Cooker is a test distro and Mandrake has come up with the idea of using testzilla to formalize hardware testing. What it does is register your hardware configuration with mandrake’s bugzilla. Read the full review of Mandrake Linux 10b2 at GUILinux.
Mandrake 10 beta 2: A Personal Account
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Mmmm. Just wanted to say to everybody that I had absolutely no problems or whatsoever with my two USB-devices installed– A Microsoft Trackball Optical and a Standard USB-scroll mouse… They both worked flawlessly…
Just a note.
The only problem I had with my usb mouse was getting the scroll wheel to work. I checked the bugzilla area of Mandrake and found that they are known bugs so I’m sure they’ll fix thsi before the 10.0 release…
I installed the new Mandrake Control Center on my 9.2 system. At first I thought it was an improvement, but after comparing the new control center with the control center on my laptop (which still uses the default 9.2 control center), I’ve decided that the old one is quite a bit better.
Having the categories listed down the left side in a column and being able to click on them at any given point is a much easier way to navigate the control center than this new method.
For those who haven’t seen the new control center and don’t know what I’m talking about – the new control center opens up in one plain window. Each category is an icon within the window. When you click the category you want, you go “forward” (like a browser window almost) and you get a new set of icons. All of the categories that are contollable are now hidden from site. In order to see them again you litteraly have to go back by clicking the “Previous” button which is (in my opinion) unintelligently placed at the bottom most part of the window frame.
It’s not just a matter of rolling my eyes because something changed or anything like that … where in time I’ll warm up to the new control center and like it better. I’ve been using the new control center on this computer for about 10 or so days now and I think it’s a step backwards personally.
But – there is good news, I guess. There are some new control center items – particularly in the “Network & Internet” category. However most of those seem to be broken at this point. But the “Monitor Connections” tool is pretty nice. It gives you a graphical/text view of your network activity. (Though if you use GKRellm like I do, it’s not really that useful.)
I have experianced the USB issue with my mouse. It is a known bug, though sometimes it seems that these fixes come slow.
I also experianced an issue upgrading from 9.2 to cooker, it killed my KDE.
The new X server was unable to connet to kdeinit, which caused X to crash anytime it tried to run a KDE application.
Once I looked at my X files and noticed the older X server hadn’t uninstalled. I ran into all sorts of dependency issues trying to uninstall it, finally ran a fource, then some more updates and all was fine.
I am a bit excited about the changes in the Mandrake release policy. I think it’s great for the people who run the mission critical systems and need a very stable system, but also very sweet for those who like to stay on the cutting edge. It should keep cooker more stable also IMHO.
..on my 10b2 right now, it’s taking a while. hopefully it finishes cleanly.
somehow installing the plastik theme on this 10b2 killed KDE. I didn’t bother investigating, but when it rebooted, I got a command line, and when I typed startx, i got icewm.
USB during install didn’t bother me, I had to fix the scroll wheel problem, haven’t gotten tapping on my laptop keyboard working yet, and sometimes the KDE Configuration program goofs out. I figure that’s part of the beta-ness of the KDE included here.. upgrading to 3.2 should probably address that problem.
Is it just me, or is the menu editor completely broken?
Just Mute the Audigy Analog/Digital Output jack in KMix or alsamixer (BTW, this works if you are using the snd-emu10k2 alsa driver).
By some dumb reason, this output is un-muted by default, which in turn mutes all other outputs! (if you have a digital set of speaker you have no problem)
So far it’s been a good ride. Admitly when KDE was still in RC’s I stayed away from downloading KDE but everything else has been working fine. Kernel 2.6, XFree86 4.4.0 and now KDE 3.2.0 all rock. The only real problem I have had is that I I didn’t download the libraries for Gnome and thus Gnome did not load. Once I figured out that I was missing some key Gnome libraries I got everything I needed downloaded and MDK has been a dream. Oh yeah I haven’t downloaded the updates for gstreamer or totem either because the guys at PLF do not have the plugins I need that work with the new updated version of totem and gstreamer MDK beta 10.
P.S. URPMI ROCKS !
P.S.S The current cooker version uses the stable version of KDE, kernel 2.6.2 and is more up to date then the ISO beta 2 version.
Yep…same here. My Logitech Cordless Desktop Deluxe USB mouse doesn’t self-configure during install, but I used the touchpad to get around. Funny thing, this problem exists since 9.2. In 9.2 if I chose wheel mouse USB during installation it hangs. At least it doesn’t hang in the 10 beta 2. But they should have already fix this.
<<Proud to live in the birthland of Linux>>
I also had the sound problem. I’ll try the above suggestion to fix this (I’m still quite newbie). Now more on topic: I like MDK beta 2 more than any other distro I have tried. KDE 3.2 is probably responsible, it looks really nice. Being an experienced XP user, I feel the release version of MDK 10 could make me do the complete switch to Linux.
menudrake, until recently, hadn’t been patched to deal with the new translations that are used to derive the new menus, so it didn’t seem to bear much relation to what you actually saw on your menu. This has been fixed in Cooker, I guess it happened after 10.0b2 was built. So should be OK in RC1, which is due soon.
Correct Cooker is more up to date then the beta 2 ISO in terms of patched and stablized packages. I can see a lot of things that are stablizing or which are stable. In fact I would recommend using Cooker via URPMI instead of downloading the beta ISO because you’ll get a better experince and more up to date packages and/or faster bug fixes as stuff is tested and tweaked/fixed.