Mandriva 2007 RC1 Released

boklm writes "The first Mandriva 2007 release candidate (codename Mona) is out. The final version is due soon. 2007's new features include Gnome 2.16 with New 'Ia Ora' Mandriva Theme, parallel initscript (for faster boot), 3D desktop (with both AIGLX and Xgl to support more graphic cards). Installable Live-CDs including Gnome or KDE are available in different languages, and because it is a live-cd it is possible to try it without installing. Don't forget to report bugs if you find them, in order to get a solid final release."

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[toddbu]

I'm with you on this one. I ran Mandrake / Mandriva for a long time, but finally gave up last year and switched to Ubuntu. One huge problem for Mandrake is that they've never been able to put out two good releases in a row. That wouldn't be so bad if you could just skip every other release, but at one point their end-of-life policies didn't cover the last stable release. At that point I just gave up and switched distros.

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[BeeBeard]

What is Mandrake's place these days? That's a tough question. It didn't used to be much of anything: Mandrake originally started as a file-by-file Red Hat clone that included KDE, back when Red Hat Linux in all it's RPM glory was the hottest thing on the block. Seriously. There were some misunderstandings with the old Qt licensing (that have since been resolved), and Red Hat made the logical choice of backing its own pony by putting Gnome in their distro instead. But there was a problem--people still liked their KDE. "Ah ha!" thought the Mandrake folks, and they included KDE. To sweeten the deal, the Mandrake people optimized their distro for modern CPU's.

That was ancient history. After that, Mandrake started to develop some really user friendly configuration tools to go along with their distro. The installer and UI were polished, the customer support was great, and all in all, Mandrake developed a great reputation as a good choice for new Linux users transitioning from Windows--the exact share of the market that Ubuntu now commands.

Then came the name change. Oh God, the name change. Whatever kind of goodwill and name recognition that Mandrake had developed in the Linux market was squandered in one fell swoop. I realize that sometimes a company has no choice with these things, but changing their name to something that sounds like a little-known part of the female anatomy was a poor business move.

"Mandriva" is still on the map, still doing what they've always been doing--making quality, user-friendly distros that people have now started to snub for whatever reason. But the important thing to remember is that the "hot" distro that everyone is using at the time changes every now and then, mostly based on the quality of their latest distro. The RPM-based distros had the most users for a while, and now the Debian-based folks are on a hot streak (somewhere, in a small, dark corner, the Slackware users are laughing their asses off ;). The pendulum might swing the other way before we even realize it. I don't know if this latest release by Mandriva is enough to make that happen, but it looks like a great start.

Re:Mandrakes place in the Linux world?

[opkool]

As a long time desktop Linux user, I have tried recently Kubuntu, SuSE/Novell SLED and Mandriva, and I still like Mandriva better over the others.

For one, Kubuntu feels so dated and so empty of configuration tools... feels like Mandrake 8.2 all over again.

Then, I like better a 1 year release cycle. I want to WORK with my Linux. I don't want to be installing Linux all the time: is extra work and I'm lazy.

Yes, RHEL/CentOS have a long life. But then RHEL/CentOS for me doens't cut it. up2date/yum are awful, it's a horrible multimedia station and it's a pretty bad desktop overall.

Fedora, well, it's a joke. Not useful as a stable desktop for a lazy Linux user that doesn't want to install a new reease every 3 months and, if you bink too much, your release is out of support.

Sure, SLED is prety good. Mostly. But then I find it to be a slow distro (compared with Ubuntu and Mandriva). And the fact that Novell is more or less trying to ditch KDE is not good for me:

Novell: "KDE is not included in SuSE anymore!"

(Users scream in horror)

Novell: "Well, we'll include KDE"

(Users cheer)

Novell : "Actualy, we'll kinda include it on the OpenSuSE version"

(Users give up German distros and go to get a German beer instead)

Peace

Re:US$20 for the modem driver first please

[Shawn is an Asshole]

If you're still stuck with dialup (which I unfortunatley am in this damn area), buy a 3com 5610. It's a full hardware modem and works out of the box and every distro I've tried. It's a bit of a bitch to get working on Windows, though (2000 at least).

Re:13 versions of live cd

[ajs318]

The problems with graphics card drivers are not unique to Mandriva.

Graphics card manufacturers are blatantly flouting the law which says that a person is privy to every secret embodied in every article they rightfully own, by simple virtue of the fact of ownership, even if that article be a graphics card and the secret be how to program it. Both ATI and nVidia licence their drivers on egregious and legally unenforcible terms which ride roughshod over the user's common law property rights. They get away with this by having the upper hand to begin with.

Neither ATI nor nVidia are willing to comply with the law by releasing the necessary details that would allow the creation of Free drivers for their cards, for fear that this might help their competitors; despite each spending vast amounts of their R&D budget on deconstructing competitors' products {most of the rest is spent bribing games publishers to make their games run slower on certain setups; ATI will pay good money to any software company to write a game which runs half a frame per century slower on an nVidia display, and vice versa}.

The GPL quite sensibly forbids the linking of non-Free code with the Linux kernel. Everyone must be free to work on the Linux kernel and everything which links to it, otherwise the authors of the non-Free parts would have an unfair advantage over tha authors of the Free parts.

As a half-arsed compromise gesture, ATI and nVidia have created free wrappers that interface between the Linux kernel and the Windows driver for the graphics card. You have to compile the wrapper against the kernel, and the resulting binary is considered to be a derivative work of the kernel source. Now the kernel is under GPL, which does not permit such a derivative work to be made. The only thing allowing it is the Fair Use / Fair Dealing provision of Copyright law. Basically, it's OK to make a copy or derived work if it's an unavoidable, necessary step in doing something else you already have permission to do: for example, the copy of part of an audio CD that exists in the buffer memory of a portable CD player with anti-shock is fair use, since otherwise you would not be allowed to listen to your own CD. The derivative work you make based on Linux is fair use, to the extent that it is being used with a graphics card that you rightfully own. However, distributing it doesn't qualify as fair use, because that isn't an unavoidable step: the recipient could obtain all the parts and build it themself.

This means that you can't distribute a Linux kernel compiled with the ATI or nVidia drivers. You probably could distribute a kernel with one or the other wrapper and no binary driver module, relying on the user to download it. However, this would crash straight away due to the absence of the important bit. And ATI and nVidia have also seen to it that you can't expect for a kernel compiled with more than one option {Free VESA driver, nVidia non-Free driver, ATI non-Free driver} to work.

You may not care a whit for software ideals, but do you care about not getting shafted up the arse by hardware vendors' illegal practices?