The next version of Mandrakesoft’s Linux distribution comes with Wi-Fi roaming capabilities, Bluetooth support and improved power management for laptop users.
Mandrakelinux 10.1 focuses on mobility
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Has anyone tried the Skype that comes with this release of Mandrake?
I’ve heard that getting Skype to work with Mdk 10 is painful, so i’d like to see some comments about how it works with Mdk 10.1.
Thanks,
Victor.
I must admit that I don’t know / didn’t knew that Skype came with Mandrake 10.1 or below if that is the case. Can’t seem to find it anyways but that’s beside the point.
I’ve been using Skype (ver: 0.91.12.0 Dynamic binary or was it the static?) briefly on Mandrake 10.0 and haven’t had any problems so far.
Haven’t tried it on 10.1 yet (just upgraded earlier today)
Basically I just downloaded the binary. Untarred it in my home directory and ran it with no problems at all.
I use the binary out of pure laziness of having to install the RPM
.
I never heard of any problems with Skype on Mandrake before now so I might just’ve been lucky or something…
I think I’ve got my laptop about as well configured as any Linux software will allow, at this point, but it’s still a little buggy when it comes to hotplug, power management, software suspend, and a slew of other “mobile only” features. Does anyone have any experience with MDK’s mobile features that they’d like to speak on?
skype would only be in the non-free MDK (Powerpack you can download from the club, purchased sets), as it’s not free software.
Nathan – hotplugging and power management are both handled in the kernel and Mandrake doesn’t have anything exclusive to improve them, though it does tend to stay very up-to-date with ACPI and hotplug stuff. MDK 10.1 will tend to be better for this stuff than 10.0, though, simply through the progress made by the kernel guys in the meantime. Most suspend stuff is actually part of APM or ACPI and thus also handled in the kernel and the same comment applies, except that there was some effort on the part of the MDK kernel team to improve software suspend during the 10.1 cycle, and MDK includes the pmsuspend2 script which can help with software suspend in some cases.
What I would like some distro to do for laptops is stick a good front end on all this stuff; you can do lots of things with CPU throttling, power control, suspension and ACPI events but this is not at all obvious to Joe End User. For instance, on my laptop when I switch from AC to battery power the screen backlight is dimmed, the hard disk timeout goes down from 15 minutes to 15 seconds, and the CPU is throttled to 75% of full speed. To do this, though, I have to install a third party utility and hack around with bash scripts in /etc/acpi. This is not something your average user will do or should have to do, and it could be easily turned into a nice clicky GUI tool. AFAIK, no-one’s done this yet.
There are no problems whatsover with Skype on Mandrake. I have been using the rpms provided on their page (-skype-0.92.0.2-mdk) on Mandrake 10 and now Mandrake 10.1.
Skype allows me to talk to other skype users, but most importantly I can call friends in Europe for close to nothing and it works great behind my Linksys home router.
So you heard wrong. At some point in time, it became fashionable to bash Mandrake and you hear the most disparaging comments from people that have clearly not ever used Mandrake. 10.1 is very fast and stable. Give it a shot.
At some point in time, it became fashionable to bash Mandrake and you hear the most disparaging comments from people that have clearly not ever used Mandrake. 10.1 is very fast and stable. Give it a shot.
I actually agree with that… i use Mdk 10, and can’t understand all the bashing i see with mdk… it’s one of the best desktop distros out there.
My gf tried Skype on her Mdk 10 and she’s got some problems with the audio… but i’ll try it later.
Victor.
Too bad the article doesn’t mention Drakroam, a handy new tool which greatly simplifies wireless network roaming.
is that you, Mr. Acton?
. You mean, apart from the bit at the start of the subhead that says:
“The next version of Mandrakesoft’s Linux distribution comes with Wi-Fi roaming capabilities”
?
😉
I’m using skype on mandrake 10. Works great. If you’re having trouble with sound, look for something like “artsdsp -m skype” (I’m not sure about the “m”) on the skype forums. Also, there is a test number to dial to work on your sound. I think it’s echo123.
My comment was that it’s too bad the article didn’t mention the word “drakroam”. Since there’s no icon/menu/applet for it, and it’s not in the documentation, how else are people supposed to know how to run it?
I use MDK 10 on a production server (I have only one because I can do everything I want on one machine), but I had little success with it on my laptop. It hung up during the installation when it hit the firewire. I used the noauto boot option next, and it installed, but lots of things didn’t work quite right including the touch pad. I next installed SuSE 9.1 and everything except screen resolution installed and worked fine. I adjusted the resolution, and it is just fine now. So, now that MDK 10.1 is out I want to put it on my laptop and see if it will be just as good for me as SuSE. My question is this: has anyone had any problems installing MDK 10.1 on a laptop with firewire on it? I have a HP Compaq nx9010 laptop, has anyone tried to install on one of those?
my old Sony C1XD has an i.Link (firewire) port and it works fine, but then it has since 9.0 so your issue was probably specific to your laptop. To make your touchpad work you probably need the ‘synaptics’ package.
sdfg