to a particular distribution?

    Don't forget to check http://www.linuxiso.org [linuxiso.org]...

    Jethro
  • As an AC has already pointed out, Mandrake forked from RedHat a few years ago, and develop seperately now.

    In addition to that, don't forget that Mandrake is compiled optimised for Pentium and better machines, which supposedly gives between a 5% to 30% performance boost. I don't have any figures to back up that claim (the boost, that is, not the optimisation :-) ), but it at least doesn't feel any slower than any other distro I've used and, being the most user-friendly, that's good enough for me.

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • I remember that the betas for Mandrake 8.0 had problems running on Via KT-133 chipset based motherboards. Has this issue been resolved in the release version?
  • At this rate we will be dealing with Mandrake 2001.0 in the year 2003. In this case this is a version number and not the year it was released ;-)
  • The ./ post mentions kernel >= 2.4.2 and XFree >= 4.02... Ever seen the >= symbol? It means "greater than or equal to".

    So there is no mistake in the original post.

  • How is the newbie firewall setup compared to the redhat 7.1 tool to setup simple firewalls?

    Mandrake 8 ships with Bastille [bastille-linux.org], a hardening and lockdown tool. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to set up, since you have to sit there and answer questions (some of them fairly complex) for half an hour.

    However, I did some contract work for MandrakeSoft a few weeks back and wrote a few things which are included in Mandrake 8, one of which is a program called TinyFirewall - it's a program which creates a configuration file for Bastille with a few easy questions (but it obviously far less powerful than the full Bastille). It's meant simply to firewall a single machine rather than a network.

    I also wrote a program (although I don't know what they're calling it in the release) which has the same basic idea (answer a few questions to configure Bastille) but rather than creating a small configuration file it chooses one from a bunch of premade config files (server paranoid, server moderate, server lax, workstation paranoid, workstation moderate, workstation lax). The premade configurations were made by Jay Beale, lead developer for Bastille.

    I know that Mandrake's guys have hacked my code up quite a bit, so I make no guarantees about it anymore, but it worked when I gave it to them :) I believe (although I could be mistaken) that the configuration chooser script is run by Mandrake's installer now.
    --
  • Bill knows the importance of providing a consistent user interface. That is why he is happy to leave themeing outside of windows.

    Oh, like in Windows XP [microsoft.com]?
  • Also all packages are compiled for i586 by default, excellent to silence those clueless drones that think blah-i386.blah is automatically bad. >>>>>>>>>>>>> Not only clueless drones, but power users. (A term you never see associated with Linux btw, because it seems all the advanced users are admins...) i386-optimized packages might be fine for your little Apache and MySQL server code, but for floating-point intense scientific or graphics applications, i686 optimizations give a decent performance boost over i386. Also, it seems to me that Linux packages have no comprehension of statistics. If 90% of desktop Linux users use P6+ class processors (a good guess, since you haven't been able to buy less than that for more than a year and a half) then shouldn't the distribution of packages reflect the distribution of machines? 80-90% PPro, 10% i585, and 1% i386?
  • Also all packages are compiled for i586 by default, excellent to silence those clueless drones that think blah-i386.blah is automatically bad. >>>>>>>>>>>>> Not only clueless drones, but power users. (A term you never see associated with Linux btw, because it seems all the advanced users are admins...) i386-optimized packages might be fine for your little Apache and MySQL server code, but for floating-point intense scientific or graphics applications, i686 optimizations give a decent performance boost over i386. Also, it seems to me that Linux packages have no comprehension of statistics. If 90% of desktop Linux users use P6+ class processors (a good guess, since you haven't been able to buy less than that for more than a year and a half) then shouldn't the distribution of packages reflect the distribution of machines? 80-90% PPro, 10% i585, and 1% i386?
  • Also all packages are compiled for i586 by default, excellent to silence those clueless drones that think blah-i386.blah is automatically bad. >>>>>>>>>>>>> Not only clueless drones, but power users. (A term you never see associated with Linux btw, because it seems all the advanced users are admins...) i386-optimized packages might be fine for your little Apache and MySQL server code, but for floating-point intense scientific or graphics applications, i686 optimizations give a decent performance boost over i386. Also, it seems to me that Linux packages have no comprehension of statistics. If 90% of desktop Linux users use P6+ class processors (a good guess, since you haven't been able to buy less than that for more than a year and a half) then shouldn't the distribution of packages reflect the distribution of machines? 80-90% PPro, 10% i585, and 1% i386?
  • Bill knows the importance of providing a consistent user interface. That is why he is happy to leave themeing outside of windows. It makes life nice and simple for corporate accounts where M$ makes it's big money. What are you to do if you want a desktop with a salvador dali on steroids motif?? No problem. Bill gave MS API access to Stardock so they could build a themeing product. That way everyone is happy and M$ probably gets a kickback for every copy of windowblinds sold.
    >>>>>>>>>>>
    That's funny. Get a clue. Theming doesn't make a GUI harder to use! Mac users have been theming their desktops for ages. Its the fact that there are dozens of toolkits, each with different UIs, and no real UI guidelines that makes *NIX GUIs annoying to use.
  • Why not send the $49.95 straight to Madrake, instead of letting some department store skim $3 off that price?

    Because I want the people at the department store to know that there is a market for Linux compatable hardware and Linux software. I want them to know that if they stock these products I will buy them. I want the department stores to place large orders with MandrakeSoft. I think that in the end this will have a much bigger impact on making Linux easily avaliable to everyone than ordering the box directly from linux-mandrake.com.

  • I think that I'm going to wait to upgrade until they have the boxed version in at Best Buy. It's not that I couldn't download it myself and burn it onto CDs and it's not that I want to support Best Buy. What I do want to support is being able to buy Linux software at local stores and I want to support the MandrakeSoft people too. They did a great job putting together 7.2 and that's more than enough reason for me to keep coming back for updates.

    For all of you who really want to have this distro, I seriously suggest that you try to locate it at a local store and if you can't, ask for it.


  • I plan on doing just that. I'm a big fan of Mandrake and have been running their distros since 6.0, which is also the only one I've actually bought... so I figure since I've been using their product for so long and getting much enjoyment out of it, that I should probably pay them this time instead of just downloading the ISOs.

    Question, however: How long does it usually take for places like CompUSA and Best Buy to stock a new Linux distro? I think I might call around town after lunch...
  • I'm not singling out Mandrake, because their installer and GUI configuration tools currently beat out (in almost all cases) all the other major distributions. Relative to the other popular distributions, Mandrake is the easiest.

    However...

    Mandrake has still in large part messed up the interface for the installer. The most shining example is the stars. The GUI design rule for image usage is that once the images get small enough, they don't really do a lot of good--Partly because the user's ability to recognize what the image means goes down, and partly because the smaller a button image is, the less it is compliant with Fitts' law. (see http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFit ts.html for more details on Fitts' law). You tend to see the same problem with a lot of M$ toolbar buttons. Some might argue "the tiny green stars you can barely see change color when a configuration is complete. That accounts for something". Wrong. What if the end-user has partial or complete color blindness? Changing the color doesn't do diddley squat. Plus, dynamically changing the appearance of a widget will rarely capture a user's attention. Putting a check mark next to the label for each completed step would work far better. The greatest atrocity I've seen in the mandrake installer is where they use stars (yet again) for things like checkboxes. They have substituted a universal interface element recognized for decades, the square with a big black check mark through the middle, for something as ambiguous as an embossed star.

    To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in Mandrake's stars, but in themselves. What I've essentially seen is a distribution installer that had real promise, but then was sabotaged by the ubiquitous "pretty == usable" falacy that pervades through the linux community. Ironically, it is now debian, traditionally the most user-hostile distribution, that is now showing real usability promise. Progeny has a very well designed, non-ambiguous set of UI widgets designed for usability and not for eye candy. They also give their value-added configuration tools sensible names, not "Drak" preceeded by some half-recognizable suffix. I take back everything bad I ever said about them. With a bit more hacking on their installer (some of which I hope to do), Progeny could become the desktop distribution of choice.
  • FTP mirror sites are still smashed from the release of Red Hat 7.1... would it have really killed them to wait a week for things to cool down? Two *major* releases in about 3 days is enough to bring all but the most well-connected sites to their knees.

  • Hardly... 2.4.3 has severe disk corruption issues, unless you use the patches we put into the kernel for Red Hat Linux just before shipping or use 2.4.3ac(recent). Whether you grabbed our patches or not, I don't know.

    As for JDK, they won't run with floating stacks (bug in JDK, not glibc) - read the release notes for Red Hat Linux for more information, where you can find out more about the problem. You probably have the workarounds from our glibc rpms already.

  • They also support work on Bastille and Plex86. I'm sure there are others too.
  • I have been impressed by the strides taken by Mandrake recently to secure their distribution. If you choose the server/high security options during installation you get a very nice secure machine from which to fashion into a server.

    I installed 7.2 onto an old box. After tweaking a few accept/deny rules, and some other nips and tucks I have the thing running very nicely now as a masquerading firewall.

  • Just wait untill you see our new "MandrakeSecurity", you may change your mind about the firewalling and/or "servers" part. .-)
    I simply don't see how MandrakeSecurity will make me give up my OpenBSD. I agree - I like Mandrake for the desktop. But is Mandrake doing a source code review of Linux like the OpenBSD crowd is? My borders need to be rock solid tight.
  • I'm currently a Mandrake 7.2 user. I know this because when I type "cat /etc/redhat-release" it says:
    Linux Mandrake release 7.2 (Odyssey) for i586

    In the three years I've been a linux user, I've used Debian, Slackware, Redhat and a few of the lesser "known" distributions. Mandrake is great for the latest toys, especially if you have a 56k modem and can't bother downloading the latest packages. However, it sucks in a technical way for shipping broken things like supermount and reiserfs.

    It also annoys me that they are so predatory on Redhat's market share, with their ridiculous version numbering scheme and "trumping" of Red Hat's announcement, always right after a red-hat release.

    Redhat contributes all sorts of resources to the free software community, they support gnome, XFree86 and other important projects. All Mandrake does is really "customize" RedHat's release with some more cutting edge tools and give nothing back to the community other then a few buggy GUI configuration tools.

    It would be nice if Mandrake simply had a "Mandrake Desktop Plus Pack" for RedHat linux and formed an alliance with RedHat. If their aren't more mergers and acquistions soon between the commercial (note I said commercial!) distributions it will only weaken linux acceptance in the marketplace.

    Bill knows the importance of providing a consistent user interface. That is why he is happy to leave themeing outside of windows. It makes life nice and simple for corporate accounts where M$ makes it's big money. What are you to do if you want a desktop with a salvador dali on steroids motif?? No problem. Bill gave MS API access to Stardock so they could build a themeing product. That way everyone is happy and M$ probably gets a kickback for every copy of windowblinds sold.
  • In the past, it has been posted that Mandrake is "Redhat that works"

    I've found that Mandrake does things a little differently (nonstandard), but things do seem to work really well, even if you need to tweak things a little. I have had no problems at all with Mandrake 7.2.

    One nice thing with Mandrake vs. Redhat is they are quite good at supporting newer things without breaking old stuff. For example, I have had good USB support in Mandrake using the 2.2.17 kernel. 2.2 didn't have usb support directly. Mandrake backrevved the newer code into it....sweet stuff. Just yesterday I plugged a flash card reader into my USB port, and after probing the appropriate usb-store module (doesn't get done by default), I had a working flash device. That simple!

    I don't like the way they handle GUI's and switching between them (I still haven't figured out how to make a custom XDM in mandrake, but that's not oh-so important to me anyway). But it's linux and you have the freedom to fix that dumb stuff. I simply boot to framebuffer without XDM, and start windowmaker with my .xinitrc script.

    Aurora sucks...dunno what the point is..but that's a simple fix too. Just remove the package and things are back to normal.

    Mandrake has some security settings you can use. I haven't done much with them, but they may be good for newbies. I much prefer running my own firewalling scripts from rc.local, and controlling rights manually.

    Mandrake is a lovely distro for the desktop (The number of useful packages makes downloading anything else pretty much unnecessary!) I use it exclusively on my home and work desktops.

    For servers I find Redhat to work better. I haven't tried any other distributions.

  • Well, that's fine for you, but I'm going to download the ISO's. Why not send the $49.95 straight to Madrake, instead of letting some department store skim $3 off that price? AND, the group at Mandrake will get your money right away, they'll know who you are, and their appreciation towards you for willingly giving money for that which they offer for free will go through the roof. I guess I'm trying to put more emphasis on the human factor here, than the monetary factor. Besides, your broadband can be put to use downloading, and thereby encouraging the use of, another Linux distro. For all the other poor souls without broadband, the department store alternative is there too.
  • I've donated to the Debian project before, but I think Mandrake having a way to donate to other projects is pretty cool. The only reason I've not donated to other projects before is because I am lazy and couldn't be bothered trying to find out how. Kudos to Mandrake (the dist).

    I don't use Mandrake, but hey... they make it easy to donate, so they must be OK.
  • I was patently annoyed at not being able to get an ISO to evaluate this. Now my dislike for Mandrake will stand - they release stuff that is so poorly mirrored why bother at all, and I'm not going to Fry's and paying for boxes and marketing dribble to get a hold of this. So I will assume Mandrake 8 is as bad as every previous incarnation. I'll stick to Slack or Debian if I want to deal with Linux.
  • We don't provide Java in download version of Linux-Mandrake because we don't have right to do so (and it is not free software).. But you can install Java RPMs from Sun website, they'll work without any problem..

  • your webcam is rushed ;-| (Score:3)

    by deno ( 814 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @11:55AM (#280693) Homepage
    Berto, Berto...

    1) "Bugs in RC1"!="Bugs in final"
    2) We did the job as good as we could. Time will tell how good this was.

    Personally I have a very good feeling for 8.0, quite oposite to what I fealt when 7.2 came out. Sure, there will be bug fixes and updates (first two being samba and kernel), but that's life.

    FYI, there is no such thing as "bug free software", with exception of TeX. IMO software gets released at the moment when developers change color from usual greyish to pale green, not at the moment when "no more bugs exist". ;-)

  • Re:Mandrake faults (Score:3)

    by The Mayor ( 6048 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:31AM (#280694)
    Damn, boy. You need to figure out what you did wrong. I installed Mandrake 7.2, as well. And:
    • I have uudecode (no talk, though)
    • I have gdb and apache (did you install the developer packages?)
    • I haven't had any problems compiling anything except stuff which required the latest versions of KDE & Gnome (the stuff that came out after Mandrake v7.2 was released).
    • xchat and xemacs work wonderfully. Xemacs has the same icons I've seen since the mid 90's.

    Did you select a bare-bones installation or something? I think you've got a bad installation.

  • Re:You don't get it, do you? (Score:3)

    by Black Perl ( 12686 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:36AM (#280695)
    They're after cold hard cash. If developers seek appreciation they ususally ask to be sent a postcard or a bottle of beer etc. This is just plain saying "We work for free but we're not gonna survive if you don't give us your dosh so pick up that wallet and support our commune. This is different from a few hackers trying to get kudos. This is a struggling business trying to sustain itself on an unrealistic business plan.

    Wrong... they're not asking for money. Did you actually follow the link before posting your troll? They're giving you the opportunity to support the open-source project of your choice.

  • Binary compatibility (Score:3)

    by ChrisWong ( 17493 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:02AM (#280696) Homepage
    One of the developments not mentioned but important is that Mandrake is once again binary-compatible with Red Hat. Now that rpm (version 4), glibc (2.2) and gcc (2.96-RH) are in sync between Mandrake 8 and Red Hat 7, RPMs can be interchanged freely between two of the largest Linux distributions. This is a good thing, regardless of which of the two you prefer. This should also further legitimize gcc 2.96-RH, which apparently is quite stable now.

  • Dammit! (Score:3)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:51AM (#280697)
    Leave it to Mandrake to mess up my day! I was going to stay home, now I have to go to work so I can download my fave distro on the T1 and burn it off!

    I am SO switching to Debian! Those guys never update.

  • This was on the Screen Savers.com (Score:3)

    by linuxrunner ( 225041 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:26AM (#280698)
    Last night on TechTV the show The Screen Savers [thescreensavers.com] did a live install of Linux Mandrake 8.0

    You can get all of that information and more off of their web site.
    They downloaded the ISO images (2 of them) and burned them onto CD's and did the expert install to show all of the new features.... Extremely simple install and partition...
    Give it up for Mandrake

    Linuxrunner

  • Awesome (Score:3)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @03:52AM (#280699) Homepage
    My treading into Linux was with Mandrake. I have other distros, Progeny, but I think Mandrake is more than a simple Distro. The 2 cd iso's are packed with software. Mandrake spent the time and effort to get the coolest free software out there and made sure it works with their distro, then put them into RPM's and packed them all up and gives everything away for free. Cool.

    I would recommend the Mandrake distro to people who want to learn Linux becuase after installing it, you dont need to really do anything more except for use it. Its a great complete product. I just their FTP servers are going to be tanked. I'll just have to wait.

    Arathres


    I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

  • When slashdotted, here are mirrors (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19, 2001 @03:52AM (#280700)
    OK, so when this is slashdotted, here is a list of mirrors for all you downloaders out there! Linux-Mandrake 8.0 release candidate mirrors for i586 processors.

    Austria [tuwien.ac.at], France [claranet.fr], Germany [tu-dresden.de] , Sweden [chalmers.se]

  • Evolution (Score:4)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:05AM (#280701)
    I hope they've made it clear that evolution is still pre-beta. Its still extremely unstable atm, and would give a poor impression to new users.

  • Moderators on crack or astroturfers out in force? (Score:4)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:43AM (#280702)
    +5 insightful? Looks like the same Microsoft lackeys that rated my comment [slashdot.org] from +4 interesting to +5 funny (thereby prejuding readers against the content before they've read a single word) are out abusing the moderation system once again. Moderating up this kind of disinformation is disingenous, indeed downright disgusting.

    As others have pointed out, Mandrake forked from red hat years ago and make significant contributions to numerous free software projects, not the least of which is providing an easy way for the rest of us to make financial contributions to the project of our choice without having to do a bunch of research first. This will probably translate into a sizable increase in contributions from people like myself with money to give, but not time to do the necessary digging to find out how.

    Finally, Mandrake stands on its own, with its own unique and compelling features, not the least of which are its ease of installation and ease of use. I can give my aunt a copy of Mandrake 7.2 and she can install and use it with little or no help, unlike the copy of Windows ME she had.

    Red Hat is a very nice distribution, and I wish them success. Likewise for Suse, Debian, and, yes, Mandrake.

  • Rushed, once again. (Score:4)

    by MicroBerto ( 91055 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:27AM (#280703)
    Don't get me wrong -- I love Mandrake and the guys that work for MandrakeSoft. However, I must say that just like 7.0, the beta cycle on this was far too short. If you read MandrakeForum [mandrakeforum.org], you will notice that there seems to be many unresolved bugs.

    However, I do think that this is much, much better than 7.2, just don't be surprised to see 8.1 (or 8.01) come out just as quickly, and tons of things in MandrakeUpdate.

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto

  • You don't get it, do you? (Score:5)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:13AM (#280704)
    Okay, I'll bite - I haven't been trolled in a while :-)

    MS don't ask for handouts, because they force you to pay for their software.

    With Mandrake, as with most other Linux distros, you have a choice - pay, or not. All Mandrake are saying is "feel free to download it for free, but if you feel like contributing some sum of money, you can do so here - you can even specify who gets the money!"

    They're not asking for handouts. They're giving us the opportunity to show our appreciation for and support of all the hardwork that goes into all the cool stuff we get to use.

    Cheers,

    Tim

  • Re:Summary of the advantages? (Score:5)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:49AM (#280705) Homepage
    Sure...

    EASY TO GET
    Download. Burn. Put in CD. Reboot. Smile.

    INSTALLATION
    Can run through windows for the true beginer.
    Graphical Partitioning.
    Support for a LOT of file systems.
    Full Graphical Installation.
    Single User Mode, its really nice. No Login, KDE, bad security but for the beginer its good.
    Very good hardware detection.


    USE Auto mounting file systems.
    Packed with applications. 2 ISO Images of RPMS. I think this is one of the most important ones. You literally get EVERYTHING you might need.

    Compatible with *MOST* Red Hat RPM's.
    Great online support. Mailing lists etc.
    Graphical Configurations for everything.
    Comes with KDE and Gnome + like 7 other window managers. Easily log in and out for some apps that dont like Gnome, or KDE, depending.

    Free

    Easy to install. Easy to use. Fully functional. It blows Windows away in useability. Its nicley secure and has different security settings during installation. Pick Paranoid for a almost uncrackable system.

    I would recomend it to anyone.

    Arathres


    I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

  • From the Mandrake Features Page... (Score:5)

    by mightyflash ( 444716 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @04:31AM (#280706)
    "Kernel 4.0.3 provides enhanced support for USB, Infrared and FireWire devices, as well as better performance with AMD and Cyrix CPUs" [...]

    Did I sleep 10 years or so?!

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