Rainer

Yep, that's correct Papa - at present Firestarter can't filter by application - however, what users can do to set up a fairly tight/restrictive firewall with Firestarter is to: * Drop all incoming connections * Drop all outgoing connections with the restrictive policy - then - manually augment this outbound policy by explicitly allowing outbound connections to the ports of your choice ie - 21 25 53 80 110 443 etc, etc (for example - obviously you can choose what ports you want here) Obviously - we're not filtering by application here ....... and rogue code could in theory make outgoing connections to those allowed ports......., but it's a good start, and it's certainly something that some desktop Linux users are probably not currently aware of (the concept, that is) BTW - doesn't IPtables itself have a "rarely-used" "rarely heard-of" module/extension that facilitates filtering by application ??? - from what I've heard, it does - it's poorly documented though and there's very little information on it (on the web) from what I've heard - has anyone else heard about this?

I've only used 2006 rc2 so far and I've found it to be a good incremental improvement over LE2005 in a variety of areas (with a host of new features aswell) - it's worth making a distinction between: 1) - Release "issues" (as outlined "again" in today's distrowatch weekly) 2) - And the 2006 distribution itself. It's pretty clear that there have been some release "issues" regards club members etc etc - however, the fundemental point would be that the 2006 distribution itself is another good, solid "product" from Mandriva. To look at it rationally - LE 2005 & 2006 compare very favourably with the vast majority of general pupose distributions in the Distrowatch top 100 - further, it's likely, and fair to say that Mandriva produces one of the "top 5" general purpose distributions out there - so, is Mandriva still producing good distributions - YES.

On the topic of 2006, one thing I didn't expect to see when sifting through the indivdual packages on a custom install, (which I'm happy about) is Fluxbox :) - previously I've urpmied it from contrib - can anyone confirm, is Fluxbox "new" in 2006?

What does anyone make of this "assesment" from today's distrowatch weekly - Ladislav: I'd guess, this kind of "vibe" partially/mostly explains why Ladislav has gone a fraction colder towards Mandriva over the last 6-12 months relative to certain other distros. What does anyone think - is this a fair depiction - here's the rest of it: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20051003 Does Mandriva need to be concerned about these kind of assesments from well known community figures - is there anything different Mandriva can be doing?

Thanks for that information, Reiver :)

I don't think it matters too much whether Mandriva's actually no. 1 on Distrowatch - however, considering Mandriva's clearly one of the best general purpose distrubutions out there, it does deserve to be recognised as such (somewhere), and being comfortably within the "top 10" seems about right.

Yes - although, I used vim to hash the entry out in /etc/fstab, so it doesn't automatically get mounted on boot-up.

Is there a known bug or has anyone else noticed that 2006 rc2 doesn't shutdown or reboot from the KDE shutdown dialog? - it goes to shutdown and stays on that "blank blue screen" - in contrast, it does however reboot etc from the login screen, so if you end you're session first and go back to the login screen, you can reboot from there as normal. Must say, 2006 is excellent so far - lots of new features, more polished than ever etc, however just a bit unsure about that reboot/shutdown issue. Thanks. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

And good to see some positive sentiment from Ladislav in this weeks Distrowatch weekly:

Does anyone know if there's going to be another beta out before 2006 is released? Thanks.

I use Fluxbox on Mandriva primarily - I've got an extremely ligthweight custom install of LE2005 weighing in around 500 mb (stripped out almost everything on install) - the Fluxbox desktop loads up at around 44 mb Ram and I'm using Deer park Alpha 2 on it - it's fast, snappy and enjoyable to use and the config files for it are easy to understand/edit - so try a few WM's including FLuxbox and see what you like :)

Thanks ;) - interestingly, and on the subject of Firefox, I'd reccomend Deer Park Alpha 2 - it's a testing release but I've found it to be sufficiently stable - one interesting feature is the fast-back/fast-forward feature - makes Firefox feel alot more snappy - you can download Deer park below - enjoy :) http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/

Just a brief tip if anyone's installing Firefox 1.0.5 on LE2005 today and you've got errors about libstdc++.so.5 being missing etc etc - you can use urpmi to install it easily - for example: # urpmi libstdc++.so.5 ftp://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/Mandrakelinux/official/2005/i586/media/contrib/libstdc++5-3.3.4-4mdk.i586.rpm]ftp://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/Mandrakel...4-4mdk.i586.rpm[/url] installing libstdc++5-3.3.4-4mdk.i586.rpm from /var/cache/urpmi/rpms Preparing... ############################################# 1/1: libstdc++5 ############################################# You can then install Firefox as normal :) (make sure you've got your sources set up first at EasyUrpmi if need be) [moved from Software by spinynorman]

Is it true that the Shorewall project has been discontinued - does anyone know what Mandriva will implement in terms of firewall technology in the upcoming 2006 release ? Thanks.

Does anyone know whether there are going to be any 2006 beta's ? - thought there was one coming out at the end of June? - think the final release is on Aug 15th ish, but just wondering about any betas before then. Thanks.

I've just done a 562 mb Custom install of LE2005 and have found it to be very snappy indeed. Basically centred around ICEWM, Firefox, Eterm, MCC, XChat, NEdit, VIM and very little else - most of the services disabled - raised security level to Higher (I don't need GUI access out of my home directory). Excellent, fast, secure, desktop - Mandriva's not bloated at all if you do it right - now somebody mention that to the FUD bafoons on OSNEWS :)

Just a few words of praise and thanks to the Mandriva devs etc - although I'm primarily an Arch/Gentoo/NetBSD/FreeBSD user etc, I still enjoy and appreciate Mandriva etc - personally think Mandriva's still one of the best general purpose desktop distro's out there - Although Ubuntu/Kubuntu are excellent distributions with a promising future (I enjoy using them aswell ;)), they've still clearly got some way to go to rival Mandriva in terms of an "out of the box" experience (not to imply that they're designed to though....) - Mandriva excells with it's Install, Hardware detection, Multimedia, Control centre, unique user-friendly Security architecture, "Mature" code and a plethora of other features - LE2005 is a competent, snappy and polished distro. Thanks to all the devs etc, and keep up the good work :) Just my, brief, 2 Euros......... heheh :D

Name change, bit of a suprise, however, will no doubt get used to it in time........ ;)

Something of interest: Behind the New Mandriva http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/5811/1/ How would the company respond to complaints from users who believe the new product release schedule will prevent the software from being up-to-date? "This is not true for three reasons. First, our Cooker development platform is updated on a daily basis. As a result, we always have the latest versions of software available in Cooker," Duval responded. Second, the plans call for regular release of "special, up-to-date releases" to contributors and club members. "So with the new release scheme, they will actually get more versions than before," he said. "Third, for power users, we will certainly perhaps release snapshots of Cooker through Community releases, more than once a year," according to Duval.

Rather than start a new thread etc .. - just a quick heads up: Firestarter package for Mandrake 10.1. http://www.fs-security.com/news.php http://www.fs-security.com/download.php

AFAIK, by default Shorewall drops all unsolicited incoming connections and allows all outbound connections - if you've got the firewall on, and haven't explicitly allowed incoming connections to any ports then you should be ok - in addition it is always a good idea to disable any un-needed services and keep your system updated ;)

Just a heads up ;) - Mandrake 10.2 Cooker snapshot: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02201#0 http://www.mandrakeclub.com/article.php?sid=3110 And the 10.2 release schedule: http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/...andrakelinux102

Actually, you're jailed in both "Higher" & "Paranoid" - it's only Poor, Standard and High we're you're not jailed ;)

Thanks for that - I've decided to go ahead with those two packages and everything seems fine. Marked the thread Solved - Artificial Intelligence

Uhmm - something "related" today on 10.1 official - doing the daily update like so: - has anyone else noticed this? urpmi.update -a urpmi --update --auto-select To satisfy dependencies, the following 2 packages are going to be installed (3 MB): perl-URPM-1.03-2mdk.i586 urpmi-4.5-29.1.101mdk.noarch Is this OK? (Y/n) y The following packages have bad signatures: /var/cache/urpmi/rpms/perl-URPM-1.03-2mdk.i586.rpm: Invalid signature ((SHA1) DS A sha1 md5 gpg GPG#22458a98 NOT OK) Do you want to continue installation ? (y/N) n