Mandrake 9.2b1 Released, 2.6 Test Kernel in Cooker 219
DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced 9.2 beta 1 of their distribution. More interestingly, Mandrake has included a test version of kernel 2.6 in cooker (their development version). It's dated 27 July so it should be on all the cooker mirrors in the RPM2 directory by now. If you can't find it on your favorite mirror, it's definitely on ftp.sunet.se."
Better yet, Bruha points to BitTorrent files for the 1st 2nd, and 3rd ISOs, and a link to the Mandrake 9.2 wiki, writing "Note that the beta1 installation uses the same kernel as 9.1 did, so if you had problems installing 9.1, you may want to wait for beta2 (which will use an updated kernel)."
Sweet... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sweet... (Score:5, Informative)
I think so.
Word on various boards seems to be that the 2.6 kernel is much faster than 2.4.x. People are claiming improvements of up to 50% in some operations.
Of course, these are early adopters, most of them with single cpu machines. I haven't heard of anyone testing it for robustness or stability in a high-end environment yet.
Anyone else got word on it's performance or bugs?
Re:Sweet... (Score:3, Interesting)
processor systems, for the past 2 years. See
its Kernel [osdl.org]
Testing website and tools. The particular tool
that does this is the Scalable Test Platform.
Bryce
Re:Sweet... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sweet... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gentoo's had the source available in portage since test 1 was released. It works too.
The only problem is that you need to use the open nvidia drivers, since the old drivers are not compatible. Who knows when Nvidia will release a version for this kernel. :sigh:
Re:Sweet... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sweet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but all Gentoo does with a kernel is download the source and install it into
Anyone who can download a file and use 'tar' can do the same thing, quite easily.
And when you install a new kernel, Portage doesn't even tell you which ebuilds need to be re-installed (nvidia-kernel, i2c, lm-sensors, etc).
Not knocking Gentoo (I run Gentoo and Mandrake), but the binary distributions do more of the hard work for you. To some people that is their strength, to others it is their weakness.
Re:Sweet... (Score:2)
Re:Sweet... (Score:2)
Um... More like 4 hours. That's about how long it takes to download and compile the GNU OS. Once that's done, you have a fully usable system.
If you want X installed, which is completely optional and unnecessary, it'll be another 8 hours or so. All in all, it just takes a good day to do, not weeks.
Re:Sweet... (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny thing is, I'm no compiler guy, but even I know that a lot of the optimisation code is inefficient. Notice that Debian came out the best in that little test? And Debian sticks with i386 code. As does most of the commercial software. And Intel and AMD optimise their processors to run that commercial i386 code as fast as possible. Doh!
It wasn't a fair comparison since they were using different video drivers, of course, and also because 'identical machines' never are. To be fair you really have to run t
Re:Sweet... (Score:2)
Of co
Re:Sweet... (Score:2, Insightful)
> advanced feature
That's what Mandrake Cooker is all about. The regular Mandrake
distro is somewhat less bleeding-edge (though more cutting-edge
than some other distros), but Cooker is for testing alpha stuff.
Re:Sweet... (Score:2)
And drivers and stability are the two most important things dists are interested in. And just like the 2.4.x series it was only after several more iterations after 2.4.0 that both of these things are likely
11 days late (Score:3, Funny)
Re:11 days late (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're running Redhat... (Score:5, Informative)
If you try it, note that you must upgrade modutils and some other packages given in the link. Many modules have changed names, like usb-ohci.o -> ohci-hcd.ko so you will need to do some screwing around. I have been running test1 then test2 for a couple of weeks from the link on top of Redhat 9 and it has been working very nicely.
Why is this on the front page? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't post to stories you don (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't post to stories you don (Score:2)
This is Slashdot. The editors will post whatever they feel like. You can even filter it out if you want to. There is no reason to whine about stories like this.
And a new release of Mandrake will indeed be interesting to a lot of people. It shows that troubled Mandrake is still up and running, working on future versions of their distribution.
Spam apologists and story whiners a
Re:Don't post to stories you don (Score:2)
Re:Why is this on the front page? (Score:2)
Maybe that's why redhat just went from 8 to 9 , they want to be on the front page of Slashdot!
Re:Why is this on the front page? (Score:2)
That being said, if we have another dozen stories where every other distro releases a 2.6 kernel standard then I might go postal... but not yet
Re:Why is this on the front page? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this on the front page? (Score:5, Funny)
Missing option (Score:1)
Oh, never mind.
test kernels (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, the only thing I dislike about mandrake is that they force KDE down your throat like it's the next best thing after bread and butter, I really wish they would include mode optinons at install like wm2, ion, openbox, icewm, but also install the qt and gtk libs in the background so you could run gnome/kde applications. That way more people would find out about the alternatives to KDE (it's too distracting and relativealy slow for my tastes.)
Re:test kernels (Score:1)
Re:test kernels (Score:5, Informative)
What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:5, Interesting)
$ cat
Mandrake Linux release 9.2 (Cooker) for i586
$ urpmq --sources enlightenment windowmaker blackbox xfce olvwm waimea AfterStep amiwm evilwm fluxbox fvwm fvwm2 ion ion-metadome pwm ratpoison rox-session swm
ftp://ftp.cae.co.za/pub/mandrake/cooker/i586
ftp
ftp://
ftp://ftp
ftp://ftp.cae
ftp://ftp.cae.
ftp://ftp.c
ftp://ftp.
ftp://ftp.c
ftp://ftp.cae
ftp://f
ftp://ft
ftp://ftp.
ftp://ftp.cae.c
ft
ftp://ftp
ftp://ftp.ca
ftp://ftp.c
(this is our internal mirror, find your own)
Is that enough? (oh, there's still qvwm in PLF, since it looks too similar to some other desktop we know).
Mandrake has never forced a desktop on anyone, and all you need to enjoy the Mandrake configuration tools is gtk+2 and perl.
Sure, not all the window managers are in the main distro, but without contrib, you're missing half of the distro anyway!
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
Under MDK 9.0, at least, there were serious focus problems that kept you from being able to use it ;-(
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:1)
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't want KDE, all you have to do is uncheck one pretty obvious checkbox
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
KDE AND Gnome?
I'd prefer they be started with something sensible that doesn't cause them to think 'Linux is slow and bloated' right off the bat, frankly.
IceWM [icewm.org] maybe. Personally I prefer WindowMaker, but Ice is probably better for the folks that have never used anything but windows. Either way, if they'd put half the time they spend on KDE and Gnome into a sensible default setup wit
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
And just how do you figure that Ice with the menus and basic configuration setup would be harder to use?
I think the opposite is the case. The sort of bloat typical of commercial distros defaults these days are usability nightmares that not only bog the machine down but also bog the users brain down. The easiest way to make a machine easy to use is with a simple and consistent interface that doesn't have too many artifacts simultaneously crying for attention.
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
1) No obvious "start here" button
2) No simple collection of desktop icons
3) No set of built in apps with unified theme and ways of working
4) No obvious choices for web/ftp/local file browsing.
etc...
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
Bzzt Wrong. Windows style taskbar with start button. Never used it have you?
That's not the WMs job, and it's debateable if it's even a good thing. If you think it is, it's simple enough to configure. I did say they would need to spend a little time developing a good default setup.
Again not the window managers job, and again perfectly easy to setup. Ice is comp
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
If I look at ICEWM themes [freshmeat.net] ICE from an end user prespective doesn't look like anything (as is true with most window managers with different styles of thems). Its a pure framework. So it
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
Ice went themeable due to user demand, of course. It originally was a light and fast win95 look-alike, and it's all still there, depending on the theme.
I've used it with both KDE and Gnome, it's quite easy to set up a good working environment with either using Ice as the WM, and it's noticeably faster and cleaner than using the POS that 'pure' KDE uses.
Not sure about KDE but with Gnome you can even set it up so that you can retheme the WM and the Gnome apps together, so that everything matches up nicely
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
I don't I agree with you regarding windowmaker and tend to prefer a simple windowmanager running terminals with a few X apps over a full blown gui (provided it has an automated menu building system from the distribution). On the other hand for a beginner the loss of screen real estate so that they have some idea on how to start (hit the start bu
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:2)
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that the competition now isn't Windows 3.11, it's Windows XP. We don't need to worry about bloat too much by default, but we are behind on features and usability.
If speed was all that mattered, why don't we just give them twm, mutt, links and vi?
Sorry, but there is no way you can put ice up against WindowsXP for a newbie, but you can with KDE, and maybe the latest GNOME release.
I think it would give a better initial impression to most newbies.
Riiight. Why can't I drag and drop to the desktop? Where is my "My Documents?", "Where is my CD-ROM drive?", "Why is the text in the menus so ugly?. Maybe 7 years ago, before Windows 98 ice could have competed with Windows
Instead, these things are left exclusively for those of us that know about them, know how to find them and how to configure them on our own time, while the newbies are being given a very bad impression of Linux
No, the people at mandrakeusers.org, mandrakeclub.com etc will quickly set them right.
if they try to install it on anything but a brand new box at least.
KDE plus OpenOffice.org plus Mozilla plus a few more utilities run just great on my 800 Duron which is now 3 years old (assuming you have about 192MB ram or more). My girlfriends 366 Celeron/128MB ram machine is a bit slow, but not noticably slower (except OpenOffice.org startup) than it was running Windows98.
Re:What, 16 alternative WMs too few? (Score:3, Insightful)
I really oughta update it, but.. I have MDK 7.2/KDE on a P3-450/256mb (a poor old K6-200 was too sl
Re:test kernels (Score:1)
Though Buchan has beat me to it, if you don't want KDE or GNOME, do a minimal install with urpmi, and then you can get most of the wm's you've listed from Mandrake contribs with urpmi.
Re:test kernels (Score:2, Insightful)
I think KDE is a good newbie GUI, and it's pretty effective for the average user. If you include
Re:test kernels (Score:2)
-uso.
Raised on GS/OS
Re:test kernels (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There vs. their.. ARGH! (Score:2)
Their, there and they're are pronounced the same hence the spelling difference is highly unnatural.
Re:There vs. their.. ARGH! (Score:2)
They don't. Written literacy is much lower in these languages relative to education, intellegence... With a complex script people produce less, more slowiy and of lower quality.
Do you pronounce they are as there?
No but I pronouce they're as there.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
No, you misunderstood. What they said was that if they did not get another million, that God would recall them. Apparently it worked. Just like it does here in America.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that like kicking people when they're down? Here I was buying stuff from them (since I do generate spare income using Mandrake), and contributing to the distro, when I should instead have dumped and run for a distro that doesn't pay attention to the features *I* want?
Now it looks like Mandrake is back on track
They weren't ever off-track
or are they releasing work that had already been done and this is going to be the last we hear?
Well, since they went into bankruptcy protection, they released 9.1, which was a pretty good release. And since 9.1, they have been making serious changes to allow greater community participation, to the extent that community contributors who know their stuff have commit rights into the main distro (although more recognition for the community work on maintaining the ports to alpha, hammer, sparc and ppc would be nice). But they have done a lot of work on GUI cleanups in the config tools etc, added more features in urpmi, and of course updated to the latest packages.
And they are still innovating more than Redhat ever did (unless the only thing you use linux for is an Oracle cluster - in which case you're probably better off with SuSE anyway
Now, imagine what they could do if they had enough resources to employ more hackers?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
"Now, imagine what they could do if they had enough resources to employ more hack
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Take the context of the reply into account ... (Score:2)
Maybe the people that ran Mandrake into the ground are gone now?
They were kicked out a good few months before the bankruptcy protection filing, but it was too late
Former Mandrake user.
What changed?
Heh, Slashdot's slow . . . (Score:3, Funny)
I CAN'T WIN!
I would like to see OpenOffice 1.1 in mdk9.2 (Score:4, Informative)
Also does anyone know if they have included the Ximain OO hacks for OO?
Re:I would like to see OpenOffice 1.1 in mdk9.2 (Score:1, Informative)
Torrents (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I'm curious what bandwidth savings Mandrakesoft made with using Bt to distribute the files!
Re:Torrents (Score:2)
I was quite impressed to see that. I hope that the Mandrake guys save lots of money on the bandwidth they save there. I seeded the files for about a day.
One thing, though -- I wasn't able to find the link to the torrents from their official website. Oh well; I guess BT is at that stage where it's provided but not actively advertised as the primary download method
Re:Torrents (Score:2)
Re:Torrents (Score:2)
Go and test it! (Score:1)
I hope Mandrake doesn't burn it's self on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
9.2 will default to a 2.4 kernel (Score:2)
Ummm, you did notice that the 2.6 kernel we're talking about is in contrib? Most newbies won't even be able to find it! 9.2 Will most certainly default to a 2.4.22 kernel (since we are rapidly approaching version freeze time), but there are already a few alternative kernels in contrib, and this will be just anot
Re:9.2 will default to a 2.4 kernel (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, some people complained that it was too similar to 9.0, and that it should have been called 9.0.1!
RedHat seemed to have got away with it.
Well, they broke binary compatability with their premature inclusion of NPTL.
Re:I hope Mandrake doesn't burn it's self on this (Score:2)
The number one thing I'd like to see (Score:1)
Join the club and vote for this! (Score:2)
Bye egghat.
actually boot? (Score:2)
Re:Unfinished product? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Its ALPHA, not beta (Score:2)
When you could have taken the defaults, updated your drakxtools package, and been able to select again as usual.
Redhat uses a different beta cycle strategy (AFAIK, with only one beta release), and Mandrake uses multiple betas. This was just to get people up to speed with the changes in cooker (note the old kernel for example), especially to find the as yet unfound bugs in the mods they have
Re:Unfinished product? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unfinished product? (Score:5, Informative)
Thats from Mandrake's website.
Jeeze...RTFA next time. Or go look up the definition of BETA software.
Re:Unfinished product? (Score:2)
No, nothing more. Nothing less. Now, move on, here is nothing to see.
Re:Unfinished product? (Score:5, Funny)
Those *jerks*! The nerve of them shipping a BETA release with bugs in it.
And here I am, sitting around like a fool thinking "beta" was short for "betar than the final release".
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you saying? Oh no, there's other country outside USA... We should not help them. Yeah, they should buy US products, but please don't buy their products?
And after that, people will still be amazed that there could be an anti-american feeling in the old countries...
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most profound students of "what is different about America was the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville. I*n his book Democracy in America describing what makes American culture distinctive, he said that the inclination of Americans to form informal, community-based non-government, non-corporate associations in order to do the projects the community needs. Volunteer fireman associations are but one common example.
And now the Internet has expanded the notion of community past walking-distance geographic boundaries, has expanded those needed community projects to include Linux, Apache, and the like, and has exported the whole volunteer community association idea to the world.
The sad thing is that now big government and corporatism -- and collusion between the two -- are destroying that uniquely American practice of volunteer community associations at home!
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:2)
The Japanese with their one desktop?!?!? +5 Funny!
Learn some econ, Troll-Boy (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, the name of this fallacy is the "broken window fallacy".
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that I have your attention, I would like to discuss the larger issue of Linux in general. It is time for us, fellow patriots, to look at our situation in the world on a global scale. Microsoft is an American company. Bill Gates started with nothing and built an empire. What is the problem here?
Bill Gates father is a high-end corporate attorney. Bill grew up in a house that would be the == of somebody makeing > 7 figures today. In fact, Bill's father funded much of the early wo
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:2)
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:1)
To say that the French are terrorists because of some random French idiots is kind of like saying Americans are terrorists because of Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber.
God, I must be bored. I'm talking to trolls.
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!) (Score:1)
Well, the French certainly aren't the only western country to have a history of state sponsored terrorist acts but the "random idiots" [aucklandci...ce.govt.nz] who destroyed the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand's waters and caused one death (it could easily have been more, others managed to escape) were working for the French government.
I don't think any court has o
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!) (Score:1, Troll)
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!) (Score:1, Offtopic)
we all look forward to a world united under the flag of Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way
I hate to burst your bubble here, but is the American Way, led by the principles of freedom and democracy and free market capitalism, to give people the freedom to choose what they want? To let the market decide which products are bad and which are good? To engage other nations in dialogue and promote the values of liberty and democracy?
Was America not won from the British, supported in
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!) (Score:3, Insightful)
Mandrake 9.1 isn't available from any vendors listed on PriceGrabber.com, and I doubt 9.2 will be either.
Face it, Mandrake's US channel sales suck.
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!) (Score:1)
Re:The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!) (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Does anyone know of old archives of Mandrake 6. (Score:1)
Well, it's offtopic, but here ya' go anyway:
No iso's available. You *can* get the RPM's and SRPM's at:
ftp://ftp.linuxforum.hu/mirror/Mandrake-old/upd
Here you go (Score:2)
Re:France (Score:3, Funny)
Re:France (Score:1)
Re:France (Score:1)
Re:France (Score:1)
Apples and oranges (Score:2)
Thank you again for coming (totally selflessly again as Pearl Harbour is a myth) to help us beat the Germans in 1941 (2+ years after the war began; 1+ year after the french lost it).
We are so selfish to have refused to help you defend yourselves agai
Re:Apples and oranges (Score:2)
Paille. Poutre. Oeil (Pot. Kettle. Black) (Score:2)