Gowator Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 I don't think it matters how big the change was from 9.2 to 10.0 compared to 10.0 to 10.1. Mandrake 10.0 broke compatibily with the 9.x series in several areas. When you break compatibility, a new major release is justified. But 2.6 was only half implmented. The REAL reason I suspect was they already had 9.2! .... As for the new release schedule, having the latest KDE/Gnome/whatever isn't what I'm worried about. Let's say I buy a laptop in June 2006. Am I really going to install a distribution from 8 or 9 months ago? How many ACPI releases ago was that? Will my Intel 802.11n be supported? ..... I'm just using it as an example. Well so long as the installer works! Traditionally the Mandrake installer screws up on ACPI and they insist on making it the default? More important to me is getitng a stable install then adding ACPI upgrades and 802.11x stuff? At the moment they are well you said it well It seems like Mandrake is trying to be like RHEL, Yep... only in typical MDK fashion they never quite commit one way or the other. Give me a stable but upgradable base and frequent patches over unstable frequent reinstalls anytime. I see your point but check out the installation section here. How many noobs found here then got told acpi=off nodma etc. etc. this is just the determined, the rest tried mandrake and gave up. While they change so frequently and include the apic and acpi in the install kernel they will keep loosing customers. Better to make the installer not dependant, get Mandrake installed and then let peope update top the latest drivers and patches! I even took Mandrake off my GF's computer. She's away in the UK and it was getting too hard updating her 10.0 install (she originally had 9.2) remotely. Now she has Woody too and I just apt-get remotely. i know I don't need to reinstall i can just update using apt incrementally, since she has a 8Mbit line I can even apt-get upgrade... (not tried but I did the whole of KDE to 3.4! and yep it works) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 gowator: wow, harsh stuff! I don't mind them charging for ISO's especially the OE and delaying its download, even for 6 months of the one year cycle. However withholding security updates is absolutely not acceptable even for 10 seconds ... this needs sorting out and updates pushed onto public mirrors. I don't quite know where you're getting this - there's absolutely no intention to 'withhold' or limit access to security updates. They're printed on the security page, advisories are sent out to the major news sites, and they're made available for manual download or through MandrakeUpdate to everyone simultaneously. Certainly no plans to change that. Second: The whole witholding non-free lie should end. The idea that they cannot issue RPM's for NVIDIA etc. is just a lie and does more harm than good. If they can distribute it to club members they can do it for everyone. Crippleware like Mandrake Move (dload edition) etc. should be stopped its counter productive. The message here is a little confused. It's true that _some_ of the proprietary stuff we ship (not all) could theoretically be distributed for free without incurring royalties. HOWEVER, there is and has always been a *policy* that the freely AVAILABLE version of MDK be made up of 100% free software (in the speech, not beer, sense). This is sometimes missed - it's not that we _absolutely can't_ ship some proprietary stuff in the free version, it's that we have a policy not to. Furthermore, however, there are _some_ proprietary things we couldn't safely ship in the freely available version; either they *aren't* licensed so as to be freely distributable, or *we* can distribute them but they can't then be legally _re_distributed. The idea of the free version is that it's utterly and totally free - you can (legally) download it, copy it, hand it out around your friends. We have to be careful with this. Third the installer should be fixed. Having a year per release maybe just maybe they will get an installer that actually works just once. In the past the default option (upgrade) has caused more problems (and loss them more customers) than any other Mandrakism except the Network wizards.Message: The installer is the first thing someone see's... making it pretty is one thing, making it work is obviously another. Making it pretty at the expense of stability is a false hope... and the one thing they need to be taken seriously is make the upgrade option work faultlessly From my experience on Cooker, believe me, there's a hell of a lot more work on making DrakX work than making it look pretty. (When was the last time it was graphically revised, 9.1?) I think you make your point too strongly; upgrades _have_ caused problems in the past, but I wouldn't say it's broken. Efforts are made to test the upgrade facility, at least with stock MDK packages (having things installed from third-party packages or by other means is often the cause of a broken upgrade, in my experience, and that's hard for the installer to account for). I don't want to deal with your personal experience, as it's your personal experience; I'll just say it doesn't match mine. So they move on... I got tired of the kernel recompiles and mandrakes secret kernel patches. Whatever I tried my kernel-enterprise was NOT able to be generated from the .config they supplied ... You *would* also need the more than one hundred patches that the MDK kernel spec file uses, otherwise obviously you're not going to get the same kernel! There's a lot more than just config changes. However, they're not 'secret'; you can get the spec file and all the patches from CVS. This is the point, I am still using woody... with KDE3.4 (and the ubuntu x.org) I don't need to wait for a release. Right, so you're using woody with packages from unstable and ubuntu, and you want us to believe this is how to run a *commercial* distribution? Unlike Debian, we have a tech support department which people pay to use. They need to be able to have a vague idea of what is actually installed on the customer's system. Your woody -> unstable upgrades work, that's great. I know for sure that some don't, and I know for sure debian doesn't officially _support_ mixing releases, just like we don't. Your method is how a _bleeding edge geek_ (like you and me - all my boxes run Cooker) runs his system. It's not how a lot of our users run theirs. Message... slow the releases and get them right and upgradable Erm, yes, wasn't this thread about our new, slower, release cycle? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 gowator: wow, harsh stuff! Well its honest.... let me tip up the answers... "Message... slow the releases and get them right and upgradable" Erm, yes, wasn't this thread about our new, slower, release cycle? Yep, Im happy... I'm all for it.... "I don't mind them charging for ISO's especially the OE and delaying its download, even for 6 months of the one year cycle. However withholding security updates is absolutely not acceptable even for 10 seconds ... this needs sorting out and updates pushed onto public mirrors." I don't quite know where you're getting this - there's absolutely no intention to 'withhold' or limit access to security updates. They're printed on the security page, advisories are sent out to the major news sites, and they're made available for manual download or through MandrakeUpdate to everyone simultaneously. Certainly no plans to change that. I agree however they are pushed onto the club mirrors first. However the main point is I support an OE... I'll even buy one if they do the 1 yr release (not promising to use it as a main distro but I will support it financially) I just want to make sure they don't stick security updates to OE on club-only mirrors first. "Second: The whole witholding non-free lie should end. The idea that they cannot issue RPM's for NVIDIA etc. is just a lie and does more harm than good. If they can distribute it to club members they can do it for everyone. Crippleware like Mandrake Move (dload edition) etc. should be stopped its counter productive." The message here is a little confused. It's true that _some_ of the proprietary stuff we ship (not all) could theoretically be distributed for free without incurring royalties. HOWEVER, there is and has always been a *policy* that the freely AVAILABLE version of MDK be made up of 100% free software (in the speech, not beer, sense). This is sometimes missed - it's not that we _absolutely can't_ ship some proprietary stuff in the free version, it's that we have a policy not to. Furthermore, however, there are _some_ proprietary things we couldn't safely ship in the freely available version; either they *aren't* licensed so as to be freely distributable, or *we* can distribute them but they can't then be legally _re_distributed. The idea of the free version is that it's utterly and totally free - you can (legally) download it, copy it, hand it out around your friends. We have to be careful with this. Ahem.. it should be a bit clearer...specifically regarding the drivers which could be included. Im not talking acrobat here Im talking nvidia drivers! Mandrake move is official cripple ware .. its not much good with the USB key disabled! (I imagine...) "Third the installer should be fixed. Having a year per release maybe just maybe they will get an installer that actually works just once. In the past the default option (upgrade) has caused more problems (and loss them more customers) than any other Mandrakism except the Network wizards.Message: The installer is the first thing someone see's... making it pretty is one thing, making it work is obviously another. Making it pretty at the expense of stability is a false hope... and the one thing they need to be taken seriously is make the upgrade option work faultlessly" From my experience on Cooker, believe me, there's a hell of a lot more work on making DrakX work than making it look pretty. (When was the last time it was graphically revised, 9.1?) I think you make your point too strongly; upgrades _have_ caused problems in the past, but I wouldn't say it's broken. Efforts are made to test the upgrade facility, at least with stock MDK packages (having things installed from third-party packages or by other means is often the cause of a broken upgrade, in my experience, and that's hard for the installer to account for). I don't want to deal with your personal experience, as it's your personal experience; I'll just say it doesn't match mine. Yep unfortunately I needed external packages to make it actually recognise my memory and nforce chipsets at the same time. (for upgrades)... But most problems are because of over optimistic defaults... erm .. acpi and apic being at the forefront and on by default (I have lost track of the number of noobies with this problem) What would work better is switch em off by default but present the user with the option to reboot with em on... but that looks less <<professional>> or DIY... but it would work ... just like the default option being upgrade if it finds a pre-existing /etc/mandrake-release "So they move on... I got tired of the kernel recompiles and mandrakes secret kernel patches. Whatever I tried my kernel-enterprise was NOT able to be generated from the .config they supplied ..." You *would* also need the more than one hundred patches that the MDK kernel spec file uses, otherwise obviously you're not going to get the same kernel! There's a lot more than just config changes. However, they're not 'secret'; you can get the spec file and all the patches from CVS. Well back in 9.1 sometime I asked ... I'm waiting..... when I urpmi kernel-enterprise kernel-enterprise-src I expect the source is the source used to make the kernel-enterprise with the same version of gcc etc. etc. Its not... so if you just do this, and then make the new kernel module it has missing symbols ... "This is the point, I am still using woody... with KDE3.4 (and the ubuntu x.org) I don't need to wait for a release." Right, so you're using woody with packages from unstable and ubuntu, and you want us to believe this is how to run a *commercial* distribution? Unlike Debian, we have a tech support department which people pay to use. They need to be able to have a vague idea of what is actually installed on the customer's system. Your woody -> unstable upgrades work, that's great. I know for sure that some don't, and I know for sure debian doesn't officially _support_ mixing releases, just like we don't. Your method is how a _bleeding edge geek_ (like you and me - all my boxes run Cooker) runs his system. It's not how a lot of our users run theirs. Yep but my other install (on the same box is PURE woody + security updates... ) If I wanted commercial support from a third party I would only expect it for the pure woody and that's fine... seriously it looks old... but its really stable (and I mean REALLY) it is so tested (its what 3 years old ....) but I still get new bug fixes and security patches... which i don't get with Mandrake 9.0 anymore... not because they are not there, because we are up to 9.2... So in summary, its harsh but fair and I think MDK are finally moving in the right direction. It remains the distro i have the fondest memories for ... and learned the most on... I think the OE and CE idea was a good idea but badly implimented.... and I would guess more political than technical! All in all the geeks will continue to use cooker/CE (or unstable/testing) but I wouldn't use it in work... [formatted by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 "I agree however they are pushed onto the club mirrors first." Ah, I see the problem. MDKsoft has no control over external mirrors. The public mirrors work like this - there's a server, ftp.mandrakesoft.com , which is not publicly available (it'd last about three seconds if it were). That's the Official Mandrakelinux Repository, basically. The public mirrors mirror either directly from this server, or from another mirror which was mirrored from this server. MDKsoft doesn't control their schedule; they mirror as fast as they choose to. Security updates are put onto ftp.mandrakesoft.com and the Club at the same time, but since Club members can then get at them right away but mirror users have to wait until the mirrors sync, there's a perceived difference. I don't see what we can do about that besides introducing an artificial *delay* in when they're uploaded to the Club, though, and that doesn't strike me as a particularly sensible idea. Basically, we get 'em out through every method we have, as soon as they're done. :) Well, the policy _is_ made clear on all official MDKsoft sources, it's just that it's often mixed up when discussed on forums and other websites like this. So basically, yes, we could put an nvidia RPM on the free version, but then it wouldn't be Free Software, so we're not going to. I *like* this idea, personally. Everyone who distributes a majority free software product like Linux should make at least one version available that's exclusively free software. Move is a different issue; there's no license issue involved in disabling USB key support on the free version, that _is_ a marketing idea. I'd hardly say the free version is useless, though - Knoppix didn't have USB support when it started getting very popular, though I think it does now, and there's many other live CDs out there which don't have key support (or other similar functionality). I actually have the free version of Move myself, not the key version, as that's what I downloaded when it came out and I've found it perfectly useful as it is. It's a full-featured live CD, lots of uses for that. Oh, and just to make it clear, you *can* plug a USB key into a box running the free Move CD and copy data to and from it, what you *can't* do (unless you script it up yourself or something) is keep a persistent home directory on a USB and use it each time you boot Move, no matter what machine. It's not like we rm -f'ed usb-storage.ko or something. :) ACPI and APIC have been a thorn in our sides, believe me. ACPI was first enabled by default as an experiment in, I _think_ (this is from memory), 9.0. That was waaaaay premature and caused a ton of problems. However, it's nowhere near as clear-cut these days. The problem is that, as far as anyone can tell, this is roughly how the World PC Installed Base splits up: 60%: machines which will work perfectly no matter *what* combination of ACPI and APIC options are set 20%: machines which work better without ACPI and APIC 20%: machines which work better _with_ ACPI and APIC I hope you see the problem :). Yes, having APIC enabled by default (we DON'T have ACPI enabled by default, acpi=ht basically switches it off, it just leaves some specific bit enabled that's needed to support hyperthreading or something) definitely causes problems on some machines. Everyone knows this. However, turning it _off_ causes problems on _other_ machines. Without a huge hardware database (we only have a little one, there are some blacklisted machines), it's hard to get this right for everyone. 10.2 will *definitely* improve this a lot, however. Prior to kernel 2.6.10, if the kernel options enabled APIC, APIC would be used even if it was disabled in the BIOS. So we were enabled APIC on machines where it was disabled in the BIOS, and it was probably disabled for good reason. From 2.6.10 on, however (10.2 ships with 2.6.11), the kernel will disable APIC if it's turned off in the BIOS, even if the kernel options mean it should be turned on. This should definitely improve the APIC-breaking-machines situation. I don't know when ACPI is going to be turned on by default, but the day will probably come. There's already a lot of laptops which basically burn up unless it's enabled. Sorry, I don't know about your specific problem with kernel-enterprise, I don't use it myself (two of my boxes use normal kernel, one uses kernel-smp). Did you file a bug? Yes, Debian's maintenance cycle is amazing, no arguments there. It sure would be nice to be able to support MDK versions further back than we currently do, I agree. The OE / CE split was pretty much welcomed by everyone, actually, internally and externally. I'm not sure where the idea came from but the marketing guys and the technical guys both like it (tech guys because they can make a really good stable release, marketing guys because they have twice as much opportunity to sell :>). As I said, I'm *fairly* sure it's going to continue from 2006 release onwards, but I'm still waiting on official confirmation of that. I know that was the situation internally in February, but hey, things change fast :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 Furthermore, however, there are _some_ proprietary things we couldn't safely ship in the freely available version; either they *aren't* licensed so as to be freely distributable, or *we* can distribute them but they can't then be legally _re_distributed. The idea of the free version is that it's utterly and totally free - you can (legally) download it, copy it, hand it out around your friends. We have to be careful with this. I like this myself and I like the fact that it is clarified. I'm a little miffed about the official NVidia driver, too, but I guess that's more NVidia's fault than Mandrake. I would like to state my approval of this slowed release cycle loudly and strongly. I used Cooker for quite some time till about 10.0-ish when Cooker become horribly horribly unstable and I won't go back for a while. Now, it seems (maybe due to MDK's recent financial problems and downsizing) that when the 6-month new release point draws near, MDK becomes nearly as unstable as Cooker used to be (before it became unusably unstable, IMHO). This needed to end and the slower release cycle is the answer, I think. Now, as I've said before very, very vocally, what MDK needs to concentrate on is customer service. The slowed release cycle should not only help them stabilize the main distro, but free them up to actually provide some sort of customer service. I'm not talking about tech support...I'm talking genuine, down-to-earth customer service. I paid for my MDK Club Membership (silver) and I logged in to the store...did my Club Discount show up? Nope. I emailed customer service about it and was given some vague 'you must be a newbie' instructions, which of course didn't work because I had already tried that. 75% of the club mirrors either were horribly out of sync, were broken or were just downright too slow...MDK can say that's not their fault, but it is ultimately their responsibility. I paid for Club membership twice. Did I ever get my MDK store Club discount? Nope. Will I ever become a Club member again? Nope. If I'm a Club member, I should get a response to my email within 24 hrs....hopefully much sooner...with an actual solution to my problem. Anyway, enough of my offtopic rant. I am very pleased with the slowed release cycle and don't let the 'I want bleeding edge and I want it now' people get you down. Now, hopefully this is a good sign of more improvements to come...especially in customer service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 Update........ MandrakeSoft: Of course, a Download version will be released for each new release, as usual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted March 22, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 After more thinking, I see the following points: positive: resellers and system vendors will have an easier time; if you sell windows you will have been selling winXP for years, no need to change anything; ok, maybe change your image to include some service pack, they're at SP2 now, after what, 4 years? it's easier in terms of publicity/ads, less confusing to the non-nerds - who, in the end are more plentiful, more used to paying for things/software and who are the ones that Linux is now shaping up for. Negative: those who want bleeding edge aren't served. Maybe for those there can be a middle road, sort of declaring certain cooker packages ok for use - I hope they will do this for gnome 2.10 and kde 3.4 with 10.2 nee lim.ed. Or the bleeding edge guys should use cooker and debug...? In any case, there should be some way to include packages of new releases of xorg, kde, gnome, xfce, gimp, OOo, etc as soon as those become available. Sort of a separation of the Mdk stuff - wizards, gui's and backend tools (urpmi etc) and the included programs. New hardware will not be properly supported. I see a need to release a minor incremental version to support new hardware (chipsets, wifi, etcetc). System vendors doing preinstalled systems will require this, and there must be something like ordering tickets/coupons in the packs, so that after six months, one can order the cd with the new kernel (with improved and added hardware support) and security updates etc.. Some unknowns: will there be a solidly tested and smoothly working upgrade path? It would be about time. Just know you can urpmi your way into the new version... fingers crossed! How will club advantages turn out? What will the release cycle look like exactly? How long beta stadium, how long rc's, how many of those, etc? Will amd64 finally be available for standard clubmembers too, as it should be? (Yes, I think it should be, it's the case with SUSE to make a fair comparison, and also with FC, Ubuntu, Gentoo - of course, Debian, etc - all those offer the amd64 version at the same price as the ia32 version...) (No, not asking for myself, I'm a vip member and a standard member, so I can easily compare the two, but have access to all up to silver level/vip level) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 Hmmmm. I've always been able to urpmi my way to a new release. 9.2, I think, was the most difficult because of major changes in naming conventions, but other than that...no problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted March 22, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 Well, the move from devfs to udev needed some manual stuff, and there have been more things like that. I remember having had plenty of troubles at some points, incredible slowness of kde, or just really long waiting between logging on in (mdk)kdm and finally getting the desktop, and then some. Sure, in most cases those things can be fixed (turning off devfs and turning on udev). But the point is, there should be a smooth upgrade path that my mom can also take without having to call me... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 22, 2005 Report Share Posted March 22, 2005 I would like to state my approval of this slowed release cycle loudly and strongly. I used Cooker for quite some time till about 10.0-ish when Cooker become horribly horribly unstable and I won't go back for a while. Now, it seems (maybe due to MDK's recent financial problems and downsizing) that when the 6-month new release point draws near, MDK becomes nearly as unstable as Cooker used to be (before it became unusably unstable, IMHO). This needed to end and the slower release cycle is the answer, I think. Now, as I've said before very, very vocally, what MDK needs to concentrate on is customer service. The slowed release cycle should not only help them stabilize the main distro, but free them up to actually provide some sort of customer service. I'm not talking about tech support...I'm talking genuine, down-to-earth customer service. I paid for my MDK Club Membership (silver) and I logged in to the store...did my Club Discount show up? Nope. I emailed customer service about it and was given some vague 'you must be a newbie' instructions, which of course didn't work because I had already tried that. 75% of the club mirrors either were horribly out of sync, were broken or were just downright too slow...MDK can say that's not their fault, but it is ultimately their responsibility. I paid for Club membership twice. Did I ever get my MDK store Club discount? Nope. Will I ever become a Club member again? Nope. If I'm a Club member, I should get a response to my email within 24 hrs....hopefully much sooner...with an actual solution to my problem. Anyway, enough of my offtopic rant. I am very pleased with the slowed release cycle and don't let the 'I want bleeding edge and I want it now' people get you down. Now, hopefully this is a good sign of more improvements to come...especially in customer service. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I really agree with steve.... It was the customer service that really got me pissed with Mandrake (as a company not as a distro). adamw: I just wanna say... yep Im ranting a bit but I am pleased... I just wanna check it doesn't get borked before implementation... well course noone will listen to me but at least I can try.. file a bug report..you have gotta be joking.. last time was 9.0beta when they ripped out the old gurpmi and replaced it with add programs/delete programs and like... Half the beta testers complained...and the answer... they had to do this because they were porting to PERL? Seriously I fail to see the connection! Sounds like a VERY POOR excuse from a non technical marketing guy... for it looks better this way. any3way, I got tired being insulted by them. Basically I had borked CD's and their answer (from marketing since they hide all the other web adresses! (this in itself is bad marketing)) was have your tried mandake expert and joined mandrake club. Well, its a bit pointless, I know coasters when I see em.. what really rubbed was my GF asking why I was partying when I could download for FREE and me going on about supporting them. While we are on that... yep great marketing selling 8.0 CD's cheap! Last XMAS Surcouf were selling off the old stocks of mandrake... and FNAC selling 8.2 or something .. then we get noobies turning up here saying it looks old? Tell whoever.. take the damned returns back from the stores... !!! Well, the policy _is_ made clear on all official MDKsoft sources, it's just that it's often mixed up when discussed on forums and other websites like this. Sorry... nothing is clear with Mandrake. (seriously) Look at Debian's social contract or Gentoo ... pretty clear but Mandrake has some fantasitic stuff and noone has ever heard of it! (well certainly not noobies) easy URPMI and URPMI in general ... great.. but its not on the box! anyway: Im not saying Mandrake are holding back security updates, Im saying they shouldn't consider it. Honestly marketing is not their forte! In other words I approve of OE... a lot.. IO approve of a 1 yr cycle .... but only if they keep the updates coming... I don'ty wanna see it get half done and just release half as much I wanna see the time spent inbetween ....on useful stuff! ACPI and APIC have been a thorn in our sides, believe me. I do, thanks for the explanation! It was way way to early though and lost a lot of potential noobies! At one point here is was probably the #1 FAQ! Yes, Debian's maintenance cycle is amazing, no arguments there. It sure would be nice to be able to support MDK versions further back than we currently do, I agree. The OE / CE split was pretty much welcomed by everyone, actually, internally and externally. I'm not sure where the idea came from but the marketing guys and the technical guys both like it (tech guys because they can make a really good stable release, marketing guys because they have twice as much opportunity to sell :>). As I said, I'm *fairly* sure it's going to continue from 2006 release onwards, but I'm still waiting on official confirmation of that. I know that was the situation internally in February, but hey, things change fast I wanna lump there together.... Debian do it because they have a huge base of volunteers! Mandrake have paid developers... If they are not doing it they are being given too much interference by marketing.... and too short release cycles... Im glad to see #2 is being addressed! A good stable release is really like Woody... it needs backports and looking after long into old age. From a stability POV woody gets better and better and its still getting backports. Hardly anyone uses it... (as we both know, well desktop wise) but it is as much a base as anything. If you start with Woody it is SO stable it serves a purpose but that purpose is not so commercial ... but it brings massive supprt to everything from Linspire, Xandros (both still Woody based) and Knoppix/Kanotix/Ubuntu Bleeding edge based .... This is how OE needs to be but with the commercial aspect it will give confidence. The installer can be pinned for a year (better for two) New hardware will not be properly supported. I see a need to release a minor incremental version to support new hardware (chipsets, wifi, etcetc).System vendors doing preinstalled systems will require this, and there must be something like ordering tickets/coupons in the packs, so that after six months, one can order the cd with the new kernel (with improved and added hardware support) and security updates etc.. Yep I have been saying similar myself... they can even just distribute the CD at the checkout... I mean they cost cents to mass produce and can be shipped with returns etc. This is what SHOULD have happened with the CD burner issue.-.. just ship update CD's to the distributers in stores... and on boxed mail order include a voucher :D Will amd64 finally be available for standard clubmembers too, as it should be?(Yes, I think it should be, it's the case with SUSE to make a fair comparison, and also with FC, Ubuntu, Gentoo - of course, Debian, etc - all those offer the amd64 version at the same price as the ia32 version...) Absolutely.. value wise there is NO comparison from suse boxsets to Mandrake.... if you want DVD+CD and 64 bit suse does it all for less than the 64 bit CD only or DVD only ... Last time I didn't buy Mandrake.... I went to the store to buy it and couldn't find the DVD version.... so I bought a webcam and TV card and left! 100% serious... 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adamw Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 OK, lemme see. Yes, AMD64 should be available in exactly the same way as i586 is, that's something I've been advocating personally since 10.0. Just goes to show the massive leverage I have ;). I don't know what the plan is for the distribution of 2005 LE x86-64; I'm hoping it'll be a lot better than 10.1. easy URPMI is not an official MDK project, which is why MDKsoft doesn't say anything about it :). We DO have urpmi.setup in main. I'd really like to see that cleaned up and heavily publicised, as no-one but *no-one* knows about it right now. gowator: really, please, do, file bugs. Yes, sometimes bugs die a lonely and abandoned death, and that sucks. It happens in most bugzillas. Many bugs, though, have gratifyingly short, exciting and active lives. In other words, it really is true that most of the devs take a lot of their work from bugzilla, and filing a bug is THE BEST way to get a problem to the attention of the developer responsible. Really. I'm not joking here. A direct email isn't going to be as effective as bugzilla. Posting it here isn't going to be as effective. Posting it to the Cooker list, also no. Post a bug, get people to vote for it, and if it sits there with no attention for a week, poke it. As for the rpmdrake redesign - well, there were a few reasons for that, but porting to perl wasn't one of 'em. rpmdrake's been written in perl since, well, ever. Either someone gave you some bad info or you're misremembering, because the circumstance was actually the port to GTK+ 2. However, it wasn't just "we're going to GTK 2 so suddenly the old design doesn't work any more!", of course not. It was already planned to redesign rpmdrake to make it simpler and less confusing for novice users, and the fact that a major rewrite was needed to make it work properly with GTK+ 2 *anyway* gave an opportunity to implement that plan. It's STILL a contentious issue. The perspective MDKsoft has on it is that the new rpmdrake is expressly designed to be really, really easy for newbies to install software with. To make a comparison, it's supposed to be more of a Click 'n' Run than a Synaptic. The intention is that power users use urpmi (or, heck, install synaptic from contrib and use that. knock yourselves out.) The old rpmdrake definitely *did* have some advantages over the new one; mostly, though, they were advantages for power users, and it really was overfunctional and overcomplicated for newbies. It's significant that most of the complaints about the new rpmdrake came from Cooker and expert users. Whatever its flaws, you can't deny the new rpmdrake makes it really bloody easy to install software, and really bloody hard to get confused or mess up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dyslexic Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 Nvidia drivers aren't open source, so they don't belong in an open source distribution. End of story. I'm an Nvidia user; woe is me. RPMdrake is easy to use if you already understand how Linux package management works. If you're used to Windows or Mac OS, RPMdrake looks like something sent to us by the Klingons. If someone new to Linux tries to install KOffice, he's going to see a damn lot of KOffice packages and not know which one to choose. A new Linux user won't know what i18n packages are, or libs, or devel packages. Just look at the problems people on this board have. RPMdrake is a good start on making an easy to use installer, but it has a long way to go. Red Carpet is the closest thing I've seen to a user-friendly installer. It was open source, wasn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 (edited) Yes, sometimes bugs die a lonely and abandoned death, and that sucks. It happens in most bugzillas. Like this one? http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7209 Opened: 2004.01.30 12:49 This one still gives me fits. They know the culprit. They know the workaround. Why can't they fix it? Edited March 23, 2005 by Steve Scrimpshire Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dyslexic Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 This one still gives me fits.They know the culprit. They know the workaround. Why can't they fix it? Are you sure it's a Mandrake packaging error and not a problem that ncurses developers need to fix? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted March 23, 2005 Report Share Posted March 23, 2005 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncur...4/msg00002.html quite Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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