Mandriva is pleased to announce the release of the first release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring. Spring features a raft of improvements and enhancements over its predecessors, including the latest software, extended support for the latest 3D desktop technologies (including Metisse), enhanced and improved system configuration and software installation tools, better hardware support, and a new look. The official announcement includes all the details on this release candidate, what you will find in it, and where to download it.
Maybe Dell will get permission from MS to pre-load it on their computers.
Hahah. Nice OS, nice post!
I wonder why they still haven´t upgraded glibc to 2.5, even though it was out almost in time for their last release. Don’t they want the .gnu.hash performance improvements?
Mandriva made some changes to their release cycle. They had dropped the 6 month release cycle originally about concerns that they were too bleeding edge and often too quick to add new features without sufficient testing (remember Kat?). Now they have gone to a “service pack” style release cycle. They are releasing a completely new base system once a year, and upgrading the desktop and utilities twice a year. So the kernel and base system will be refreshed at the release of Mandriva 2008.
This is a true point release to bring in the new features of Gnome and KDE and the 3D gadgets without breaking compatiblity.
Glibc is part of base.
I have been running the beta for a couple of weeks now and it fixes A LOT of bugs and annoyances that I had had with 2007.0
Edited 2007-03-15 17:23
They are releasing a completely new base system once a year, and upgrading the desktop and utilities twice a year. So the kernel and base system will be refreshed at the release of Mandriva 2008.
I have been running the beta for a couple of weeks now and it fixes A LOT of bugs and annoyances that I had had with 2007.0
This could be a bad idea, with many users potentially opting to skip the initial buggy release and just wait for the service pack. Kind of like what a lot of people do with Windows
heh
Seriously though, I’d rather have a rock solid version once a year instead of a buggy one every six months followed by a stable one.
Edited 2007-03-15 20:24
“Seriously though, I’d rather have a rock solid version once a year instead of a buggy one every six months followed by a stable one. ”
I agree with you. I cannot understand why a year release cycle can produce a buggy distro, compared to a six month cycle.
In my opinion, Mandriva have a good set of tools to install and configure the system. The package manager its great, when it works. He needs a lot of works to handled error message in a way that the user can understand whats happening (like, I have a lot of packages that he lists, and when I click over it, he says “This package cannot be installed”. Why? God knows… but apart of that, its a great program too.
But, Mandriva faced that a year release cicle would produce a distro with old packages, but today the target user of Mandriva waits for a stable release, not a bleeding edge distro. I used 2005 until january of this year, and I only upgraded because I had troubles with my computer. And I miss so much 2005, he worked so good to me…
“I have been running the beta for a couple of weeks now and it fixes A LOT of bugs and annoyances that I had had with 2007.0 ”
Thank god. I am using 2007.0 on my desktop since january, and I am waiting for the next release of Ubuntu to switch. Its sad, because I am a Mandrake user since version 8.1, but since 2005, the releases became more and more buggy, a lot of packages simply dont install, and some doesnt work.
Come on!
The 2007 release is by far the most stable one I’ve seen (even compared to other distributions). What kind of bugs do you have?
“What kind of bugs do you have?”
Well, I tried to use 2007, and I really loved it until I tried to add the French dictionary for OO Writer. Once I did, this, wrting would slow to a crawl. I went to the forums and started asking questions. After reporting what top had to say, I never heard back. Since then, I erased Mandriva and have put on FC6. Too bad…this is one of the distributions for which I would consider paying money.
“Thank god. I am using 2007.0 on my desktop since january, and I am waiting for the next release of Ubuntu to switch. Its sad, because I am a Mandrake user since version 8.1, but since 2005, the releases became more and more buggy, a lot of packages simply dont install, and some doesnt work”
go to easyurpmi and add cooker to your repo lists (it’s okay to do it right now because cooker is in a freeze for the RC of 2007.1)
urpmi.update -a
urpmi –auto-select -v
Once you’ve run the upgrade remember to remove the cooker repositories from urpmi.
Then, when 2007.1 is released in the next month or so add the new repos for the new release and repeat to complete the upgrade.
If you choose to switch to Ubuntu, I wish you well. It is also a very good distro.
To clarify, 2007.0 wasn’t really a buggy release if you ran it stock. My issues were related to KDE 3.5.4 running the Baghira theme (from PLF RPM). When I upgraded to KDE 3.5.6 my issues with Baghira went away.
I really should have made that clear in my original post. 2007.0 has been one of the best Mandriva releases that I have used, and I have been using Mandrake/Mandriva for over 4 years now as my main system.
The bugs I had didn’t reflect badly on the distro.
Edited 2007-03-15 21:45
I tried to do a urpmi.update -a and it updates all the repositories I have (I installed based on the infos from easyurpmi, because the tool on RPMDrake to do it didnt work).
Nice to see, a problematic package like dvdstyler that I tried to install before simply doenst appear anymore on RPMDrake. It doesnt solve my problem to install it, but at least it doenst appear as a program that I can install. Then I tried to install mandvd, and he just tell me that he cant install it because of dvd-slideshow. Nice, why that package is in the repository, if a dependency is not? And install such packages that have a lot of dependencies from source is a nightmare.
Thats a kind of think that makes a user tired.
[root@lenovo SPECS]# urpmi –test mandvd
No package named mandvd
[root@lenovo SPECS]# urpmi.removemedia
the entry to remove is missing
(one of Main, Contrib, non-free)
As you can see, I have all official media configured, and there is no mandvd package. Whatever media you are trying to install from is not an official one, and therefore any errors in it are not our fault.
mandvd is in plf, not official Mandriva repository. Make sure you have contrib installed before using plf (see http://easyurpmi.zarb.org). It works fine for me.
> concerns that they were too bleeding edge and often too quick to add new features without sufficient testing
Well, I’d say that this is still the case: in 2007.0 they added Xgl without any usability testing, I’d say: the Expose effect (activated by default when you choose Xgl) is activated when you put your mouse in the ‘right upper’ corner of the screen, which is also where are the controls to close a window, so nearly each time I want to close a window, the Expose effect is activated..
Easy to deactivate of course, but a good indicator of the (not very good) state of the usability of Linux desktops: features bundled together with little thinking about the interactions.
In addition to what Wemgadge said above, Mandriva glibc does provide DT_GNU_HASH support and 2007 “Spring” is built with that. It also contains other bug fixes beyond glibc 2.5.
Should have googled first. Please ignore.
Edited 2007-03-15 18:09
They should decide about their release policy once and for all one time, its getting really annoying when you plan your upgrades and they change it one more time. Its just not serious for enterprise software provider.
When Mandriva choose to make a distro per year the lost lots of Mandriva Club members.
Mandriva Club members have the ability to download the new distro a month before the rest of people.
It makes sense we wanna have cutting edge applications twice a year instead of once a year.
I’m a subscriptor and I’m very happy the next Computer I’ll buy will have the last product available for the distribution I pay for.
On a purely technical bassis it is not a bad move neither.
I think that many american journalists and many americans in general are partial and not rational when they speak about european linux distributions.
Suse, for example, was very popular in Germany before Novell acquisition it. It was a very good distribution but Novell is a looser and outdated company which have its root in proprietary software. First Novell pushed Gnome instead of the successfully KDE usage on Suse. Then Novell acquired Ximian and pushed Mono/.Not on Suse. Then they sold their souls to Microsoft. Novell destroyed the most european commercial linux distribution. But Novell is an american company and therefore there is no problem.
Mandriva born to improve Red Hat as desktop and they had much success in it. Mandriva Linux has a very good graphical and conventional installer and ALSO it has now a livecd form of installation (MandrivaOne). Mandriva Free Edition (equivalent to OpenSuse and Fedora) use the same packages of the paid versions. If you add extraoficial repositories like PLF, MCNL, etc you can have mp3 supports, video codecs, etc even with the Mandriva Free version. Nothing different than OpenSuse and Fedora.
And Mandriva linux can use urpmi, apt4rpm/synaptic (apt ported to rpm by Conectiva) and smart. You have 3 choices. In my opinion urpmi is much better than yum/up2date (Red Hat) and yast/zenupdate (Novell).
MCC (Mandriva Control Center) have a few better options than Suse’s Yast but both are much better than Red Hat and *buntu in this field.
Remember: Xgl is developed by Novell and it is not very good. Red Hat’s AIGLX is much better and it can be used perfectly in Mandriva Linux. Nvidia users can use it if they upgrade nvidia driver to 9xxx versions and this can be made easily in Mandriva Linux using the dkms-nvidia package, which compile and install drivers automatically when you upgrade the kernel or the nvidia driver.