mousematt Posted July 1, 2004 Report Share Posted July 1, 2004 THIS IS MANDRAKEMAG: A FREE MANDRAKELINUX E-ZINE Volume 01 - Issue 01 - Day, 05 June 2004 - http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au IN THIS ISSUE - a message from the editor - six reviews of mandrakelinux ten - an interview with anne wilson, mandrake community twiki - newbies: five smart things to do after installation - I want to play quicktime movies... what do i need? - this issue's desktop artwork - contribute and contact information MANDRAKEMAG IS NOT SPAM. If you wish to cancel your subscription then send an email to mandrakemag@webace.com.au with UNSUBSCRIBE in the message subject line. This issue was published online at http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au on Thursday, 10 June 2004. ====================================================================== MOUSEMATT'S OPENING MONOLOGUE (a message from the editor) MandrakeMag is not spam - its a free online magazine published via plain text email and devoid of corporate messages, advertisements and marketing. It's retro - a blast from the past. A new relic from an Internet before rich text emails, flash movies, version four browsers, worms, viruses and spam. I started MandrakeMag on a whim: a burst of inspiration, and have spent the past few months working out if I really had time to do this, and how I was going make it possible. My aim is simple: to produce an interesting, intelligent, user friendly e-zine that tells stories, shares knowledge and helps other people get excited about Mandrakelinux - my favorite Linux desktop distribution. More importantly, this little magazine is designed to build another dimension to the Mandrakelinux community. This first issue, is a little shorter than I would have hoped. However, I am very happy with how its turned out. I was going to write a review of Mandrake 10 Official, but to be honest, my early drafts were too long - and just repeated a lot of things that have already been said by other people. So, rather than say it all again; I have published the links to a number of Mandrake Ten reviews and written a sentence or two. This issue contains a very extensive interview with Anne Wilson, a retired school teacher and "leading light" of the Mandrake Community Twiki project. The interview is well worth the read, and more importantly, the Twiki is well worth helping out. It is slowly growing into an incredible knowledge base for Mandrake users - but it can only benefit from everyone's contribution. This first edition also contains some links to some great desktop artwork, instructions on how to play Windows Media and Quicktime movies from inside your web browser; and an opportunity for other readers to share their thoughts. Thank you very much for subscribing to the first issue of MandrakeMag; I am sorry its a couple of days later. The next issue will be on time. I welcome your ideas and contributions. Just send me an email if you have a comment or want to help out: mousematt at webace dot com dot au Welcome to MandrakeMag Issue One: And so it begins... ====================================================================== SIX REVIEWS OF MANDRAKELINUX TEN I've selected six different reviews of Mandrakelinux 10. The first two review the stable, and now freely available official edition - the other four review the Community pre-release. To summarize, these reviewers all tend to agree that 10 is the best Mandrake release to date. Some reviewers encountered a few quirks and the occasional bug - but the broad consensus is that Mandrakesoft has a winner here. Mandrakelinux 10.0 is the best Mandrake release yet! My advice to everyone is simple. Install 10.0 Official and decide for yourself. You can download the three CDs from a local mirror, or buy a cheap copy off eBay or from a local CD reseller. It is easy to find, easy to install and well worth a look. Enjoy the reviews. http://www.fatcaterpillar.org/reviews/soft...icial_powerpack http://www.madpenguin.org/Article1040.html http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6327 (Community) http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/review100.html (Community) http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&id=43 (Community) http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5314/1/ (Community) ====================================================================== AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE WILSON Anne Wilson is a retired school teacher from the United Kingdom. Anne first encountered a computer in 1968 on a tour of a British Steel factory in Sheffield whilst she was at teachers college. She bought her first computer, a Sinclair Spectrum with 48K of RAM in 1986, and has been hooked ever since. Anne agreed to sit down and talk to me about her Mandrake Linux adventure, the Mandrake Community Twiki. MOUSEMATT: Why Mandrakelinux? When did you start with Linux? Which version did you start with? What version do you use now? Do you belong to MandrakeClub? ANNE WILSON: One day my son-in-law started showing me UNIX running on Windows - all command-line stuff, but it caught my interest. Then a magazine gave away a copy of Red Hat 5 and I decided to try it. It was ill-fated. I got the dial-up Internet connection working, but neither my scanner nor printer would work, and without a printer I'm lost, so the idea went on a back-burner. ANNE WILSON: Nothing more happened until I saw Mandrake 7 on a disk. I struggled for a while, but again came up against hardware problems. Then, when I found Mandrake 8.0 I also found the mailing lists. 8.1 came out very shortly after that, and at that point I started spending more time with it. At some point during 8.2 I made the big switch, only booting to Windows when I needed Something I just couldn't find in Linux. ANNE WILSON: My main box runs 9.1. I kept meaning to upgrade to 9.2, but when everything is working there doesn't seem much point. Also, I do some DTP for my daughter, and use a Windows program for that, so I run Win4Lin, under KDE. ANNE WILSON: I've been a Silver member of the club for 2 years now. I have recently installed Mandrake 10 Official via BitTorrent. It is installed on a new box that I want to use mainly for video-editing, and I'm spending a lot of time playing with that. MOUSEMATT: You are one of the most active contributors to the Mandrake Linux Community TWiki Project: what is the TWiki project all about? ANNE WILSON: The idea of the TWiki grew out of the problems that many of us had with supermount. Some of us felt that we could help Mandrake by trying to get together information about systems where supermount did or didn't work. The idea was too ambitious - we were not ready for it - but the idea that we, as users, could help the distro prosper had been sown. ANNE WILSON: Around a year later someone remarked on how much list time and space went on answering a few questions over and over, and wondered what we could do about it. Someone with Wiki experience suggested a shared space for swapping information, but many felt that it could not work. Maybe the information would be inaccurate. Maybe no-one would bother to post any. Eventually we convinced Vincent Danen that it was well worth a try. ANNE WILSON: MandrakeSoft had real worries about the idea. If they sponsored the idea they would have a legal responsibility for the information that appeared there, yet they would have no control. Unsurprisingly, that was not an acceptable situation. Vincent argued strongly for us, and eventually MandrakeSoft said that we could try it, using their logo etc., providing we made sure that the front page carried a specific statement that the site was user-maintained, and not in any way sponsored by MandrakeSoft. ANNE WILSON: TWiki only works if people take the trouble to post information. Some feel daunted, thinking that it is yet another language to learn in order to post, but the language is very simple for most purposes. Adding to an existing page is the ideal way to get started, as you can look at previous entries to see how they have achieved the formatting that you need. If you need to add a lot of information and don't want to bother learning thelanguage you can use the basic html tags. As long as you stick to simple ones they will work on a TWiki page. ANNE WILSON: Apart from that, the two main problems are getting enough people to add information and publicising the TWiki's existence. The second one was tackled by several of us using a reference to the TWiki page in our email signatures. The url for the TWiki is not particularly easy to remember, so one contributor gave us space on his website for a redirect page. The URL for the Mandrake Twiki is http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org. MOUSEMATT: Do you believe Mandrake is good enoough for the home, school or business desktop? What is your advice to a new user? ANNE WILSON: I think Mandrake is a very good and attractive distro. In a way, beginners using Linux is like using PCs in the days of DOS, where the end user did not expect to be able to do everything himself. What I would recommend is that a regular user sets up the system initially to do exactly what the user most needs. Once they are happy with that, and that shouldn't be long, then a wish-list could be tackled, adding a little at a time. ANNE WILSON: Support for the beginner is the real problem. For a long time now we have had the situation where friends and neighbours can give support to a first-time Windows user, but this is not usually the case with Linux as yet. What would be really nice is a magazine that builds the confidence of newbies. The few current magazines are all far too technical for that task. "Growing up" with a magazine is a great way of gaining confidence, but I suppose the real problem is the range of choice in Linux... We have to make sure that we fight the elitist attitudes whenever necessary if we are to help others gain the freedom we enjoy. MOUSEMATT: Anne Wilson, thankyou so much for your time. The URL for the Mandrake Community Twiki is http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org ====================================================================== NEWBIES: FIVE SMART THINGS TO DO AFTER INSTALLATION Have you just successfully installed Mandrakelinux? Are you staring at a brand new Galaxy desktop wondering what to do next or where to go for help, guidance or just plain fun? If you have been paying attention, you will already have bookmarked the Mandrake Community Twiki (http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org). Below are five more smart hyperlinks that will make your Mandrake adventure a lot easier and more enjoyable. #1 Setup URPMI - http://www.urpmi.org/easyurpmi URPMI is Mandrake's package management tool. It is extremely easy to use and makes installing thousands of extra applications and software updates almost completely painless. To setup URPMI properly follow the prompts at: http://www.urpmi.org/easyurpmi/ If you want to save the bandwidth don't mind CD swapping, don't select a "main" mirror and use the compressed index. To install software using URPMI either use the Install Software tool in the Mandrake menu or open a console and type (as root) urpmi package name URPMI will take care of the rest. Don't forget to setup the contrib, updates and PLF mirrors. You will need them all if you'd like to have a lot of fun with Mandrakelinux. #2 Join MandrakeClub - http://www.mandrakeclub.com 90% of Mandrakelinux users download and install it for free. This is 100% legal and perfectly okay. However, there are some advantages to joining MandrakeClub - it shows Mandrakesoft that you like their product and you'd like to financially contribute to its future. Moreover, the club mirrors contain a lot of commercial software that isn't easilly available elsewhere. These include the commercial NVIDIA and ATI graphics drivers, and RPMS for Lucent, Connexant and Alcatel dialup and ADSL modems. Moreover, Mandrakesoft now releases all of their software to Club members before they release them to the general public. Memberships start from USD 60 per year. Please give MandrakeClub some thought... #3 Join the Mandrake Users Board - http://www.mandrakeusers.org This is the largest Mandrakelinux discussion forum on the Internet. It is free to register and a great place to get free help with Mandrakelinux. If you don't want to join the Club this is the next best thing. I would strongly recommend you have a look at this website. #4 Get counted! - http://counter.li.org How many Linux users are there worldwide? How many live in your country, city or state? Its a great idea to take part in this online census: it allows the Linux community to measure its size and use this information to encourage hardware and software companies to improve Linux support. Why shouldn't every Linux user be counted? #5 Remember Google - http://www.google.com/linux If you are searching for Linux specific stuff try surfing to google.com/linux. It is a penguin specific search engine for Linux users. I've often found it does a better job hunting down software and hardwarwe errors, rpms and message archives from user groups. ====================================================================== I WANT TO PLAY... WHAT DO I NEED TO URPMI? I'm assuming you have correctly set up URPMI properly and have access to the contrib and Penguin Liberation Front (PLF) mirrors. If you don't have them working please configure them with Easy URPMI first. QUESTION: I want to play quicktime movies with my linux web browser This is easy enough to setup. Load the Install Software utility. Enter your administration password and find and install the following "mplayer" and "mplayerplugin". A list of extra packages will pop up - install them as well - they include the realplayer, windows media and quicktime. The utility will then download and install mplayer and the necessary plugins from the PLF. It also might be an idea to search and install "kmplayer" - it provides a pretty KDE front end to MPlayer that is a lot easier to use. Once you have finished, exit the software install utility and load your favorite browser. In my case this is Mozilla Firefox or Opera. Then surf to http://www.apple.com/trailers and have a look what's coming to theaters. Enjoy! If you have a question to ask or would like to volunteer to look after this section please email me at mousematt at webace dot com dot au. ====================================================================== DESKTOP ARTWORK FOR THIS ISSUE The Nuvola icon theme is a great addition to any KDE desktop. In fact, I prefer it to the default crystal icon set. If you would like to see it or download it - please follow this hyperlink: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5358 I'd also like to recommend you check out The Art of Greg Martin. Greg produces some great starscapes that make wonderful wallpapers. I really think they add a polished touch to my desktop. View some of his work at: http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/ If you have a something spectacular you'd like to recommend - please email the hyperlink to me at mandrakemag at webace dot com dot au. Also, if someone would like to volunteer to look after this section please volunteer via email. ====================================================================== CONTRIBUTE AND CONTACT INFORMATION You are nearly at the end of the first issue of MandrakeMag. What do you think? Please send any feedback to me at mandrakemag at webace dot com dot au. I am sorry this issue has been released a few days late - life happens! The second edition of MandrakeMag was published via email on Thursday, 01 July 2004. It will be available on the MandrakeMag website on Wednesday, 07 July. The second issue contains: - a message from mousematt - thankyou harry! - a quick review of mandrakemove 2 - missing market: what mandrakesoft has to learn from suse 9.1 - columnists wanted - no more disk swapping: a tutorial by harry phillips - manually partitioning 98/ME and installing 10.0 (by harry phillips) - installing gimp 2.0 with urpmi - four quick links to get extra software for your mandrake desktop - three great linux strategy games - the mandrake 10.1 roadmap Thanks for reading. Please consider subscribing to MandrakeMag. Remember it's free! Continue your Mandrakelinux adventure. Bye for now! mousematt ====================================================================== PRIVACY STATEMENT: MandrakeMag respects your privacy! Any and all information collected at this site will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold, reused, rented, loaned, or otherwise disclosed. Any information you give to MandrakeMag will be held with the utmost care, and will not be used in ways that you have not consented to. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact MandrakeMag. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 2, 2004 Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 count me in.... Ill pm you with my gmail address then i can keep them all.... one day these will be worth money... issue 1 .... ooooohh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mousematt Posted July 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 one day these will be worth money... issue 1 .... ooooohh Is that a good thing? Are you keeping it cos its bad or cos its good? I didn't think it was a comic book... its jus plain text about Mandrakelinux 10.0 :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 2, 2004 Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 that was just a joke ... nope I like it... plain text has the nice retro feel.... less invasive etc. I already checked out the greg Martin site... nice except the tutorials all use photoshop ... good idea ... well done your penguin needs you :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mousematt Posted July 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 Thanks Gowator. I know Greg Martin uses Photoshop: I was admiring the end result not the pots and pans used to create it! :-P Do I add you to the subscriber list then? And would anyone complain if I post issue two here next week? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted July 2, 2004 Report Share Posted July 2, 2004 not me i sent you my gmail address didnt I ? I might have a go in GIMP and see whats possible to copy technique wise.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.