mousematt Posted September 24, 2004 Report Share Posted September 24, 2004 THIS IS MANDRAKEMAG: A FREE MANDRAKELINUX E-ZINE Issue #4 - Day, 24 September 2004 - http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au IN THIS ISSUE - opening monologue - advice on mandrakelinux 10.1 community edition - introduction to the default desktop discussion - mandrakebizcases reminder - four essential small business applications - an interview with the kumula development team - four URLs and four rules to reduce hardware hassles - mandrake related news headlines - CHALLENGE! the mandrakelinux community marketing initiative - the naming of files (Christopher FA JOHNSON) - some advantages of DHCP for small business (Harry PHILLIPS) - an introduction to mandrakeclub.nl (Gerard) - mialug audio newsletter - help wanted! - in the next issue 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 will published online at http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au on Tuesday, 28 September 2004. ======================================================= MOUSEMATT'S OPENING MONOLOGUE This is a bumper issue of MandrakeMag. I have spent weeks compiling and editing this issue... my original articles list was three times as long. This is the biggest issue of MandrakeMag yet! More than 5530 words. Before I go to far, I'd like to acknowledge the support and the offers of assistance I received following the demise of my hard disk drive prior to the release of the past issue. I thankyou for your generous offer and have recommend your services to others. If anyone would like some more information please email me. This issue is the last issue to be sent from a webace.com.au account. I have finally bitten the bullet and registered a domain. The next issue of this e-zine will be sent from mandrakemag AT doorsproject.net. I'm letting you know now so that you can adjust your spam filters accordingly. This is the first small business edition of MandrakeMag. It explores hardware and software choices for Mandrakelinux business users; interviews a senior developer of the Kumula Suite, a rising star of the KDE business desktop; some of the latest news and reviews from Mandrakesoft; plus all of the usual tutorials, hyperlinks nad high quality submissions from Harry Phillips and Chris FA Johnson. This issue also discusses the Great Default Desktop Discussion and launches a new community marketing project for Mandrakelinux users. Well worth the read. Welcome to the fourth issue of MandrakeMag! Matthew PROUSE, MandrakeMag Editor <matthew AT doorsproject.net> ======================================================= ADVICE ON MANDRAKELINUX 10.1 COMMUNITY EDITION A four disc version of Mandrake 10.1 "Community Edition" has officially been released to all MandrakeClub members. A number of Linux CD vendors are now selling copies of Mandrake 10.1 Community online before it has been released to the general public by Mandrakesoft. The public release of 10.1 Community is expected in approximately two weeks time. Should you upgrade your 10.0 install to 10.1 Community Edition? Let's be honest, the Community Edition is pre-release software. It is the final release candidate of Mandrakelinux 10.1. Savvy and loyal Mandrakelinux fans are supposed to download it; install it on their PCs; play, tweak and fiddle with it to their hearts content; and write bug reports so that the "Official" box set version of 10.1 (Official) is relatively bug free and thoroughly tested. Unless you are a developer, debugger or digital stunt pilot, I strongly recommend users stick with 10.0 Official and wait for Mandrakesoft to finish Mandrakelinux 10.1. Given its pre-release status I would not trust my mission critical file and web servers; honors and masters projects or MP3/OGG collections to a software release that is not yet "Official". By all means, play with Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community: it needs your bug reports. However, heed my warning, if you depend on a truly stable environment, save yourself the tears and stick with Mandrakelinux 9.2 or 10.0 Official for a while longer. 10.0 Official is an incredibly stable piece of software... if you only wait a little while, Mandrakelinux 10.1 will be too! If you decide to install 10.1 Community Edition, aRTee's installation guide may be useful. Surf to http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/install101.html ======================================================= AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MANDRAKELINUX DEFAULT DESKTOP DISCUSSION In mid August, Mandrakesoft commisioned an ergonomics survey investigating the design and usability of the Mandrakelinux distribution. The poll is still open and can be accessed at http://poll.mandrakesoft.com/Ergonomics/ MandrakeMag decided to launch its own investigation into the design and functionality of the Mandrakelinux default desktop. A message was posted in the Workbench section of the MandrakeUsers Board (http://www.mandrakeusers.org) and members of the Mandrakelinux community eagerly contributed opinions, ideas and new ways for Mandrakesoft to improve the default desktop experience. The thread generated 165 posts in 14 days. Many posts were extremely detailed with well thought arguments, detailed explanations and incredibly effective alternative designs. I now have the daunting task of summarizing the thread and producing a report which I will present to the same Interface team that commissioned Mandrakesoft's own ergonomics poll. When complet, the report will also be published in PDF form on the MandrakeMag website. If you are interested in the discussion or would like to help me with the report please surf to http://mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=17787 and have a read. I'd like to salute the creativity of three Mandrakelinux users in particular. Thankyou arctic, DarkElve and Adrianovaroli for your support, enthusiasm and input. You have some incredible ideas and I sincerely hope that Mandrakesoft takes notice and includes some of them in future releases. ======================================================= FOUR ESSENTIAL DESKTOP APPLICATIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESS #1: OpenOffice.org 1.1.x (http://www.openoffice.org/) OpenOffice needs minimal introduction. It is a powerful, multi-platform, open-source alternative to the Microsoft Office suit (Word, Powerpoint and Excel). OpenOffice.org aims to compete with Microsoft Office and emulate the MS Office look and feel where suitable. It is also able to import from and export to almost all Microsoft Office file formats. The ability to read and write Microsoft file formats is the most important feature of OOo for many users. OpenOffice 1.1.0 is included in a default install of Mandrakelinux 9.2 and 10.0. RPMS for the latest version (1.1.2) are available from MandrakeClub. OpenOffice comes with a number of useful templates and wizards that can be effectively used in a small business environment. Unfortunately, they are well hidden inside the OpenOffice menu system. Wizards for memos, reports, letters, business cards and faxes can be discovered in the File menu. Templates generally lurk in the "File > New" menu. The more extensive wizards are available under "File > Autopilot". For more document templates surf to http://ooextras.sourceforge.net/ For OpenOffice support try the discussion forum at http://www.oooforum.org/ #2: Ximian Evolution / Kontact Personal Information Manager No business - and almost no person - can survive today without email. Ximian Evolution and Kontact are two highly integrated groupware applications. Both have email, addressbook, calendar and task list functions. Both applications can synchronise with PalmOS based mobile devices. Evolution is developed by Novell subsidiary Ximian and uses the GTK2 (GNOME) toolkit. Kontact is a KDE 3.2 application and uses the Qt toolkit. Using 10.0, Ximian Evolution is installed with a GNOME Desktop install. Kontact is installed instead when KDE is chosen. I personally use Kontact for my personal information - excluding MandrakeMag. I find it to be a fast and functional package. However, Evolution is a lot more mature, is able to talk to Microsoft Exchange mail servers and enjoys strong development support from companies like Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems. I wouldn't be surprised if many corporations standardise on Evolution in the years to come. #3: GnuCash - Linux Accounting Software (http://www.gnucash.org) Sadly, there is no Linux version of the popular Quicken or MYOB financial management and accounting software. Despite its quirky and old fashioned user interface, GnuCash is a powerful finance and accounting tool. GnuCash is an open source, double-entry book-keeping based, personal finance system, similar to Intuit's Quicken application. Current versions of GnuCash concentrate on small business features and functionality. The latest version of GnuCash (1.8.9) is available for Mandrakelinux 10.0 users in the NORLUG urpmi repository. Adding this site to your URPMI source list was convered in the previous issue. If you need more info, the URL for Chipste r's Norlug URPMI repository is http://www.norlug.org/~chipster/ There is an extensive list of Linux compatible financial applications at this URL: http://www.linux.org/apps/all/Office/Financial.html. This webpage has hyperlinks to small personal finance tools, larger and more sophisticated server based programs and a several free and non free point of sale applications. #4: CrossOver Office (http://www.codeweavers.com) Do you really need to run Microsoft Office on your Mandrakelinux computer? CrossOver Office is a commercial software program capable of running popular Windows applications without a Windows installation. It is a snapshot of the public WINE source tree (http://www.winehq.com), with various compatibility patches added, and more user-friendly configuration tools. The actively supported applications are Microsoft Office XP, 2000 and 97, Microsoft Outlook 2000, Microsoft Access 2000, Microsoft Visio 2000, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Adobe Photoshop, Lotus Notes and Quicken 2002. A number of other applications also work under CrossOver Office. Prices start from US $39.95 and include technical support and assistance from CodeWeavers. CrossOver Office can be purchased directly from the developers or from the Mandrakestore (http://store.mandrakesoft.com). This is a very short list of literally thousands of applications for Linux business users. An extensive list of Windows apps and their Linux equivalents is available online at http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml ====================================================== AN INTERVIEW WITH THE KUMULA SOFTWARE TEAM I consider Kumula Documents (http://www.kumula.org'>http://www.kumula.org) to be a rising star of the KDE business desktop. I was very happy to sit down with Juergen from the Kumula Development Team and ask him about this project and its future on the Linux business desktop. MANDRAKEMAG: Before I ask about Kumula, I'd like to learn about the Kumula Development Team. Who are you guys? How did you get involved in Open Source GNU/Linux Desktop Software? What are your roles in the Kumula Development Project? JUERGEN: Currently, the team consists of three members: Thomas, Stephan and myself. We are all software professionals working in Germany. Thomas and Stephan mainly do conceptual things, whilst I hack the code. Kumula is written in Qt, PyQt and Python using the fabulous Eric3 development environment. It fits perfectly to KDE. MANDRAKEMAG: What is Kumula? What kind of application is it? What is it designed to do? JUERGEN: Originally, it was designed for business consultants. This group generally has special software requirements. In general, consultants have to manage customers/clients, which mostly are companies. During development we saw the potential of modular software design, and now Kumula is designed for flexibility and should fit the needs for each business user in future. JUERGEN: Kumula is an integrated suite of software programs. "Clients" is the customer/client management program. It is extremely modular. The main application manages only client names and identities, the rest (like addresses and contact details) is managed by modules. Because of this modular design we expect "Clients" to become a flexible Customer Relationship Management solution. JUERGEN: Another important part is the "Documents" application. It should become a complete Document Management System, including central scanning functions and document flow management. Other applications fulfill the needs of people working in an office ("Letters"), or provide possibilities for special classes of business - like "Journal" in the case of accounting offices). MANDRAKEMAG: How many developers? How many people use the Kumula suite? JUERGEN: The Kumula team consists of three members: one programmer, one concept man and another doing a little of both. Additionally, other programmers have contributed to enhance the program suite. Joseph Rawson wants to improve the database layers and Romans plans to provide a web interface to the Kumula database. JUERGEN: It is hard to calculate the number of Kumula users. We count over 1000 downloads from KDE-Apps.org and about 600 downloads from our own website. MANDRAKEMAG: What are some of the key features of the current alpha release? Is this release somewhat stable? JUERGEN: The current release (2004.09) brings two new applications, "Letters" and "Configurator". "Letters" helps consultants write letters to customer and clients. You select an address or contact person from the "Clients" database and follow the letter writing wizard. It is only a concept release, but it generates PDFs on-the-fly already. "Configurator" helps each user to configure access to the Kumula database and some external applications. JUERGEN: "Clients" was improved in 2004.09. It can now store small pictures of each contact person like Kontact. A user can also describe each client as "potential client" or "lost client". JUERGEN: "Journal" has taken the biggest step since the last version. It is now a MDI application. It is very useful to enter accounting records and to watch an account report at the same time. It now handles fiscal years, multiple record batches provides account reports already. "Documents" wasn't touched in this release, it has the same functionality and the same bugs as version 2004.06. JUERGEN: We are a long way from a stable release, but we're working at it every day. Stability will happen. MANDRAKEMAG: How can Kumula help small businesses and enterprises? Why should they use it? Are you aware of Kumula being actively used by any business? In what capacity? JUERGEN: We're getting feedback from some people; some of them working for interested companies. Most of the feedback is created by bug reports and/or feature requests. JUERGEN: Of course we'd like to see Kumula included in some major distributions. But it has to become more stable first. Right now, there are many important features missing in most of the applications. They need to be added first! MANDRAKEMAG: What will Kumula be like in two years time? Who will be using it? JUERGEN: I guess in two years Kumula will be stable - and feature-rich - enough to manage all business clients and documents. These "basic" functions, which can be used by every business user, will hopefully be the first parts to become stable and complete. JUERGEN: Additionally I think there will be a few specific applications for specific business classes, like "Journal" for accounting offices and tax consultants. There could be an application for handling your clients' stocks and investments, or ebay seller software. Our web hosting company is thinking about developing a domain and webspace managing software for Kumula. There is a lot of potential there. JUERGEN: Hopefully, there will come a time when Kumula will be split into common business modules (Library, Clients, Documents, ...) and specialist modules for users to select individually if they need them. MANDRAKEMAG: Do you think Linux is suitable for the small business? What applications are "ready" for a Linux small business desktop? What is still missing? JUERGEN: Linux is definitely ready for the business desktop. This is why we started developing Kumula. There are a lot of applications for the business desktop already, many for small and even a few for larger companies. In most cases you only need an operating system (GNU/Linux) with a graphical user interface (KDE/GNOME) and office programs (OpenOffice/KOffice). So the basic requirements of small (!) business desktops are already there. But larger companies need additional software for daily work, and it's very hard to say what applications they still need. It varies from one company to another. JUERGEN: This is also the reason why we created this Kumula concept. The software is written in an easy-to-learn and platform-independent language and toolkit (Python and Qt). We hope that business users can create their individual modules easily - and share it with others. MANDRAKEMAG: How can readers find out more about Kumula? What is the best way for them to get involved? What skills do Kumula developers need? JUERGEN: There is a lot of information available on our project website (http://www.kumula.org). We discuss a lot of design concepts in our forums, and publish the development process on our roadmap page continously. If somebody wants to create software for Kumula, they should contact us directly - so that we can help them. Unfortunately, most of the documentation is incomplete. Sadly, there is very little docucmentation available for users or developers. Therefore, the best way to support Kumula would be writing thorough documentation for existing code.;-) JUERGEN: However, I think developers can get involved easily - just read the source code of the existing applications. Python/Qt isn't hard to learn, and the Kumula library does make some tasks easier. If a developer runs into problems, they can always contact us using our forums. JUERGEN: In the end, there is only one skill really needed: an interest in business software for Linux. MANDRAKEMAG: Thankyou very much for your time. If you'd like more information about the Kumula Suite, please surf to the official project page at http://www.kumula.org or email the development team at info AT kumula.org. ======================================================= FOUR URLS TO MAKE BUSINESS HARDWARE SELECTION A LOT EASIER Hardware hassles can be a problem for any Linux distribution. Every day devices that often work perfectly under MS Windows can become plastic paperweights due to a lack of hardware support. However, there are a number of websites that take a lot of the pain out of choosing some peripheral hardware for your Mandrakelinux PC. #1 PRINTERS: LinuxPrinting.org (http://www.linuxprinting.org) A comprehensive list of inkjet and laser printers and their current status under linux. Although this site is not Mandrake specific, it is an excellent starting point and does have an active community bulletin board. GENERAL OBSERVATION: Hewlett Packard and EPSON are the most Linux friendly manufacturer. Canon and Lexmark generally manufacture plastic paperweights. Most cheap inkjet multi-functions do not work except for some HP and EPSON models. #2 MODEMS: LinModems.org (http://www.linmodems.org/) A comprehensive list of resources relating to dial-up software modems and their necessary drivers under Linux. Once again, this site is not Mandrakelinux specific, although it does provide a lot of information you can then take to MandrakeClub, MandrakeUsers or any other Mandrake specific discussion forum. GENERAL OBSERVATION: Winmodems suck! Although it is possible to get internal winmodems using Intel, Connexant or Lucent chipsets to work under Linux. A reminder that commercial drivers for connexant and lucent winmodems are freely available for MandrakeClub members. #3 SCANNERS: SANE Project (http://www.sane-project.org/) SANE stands for "Scanner Access Now Easy" and is an application programming interface (API) that provides standardized access to any raster image scanner hardware (flatbed scanner, hand-held scanner, video- and still-cameras, frame-grabbers, etc.) The SANE website has a huge database of supported and unsupported scanners and information on how to get many problematic devices working under Linux. #4 GENERAL: Mandrake Certified (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/hardware.php3) Mandrakesoft maintain an official list of certified hardware for their distribution. Although generally a little out of date, the list is a good basic guide to hardware support for Mandrakelinux. Hopefully, these URLs will take some of the hassles out of hardware selection. Also, if you need further information/support remember to make a post on one of the many Mandrake Community forums: namely MandrakeClub, mandrakeusers.org or mandrakeclub.nl. Furthermore, it may be a good idea to remember these simple rules of thumb. * When printing, HP and EPSON are better than Canon and Lexmark. * When scanning, be SANE and check the Mandrake Control Centre first! * With dialup modems, external is best. Some internals work, some don't. * With broadband modems, ethernet connections work. USB might not. * Most gimmicky USB gadgets are plastic paperweights. * Real devices are always better supported than adapters. ======================================================= MANDRAKE IN THE HEADLINES Over the past month Mandrakesoft have made a number of announcements about current strategy, future products and the open source marketplace. Some of these include: [iMPORTANT] The Mandrake Mystery (Enterprise LinuxIT 01.09) URL: http://enterprise-linux-it.newsfactor.com/...?story_id=26647 Mandrakesoft positions for the future (NewsForge 21.09.) URL: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/09/21/1858209 MandrakeSoft releases mobile Linux device (ZDNet.co.uk 16.08) URL: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix...39164736,00.htm French Defense Ministry commissions high-security Linux (ComputerWorld 23.09) URL: http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/200...4,96106,00.html Mandrakesoft offloads shares to go shopping (The Register 17.09) URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/17/mandrakesoft_shares/ Mandrake updates Linux desktop (DesktopLinux.com 20.09) URL: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4884430904.html Mandrakesoft Pledges Support to Linux Standard Base 2.0 (Mandrakesoft 13.09) URL: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/.../corporate/2507 For more Mandrake related news articles follow this hyperlink: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=...tnG=Search+News ======================================================= CHALLENGE! THE MANDRAKELINUX COMMUNITY MARKETING INITIATIVE [in response to The Mandrake Mystery in Enterprise Linux IT) In an article published on 01 September 2004, Russell Shaw discusses the role of Mandrakelinux in business computing. Shaw writes that: "Mandrakelinux is promoted as a friendly Linux operating system that offers ease of use for both servers and the desktop. Mandrakesoft makes the OS available in several languages and promises that it is far more stable -- and just as easy to operate -- as the Windows and Macintosh So, if Mandrakelinux is so user-friendly and powerful, why is it not a household word -- even compared to other Linux flavors? In a word: marketing. There is a widespread, if not universally shared, perception that Mandrakesoft's marketing efforts are far less sophisticated than its technical attributes." URL: http://enterprise-linux-it.newsfactor.com/...?story_id=26647 I agree with a lot of Shaw's article. Mandrakelinux is an extremely powerful software product with a lot of technically sophisticated features. Mandrake's marketshare is hard to calculate because most Mandrake installs come from free CDs. Also, there is a need to develop a greater level of awareness about Mandrakesoft and its products and services. MandrakeMag would like to take a page from the Mozilla Foundation's book. They have recently launched a community-based marketing initiative for the Firefox browser. It aim's to promote Firefox and increase surfers' awareness of Firefox and its advanced features. Central to this campaign is the collaborative creation of digital artwork; website banners and buttons; email signatures; and letters and advertising material designed to promote the Firefox browser. The URL is http://www.spreadfirefox.com/. This is an exceptionally clever idea - and MandrakeMag is happy to copy it and apply it to the Mandrakelinux Community Marketing Initiative. In a few days time, MandrakeMag will simultaneously start discussion threads relating to community marketing of Mandrakelinux on three Mandrakelinux friendly forums: the official Mandrakeclub.com; mandrakeusers.org and mandrakeclub.nl. A new section will be hyperlinked to the front page of the MandrakeMag website (http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au). This section will state the goals and objectives of this project; state the terms and conditions; link to all three discussion threads; and eventually include a library of community contributed material. What I would like to see created: * A number of web buttons identifying Mandrakelinux users and Club members. * A number of Mandrakelinux marketing wallpapers. * CD cover templates for home-made Mandrakelinux install CDs. * A basic two-page getting started guide for new Mandrake users. * A simple FAQ for prospective users I urge the community to rally behind this project and increase Mandrake's marketshare and popularity. In a few days time join the discussion threads, share your views, contribute your artwork and help build a stronger awareness for this incredible software community. Check out http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au in a few days time and email me personally at matthew AT doorsproject.net if you have any comments, suggestions or ideas OR would like to volunteer your time to this project. MandrakeMag readers - programmers, artists and users alike - let's build a better distribution by making the rest of the world realise how great it already is! :-) Consider yourselves challenged! ======================================================= THE NAMING OF FILES (by Chris F.A. Johnson) (with apologies to T.S. Eliot) The Naming of Files is a serious matter, This isn't just one of your Usenet flames; You may think at first it doesn't much matter But I tell you, a file should have a SENSIBLE NAME. What is a sensible name, and why does it matter? Unix file names may contain any character except NUL (ASCII 0) and slash (/). But one shouldn't use them all just because they are allowed. A file name is a syntactic unit, a word, if you like. When the integrity of the word is broken, problems ensue. The most common problem character is the space. Once a rarity in file names, it is now commonplace thanks to M$ Windows. $ file="$HOME/spaced-out filename" $ ls / > $file bash: $file: ambiguous redirect This problem is often solved by enclosing the file name in double quotes: $ ls -l / > "$file" $ cat "$file" drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 13 18:03 bin drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jul 8 02:13 boot drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Dec 31 1969 dev drwxr-xr-x 82 root root 8192 Aug 17 11:11 etc drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jul 11 02:58 home ........ But spaces can cause problems, for example, when piping file names to another command, such as xargs: $ echo "$file" | xargs printf "%s\n" /home/chris/spaced-out filename Each word of the name is taken as a separate argument. $ echo "$file" | xargs printf "%s\n" /home/chris/spaced-out filename The worst character to deal with in file names is a newline (ASCII 10, or \n). While it usually can be dealt with, doing it in a shell script often requires very inefficient code. I prefer to consider such files to be broken. I fix them and get back to my regularly scheduled scripting. Characters to avoid in file names File names should not contain whitespace (space, tab or newline), or characters special to the shell. These include quotation marks, asterisks, apostrophes, back-ticks, parentheses, question marks. It's also a good idea to avoid non-printing characters. To be on the safe side, stick to alphanumerics, periods, hyphens and underscores. ======================================================= THE ADVANTAGES OF DHCP FOR SMALL BUSINESS (by Harry Phillips) Here are some of that advantages of using DHCP in a business environment: * Computers don't have to be individually configured; they get all the configuration information they need via DHCP, such as e.g., the gateway, a WINS server address, an IP address, a netmask, the name server addresses etc. * A network can be easily readdressed, expanded or made smaller, without having to reconfigure individual machines. * New services (e.g., WINS server, DNS Nameserver) can be easily installed, without having to manually configure each machine. * Mobility is dead easy - a laptop can be removed from one network and connected to another and get its correct configuration on the new network immediately- completely automatically. * Users who take their laptops home and have a small network at home can also set up DHCP at home. Plug out at work, plug in at home, done. * You can get away with less IP addresses in a network where not all of the computers are in constant use. * DHCP doesn't rule out fixed addresses; you can have dynamic as well as static addresses in a network, if required. * Using DHCP reservations allows administrators to have a central point of reference for all IP allocations in the organization. * Configuration information can be administered from a single point. You can use graphical applications such as webmin and the Mandrakelinux Control Centre. ======================================================= MANDRAKECLUB.NL - A DUTCH CORNER OF THE MANDRAKELINUX COMMUNITY (by Gerard) The popularity of Linux seems to be growing. The demand for websites and fora with tips, tricks and solutions, like http://justlinux.com and http://www.linuxquestions.com is bigger than ever. This seems to be even more true for Mandrake, as a lot of dedicated Mandrake fora sprang up all over the world. Up till now there weren't that many RPM repositories and websites that were totally focused on Mandrake. Red Hat and SuSe were the two big RPM-based distro's. But not anymore. The popularity of Mandrake is growing rapidly, and so is the number of websites and rpm repositories dedicated to this distro. One of the features that helped Mandrake to increase it's popularity, is the incredible range of languages it supports. And following this trend, a lot of language-bound fora were founded by enthusiasts. Examples of this trend are http://www.mandrakeusers.de in Germany, and http://www.mandrakeclub.nl. This article is about the last of these two websites, Mandrakeclub.nl (mcnl). While this website is mainly in Dutch, they also have a small section for English speaking Mandrake users and the part of the forum dedicated to rpm development is also in English. Mcnl is still a young site, it was founded in the autumn of 2003, and has since then grown to a fairly large websites - by Dutch standards. It presently has more than 1200 members. The forum is led by a small but dedicated group of mods, and there is a fair amount of community involvement. For a couple of months mcnl also has its own rpm repository, which already contains a fair number of really nice applications, like SuperKaramba, Mozilla Firefox, Gaim etc. And also a lot of games like SuperTux and Doom. To make sure these new RPMs do work for everyone, the mcnl team tests all applications before putting them in the "official-tree". Mcnl is still looking for testers and builders, so if you're interested in trying the newest packages for Mandrakelinux, send a personal message through the personal messaging system of the forum to Alain. Of course you can also request a RPM of that one special application through the English section of the forum. So just drop by at mcnl and tell the crew what you think of the forum. After all, Linux is what you make of it. For more information surf to http://www.mandrakeclub.nl ======================================================= THE MIALUG AUDIO NEWSLETTER: All about compression libraries A few weeks ago I was contacted by Gonzalo PORCEL (http://www.porcel.net/) from the Miami Linux Users Group (MIALUG) asking to share an article from the previous issue with his Linux User Group. For those of you who are curious, this is perfectly okay - although please email me first. Gonzalo, himself, is the author of a superb, free book about converting to Linux: How to Master GNU/Linux* in 20 steps. The book is available online at http://www.porcel.net and is well worth the read. Gonzalo also made me aware of MIALUG. I quickly surfed the website- (surfing is what you do in Miami, you don't browse on a beach :-) - and discovered some great news articles, an interesting discussion forum and an extremely interesting audio newsletter. The newsletter is available in MP3 and Ogg-Vorbis format and discusses compression libraries and package managers under GNU/Linux. I personally found the audio newsletter an interesting idea and a fascinating history lesson on compression ann package management. If you want to know about .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.bz2, .rpm and .deb file formats - and what they all mean. Have a listen to the MIALUG audio newsletter. The URL is http://www.mialug.org/modules.php?name=For...topic&t=163. Please go easy on the bandwidth, this file may need to be mirrored in the near future to reduce MIALUG's traffic costs. Please be gentle everyone. ======================================================= HELP WANTED! MandrakeMag is looking for a regular contributor interested in writing about the latest developments in Mandrakelinux Cooker - and another to discuss the Server side of Mandrakelinux. If you are interested please email me at matthew AT doorsproject.net Also, I am in need of a CSS expert. The MandrakeMag website is a small, lightweight and relatively simple webpage... That's not changing. However, I would like to make the site easier to use for people with disabilities - like http://www.ubuntulinux.org. If you would like to volunteer your time and can help me design a CSS for the existing layout and another with enhanced accessibility, I will be a very happy editor. If you are interested please email me at matthew AT doorsproject.net ======================================================= IN THE NEXT ISSUE The next issue of MandrakeMag will include a preview of Mandrakelinux 10.1 Community edition. I'm going to share my experiences of installing Mandrake 10.1 for PPC on my Apple iBook. Expect an install guide for Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and a profile of the network administration tool - webmin. As always, please feel free to submit an article to the next issue. Thankyou for reading this issue of MandrakeMag. Remember to check out the recently updated MandrakeMag website at http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au and take part in our community marketing project. Comments. Suggestions. Ideas. Submissions. Feel free to contact me. Bye for now! mousematt ======================================================= ©2004 Matthew PROUSE. Creative Commons License. Some Rights Reserved. This e-zine is totally independent of Mandrakesoft SA. Mandrakelinux is a registered trademark of Mandrakesoft SA. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MandrakeMag website is kindly hosted by Tux Computing (http://www.tux.com.au). 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. ======================================================= MandrakeMag : a mandrakelinux e-zine. http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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