“Club members and contributors should have exclusive access to the download edition ISOs. For others, ISOs will be freely available world-wide by the end of October”, MandrakeSoft said for their upcoming version of Mandrake 9.2. Mike Kestner has released an update to Gtk#, version 0.11. The EU Parliament approves Software Patent Legislation, but not for all cases. The Czech site Root.cz has a good round up (in Czech) of that’s coming on GTK+ 2.4 and 2.6 (the file selector shown there is just a mockup, not the final). Python 2.3.1 is out: this minor release introduces a number of enhancements. Seagate ships first PC operating system pre-loaded on value-priced hard drives: Lindows. According to sources close to Microsoft the latest date set for Longhorn to go to manufacturing by is Aug. 15, 2005.
News Soup: Longhorn RTM, Mandrake, Lindows, GTK, Python, Patents
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
…that is, if EVERYTHING goes to plan. Knowing Microsoft, It’ll be well into 2006 before we see HPs and eMachines loaded with it. Meanwhile, Mac OS X will be at Version 10.5 and Lindows will be at version 7.0.
Anyone has a real screenshot of the new GTK+ file selector? We all have seen the mockups and the third party patches that are not part of the gtk tree, but I don’t think there were any real shots of the real thing (has it being commited yet?).. Anyone running CVS here?
Have anyone tried to get them work on FreeBSD, yet? Last time, I tried and it doesn’t work on FreeBSD..
I wouldn’t compare the 3.11 –> 95 step to 2000 –>XP one. 2000 and XP pretty much have the same code base, don’t they?
why does mandrake persist in trying to upset its user base, barely having recovered from the last hoo-hah over over advertising, now people are moaning about delaying public ISO access until the end of septmeber… no October.. sigh…
i’m seeing parallels between mandrake and sco…. you couldn’t do more to upset your own customers.
If you want to get the ISO earlier, become a member of their Club. That’s the deal. EXACTLY because of their financials are in a bad state, they have to do that. People should understand that instead of muttering around. Nothing is really free in this world, everything does come at a cost. And karma.
Eugenia: It hasn’t been commited yet. At least on the GTK website, they say the file selector “still has to be made”. Oh well.
The mockup looks nice though. I’d enjoy that.
Thom: Windows 2000 –> WindowsXP is a revolutionary jump? Oooh,pretty colors.
…if Longhorn supports open standards and is geared towards interoperability, then that’s fine with me.
If it’s more of the same MS tactics, i.e. using proprietary standards to corner the market, shut out competition and increase its monopoly, then I will not even try it, even if it was the best OS ever made.
I know some people are not interested in mixing tech and politics, nor in the effect that powerful economic forces have on society. I respect this point of view, but I can’t share it. I will not encourage a monopolist if I can help it, and I will encourage open standards.
So I don’t necessarily want Longhorn to fail – only if it’s another one of MS’s world domination schemes… 🙂
So you give nothing to them and you expect to have everything that paying customers get immediately?
Mandrake is first and foremost a company. I personally love Mandrake and totally understand their reasons for doing this–they want the paying customers to feel that they’re getting something in return as opposed to every other time when paying customers got their CDs way after the downloadable ISOs vere available.
If you need it immediately, get a subscription. Otherwise, quit whining.
I agree with Eugenia. I became a Mandrake Club member to support them, and I appreciate the few perks I get. I mean, it’s only a month (and you can basically get the packages from Cooker anyway)…
Finally!!!! I have been saying this over and over. Mandrake needed to either hold off on the free download isos until the retail packs were in the stores or offer the isos first thru the club and then time the free download isos to appear at the same time as the retail packs. Finally they chose one of those paths.
I’ve posted something to this effect many times yet I always got flamed by Mandrake users who carried on and on with “wah, mandrake must always be free as in beer.” Simply being free as in speech isn’t good enough for some.
Look, Mandrake needs money. They obviously are not making enough as it is, so they needed to do something to reverse the downward trend. This is a good sign. Mandrake users, if you want your distro to stay around, support it by joining the club.
This is a good business decision.
as i undertsand it, the boxes won’t appear in retail until the end of october. so those people who don’t want to use the mandrakeclub for one reason or another but still want to pay for the box, won’t be able to. this is my problem. and i think its bad for mandrake. mandrake, if they want to make money, should be targeting those wishing to pay, not backslapping each other, that can wait till the profits roll in, but not before.
and i think there is a certain distaste to the way mandrake suggest that “cotnributors” will get early access. this wrong because who knows who is a contributor. one might, contribute to a certain software, which happens to be included in mandrake. mandrake benefit from that software, and yet this person is not considered a “contributor”. danger ground methinks.
The two big Windows jumps were 3.1 -> 95 and ME -> XP. Since 2k was never a home OS, it doesn’t count here. There is no indication that the XP -> Longhorn transition will be anything as big as the 3.1 -> 95 transition. More likely, it will be like the 2k -> XP transition — changes in looks but little else.
> the boxes won’t appear in retail until the end of october. so those people who don’t want to use the mandrakeclub for one reason or another but still want to pay for the box, won’t be able to.
Boxed products take up to 25 days to be printed and send worldwide. This is why there is this gap in time between the Club ISOs and the box retail version.
Besides, it is no secret that MandrakeSoft makes much more money from MandrakeClub and NOT from the boxes. If you _really_ want to help mandrakesoft, you need a Club membership, not a box.
Well, Linux has a long way to go in the development phase. I mean as far as laptop’s go, it is a hit or miss operation, Linux is extremely hard to get to work with modules on laptops ie (modems) and such.
>>If you want to get the ISO earlier, become a member of their Club.
Or if you want them for free, wait a couple days and get them off Kazaa, Gnutella, WinMX, Usenet, IRC, Bittorrent, etc. You just won’t be able to get them off the mandrake mirrors until late October. They’ll surely be all over other networks long before then.
“Thom: Windows 2000 –> WindowsXP is a revolutionary jump? Oooh,pretty colors.”
Kind of wrong put by me, someone else already noticed it: 2000 never really was a home OS. The step ME-XP is pretty big though.
People are never ready to forgive Redhat as they are for Mandrake. I think people are going to have to get used to moer community type distros like Debian, Gentoo and now Fedora. Maybe Mandrake needs to do the same, and shift focus off the home market for a while.
although i don’t like their click-n-run strategy, i must say that imho, bundeling the OS with the HD is a pretty smart move. i also think it can sure push linux (ehmm.. lindows) ahead since installing the OS when building a PC is extremely time consumming, and if it’s going to work well out of the box, it does have a chance to make change.
cheers for the excellent idea (and hopefully, implementation).
nice.
The EU Parliament was created in order to have a standardized legislation. Problem is, legislations are being drafted in US and japanese corporations board rooms. Instead of wasting taxpayers money, those honourable members of parliament should resign immediately and grant all powers to a committee that would comprise the wealthiest business persons in the world. At least, everything would become clear : no more illusions about the EU sovereignty, no more talk of a powerful EU that would represent the second largest market in the world (after the US), no more disillusioned citizens, no more demonstrations, …
It really bothers me to see how those who are granted power by the people (Members of Parliament) are eager to relinquish it to the rich.
Should widen the gap even further. Make the gap…60 or 90 days, and incentivize the subscription even more: want 9.1 complete? Join. Want mandrake optimized packages? Join. Don’t want to wait 90 days to get your ISOs? Join.
It wouldn’t be a bad thing to take a cue from Libranet and leave the free downloads a release or RC back either. That’s the only way to get Mandrake’s subscription level up, and get the company out of the hole.
>I might suggest you work on your Slackware sound problems before you get fooled up with the GTK file selector. There’s a learning curve.
What are you talking about?
As I wrote on my article, I have another sound card now that does not these problems at all.
What is _your_ problem?
“Nothing is really free in this world, everything does come at a cost.”
Only unimportant things like water and air. And depending on where one lives, possibly food.
Kind of wrong put by me, someone else already noticed it: 2000 never really was a home OS. The step ME-XP is pretty big though.
Except that when ME was the current home OS, the NT codebase (which eventually led to XP) was already available as NT 4.0 and 2000. The correct “leap” analogy would then have to be between Win95 and WinNT, as the two codebase continued in parallel from there.
The current situation is nowhere like this – there isn’t an alternate codebase already available. Will Longhorn be it? I doubt it – from what we know so far (marketing smoke and mirrors aside) it seems more evolutionary than revolutionary. In any case – security issues aside – redoing the entire OS codebase doesn’t seem warranted at this point. So I don’t expect the leap from XP to Longhorn to be as dramatic as from 3.x to 9x, or 9x to NT.
One thing is certain – it will be interesting to check Linux’s progress until then! (Can’t wait for 2.6 to be released!)
After using 2003 server and loving it I am a little disappointed that they won’t be using that code workstations. 2003 server is so fast and clean. Having tried some of the longhorn builds I think 2003 server is much more my style.
Read: light, fast, responsive, and minimal code.
Longhorn will probably use a lot of the same code underneath as Windows 2003 server. There is, after all, only a single Windows codebase. The differences between server and workstation versions lie entirely in a few protected registry keys that alter the behavior of various parts of the code. As such, 2003 server might very well be fast and responsive, but it ain’t light and minimal in code size
Longhorn will debut in 2-3 years. Linux will be running kernel 3.0, KDE 4 and Gnome 3. OSX will be about version 10.6.
XP is pretty good now so there will be little incentive to change except on new machines.
Let’s hope projects as Xouvert and Cairo (xr) will progress fast and be used by Gnome (3?) or KDE(4?) by 2-3 years so the Linux Desktop can match with M$’s Aero interface which depends on and uses 3DHardware ( if available ) just like OSX for similar results.
Are two or three years enough for the opensourcecommunity to keep up? Let’s hope so.
Actually, if you read the yahoo-article, you’ll find that the large businesses who wrote the qoriginal draft are very disappointed.
That’s because the EU-parliament changed the directive so much that it now has become an important tool in the fight against software patetents.
Maybe not all MEP’s have understood this problem. But a sufficient majority has.
Even though is so similar to Russian that I can understand some phrases…
Is there an English version of this GTK article? I couldn’t find one…
“Parliament also rejected a business-friendly amendment that would have made it easier to enforce patents. Patent-holders are forced to sue end-users of their products, rather than the original suppliers. “Patents won’t be enforceable because you can’t pursue suppliers directly,” Baumann said.”
Patent holders suing END USERS? Now WTF is THAT? Pure nonsense. End users can’t effectively defend themselves against this sort of claims! And again, it’s the supplier who profits from allegedly infringed patent. Isn’t it logical that the supplier be sued, not the end user? Clearly, I must be an idiot, since I can’t get it…
That is indeed written misleading and I’m a bit unclear on what exactly they base that on.
That’s what I think they base that on:
The original proposal was that even source code (aka a description of the patented thing) and not the binary itself is infringing patents. Combined with the absolutely nutty patents the EPO has given out, everyone who would post the source code of a progress bar on the internet would have been in danger to be sued.
However, that has been removed by the parliament.
I think we should try to understand their reasons for the delay on making the release 9.2 ISOs public. They need money, as most IT companies right now, and so they have to balance some “unpopular decisions” with financial goals, otherwise they go bankrupt and become one more “star in the sky”. It’s better to have a delayed release than having no release at all.
Maybe we’re just too spoiled on having everything free (on both senses) and fast, but to wait a month to get an update is not that painful, is it?
The question on my mind, is will this version of lindows come with a year of click n run?
And Click N’ Run is a great thing (if slightly behind in versions)
Rayiner:
That’s where you are wrong. Longhorn isn’t just more pretty colors… They’re restructuring the entire OS – from the ground up – making everything modular, so there can be many different versions (ie OEM, Retail, Professional, Server, etc) but all they have to do is include the right “plugins” so to speak. In addition to that, they have developped a service that piggy backs ontop of NTFS so you can do more natural searches (i.e. “Music by 311” will return all music files made by 311, or “Documents from Bill” for example; I can go on and on, but Paul Thurrott has done a very concise wrapup at http://www.winsupersite.com
Sounds to me like the “modularization” you speak of is just a rewrite of the installers and repackaging of OS components. Nothing extraordinary with that – the modularized structure is probably there since the early days of Windows NT, it’s just that it wasn’t visible to the end user.
As far as the database-like filesystem is concerned, that is something new – although not entirely original. There are similar filesystems in the works for Linux as well…
I won’t comment on Paul Thurrott or his web site.