Many users submitted the news of the release of Mandrake 10.1 Official. Mandrakelinux 10.1 includes Linux kernel 2.6.8.1, Gnome 2.6, KDE 3.2.3, and GCC 3.4.1. Mandrake touts the benefits of better Centrino support, expanded Bluetooth support, and improved laptop support, which includes ACPI and wireless chip support. Mandrake 10.1 Official can be purchased now.
Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Released
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Adam Scheinberg
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mandrake 10.1 community was only released a few weeks ago, is this long enough for proper testing? previous mandrake releases have been plagued with bugs and there has even been a petition to the developers.
compare this with say fedora’s release process where they do a 3month testing and bugfixing run. mandrake could be definitely one of the best distros for newbies but I always feel unsure about recomending it with the lack of QA
ditto
a few weeks? try six.
FC3
FreeBSD5.3
🙂
11.8&11.5
From http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/101/
KDE
Mandrakelinux 10.1 offers by default version 3.2.3 of this popular desktop environment. 3.2 was chosen to maximize stability, but KDE 3.3 is also provided to Mandrakeclub members.
Interesting. Are they offering what they consider unstable software to Mandrakeclub members? If not, and they consider it stable, why not make it available to everyone?
I don’t know, with SuSE 9.2 and Fedora Core 3 both due fairly soon and both (iirc) with KDE 3.3, aren’t Mandrake slipping behind the times a bit?
six weeks is NO WAY enough to test, fix, stabilise and refine an entire operating system. if microsoft spent such little time on their oses we would be giving them plenty of hassle.
you gotta ask, considering the serious bugs with previous releases, and the petition in which hundreds of mdkclub members are complaining about bugs and poor testing, do you think six weeks is enough?
certainly from trying 10.0, 9.2 and 9.0, there were some big bugs and loads of little glitches throughout, as others found. they were actually worse than when win2k and xp went gold – is that the impression we wanna give to newcomers?
I really respect mdksoft’s aims and would love to be able to recommend it, but those familiar with windows dont wanna see something with even more glitches and bugs
they have the latest gnome apparently. from the poroducts page:
”
GNOME 2.6
The newest version of this leading graphical environment offers improvements in the user interface, general stability and speed, and the built-in help system.
”
i wonder if mandrake 10.1 works without issues with:
* centrino wireless, ipw2100
* nvidia drivers (didn’t work with official upgraded mandrake 10.0 kernel)
* serial ata – silicon image 351A (10.0 has the module but didn’t install on an nforce3 board amd64)
how is performance compared to 10.0? if the every growing bloat is slowing things down at all?
what about media playing abilities? will it play mp4 videos with aac sound?
Latest vesion of GNOME is 2.8 currently. Looks like they’re staying a release behind, I guess for stability concerns.
-G
“3.2 was chosen to maximize stability”
Which is only half the truth because it includes kdepim 3.3.
If a distro (any distro) waits 8 weeeks or more, either a new version of some “important” package has been released or is just arround the corner, and then a lot of people jumps to their throats because they didn´t include it or waited for it.
If there is anyone to blame for this, is ourselves.
Writing this from my four-distros box.
i did an netinstall of Mandrake 10.1 Community, it was stable but my tv-card didnt work (Compro TVMate) yesterday I updated and everything i stable and working.
its fast to
have ordered Ubuntu cd´s will try on that , will try Fedora C 3 also and maybe stick with it.
Six weeks is NO WAY close to the period of time USED to test, fix, stabilize and refine this release. Try 16 weeks, more exactly July 19 2004. Pleas get your facts correct, you are doing nothing but FUDing. Don’t see any big differences with a fedora release when it comes to time spent in testing.
for the non-techie home audience, ubuntu is mor polished, simpler, less (but well chosen) choises, system confuguration is easy and explained clearly, adding packages is very good. X was configured.
the unusuual step of disablign root and using sudo is also good for home-oriented users.
for the first time in years, i might change from mandrake as my main desktop os.
Although i don’t use Mandrake Linux ,i think it’s a good distribution.Most users don’t have a clue about what the difference is between KDE 3.2.3 and KDE 3.3 besides its looks.Instead of whining about the package versions included it would perhaps be more wise to let common sence prevail and judge a distribution more on how it performs the tasks you think is necesary then what it looks like when it runs.
i was referring to the time between community and official.
if you want to ignore the major bugs in previous releases, and the massive package updates after their launches, and the large petition from regular users and mdkclub members, fine. but your therefore dismissing a major problem.
go look round the net, especially newbie forums, and see how many first-timers have been bitten by these problems and have returned to windows, thinking that linux has been overhyped and falsely advertised. this isnt good at all.
I gave up on this distro in the server room after I installed it as a file server and it kept randomly crashing. I gave up on it as a workstation distro, when RedHat and everyone else ran circles around it and they added advertising to the free version. I just don’t see any use for it. Besides, nowadays, it is only about FreeBSD and Debian, my two favorite operating systems.
People can’t have it both ways.
It wasn’t long ago that people where complaining that Gnome 2.8 hadn’t made it into 10.1
When will the mirrors be updated so people can upgrade from 10.1 community to 10.1 official?
” I installed it as a file server and it kept randomly crashing”
It’s not the distro, it’s the user. You claim you can’t get Mandrake to work, but you can use FreeBSD. You’re either lying or just plain confused. You ought to be using Windows.
Nope, you were actually FUDing with comments like this, “compare this with say fedora’s release process where they do a 3month testing and bugfixing run.”
And yes Mandrake have had some problems but if you crawl the net and newbie forums for other distros you sadly get most of the same. Understandably less noise from newbies on fedora, as fewer newbies installs it. As for QA didn’t FC1 nuke windos partitions?
says it has wifi support, but which chips? Suse9.2 live claimed it had it as well including hotspot locating but it failed on my Inspiron 5150 so once again I’d have to use DriverLoader which works great but of course has no hotspot locating ability.
It’s time these commercial linux distros lobby hardware vendors once and for all for professional driver support and be done with this madness!
I have great respect for mandrake and their product. I’ve never had it crash, even when running as a full blown web/mail/file server, and as a firewall. I found it slower as a server than SlackWare, but as a desktop OS it’s great. I have always purchased the Offical PowerPack releases since version 8.1 and will continue to do so (mainly to help the company out). To be honest mandrake is the distro I’ve used to convert many windows users to linux, some of them now even use SlackWare & FreeBSD.
/my 2 cents
well, you’ll be lucky if you can get to upgrade from 10.1 ce to official anytime soon via http or ftp, the update mirrors for 10.1 ce don’t even work.
>stop lying. it didnt nuke any partitions.
You are right. Didn’t nuke it, but made it unable to boot into Win wich is for most user the same as nuking. Since all problems in windows usually are fixed by a reinstall.
CLUE NUMBER ONE!
the test period for this release of Mandrake is approximately three months. That’s going from beta 1, the official start of the stabilisation / testing cycle, through to this release of OE. How short are people’s memories?! Don’t you people actually fricking REMEMBER that there were several beta and RC releases before CE came out? Sheesh.
CLUE NUMBER TWO!
MDK 10.1’s feature set was frozen a few weeks before 10.1 CE’s release, just days after the release of KDE 3.3 and well before the release of GNOME 2.8. Including either would be a lunacy and a mockery of sensible release practices. An unofficial KDE 3.3 build was included for Club members because people bitched so much in places like this that it wasn’t included as standard.
I find it hilarious to compare the two types of bitching in this thread; those claiming Mandrake is way too fast to release and unstable and full of bugs and those claiming it’s completely worthless because it doesn’t have GNOME 2.6 and KDE 3.3. I hope you see the problem too, people.
>stop lying. it didnt nuke any partitions.
You are right. Didn’t nuke it, but made it unable to boot into Win wich is for most user the same as nuking. Since all problems in windows usually are fixed by a reinstall.
I think you are referring to the problem with FC2 and some other distros, springing from the different way the 2.6 kernel treated the hard disk geometry and thus the way the partition table was compiled when parted was used. It wasn’t a distro issue but a kernel one, if I understood correctly.
K
kdepim 3.3 was released considerably before the rest of kde 3.3. It is designed to work with kde 3.2.
@bt: “i was referring to the time between community and official.”
Our question is why? What is your justification for referring to this timeframe as if it were the entire testing phase of 10.1 development? It’s simply a falsehood.
does anyone know if it includes the wpa supplicant and madwifi?
without WPA security i am networkless..
no reboots, KDE running full time. Basic installation, just changed a few desktop elements to suit my taste.
Nothing, it just keeps running, 100% stable.
looks to me like you can do it right now, right here:
ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandrakelinux/officia…
My first foray with Mandrake was 10.0 Community. I liked it so much I went out and bought the Power Pack of Mandrake 10.0 Official. I just adore it. It looks great, it’s fast, it’s full featured, it’s brain-dead easy and has world class hardware detection (second only to Knoppix), and it’s stable and relatively bug free.
Yes, that’s right, I said relatively bug free. I have yet to discover any real bugs in my day to day usage. At least I have not noticed anything that I would consider a bug.
And another poster here made the good point that reported bugs in Mandrake are the same reported bugs in SuSE and Fedora (or other distros), if you look at the user forums.
For instance, when Mandrake 10.0 Community first came out, it had the problem with not being able to boot the Windows partition in a dual boot configuration, due to altering the disc geometry configuration. It turns out that Fedora Core 2 and SuSE 9.1 had the exact same problem. And it turned out to be a problem in the new 2.6 kernel (or how the userland utilities interacted with it – I can’t remember the details). But the problem was identified and fixed, by all three of the distros I mentioned. When I’ve installed Mandrake 10.0 Official PowerPack as a dual boot with Windows, I’ve had zero problems.
Unless Mandrake really goes down hill, I will continue to support and use it. I’ve tried Red Hat, SuSE, Knoppix, Mepis, and of course Mandrake. I doubt I will ever jump into Slackware, Gentoo, or pure Debian, as I have a family and a life, and I can’t spare the amount of time those disros require to get working. Of all distros, Mandrake has delivered the best overall GNU/Linux/FOSS experience for me.
That said, I probably will not download or buy every minor point release. By looking at the package list, Mandrake 10.1 just does not have enough new, cool goodies to justify the upgrade. Maybe Gnome 2.6, but it’s little difference from 2.4 (mostly spatial Nautilus, which I’m not wild about anyway). KDE 3.3 is not ready for prime time, and I already have 3.2. The kernel 2.6 minor point releases don’t excite me much either. Bluetooth and Centrino support don’t excite me right now either, as I have neither.
So for me, I think I can wait until 11.0 comes out before I consider an upgrade. I’m estatic right now with 10.0. This will probably be my pattern – buy the PowerPack for every “major” release, and ignore the minor point releases (unless, of course, the minor point release has some “must have” for me).
So who cares what my pattern is? Well the only reason I mention it is that so many Linux enthusiasts have to have the “latest and greatest” of everything. Then when it doesn’t excite them or they are let down from their expectations, they constantly bitch about it. What I’m saying is, don’t get too excited or get your boxers in a bunch over every possible point release.
Anyway, Mandrakelinux is an awesome all around distro.
wifi…there are versions of pretty much all available wifi drivers in the main kernel. Firmware isn’t included, so if your card needs firmware, you have to get that separately. Some versions are a little old; svetljo’s kernel has newer versions of some (kernel-multimedia-2.6), otherwise you’ll have to build newer versions from source if you need them. Basically, 802.11b support is pretty darn good now. 802.11g is a lot more of a pot luck situation.
what I specifically wanted to know about was WPA Supplicant that lets you use WPA. I know all about the ndiswrapper and so on.
but they are all WEP only UNLESS the WPA Supplicant is installed (which is not part of neither NDISWrapper or MadWifi). My network ONLY supports WPA..
Lots of distros have ndiswrapper, but without WPA i have no network, hence require wpasupplicant to be part of the distribution.
I cant find a packagelist for the upcoming suse9.2, and cnat find a packagelist for mandrake 10.1 either..
[root@toy adamw]# urpmq wpa
wpa_supplicant
[root@toy adamw]#
it would appear so! It’s in contrib, though, so may not be on the CDs, depending what you get. If not, you’ll have to define a contrib source after installing and install it from there.
> kdepim 3.3 was released considerably before the rest of kde 3.3.
Wrong. It was released first and as part of KDE 3.3.
I’ve been looking into this – it’s odd, as I can find no reference to an official release of kdepim 3.3 before the rest of kde 3.3, but MDK’s kdepim 3.3 package was put into Cooker well before kde 3.3 was actually released. I’ll look into the changelog history once I’m on a Linux machine (I’m at work currently).
cheers for that!
I obviously haven’t tried 10.1 Official yet, but if 10.1 Community is any indication, this is going to be an excellent distro. I really liked 10.0, but 10.1 seems even more polished and responsive.
And those of you complaining about KDE 3.2 vs. KDE 3.3, I simply can’t tell much difference. I actually prefer Mandrake 10.1 Community with KDE 3.2 to SuSE 9.1 upgraded to KDE 3.3. Mandrake is simply more responsive on my system, even with an older version of KDE.
As for Mandrake being buggy, well it does have some bugs. But my experience in the last year has been much better overall with Mandrake than with SuSE, Debian, Yoper, Knoppix, Xandros, Fedora Core 1, Libranet or a host of others I’ve tried. I use it as a desktop OS. Obviously your individual experience may vary, but until I find something better, I’m sticking with Mandrake.
well, thats a pleasant surprise coz like i said most people have not been able to update 10.1 CE. This leaves me wondering whether they are not really bothered about releasing updates for CE and just want to concentrate on Official.
from CE to OE the correct update source for CE is Cooker. From now on the correct update source for Cooker is Cooker, the correct update source for CE is a CE mirror, and the correct update source for OE is any official update mirror. CE never actually has an *update* source in the same sense as previous stable releases did and OE still does – updates are put directly into the main CE tree.
to clarify the first part of that last post – “from CE to OE” means “during the period between the release of CE and the release of OE”. everything else in the post deals with the period after the release of OE.
Good stuff Mandrake – fair to say that it’s one of the most well-rounded/polished distros out there.
> but MDK’s kdepim 3.3 package was put into Cooker well before kde 3.3 was actually released
Possible, the development code is not secret. On equal share Mandrake could have added the complete KDE 3.3 development code into Cooker and debug it during the whole time.
Mandrake is better in the sense that they actually have tools to configure things. With Ubuntu you get almost nothing. Outside of the very basics that Gnome provides)
Ubuntu is cleaner though, and I found it to be a nice Gnome Desktop.
I think what happened is this: kdepim 3.3 was declared ahead of time to be kde 3.2 compatible, so Laurent (Montel, MDK’s KDE head honcho) decided to put kdepim 3.3 into mdk 10.1 as he felt the improvements in it were significant enough to get in there. The rest of kde stayed at 3.2 as per the decision made at the time Cooker unfroze from 10.0. I can’t comment on the results of that decision, as I don’t run KDE, but most 10.1 users seem pleased enough with it