aRTee

BTW since adamw is reading in, have a look here: http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en/82.php3 and tell me there actually existed such a thing as Mandriva Linux 8.2. Please, someone should do something about this - a name change doesn't mean one can go back in time and erase the old names. Just running a script on the contents of a website doesn't do either. I guess now we've seen it all :(

One of my colleagues upgraded his system to MDV2005LE and said it was the best OS he ever installed and used. I'm running it on my laptop from fresh install with the dvd, my server from iso image (booting with GRUB - if anyone had trouble in the past to convince me of the superiority of GRUB compared to LILO : yes, in certain cases GRUB offers ways that are really needed that LILO can't do -- btw the server has no dvd and I only have the dvd image, so I couldn't have done a disc install there), and just now my desktop system by removing all sources, adding the dvd iso image (as mounted local files), main, contrib, plf(non)free and updates, and doing urpmi --auto --auto-select --noclean (I'll get to the noclean part). Seems fine, just that I haven't rebooted or even restarted my session yet. On the laptop, with the multimedia kernel, suspend to disk _and_ to ram now both work. The USB wireless dongle doesn't work anymore - on bugzilla they mention it's a kernel bug. Ah well, it's not mine anyway. I did use 2 pcmcia wireless cards though, and the wired ethernet - hot plugging all the way (ping www.google.com and unplug the cable - it went on - plug back the cable, take out the card, ping times keep working fine - plug the other card, unplug the cable - still keeps working!!). USB works like a charm too - my digital cam now gets mounted, and one can finally exchange cards in cardreaders without unplugging the cardreader, just removing and inserting memory cards works fine. My usb hd gets all the partitions mounted too, before there was some code in the perl scripts that stated that with too many partitions things might get too 'risky' so nothing got automounted, I had to do it by hand. This time around, all gets mounted fine. As for using --noclean on urpmi, I set up my server and mounted /var/cache/urpmi/rpm on my lappie and desktop, so that I only have to download any rpm once - it will be available to all machines that might need it. As far as I can tell, I like mdv2005le better than any system before this, the improvements are not hard to find (to me), and the only disadvantage I could find so far is that usb wireless dongle issue... IMHO things are looking very good for MANDRIVA. :P

Gowator, MDV supporting SPARC and Power4? Pass me whatever you're taking, it must be good :P Next you'll want Itanium(2) and ARM support - hey, it's both from Intel, and they're the leader! On the other hand, good that your company is consolidating on one platform on all architectures, because that more or less implies Linux... :D I'd make sure to have _two_ software suppliers, heterogeneity is key. Having two out of RH, Debian, Gentoo, and heck, why not SUSE/Novell LDS or even Sun JDS... There's only one thing MDV has to do, more than anything else (including making clubmembers happy enough to continue subscription): get preloaded systems out there. Look, MS makes 45USD on any Dell system, lots of people buy one every 5 years, and still they're raking in bigtime. If MDV loses all clubmembers but gets the preloaded market, they're set to be big. Preloaded, the only way to compete with MS and Apple. Granted, Linux isn't quite there, but it's on its merry way....

See also: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/MdkXbox

BTW Kristi, thanks a lot for that info - I'm a VIP member, so I didn't realise what is Silver level and what is regular, now I see they listened: x86-64 is available to regular members! Yay! (Yes I sincerely seriously wanted that.)

adamw, the SUSE fud comment wasn't exactly directly at you (though if you feel concerned, maybe you should :D :P jk) but anyway: if you mind that xine and mplayer don't work with libdvdcss, no big difference: one has to get libdvdcss anyway, might as well get the other stuff. So in any case there is work to do. Same for java, video drivers, etc. Only mp3 payback is different, for all other things wtih any popular Linux distro there is work to do...

Well, my bittorrent is steadily climbing since I started it 30 mins ago to 100KB/s at this moment. Should be there tomorrow morning. Whoops, checking again, seems it's moved up to 150KB/s. Good to have MDV2005LE final, I have a new server, a PIII 800 that's been waiting to replace my old server (PII 350, uptime as we speak: 445 days)...

As for whether to install the new version (or any other version of Linux) - I don't see why it's an either / or situation. As I have recommended since what, forever?? the only sensible thing to do since the smallest harddrive was over 20GB is to create not just one / partition but TWO, one for immediate use, one as /mnt/altroot which you can use at a later stage for (building up suspense....!!) _you guessed it_ : the next version of your Linux distribution or heck, another distribution that you want to give a go. I've been running mdv2005le-rc2 like that on my laptop and desktop system ever since it was released, and I will do a full install on both systems to see how easy that goes, and to have enough experience for my website - most people will do a reinstallation, or better: a new installation to check this Linux thing out. My comments as for mdv2005le (rc2) are the following: refer also to my configuration page -- which will be way shorter; must keep elements: urpmi config, libdvdcss installation, java/flash setup, nvidia installation. Stuff I don't have to include anymore / must NOT keep elements: webcam /usb-audio mic conflict - fixed. (I was actually surprised that this issue was present on SUSE 9.2 - there goes the theory that SUSE tests so much better... if this is still broken on SUSE 9.3 they're really dumb, because I sent them the link to the Mdk bugzilla discussion which should give them all necessary info to fix the issue) webcam vga resolution driver - fixed, works out of the box. Never so happy about a closed source driver taken off the market - reverse engineering solved this one quickly, and now it's in the regular kernel - no more tainting due to this, and works out of the box!! lirc driver issues - fixed (should have been fixed before, but anyhow) So lots of issues have been fixed, remaining stuff is related to regular configuration related to my network. Deteriorations: my laptop suspend to disk doesn't work anymore my usb wireless dongle doesn't work, Olivier Blin just sent me a response via bugzilla to try, this might still get fixed Improvements: usb harddrive with 'complicated' partition table gets all partitions mounted - before they didn't, since the perl script was too scared (some text comments inside stated that with so many (5 in this case) partitions the risk was too high to screw something up - whereas SUSE 9.2 had no issues) my panasonic Lumix dmc-fz10 gets seen and mounted as usb-removable-storage - this is a nasty one, it's not quite standard usb-storage compliant (which I deduce from my usb-on-the-go harddisk not being able to copy any files over either) suspend to ram now works on my laptop I may just for the sake of it use my laptop with the old kernel, if suspend to disk still doesn't work with the final release kernel. In any case, MDV2005limed looks like it's going to be great, at least for me (and since when should I care about anyone else...?!! :P ). As for SUSE, yes, you should not install xine and mplayer from SUSE, but go for the packman packages. Read my review to see how SUSE 9.2 compares to MDK10.1. Could people here please stop fudding about SUSE, especially since Novell seems to get things right again and again (gpl-ing YAST for one thing, putting a freely downloadable dvd iso image on their ftp server is another), in a way that cannot be considered sheer luck or coincidence; some people at Novell seem to really grasp Linux and FLOSS... [edit] when I said: you should create TWO partitions to serve as root partition, I meant (of course) AT LEAST TWO. I think I have 4 on my desktop ('just 2' on my laptop). Recount: 5 on my desktop. (Why? Simple: they are on 2 harddrives, if one fails, I still have at least 2 partitions, one for work, one for testing.)

You're welcome. And welcome to the board too! Enjoy Linux!

Hmm, isn't Novell Desktop Linux a specific product? From www.novell.com I gather that SUSE Linux still exists as the line of Linux by Novell, previously SUSE...

Ehm, I'm half Chinese. My name is Chinese. Granted, I don't really speak chinese, but I have loads of (mostly Cantonese) Chinese speaking friends, plus a KF master from HK, plus due to my genetic heritage a drive to find out things about the Chinese culture. The written language is Mandarin, there is no real difference between the spoken Mandarin and the words they would write down. Sure, there is a slight difference, just like spoken and written English. However, there are more or less common/regular words in Cantonese that don't even have an associated character (pictogram if you will) nor an equivalent word in Mandarin. Now the real problem is: what is the meaning of 'mandrivausers' in either language? And would they pronounce it mandlivausels? :P

Sorry to go o/t again, .... Cantonese is definitely not the most spoken language in China, it wasn't even before the government started pushing Mandarin. It's the language of the province Canton. There are many more provinces, and many more dialects (hakka to name one). BTW The written language is Mandrarin. Your KF master is wrong. Read the info on the web. BTW _my_ KF master has been saying the same as I have: Mandarin is spoken more than Cantonese, in total. Outside of China however, it depends on where you are - in many large cities, there are larger communities of Cantonese speakers (Amsterdam, Paris, London, etc). Enjoy Linux! :D

Grinning-Lizard, with that nick you must be a SUSE user. SUSE, previously SuSE, is also not a really good name. Meanwhile, it does have the reputation of being one of the most solid, tested, usable Linuxes out there. So I agree with you. The name won't close any doors that were open, except for the door to the courtroom with Hearse... Let's continue to keep supporting this distro, whatever the name, and help to improve it!

Thank god! With some reactions to the name change, one would think they sold out to MS..!! But if it's still a Linux, I think I'll just keep using it. :P

Yep but then this accounts for Ubuntu knocking Mandrake from distrowatches #1... As I pointed out KDE isn't even a real part of Ubuntu... but I have had 3.4 for a while now. If they have English, french and portuguese then they could at least roll something out ... it really is very nice... btw and possibly nice enough to be a must have criteria As i said to kristi a while back I have seen worse reasons than colour for choosing a distro... (heck most of mine are what the heck....) but KDE 3.4 is very pretty and might draw me as a no brainer to install on my mum's PC etc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> So, what's it with the distrowatch ranking? Mdk has been at the top for ages, ahead of FC, SUSE, etc. And those are still around. So what. Mandrakesoft/Mandriva have an _obligation_ to members who use other localisation than English, French and Portugese. There will most likely be KDE3.4 for clubmembers though, judging from past actions... unsupported of course, but still. Really, not having KDE3.4 is not the end of the world. The only really cool thing is that Kghostview supposedly has the feature of allowing to select text and images, making it come closer to Acrobat Reader, ... but I read somewhere that that is getting backported to the KDE3.3 that MDV is releasing as limed05.

Best comment from slashdot: The followup post clarifies: Avirdnam - a vird nam - - a weird name... Classic! :P On a side note, maybe it's me being anti counterfeelings, but I'm starting to like the name. Has a nice ring to it. Mandriva... Yeah, it's actually ok. Now, if it works more or less ok, which is to be expected from the 2005 Limited Edition (yeah, this is from the company that makes up hated names) considering rc2 that I'm typing this on, it may well work out fine. In a year from now, the world will have moved on and accepted that "among the distributions that are powerful yet easy to use, Mandriva Linux ('relative newcomer') is one of the best... It certainly holds its own next to SUSE of Novell, Ubunto of Canonical and Fedora Core of RedHat."

Well, the name has been decided:

From the official mdk website:

adamw, you forgot the smiley... :D

dexter11, to this: I was about to answer: they can't be that stupid _not_ to do that. Then again, hopefully someone at mdk reads comments here and passes this idea on to mdksoft management. (adamw, it seems you're an insider now... :P ) Anyway, I think I like the name Whatever Linux. Must propose it in the naming thread... :D

Only a year old? :P

Please consider that likely not all / not enough translations have been done. The same happened with 10.1, and it will happen again. Nothing new here.

You have to follow the instructions here: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/...Network_with_No and you'll be fine. So use the kernel and initrd in the dir isolinux/alt0

Ah, yes, in more countries, that's true. It's all a matter of perspective and definition. Mind you, in France (just a quick hop across the Channel, or a swift train ride underneath it) you won't get far with English.... or Chinese for that matter... :P

Yeah, that I didn't look for.. thanks for checking. But I don't actually care too much - 10.2 is shaping up so nicely, I hardly have anything to write.... If you read my config page, the non-trivial stuff is due to missing drivers: lirc, pwc (for vga resolution) and then some - all this has been fixed in 10.2. The rest is trivial imho... I must say, apart from those few things mdk developers managed to break, 10.2rc2 works better than any previous version, with less config stuff for me - I did an iso install, and so I didn't even have to set things up for urpmi to use iso images... Really, not much left to config. Note: I never planned to still be doing my website after the end of 2005.. so if I stop indeed, it won't really be a change of plan... but we're getting ahead of ourselves here, I've already established that mdk will use that name for v. 2006 which will be the official version until Q3 2006 - quite a while from now. Let's worry about this later, shall we... :D