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Linux Mandrake 6.0 Released 129

Posted by justin++ from the nice-page-redeux dept.
The Linux Mandrake team has released version 6.0 of their award-winning distribution. The new release includes software so new it's almost scary - kernel 2.2.9, KDE 1.1.1, and even GNOME 1.0.9. To go along with the new version, the guys have also redone their web page. Comments?
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Linux Mandrake 6.0 Released More

Linux Mandrake 6.0 Released

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  • Re:so how do you turn it off? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can just type rm -f when you delete and it won't ask you. Or you can make an alias in /etc/bashrc
    alias rm="rm -f"

  • Re:ISO's ??????????? (verified ISO's) (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can get the ISO at
    ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/

  • wrong, wrong, wrong! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Has anyone else had troubles with RH6? For me it's been so bad I've decided to go Debian.

    nope.

    KDE is strewn all to hell and gone across the hard disk instead of all under $KDEDIR (which they make /usr).

    All Redhat from redhat.com install in /usr as do most debian packages. Traditionally /local and /opt are for local and optional software installed by the user.

    To make matters worse, you need to install KDE from source to install it under /opt now since KDE is no longer making RPMs.

    this too is wrong. KDE.org still has rpms (version 1.1.1 is the latest) and they install to /opt (just like you like it)

  • KDE in RedHat/Mandrake (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, 1999 @01:27AM (#1876436)
    FYI

    1)
    KDE in RedHat can be relocated from /usr to
    wherever you want it to be with the relocate
    option from rpm. See 'man rpm' for details.
    You might need to set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH
    so that the libraries can be found.

    2) RedHat does not ship KDE 1.1.1 but a pre-
    release. I haven't checked but I assume that
    mandrake has done the 'Right Thing' and
    included the real KDE 1.1.1 release.

    For people who want to use KDE, Mandrake is
    a better choice than RedHat.

    Cheers,
    Waldo Bastian
    bastian@kde.org
  • Hey, until everyone uses the one true distribution/desktop/etc, they'll never be happy. I find this more disturbing Microsoft-like behavior than some group making a program that puts an X in the upper right corner or has a pull down menu coming from a rectangular bar at the bottom of the screen.

    But that's just me.
  • And you base this on, what? Have you talked with Bob Young or any official RedHat representative? Or was it just your own speculation?
  • ... nothing of use to you. So does that make it useless for everyone? Everything has its niche, and no one's requiring everyone to run everything.
  • How about trying the link Justin provided in this posting to find a few things different from stock RedHat or just changed from Mandrake 5.3? Compare lists of rpms (rpm -qa > file on a Mandrake 6 and RedHat 6). I haven't yet downloaded everything to install Mandrake 6, but I see several things that weren't in RH6 just by perusing their web site. It really wasn't that difficult to find the information; it just took a little effort.

  • Re:No good. (Score:3)

    by whoop ( 194 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @06:43PM (#1876444) Homepage
    I wasn't directing that post to you, but to ill who said how people hate RedHat because it is commercial, and only tends to the people that pay for it. I've heard some RH folks talk at conferences, briefly talked with them myself, and I don't see them as he paints them, only out for a quick buck, or that their sole motivation is what will bring in the most money.

    And seeing what ill wrote just before your response, it proves my point. Too many of these people just paint these evil scenarios in their minds and then come here to spread their FUD and state their hallucinations as fact. This is what is hurting the Linux and Open Source communities more than MS or any team they form.

    Many non-Linux people I've talked to see so many of these fanatics when they look into what Linux is in newsgroups, here on Slashdot, etc. I have to do more work convincing them that there is good in this community and Linux is not just about these wackos, then what it took for one of these people to type their FUD in their post.

    We're killing ourselves here folks, wake up and spread the good word.
  • I know there is a mirror list, but does anyone know where i can get an ISO image yet ? It can take a while to synch up but i dont have the patience to wait till next week.

  • Re:6.0 (Score:3)

    by John Campbell ( 559 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @07:08PM (#1876446) Homepage
    Yeah, Slack is slow to increment version numbers... I've got a Slackware 4.0 CD on the way; it'll be replacing the Slackware 3.0 CD I've been doing installs off for years. Slack 3.0 was 1.2.13-based, Slack 4.0 is 2.2.7-based... so they apparently didn't consider the change from the 1.2 series to the 2.0 series to be sufficient cause to change the major version number...

    In the same time, Red Hat has gone from 2.0 to 6.0... and, y'know, I never did figure out what the big difference was between 4.x and 5.x that made them increment the version number...

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by dmiller ( 581 )
    Apart from slightly newer software version, what does this give me that Redhat 6.0 does not?
  • Posted by _DogShu_:

    got an URL that doesn't require a password?


    BTW, I accidentally deleted my redhat iso before I burned it, anybody know where I can get that iso? or is there a site that will provide links to linux isos?

  • Posted by Hav{}k:

    I have been using mandrake 5.2 and 5.3 since they came out, and love them. Almost to easy to setup now and the dev for the KDE has come along way almost as good as Afterstep. anyway i had to throw my two cents in.

    Enjoy

    " Long Live lynx "
  • O.k you can use hdparm to tune your IDE parameters etc, most distros allow this, and they don't make a big thing about it.

    As far as i know the kernel IDE driver automatically tries to use dma on the IDE device as default. Only if the disk doesn't support it does it turn it off, which means that anybody who is using a 2.2.x based distro and a dma capable disk shouldn't have to do the above and will have decent IDE throughput. They may have to do the 32 bit IO thing though.

    I have tried turning on the 32bit IO option but it doesn't seem to do much for the throughput from either the chipset or the actual disk:

    With 32 bit IO:

    buffer-cache-reads 105.79 MB/s
    buffered disk read 12.60 MB/s

    Without 32 bit IO:

    buffer-cache reads 105.64 MB/s
    buffered disk reads 12.59 MB/s



    They seem to be promoting a 'feature' which is basically in EVERY 2.2.x distro, that's all.


    Iggy
  • Their blurb says about there being optimized UDMA IDE drivers as part of the distro.

    How do they do that. DO they just mean that they are using a later kernel which may/may not have better support for IDE disk transfers (although the difference between 2.2.9 and 2.2.5 can't be that great ?!?!).

    Or have they applied patches from else where to the kernel ??

    Anybody know ??


    Iggy

  • Mandrake -- Smoothest Integration (Score:4)

    by rama ( 1657 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @05:58PM (#1876452)
    They remove all the minor annoyances in Redhat. In
    particulal, they have true type font server, fonts, all the latest goodies like themes and much more.

    They are also more responsive to user requests. There are several Bero* applications which are superior to normal applications.

    In short, it not just Redhat with KDE. It is Redhat done right for the average joe, who just
    wants to get his PC working the way he wants.
  • If Red Hat was a flavor of the month distrbution, why would they attract the investments of Intel? Why would Dell preinstall Red Hat?

    Regardless of whether they got to be the flavor of the month or not, they've exploited their status of being the right flavor at the right time to lock themselves in as the leader.
  • Seems to me that you uncompressed the compressed boot image. Re-download it and DON'T gunzip it. dd it to /dev/fd0.

  • Re:6.0 (Score:3)

    by edward ( 2630 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @07:45PM (#1876455)
    rh 4.x is libc5, while rh 5.x and up are libc6
  • SuSE is not RedHat done anything. It's their own distribution not a hack of another. They use the RPM (RedHat) Package manager as does Caldera, etc. The way they organise packages on the CD is similar to the slackware method (have separate directories for different categories of apps).

    When designing SuSE they seemed to take the best ideas from other distributions (as a Slackware user this is the other distribution that I'm most comfortable with - although there's a lot of things different to slackware) and combine them into their own as well as adding their own ideas.

    Each to their own, however, I've never really liked RedHat but it's getting better all the time. It's just the little things with it that really piss me off. One of the most irritating is aliasing the rm command to rm -i so it keeps asking if you're sure every time. This should be an install time option or not included at all. When I was a new user I couldn't work out how to get rid of this irritating setting and as this 'safety net' is only in RedHat and rip-offs people moving over to another distro may then feel confident that they were going to be asked what they wanted to delete than type rm * expecting to be asked what to delete when everything gets deleted without even saying.
    --
  • I gotta wonder why this was moderated down for being off-topic, when the original article points out the new web site.

    Now, *this* reply is off-topic.

  • Re:Mandrake -- Minor Point (Score:3)

    by Trick ( 3648 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @07:50PM (#1876458)
    Just for the record -- the default font server shipped with Red Hat 6.0 does TrueType. A minor point, but I was glad to see it.
  • One of the screenshots had a "Saving Private McCormick" wallpaper. Where can I get one?

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • Long long ago in a galaxy far far away (OK it was September 1995) I got my first exposure to Linux. It was a copy of Slackware and I thought it was somewhat difficult to use but not too bad. I had not heard of any other distros because Slackware was the dominant one at the time.

    Then I saw the beta 1 for Caldera OpenLinux based on Red Hat. I thought to myself what is so great about Red Hat over Slackware? The biggest improvement RH had over Slackware was you could manage your system more easily using RPM. I tried using Slackware again last year but I was not impressed. I have been and still am using Red Hat.

    THAT is why I use Red Hat. Not because it's the in-vogue distro. Because it's useful for me.

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • RedHat 6.0 screwed up KDE a bit (Score:5)

    by Jacco de Leeuw ( 4646 ) on Friday May 28, 1999 @03:09AM (#1876461) Homepage
    I have been using Mandrake 5.3 for a while, and was delighted to hear that RedHat was going to include KDE in RedHat 6.0. I assumed that RedHat was going to take notice of the usability enhancements of Mandrake but I must say I was a bit disappointed when I installed RH6.0. It's still a great server distribution (I make my living with it ;-) but for the beginning user, I like Mandrake better. For instance:

    - Everyone using KDE should run Appfinder after installation. Point is, RedHat *broke* the Appfinder.

    - KDE 1.1.1 instead of a prerelease

    - More KDE apps and toys bundled.

    - More icons on the desktop, such as Netscape, GIMP, CD-ROM, floppy etc. Nicer backgrounds ;-)

    - With Mandrake, if you click on the CD-ROM or floppy as a normal user, it gets mounted automagically. I have a hard time explaining new users why they have to edit /etc/fstab to make this work under RH6.0

    - Mandrake distributes ISO images. I screwed up a CD-R while making a bootable RH 6.0 image. (I wanted to add KDE 1.1.1, various contrib junk and crypto stuff from ftp.replay.com). My own fault, of course, but still, CD(-image)s are a boon for new users.
  • I just made a CD of Mandrake 6 yesterday, and my quick verdict is "It Rocks!". The best way I can describe it is as Red Hat done right - after install, the only thing I had to do was edit my X startup to run in 16-bit mode, and THAT WAS IT! That's far less fiddling that I've had to do with any distro to date - and I've tinkered with Red Hat 6, SuSE 6.1, and Caldera 2.2 - in order to get it working "right". On the one hand, it's great to be able to tune an install yourself to perfection, but I like the idea of a distro I can just install and _use_. Five pocket protectors up!
  • RedHat must be making a killing off of me, since i have started using it from 4.2 to the current 6.0. Wait a sec! i never paid a dime for it! Something must be wrong... Oh wait, i remember, i downloaded the files and burnt it to cd. Wow, poor RH i guess they didn't know i could "warez" their cool software. What? you mean it was free to download all this time? Okay... geez, i almost felt bad about it.

    Do you see where i am taking this? I have never paid a cent for RH, and i don't plan on it either. Why? first of all, i don't particulary care to go out and buy shrink wrapped software, nor wait for stuff to be mailed to me. Plus i like to keep my cd updated by keeping a local image on my hard drive and updating it with new stuff. Plus its my choice. If you don't like RH, don't use their stuff.

    Remember, its all about CHOICE...

    oh, and i have downloaded everything by myself on my modem.

  • Has anyone else had troubles with RH6? For me it's been so bad I've decided to go Debian.

    Eg., on full install, WindowMaker does not work, many things crash randomly. I've installed it on about 5 machines, all with major weirdnesses.
    xfs doesn't work at all sometimes. True type fonts stopped working, and problems with xauth ...
    KDE is strewn all to hell and gone across the hard disk instead of all under $KDEDIR (which they make /usr). To make matters worse, you need to install KDE from source to install it under /opt now since KDE is no longer making RPMs.

    It seems OK as long as X and none of their X hacked junk gets installed.
  • KDE.org still has rpms (version 1.1.1 is the latest) and they install to /opt (just like you like it)

    - no they don't - the RPM's are for RH 5.x only

    All Redhat from redhat.com install in /usr as do most debian packages. Traditionally /local and /opt are for local and optional software installed by the user.

    /opt is for additional packages. Putting everything in /usr the way RedHat does frankly creates a total mess with large desktop products like KDE and Gnome. If they had at least placed KDE in it's own section in the RPM database, this would be forgiveable. But it (along with GNOME) is strewn to hell and gone across the RPM database too. This makes it very difficult to uninstall. One has to do it from the command line, tediously grepping for each instance of "kde" in the database and uninstalling each package by hand. Is there a way to do this in one fell stroke?

    I just want a distribution that basically installs software to the same locations that the software would put itself in if I were to download the source and compile. Red Hat - all versions - is a total pain in the ass if one likes to upgrade things without having to wait for RH to produce an RPM. I guess this leaves Slackware but I'd really like a glibc 2.1 based distribution ...

    WindowMaker is still completely hosed, I can't understand why this happens. I've had varying results on different machines, but usually it doesn't work.

    Also I have big problems running X programs remotely. Even after "mkxauth blah" "blah" still can't connect to the display ...

    xfs is totally fucked. It can't serve fonts remotely (though it says it can in the man pages) - maybe Red Hat has disabled this little feature without telling anyone? On some installations xfs doesn't even pick up my fonts which are installed locally, even though I've gone trough the proper procedures to add them.

  • Why I'm starting to hate that "I have redhat, why should I use this new distro?" Sound like those dickheads at the university who says..."Hey I have NT, why should I use XX OS?"

    Umm... Not to make you look like a moron, but these people are generally asking "What's better about this distro that would make me want to choose it over Red Hat?", not "I have Red Hat, I am going to bury my head in the sand."

    YOUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE! (hey, clap your hands!)

    They are exercising their right to make an informed decision, not just blindy jumping on to the flavor-of-the-month distro...

  • A lot of them are, but debian is at 2.2 and slask, one of the oldest distros is still at 4.0,I think it mostly looks that way because all the hundreds of RedHat-based distros are going 6.x as well as some others.
  • I really like Mandrake 5.3, and am looking forward to 6.0.

    With egcs becoming the new GNU compiler, does anyone know if this is the default compiler for this distro?

    -- stephen
  • On 99-05-28 at 3:56 EDT zur posted:
    ... they should use the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, which includes /opt, if they want their distro to be interoperable. Most of the distros are already doing this.
    This is good news, if true. My experience is just the opposite.

    A list, please. Or email me [mailto] info on individual distros which comply (or don't) to the FHS and I will compile the list and post it.

    For starters, RH seems to be ignoring the FHS entirely. All releases of GNOME RPMs that I have seen also ignore it. SuSE (from reports on this thread) seems to be complying at least partially, but I would like more data. Caldera (a year ago) was not complying, I have no later data. I have no real data on any other distros put out since the FHS (or even the original FSHS).

    May Gates be missing from all your worlds,
    == Buz :) Buz Cory [mailto] of BuzCo Systems [ddns.org] -- New York NY USA
    write [mailto] for FREE help with:

    • Installing/Configuring Linux
    • Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
    My world has no Gates (but it does have a little Penguin).
    Programmer? Overwhelmed with bugs? Ada is the answer.
  • On 99-05-27 23:19 EDT chris@0x7f.freebsd.co.uk posted:
    It's a pretty good design.
    Concur :=)
    However, I believe the color scheme used on the site could definitely use some work, they don't go well together
    Now here I disagree. I found the low-key design quite refreshing and that the colors worked quite well. Much better than most of the WWW sites I have seen, which tend to be garish and frequently very hard to read because of poor choices of text and background colors.

    May be a difference of system setup. I am running NetScape-4.6 on Linux w/ the X-Free86-3.3 SVGA server on an S3-virge video card, 16bpp, and my Sony/Gateway monitor set so white is as bright as I can get it and black as close as I can get it to the blank space.

    May your world be without Gates,
    == Buz :)

  • At 0:49 EDT on 99-05-28 an Anonymous Coward wrote:
    ... Traditionally /local and /opt are for local and optional software installed by the user.

    Try making that:

    Traditionally /usr/local is for things created or modified locally (by the administrator or users) and /opt is for optional software not part of a
    standard system.

    IMHO, RedHat is doing it entirely wrong. This is one of the things I detest about them. The are doing a lot of things right, but building good distros is not one of them.

    Most of what RH puts in /usr should be in /opt. This includes things like perl, python, tcl/tk, any language not native to the OS or required to compile anything in {,/usr}/{,s}bin. IMHO, even X really belongs in /opt, but long tradition puts it in /usr.

    In other words, /opt/bin should be larger than /usr/bin, and probably /opt/lib (for such things as the various graphics and language libs) should probably be larger than /usr/lib. And both of them should consist entirely of symlinks pointing pack to the package directories. I even use this method in /usr for such thing that I build myself. Instead of copying or moving the executable or library to the installed location, I use symlinks.

    Actually, there is just as big a problem w/ Caldera (as of early '98). Dunno about Debian, Yggdrasl or SuSE. Slackware had so many deficiencies in '94 (when I first started running Linux) that I have not even looked at it since.

    Probably things like KDE, GNOME, window managers, etc should be under X (wherever it is, on my system it is a separate partition with symlinks to the standard locations). Am very displeased with the GNOME putting everything in /usr, especially with their inconsistent naming. If every GNOME app or utility started out gno... it would not be such problem, but they still should be in /opt and the desktop, WM, and libs in /X.

    May you all have no Gates in your future,
    == Buz :) (Buz as Installer)">Buz Cory [mailto] of BuzCo Systems [ddns.org] -- New York NY USA
    ">write [mailto] for FREE help with:

    • Installing/Configuring Linux
    • Getting started with the Ada Programming Language.
    My world has no Gates (but it does have a little Penguin).
    Programmer? Overwhelmed with bugs? Ada is the answer.
  • Horses for courses - if you want to convert a Windows user to Linux, you are going to fail big-time if you hand them a Debian or Slackware CD, but they'll probably be fine with Caldera, Red Hat or (by all accounts) Mandrake. I've installed all the above except Slackware, and I'm quite happy with the character-based Debian 2.0 install, but I've got a reasonable background in various Unices.

    Is it better that the only people using Linux are 'traditional Unix' types, or that a vast number of new users start using Linux, even if they expect and demand GUIs for everything?

    Nobody is going to stop you using Debian or Slackware, and they're ideal for certain types of Linux usage. Just don't demand that everyone conforms to the way you view Linux...
  • Agreed, I've already played with Debian in a VM, and found out that Caldera 2.2 is allergic to being in a VM (at least for me).

    I think it would be very smart to bundle the demo version of VMware on a commercial applications CD, such as the one in the Red Hat boxed set. Even better if they bundle the full one in a boxed set but then it's commercialware not freeware...

    VMware is a real killer app for Linux - it's so convenient to have access to Windows stuff while apps vendors slowly make the migration to Linux.
  • You are both right... It would make most sense if /opt was a symlink to /usr/opt - still conformant to the Linux FHS but mapping onto the /usr partition to keep root small. Of course, if /opt is a separate partition the symlink should not be created.

    Personally I have a single huge root partition that has everything, but I may live to regret this :)

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by bbcat ( 8314 )
    Judging from Mandrake 5.3 I would see it as
    RedHat with some updates. There was a problem
    with Mandrake 5.3 in regards to Doom, the
    weapons were invisible and it would crash
    regularly. Something was messed up bad in
    the video on the console. On the other hand
    the support of KDE wasn't too bad. Since I
    now have a stable gnome I would see little
    use for that one.

    If the bug about doom and perhaps other console
    applications isn't brought back with Mandrake
    6.0 I would say it would be better than
    RedHat 6.0, being a cheap upgrade from RedHat.

    Cheapbytes should have it shortly.

    There was another bug which would force the num
    lock on. Fortunately that bug can be fixed by
    removing some offending lines in
    /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. There're easy to spot,
    something to do with led. I'm sure this bug
    will be there again in the new release.

  • I'm still amazed that I can install and play with the new linux-mandrake release (and try out gnome, KDE, the new 2.2 kernel, and all those other goodies that for the first time) while the computer stays up and continues to happily process email and serve web pages. Trying out new distros has gotten so much easier! I wonder which linux vender will bundle vmware first?

  • It's only a hack, but I like it (Score:4)

    by scooteur ( 9354 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @06:42PM (#1876477)
    It uses the latest stable kernel. Everything has been recompiled with pgcc. There's better language and font (truetype) support, more applications and goodies. Etc. And the best part: it's distributed as a iso cd image.
  • Debian is at 2.1. Then there's Potato, which
    has not been versionized yet. Later...

  • Re:6.0 (Score:3)

    by Stephen Pitts ( 10589 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @06:04PM (#1876479)
    What's really scary is that a CompUSA ad announced
    "discount pricing for the new Linux 6.0".
  • I tried to upgrade from Mandrake 5.3 (with KDE upgraded to 1.1.1) to Mandrake 6.
    Everything was smooth during installation. After reboot I had some unpleasant surprises.

    First, kde was screwed up totally.

    Second, X server started to launch about 5 times slower than before (I don't know why yet).

    I desided it will be cheaper to clean everything out and start from empty root partition, after that everything worked good, but X server still launches slowly, so I switched to init5 as a default.

    Now I am trying to make recompiled kernel to work for me. Now it dies after checking SCSI, with
    "kernel panic" message.

  • Re:Why? - Fresher, Less buggy (Score:5)

    by IQ ( 14453 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @08:45PM (#1876481)
    They moved /opt (where KDE is located) off / and into /usr. I like this. (DISCLAIMER: I have not installed RH6. However, earlier mariner/venus Mandrake betas had /opt in /.) Keeps / small and tame. I followed it in beta, installed it 8 or 10 times in the last week. Mostly it is Current. 229 is nice & fast. Lots of RH6 bug fixes rolled into it. Full install puts 1148 Megs in my /usr. / was around 28 - 33M and I keep /var in a separate partition.

    It became popular prior to RH6 because it was RH +KDE. It has worked well. I am running it on my Thinkpad 600 and on a K6/200/Abit IT5H. Installing Linux on the Thinkpad has been a bit of a chore but RH seems to have figured it out.

    The install took less than 20 minutes not including Sound config...

    ...TGIF!
  • One of the most irritating is aliasing the rm command to rm -i so it keeps asking if you're sure every time

    God I hate that!

    When I was a new user I couldn't work out how to get rid of this irritating setting

    Please tell this new user how you did so before this new user goes crazy...(y [enter] y [enter] y [enter] arg!) thanks :-) -geekd
  • It's not just your HO, it IS why they went with that version number(s).

  • Use symlinks stupid! ;->

    ln -s /usr /opt/kde
    ln -s /usr/bin /usr/share/bin

    RedHat puts everything under /opt/kde in /usr (e.g. /opt/kde/share -> /usr/share), with exception to the binaries themselves. Binaries (normally in /opt/kde/share/bin) are now in /usr/bin.

    -- BitMan

  • It's there to help keep newbie users from deleting the entire drive. Don't laugh, I've seen it done. It's the difference between rm -r /junk and rm -r / junk (one space).

    If you are positivie you know what you are doing, you have two choices. 1) Edit /root/.bashrc and remove the alias "alias rm='rm -i'" or 2) type unlias rm at the command line whenever you intend to delete a lot of files.
  • No,no, I have plenty of hard disk space. But how am I supposed to fit a 2.7MB disk image onto a 1.44MB disk? What do I do? Copy it to a ramdisk, then dd if=boot.img of=/dev/hda1? That doesn't seem very safe at all!

    Surely there's a better way, but please tell me what.
  • I can't tell from the webpage (admittedly, I didn't look too hard) how much they've merged with Berolinux. Do they have pentium/k6 optimized distributions like Bero did? I never actually got Berolinux to install. For some reason the boot image was over 2MB. What's with that? I guess I'll stick with actual Red Hat, recompiling the SRPMs for now (though Stampede is looking very, very nice; we'll see if I'm too lazy to learn a new packaging system).
  • I haven't heard many problems of 6.0, especially compared to 5.0, And I'm running on several machines (gnoRPM rules). I have not had any problems, even on crappy Compaq stuff.

    The definately streamlined the install, and I also Installed SuSE, (Wanted the TNT driver, and didn't have Linux installed yet, and I'm not a RH bigot, just like it). I still prefer RH (I use E + GNOME, I use KDE under SuSE and LinuxPPC). I actually prefer GNOME to KDE now, and I've been using KDE for quite some time.

    Anyway, I'll probably keep using RedHat for my main distro, because dispite the complaints I have not had any problems, which is the great thing about choice.

    As for a slightly different thread about /opt. If the Distro doesn't follow the FHS, it should be considered broken, and I was glad to see that SuSE now added symlinks to make the /etc/rc.d tree compatible with RedHat's. (The FHS doesn't cement the rc.d structure).


    -- Keith Moore
  • Perhaps recompiling everything with egcs & pgcc etc etc... sure there might not be much original work, but at least they took the time to optomize and merge their work with RH 6.0

    I say that's worth a blank CD-R...

    I'm almost tempted... but well, I want to learn how to use my box, rather than just play with it...

    (compiling kernels is fun... really!)
  • Well, Mandrake seems to take the latest RedHat and fix any concerning bugs or oddities and apply the updates from updates.redhat.com. Overall, I'm extremely impressed by Mandrake 5.3...I ordered a RH 6.0 CD from CheapBytes, but I have not installed it given the various complaints about it I have heard. I will probably buy and install Mandrake, though.

    Mike
    --

  • Yes, it takes RedHat as a basis, because you have to start somewhere. But here's what makes the big difference:

    - Pentium uptimizations (5-30% faster)
    - Updated packages, latest versions
    - UDMA optimizations
    - Pre-configured applications
    - Almost 100 RH6 bugs fixed
    - *REAL* KDE 1.1.1, not a pre-release
    - KDE Themes, more KDE apps
    - True Type fonts
    - Internationalization (accents, man-pages...)
    - Apache 1.3.6 with PHP3.0.8 integrated

    Now, what do you want more???

    JM
  • I liked SuSE very much. But there was one little tiny thing in 6.1 that put me off in a big way. Many of the packages are unstable releases. I use Gimp a **LOT** so I was not pleased that I was given Gimp 1.1.x. Very reassuring to see their "Road to Stability" splash screen :-) I had to uninstall it, and reinstall the old one from SuSE6.0. And this was just one example.

    IMHO, stay with 6.0 until 6.2 comes out.
  • I'll probably go with Mandrake 6.0 (it's either than or SuSE). But with the way that Redhat messed with KDE, I'm wondering how they are doing it. Is KDE installed to /opt/kde (or at least /usr/kde or something similar)? And since RH packages are to be 99% compatible with Mandrake, how will this work when they're built to install to /usr?

    If needs be, I can hold off selecting KDE during install and install them afterwards to /opt. (I liked SuSE's idea of putting GNOME under /opt also. Keeps the /usr from getting too cluttered).
  • I am certainly aware of symlinks, asshole ;->

    The problem is, I don't want KDE installed to /usr, period. I can hold off installing any of the KDE components until after Redhat is installed, but maybe I don't want to.
  • Can I use the Mandrake6 RPMs for KDE and X to upgrade my RH6?

  • Re:Optimized UDMA drivers ?? (Score:5)

    by vherva ( 22270 ) on Friday May 28, 1999 @07:20AM (#1876499)
    Perhaps it means this:

    [http://www.linux.com/tuneup/articles/19990518/2 5/]



    2x performance increases have been reported on massive disk I/O
    operations (like cloning disks) by setting the IDE drivers to use DMA
    and 32-bit transfers. The kernel seems to use more conservative
    settings unless told otherwise.

    The commands are

    # /sbin/hdparm -c 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

    to use 32-bit I/O over the PCI bus. (The hdparm(8) manpage says that
    you may need to use -c 3 for some chipsets.)

    Use:

    # /sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

    to enable DMA. This may depend on support for your motherboard
    chipset being compiled into your kernel.

    You can test the results of your changes by running hdparm in
    performance test mode:

    # /sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

    When you've found the optimal settings, you should consider doing a

    # /sbin/hdparm -k 1 /dev/hda (or hdb, hdc etc)

    to keep these settings across an IDE reset. I've seen the kernel reset
    the IDE controller occasionally and if you don't set -k 1, the other
    settings will be reset to defaults and you'll lose all your performance
    gains.

    The -m option can be used to change the number of sectors transferred
    on each interrupt. You may get additional gains by tweaking this, but it
    didn't do anything for me.

    Author: Kenn Humborg (Obtained from TuneLinux.com)
  • If you read the news you will know that Bero merged with Mandrake in mars. http://www.berolinux.za.net/merge.html Regards
  • Hmm this distro seems interesting but I really think they should change around some more stuff instead of just upgrading some packages. IMO distributions should be more creative/have new stuff.
    Btw can someone tell me how to reply to the original article, I always have to reply to someone else's post.

  • 6.0 (Score:2)

    by Phelan ( 30485 )
    is everybody going 6.x now?
    It seems that all Linux versions
    seem to be around the same area lately interesting
    if anything
    P Kueth
  • Faster? That sounds great. I only have 32M of Ram and I find Mandrake 5.3 runs a bit slow with KDE, but faster than OpenLinux 1.2's desktop!
    I find Mandrake to be a great distribution to have when you want to get a system up and running in a hurry and still have all the bells and whistles.

  • Mandrake 6 (Score:5)

    by Nichen ( 34123 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @05:16PM (#1876504) Homepage
    After testing out several other Linux distros, I have to say that I was most pleased with Mandrake in getting a system setup properly (haven't tried out Debian yet, and Mandrake 6 will probably make me hold off on that now). From the information on their website on the new release, I think that Mandrake will continue to reside on my computer. It's really nice to find a distro that caters to people like me that just want to use Linux, not hack into it (although that's probably the fun in using Linux for most). Eh, the Festen release made me stay in Linux much more than Windows, and it will be interesting to see the effect Venus will have on me once I install it. Kudos to the Linux Mandrake team.
  • and not hard links?

    I missed class that day...
  • Gnome is great so far... I am a user of Mandrake 5.3 (Found it way better then RH5.2) with GNOME 1.0.4... I wonder how easy is it to upgrade, and how good is it with gnome?
  • You are right and wrong.

    What happens is that the kernel bundled with Mandrake 6.0
    is not compiled with the option CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO
    ("Use DMA by default when available") as this option is
    reported to break some IDE drives at boot time - they just
    won't work - whereas not compiling with this option and
    setting DMA usage via hdparm -c1 /the/good/drive works.

    Yet another broken-hardware-sucks kind of story :)
  • My own speculation/opinion, of course. What do you suggest I ask Bob Young anyhow? I guess I could since it would make for a decent conversation, but I'm sure of what he will probably come up with. Maybe you should ask Patrick Volkerding?
  • Hmm.. well, maybe it goes beyond the software itself and instead the decisions of the people who develope it. For example, redhat tries to make money off of their software and leans to making it more commercial. This is kinda why some people don't care for it, like myself. Instead, I would rather run a distrobution put together by someone who isn't money-driven, but tries to make the software the best it can be, instead of tending to the people who are willing to pay for it.
  • > Traditionally /local and /opt are for local and optional software installed by the user.

    Wrong, /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages, and there
    is no "official" /local directory.
  • > They moved /opt (where KDE is located) off / and into /usr. I like this

    This is stupid, they should use the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, which includes /opt, if they want their distro to be interoperable.
    Most of the distros are already doing this.
  • in what, that they (redhat) have done good for the community? I dont need to talk to any representative.. who do you think funds the gnome project? guess who has done some major contributions for xfree86? I needn't talk to a redhat official to know that they're not completely focused on their own financial gain.
  • hehe, sorry 'bout that then.. yah, I agree with you tho.. we're shooting ourselves in the foot with the petty redhat vs the world, gnome vs kde, glibc2.* vs libc5 etc arguments.. people see this, and think that this is how the community operates, and for the 'world domination' that so many linux fanatics talk so much about to occur, they need to stop the petty arguments
  • just because the distro uses rpm packaging, doesnt mean you have to install everything by rpms.. source tarballs are almost always available as well.. play with em to your hearts content =)
    I think that the rpms are there for a majority of their users, who dont really care about the source (in other words, they're not programmers ;), but almost any program available in rpms has a source tarball or at least a srpm available..

    btw, I run rh5.2 and I recompile my own kernel ;P
  • yah you would, retard ;)

    seriously tho, I realize that, but it seems in the last month or so, the majority of posts have turned from less attempted discussion to more flame wars.. and I finally decided to say something about it =)
  • I'm getting sick of all the closed-minded people on /... its another distro, which has a purpose of making linux accessable to people who may not have as much computer expertise as others. Yes, its a 'redhat hack', but its simplified enough for less knowledgable people can install it, but not enough that they dont learn anything. calling anyone 'lame' for using it is pretty lame in itself, and pretty much a waste of posting space =P
  • I dont exactaly believe this.. redhat makes updates for software public, and they've done quite a few things for the linux community other than just their own financial gain. No question, they base a lot on their financial gain, but thats more in marketing.. I bet if slack were to get commercial success, and get 50 bucks a pop for a boxed set, the author(s) would leap at the opportunity. Redhat is just the one that has caught the brunt of the commercialization of linux

  • Re:No good. (Score:3)

    by Justin Norman ( 38075 ) on Thursday May 27, 1999 @05:30PM (#1876521)
    once again, further proof of my point. linux is linux, wether its debian, slackware, redhat, suse, turbolinux, roll-your-own, or one of the many redhat clones. Think of it as music. if you like, say, techno, but you dont like, say, punk, do you trash everyone who listens to punk? no, you let them listen to what they choose, and you listen to what you choose. all that distrobutions are are a choice of what 'breed' of linux you wish to run. no version is any better than the next.. it all depends on the admin =)
  • The Reason Venus (Mandrake 6.0) is version 6 is they are matching version numbers with Red Hat, due to the fact that Mandrake is a modified version of Red Hat, it helps to avoid confusion IMHO.
  • It's a pretty good design. However, I believe the color scheme used on the site could definitely use some work, they don't go well together.
  • Better yet, where can i get the picture of the linux chick in one of the other screenshots? ;)
  • Another off topic thing - Anyone think Microsoft would be just a little upset if Dell (or anyone else) shipped Windows this way, running under another operating system? hmm...

  • Did anyone try an upgrade from Madrake 5.3 to 6.0?

    Were there any problems with the switch from 2.0 to 2.2? Any KDE user setups lost (e.g. kppp)?
  • Yeah, this "cutting edge" crap is rediculous. Why release all this new software to all those users when it hasn't had time to be tested for stability/security? This is exactly why slackware stays libc5 and doesn't move to glibc2 since glibc2 isn't as stable or proven to be secure.

    If some bug hits one of these packages, think of all the users who are going to have to download a new version since Red Hat, Mandrake, etc. are using "cutting edge" software instead of a stable version.

    http://www.slackware.com [slackware.com].
  • Can anyone suggest a HOWTO or other docs introducing the basic file directory structure for GNU?
  • I have installed both of these wonderful Linux distrub (Mandrake 5.3+6.0) on different machines to compare them. I see NO difference besides what RH has done. This seems completely STUPID. The little that hs been added is not enough for a new distrub. Mandrake, get more and get it fast.

  • LSL [lsl.com] have it available burned and taking pre-orders for the "real factory deal".

    http://www.lsl.com/ [lsl.com]

    they always have the new stuff...




    ---------------

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by Bero ( 93841 )
    Among other things, you get better hardware support (CD-Writers, ISDN, PC-Speaker, Windoze keys), more packages, Pentium optimizations, and TrueType support.

    The announcement at
    http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ venusannounce.php3 [linux-mandrake.com] has more details.
  • You can.
    However: Mandrake uses bzip2'ed man pages, which RH doesn't support.
    If you update packages with man pages, you should either run
    bunzip2 /usr/man/*/*bz2
    or update to the Mandrake man package, as well.
  • Mandrake 6 is not based on RH6 as in "bug compatible". (even though RH6 is not as bad as you claim).
    We've had problems with RH's TrueType support, as well, which is why we removed RedHat's TrueType patches to XFree86 and put in our own variant (based on X-TT).
    One of RH6's problems is their glibc 2.1.1 CVS snapshot; Mandrake is more current here.
    KDE is in /usr in Mandrake too, because we wanted to be compatible with RH (we'd prefer putting it in /usr/X11R6 to be FHS compliant), but all KDE packages are relocatable.
  • Actually there are a lot of differences between 5.3 and 6.0 aside from what RH has done.
    For example, 6.0 has ISDN support, support for CD-Writers, the Euro key and Windoze keys, bzip2'ed man and info pages (not really user visible, but saves you quite some diskspace), and a series of new packages.
    Have a look at the announcement http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ venusannounce.php3 [linux-mandrake.com] for some more details (but even the announcement isn't complete).
  • It's pgcc 1.1.3.
    Pgcc is a compiler based on egcs, with some additional
    optimizations for Pentium and higher ix86 processors.
    The main reason the optimizations are not yet in
    egcs is that they break support for some non-ix86
    platforms.
  • First of all we put in kernel patches for support of some additional chipsets, like the rather PIIX4 chipsets (used in a lot of Pentium II/III mainboards).
    Second, we automatically added hdparm -c 1 -d 1 to the init scripts, which is a big speedup for some drives, a small one for others.
  • I am running *GASP* SuSE 6... I like it so far, although YaST pisses me off a bit. Not that that is a 6.0 exclusive feature or anything ;)

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