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Mandriva Businesses

Mandrake Releases 9.1b1, New Packaging Model 346

Posted by timothy from the listening-to-users dept.
DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced version 9.1 of their distribution. While there are some interesting choices for new packages (like kernel 2.4.21pre2 and XFree86 4.3 beta) the most groundbreaking thing about this release is the way in which they decide which packages are "high priority" for development and inclusion in the standard install. Any registered user at MandrakeClub can vote. Their opinion is that no one knows where development effort needs to be spent better than the end-user." Update: 01/10 19:38 GMT by T : That's "distribution."
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Mandrake Releases 9.1b1, New Packaging Model More

Mandrake Releases 9.1b1, New Packaging Model

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  • Confused? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ctxspy ( 94924 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:32PM (#5057315)
    To me, that was a damn confusing summary..

    What exactly are they talking about?

    • Re:Confused? (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Evil Couch ( 621105 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:38PM (#5057376) Homepage
      they're releasing a new version of mandrake linux and they're cutting things out of the desktop distro so that it'll fit on one CD. they've set up a poll for all mandrake users to pick and choose which features they want to ship on the CD.

      This is a pretty cool idea. I don't use mandrake, so it does me no good, but the concept is really awesome. build up a community and then let the community drive the development and implementation of the product. this should serve as a great example of what the people with the money should be doing in the open source communities.

      of course having *everything* would be nice, also. but you can always download the extra features you want/need.
      • Good summary, the idea is most people don't give a crap about the extra RPMs, and if you do, they are easy to get online. Eventually they can whittle Mandrake down to the kernel and urpmi and end up with Debian Lite.
        • There is no need to attempt to compare a stripped-down Mandrake release to something like Debian. It seems little more to a random holy war troll to those who tend to prefer distributions in the Red Hat/RPM lineage to the Debian/apt-get lineage. Why bother?

          Mandrake can already be installed with a small initial footprint. The urpmi app can be used to grab rpm binary packages (or source rpms) online and install with integrity checking etc, but Mandrake puts effort into putting the bleeding edge into a very useable and advanced desktop/server distribution. You can try to stay away from the bleeding edge, but Mandrake isn't designed (at this point) to cater to that stance. By contrast, Debian is not primarily a bleeding edge distro, but like any Linux it becomes what you make of it despite the design tendencies.

      • Re:Confused? (Score:4, Informative)

        by fault0 ( 514452 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:42PM (#5057436) Homepage Journal
        > they're releasing a new version of mandrake linux and they're cutting things out of the desktop distro so that it'll fit on one CD. they've set up a poll for all mandrake users to pick and choose which features they want to ship on the CD.

        correction.. it's only for people who are club members. I guess it's a incentive for people to join the club, and a rather good one at that.

      • Re:Confused? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 13Echo ( 209846 )
        I like the idea. As a matter of fact, I have even submitted a request for a specific app. Though I don't really actively use Mandrake (I've always been a Slackware fan), I've found some benefits to being a member of the club. This shows that they care about what the users want.

        Did anyone else notice something about the Mandrake Club? They've got over 22,000 subscribed members. At $60 per year, per person (basic membership), that is a pretty substantial chunk of income. Undoubtably, they may have some corporate or group memberships, but still; Mandrake Club has proven to be a success, and opportunities like this only help it more.

      • a one cd retail version (Score:5, Interesting)

        by zogger ( 617870 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:48PM (#5058082) Homepage Journal
        --I think if any of the big guys can get a one cd retail version that can be put on the shelf for ten dollars that linux will "take off" for joe average. Reality is reality, "money" has to come into the picture in a much bigger way or linux is gonna stay an also ran, no matter how good it gets. Geeks who are totally happy to spend all the time in the world tweaking and downloading etc are less than 1% users very broadly speaking. That's the choice, keep it geek only or not, it's binary.

        That and as soon as some of the bigger box makers like dell start making their "home peecees" come with at LEAST an installed dual boot, or have an OS option choice sitting right on the showfloor that is reflected in a cheaper fairer price for the same exact hardware config over to the "best electronic buys in your office world city" store.

        A ten buck (or so) "home surfer" with some other stuff that's pretty cool" distro release would be nice. If the clone companies can do it, so can the distro releasers, making it one cd will allow at least a single small paperback manual included, written in ENGLISH (or language of choice that is not acronym based geek technogarble to most people) to be included in that price. I mean really, man pages need actual translation for most people. They "work" for geeks, that's it, kinda sorta.

        Releases needed, IMO --> "home surfer", "small business that is an office", "enterprise business that is an office and also needs to be a host/server on a whopper scale".

        Scale it up like that, add extra cds for what might be wanted "Games! cd" whatever, "all kinza artsy fartsy stuff" cd, "mega media enjoyment" cd, "office crap up the wazoo" cd, and charge more then, there's another ten bucks. The competiton is roughly one hundred dollars, and it's not that hard to have enough apps included at even the ten buck range to make it pretty spiffy, but don't overload it as well, too much is as bad as not enough. People get into new stuff this way crawl>walk>run.

        Adjust 'support' accordingly. Have a generic optional CD that has tons more generic apps, and sell it separately from the other releases. Keep ALL of them under the pricing of the borg. And make SURE that what's included *works*,ESPECIALLY getting online and NOT GETTING OWNED WITHIN 15 MINUTES, and release less stuff, but make it better quality, and upgrades as flawlessly as possible - release to release - without breaking the last generation install.

        Prices have dropped for the coupla big dog releasers,the releases themselves are very very good, this is GOOD, now make it BETTER and get that stuff on the shelf and on the new PC boxes.

        signed, joe consumer who wants to do more than just tweak forever and ever to make things work.

    • Re:Confused? (Score:3, Informative)

      by DCowern ( 182668 )

      Mea Culpa. That's all I can say. I was running out the door and read the announce but didn't properly spellcheck or coherency-check my post. :-)

      The point is that there are certain packages included in a "standard" install of Mandrake. Since these packages are installed on pretty much all Mandrake systems, they get the most attention from the Mandrake development team. More attention = more support for the community surrounding that specific project.

      Now instead of the Mandrake corporation making these decisions, they've decided to let the average user make these decisions via Mandrake club. The thought is that the average user knows best what the average user wants and needs in a distrIbution. ;-)

  • We all need to thank Mandrake (Score:5, Informative)

    by Amsterdam Vallon ( 639622 ) <amsterdamvallon2003@yahoo.com> on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:34PM (#5057336) Homepage
    They brought Linux out from the dusty closets of computer hackers and to the front lines -- of the American economy, that is.

    Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart [walmart.com] stores country-wide.

    Before you diss this newbie-tailored distro, remember that it really was Mandrake, and not Red Hat, Solaris, or Slackware that brought Linux to the masses.

    Business Week, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal all write about Linux based largely in part on the inclusion of Mandrake on many popular-selling computers.

    • Re:We all need to thank Mandrake (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:44PM (#5057462) Homepage Journal

      Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart

      Playing devil's advocate here; I'll venture that most of those machines get reformatted with a warez'd copy of Windows.
      • Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart

        Playing devil's advocate here; I'll venture that most of those machines get reformatted with a warez'd copy of Windows.

        ...which means Microsoft made no money from the purchase of that computer. That's probably a big deal for those to whom this sort of thing matters.

        • ..which means Microsoft made no money from the purchase of that computer. That's probably a big deal for those to whom this sort of thing matters.

          No money in the bank, but they get mindshare by having a Windows desktop displayed. That is worth something.
          • "they get mindshare by having a Windows desktop displayed. That is worth something."

            No, that's worth everything. I'd rather that everyone paid for Windows and then used Linux. Market share is more powerful for Microsoft than sales of their OS.

      • Re:We all need to thank Mandrake (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stinky wizzleteats ( 552063 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:47PM (#5058073) Homepage Journal

        Playing devil's advocate here; I'll venture that most of those machines get reformatted with a warez'd copy of Windows.

        If I was aware of that happening, I'd turn them in. Not out of Linux zealotry per se, but because I don't want M$ to have a good reason to squash the market for PCs without the M$ tax.

      • I know of three boxes purchased from walmart that are running Mandrake, RIGHT NOW.

        I don't know about you, but the windows users I know have no idea that pcs are selling for $200 and $300 these days, they DON'T like installing their own OS, and they are very risk adverse when it comes to buying over the Internet. That is taken from a very, very small sample of the population (the people that I know), but it is better than the baseless BS you are spewing.
      • Wasn't this exact comment posted on the last Walmart-PC story?
      • wait until people try to use a warez copy that won't work do to MS softwre protection. That will be a great day for Linux. Of course I predict that MS will stop with this when they start losing mindshare.

    • Millions? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by NetJunkie ( 56134 )
      I think not. I doubt millions went to walmart.com and ordered these. Anyone got sales numbers?

    • try again, sir (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Millions? (I don't think there's been any announcement of sales figures; your statement is pure conjecture. If it were millions, I think we'd have heard about it.)

      High-Quality? (even the most zealous of Slashdot readers have agreed that these machines are made of bottom-grade components. Certainly usable and functional, but no where near the quality of even a low-end Dell or HP machine).

      In stores? (last I checked, these machines were only available from walmart.com)

      Amazing! Three errors in one sentence! Your argument is interesting, but you do nothing to aid it by just fabricating supporting points.

    • Let's not lose our pespective here.

      I also think it's a great triumph for mandrakesoft to reach a much wider audience through walmart, but ... millions?

      and by the way, solaris is not linux.

    • Actually it was Linus that brought Linux to the masses. But I digress.
    • As much as I like Mandrake, I'm sticking this one in the "Astroturfing" pile. I mean, I understand why Micro$oft engages in it, but the LINUX COMMUNITY?! Please spare me the bullshit!
    • They brought Linux out from the dusty closets of computer hackers and to the front lines -- of the American economy, that is.

      Mandrake is now sold pre-loaded on millions of inexpensive, high-quality computers at Wal-Mart stores country-wide.

      I don't know what's in your Wallmart, but I had the impression that they were only selling Mandrake pre-installed at their online store, not in the bricks-and-mortar stores where "Aunt Tillie" shops.
      Business Week, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal all write about Linux based largely in part on the inclusion of Mandrake on many popular-selling computers.
      I suspect business publications talk about Red Hat because that's what's on the vast majority of corporate servers or workstations in North America. The Wall Street Journal and Business Week could care less about what kind of Linux is sold in the Walmart online store.

    • Re:We all need to thank Mandrake (Score:5, Funny)

      by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @04:12PM (#5058335) Homepage
      Red Hat, Solaris, or Slackware that brought Linux to the masses

      No, I'm sure it was Solaris that brought linux to the masses.

  • I love the naming techniques (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lt Razak ( 631189 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:34PM (#5057341)
    Mandrake 9.1b1, kernel 2.4.21pre2 and XFree86 4.3 beta.

    You just gotta love these release numbers2.1a

  • Money woes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:34PM (#5057344) Homepage
    Does anyhow know how Mandrake's doing in regards to solving their money woes?

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:40PM (#5057408)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Money woes? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Amsterdam Vallon ( 639622 ) <amsterdamvallon2003@yahoo.com> on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:42PM (#5057433) Homepage
      There hasn't been much said recently by those who keep Mandrake's books.

      Their page for latest financial information [mandrakesoft.com] hasn't had an update in several weeks.

      However, their last news indicated that for fiscal year 2001-2002, revenue increased 31% and they massively reduced operating losses.

      I think in the end they will stay in business because of the strength of their products and community.

      • Re:Money woes? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mr Guy ( 547690 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:50PM (#5057531) Journal
        Summary of Mandrake's Future, from their perspective. [mandrakelinux.com]

        The line I find most interesting is this one:
        The world already boasts of several million Mandrake Linux users, and we know at least 200,000 of you. We could get over this crunch if less than 20,000 users became Silver Members of MandrakeClub.
        /sigh

        I guess since I run it on my desktop, and finally convinced my wife to run it on her laptop, I should cave and make that 19,999 users.
        • The world already boasts of several million Mandrake Linux users, and we know at least 200,000 of you. We could get over this crunch if less than 20,000 users became Silver Members of MandrakeClub.

          I guess since I run it on my desktop, and finally convinced my wife to run it on her laptop, I should cave and make that 19,999 users.
          Well... it does say if less than 20,000 users. Seems to me that 1 is less than 20,000. Register your wife and you will have single-handedly saved Mandrake! Congratulations!

        • GOOD FOR YOU!! (Score:4, Informative)

          by Idou ( 572394 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:46PM (#5058066) Journal
          I wish your post would get modded to 5 so that other slashdotters would see it. You will not regret being a member. The mirror script makes urpmi setup very easy and painless. Being able to vote for your own rpms is great (I had a starcontrol 2 package rpmed for me, and it runs great)!

          And now . . . I can vote for my favorite rpms in order to make sure they get into the next release. Things are just getting better and better (I am a Silver member for the next 600 days).

  • nice timing (Score:3, Funny)

    by muyuubyou ( 621373 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:36PM (#5057356)
    Just the day after I downloaded 3 SUSE CD's from a 56K....

  • Good thinking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Binarybrain ( 253017 )
    I don't like the Mandrake distro very much. It used to be buggy back when I tried it but from hear now those days are long gone. Anyhow.

    Kudos to this "ask the user" idea. Its really a wonderful idea.

    • Re:Good thinking (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MilesBehind ( 517130 )
      This "ask the user" stuff is not that new or original. WineX project has been allowing paying users to tell the developers which games to work on supporting next. I guess it's a sound business plan for free-software projects, giving the paying customer a degree of control over the product.

      Maybe if Loki worked with something like that, instead of porting Eric's ultimate solitaire and Postal, things could've been so much nicer now...

    • Re:Good thinking (Score:4, Informative)

      by Blimey85 ( 609949 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @04:01PM (#5058217)
      You should give it another go. I'ved used MDK for several years and it's has gotten a whole lot better. It's like a bottle of fine wine... it only gets better with age.

  • nice (Score:4, Funny)

    by muyuubyou ( 621373 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:39PM (#5057393)
    Now I can set up a bar-monkey [slashdot.org] with kernel 2.4.21pre2 and XFree86 4.3 beta.

    My cocktails will kick ass!! It just can't get any better than this.

  • They want opinions? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chocolate Teapot ( 639869 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:39PM (#5057398) Homepage Journal
    I'm gonna vote for the removal of RPM

  • customer oriented development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:40PM (#5057415) Journal
    I'm impressed.

    Next thing you know, they'll be making money.

    I think these are the innovations that the linux distros need even more than new drivers, other technical advances.

  • According to this [mandrakelinux.com], they are planning on reaching break-even by spring of this year:

    Reaching the "break-even" point is now planned for the next release of Mandrake Linux in the spring of 2003.

    Perhaps they didn't get the money they needed from the last plea they gave out, and so are speeding up the development process to get new versions out.

    They just released 9.0 in November, if I recall correctly.

    That being said, I think I'll finally chip in, as I like the distribution, and have only been downloading ISOs for a while now.
    • That being said, I think I'll finally chip in, as I like the distribution, and have only been downloading ISOs for a while now.

      I agree... Just last week I downloaded Mandrake 9 for my company to put up a last-minute FTP server.

      Installed in no time, pftpd configured properly and all. I was quite impressed and urged my boss to throw $$ at Mandrake for becoming an OS that we can rely on when we just need to get a machine up and running.

  • I agree with them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by core plexus ( 599119 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:42PM (#5057438) Homepage
    While it's nice to have an army of hackers working on projects, the fact remains that until the end-user is happy, and I especially mean those who might be interested in switching from Windows or some other proprietary OS, as well as those users who don't care about what their machine is running, just as long as it does what they want it to without having 5 years experience, Linux will be, at best, #2 on the desktop.

    Personal Strap-On Aircraft for Auction on eBay [xnewswire.com] A What?

    • And I have no particular reason to believe it isn't, nor do I have any particular reason to care either way if it comes to that.

      However, I will point out that Chevy will always sell more Monte Carlos than Ferrari will sell all of its models combined.

      Big deal.

      This is really only of significance to those that actually believe their jacket saying "Tommy Hilfiger" on it makes it "better."

      My neighbor's choice of car has little or no bearing on whether or not a Monte Carlo is a more desirable car for *me.*

      KFG

  • 1 CD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:46PM (#5057490)
    the beta comes as a 1 cd download. hopefully this is an omen for 9.1. mandrake has always been a bloated distro. sure, i like all the stuff, but more is not always better. better is better. fewew, better apps are the answer. make OO.org fonts better (RH did), fix up the menus a bit, and streamline a few things. a 1 cd distro has more than enough room fo rall the good stuff (think knoppix). you don't need 17 editors nor do you need 14 mp3 players. mandrake has been the "newbie" distro. it is where i started. and even four years later, it is still my distro of choice. i can tweak it (like any other distro) if needed. one cd is all that's needed.
    • I totally agree with your thoughts of making this distribution a single CD, but unfortunately ...

      IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!


      OK, now to prove that this isn't a troll post, I'll share my thought process about this ...

      Mandrake (just as all other Linux vendors) are not here to simply promote Linux (otherwise, there'd only be one Linux distribution) .... there here to make money!

      If they make the distributions small, everyone will simply download them (even people on 56k) rather than go to the store (real or online) and purchase their distribution that is already on CD with their documentation and lovely packaging.


      This is why all Linux distributions will get larger before they get smaller ... and that sucks!


      Just my $0.02 cents .... and my spelling lession for the day. I never claimed to be good at spelling (that is what clippy is for), but I now know how to spell distribution.


      • I would simply be happy if an *install* only required one CD. I remember fondly the days of putting a CD in, starting an install, and coming back later to have it finished (not asking for the next CD).
        • You can, with Mandrake.

          When it asks you what CD's you have, deselect CD2 and 3. The available packages in the selection list will be lessened (for obvious reasons, I might add), but you're still good to go.

    • Re:1 CD (Score:3, Informative)

      by mickwd ( 196449 )
      Just because Mandrake comes on 3 CDs in the download edition (and more in the boxed sets) doesn't mean you have to install all the CDs.

      You can install Mandrake 9.0 from a single CD, and still end up with a very useable system. Or just use two CDs, or just three.......or all of them.

      But since you've been using Mandrake for four years now, you knew that, didn't you ?

    • Bloated?


      Ever install Suse? Or Redhat? What's bloated? Last Suse distro I had came with 7 disks chock full of cool-ass stuff. And then extra CDs of even more cool-ass stuff. Is that bloat or thoroughness? If you want it it is probably on one of the CDs. There are 2 CDs for the core Mandrake distro. Depending on how much YOU choose to install you may need a couple or all of the others. It is up to you. You are not required to use all the CDs when installing.

  • Oh thank you God (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:48PM (#5057508)
    Mandrake 9.0 was the windowsME of linux. It had nice looks, but added little and caused nothing but troubles for me. I'm really hoping that Mandrake 9.1 resolves most of the problems I had. Also, I'm looking forward to XFree86 4.3.

    Don't get me wrong. My favorite distro is still mandrake 8.2. It was excellent, but Mandrake 9 didn't do anything for me. It caused crashes (Grip for whatever reason seamed to lock up the desktop), problems (not working on reiserFS), more crashes (NVidia drivers crash when rendering 3D continuiously), bad organization mistakes (why in the world separate out package installation and removal), and many other things. But I've always liked mandrake and am really hoping that 9.1 clears up the problems and increases the extras including the great. up-to-date, package selection. I support distro's I like which is why I'm part of the mandrake club and I am really hoping this one continues to improve.

    • Re:Oh thank you God (Score:5, Funny)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:57PM (#5057605) Journal
      >> It caused crashes (Grip for whatever reason seamed to lock up the desktop), problems (not working on reiserFS), more crashes (NVidia drivers crash when rendering 3D continuiously)

      Warning.

      You have violated the Slashdot Linux Zealot Act of 2003 by stating that Mandrake linux crashed.

      Please repost your comment, replacing Mandrake with Microsoft and Grip with Outlook, or we will be forced to notify the authorities.

      Objectivity regarding Open Source software will not be tolerated.

    • Re:Oh thank you God (Score:3, Informative)

      by robson ( 60067 )
      For the record, I've been running Mandrake 9 since I got my pre-order DVD in the mail (about 3 months ago), I use ReiserFS, NVidia drivers, and have had no stability problems.
      I'm not denying that you're having problems, but they may not be indicative of a larger pattern.
      • I'm not denying that you're having problems, but they may not be indicative of a larger pattern.

        I can second your comment, I use nVidia drivers and use GLX often, and have no stability problems. The only problem I have is Japanese input is buggy as hell on Mdk9...
    • No, Mandrake 8.0 was utter crap. 9.0 is solid.
  • ...who don't know if they want to support the club, go to the mirror list:

    here [mandrakelinux.com]

    Try out the beta, if you like it, join the club and help focus the direction of a decent distro.

    Yes, I use mandrake. No I am not a club member, or employee.
    • That link points to http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftptmp/1042225920. 78796bc94d6342c90d73c6d7e2ec5baa.php#beta
      which gets the usual Mandrake web server message about "That page is missing. Go back to the main page". Probably some sort of auto-updating thing; I got that two days ago when trying to find the mirrors page to download 9.0 :-). Alternatively, it's possible that my company's firewall is up to something.
      • So URLs have been around for 20 years now or whatever, why haven't people learned to paste them properly yet ? Posting an URL with an obvious session ID is stupid. It's also annoying when I look in the geek section of the newspaper and they go "blahblahblah/index.html" , hello people you dont need the index.html. Equally annoying to me (but I guess objectively less bad) are people who ruin aesthetic URLs by throwing 'www.' on the front.

  • Debian has this to. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jonestor ( 443666 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @02:55PM (#5057584)
    Debian has this to. It's called Popularity Contest [debian.org].
    • You mean those Debian guys let you tell them what packages you like without having to pay for the privilege?

      Must be a bunch of damn commies, I tell ya.
  • ...........does Mandrake need some more money again?

  • MandrakeClub? (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )
    Shades of Mickey..

    All together now!

    M.. A.. N..
    D.. R.. A..
    K.. E.. C.. L.. U.. B..

    MandrakeClub!
    MandrakeClub!
    The Linux group you're sure to lub!

    Who's the leetest of the groups that's made for you and me?
    M.. A.. N..
    D.. R.. A..
    K.. E.. C.. L.. U.. B..

  • Package survivor (Score:2, Interesting)

    by spells ( 203251 )
    Shouldn't they have started with all of the packages and had users vote packages off of the CD? Seems to me that's how it's done these days.

  • Mandrake Naysayers (Score:5, Informative)

    by hogger ( 566646 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:19PM (#5057853)
    I just don't get you mandrake naysayers. Have you tried Mandrake 9.0? You don't have to use KDE or Gnome, it's right there in the install. The following tips will surely change a few of your minds:

    1. During installation, select "advanced" installation, rather than the default.

    2. Be sure to add "Other Window Managers" in addition to KDE & Gnome

    3. Make the selection during install that DOESN'T start X on bootup.

    4. After installation, put a .xinitrc file in your home directory. Put "exec icewm", "exec fluxbox" or whatever you like for your window manager in it.

    5. use urpmi.remove to get rid of the CD sources for package installation:

    urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 1 (x86) (cdrom1)"
    urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 2 (x86) (cdrom2)"
    urpmi.removemedia "International CD (x86) (cdrom3)"

    and replace them with an FTP source:
    urpmi.addmedia base-ftp ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/9.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz

    and add the contrib source:
    urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/9.0/contrib/RPMS with synthesis.hdlist2.cz

    so it never ever prompts you for CDs (assuming you've got broadband)

    Add the plf software source:
    urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://plf.chem.yorku.ca/pub/plf/9.0 with hdlist.cz

    Now, you can install just about anything you like with a simple "urpmi {package name}". For instance, if you want mutt, and you're also missing a lot of its dependencies, "urpmi mutt" will not only get mutt, but it will first get whatever is needed for mutt to run. FreeBSD addicts can surely appreciate that (ala the freebsd ports system).

    I've been running MDK9.0 since the day it was out of beta and have never had these buggy problems that some of you complain about. No window manager problems (I use fluxbox), no nvidia problems (I've played many a LAN party with my box, never had a crash during crunch time yet), no problems of any kind.

    You boneheads should give it a chance before blasting it. Don't try to use it as if it were some kind of RedHat clone, it's moved way beyond that in the last couple of years.

    • Re:Mandrake Naysayers (Score:5, Funny)

      by fritter ( 27792 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:59PM (#5058198)
      I just don't get you mandrake naysayers. Have you tried Mandrake 9.0? You don't have to use KDE or Gnome, it's right there in the install. The following tips will surely change a few of your minds:

      1. During installation, select "advanced" installation, rather than the default.

      2. Be sure to add "Other Window Managers" in addition to KDE & Gnome

      3. Make the selection during install that DOESN'T start X on bootup.

      4. After installation, put a .xinitrc file in your home directory. Put "exec icewm", "exec fluxbox" or whatever you like for your window manager in it.

      5. use urpmi.remove to get rid of the CD sources for package installation:

      urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 1 (x86) (cdrom1)"
      urpmi.removemedia "Installation CD 2 (x86) (cdrom2)"
      urpmi.removemedia "International CD (x86) (cdrom3)"

      and replace them with an FTP source:
      urpmi.addmedia base-ftp ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/9.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz

      and add the contrib source:
      urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://mirrors.secsup.org/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandra ke/9.0/contrib/RPMS with synthesis.hdlist2.cz

      so it never ever prompts you for CDs (assuming you've got broadband)

      Add the plf software source:
      urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://plf.chem.yorku.ca/pub/plf/9.0 with hdlist.cz

      Now, you can install just about anything you like with a simple "urpmi {package name}". For instance, if you want mutt, and you're also missing a lot of its dependencies, "urpmi mutt" will not only get mutt, but it will first get whatever is needed for mutt to run. FreeBSD addicts can surely appreciate that (ala the freebsd ports system).

      I've been running MDK9.0 since the day it was out of beta and have never had these buggy problems that some of you complain about. No window manager problems (I use fluxbox), no nvidia problems (I've played many a LAN party with my box, never had a crash during crunch time yet), no problems of any kind.

      You boneheads should give it a chance before blasting it. Don't try to use it as if it were some kind of RedHat clone, it's moved way beyond that in the last couple of years.

      Wow, it practically installs itself!
    • 3. Make the selection during install that DOESN'T start X on bootup.

      4. After installation, put a .xinitrc file in your home directory. Put "exec icewm", "exec fluxbox" or whatever you like for your window manager in it.

      Small correction. If you install other window managers and leave X on by default it will ask you which one you want to run.

  • Screenshots (Score:4, Informative)

    by isNaN ( 45985 ) <.sebastian.claesson. .at. .gmail.com.> on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:25PM (#5057904)
    Here are some screenshots of 9.1b:

    Screenshot one [tuxreports.com]
    Screenshot two [tuxreports.com]
    Screenshot three [tuxreports.com]
    Screenshot four [tuxreports.com]
    Screenshot five [tuxreports.com]

    I think it's looking quite sweet... Can not wait for the download to finish...

  • Is this a bad time . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Idou ( 572394 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @03:26PM (#5057917) Journal
    to remind everyone who has used or is interested in using Mandrake to become a Mandrakeclub member? The Slashdot community has been pretty critical of Mandrake recently, so here is your chance to become a member and do something about the distro you spend so much time bitching about.

    Otherwise, people might get the idea that slashdoters are a bunch of whining freeloaders who complain for the very sake of complaining.

    Er, or is that me . . .?
  • I could have sworn there was only one Linux distribution named Mandrake, but now I'm not so sure. I'm seeing messages about how great this Mandrake is, and how we owe them a debt of gratitude, and all kinds of other praise.

    I must be mistaken... this must be a different distribution than the one that received all the "Die, Mandrake, Die!" comments when they were asking for money just a few weeks ago.

  • Luckily, even non-members can view the Voting results page [mandrakeclub.com]. Amazingly enough, it seems that even among the "geek"-biased club, many votes are for multimedia-related applications. Whether this may be due to important non-multimedia applications being labeled as vital and automatically included, or through a real shift in the users of linux.

    Even if this doesn't work out for Mandrake, it'll still serve as an interesting sociological experiment and good precedent for other linux distros to design and improve accordingly.

  • beta packages in beta (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ankh ( 19084 ) on Friday January 10, 2003 @05:46PM (#5059179) Homepage
    Note that there's still approx. 3 months before a scheduled release, so I'd expect the kernel and XFree86 versions to be later.

    The package management tools have also been evolving fast -- if you follow the cooker list, you'll know that the gtk+ 2 version of rpmgrake is out, and it's much faster and improved. (and there's an update to urpmi, too).

    At this point, urpmi is approaching the usefulness and robustness of apt-get, albeit with slightly fewer features -- e.g. no "suggested other packages". It's possible those willl come later, at least in principle: there's nothing inherent about RPM that prevents such features.

    If 9.0 crashed for you, the right thing to do was to report the problems one by one, and help get them fixed for everyone -- not wait 3 months and then whine on slashdot that there were problems. Maybe the Mandrake developers didn't have your hardware. Maybe the XFree86 developers didn't have a machine with your video card, soundcard and disk controller, and couldn't reproduce the problem.

    In general I think Mandrake is going in a good direction: making a Linux distribution that's easy to administer and use, but that is powerful enough for experienced users and admins (e.g. distributed package management, command-line configuration possible), has reliable automated package downloading and installation (including dependencies), and yet that uses the standard config files for everything, so that you can still administer it the "old fashioned way" be editing /etc/fstab or whatever... hence, a distributionthat appeals to new users, and also can be used by developers.

    Some of Mandrake's tools (e.g. draksync, a graphical front end to rsync that can use ssh) could do with being moved to sourceforge or somewhere and being more widely used.

    Having a Linux distribution that most people can install in 20 minutes to an hour, with no difficult questions, makes a big difference. People moving from MS Windows are often used to reinstalling frequently: this way, wen they can't fix a problem, instead of going back to Windows, they go reinstall Linux, until they learn more about reconfiguring and fixing stuff. And if they never learn how to reconfigure, and always reinstall, it's still a win if it doesn't crash, is Free, open, and they can have a say in what packages are available.
  • I am running Red Hat 8 right now, but I recently installed Mandrake 9 on my 13-year old brother's system (he is running it exclusively, not even dual booting). A few months ago, I put Mandrake 8.2 on my sisters system, which is dual booting with Windows 2000. I am also a member of Mandrake Club.

    That said, going with one CD rather than the traditional three isn't really a good thing I believe. If you really wanted Mandrake on one CD previously, just download the first CD. This was already an option, and you could install a reasonably functional system. Surely, they could make sure the the 'highest priority' packages are on the first CD (they have less motivation to do that with the old multi-CD distrobution system, they could afford to let an 'important' package slip to disc 2), which will certainly happen with the new situition, but it's still limiting choices.

    Mandrake is basically saying, we are cutting down our distro to 1/3rd the size, pay us to make sure the 2/3 that get cut aren't stuff that you like. It's really not a winning situition for the customer.

    I think it would be a much better idea for Mandrake to focus on urpmi. Have networked (RPM, urpmi?... I don't know what they should be called) servers as the default place to look for packages in addition to the installation CDs. They could focus on being like Debian (extreme ease to get new/updated packages after the install), except that the initial Mandrake install doesn't require reading massive amounts of documentation, or much experience with Linux.

    Personally, I still like compiling stuff from source, and the only reason I run Mandrake/Red Hat is so I can get an initial working installation... perhaps my I am now competant enough to install Gentoo, and then I won't have to worry about Mandrake anymore anyway.

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