MandrakeSoft released a test version of its Cooker tree in the form of 2 ISOs available now for testing. Includes XFree86 4.4.0-RC2, KDE 3.1.94, kernel 2.6.0.
Mandrake Cooker Developer Snapshot Available for Testing
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Oy, this is a quandry. I’m not the biggest fan of Mandrake. I just don’t think that it has the polish of Red Hat (Fedora).
Of course, I do want to test XFree86 4.4 and the 2.6 kernel.
I’ll probably download it and just change the theme. I hate the new Mandrake theme.
Disclaimer: None of this is flame bait. I just wanted the first post. Mandrake is my second favourite distro (I’ve never tried SuSE because they make you pay money or go through a very long install process). Don’t take heed of anything in this post. It is three in the morning and I have no idea what I am saying.
I officially take no blame for anyone taking this post the wrong way!
Its supposed to be a KDE distribution, but its pretty screwed up and doesn’t include many KDE apps that it should, like KDevelop. Also it used Kernel 2.4.
It is also buggier than normal, for example here is a Mandrake specific bug I found: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71622
>I just don’t think that it has the polish of Red Hat (Fedora).
Fedora is far from “polished”: http://sisob.tuxfamily.org/archives/000140.html
what does the 4.4 release address? Bug fixes, performance, new features???
> what does the 4.4 release address? Bug fixes, performance, new features???
sorry … found my own answer here:
http://www.xfree86.org/snapshot/RELNOTES2.html
“Its supposed to be a KDE distribution…”
It is not supposed to be a “KDE distro”. It mearly started out KDE centric… it is not anymore. Nor has it been for a while.
“I officially take no blame for anyone taking this post the wrong way!”
Thats ludicrous. You shout fire in a crowded movie theater.. It’s your fault. Not the people who.. “Took it the wrong way”.
Just curious how far they’ve gone
I prefer waiting. In january 2004 we will know if MandrakeSoft will have to close down or if they can stand the millions of dollars of debt.
kdevelop has been included since ages.
Latest cooker snapshot :
#urpmq -f kdevelop
kdevelop-3.0.0-0.beta2.4mdk.i586
Mandrake has more than 6000rpms in the main and contributions branches. Most free software is available and ready to be installed using urpmi or the graphical installer.
I have used Fedora/Redhat and Mandrake both. IMHO I think Mandrake has more polish then Fedora/Rehat especially with it’s config tools and it’s nice Control Center. Also Mandrake’s officialurpmi feature is way better then Fedora’s/RedHat’s un-official support of apt-get.
I am using MDK’s kernel 2.6 stable with MDK 9.2 and have been doing so since they first put out a official stable rpm in their cooker repository. IMHO it rocks ! Of course I have not dared to touch any other packages because cooker is just to dangerous to play with on a working system. I only grabbed kernel 2.6 and it’s dependent rpms and that was it. I hope that Mandrake waits for gnome 2.6 and then releases 10.0 three months after Gnome 2.6 goes stable. If they put out a distro with kernel 2.6, KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6 with XFree86 4.40 then it would totally rock !! Plus it’ll give them time to incorporate kernel patches, kde 3.2 patches, XFree86 patches and a few gnome patches.
What finicial problems are you talking about ? I have not heard of any recent problems ? Post a link to back up your claims or else retract them.
“MandrakeSoft Files for Chapter 11 – it’s Official”
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2564
“MandrakeSoft Introduces Ads to Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download Edition”
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4523
“MandrakeSoft, the third biggest Linux provider which has known financial problems, decided to go ahead and offer advertising options via its upcoming operating system. Regular screensavers, bookmarks, default first browser page and Installation screens will feature advertisements. “
Their release plans for LM 10.0 are explained here:
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Mandrake10
where it says: “Mandrake 10.0 is scheduled for March, 2004” so whatever is released well before that date will (most likely) be in 10.0 otherwise it won’t.
And LM9.2 + packages from PLF (Penguin Liberation Front) makes LM one of the easiest, most complete and ready to go Linux distribution. Yes, it has its defaults as all other distros out there incl. RH, SuSe, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, etc.. etc..
Happy New Year everybody.
Oy, this is a quandry. I’m not the biggest fan of Mandrake. I just don’t think that it has the polish of Red Hat (Fedora).
Interesting. I like Fedora and Mandrake (have them both installed on two different hard-drives right now) but at least for Desktop uses I prefer Mandrake because I feel it has *more* polish when it comes to Desktop uses.
My own disclaimer – the following are just my own opinions and I recognize that others won’t necessarily agree. I find the Control Center to be more comprehensive than RedHat’s various administration tools which are sprinkled around in various menus. You get MP3 and NTFS support “out of the box”. And if you buy the boxed distro, you get Flash, Java, and Real Player “out of the box” as well. Fedora’s Add/Remove tool is kind of useless once your system is setup don’t you think? The only thing you can do with it is to Add new packages that are on the distro CD’s (many of which are already out of date). Mandrake’s package management tool lets you add new depositories so you don’t need to get a third party tool like Synaptic.
I’ll probably download it and just change the theme. I hate the new Mandrake theme.
That’s truly interesting to me. I love the Galaxy theme. I think it’s the best default theme I’ve seen in any distro as of yet. It has a glossy, vibrant appeal to it. Bluecurve itself isn’t horrible, though I don’t really care for it’s dullish appearance. But the default icons in Fedora are one of the things I really don’t like. Of course all of that can be changed, but the less work I have to do “out of the box”, the better that distro is for me.
And you also heard that they are offically coming out of chapter 11 in a short time right? And that the links you refer to are close to a year old, right?
Full Financial Report:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/newsletter/sn031211
> It is not supposed to be a “KDE distro”.
> It mearly started out KDE centric… it
> is not anymore. Nor has it been for a while.
Why then did Mandrake choose KDE as desktop for their new live-CD product, <A HREF=”http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove“>”MandrakeMove…
Why then did Mandrake choose KDE as desktop for their new live-CD product, http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove “MandrakeMove”?
A live cd has limited space, so they chose KDE because of user demand. That’s right, MDK pays attention to their desktop users, and the majority of their users prefer KDE. On their main distro they continue to provide support for multiple desktop and windowing environments.
I’m a fan of MandrakeSoft and their efforts to bring Linux to the masses, but they REALLY need to work hard on their QA for the next release. 9.2 came out riddled with bugs and glitches, needing hundreds of megs of updates, and some of those updates have caused further problems.
This isn’t a big deal to those of us who’ve been using Linux for a while, as we know how to fix things and attribute the problem to a specific component (ie this is a KDE problem, this is a kernel glitch, this is Mandrake’s lack of testing etc). But to a newcomer, it just appears that “Linux is buggy” and “Linux needs loads of updates all the time”.
It’s a difficult situation. MandrakeSoft are still trying to get back on their feet and have limited resources, but they need to do proper testing before 10.0. Otherwise they’ll give a very negative impression of Linux to potential convertees, and that’s not good for anyone.
So good luck MandrakeSoft, but make sure 10.0 is the kind of release I can give to a newcomer and be happy that he/she will really see the benefits of Linux.
>I’ve never tried SuSE because they make you pay money …
If you don’t want to pay you should not be using any distribution (besides Debian).
Its supposed to be a KDE distribution, but its pretty screwed up and doesn’t include many KDE apps that it should, like KDevelop. Also it used Kernel 2.4.
Yeah, that’s true, the KDE implementation is pretty broken at the moment. Konquerer is exhibiting some pretty wierd behavior, and the Theme Manager has disappeared altogether.
Conversely, though, the Gnome implementation has taken a drastic turn for the better. I’m currently using it as my default desktop, although I’ve mostly been a KDE guy ever since KDE first came out. But, of course, this is only a test distro. I’d expect the mess to be straightened out by the time they get around to releasing Betas.
Also, I’m surprised they’re still developing the KDE 3.1 tree. I’d have thought that since 3.2 would be presumably be released by the time Mandrake 10 was ready, they’d be building on top of that, or at least offering the rpm’s to test as they have in the past.
Is kernel-source package included in the ISO or is it like Mandrake 9.2 ?
TROLLLS…SO MANY TROLLLS!
“Is kernel-source package included in the ISO or is it like Mandrake 9.2 ?”
I think its on the 3rd CD.
“Also, I’m surprised they’re still developing the KDE 3.1 tree.”
KDE 3.1.94 is 3.2 beta.
Anyone know where I can download the ISOs? I looked around for a bit, but couldn’t find any updated cooker trees.
Nevermind, I found a torrent.
“Also, I’m surprised they’re still developing the KDE 3.1 tree. I’d have thought that since 3.2 would be presumably be released by the time Mandrake 10 was ready, they’d be building on top of that, or at least offering the rpm’s to test as they have in the past.”
A) Mandrake *is* developing 3.2. The package version numbers match KDE’s version numbers which as far as I know is 3.1.94, AKA 3.2 beta.
B) KDevelop is included.
c) Comes with choice of 2.4 or 2.6.
d) I haven’t seen any sort of MDK KDE “wierd behavior” or weird behavior either. So exactly how is it “pretty broken”?
“Is kernel-source package included in the ISO or is it like Mandrake 9.2 ?”
“I think its on the 3rd CD.”
Funny enough.. it was not actually on 9.2’s cds at all. You had to download it seperately. Which would make it very hard if it was not on this snapshot because you would have to downlaod it from cooker, which has changed already I’m sure.
“If you don’t want to pay you should not be using any distribution (besides Debian).”
That is not really true. Mandrake recently said that they will ALWAYS put out a free download edition composed of nothing but Free Software. It’s kinda silly to call someone a free loader when what they are getting for free is by the givers choice. By the same logic you could call all Debian users “free loaders”.
i’m sure there are other ftp mirrors http://ftp.lip6.fr is one of them.
That is very old news ! I said current and recent news !
This more current and recent bit of news does not state that they are going under anytime soon !
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/newsletter/sn031211
OK. Then buy all the stock you want. Hope you don’t lose your money.
A) Mandrake *is* developing 3.2. The package version numbers match KDE’s version numbers which as far as I know is 3.1.94, AKA 3.2 beta.
Oops! My bad! I’m not familiar with the KDE development version numbering scheme.
B) KDevelop is included.
Can’t take responsibility for that statement, I didn’t make it, I merely quoted it. (But the theme manager is indeed missing. Is it being dropped or replaced?)
c) Comes with choice of 2.4 or 2.6.
Ditto as per above. I’m using 2.6 myself.
d) I haven’t seen any sort of MDK KDE “wierd behavior” or weird behavior either. So exactly how is it “pretty broken”?
I didn’t say KDE, I said Konqueror. It renders some sites incorrectly that it previously got right. An example:
http://www.debategate.com/3DHS/
Bruno, not sure what you are on about. I’ve tried that site in Konquerer, Mozilla and Firebird and its all the same. If anything its bad coding by the author!
I’m using Konquerer-3.1.3, and that site, http://www.debategate.com/3DHS/ , doesn’t come up correctly at all. Mainly it is missing a table that allows access to a whole set of drop down menu links at the top of the page.
The menu links show up perfectly in Mozilla, but Konquerer leaves them completely out.
I like mandrake just because it’s the most popular distro and I always seem to have the least trouble finding packages for it. With Fedora placed in perminant beta it looks like the Debian based ditros are also getting more popular. Mandrake + mandrakeclub membership is probably the closest thing to desktop worthy that I have used, at $60/year it cots less than the boxed version of many distros and you keep the membership when you upgrade to the next version of the distro. Currently Mandrake has more users than most other distros combined.