Mandrake 9.0 Released Today

[SteveC]

Continuing the trend of Linux stories here, Mandrake released 9.0 today. It's 3 CDs, so bring you broadband connection.

The list of mirrors.

Steve

 

[SteveC]

The site is /.ed, and the link I provided doesn't work anymore, so here are the mirrors:

Australia
ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/Mandrake/iso/

Austria
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/iso/

Czech Republic
ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/iso/
ftp://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/

France
ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/Mandrake/iso/
ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/

United States
ftp://ftp.cs.ucr.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandrake/iso/
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/Mandrake/mandrake/iso
ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/Mandrake/iso/

And the one I'm using, that isn't listed on the site:
ftp://ftp.sunet.se

I'm getting over 2Mbits from it, so it's got some bandwidth left.

Steve

 

[SteveC]

I installed it, and so far I'm very impressed. I chose the recommended install, and the entire process took about 25 minutes. The best part is everything just work out of the box. Samba worked with no trouble, and I was able to print to my other PC right away. It even had drivers for my scanner (Epson Perfection 2450 connected via USB) and that worked too. I haven't transferred my fonts over yet, so they still look horrible, but other than that, they've done an excellent job so far.

Steve

 

[The JoJo]

Those sunet.se, and funet of course , networks are pretty snappy usually. Some of the best here up north...

Steve, do you get good speed across the atlantic, from sunet? Are you using broadband?

 

[Clocker]

What directory in ftp://ftp.sunet.se ?

C

 

[SteveC]

The Jojo,
Yes, I have broadband, and Sunet usually has very good speeds from here. I got the first CD averaging about 2.5Mbits/s, and the second CD averaging about 1.5Mbits/s. My cable connection tops out at about 4-5Mbits/s, so that's not bad considering how busy it was.

Clocker,
It's in /pub/Linux/distributions/mandrake/iso
If you only need English, then you only need the first 2 CDs.

Steve

 

[CougTek]

I still cannot access their web site. Does Mandrake 9.0 includes KDE 3.0.2 or earlier or KDE 3.03? There is a problem with SSL handling with Konqueror in KDE 3.02 and earlier, so I would rather have the fixed 3.03 version.

KDE 3.1 final is supposed to be available in October and there are a bunch of new features on it that I would like to see on my Linux boxe so I think I'll wait for RedHat's next version before upgrading my current RH 7.3 box. Or maybe Mandrake 9.1, depending on which is available with it first.

I admit that I prefered my experience with RedHat than the one I previously had with Mandrake. Maybe it was because the Mandrake 8.1 I used shipped with KDE 2.2.x rather than the much better KDE 3.0 (IMO), but nonetheless, I have had a better feeling with RH.

So far, people here have talked about Licoris (apparently slow), Gentoo, Debian, RedHat, Mandrake, Lindows a few others. I heard a lot of nice things about SuSe, but alas, it isn't available on the Net for free as the others.

 

[Handruin]

Web leak of Linux lets Hat out of the bag:

update Parts of the newest version of Red Hat's Linux software slipped onto the Internet Wednesday, nearly a week before the operating system's official release date, giving glimpses of a product with a new focus on mainstream computer users.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-959434.html

 

[CougTek]

Finally been able to access their site, got my (positive) answer. KDE 3.03. I might try it afterall.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Coug, also consider SuSE 8.1 that comes out early October as well...

 

[CougTek]

My main problem with Suse, no matter how good it's supposed to be, is that it isn't available to download for free on the Net (except maybe on warez). I've heard many nice things about it, but I'm not ready to lay down cash for a distro similar to many others while not being sure at all that I'll like it more than RH, Mandrake and cie.

Find me a place to download SuSe 8.1 free of charge and I'll try it. Otherwise, I'll stick to something else.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

it isn't available to download for free on the Net (except maybe on warez)

Find me a place to download SuSe 8.1 free of charge and I'll try it. Otherwise, I'll stick to something else.

OK. So... am I doing the search? :roll:

 

[Mercutio]

The best legal version you'll find will be a downloadable, bootable ISO that doesn't include an installer... you can try out SuSE on a CD, but if you want it on your hard drive, you have to buy it or steal it.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks for the info, but I won't take the trouble. Since I'm already more or less satisfied with my current RedHat distro and I expect Mandrake 9 to be quite good too, I don't think it worths the trouble and $$$ to look for a CD of SuSe. It must be a very fine distro, but I have something good enough for free so why bother?

 

[CougTek]

Another great thing with MDK 9 compared to RedHat 7.3 : it doesn't slow down after a while. Back when I had RH 7.3, the more programs I opened and closed, the sluggier my desktop became. No idea why. It's just like if RH didn't cleared it's memory after I exited applications. F@h crunching times were there to confirm my feelings. Just a single opening of Konqueror and my crunching times increased. That's one of the main reason I didn't get hook to RH 7.3 very much as a desktop OS.

But Mandrake doesn't show this problem. I opened and closed many applications (mainly Konsoles and browsers) since this morning and my F@h crunching speed hasn't dropped at all. It always get back to normal when I stop running applications and it doesn't drop much anyway when I'm just browsing (mainly with Galeon 1.2.5 - wonderful browser).

So far, I'm amazed with Mandrake 9.0. I'm little more than a dummy user on Linux yet I can use my computer almost as well as I can on Winblows. Installing programs is sometimes tricky (Acrobat Reader 5.0.6, never figured out what I should do to start the installation script), but all in all, it's very usable anyway and I believe most people who are familiar with computers should be able to use it as well.

Now I trully have an alternative OS for my computers, aside Win2K/XP Pro. It's a great value.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Now I trully have an alternative OS for my computers, aside Win2K/XP Pro. It's a great value.

Games? New hardware?

The bad thing about Linux distros is they don't have the "Mandrake Update" thingy like Windows Update... the only solution is to compile your own Kernel, endeavor not easy for beginners...

 

[Prof.Wizard]

IMO Linux gives a second life to an old PC. Actually if you buy a new PC and you don't want to throw or upgrade the old one the best way to go is format the HD and install a Linux distro. Since you won't want to run games immediately you won't need any super-drooling performing CPU/graphics adapter... Then even an oldy Pentium II or AMD K6-2 can do the trick!

IMHO all the above, don't shoot me...

PS. Always have a Windows-PC handy for the real deal. Linuxes can be good as secondary or dedicated-work boxes. Or even better, "guinea pigs" to learn one day how to live WITHOUT Windows...

 

[Mercutio]

Prof, some distributions have a very useful package management system called apt-get. It's part of debian, but I think several other distros use it, too. It works amazingly well for upgrading your linux install.

I think an alternate viewpoint to Prof's is that Linux shows you that you need a lot less PC than your Windows gaming machine. I think linux reveals the bloat of Windows.

 

[Handruin]

Prof, some distributions have a very useful package management system called apt-get. It's part of debian, but I think several other distros use it, too. It works amazingly well for upgrading your linux install.

I think an alternate viewpoint to Prof's is that Linux shows you that you need a lot less PC than your Windows gaming machine. I think linux reveals the bloat of Windows.

I sorta disagree with this. I feel the same as Prof that linux provides a 2nd life to an old machine, I have a different view. IMHO a dead computer to me is one that will not perform with the latest games, and is sluggish with certain applications.

When I decide to try a linux distro. it will be for server related tasks such as apache or samba. Both of these don't require mega hardware, at least not for what I use them for.

I won't disagree that windows has bloat in it. But at the same time, the compatibility between games and windows is greater then Linux. Therefore it seems like a PITA to get Linux to play all my games, if they will even work in the first place. I am looking at this simplistically Merc. because I don't have the same Linux experience that you have.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I only hope United Linux is a success in the business segment so they try something similar for consumer/home users.

I said it once, nobody heard: only if distro-makers start collaborating and merging their brands (imagine a SuSE-Mandrake-Red Hat conglomerate!) they will have the critical mass of developers and updates to seriously compete with Microsoft for a good market share. Only this and a good lobbying on every computer software house to port all applications/games on all three major platforms (ie. Windows, MacOS, Linux)...

 

[Mercutio]

United Linux will never amount to anything. Its main backers include Caldera, a company that needs to be beaten hard with a clue stick (they're basically SCO at this point, and trying to wrap their Linux product around SCO; Caldera is seriously talking about charging per-seat licenses for Linux), and TurboLinux, a company that is nearly backrupt, whose primary product is essentially redhat + kanjii text. I don't see a lot of synergy, nor more than a halfhearted effort, from any of the UnitedLinux activities. Certainly no innovation on that front.

I *do* see a bright future in RedHat, for at last making a Gnome/KDE desktops that are visually and functionally identical, and Debian, which seems to be the best shot at a standardized distribution at this point.

 

[Handruin]

Here is a review of RH 8.0 for those who are interested:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1842

 

[Sol]

I feel quite similarly to Prof on this I guess, I just downloaded Mandrake 9, (bit of a pain since I had half of 8.whatever when it came out and had to start again) and I plan to install it on a couple of older machines to act as game servers or whatever, I'd love to run a linux box as my primary machine but untill games become compatable with it I can't really justify that since my machine is pretty much a dedicated gamming box which hapens to also allow me to write the occational document or program.

Really it's infuriating since I know windows pretty much sucks performance wise and games is where that counts the most, nearly everything worth playing runs in openGL anyway except for a few good games Microsoft managed to acquire the developers of before release.

Maybe developers just refuse to make games for people too scummy to pay for an OS.... But that rules out most people anyway...

 

[CougTek]

RedHat 8.0 is out. But RedHat's website is dog slow for me right now.

 

[Handruin]

RedHat 8.0 is out. But RedHat's website is dog slow for me right now.

Same here, RedHat's site was slow all day. I was trying to DL it all day but had no luck from their mirror sites. I eventually found one site with an 8.0 folder, but they put password on it making it useless for me.

 

[CougTek]

AMSN, a kind of MSN Messenger for Linux, always crashes under Mandrake 9.0. It doesn't hand my desktop, but I have to re-log to get rid of the useless window it leaves behind when crashing.I know other people use it without problem on other distros.

Galeon also crashes every now and then (4 times a day), although it just quit without leaving anything behind.

But at least I haven't had to reboot the computer a single time since I first installed Linux. Try that with Windows.

 

[Handruin]

AMSN, a kind of MSN Messenger for Linux, always crashes under Mandrake 9.0. It doesn't hand my desktop, but I have to re-log to get rid of the useless window it leaves behind when crashing.I know other people use it without problem on other distros.

Galeon also crashes every now and then (4 times a day), although it just quit without leaving anything behind.

But at least I haven't had to reboot the computer a single time since I first installed Linux. Try that with Windows.

Never have to reboot and programs crash 4 times a day.

Reboot occasionally and they crash once or twice a week.

I don’t reboot much, and my programs don’t crash much. Guess I’m doing OK so far.

:dunno:

 

[Mercutio]

Looking at the feature list for RH8, it looks like the two killer features (to me) are the unified desktop GUI and simplified font management. RedHat8's install supposedly is missing a lot of multimedia stuff, though, which probably makes it somewhat less appealing to the mandrake crowd.

Galeon is a "light browser" based on Gecko, just like Phoenix. It's not a full-feature, prime-time product. Yet.

I haven't seen an honest-to-goodness Mozilla crash since about .9. I saw an IE6 SP1 crash (on a 2000SP3 machine, no less) this very afternoon. That tells me everything I need to know.

 

[Handruin]

Looking at the feature list for RH8, it looks like the two killer features (to me) are the unified desktop GUI and simplified font management. RedHat8's install supposedly is missing a lot of multimedia stuff, though, which probably makes it somewhat less appealing to the mandrake crowd.

Galeon is a "light browser" based on Gecko, just like Phoenix. It's not a full-feature, prime-time product. Yet.

I haven't seen an honest-to-goodness Mozilla crash since about .9. I saw an IE6 SP1 crash (on a 2000SP3 machine, no less) this very afternoon. That tells me everything I need to know.

I don't use mozilla enough to notice it crash. IE 6 however is about the only thing I can remember crashing on my XP box. This I will agree, there is something wrong with my IE 6, it does crash more often then I like.

ICQ used to crash often now that I think about it. But that stopped as soon as I loaded up trillian. On a side not, I notice now that I get almost no stupid porn adds from ICQ since I've used trillian.

I'll have to post a screen capture of my domain controller at work. It's getting close to 200 days of continuous uptime. (W2K SP2) I do have to apply SP3 to it at some point. I'd like to wait for 365 days of uptime however. I'm hoping the power doesn't go out!

 

[Mercutio]

Wanna hear something disgusting? One of my Linux boxes maintained its uptime through a change in residence. I left it plugged into a UPS while I moved it.

Of course, that machine had been down for a kernal upgrade a few months before, so it wasn't like I was preserving a record or anything. I just wanted to try it.

I've seen Win2000 Servers with 150 days of uptime. I don't remember seeing an NT4 server go more than about five weeks. I've seen BSD and Novell machines exceed 1000 days.

 

[e_dawg]

But at least I haven't had to reboot the computer a single time since I first installed Linux. Try that with Windows.

I did. 193 days continuous uptime with Win2k on my desktop. Since then, I built a new computer which has been running non-stop with Win2k since I configured it to my liking. 31 days and counting. I don't forsee a crash or anything else short of a power failure forcing me to reboot for another 193 days.

 

[Handruin]

Wanna hear something disgusting? One of my Linux boxes maintained its uptime through a change in residence. I left it plugged into a UPS while I moved it.

Of course, that machine had been down for a kernal upgrade a few months before, so it wasn't like I was preserving a record or anything. I just wanted to try it.

I've seen Win2000 Servers with 150 days of uptime. I don't remember seeing an NT4 server go more than about five weeks. I've seen BSD and Novell machines exceed 1000 days.

OK, you get the Holy Grail on that one. For no other reason then to try moving a Linux box while it was running is pretty creative.

I've certainly seen NT servers with more then 150 days uptime. Our older PDC (and main file share used daily) was up for almost 200 days before it needed a reboot for some reason or another, and it was on a Compaq Proliant 1850R server.

It would be nice if I could apply fixes to W2K machines and not have to reboot. Other then that I haven't had stability issues. My W2K Pro workstation has been up for close to 200 days as well. I can tell it is getting tired. It seems laggy when I open different applications and it tends to hit the hard disk more often for some type of caching or virtual memory.

 

[CougTek]

e-dawg,

The only two ways not to reboot a computer using Win2K from the installation is to either not install the update packages (DX8.1b, SP3, IE6 SP1, etc) or to make a customized installation CD with all the current updates installed by default. Not installing the updates just for the sake of not rebooting the computer is a bit stoopid IMO, unless you don't plan to access the Net and you run outdated versions of your applications, while creating a customized CD is a)a lot of work and b)a temporary solution since there will eventually be important updates sooner or later.

With Linux, you can upgrade and upgrade and upgrade, with the same installation that came on the default CD and not reboot once.

If it can console the hearts of the inconditional Winblows lovers, I can say that the level of maturity of most applications is far more advanced on the Win2K platform than on the Linux distros I've tried. My browser crashes around ten times more often under Linux than under Win2K. MSN Messenger on Winblows works ok while AMSN under Linux has a lifespan of about 10 minutes. Installing programs under Linux is a pain and it doesn't simply work by double-clicking an install.exe file. Using Linux is a lot more work right now than using Winblows.

But still, Linux IS usable enough (except maybe for games and image editing programs) to be used as a desktop OS. At least when you consider the latest versions of Gnome, KDE, GCC and cie. I wouldn't have said that before KDE3 though.

 

[Tea]

I don't usually count uptime, but my OS/2 systems routinely go for months at a time. The most frequent cause of a reboot is power failure. (Since our stupid, greed-motivated ex-Premier Kennet privatised electricity supply a few years ago, power failures have increased to be around two to three times more frequent than they were back when the SEC was a state-owned monopoly.)

My NT box gets rebooted once a month or so - pretty good but not quite up to OS/2 standards (and it has easier tasks to do too), while this W2K box would probably be just as good as the OS/2 ones, I think, but it gets an entirely different sort of workload. Longest uptime on this one is probably three or four weeks, but if it ran the same restricted set of purely business apps I run at work, I dare say it would go quite a bit longer.

I don't suppose they count, but my Smoothies - sort of castrated Red Hat Linux things - go forever. I can tell from the uptime on the home one - a 6x86-200 Classic - that I moved the furniture around (and unplugged it) 43 days ago. I must remember to reboot it one of these days so that the latest update kicks into action. Or maybe not bother: there is bound to be another power failure sometime this spring.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I've seen BSD and Novell machines exceed 1000 days.

What's the record?

 

[Mercutio]

Look here for the longest-running web servers. I think there are probably some Netware 3.12 boxes that might double 1350 days, but since those aren't exactly public machines, they don't show up anywhere.

 

[Handruin]

I've seen BSD and Novell machines exceed 1000 days.

What's the record?

That's odd, I didn't write that? Did you fill in the wrong person for the quote?

 

[Prof.Wizard]

That's because I quoted your post where you quoted Mercutio... shit happens!

Entschuldigung. :-?

 

[e_dawg]

'tis true, Coug. Applying patches and service packs tends to require reboots. In a corporate setting, this can be a problem if you want to have the latest security patches. However, for a home user, this is kind of making a mountain out of a mole hill -- not only are the security holes rather minor in significance, but the inconvenience of rebooting once a month to apply said patches is not a big deal considering most people turn their computers on/off every day.

I can see why people would complain about Windows if you're using it to run a high availability server, but on a home computer, why such a big fuss? I'd rather have a scheduled reboot for patching my W2k desktop than numerous unscheduled application crashes on Linux. Application maturity in Linux is definitely something that is holding it back from the mainstream desktop world.

 

[Buck]

Linux and Unix seems to provide some nice stability for servers. But I've also seen some NT 4.0 servers run a while. My Domain controller gets shut down about twice a year, the last time was in June when I rerouted the KVM through a new switch. My NT 4.0 Workstation which doubles as a Print Server hasn't been shutdown since last winter, I believe that was January or February. The only issues that have arisen are related to Outlook 2000 on it, which get resolved when I close the program and open it back up. The machine does remarkably well on PII 400 with 128 MB of RAM and a WD64AA drive. I'll have to admit that I haven't done any new updates for a while, maybe that is why it runs so well.