The RC2 for x86-32 is available with mostly bugfixes. The RC1 for x86-64 is merged with 10.2 for i586, integrated graphics on i915-based motherboards are now supported. Packages fixes and additions: kdevelop, nut, pinentry, ripole, rosegarden4, xdelta2, ypserv.
Mandrakelinux 10.2-RC2 for x86, 10.2-RC1 for x86-64 Releasd
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I haven’t tried MDK since 10.0 and that sucked ass.:(
Is 10.1 and 10.2rcx better? Hopefully the Conectiva developers will step in and clean up in the mess.
What in 10 you didn’t like?
KDE for starters…
It’s right there. Or xfce.
you did not like 10.0 ? probably the best distro around at the time !
now they are at 10.1, it IS the best distro around.
although, do not move on to 10.2 yet, it is still for testing, hence the RC2 bit
Couple of the big ‘fixes’ for RC2 – SB Live! and Audigy owners will now actually be able to boot (thanks for that one, Alsa team!), installed from SATA optical devices ought to work.
Too easy of an answer for you. Their GNOME integration was not that good with 10.0.
define ‘integration’. What was wrong with it?
integration: http://www.answers.com/integration&r=67
All I’m saying is the Gnome integration for Mandrake 10.0 was not that good. Surprisingly it is better in 10.1.
well, i’m more of a fedora guy, but mandrake is still a good distro.
btw, you forgot an ‘e’ in the subject. “released”
I liked 10.It was the best at the time.
I think Mandrake does and will continue to do a heckuva job running from the front all the time.Thats a difficult job and I think thats why it gets alot of unfair rap because comparing it with the newer distros it seems to suck but most forget thats where their linux experience began.
Yes, I know what the word integration means, thanks. It’s still not clear in this context. Integration of what into what? How is MDK 10.0’s KDE more ‘integrated’ than its GNOME, or whatever? What is it more integrated with?
What Gnome features were you not able to find in MDK10? As a user of FC, MDK, Suse, Debian (and derivatives), I feel pretty good about comparing those distros. Gnome was “integrated” just fine in them…including MDK. Granted KDE is MDK’s default, but it’s just not that difficult to change to Gnome.
These days the distros are so good, it comes down to a couple of issues:
a) installer and its related eye-candy
b) package management and its related eye candy
MDK (and many, many others) make a fine linux distribution for all kinds of users. Your complaint doesn’t hold much water without some specifics.
Whatever the case is, a new user ought to just pick one and stick with it. Learn the stuffing out of it and grow.
**Whatever the case is, a new user ought to just pick one and stick with it. Learn the stuffing out of it and grow.**
Agreed.
its been said a million times before – but mandrake’s graphics for its distribtion, adverts, websites, box sets, desktop themes, configuration tools… they’re very amateurish!
which is a shame becuase its a very capable system.
now if they have the mandrake capability with top grade graphics – that would be one attractive package.
and yes – people are affected by the graphics. Snr IT Manager from X Corp is going to prefer Redhat or Suse or MS just because they look more professional. Bad design gives the impression that the authors are not meticulous about their product – even if it isn’t true.
As an IT director I’d just be happy if Mandrake wanted to sell me something. I’ve emaield them 3 times about their corporate email gateway but I guess they just don’t want my money. Mandrake, you reading this?
I agree with what’s been said here: Mandrake doesn’t have it..yet..when it comes to integration, stability, and most positively–graphics. They may get there some day, but right now it feels like we’re all big, bad alpha testers for a project gone awry. Until they get it straight, I’ll happily boot Slackware.
Yeah, slackware, with its killer customised graphics and integration? (hint: unpatched packages). um…whatever.
Yeah, and a bloody good thing too. Mandrake piles stacks of untested patches into its packages, and the end result is gross instability. Just look at some recent releases. Hundreds of megs of fixes – only a month or two after release. Bugs abounding, glitches all over the place.
Contrary to what some uninformed people say, the LG drive problem WAS Mandrakesoft’s fault, for this reason: the code which caused the problem wasn’t in the stock kernel. Oh no.
It was an untested, experimental patch, but Mandrakesoft decided to roll it out to millions of users (many of them newcomers), and look what happened. That’s grossly irresponsible.
So yeah, give me Slack’s stable, known, tested vanilla packages any day over Mandrake’s bug-ridden over-fiddled suite of glitchy mess-ups!
I must say that I am very pleased to see MandrakeSoft continue in its long tradition of innovation and contribution by supporting the Free software philoshopy of release early and release often when it come to beta testing there software solution. Which is free ( as in cost )and accessible to all.
MandrakeLinux is rock hard solid as proven by its millions of user worldwide who are all very happy using it everyday , MandrakeLinux his the most advanced GNU/Linux availaible today , no one else come near what they have to offer in term of tools , number of software and possible solutions.
Its the only Gnu/Linux Company that support all there product with security and updates and who as kept there promise of delivering a full Gnu/Linux solution to everyone.
There solution are not only the most integrated and most beautifull , they are what all the corporation of any size and what all the individuals need also. Thats why Most user after some year with Red Hat , Novell , Slackware , Debian and most of the Linspire and Xandros user all switch to MandrakeLinux.
MandrakeLinux is the last remaining commercial Real Gnu/Linux distribution that to this day fully support all the windows manager and desktop environment by default by paying developper to improve them. And win prize for the quality of each individual WM and DE , unlike most other distribution who only really offer support on one windows Manager , you can be confident that on the last version of MandrakeLinux , the windows Manager will be the best and stable that is availaible at the time of release.
MandrakeLinux dont compromise security for the sake of useability , but yet they are still the most useable and easy Gnu/Linux distribution to use.
Unlike other who will falsely claim to support opensource there is a long track record of Mandrake providing directly the changes they made to the developper of the software that they are permited to use. And also the visible offer of the source code and its release in a useable fashion to all in the GNU/Linux community.You can also name the developper working for mandrakaesoft and on what project they are as they tend to be the one who deliver the most updates.
Unlike other who falsely claim to have the best product and that they falsely have a distribution for everyone when the total cost of ownership to equal the basic Mandrake offering with them is well over 300$ , and that dont cover the source , beta and development tool and server tool , and that they are not even making a real profit , but yet stiil claim to be the best of the best when there user number dont even pass the 10 000 users.
Mandrake with its 3 Million “paying” user and its 70 million free user and this in 60 languages in over 200 country. Is in fact among the one leading the charge.There community and there support and themself invested over 50 million for last year development of there solutions.
They have to , because there real competition is the exeptionnal group from Fedora ( The spin off development project of the 3.5 biilion USD Red Hat, who where not interested to develop the desktop ), The Immense group that is the Debian group and its spin off and associated claimer thief, The knoppix live cd and it spin off and thief who keep improving the way Gnu/Linux install and is released. The Ubuntu group lead by the billionaire shuttleworth who’s contribution and style should be the norm everywhere. And lets not forget the Gentoo people who are among the best community. And many others.
MandrakeSoft and MandrakeLinux are GNU/Linux heavyweigth champion , just like MUHAMMAD ALI who changed its name and who whas a man with its flaw , MandrakeLinux is the same,
MandrakeSoft and MandrakeLinux are also like “Rocky Balboa” , everyone is always on there case , , they always loose at the beginning , but in the end they always come back even better.
MandrakeLinux and MandrakeSoft :
# Front Line in the defence of freedom : checked
# Choice : checked
# Quality : checked
# Highest Stability, level 5 , Military : checked
# Gnu/Linux : checked
# Quantity : checked
# most possibility : checked
# For everyone : checked
# At no cost and low price : checked
# Real Community : checked
# Development Tools availaible to all : checked
# Profesionnal : checked
# Profitable : checked
# Gnu/Linux and Open source support : checked
# Most advanced Gnu/Linux distribution : checked
# Sharing off source and software : checked
# Multilangual : checked
# Multi platform : checked
# Bullshit : left out
# Renaming other people software : left out
# Developping closed source software only : left out
# Showing off old stuff as new : left out
# Very small donation to make look bigger : left out
# Claiming other people works as own : left out
# Insulting GNU ,Geek ,Developper, anyone : left out
# Claiming to be #1 or the best : left out
Quote : Some developers build desktop Linux for a living, and some build it with heart. Some developers understand the needs of desktop users and some just seem to live inside your head. – Adam Doxtater
“Its the only Gnu/Linux Company that support all there product with security and updates”
Er, no. They have an 18 month lifespan before products are EOLed, which is considerably shorter than Debian or RHEL (and indeed CentOS as a result!).
“# Highest Stability, level 5 , Military : checked”
Hah! Perhaps your post is just a troll. But I’d be wary of using any Linux in military installations – something like VMS would be better. And Mandrake’s notorious bug-ridden releases would be a nightmare in such a scenario.
BTW, a question: will it be possible to make a “desktop-environment-adaptable” implementation of OpenOffice.org in Mandrakelinux?
That is, when I use KDE, I have the KDE-like OOo; and when I use Gnome, I have the Gnome/Ximian-like one (which seems to be the only available sofar, in Mandrake, contrarily to SuSE, for example).
Eventually, all this could become a system-wide option, maybe: KDE- or Gnome-look for as many apps as possibile? Hypothetically, of course.
Even better, maybe try to unify the two main environments as much as possible…?
Just some random – but not too random, really – thoughts…
… Ah, I forgot: the Galaxy theme really needs to be “modernised” – it could be more similar to Plastik, IMHO…
Lets see.
1)Contribution to free software:
Please name some.
RedHat not Mandrake among all the Linux Distributions
contribute most to free software.Redhat has developers working on the kernel (Alan Cox),
X (Seth Nickell..http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog//xshots),
gcc and Gnome.Kde developers are employed by Novell.
Name one high profile project which is widely used to which Mandrake has contributed “substantially”.AFAIK there is none.
2)Community:
Though i’m a slackware user I have to admit that Gentoo community rocks.Their forums have a wealth of information.
Mandrake forums are only for paying mandrakeclub customers.
3)Beautiful Desktop?
Please.
Mandrake looks cluttered.A million programs thrown together.If you want to see a polished distribution see Suse(Novell)
4)Quantity Software ?
Debian leads the way with Gentoo close behind.Among commercial distributions Suse takes the cake for that.
5)Front line in defence for freedom?
Where was Mandrake during SCO fiasco? (I can excuse them as they have just become profitable).
6)Highest Stability, level 5 , Military : checked ?
Even Mandrake fanboys will admit that it is the least stable distributions among the big distributions (Fedora may take it’s place now..sad.).
Thats the price you pay for having the latest and greatest
software.Mandrake has a history of shipping Beta software in its production releases.
I think you are definitely trolling because AFAIK only Redhat and SUSE has got military clearance (Not the highest level).It’s a very expensive and time consuming process and I definitely don’t think Mandrake could have afforded that
considering their finances.
I can go on and on but i think i have fed the troll enough.
PS:I have nothing against Mandrake.I think it’s a pretty good distribution especially for newbies
the minuses are
1)Lack of polish.The menus and distribution itself has a cluttered look.If you haven’t used Mandrake just take a look at their website (http://mandrakelinux.com/)
You will kno what i’m speaking about.
2)Unstable and buggy in comparison to other big distributions.This is slowly changing.
3)It’s a big pain to compile software.Some libraries are not in default locations.
Plus:
1)Latest and greatest software
2)Newbie friendly compared to slackware and gentoo.(Definitely Ubuntu and SUSE is better in this regard)
Hard to decide if that post is a really transparent advertisement, or some sort of troll
It reads like a badly written sales pamphlet.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=287&slide=2…
I am so sick of trolls like you.
1) Mandrake’s military grade security is the highest achieved by any distribution, even surpassing Solaris:
http://news.com.com/Mandrake+in+contract+to+boost+Linux+security/21…
The results of that research have now been incorporated into Mandrake’s upcoming corporate server.
2) About Mandrake’s community being only for paid-for customers. Clearly, you are not a Mandrake user. Go here:
http://mandrakeusers.org
Or if you like usenet: a.o.l.m
The mandrakeusers forum has thousands of registered users and is one of the liveliest and most helpful communities around. The same thing can be said for its usenet community.
3) To prove Mandrake’s lack of polish, you point us to its old community site, rather than to its official corporate site. Nice try, troll:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
Tell me what’s wrong with the site above.
4) We know that you are trolling because you propose that people use slackware instead of Mandrake. I can’t tell you how funny that shit is. Not even Patrick recommends Slackware to new users.
5) With regards to stability, I’d like to point out to you that Mandrake is the first distribution to move its professional release to a yearly cycle and its corporate release has always been on an 18-month cycle. Both of them are rock-solid, featured full and the best introduction to Linux for most users. Mandrake 10.1 with all of the updates applied makes for the best introduction to Linux today. PCLinuxOS, based on Mandrake, makes the best LiveCD around.
6) In terms of Mandrake supporting free and open source software, I’d like to point out to you that even in their most difficult times, Mandrake continued to make its ISOs freely available to everyone, something that Suse only started to do recently and something that Red Hat no longer does, unless you consider Fedora to be as good as the former Red Hat releases. Most people do not.
I could also go on forever, but I will not waste my time with trolls like you who are damaging Linux adoption by pointing people towards totally unusable distributions, particularly for newbies.
Did you even read what i wrote ?
I specifically said Mandrake is a good distribution for newbies.Where did i recommend slackware to newbies?
Who is the troll here?
1)
”
http://news.com.com/Mandrake+in+contract+to+boost+Linux+security/21…..
The results of that research have now been incorporated into Mandrake’s upcoming corporate server.
”
It says Mandrake will “try to” attain Evaluation Assurance Level 5 (EAL5).Wake me up when they do that.
If you have read what i said it says the same thing as the article says.Redhat and Novell has acquirel EAL3 and is trying for EAL5.
2)
“http://mandrakeusers.org“
It times out for me.I will take your word that it is active and helpful.But it’s not official.I praised the Gentoo
forums and they are official.The official forums are only
for paying memmbers AFAIK.
Even Ubuntu community is good and they are official.
It makes a huge difference when a developer of the
distribution answers your questions.
3)I got that link from
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandrake
Both mandrakesoft and mandrakelinux are listed as official websites.I always used mandrakelinux since that was a more intuitive name.Nowhere on mandrakelinux site it states that
it is a community site and distrowatch lists only official sites i believe both are official
BUT I agree with you.mandrakesoft looks much better.
4)Read my post carefully.I never recommended slackware to newbies.I specifically said Mandrake is a pretty good distribution for newbies.Whom are u kidding ?
5)Don’t know about that.But the community products are less than stellar.
6)Ha! Otherwise no one would have used it.Suse could afford
to do it and they paid the community back by employing
KDE developers and creating an excellent distribution.
Now that Mandrake has enough money they release the community edition much later to public.Before calling me a troll please remember that i have NO CRIBS about that policy.They can do whatever they want.But please don’t
position them as some great saviour and mentor of free software/open source.There are much deserving distributions
In no particular order
Debian:Completely free distribution.Religiously stick to
free software principles.
Ubuntu:Completely free,employs Debian and Gnome developers,contributes their changes back to Debian
Redhat:For doing the grunt work like employing developers for X,kernel,gcc and other core programs.
For setting up a legal defense fund during SCO fiasco.
Novell:For employing KDE developers and ximian developers
and now for GPLing Yast an excellent program
Gentoo:For the most vibrant and helpful community and for
bringing out new bugs into open by their crazy CFLAGS 😉
Sun:For providing support for OpenOffice.org which is necessary for Desktop Linux push.Their motivation for it
maybe different but it helps Linux adoption.
Every linux distribution except suse has offered iso’s always.(Suse had a ftp install btw).Heck that’s the linux business model.Offer the OS for free and charge for services ! What are you smoking?Do you think Mandrake would have survived if they offered only a commercial version initially? You have to have dedicated users first then you can stop providing iso’s.
Agree On
———
1)Mandrake is a good distro for newbies.
But as Ubuntu is progressing fast I see Mandrake losing that position soon.
2)Fedora sucks compared to previous redhat offerings.
But for me Fedora and Mandrake are equal except for
multimedia and some stuff like that.
Multimedia support will never be included in Fedora
but i think it is going to improve simple because
a)Fedora is what redhat engineers itself uses (see the videos posted Seth Nickel yesterday)
b)It’s in Redhats best interest not to lose new users to
other distributions.It is how they gained market dominance.
Almost everyone used Redhat and slowly it became an industry standard.
Redhat took a long time to resolve issues like opening up CVS access to outside devlopers.But atleast things are moving in the right direction and I wish the best for Fedora.
“It was an untested, experimental patch”
untested? It was in the Cooker kernel for three months then in a series of publicly released betas and release candidates. Bit hard to know how it could be *more* tested.
Oh, and my point wasn’t that unpatched packages are *bad*, just that it’s a bit ridiculous to bitch at MDK for lack of ‘integration’, then promote a distro which *prides itself* on doing absolutely no work to integrate anything with anything.
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/FreeSoftwareProjects
I guess it is hard for AdamW to be objective about Mandrake’s shortcomings when he collects a check from Mandrakesoft.
Absolutely, and you’ll note I haven’t been particulary disputing MDK’s shortcomings, simply suggesting that knocking it for ‘lack of integration’ then suggest Slackware as an alternative is absurd, no matter who pays your rent. Slackware’s a fine distro, and there are many reasons to use it. I can’t see anyone sane thinking that ‘integration’ would be one.
I just can’t see any reason anyone but a new user wanting to try linux would use Mandrake (or even fedora, in my mind). I don’t see how any experienced users could not find such behemoth distributions cumbersome and a pain when it comes to just getting things done. Sure, they provide a nice desktop out of the box, but that’s about it, theres just no flexibility.
Depends what you want to get done, really. Last weekend I wanted to set up a website. urpmi apache2, mysql, php and punch port 80 through my router, stick something in /var/www/html and it’s online. I got that done!
In this screenshot, the side image of the KDE menu says it’s version 3.2:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=287&slide=2…
Haven’t they got around to at least 3.3 yet? Will they use 3.4 for the actual release?
The new splash screens – boot, KDE and Gnome – in Mandrake LE 2005 RC2 look much better than the previous ones: very good! 🙂
Now, if only that annyoing Trash icon alignment bug could be solved, eventually: with the bottom panel size set at “small”, the traschcan, if put in the lower right corner (à la XP or OS X), moves upwards by itself at every login (with the icons set to align to the grid) – very annoying. (Probably it has already been reported as a bug, anyway…)
Very promising release – especially if the more recent KDE and Gnome, etc. will be made available as updates/downloads, after the Official release…
Why don’t you tell us what the differences between real distributions and Fedora and Mandrake are? Please enlighten us.
Does it make you feel like more of an expert to do a text installation? Because you know that you can do that too. Or does it bother you that it auto-detects all your hardware? Because you can turn off hardware auto-detection.
Do you think that editing /etc/fstab or /etc/exports by hand cannot be done? What is your gripe. Mandrake 10.1 is light and can be installed as a complete server in less than a few hundred megabytes.
Your sense of elitism betrays a need to feel superior to others and you project that by calling Mandrake “a newbies” distribution. Utter nonsense.
how come there is a word “menu” covering the star?
damn ugly!
I tried it, and went back to 10.1, which I love. The 10.2 RC2 didn’t even install their package management tool (rpmdrake) or their MandrakeUpdate utility. And frankly I didn’t see much difference in other areas to be worth the hassle.
The install didn’t include a copy of libstdc++.so.5 (they used .6), which was annoying.
Abd the version of firefox installed in 10.2 had odd choices for icons, too.
… is that KDE desktop device icons (typically, hard drives: for example, /, C: and E: partitions) show up in Gnome as generic icons, and with an error when you click on them: another desktop environment integration issue to be solved, hopefully…
It’s been KDE 3.3 for five months, those were just some old graphics that didn’t get replaced till quite recently. Final will be 3.3, as has been explained several times before.
@anonymous (comcast): there’s nothing in the distro that depends on libstdc++5; why should it be installed by default? If we did that all the *other* people in the thread who talk about ‘bloat’ would complain. Not installing rpmdrake and MandrakeUpdate is odd, what media did you use to install? What package selection options did you pick?
I just wanted to know whether they have solved in mdk 10.2 RC2 for x86-32 the installation bug that happened in 10.1 on some machines with a SATA hard drive and a regular EIDE (non-SATA) CD-ROM. The bug consists in the installation program not finding the CD-ROM unit at the early stages of the install, even after booting installation CD1 from it normally.
AdamW mentioned briefly in one of his first posts that this bug or a related one was solved in 10.2 RC2, but I can’t find anything about this in Mandrake’s site. Googling around brings some similar cases involving sata hard drives whose drivers are not found or loaded at install, but nothing about unrecognized CD-ROM units.
Anyway, good to see Mandrake 10.2 is near its release version. My best wishes to the release team. Ah, and don’t mind postponing the release date a few weeks if that means resolving last-minute bugs and problems more thoroughly.
I didn’t hear about that particular bug, we had a problem with installing from *SATA* CD-ROM drives but AFAIK there was no known problem with the setup you describe. You’d have to try it out to know for sure, sorry!
Regarding the missing MandrakeUpdate and rpmdrake: I installed off the first 3 CD ISO images. This was a clean install onto an empty drive. I selected custom package installation (as usual) and let it do its automatic update thing at the end of the install. Result was no “Configure your Computer” utility (whatever *drake that is) and no GUI package installation or update tools.
Well, I know the bug seems unrelated to SATA as it involves installing from a normal EIDE CD-ROM, not a sata one. But we found there should be some relation when looking at the BIOS settings of the machine. In Advanced IDE settings, it had channels 1 and 2 of the normal ATA controller mapped to channels 1 and 2 of the SATA one (both integrated in the motherboard, an Intel one).
I don’t remember all the details, as it’s an office machine and I write this from home. The point is that we were unable to install on that machine, even after changing the BIOS to avoid the mapping of parallel IDE to serial IDE. However, in another very similar machine (a desktop model instead of a tower) the same BIOS changes allowed us to get properly into the installation and proceed from there on.
I’ll do what you say and try 10.2 RC2 in the problematic machine. Ah, the joys of testing are back!
What changes did you make in custom package selection, do you remember?
Sorry, I don’t remember my package selections. Maybe it’s possible that I accidentally disabled those components. But I’m not even sure if they appear in the package list.
IMHO this is the famous : unselecting mailx will remove a bunch of packages.
Concerning the firefox icon choice, this is due to Mozilla foundation policy. You can’t use Mozilla Foundation icon if you are shipping a modified product or doesn’t have an authorisation from them :
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
1) Mozilla Firefox/Firefox
The top level is naming your product using our exact trademarked names, for example, calling your product either ‘Mozilla Firefox’ or plain ‘Firefox’. This level is the only one which includes permission to use the official mozilla.org logo for that product (e.g. the fox-on-globe for Firefox). Please view our Distribution Trademark Policy for details on how you can distribute versions of our software that include our trademarks.
To the gentleman who lauded the acomplishments of SUSE over Mandrake:
1. Suse for one thing has been around longer than Mandrake.
2. I tried Suse as a so-called Linux newbie (the term “newbie” is extremely condescending not to mention insulting; perhaps “novice” would be a more appropriate term). While YAST was easily understandible, the actual package selection process and resulting dependency problems during installation were an utter nightmare.
3. Suse as of 9.0 still had no support for playing DVD’s through the various video tools with their distro. They say it’s because of legal reasons.
4. I finally gave up on Suse about a year ago (I used Suse for a year) and tried Mandrake. While Mandrake 9.2 initially had some bugs, I was able to get those worked out. In addition, DVD’s played in all the video tools in Mandrake.
5. I am now an intermediate Linux user and would never consider ditching Mandrake for Suse again. Nor for Fedora, Slackware, etc. Mandrake IS working out it’s problems for all users, novices, power users, etc.
6. If Mandrake was around as long as Red Hat and SUSE, with their accumulated finacial resources, I’m sure there would be no need for a member’s only club. Let me point out that if you want the pro edition of SuSe , you DO have to pay for it. Red Hat has also gone to a subscription-based model for their services.
You complain about the member’s only forum for Mandrake. There are also forums out there for people who just download the free edition of Mandrake. Try searching for Mandrake + Forums on your search engine.
Please try and be objective with your comments on Mandrake. If you choose to point out Mandrake’s shortcomings, by all means point out Red Hat’s, Suse’s, etc.