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Mandrake 6.1 NOT Out (Update) 67

Posted by Hemos from the mandrake-of-enlightenment-is-not-making-this dept.
swestbrook writes "It appears that Mandrake 6.1 final is out. It's starting to appear on the mirrors everywhere-grab it from here or the usual places. No news of the release on their website but details should show up today. Update: 09/14 10:44 by H : I've been informed by Mandrake that it is not out yet-they are still going through the beta process, so don't be surprised by bugs in the current beta. You've been warned.
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Mandrake 6.1 NOT Out (Update) More

Mandrake 6.1 NOT Out (Update)

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  • Re:They're not fixing bugs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My understanding from the devel mailing list is that the outstanding bugs on the bug page is a result of their bug tracking system not being fully in use. They claim that bugs are actually getting fixed but bug page updates aren't happening like they should.

  • Not official yet (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The mail on the Cassini (6.1B) mailing list seemes to indicate that 6.1 (helios) is not released yet. Still some bug fixws going on.
  • yeah i know 6.0 has been out since may that wasnt what i was asking, im talking about 6.1 ISO images.

    I guess we wont see that until its actually out though, if it isnt "Officially" out now.
  • ISO anywhere ?

    anyone ?

    im spoiled i know but i love my ISO's
  • Mandrake's main web-site [linux-mandrake.com]



    Follow the "free download" link under "Get Your Mandrake!" to: Mandrake mirror sites [linux-mandrake.com]
  • Hard drive optimisations are turned on at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

    I think that I need to fiddle with them too: my hard drive light stays on permanently when I'm in Linux. Something that I find quite disturbing!

  • What I heard about Linux at Costco was pretty darned interesting: They said that they decided to offer RedHat linux on a whim, and that it had outsold Windows 98.

    I wish I could rememeber where I read that, at any rate: it was amazing to see like 4 pallettes of redhat boxes right where you walk in at our local store.

  • Very Informative...

    Most people would provide a link to the particular document perhaps.

    How come I'm never moderator when I need it?

  • RedHat 5.1 initially shipped with kernel 2.0.34pre6 IIRC. Didn't seem to do any harm. The harm came when they made a silent upgrade to 2.0.35. You'd buy an Official RedHat 5.1 CD and end up with a different version than someone else who bought an Official RedHat 5.1 CD. Why is this a problem? Try installing RedHat 5.1 on someone else's machine as a favor after having installed 5.1 on your machine. I was pulling hair out trying to get sound to work, until many hours later I finally traced the problem to the fact that her RedHat 5.1 CD had kernel 2.0.35, which had apparently made some major changes to the sound code from 2.0.34 (so much for the so-called "stable" branch), thus my attempt to set up her identical sound card in the same way as mine was set up wouldn't work, since I was running RedHat 5.1 whereas she was running RedHat 5.1, which is incompatible with RedHat 5.1 as far sound configuration goes. Lovely...

    Thankfully, since then, RedHat has vowed to stop making silent upgrades (what they should have done is release this as RedHat 5.1.1, what they decided to do instead is stop shipping CD's with updates already applied -- which is lame but better than the original situation). And with any luck the kernel people will start making stable branches that are actually stable (i.e. after the feature freeze, nothing goes in but bug fixes -- if you want to have new features, run the odd series kernels).

    --

  • Several months ago, I was at CompUSA buying a hub (desperate -- we needed to get out of the colocation cabinet that night) and, to my amazment, I found a whole shelf with various shrink-wrapped Linux stuff: multiple distros, WordPerfect, and Civ: Call to Power for Linux. Apparently that day was the first day the store got CTP. I was highly impressed.

  • 6.1 (Score:1)

    by wally ( 3636 )
    I downloaded one of the early 6.1 variants a few days back, and I have to say it does excel in a few areas, notably speed. Also their GNOME/E setup (at the time) was probably the best I've seen, period, in terms of *everything working*. It also seemed quite stable.

    I did have a problem, however in that when it kicked into "sleep mode" it would throw the system clock completely off. Has anyone else experienced this problem, if so is there a fix available? Apologies if this is a newbie question.

    Happy Tuesday
    wally
  • Just curious, you wouldn't happen to have an S3 Virge card. If so, that's happening because the X server(s) for the Virge are so completely broken.
  • Folks....hold up! The 6.1 release is not yet finished. Wait until they get a few more bugs worked out ok. The official pressing isn't until some days away so let the mirrors settle and the ISO images get created. Also there are some other small nigglies that have to be worked out. It is not done yet so please don't download it and then complain about it. Thanks, Nicholas
  • He can still install it. Just on the reboot after the install you have to boot from the floppy and edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit file and comment out the section that does the udma stuff. GeekBoy
    ***************************************** ***
    Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
  • Helios isn't ready yet! Please wait for the official announcement. There are still some bugs to be squashed and major new builds possible.

    If you want bleeding edge, try cooker [linux-mandrake.com], Mandrake's real time development distro!

    However, if you encounter bugs on pre-Helios, please send them to Mandrake's bug ml [mailto].

    Thank you!

  • It has been my understanding that at least in the past (with the exception of Mandrake 5.3), Mandrake has based their distribution on the Redhat releases. Have they decided to part from this strategy now? They seem to be ready to release 6.1 before Redhat's release of their 6.1 product. Anyone in the know?

    --Jamin Philip Gray
    jamin@DoLinux.org

  • There are many little differences, like the penguin on the login prompt :) I find that mandrake is a little more "polished" than redhat. they force you to creat a non-priveledged user during setup, something i'm usually too lazy to do on my own.

    I also believe that mandrake is now compiled with pentium optimizations, which is supposed to give a speed increase.

    I've used both 6.0s, and personally i like mandrake better. I cant wait to get my iso image and check it out :)))

  • There was a problem when it first came out. You need to uncomment a line in the /etc/inittab file. Unfortunately I don't remember which line it was off the top of my head.
  • I was looking at the ftp mirrors today, because I wanted to download 6.0. I could only find 6.1, and, seeing as I thought it was still in beta, I didn't want to download it. This clears everything up...

    Anybody got a list of new features?
  • Yeah, I just ordered 6.0 from Cheapbytes... Oh well, guess I'll use up some of the twin T1's for the upgrade.

    -- Keith Moore
  • ...but 6.0 wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, particularly during install.
    BTW, congrats to /. for beating out Mandrake with the news. Perhaps someone should let them know they've got a web page.
  • Fair point. You've shamed me for making impetuous comments; I promise not to do it again. Today.
  • I think they were just waiting for the KDE version to be finished. The beta they had up before was built from the 1.1.2 CVS, not that I tried it mind you (no highspeed bandwidth or CD burner). Things like Lothar for configuring hardware look very promising, however maybe they should have waited to see what Redhat is really doing and incorperate it? No matter, either way Mandrake always puts together a solid distrobution.
  • I tried RH6.0 and it was very unstable on my system, so I tried Mdk6.0 and haven't had a problem since.

    They did rush out a quick fix for a problem they were having with the init scripts. It never affected me though.
  • Before you jump to unwarranted conclusions, check your facts. The bug tracking system is broken. That doesn't mean that dozens of developers are just sitting down picking their noses and waiting for a release. They're fixing them despite the fact that they can't log the fixes for you to see.

    Mandrake developers are active participants in the general and developer mandrake mailing lists. If there is a specific bug you are concerned with, post a question to the lists asking if it's fixed.
  • Well, it seems like you might be lucky...

    KDE 1.1.2 appears to be included!
    Talking about bleeding edge ;-)


    Best regards,
    Steen Suder
  • I've tried DL'ing the 6.1version from several sources and they all seem to crash, so I would hold off a bit before DL'ing the files. I did briefly use the 6.1 Beta and it ran very smoothly (and fast), but the non-beta is still buggy - I can't install it - it just crashes even before I can select which packages I want to install
  • I'd seriously watch out for that available-at-CostCo `Mandrake' distribution. A friend got it and got reamed:
    • The install failed because one of the needed modules was built for the wrong kernel version, so an install-time insmod died.
    • It turned out that if you read the fine print it's actually a Macmillan product, not even an `official Mandrake' product... so, no Mandrake support. (Not even any Macmillan support, actually, just some third-party um professionals whose name escapes me.)
    I think such knock-off slap-together quick-buck distributions do an extreme disservice to the cause, putting bogus software in the hands of those who can least deal with it and thus tending to feed the FUD.
  • I had a problem where hdparam (hdparm?? can't remember) was set on hard disk that didn't support the flags that were being set. Took me ages to work out that I was getting filesystem corruption and THEN to work out the problem.

    I still have a problem where the system just freezes when I'm in KDE or Gnome.

    grrr....

  • Damn (Score:1)

    by raffe ( 28595 )
    Damn i just burned a copy of 6.0 1 hour ago!!!
  • They have been experiencing various difficulties. Their NFS server had a faulty motherboard and must be replaced, and they had various difficulties with their ISDN modem (which I helped their sysadmin in solving). Release is expected Real Soon Now (tm).
  • Redhat is everywhere, but it's too damn expensive ($79.95 for the basic box? Download it)

    Mandrake at Staples and Media Play, but don't bother, they don't have Mandrake's best, the Power Pack. I've only seen their basic and deluxe in retail.

    Ordered my Mandrake 6.1 from LinuxMall, got a free RedHat CD with it, which isn't bad for $50.

    Jpowers
  • Red Hat/Mandrake also in Software Etc. next to a copy of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux, and Word Perfect 8 for Linux at Staples. Scary.

    jpowers
  • Which is good... choices, always we need more choices! :)

    Seriously, can anyone explain the difference between the two distros, other than the fact that on RedHat you have to explicitly tell it to use KDE instead of GNOME?
  • I had a similar problem with RH6.0 when I put a new motherboard in that didn't like APM to turn off the computer after a halt, it would spout some errors on the screen. When I booted back up, sure enough, the clock was exactly 12 hrs ahead. I just ended up disabling APM power off on halt in the kernel and recompiling. No problems since.
  • where did they go?
  • There's a mountain of stuff outstanding from
    6.0 and practically none of it is being addressed.

    See the sad story at their bug page [linux-mandrake.com].
  • Can't really give out an ISO since it's in beta it keeps changing so any ISO anyone makes is out of date by the time it gets to the web. These guys are working fast and furious on the bug side.
  • Alan posted a summary of the 2.2.13pre5 patches on the Linux Kernel mailing List [indiana.edu] last thursday. MandrakeSoft might have considered this prerelease stable enough to include it in their 6.1 tree. They might also be holding their press annoucement until the final 2.2.13 is out and they can rpm-ize it and load it on their ftp site.

    I've never installed a pre-xxx kernel before, and I wonder if any of you who did it had experience problems with software that test the minor version number of the hosting kernel. I guess a program based on atoi("13pre5") will not be too happy about the whole idea.

  • Last time I was at Software Etc. (picking up FF8) I was looking around; they had two distos, Red Hat 6.0 and a much cheaper box with Mandrake 6.0 :) Really, $100 vs. $30, if I was gonna buy one I think you can all guess what I'd get :)
    --
  • Where do you find the iso images for Mandrake? I just downloaded Caldera 2.3's iso image and found that much easier than going through all the directories to download everything.

    Mark

  • Sorry about the horrible mess I just posted, its my first time ;)

    Here are the file updated since the 12th:

    09.12.99 X11R6-contrib-3.3.2-8mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 klyx-0.10.0-3mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 libmikmod-3.1.6-2mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 libmikmod-devel-3.1.6-2mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 man-pages-ko-1.1-8mdk.noarch.rpm
    09.12.99 mikmod-3.1.6a-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 xanim-28010-6mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 cdrecord-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 cdrecord-cdda2wav-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 cdrecord-devel-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.12.99 bzip2-0.9.5d-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 enlightenment-0.16.devel.6-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 mkisofs-1.12b5-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 rhs-printfilters-1.57-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdebase-1.1.2-8mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdegraphics-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdelibs-1.1.2-7mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdemultimedia-1.1.2-3mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdesupport-1.1.2-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdetoys-1.1.2-2mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdeutils-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdeadmin-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kdenetwork-1.1.2-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 ppp-2.3.8-1mdk.i586.rpm
    09.13.99 kernel-smp-fb-2.2.13-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 ncurses-5.0_990703-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 ncurses-devel-5.0_990703-4mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-BOOT-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-doc-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-fb-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-headers-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-ibcs-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
    09.14.99 kernel-smp-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm
  • I upgraded to Mandrake from Red Hat 6.0 about a week ago, and it has performed splendidly for me thus far. I've noticed significant speed improvements in GNOME/E, and GNOME actually seems less buggy to me now (I don't know if that's accurate, since I believe Mandrake packages the same version og gnome-core and gnome-libs, but it certainly seems that way). I'm done with Red Hat. Mandrake gives me everything Red Hat does and more, and offers better performance. Who can argue with that?
  • Been watching the ftp sites for the new 6.1 release and did an ftp install yesterday to update the 6.1b install I had. Everything seems to work on my system without any troubles yet.

    Ender

  • Re:I'll give it a try (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Or maybe, *just maybe* /. should have waited until Mandrakesoft made the official announcement. This way all the mirror sites have the updates propagated out to them, iso images can be verified, etc.

    This way, both Mandrakesoft and the mirror site admins would be much better prepared for the /. effect.

    Keep this in mind before you post a complaint like "The server's too slow... where are the mirrors???"
  • Last time I was at Costco, they were selling Mandrake Linux and Caldera Linux only. Needless to say, this surprised the crap out of me. I had expected to see Red Hat there.

    Either way, does anyone have data as to which of the major store-chains you can buy which distros at?

    This would be good information to have online somewhere for potential buyers (at least those buyers who research their distros before buying one).

  • Try... (Score:2)

    by Malc ( 1751 )
    Mandrake's main web-site [linux-mandrake.com]

    Follow the "free download" link under "Get Your Mandrake!" to: Mandrake mirror sites [linux-mandrake.com]
  • I got a copy of Mandrake6 from Cheapbytes a couple of weeks ago and installed it. So far it seems unstable compared to the original RH6 and it doesn't seem to shut down properly either. When I turned my computer on this morning, the system had to recover from a pretty bad case of filesystem corruption b/c the system shut down wrong when I turned it off last night. Although it was the worst case I've seen so far, unfortunately it was not the first time re: Mandrake.

    When is RH6.1 coming out?!?!?!

    "Microsoft is the epitome of innovation and product quality."

  • Mandrake integrates a little more with kde (aka they use kdm instead of gdm by default), they have a little updater app which lets you get the latest updates easily, they debug and test a bit more than redhat and thus tend to have a few less "quirks", they ship with egcs/pgcc (now gcc/pgcc) by default, and compile all the binaries with it which should lead to a 5-30% speedup depending upon app.
  • mandrake has a listserv and newsgroup (alt.os.linux-mandrake i think). These places are stocked with people who will answer any question about mandrake that you have. i've gotten help from everything from quake3 to setting up a domain with bind

  • It's not a very scientific observation, but I've seen Redhat and sometimes other distros on the shelves in mall software stores and the like. Our university bookstore is still pretty behind it with computers...prices are insane for 3 year old software...but they have linux books (cd's bundled.)

    I think perhaps the Distro people themselves could provide data on how many units are sold and how...


    Costco tends to not diversify too much, they sell whatever they can get cheap. That's why their product line sometimes changes slightly over the months....
  • Has anyone noticed that the distro appears to include kernel 2.2.13? I'm downloading it now, and there's a file called "kernel-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm". AFAIK, 2.2.12 is the latest. Is mandrake doing custom kernels, did they screw up their names, or is it something entirely differnet? Note that I haven't installed it yet, so I don't know what the kernel actually is...
  • Mandrake hasn't been based on Redhat since 5.2. Yes, that's correct, 5.2. They forked the distros with 5.3 and everything else since has been their own.

    They attempt to stay Redhat compatible, and this includes adding some Redhat apps and keeping the configurations the same. But they realized a while ago that they need to be their own distro and not merely a "better Redhat".

    Cooker is their "development" distro. It is always being worked on and updated. When they feel that cooker is relatively stable, they fork off a beta distro, get it fully stable and release it.
  • Mandrake also uses UltraDMA on IDE drives which support it, for a substantial speed increase, and tweaks some stuff in the KDE configuration.

    It runs fine on my workstation, but my friend has been having DMA-related problems that prevent him from installing it. Maybe we'll try 6.1 today.

  • I apologize to everyone that I spoke a little too soon. My mistake.. thousands of rotten apples thrown my way.
  • I wouldn't rush to download this for a little while. People have suggested waiting for KDE 1.1.2, but that isn't the only reason. The 6.1 directories have been around for a couple of days and the contents are still changing. Here is a few of the files that have changes at a Mandrake ftp mirror (ftp.tux.org): 09.12.99 20:10:00 11R6-contrib-3.3.2-8mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 20:10:00 klyx-0.10.0-3mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 20:10:00 libmikmod-3.1.6-2mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 20:10:00 libmikmod-devel-3.1.6-2mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 20:11:00 man-pages-ko-1.1-8mdk.noarch.rpm 09.12.99 20:11:00 mikmod-3.1.6a-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 20:11:00 xanim-28010-6mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 22:20:00 cdrecord-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 22:20:00 cdrecord-cdda2wav-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 22:20:00 cdrecord-devel-1.8a27-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.12.99 22:30:00 bzip2-0.9.5d-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 0:15:00 enlightenment-0.16.devel.6-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 00:26:00 mkisofs-1.12b5-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 15:05:00 rhs-printfilters-1.57-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 16:45:00 kdebase-1.1.2-8mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 16:45:00 kdegraphics-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 16:50:00 kdelibs-1.1.2-7mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 16:55:00 kdemultimedia-1.1.2-3mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 17:05:00 kdesupport-1.1.2-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 17:05:00 kdetoys-1.1.2-2mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 17:10:00 kdeutils-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 17:15:00 kdeadmin-1.1.2-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 21:10:00 kdenetwork-1.1.2-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 22:01:00 ppp-2.3.8-1mdk.i586.rpm 09.13.99 23:23:00 kernel-smp-fb-2.2.13-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 01:15:00 ncurses-5.0_990703-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 01:15:00 ncurses-devel-5.0_990703-4mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 03:50:00 kernel-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 03:55:00 kernel-BOOT-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:00:00 kernel-doc-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:10:00 kernel-fb-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:10:00 kernel-headers-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:10:00 kernel-ibcs-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:10:00 kernel-pcmcia-cs-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm 09.14.99 04:18:00 kernel-smp-2.2.13-5mdk.i586.rpm As you can see, there is a reason this release hasn't been officially announced.

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