Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris Archive

MandrakeMove is a Live CD distribution, or in other words, it does not need to be installed. It is an interesting concept, but not a new one, there are quite a few similar products, such as the famous Knoppix, SUSE Live, LindowsCD, Mempis, PCLinuxOS, Gnoppix and a few others.

Mandrake Linux 10.0-preview edition pretty much defines the shape of things to come in Linux land in 2004. With Kernel 2.6, KDE 3.2 beta and XFree86 4.4 beta, it doesn't leave much to be desired. This article refers to cooker snapshot as of December 31, 2003. Please note that this release is not a beta release. This is not even an alpha release. Its just something put together to show what we can expect from Mandrake 10.0. This release comes on only two CDs so some of the packages are missing. And as there are bound to be lot of bugs in this kind of release, I'll be concentrating more on the usability aspect. So let's see if it is worth drooling over.

Seeing the power of Linux, I wanted to continue using it, but I wanted to be able to use it without too much hassle. I was a huge fan of RedHat, and was very upset that I would have to start using a different system. The only home systems out there that were big were Lindows and Xandros (at least the ones most spoken of) and they were not what I wanted. Lindows always logging you in as root, and Xandros being (originally) too expensive. I decided to go with this Lycoris Desktop/LX that I had read up on because it seemed the only system that was worth looking at because it wasn't too dull or too bubbly, as are others. Here is what I have enjoyed about the system, and things I have found wrong with it.

MandrakeSoft, the maker of the popular Mandrake Linux distribution, today announced the release of MandrakeMove, a complete Linux desktop system that runs "on the fly" from a single bootable CD. MandrakeMove is a new product designed for the PC platform that requires no installation process and uses a USB key to save personal data. Pricing starts at $19.90.

In an interview with LinuxQuestions.org Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval gives an update on the financial status of MandrakeSoft, his opinion on the acceptance of Linux on the desktop, user response to the Mandrake Club, his response to the UserLinux manifesto and the recent Red Hat plans.

On December 1st MandrakeSoft announced a new product MandrakeMove based on the KDE Desktop. KDE::Enterprise caught up with Gaël Duval to ask a few questions about MandrakeMove and KDE.

Joe Barr moves from Red Hat to Mandrake Linux and writes about his experiences.

ElementComputer has released a $999 TabletPC (interesting laptop but with no internal CD drive) powered by the Lycoris distro (good WinXP TPC Edition alternative but with no handwriting recognition).

To encourage users to switch from Microsoft Windows products to the new Desktop/LX Operating System, Lycoris is now offering the "Moving On" competitive upgrade for all users of Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2k/XP. Users simply send in their original CD or restore disk along with their Certificate of Authenticity, sticker, or original product key papers from Microsoft , and Lycoris will give them 50% OFF the retail price of Desktop/LX Update 3. This offer will only last two weeks, until November 30th.

The held back Mandrake 9.2 ISO's because of the LG CD-ROM issues, are now available for download. Anyone knows if the 250 MB of additional updates MandrakeSoft issued a few days after the release of the ISOs in the MandrakeClub last month also included in these download-edition ISOs?

In reply to an open letter by community member "why", Lycoris founder and CTO, Joseph Cheek admits that they misunderstood the GPL, and promises to have the source for the evaluation edition available soon. Rus also apologized for the lack of an announcement regarding Lycoris' new policy. Update: Read on for an official response from Lycoris:

ISOs and Changelog information about Mandrake's AMD64-RC1 Linux can be found here.

Lycoris makes three tablet-specific tweaks to the OS, but it's not enough. The first Linux-based tablet, Desktop Evolution's $1900 De-Tablet, is a good effort, but its software needs additional refinements before it will please the tablet-toting masses, says PCWorld.

Just a couple of weeks into a new release, Mandrake Linux 9.2 users have encountered all sorts of problems. First, it was the problem of the missing kernel-source from the original ISO's as reported on the Mandrake Club site, then it was a slew of a major bugfix set of patches, including fixes to KDE and the kernel, and now reports are surfacing on Cooker (and which has been confirmed on Mandrake's site that Mandrake Linux 9.2 is killing some cdroms made by LG Electronics.