Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta 3 was quietly released on Tuesday. No mention of the release is as of yet posted at MandrivaLinux, but a 3 ISO set and a Mini CD are available for download. You can read the changelog, and there’s also a review available (screenshots included).
looking at the shots i can’t say it looks particularly clean or beautiful.
i can’t speak for GNOME, but KDE – their main DE – has *horrid* colorscheme, style and window borders. absolutely out of tune with the elegant blue penguin seen all over the place. why don’t they just stick to plastik?
i mean, look at the konqueror window… http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/419_or/43.png
It’s just another linux distribution. Theses reviews are boring…
I dont want to bitch but that “FREE” thing on the desktop looks awful.Would been nice to have the words “Free Edition” or something in small fonts above the clock.Otherwise,I think the desktop looks clean and appealing.
First of all, Mandriva is not just ‘another linux distribution’. Second, I agree about reviews being boring lately. Reviews are basically a breakdown of new kernel/KDE(other) updates.
But isn’t that what Linux updates are all about.. updated kernel, window manager, and occasionally propietary add-ons.
It seems that Mandriva has not really changed very much over the fast few final releases.
I’m not sure why free is plastered over all those screenshots, because I’m running the cooker version of mandriva and the only place you’ll see free is on the Lilo OS selction screen. I think they just branded the Betta 3 iso’s with those images. The cooker version of what Mandriva will become on September 15 is pretty polished in comparison to LE 2005. It’s clear that they got the message that the scary stary eyed pengiuns have to go. Also, Mandriva’s Galaxy 3 Window theme gives the distro a very clean unified look and feel when used witht the new graphics and standard widget set. I’m not sure why all the screen shots show the old default windec. The Conectiva and Lycoris changes aren’t in there yet, but Mandriva 2006 is definitely shaping up to be a much better release than their last offering.
“The Conectiva and Lycoris changes aren’t in there yet, but Mandriva 2006 is definitely shaping up to be a much better release than their last offering.”
You mean after releasing 10.2 early and calling it a “Limited Edition”, and after buying two companies with technical expertise to improve this distro we still do not have any of the new technology in there?
What are they waiting for?
That said I wanted to know where the changes will take place.Has there been any public mention as to where they would incorporate the other two distros?
I type this from an up-to-date cooker system. The first attempts go get upwards from 10.1 ended with a b0rk3d URPMI, so a clean slate reinstall was due. I FTP-installed 2005LE, then switched on cooker, and then gpwgnome (I run gnome).
To be honest, there is nothing much visible to me that would be exciting over 10.1 (except I _HAD_ to have the Mac System 7 style Nautilus fold-out triangles from 2.12). Machine works as usual, a few cough-ups, notably an occasionally hanging gam_server (kill off and then manually refresh for the rest of the session), and due to a Pango bug screwed-up scintilla-based editors (Anjuta, SciTE).
I can’t comment on the visuals, because I switched to Clearlooks. KDE seems to do fine, I just have a konqueror open, and am hacking away a bit in kdevelop, which works okay with the new gcc 4 backend.
Control Center changes are on the conservative side and out of my head I could not tell what’s different from 10.1 (okay, maybe the autopicking of sources, but that’s it).
So, to sum it up: works well for me.
Rich
Mandriva’s a good, solid and comprehensive distro – this release will no doubt be another good release – I’d personally prefer them to use the .NET style and a different window decoration as a default – this is easily changed post-install though.
I can’t use Mandriva 2005 or 2006. They both lock up so bad that it is unusable. Though prior versions work fine. It sucks because Mandriva is the only linux distro that has drivers for my wireless card.
Yes, I too have had problems installing 10.1 and 10.2 on two quite different machines – gave up in the end and went to Suse. And on my own machine there are several packages that just won’t install and run properly. The gui tools for admin are excellent, but stability, its a different matter and probably has been since 9.2. Which was very stable.
Mandrake locks up.
Mandrake has a driver for my wireless card.
Mmmmm… not a coincidence me thinks.
The MINI ISO they provide is very much appreciated. The ability of installing a base system with icewm without downloading anything from the internet (except for the last part when it updates installed components) is really great. As my first distro (7.2) I’m happy to see that Mandrake is still going strong.
The MINI ISO they provide is very much appreciated. The ability of installing a base system with icewm without downloading anything from the internet (except for the last part when it updates installed components) is really great. As my first distro (7.2) I’m happy to see that Mandrake is still going strong.
Agreed – in a similar vein I’ve done excellent custom installs of Mandriva taking up a tiny 500 mb of disk space – I’ve then installed Fluxbox using URPMI and have got an extremely lightweight snappy distro based around Fluxbox, Firefox, Eterm, Nedit, VIM etc – very minimal indded.
Mandriva can be made to be as minimal and “cool” as most other desktop oriented distros.
Mandriva’s a good, solid and comprehensive distro
……………….
thats great but Mandriva with the new name and all is lacking wow factor… its an update yay great next…
if they dont want to add something special then why bother…
To be fair though, the vast majority of deskto-oriented distros don’t go through major changes with each subsequent release – there were very little surface changes from Fed Core 1 to Fed Core 2 – and then Fed Core 2 to Fed Core 3…. very little! (not reffering to package updates of course).
But does it have Synaptic?
I vomit when I get a sniff of RPMs.
UBUNTU IS THE FUTURE!
Why would it need synaptic when urpmi and rpmdrake work just fine.
Synaptic uses Apt (I think), and lots of users prefer Apt to any other package manager. Apt is very flexible. It saves a lot of bandwidth as repository updates are incremental (unlike Yum and maybe urpmi), most of them under 20 kilobytes. The whole Ubuntu repository is an under-3-megabytes download.
When I wanted to add some mirrors to get additional Mandrake 10.1 software, I had to download over 50 megabytes of package data! On my Internet connection this is unacceptable.
In addition, just installing Firefox on that Mandrake 10.1 distro has turned out to be a pain in the ass. Most Mandriva’s repositories are either closed or 10.2-oriented. Maybe I’m dumb, but I couldn’t get Firefox decently working. In addition, there’s no unified place for Mandriva packages. I’m sorry, but Rpmseek is not an option because it’s too hard to use. No problems with this in Ubuntu. If the needed package doesn’t exist for Ubuntu, you can simply install a Debian package.
What pisses me about Mandriva is their lack of support to free/download edition users. You can’t get packages easily, you won’t get updates form Mandriva Online, you won’t even get access to their official forums. I understand them wanting to get money, it’s their right. That’s probably why most other vendors (Redhat, Suse, Sun) create “community editions” of their distros: you can choose either to get support from the vendor and pay $$$ or get support from individuals (with nothing guaranteed) and pay nothing. But Mandriva unfortunately has only the first option: pay money or you don’t get support at all. If you aren’t a registered user, yu will probably feel discriminated.
Seems Zlogic, that you are clueless about a lot of things.
“Seems Zlogic, that you are clueless about a lot of things.”
If you think so, why don’t you reply properly?
Yes he is wrong about a couple of points, but right about many others. For instance as somebody who knows apt in all its incarnations very well, I can confirm that it is a lot easier and faster than Urpmi.
don’t use hdlist but hdlist.synthesis (MUCH smaller, but contains less information).
http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ is the best repository tool that any distribution created
– Kat for desktop searching
– almost full Kolab 2 integration !!!
– real, deep stabilization of packages dealing (dependencies, etc…)
– integration with smart (if you don’t like urpm* tools)
– new release scheme (every year)
– Xorg 6.9 (I don’t really like this point, but others do).
“To be fair though, the vast majority of deskto-oriented distros don’t go through major changes with each subsequent release – there were very little surface changes from Fed Core 1 to Fed Core 2 – and then Fed Core 2 to Fed Core 3…. very little! (not reffering to package updates of course).”
agreed but as a paying customer… I think Mandrake needs more then just package updates and a new background picture every year… the art work is bad… the 2005 and even this 2006 is (pcLinux) its childish…
every release of Mandriva (Mandrake has problems that have not been solved) i.e. adding a lot of packages through thier drake tools (say 100 or 200) when there is a problem what happens to the displayed message the buttons your meant to clickon are not on the screen no matter what res 1024/768 or higher you cant get at them….
Artwork should be done professionally by mandriva, redhat and suse (suses latest is getting better)…
but it could be a lot better…. and hopefully it will get there but these things could of be sorted out years ago if distros would be more responcible for the product they are putting out.
agreed but as a paying customer… I think Mandrake needs more then just package updates and a new background picture every year… the art work is bad… the 2005 and even this 2006 is (pcLinux)
Yep, fair point and agreed – if you’re paying for the product you would expect more ideally.
In terms of the free distro though, it’s still one of the best desktop-oriented distros out there relative to the vast majority of other desktop distros.
Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta 3 finally works again in Virtual PC 7 (the Mac version of Microsoft’s emulator): very good!
There must have been some changes in the kernel, thus: previously, it always crashed on startup with an unrecoverable processor error.
I hope future versions will be VPC/Mac-compatible too, also considering that the separately maintained Mandriva PPC port is more difficult to install and to keep current (and many things don’t work yet, at least on some hardware) than the x86 one (via VPC)…
Is the release date 2006?
I hope that Mandriva isn’t going to imitate magazine publishers & apply dates way into the distant future, so that the date on the product becomes meaningless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPTL
n the Linux operating system, the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL) is a software feature that enables the Linux kernel to run programs written to use POSIX-style threads very efficiently.
In tests, NPTL succeeded in running 100,000 threads simultaneously on a IA-32 which were started in two seconds. In comparison, this test under a kernel without NPTL would have taken around 15 minutes.
Nice,although i can enable this too on gentoo with nptl and nptl-only USE flags.I wonder what they meant with security hyperthreading though.
In terms of the free distro though, it’s still one of the best desktop-oriented distros out there relative to the vast majority of other desktop distros.
is it enough even for a free distro to just wonder through the upgrade paths…
The big distros need to challenge themselves need more creativity… most things are in place just needs some major spark that linux can do and most others cant.. let them play catch up..
is it enough even for a free distro to just wonder through the upgrade paths…
The big distros need to challenge themselves need more creativity… most things are in place just needs some major spark that linux can do and most others cant.. let them play catch up..
It’s not ideal – but then again most distros just wander through the upgrade path – As a Gentoo and Arch Linux user I hardly see any mouth-watering surface improvements with each subsequent release…… far from it.
Admitedly, Fedora’s turning up the volume with FC4 and SuSE’s recent moves are encouraging – but by and large most desktop-oriented distros don’t radically change with each subsequent release.
There clearly does need to be more “creativity” in this area.
running 2005 on a thinkpad, p111 with belkin network card. am posting this from panera. mandriva 2005 is the first linux distro i got online with wireless with little configuration. will keep this good thing untill 2006 goes official.
Please note: It is a bit embarassing for me to have a starry eyed penguin greeting the restaurant when i boot up. I need to change that boot image!!!!
JAVAJAZZ
I tried it, but once again Mandriva is very buggy with lots of desktop crashes. Maybe in 10-15 years Linux will be ready for the desktop, but we just use BSD or Solaris for servers.
I tried it, but once again Mandriva is very buggy with lots of desktop crashes. Maybe in 10-15 years Linux will be ready for the desktop, but we just use BSD or Solaris for servers.
I’ve never experienced LE 2005 or 10.1 crash – for me Mandrake 10.1 and 2005 LE have been some of the most stable distros I’ve used. Relative to the vast majority of desktop-oriented distros out there Mandriva’s clearly one of the least buggy distros.
I wonder what they meant with security hyperthreading though.
My best guess is it has something to do with the possible hyperthreading vulnerability which was all over the net earlier this summer. As far as I recall it was rather hard to exploit and noting near as bad as the reports hyped it to be. I think the fix was to turn off hyperthreading or cripple it, in any case it’s not particularly good for the speed and efficiency. Probably the reason Mandriva does not do it by default.
Yes,i googled for it and your description is valid 🙂
Hyperthreading is likely to be on by default at standard security level, and turned off at higher security levels.
As for ‘creativity’, we wrote a completely new interactive firewall application for 2006 which notifies you of attempted intrusions and allows you to control the response; how’s that?
The ‘Free’ is a re-branding of the Download edition, it’s now called Mandriva Free.
The Conectiva guys are already hard at work on 2006, as anyone who reads the Cooker ML will know. Flavio Leitner has been one of the main developers of 2006’s kernel, and Andreas Hasenack has built or updated various packages (including one major one, Kolab 2) – they’re just the two people who come to mind. The acquisition of Conectiva was never about simple graphical changes on the desktop. The changes from Lycoris will mainly come in the Discovery edition, you won’t really see them in the betas or the Free edition.
As a mandriva club member drifting away to Ubuntu, would you like to say why the Lycoris stuff isn’t going to be in the Free downloads?
As for ‘creativity’, we wrote a completely new interactive firewall application for 2006 which notifies you of attempted intrusions and allows you to control the response; how’s that?
That sounds nice, and great usability. As I’d guess it will alert on those silent failures when you have your firewall to tight, and alert those who checks their logfiles far to seldom.(like me, yes I know!)
and allows you to control the response
Does it have a option to DOS the bastard off the net 🙂
As for ‘creativity’, we wrote a completely new interactive firewall application for 2006 which notifies you of attempted intrusions and allows you to control the response; how’s that?
Sweet,is snort implemented or something similar to port-sentry?
Taken from blino’s announcement email to the Cooker ML:
* Components
– netfilter modules to detect intrusions
– our own netfilter target, AFWLOG (not yet available)
– iptables
– ipset
– mandi, a root socket to user apps bridge, using D-Bus
– net_applet, which receives alerts
– drakids, a blacklist/whitelist management tool
* Operating mode
Intrusions are detected by netfilter matches, such as the psd (port
scan detector). More matches will be used.
Our netfilter AFWLOG target forwards intrusion detection data to the
mandi daemon through a netlink.
The “Active Firewall” plugin of mandi has two operating modes:
– it blacklists the intruder in automatic mode
– it sends a notification to a user interface through D-Bus in
interactive mode,
An intruder blacklist is maintained by the daemon, using ipset.
This blacklist is stored in memory by ipset. A whitelist is also
available, using ipset too, it can be saved in a file.
ipset basically allows to group a list of addresses, and to use them
in a single iptables rule.
Sounds good – does it have the facility to drop all outbound connections execpt those to specified ports – for example, you might only want to allow outbound connections to 21,25,80,110,443,6667 etc and drop everything else in the outbound direction?
Also, by default, will it drop all unsolicited incoming connections?
Outbound specific port filtering isn’t really in the scope of this tool as I understand it; this is meant to be something nice and fuzzy for users, not an advanced configuration tool for power users. You can always set up a Shorewall rule to do that, but I don’t think we have a UI for it. I think unsolicited incoming connections are dropped, but I’m not 100% sure; at least I’ve seen some PR stuff promoting it as ‘stateful firewall’.
Thanks Adam – that’s fair enough – it’s good to see improvements coming at ay level.
My favourite distro is Debian (and Debian *compatible*).
However I am looking for a second distro to dual boot. Mandriva seemed like a good candidate.
However since OpenSUSE I am beginning to change my mind: SUSE gives you 5 CDs (at the moment), Nvidia drivers, MS Fonts, it will be available for everybody when ready, not just for club members…
With Mandriva you must hunt for proprietary stuff all over the internet, unless you are a club member.
Besides I couldn’t use beta1 (I couldn’t go beyond the partitioner) nor beta2 (I couldn’t for the life of me set up an ADSL connection)
SUSE 10 was usable since the 1st beta.
…nor beta2 (I couldn’t for the life of me set up an ADSL connection)
That’s exactly the same thing that happended to me. I staring right now at the Mandriva 2005 LE installation disk that came in a computer magazine. When I installed, I was amazed on how Madriva improved since their last versions were quite buggy. Streamlined installer, Hardware detection, look and feel somewhat better (still don’t like that window decorator and the scary penguin at the boot, though) and everything else.
But no matter what I did, I could never make my ADSL connection works. After struggle for a couple of days, I eventually gave up and installed MEPIS instead and never looked back. Actually, I’m happy that it happened since I wasn’t planning to try other distros anytime soon and MEPIS is so damned faster compared to most distros that I couldn’t believe my eyes… 🙂
DeadFish Man
AdamW.. thanks for your reply…
I dont meant to be a stick in the bush and I have used Mandrake as my main desktop for the last two years or so… also purchasing MLE2005.
I have refrained from downloading and testing 2006 as of yet, I did start download today but stopped after reading short review… mainly becauase it looked like a revamp in packages..
The firewall feature looks interesting…. but that could be said Mandriva playing catchup to Windows XP sp2… (Mandriva already had a firewall product so im sure the company is pretty good at creating firewalls)…
But this is not the mad creativity that Im talking about… Creativity is creating something that is new… and excitting…
Compeating with the rest of Linux land (most have caught up with the founding principles on why Mandake was created..)…
If ya want a bigger pond a lot of distros will have to start digging….
just as im saying digging ponds etc
Microsoft officials have admitted one of their biggest challenges in continuing to grow the company’s Windows business is the impression among some of its installed base that older Windows versions are good enough. The users of Windows 95, which turns ten years old on Wednesday, are a case in point. Elsewhere, here is a story about the launch of Windows 95 exactly 10 years ago.
does it have the facility to drop all outbound connections execpt those to specified ports – for example, you might only want to allow outbound connections to 21,25,80,110,443,6667 etc and drop everything else in the outbound direction?
That’s simple to adchieve:
you need only:”all all DROP info” in /etc/shorewall/policy
and than you can open the port you want in /etc/shorewall/rules like this:
ACCEPT fw net:<ip-address> <protocol> <port> or
ACCEPT net:<ip-address> fw <protocol> <port> /*(server rule*/
if you don’t enter a <ip-adress> than traffic is allowed to go to all ip adresses on the specified ports.
Would be nice if mandi would include an option that enables you to easily set such configurations GUI wise.
Maybe something for the powerpack.
That’s how I currently do it with Shorewall
– although for the Policy I use:
fw net DROP
and for the Rules I use something similar to:
ACCEPT fw net udp 53
ACCEPT fw net tcp 21,25,80,110,443,6667
Naturally, the above arrangement can be augmented and modified to suit needs.
Yesterday, I said that Beta 3 finally worked with Virtual PC 7 (Mac).
Well, only partially, if one can say so: oddly, an install using the Mini CD works and boots correctly, while an install using the “ordinary” CDs (CD1, CD2 and CD3) still gives the unrecoverable processor error message (and, thus, makes Mandriva unsuable on VPC, of course).
Now, this is really strange! Different kernel, maybe?
Of course, this is only of academical interest and not in any way proritary, but anyway…
P.S.: The Mini installation boots into a minimalistic Twm, not the “full” IceWM.
… Oooops, sorry: “unusable”, not “unsuable”! 🙂
Is it to complicate to explain that shadowed text is unreadable? Same for the mouse pointers (especially i-beam).
Will it include Beagle?
Beagle is in contrib, but why use it when there is kat in main ?