The second beta of Mandriva Linux 2006 has been released. Read the release notes, and download it from one of the mirros listed on that same page. Update: screenshot gallery.
The second beta of Mandriva Linux 2006 has been released. Read the release notes, and download it from one of the mirros listed on that same page. Update: screenshot gallery.
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=408&slide=2…
good people @ OSDir already have a slideshow:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=408&slide=2…
In the release notes it says:
New Mandriva Theme
But from the screenshots nothing is different except the background. Anyone know what’s the deal?
Can someone please tell me, why oh why a product like Mandriva Linux, which is supposed to be used by Linux newbies has that Emacs icon in kicker? It has been sitting there forever
What kind of userfriendliness is that? Wallpaper and default launchers seem to belong to different distros.
I know Mandriva has excellent hardware detection and a good (but buggy) bunch of programs in the Control Center, but I’ve never understood why it’s always described as so easy to use? Look at this shot:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/408_or/51.png
Pretend to be a new user. Under that Configuration menu, what’s the difference between configuring my Computer, and Hardware? Why two things? And why can I configure both my Desktop, and KDE? I thought my Desktop was KDE? Shouldn’t Printing be under Hardware? Or ‘Configure Your Computer’? What is ‘KRandRTray’?
It’s an absolute mess! Ubuntu’s menus are the way it should be — short, uncluttered and extremely clear. Mandriva is a great distro in many respects, but they need to clear up some of these things IMHO before they can correctly be categorised as ‘User-friendly’.
“Configure Your Desktop” gives you Kde Control Center.
“Configure Your Computer” gives you Mandriva Control Cneter.
To me this makes sense mostly.
The rest of the items are mostly just submenues that launch the appropriate modules, that are part of either KCC or MCC. I guess I can see how it could be confusing on the first time you are using it, but it also kind of makes sense too, and you get used to it. The connection is pretty easily made between the submenues and the fact they run different modules. I guess it’s more for convenience: I could just go straight to KDE | Look and Feel | Splashscreen for example, and not have to run KCC.
KRandRTray is a system tray utility that lets you change screen resolution and refresh rate on the fly. Like you click on it and there is popup menu with all the different screen sizes and refresh rates, and a link to Configure Display…
Well put, what the heck is KRandRTray? I run a purely Linux show and have never heard of the thing, so what good is it in a menu for Linux newbies (assuming Mandriva is going for that crowd). At best it’s a horrible name that means nothing. [after a few minutes I’ve figures out it’s some screen resizing function. Then why is the option under hardware rather than configuration?]
This is the perfect example of Linux developers not having a clue about the normal user.
I think he knows what krandrtray is
The relevant sentence is “pretend to be a new user.” That is what he was doing. Very nice of you to explain though. Perhaps you can think of a way to explain it to all the real newbies who will have no clue what it is.
For a “newbie” distro, I can see why renaming krandrtray might be useful
“And why can I configure both my Desktop, and KDE? I thought my Desktop was KDE?” Right. Like a newbies going to think that.. you’re reaching a little there. A newb is going to think his desktop is the place with the icons, a newb has no concept of desktop environments. Which of course why overall you are right, it isn’t entirely newb friendly. Maybe Mandrake receives that label unfairly, maybe with the emacs icon they are looking for a different audience
I really do get tired of hearing about Ubuntu. There’s absolutely nothing special about that distro, other than the hype surrounding it. If you are a big Gnome fan, then perhaps something like Ubuntu is for you. If you prefer KDE, then use that. But, let’s stop throwing out the name of a overhyped distro that is nothing special every single time a review is posted. That does nothing but give everyone the impression that you guys are nothing but zealots.
You’re right — there’s not one big, singing, flashy feature about Ubuntu that makes it great. It doesn’t have something you can hype up and talk about everywhere.
What is does have is CLASS.
Lots and lots of little things arranged together to work. Sane, simple menus. Decent choice of software — usually the best apps in their field. Solid theme that fits both corporate and home user desktops (no toyland or pointless flashy nonsense). No need for three browsers and five editors. Solid Debian base and access to zillions of packages if necessary. Efforts put into performance and fast-response security — aspects some other distros leave behind.
Ubuntu is about the WHOLE EXPERIENCE rather than two or three gizmos that are either buggy (YAST and Beagle) or just novelties that wear-off quickly. The refined desktop design and narrow but ideal selection of apps is VERY good for newcomers. So you may not see much in it, and that’s fair enough (I still prefer to use Slackware), but Ubuntu DOES have remarkable stuff going on.
You just have to look a little deeper than two screenshots to find it…
“You just have to look a little deeper than two screenshots to find it…”
I did, and I found out that the emperor is naked.
Everybody with a bare minimum of experience can install Debian and slap XOrg and Gnome on top of it. And it looks better even. And less buggy too.
But of course if you have never seen Debian before. you’ll say in awe: “how beautiful!!!”
I agree i’ve had nothing but trouble with ubuntu
SUSE has worked much better for me.
“SUSE has worked much better for me.”
And you can get 5 free CDs and/or one DVD, *everything included*
I actually did think that he was asking what KRandRTray was. Lol. Sorry. Yes I agree the name is completely unintuitive. But this isn’t really Mandriva issue. In fact lot’s of applications have weird names. KBear == FTP client !!! That’s why so many distro’s (or is it a KDE thing?) have that descriptive thing in brackets in menues now. So it would say “aKregator (RSS Reader)” or something similar. Personally I hate this because it adds to the menu, but I can definitly see how it’s helpful to new users.
The menu structure in general is debatable. IMHO, The “Configure Your Computer” and “Configure Your Desktop” stand out quiet nicely at the top, and should be the first things the user would use.
To me, actually, I thought the bigger issue would be the user thinking that “Configure Your Desktop” in the menu was the same as right-clicking on the desktop and choosing “Configure Desktop” (or whatever the actual string is). I thought there was an ambiguity here, where two (almost exactly the same) terms are used for two quite different functionailites. As with many usability issues, I don’t think there is a “perfect” menu structure. What works for some people may not work for others due to defferent experiences and expectations.
Mandriva’s a good, solid distribution with relatively mature coding behind it – this will no doubt be another good release – would be nice to see the .NET KDE style in use and different window decorations as the default though – easy to change admitedly…. – will look forward to trying this release.
I really wish Linux distros stop version churn.
You should have only ONE version of the core utilities (like FreeBSD’s base package that contains awk, grep, ls, tar, sed, ifconfig). They should version the OS based on the Kernel version and not some arbitrary number of new packages being updated.
Aren’t we just now in the middle of 2005 or have the Linux vendors started to emulate automotive vendors who start selling the next year’s model in July.
Here is a review:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/2174
Discovery Edition is the version of Mandriva intended for absolute beginners. It has a completely different menu structure with descriptions instead of program names for many applications.
BTW, just a thought that occurred to me: can anyone come up with a convincing reason why you’d ever _want_ to change your resolution and refresh rate with an app like krandrtray? You choose the best res and refresh your monitor can handle, and stick with it…
want to change your resolution and refresh rate
testing that your apps or webpages work in x res and dont go out of the screen ie all buttons/options are shown for 800×600 etc etc…
drake install update suffers from this if you select hell of a lot of programs and the install fails theres no easy way to veiw the options ur given…
“I really do get tired of hearing about Ubuntu. There’s absolutely nothing special about that distro, other than the hype surrounding it. If you are a big Gnome fan, then perhaps something like Ubuntu is for you. If you prefer KDE, then use that. But, let’s stop throwing out the name of a overhyped distro that is nothing special every single time a review is posted. That does nothing but give everyone the impression that you guys are nothing but zealots.”
Amen.
I’ve tried Ubuntu. I liked it. But it didn’t stay on any of my HDs. It is very overrated. It doesn’t offer much over any other distro. Frankly, it’s better to stick with pure Debian, with the new Sarge release (or upgrading to testing or unstable if desired). The installer is the same, the hd detection is the same, and the Gnome tools are the same, only Debian proper is much more stable, faster, and is completely in sync with Debian repos (being Debian 😉 ).
As far as newbie friendly distros go, Ubuntu has absolutely nothing on Mandriva. Not even close. In terms of newbie friendliness, Mandriva is vastly superior to Ubuntu, hands down. Mandriva is, frankly, even a better implementation of Gnome (it defaults to KDE, but it’s Gnome implementation is excellent), even though Ubuntu is Gnome centric.
It’s an annoying trend at OSNews – someone posts a distro review, and inevitably an Ubuntu fanboy chimes in with “that distro sucks, Ubuntu is much better”. It’s somewhat true of all distros and their users (there are other distro wars). But the Ubuntu zealots at OSNews are completely out of control.
In any case, it is totally stupid to be a zealot for any distro. It’s all Linux, GNU, gcc, Gnome, KDE, OO.org, etc. folks. All distros have their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve tried many of them, and I have my favorites. But none of them are perfect.
It’s nothing special with the Ubuntu zealots, it just happens to be the “distro of the moment”. Gentoo, Fedora and Mandrake also had those days. Let’s see what’s next.
Having said that, Mandriva surely needs a designer/HIG specialist to make it cleaner and more consistent…very often I have the feeling it just have too many items and subcategories in the start menu, and from time to time they put some pretty bizarre art on the installation window or in the desktop out of nowhere..not very professional.
In that respect I think no distro gets close to Suse.
I think there is so much praise for ubuntu coming from ex-windows users who have switched after trying ubuntu.. ubuntites as I like to call them
I mostly use mandrake/mandriva machines, but I am typing this on my Ubuntu 5.04 PC.
Now, I like Ubuntu for what it is, a simple Debian clone that makes using Linux simple for the masses….
and I think that is what has happened.
the masses are using Ubuntu to switch from Windows, and they shout it aloud.
remember when you first switched ? didn’t you want to tell everyone about the wonderful system you found, and how great it is ?
Where are all the Ubuntites from, if not from Windowland ?
“I think there is so much praise for ubuntu coming from ex-windows users who have switched after trying ubuntu.. ubuntites as I like to call them”
“Where are all the Ubuntites from, if not from Windowland?”
Very well said. But I believe a few come from Gentoo as well. And I can understand, because I have personal experiences of compiling for days and failing.
“remember when you first switched ? didn’t you want to tell everyone about the wonderful system you found, and how great it is ?”
Exactly. My first distro was Mandrake, and I told my mother every day what a beautiful thing I had found.
mandrake should migrate to using apt and dpkgs.
Why? What are the gain they get with switching from urmpi and rpms to apt and dpkgs? Other than lots of work and retraining of their developers. I can’t see a single reason for why this would make any sense whatsoever. But please enlighten me, what are the gains?
I don’t know if the previous poster meant moving to Debian, which could of course have many advantages: biggest repository of any distro, thousands of existing developers…
Of course you could tell me that there are already plenty of Debian derivatives out there. But only two are truly Debian compatible and not too dumbed down: Libranet and Kanotix. The future of Libranet is uncertain because it has only two developers. Plus till now it supports only one arch. Kanotix is very nice, but not everybody likes that it is based on Sid. Besides it is only one CD and only one developer.
Mandriva could become the de facto, all purpose Debian based distro, backed by a pretty large organization like Mandriva and it could aim at any kind of user, from corporate to home desktop.
That would set mandriva apart from any other distro, while where it stands now it is competing with many others: OpenSUSE, Fedora…
I can’t believe my eyes. They’ve FINALLY put some effort to make it look more PROFESSIONAL! No stary/stoned tux!! No little stars falling from the sky!!!
Don’t get me wrong, i love Mandrake/Mandriva, am typing this from a Mdk 10.1 which is perfect for me. But the childish look should have already been dropped years ago…
Anyway, it’s never too late. Seems like the buying of Conectiva and Lycoris has brought great benefits.
He did not say anything about moving to Debian, he only said migrate to using apt and dpkgs.
So I did not think he meant moving to Debian, which actually have some pros but also lots of cons. The worst ones are the fact that Debian suffers from dated libraries and incredible long turnover times. It would force Mandriva to extend it with packages from unstable and in some cases doing their own, to stay somewhat current. Much the same way as most of the other Debian deviates does.
“He did not say anything about moving to Debian, he only said migrate to using apt and dpkgs.”
Yes, but only Debian uses apt + dpkg (only one, it is the package manager
“It would force Mandriva to extend it with packages from unstable and in some cases doing their own, to stay somewhat current. Much the same way as most of the other Debian deviates does.”
Yes, but it can be done, without even forking Debian for that matter: look at Kanotix (a one man show)
Other than updated packages, what will be different between this version and Madrake 10.0 ?
Well, linux improves at a very fast rate, so updated packages are very important. Especially so if some of your hardware is not supported by an older version.
By the time 2006 is released, Mandrake 10.0 will be 18 months old, a long time in the world of linux. And if I remember correctly, Mandrake/driva stops supporting a release after 18 months.
I tried to install the ATI proprietary driver version 8.14.13 on Mandriva 2006-Beta 2 but it did not work. Is it because Mdv 2006 is compiled with GCC 4.x, instead of 3.4.x? Is there a way to work around this? The same driver works fine on Mdv LE2005 though.