Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC-2 bittorrent link is now available, ftp mirrors to be updated slowly. UPDATE: Texstar uploaded his screenshots from Mandrake 9.2 RC-2 while most FTP mirrors are now updated.
Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC-2 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Informations about BitTorrent, or how to install it
can be found here
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html
The official announce is here :
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/92beta.php3
All complains, flames, and bugs, don’t go here, but
here ==> http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/
*Opens Bittorrent ncurses GUI..
*Bt info: “finishing in 227:05:09”
*3 minutes later: “finishing in 51:32:22”
Heh, that’s what I really love about Bittorrent; at first it looks like you’ll have to wait one month, and after a few minutes (or hours) things go much much faster.
I’ve often seen a download initially taking up ~100 hours, being finished in ~10 hours instead.
Anyway, back on topic..
> All complains, flames, and bugs, don’t go here, but
> here ==> http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/
Actually, the URL is OK, but testers should 1) try to find if the bug has already been reported 2) if so confirm the bug 3) if not, add the new bug and describe *exactly* how to reproduce it 4) the best is to report a solution (or patch) to increase chances to get it fixed. This is the way open development works 🙂
4) the best is to report a solution (or patch) to increase chances to get it fixed. This is the way open development works 🙂
Yes, it kinda assumes that every user is also a programmer.
Yes, it kinda assumes that every user is also a programmer.
No, there is no need to be a developper to be a good tester.
A user who can do steps 1 to 3 (non-redundant, precise and well-explained bug reports) is _very_ helpfull.
Well, it will be good to provide a good tutorial about
<< how to make a good bug report >>, which will explain basic things, such as :
* How to use bugzilla ?
* Programm foo.bar crashed !
Ok, run $ gdb foo.bar
, then type bt, and attach the result of the command.
Anyone has a good URL ?
A think like the very good :
How to Ask Questions The Smart Wary from Eric Raymond
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Yes, I agree with the first 3 steps. I just made a cynical remark about the fourth step as the “open development way”. I was thinking a bit about how programmer centric the open development way appears to be but I was too tired to write anything intelligent. But this is off topic now…
Are these included? Anyone have 2.6 running on 9.1?
I doubt it.
2.6.0-test5 is just released. I’ve installed 2.60.-test4 on Debian/testing. ACPI is broken.
does anybody know why MS got ACPI coded 3 years ago, and though it’s hosted at Intel, the OSS community is still struggling with it?
From the Battery Powered Linux mini-HOWTO:
“A bit of history… Microsoft was the first vendor to implement ACPI. This is both good and bad. It is good because when you buy a system, you can pretty much guarantee that it has passed Microsoft’s hardware compliance tests, including the test of its ACPI implementation. However, these tests come up short in that they do not indicate compliance with the ACPI specification, but rather with Microsoft’s implementation of ACPI. When that same machine is used with Linux, some classes of errors that did not manifest themselves under Windows may become apparent.”
http://www.linuxhq.com/ldp/howto/Battery-Powered/powermgm.html#ACPI
I don’t know when that was written, or if it still applies (or even if it was right in the first place)….
funny, i check around pretty frequently and never saw that.
too familiar, yes, but 3 years is 3 years. <sigh>.
I am a Windows guy, and install Linux from time to time, just to see how things are going. I thought Mandrake 9 was cool. But I had a major problem that I can’t get over, that is preventing me from trying Mandrake out again. Does anybody know anything about Mandrake automatically installing its boot loader without asking you if it is okay?
2.6 kernel is avalable in contribs. Some drivers are missing though, but gives an idea of its superior responsiveness.
Add sources using http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/index.php
does the mandrake installer know what lvm is when it comes time to partition?
At install, it asks you if you want to install its bootloader or not, and where (MBR, 1st sector or on a floppy !)
can it take a long time for BT to catch up? I’ve been at it for about an hour and it’s still at 133 hours. this is my first BT download…
This coming from our social security dept!!!!!!!!
If you don’t like Mandrake products don’t use them.
Choice is the true freedom.
Of course it’s available. Because I just downloaded & installed rc1 yesterday!!
&%*#(@%$#%^#!!!!
I’m in the same boat
But thats ok, their update process is much improved. I just did a normal update from 9.1 to 9.2 rc1 with no issues. Hopefully this will do the same.
Very very tempting. But since 9.2 RC2 is up to the full 3 CDs now, 9.2 final is probably two weeks away. I’ll hold off until then. And I’m actually gonna _pay_ for it this time! I used Mandrake 7, 8 and 9 and don’t feel it was really “there” yet as a distro until 9.1 + KDE 3.1, which has been my undisputed favorite distro since its release and I promised myself I would buy 9.2 because of it in order to support the company. Since there isn’t going to be any drastically new KDE or kernel, 9.2 will be a severely improved 9.1, which has got to be a very good thing. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see which of my few, minor annoyances they’ve fixed. (Namely, the upper-left corner of the KDE Galaxy theme has a horrible rounding job, and also when you disable desktop icons [I hate desktop icons…that’s sooooo 1995] you get a “busy” mouse cursor unless you right click on the desktop, choose properties, go to behavior, check “enable icons on desktop”, click apply, then uncheck that box, and click apply again. Then and only then will you have a mouse pointer that doesn’t make it look like the system is busy. It’s very annoying to have to do this at every login…I didn’t have this problem with Red Hat’s KDE, but I did with Lycoris, which makes me think it’s a KDE problem that only Red Hat bothered to address. Surprising.)
Anyway, viva la Mandrake!
> does anybody know why MS got ACPI coded 3 years ago, and
> though it’s hosted at Intel, the OSS community is still struggling with
> it?
Besides the fact that acpi was a standard designed by ms to enable all computers to be ‘instant on’ and i have seen too many broken windows boxes that were fixed by turning acpi/powermanagment off, 3 years is a very long time. i still dont have it working on my laptop, altho it works really well on my desktop at work
– talk about getting things working for the wrong things first!
You dont´t need to install the boot loader in the hard disk. Select the option to boot from a floppy drive.
are there any screenshots of the updated mandrake themes? do they use the new XFCE 4?
Well, basically:
ACPI was a standard designed by Intel with MS assistance. However, Intel was taking too long, and MS used a broken, not-yet-ratified version of the standard. Since it did, laptop etc. manufacturers did what MS did (since Windows did not support the eventually ratified standard). Linux is compatible with standards-compliant ACPI, but not with the MS version.
When you get to the first screen in MDK’s setup you need to select ‘advance’ on the Languages part. From then on you get the option of setting MDK up either the auto-magiclly way or via your instructions. When you get to the boot-loader configuration part make sure you select fd0 if you want to boot up via a floppy.
I had the same problem with MDK9.1, I specified install to root partition, and what does it do? It installs it in the MBR and the root partition.
Why? Because it already installs it before it asking the user.
I too hope this bug has been reported since the release of 9.1
If you want to play with a linux distro, and then get rid of the boot loader later, simply boot your system with a dos / windows boot floppy and type FDISK /MBR to rewrite your master boot record so windows can understand it without grub/lilo.
well, the current kernel 2.6 in contrib is still broken, i.e., kernel panics on boot on all systems I know it’s been tested on. I think the problem patch has been discovered, but I don’t know if Olivier’s planning on building a working version before 9.2 final is built. It’d be nice, though
. ACPI has been included in the Mandrake kernels for a while now, since at least 9.1 and I think much earlier. You can use drakboot to enable / disable ACPI (from 9.1 on) or just edit lilo.conf / grub.conf yourself – if the “acpi=off” boot parameter is present, ACPI will be disabled, otherwise it’s enabled.
I’ve downloaded and installed MDK 9.2 RC2 yesterday, looks rock solid to me except a few minor glitches. I’ll file the bug reports as soon as I can, but the most anoying bugs where when the installer said at package selection: Cannot select/unselect package!”.
Otherwhise, its rock solid.
PS: Let me give you a pice of advice: If you want maximum data safety use ext3, any other FS I tried and especially on MDK corupted my files after a few crashes.
I see no major changes from 9.1 to 9.2 like I see when moving from 9.0 to 9.1. Of course I’m saying this only based on screenshots from textstar and notes in the Mandrake site. I mean, cosmetic changes seem to be minimal and most packages are only updated to current version. It is to note that URPMI seems to have been improved (only when I d/l tha final version I’ll be sure). All I said is not to say that 9.2 is bad. Fewer changes means fewer bugs (hopefully) and in general a more stable product.
But my concern is that the added value that would lead someone to buy 9.2 if he/she already has the 9.1 version is minimal. When Mandrake was struggling to survive less than a year ago, they made a HUGE improvement when moving from 9.0 to 9.1. As I have not d/l any beta/rc, all I can do is ask, is it the change in 9.2 that big?
It’s not always up to the distribution (in this case Mandrake) what new software comes out. 9.2 is an incremental upgrade, with bugfixes, added functionalitty and maybe some better apps. That’s what .x releases are for. Take Slackware for instance, 9.1 will come out soon, they migrated from i386 to i486 and added new and interesting functionalitty and new apps. But nothing so spectacular. If you wanna see something spectacular, then upgrade next year in spring, and you’ll see.
Cheers, Marc.