MandrakeSoft has released the second beta version of Mandrake Linux 9.2. A list of changes and download locations can be found here.
MandrakeSoft has released the second beta version of Mandrake Linux 9.2. A list of changes and download locations can be found here.
Please let’s not get into politics this time. It’s really beginning to mar my enjoyment from the site.
Thanks
Aaron
Plus i believe that Mandrake is a good Linux OS.
What politics?
BTW I recommend everyone who wants it, grab it before you know who gets ahold of the news.
does any one know whether it includes xfce 4? I’m using the morphix light gui version right now, but I’ve always like mandrake. Anyone who hasn’t tried xfce 4 yet should try it, it is a huge improvement over previous versions
What politics?
Last time there was a Mandrake post we had ever pro-US sycophant jump out of their basement screaming that they shouldn’t support Mandrake because its French.
From an outside perspective, I couldn’t understand the whole argument either.
As usual, Mandrake get in a lot of problem with this beta…
Firts, I try to do a network install and it dont detect my card which is a Linksys, every distro does detect automatically…
Second, after manually initialising the card, it cannot start the network with a static adress… So I must put a dhcp server on my laptop to start the installation on my other computer…
Third, it hang in the installation process when detecting a simple Ps/2 Logitech mouse…
So, rm -rf /home/ftp/Mandrake for me…
Also, it dont make sense to me to release a beta for testing for stable with software in beta phase in it…
Jeff,
If you can go to http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/ and enter these bugs it will help make for a better distro. Of course that’s what betas are for. To get the bugs out.
Aaron
Yes, for sure it’s what I do for help them…
But, I dont understand why gcc3.3_pre1 and Gnome 2.3.5 is included here. It must be the cause of many new bug…
And more, they are rewriting their drakx tool. You must do this before releasing a beta. You dont change a software in the lastest beta… It will not be as tested as if it is include from the start
the old GCC is in there probobly because changing the compiler can screw up the whole distro.
Gnome 2.3.5 was declared “relatively stable”, and they want “the masses” to test it, so what better way?
Agree with you for the mass testing…
But, in my definition, a beta is a software that you release for people to test and when it’s done, it will be released…
But Mandrake has always do the contrary. You test version x.x.x all the way the beta series and when it’s stable, they change it to version y.y.y in the last moment.
Result? Many bug comes out in the final version…
They must the “be on the edge” attitude and be more selective for the package IMHO.
as i usually use KDE this is what i have figured out so
far. sound wont work until u go into mandrake control
center and change from audigy driver to emu if u have
a soundblaster live. then u need to open up kmix
and unmute and bring up the volume on the master which
is the first volume control on the left then unmute
cd player and bring up the volume there also.
also i noticed when u reboot sometimes the boot stops
at checking for new hardware, just hit enter and it
continues.
enjoy.
works great.
i wonder wy hardware detection that used to work, fails in later released… this is odd… i don’t know but i would have thought the hardware detection was effectively a look-up tables… from hardware ID’s to kernel drivers plus parameters etc… and maybe sometimes the “key” is a little procedure as the hardware ID is not there or not enough… once this is done … surely it shouldn’t break again?
and on this point? why is there a disparity between the distros on hardware detection? surely all being open source… such “look-up” tables would have spread like wildfire?
i really don’t think theres an excuse for general purpose distro’s like Debian not to do much hardware detection ( i can see why say slackware might not, as it wants the user to do so by design, but debian aims to be general purpose, general user).
having said all this – i use mandrake because it had the best hardware detection, or reputed to.
I find Knoppix to have the best hardware detection. it’s a really nice distro, to teach or show some people about what linux is.
mandrake make it so easy to install linux. compared to debian or gentoo, it’s a breeze.
mandrake has always had issues (scroll whell not working) with Mouse devices, particularly Microsoft ones. I just use generic.
Just installed this beta on my spare computer which is a amd k6-2 300mhz with 256mb of ram. I know i really got to build another one for the test bed. Anyway, this beta is very good for a beta. I havent checked yet but it does seems to have more pep. I believe it is a newer kernel that is in 9.1 Kde seems a bit to quick for being on such a slow computer. So far no problems that i can report from this spare computer about 9.2 beta 2.
Mandrake was the first Linux distro i tried way back in version 6.5 in 1999. I have tried others and liked them too. But I always gravitate back Mandrake for one reason or another. Mandrake is a wonderful distro. Cant wait for 9.2 final.
Oh another thing, i dont care who makes this Linux. For me it just doesnt matter. All I care about is Mandrake along with the other distros are coming along nicely.
my hardware detection issue is not a mandrake issue.
i seem to have a little problem with my ide cable.
thought i’d mention it.
if u beta test Mandrake and move towards Mandrake
the source with be with u
and if u dont, oh well…..
how you people can constantly figure that one distro would be easier to install than the other. If someone is to find that Mandrake is *easier* to install than SuSE, Lycoris, or pretty much anything, than this person has a serious problem. (I will take Gentoo out of this) — They are all the same, they only come with different looks.
As I am a masochist I tried to start the install from a floppy using WinXP an then using the “ftp” install mode. Everything worked as if I was using a CD !! 7 hours later I woke up with “root” password prompt waiting for me. I did it on a VAIO laptop (I thought it would fail as the laptops are often made of strange components). I’m using mdk since the 8.2 and I think they are doing a great work !
Mandrake 9.1 was a big hit, fresh new look.
But also a lot of bugs. i hope they’ll fix it in 9.2
Anyway, i don’t like that bright big fonts, because i am
using linux also on a 800×600 box, and it looks horrible –
everything’s too big. And don’t say buy a new monitor, it
works still great.
tank
If Mandrake were to spend every penny they get from HP on quality software writers they might just get this turkey to run !!
The new look of 9.1 also brought along many bugs. Hopefully 9.2 will be a more mature release. Waiting for the final version…..
When 9.2 comes out, Kernel 2.6 might be in the final beta stages, and once its out, time for Mandrake 10 beta with the 2.6 heart……., Oh the excitement never stops in the open source world
))
Mandrake 9.1 works fine on my Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D without any problems. Bugs ?? There’s sometimes a little strange behaviour but I’ve got other ones with WinXP too.
I hope v9.2 of Mandrake will be another great release ! I’m really looking forward to it.
Check your XFree86Config-4 file and make sure that were it’s has the line “ZAxisMapping 4 5” and that the numbers are correct for your mouse. I have a MS IntelliMouse Explorer mouse and for some reason MDK setup the scroll wheel axis to 3 and 4. Thus producing a weird bug in which I could scroll down but not up. Later on it was pointed out to me that your axis for your wheel is 4 ( down ) 5 ( up ) and that 3 is reserved for clicking down on the mouse scroll-wheel and using it as a third mouse button.
Hi,
if you’re not able to make your imwheel mouse work(s ?) try to change this entry in your /etc/XF86Config-4
Section PointerDevice
protocol “ps/2” -> “IMPS/2”
…
endsection
it always worked for me whatever distro I used…….
Cheers
Would anybody be willing to post some screenshots of this beta?
I’ve used Mandrake 8.x, 9.0 and 9.1, and I have to say that I liked the 8.x series better. I recently installed SuSE 8.2 with Ximian desktop, and I think that it’s by far the best distro out there. Especially with the Ximian desktop…it just looks so crisp and polished. Even the default SuSE KDE desktop is nice, including the look of YaST as opposed to Mandrake’s sloppy looking configuration tool.
I’ve been burned by Mandrake’s betas before-I’m sticking with 9.1 until we get an RC out of this.
I always find it strange that Mandrake beta test runs are short. I mean, Redhat released Servern a while ago, and Mandrake has released 2 betas since. I think they should allow their beta test runs to go longer to give people a good chance of getting a good shakedown of the betas.
I think that is because they are more dinamic… Go to cooker and you’ll see that they are working hard to fix any reported bug. And there are a lot of things that can only be tested in a proper way with a “fresh” install. For example, there were some bugs in the install process that are fixed, new and updated packages… Of course, you don’t need this new beta if you are running cooker.
maynard – Mandrake beta cycles are shorter because Cooker is open. Red Hat’s development distro is not open. If you want to test outside of beta cycles, run a Cooker machine.
Screenshots – not much point, 9.2 looks pretty much exactly like 9.1, except the fonts are better (Bitstream Vera fonts used by default, freetype 2.1.4).
Kernel – actually, 2.6-pre2 is already in Cooker contribs; install that package plus module-init-tools, make sure you have the latest versions of initscripts and mkinitrd, and it ought to work. You’ll have to add a lilo menu entry manually, and I had to run mkinitrd manually too, YMMV. It boots fine on my machine, though I can’t use it as I can’t get nvnet to compile (yes, I know about the patch, no, that’s not enough). I guess kernel 2.6 may be default for 9.3 / 10.0, depending on how stable it proves to be. Oh, the 2.6 package in contrib is done by external volunteer contributors, not by the mdksoft kernel team, so if it doesn’t work for you, don’t blame mdksoft
.
tank: uhhh, you are aware you can change font sizes? In “look ‘n’ feel / fonts” menu in KDE, and configuration / GNOME / Fonts menu in GNOME…
The other point about short beta cycles is they’re necessary for mdk to keep the “bleeding-edge” gimmick; once it gets into beta and RC stage, main tree is more or less frozen to new versions, so the earlier you start the beta cycle, the more out of date the distro will be on release.
@AdamW:
maynard – Mandrake beta cycles are shorter because Cooker is open. Red Hat’s development distro is not open. If you want to test outside of beta cycles, run a Cooker machine.
That’s a somewhat misleading statement. As RawHide usually accurately reflects the current state of their development distro. Just because it’s not available as a convenient ISO doesn’t preclude the fact that it exists.
I’m glad to see other people recognize that 9.1 did have a good amount of bugs. I hope Mandrake is that listening and that they will do better qa testing on 9.2.
I found the ldm_validate_partition_table error in the Mandrake 9.1 that I just installed. Prevents KDE from starting.
Have they fixed it in 9.2 beta??
i’ve been running KDE and only KDE since 9.0
Mdk 9.1 has a problem where the stock RPM install of OOo won’t start if CUPS is running. Upgrading to 1.0.3 RPMs didn’t help, so I downloaded 1.1 RC2. Buggy, but at least I can print
Anyone know if this is fixed in Mdk 9.2b?