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new Mandrakelinux release cycle


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Clubmembers get access to java - which one cannot distribute normally, check the SUN license - some other non-open source things like Opera, some CAD progam, etcetc.

 

Next, they get some closed source drivers, for ATI, NVidia, and then some - yes, this includes some adsl modem drivers.

 

Then they get to vote on what new software should be packaged for some version of Mdk - usually the latest stable version.

 

 

I checked, forcedeth driver is included in the regular kernel. I haven't the faintest idea why you thought that it is not included in Mdk??

It was just an example. What I meant is Mandrake (and every other distro IMHO) should support the most hardware, even if there is no open source driver, out of the box.

Without modem drivers for Linux, one can't get onto the web? Whatabout windows?

Who cares about Windows? I started this because I'd like to see my favourite distro to improve. It could be better than Windows in that too.
Or, if one doesn't have windows, why does one have a winmodem????
Because one didn't know there are such things like this.

Buy Linux compatible hardware! That's the only way to improve - Linuxcompatible with open source drivers, that is!

Well I do, and I guess a lot of people here do that too. And whatabaout newbies? This distro is ideal for them. A lots of them don't know how Microsoft maintains monopoly. Not everybody has enough money to buy new hardware to a new OS (a lot of people leaving Windows because of this).

 

Yeah community members could do a lot of things to improve Mandrakelinux, but if you really want to be a community member at Mandrake you have to pay for it first. I think it's a huge holding back for the distro and the company.

Ehmm, how so?

What I wanted to say that I don't feel I am really a member of a community here. When I used Yoper, Andreas and the other developers were writing to the same forum and it was a good feeling, not to mention that they had a forum accessible to anyone on they official website and not ""only"" (no offense) a fan based one. There is no place,forum or anything where MandrakeSoft employees would meet their community/fans except the cooker mailing list, don't know about the club though. But community is not only developers and club members. I think all I wrote here worths nothing because their not reading it except adamw but he's a "semi-insider" thousands of miles from them.

I have paid out of free will, not for any of the benefits of the club. And for my translations I have gotten a VIP membership, giving access to Silver level stuff.

I don't see why you think one has to pay to become a member of the community around Mdk..

Good to hear and congratulations. So if somebody does something remarkably good for the distro, he might get a reward. That's really good to know.

 

 

I'll never understand that, why private? Is it a secret? Maybe someone from the outside could give an idea now in the designing phase that could improve a lot. It would much better now than rewrite it later.

 

MandrakeSoft is a company. No need to disclose everything. Heck, look at SUSE - I posted a bugreport and haven't the faintest idea if anyone ever looked at it. I included the fix that Mdk's buglist had for it, so it should be easy for them to fix it, but that's all.

For all I can see, lots of Mdklinux is much more open than RH (not talking about FC here!) SUSE and other commercial distributions (heck, xandros, linspire etc even include proprietary software).

MandrakeSoft is a company which earns most of its profit from a Linux distro. Linux is about being open and being in a community. And as I said before I'd like to see my favourite distro improving so I don't care about negative examples so let's just talk about FC or Gentoo or <put your favourite distro here>. And heck Mandrake includes propietary software, only for club members but it includes, and guess what I like it, maybe some other people do. But what I really like is that I have an option (like everybody else) to use them or not.

 

There are certainly things wrong with how Mdksoft is executing (or hopefully, has been executing) their stuff, but the points you mention are hardly the large stumbling blocks.

Well I think it is. Mandrakelinux with a good and bigger community... Maybe I should open a new topic for that "Ideas about building a better community around Mandrake" because its really offtopic here.

 

I'd say treating amd64 versions differently than regular i586 is imho the major point, next up are the bad marketing (or lack thereof), low visibility, etc... which hopefully the new release cycle will address.

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It was just an example. What I meant is Mandrake (and every other distro IMHO) should support the most hardware, even if there is no open source driver, out of the box.

 

No. This would not motivate any manufacturers to make open source drivers possible.

 

The true standard and only path to digital freedom is through fully specified hardware and open source drivers.

 

Who cares about Windows? I started this because I'd like to see my favourite distro to improve. It could be better than Windows in that too.
Or, if one doesn't have windows, why does one have a winmodem????
Because one didn't know there are such things like this.

But in that case, that user does have windows. So they can use windows to get the Linux closed source modem driver.

 

Well I do, and I guess a lot of people here do that too. And whatabaout newbies? This distro is ideal for them. A lots of them don't know how Microsoft maintains monopoly. Not everybody has enough money to buy new hardware to a new OS (a lot of people leaving Windows because of this).

True. But then, those newbies are going to be upset about not having their favourite software, etc.

One reality with Linux that people will have to accept: it's different, and change needs time and accepting mentality.

 

Good to hear and congratulations. So if somebody does something remarkably good for the distro, he might get a reward. That's really good to know.

Well, to be honest, my website cost me way more effort and time, and I think that it has done way more good to Mdk... With over half a million hits, I'd say it's pretty popular for a fan based site... The best I ever got for that from Mdk was some links to my reviews...

 

 

MandrakeSoft is a company which earns most of its profit from a Linux distro. Linux is about being open and being in a community.

Disagree. For me, it isn't. It's about being free, independent, in control. Instead of controlled.

Lack of openness is present in any company. Management doesn't have to justify to anyone but shareholders. That's the way it works, in the end.

They have to think things over and discuss behind closed doors. If you want something completely open, move to debian. Get away from a company owned commercial distribution.

 

 

On the topic of closed source drivers: if manufacturers fail to assist the development community, I think they should not be rewarded with having their hardware supported in all or any standard distributions.

I sincerely hope that some day soon, even graphics cards with respectable specs will have open source drivers.

 

I know you don't care about this (yet), but open source-ness is very important. The GPL is, in the end, more important than Linux.

 

Just as you don't care about closed source drivers, most people don't care about DRM, TCPA / NGSCB, Palladium, and other things that put essential freedoms at risk (such as the freedom of speech). But it's due to those who _DO_ care (and take action) that things don't get out of hand (think 1984 in the Orwellian sense).

Richard Stallman is one of those people. Little ol' me is another.

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Dexter, it is easy to get the latest release free.  When I first came over to MDK, I grabbed 10.1  Then I needed technical help - I got all the tech help I could everl hope for from mandrakeusers.org - fantastic, helpful people there, and i quickly got into the testing loop and am running cooker-current - can't get any more current than that!!!.  All free.      Yes, I did pay $66 for a standard membership, but I won't truly benefit from that until 2005LE goes final.  Being on limited income (my waistline still doesn't quite attest to that) I can't do the silver membership, and being just a home user, I don't need the power packs.
Well Mandrake official is current enough for me. I don't like bleeding edge distros but I like to work with the latest stable. I know it's free now but will it remain free (I mean the updates between the annual official releases)? I don't know and I think noone (or very few) knows yet outside the company. This is related to what I think one of the problems of MandrakeSoft : the lack of conversation between them and their community/fans outside the club. I'm sure there are wonderful people here but there's no relation between them and the company.
  But I am having a ton of fun with this and feel I have gotten more than my money's worth from club membership (Just this weekend, we could help folks on the club forum when Chris' server hickupped (more profuse thanks to Chris.

 

To me, it all comes down to what the community can /is willing to/ give to me to get me up and running.   Xandros was a great first distro cause it all looked like windows and I could learn a bit of Linux slowly.  But I outgrew it.  MDKsoft distros were easy to install and help was easy to come by.  So here I am.  I've been doing computers and PCs for 40+ years.  I'm damn lazy!!!!!  :cheeky:

Stick around!!!

Kristi

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The updates will be free too.

 

Remember, if they are not free, this is GPL software, anyone with acces can take the srpm and recompile and make the rpm available.

If that is not MdkSoft itself, that other party would gain momentum. They know they don't want upset people to fork mdklinux...

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dexter: exactly what the interim releases will be and who will get them (besides Club members), how, and when, are all not decided yet (yes, even *within* the company :>). It's possible they'll be made added value for the Club and released *only* to the Club or only later released for public download. However, even if that happens, what artee wrote is true. There's absolutely nothing to stop someone taking all the freely redistributable bits and, well, freely redistributing them - mail CDs out, put 'em on a website, set up a torrent, whatever. You'll notice that the 'cheap ISO' sellers always have copies of the newest MDK release just after it goes out to the Club, and before we officially make the freely downloadable version available - under the licensing terms, there's nothing wrong with this.

 

The actual official yearly release will always have a freely downloadable edition, made available a while after the Club gets it.

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"It was just an example. What I meant is Mandrake (and every other distro IMHO) should support the most hardware, even if there is no open source driver, out of the box."

 

No. This would not motivate any manufacturers to make open source drivers possible.

True, but will every driver or software be open sourced if we force the companis? I doubt. They want to keep their secrets as long as they have profit from it e.g. Nvidia will not put a "Howto manufacture GeForce chip" doc on the web because every chip manufacturer would make and sell its own GeForce chip instead of buying it from Nvidia. I think it's pretty obvious. You want to force them or ATI or any other company using closed source drivers? How? You use video cards I'm sure. What I'm trying to say here is sometimes it's inevitable to use their products because there is no other option but to use them or not. Maybe it will change in the future but today these are the facts.

 

"Well I do, and I guess a lot of people here do that too. And whatabaout newbies? This distro is ideal for them. A lots of them don't know how Microsoft maintains monopoly. Not everybody has enough money to buy new hardware to a new OS (a lot of people leaving Windows because of this)."

 

True. But then, those newbies are going to be upset about not having their favourite software, etc.

Then that is the perfect time to tell them to go back to Windows.

 

One reality with Linux that people will have to accept: it's different, and change needs time and accepting mentality.

True, but sometimes it takes too much time to understand that you can't have a fully functional computer because of pride.

 

"MandrakeSoft is a company which earns most of its profit from a Linux distro. Linux is about being open and being in a community."

 

Disagree. For me, it isn't. It's about being free, independent, in control. Instead of controlled.

Lack of openness is present in any company. Management doesn't have to justify to anyone but shareholders. That's the way it works, in the end.

But for a Linux manufacturer company: it gives the more info the better (IMHO of course). Sometimes it's understandable that they just make a decision sometimes not. The don't have to justify anything, but they better do.

 

They have to think things over and discuss behind closed doors. If you want something completely open, move to debian. Get away from a company owned commercial distribution.

Maybe I will. I can't decide because of the lack of info. The most important to me is public updates between official releases. The press release was 10 days ago and there are still no further words. edit: thanks to artee it's settled now.

 

On the topic of closed source drivers: if manufacturers fail to assist the development community, I think they should not be rewarded with having their hardware supported in all or any standard distributions.

I sincerely hope that some day soon, even graphics cards with respectable specs will have open source drivers.

Maybe your dream is closer than you think click. As about closed source drivers true that companys should not be rewarded for using them but if there are no alternatives then one have to face the facts. Until that video card is not out on the shelves, there's no point in abusing ATI or Nvidia. Linux market is small for them comparing to Windows market. They can turn out just as easely they turned in. After the alternative (that open sourced video card) has born, ATI and Nvidia drivers could be thrown away and you can encourage everybody to use that and only that video card.

 

I know you don't care about this (yet), but open source-ness is very important.

I care about it but not over usability.

 

The GPL is, in the end, more important than Linux.

Anyone tell me why the forum engine is not drawing those boxes around the quote texts?

 

[formatted by spinynorman]

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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 just want to take a moment to say that even if I'm in a small minority, that I think the CE/OE split is without a doubt the absolute dumbest thing I've ever heard of or seen from an OS publisher.

 

It's confusing to new users. I can't count how many posts there were on this site alone reguarding "what the hell is CE???" For a very long time, there was much heated debate as to what the new names realy meant, before we figured out that......

 

It's dishonest. It means alternating between a release than in the past would have been considered a testing version or at best an RC in terms of quality and a version that is more stable than past releases because so many people were tricked into testing the RC.

 

It's harder to support. If more releases = easier to support, manrake wouldn't be moving to a yearly cycle. End of discussion.

 

It's harder to market. Increasing the number of releases, in addition to the problems listed above, also makes it virtualy impossible for retailers to stock. I realy amazed that mandrake would consider keeping this double release program now that they seem to have figured out that less is more with this yearly schedule.

 

 

Personaly, I will never install another CE. Nor will I reccomend one to anyone. I think that the new retarded release schedule is the best thing I've seen mandrake do in a long time. However, I will laugh if they stick to this idiotic CE/OE split. The only thing that could make the anual release schedule better is if it was a TRUE yearly release. 1 year=1 release. Leave EVERYTHING else for updates and patches. As someone (I think gowator) said, releases are for new installs (and I'd add, updates too big for non-uber users, like kde versions).

 

my $.02

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because you use too many quote boxes, dexter. there is a limit of 10 boxes i think....

Well I do, and I guess a lot of people here do that too. And whatabaout newbies? This distro is ideal for them. A lots of them don't know how Microsoft maintains monopoly. Not everybody has enough money to buy new hardware to a new OS (a lot of people leaving Windows because of this).

True. But then, those newbies are going to be upset about not having their favourite software, etc.

just a question: how can you win a newbie to mandrake with that silly new design? it looks extremely bad. shame on mandrake.

Edited by arctic
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vdub: your objections don't really hold up.

 

"It's dishonest. It means alternating between a release than in the past would have been considered a testing version or at best an RC in terms of quality and a version that is more stable than past releases because so many people were tricked into testing the RC."

 

Nope, not really. The CEs that have been released (10.0 and 10.1) were released at exactly the same point in the cycle that the final releases would have been issued under the old system, and after the same amount of beta releases. In other words, 10.0CE and 10.1CE *were* what 10.0 final and 10.1 final would have been without the CE / OE system.

 

"It's harder to support. If more releases = easier to support, manrake wouldn't be moving to a yearly cycle. End of discussion."

 

CE is not supported. It doesn't even get guaranteed security updates, though someone usually sticks them into the CE tree.

 

"It's harder to market. Increasing the number of releases, in addition to the problems listed above, also makes it virtualy impossible for retailers to stock. I realy amazed that mandrake would consider keeping this double release program now that they seem to have figured out that less is more with this yearly schedule."

 

CE was never and will never be stocked by retailers.

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It was just an example. What I meant is Mandrake (and every other distro IMHO) should support the most hardware, even if there is no open source driver, out of the box.

 

No. This would not motivate any manufacturers to make open source drivers possible.

 

The true standard and only path to digital freedom is through fully specified hardware and open source drivers.

But they distribute the closed source drivers to club members and powerpack Cd's,

Its neither one nor the other. Its dishonest of mandrake to claim its licensing... it is a choice not to and an extremely hypocritical one at that.

 

 

Who cares about Windows? I started this because I'd like to see my favourite distro to improve. It could be better than Windows in that too.
Or, if one doesn't have windows, why does one have a winmodem????
Because one didn't know there are such things like this.

But in that case, that user does have windows. So they can use windows to get the Linux closed source modem driver.

 

How do you figure that? I bought my laptop because it was cheap... and XP was never even activated... This doesn't even cover the reinstall or upgrade process.

 

Its thinking like this which is why Mandrake deserved to go broke!

 

 

Well I do, and I guess a lot of people here do that too. And whatabaout newbies? This distro is ideal for them. A lots of them don't know how Microsoft maintains monopoly. Not everybody has enough money to buy new hardware to a new OS (a lot of people leaving Windows because of this).

True. But then, those newbies are going to be upset about not having their favourite software, etc.

One reality with Linux that people will have to accept: it's different, and change needs time and accepting mentality.

 

Once again people change because they dislike XP or MS or.... I changed because linux is better...

Personally I find the dishonest marketing of Mandrake a major put-off.

They lie on powerpacks (plays all your DVD's) .. they withold documentation and they lie about what they put in their kernels. Its one thing having the documentation on the club with restrictive non GPL licensing and another simply saying the source is the documentation since they lie about the source as well, at least with kernels!

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gowator, please be more specific about your accusations, they seem a little wild and vague to me. The entire mdk kernel source with all patches, changelogs etc is available in the .src.rpm and also in CVS, for a start.

 

the open / closed thing is not hypocritical. We make the freely downloadable version truly free for two reasons. One is, yes, honestly, ideological. We like free software. We recognise that there are a lot of MDK users who *need* or *desire* non-free software, hence we provide the Club and bought versions to satisfy that market, but we *also* believe in free software as an ideal and therefore feel it appropriate to provide at least one product that is entirely free software. Reason number two, though, is practical. We like the freely distributed version to be truly free because it makes distribution ever so much easier. So long as we have the 100% free software policy, you _know_ you can take your Download Edition and give it to as many people as you like and it's entirely legal. If we start putting closed stuff in the free edition, this gets way more complex; we have to keep a tab on every license and get expensive legal advice on whether the product is still freely redistributable, and we have to do that every time we make a release. Not good. Keeping it free software makes that part so much simpler.

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gowator, please be more specific about your accusations, they seem a little wild and vague to me. The entire mdk kernel source with all patches, changelogs etc is available in the .src.rpm and also in CVS, for a start.

Yep but they don't document the patches...

If I cannot urpmi kernel-source-xxx-yyy and it does not compile to kernel-xxx-yyy then its not the same kernel.

Non of the 9.x enterprise kernels did.

Using their .config made a kernel of a different size and different symbols hence the patches were NOT applied to the kernel source.

 

This is absolutely the main reason I dropped mandrake because I was stuck getitng the closed source nforce drivers working with the enterprise kernel ... every sibnce change meant recompiling kernels as well as the drivers. Is it an error or are mandrake cvering up a secret? Who knows but it prevented my nforce working without paying for club membership (on top of owning Powerpacks in order to get a rpm for the kernel enterprise!)

 

the open / closed thing is not hypocritical. We make the freely downloadable version truly free for two reasons. One is, yes, honestly, ideological. We like free software. We recognise that there are a lot of MDK users who *need* or *desire* non-free software, hence we provide the Club and bought versions to satisfy that market, but we *also* believe in free software as an ideal and therefore feel it appropriate to provide at least one product that is entirely free software. Reason number two, though, is practical. We like the freely distributed version to be truly free because it makes distribution ever so much easier. So long as we have the 100% free software policy, you _know_  you can take your Download Edition and give it to as many people as you like and it's entirely legal. If we start putting closed stuff in the free edition, this gets way more complex; we have to keep a tab on every license and get expensive legal advice on whether the product is still freely redistributable, and we have to do that every time we make a release. Not good. Keeping it free software makes that part so much simpler.

 

Sorry if this was the case then belonging to the club wouldn't make any difference....

 

It is showing a preference to club members in non free software.

 

Ive said before..make the OE non-free and pay only for me but keep the CE open..open...

The problem is Mandrake can't decide which way and don't publicise it very well.

You shouldn't have to be making these corrections, they should be on the first page on Mandrake.com in big letters...

 

Same like someone said over OE and CE... actually finding out what they were was half the battle!

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dexter11,

True, but will every driver or software be open sourced if we force the companis? I doubt. They want to keep their secrets as long as they have profit from it e.g. Nvidia will not put a "Howto manufacture GeForce chip" doc on the web because every chip manufacturer would make and sell its own GeForce chip instead of buying it from Nvidia.

Well, no, that's something altogether different. I want (would like) them to open the spec of their chips so that open source drivers can be made that make full use of their chips.

Compare it to AMD making the instruction set known to their AMD64 chips. Have they done that? Yes. Can gcc compile for AMD64? Yes.

Can others easily reproduce amd64 chips? No

 

Trust me, I'm a chip designer. I work in a team that makes chips for mobile phones. We actually give our customers all specs, and they make phones with them. I doubt that from the spec they can recreate our designs (actually, I'm sure that they can't. And those that can could have done it even without our specs).

 

Compare it this way: giving the spec is giving the manual to a device: it tells you how to use it.

So if you get the manual to a car, telling you exactly how to use it, this will allow you to use it. It doesn't tell you too much about the engine, so only those who are really in the know in terms of engines could create a similar engine. But then, they were already in the know.

 

 

I think it's pretty obvious. You want to force them or ATI or any other company using closed source drivers? How? You use video cards I'm sure. What I'm trying to say here is sometimes it's inevitable to use their products because there is no other option but to use them or not. Maybe it will change in the future but today these are the facts.

 

Actually, you're right in the sense that practically, there's no way around it. But look at it this way: all X crashes I had were related to my nvidia drivers (yes I have nvidia, at least they beat ati by a mile) - I don' t have any other problematic stuff on my work machine.

One comment though: complain what you want about Intel, but they currently have the fastest open source 3d graphics; unfortunately they're not so fast and only in integrated chipsets. But the drivers are fully open source, so no 'your kernel is tainted' business and lack of support from kernel developers....

 

The point of not having open specs allows companies to bullshit about what their chips really do, and what gets solved in the driver (and so is done by the cpu, not the gpu). And then some stuff, but really, it can all be reverse engineered.

BTW recall the various driver cheatings - google for it and you'll find loads...

 

 

Then that is the perfect time to tell them to go back to Windows.

No, they should never have left it. A long long time ago I wrote my switching article, it's amazing how relevant it still is today: http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/switchsuccess.html

 

Maybe your dream is closer than you think click. As about closed source drivers true that companys should not be rewarded for using them but if there are no alternatives then one have to face the facts. Until that video card is not out on the shelves, there's no point in abusing ATI or Nvidia. Linux market is small for them comparing to Windows market. They can turn out just as easely they turned in. After the alternative (that open sourced video card) has born, ATI and Nvidia drivers could be thrown away and you can encourage everybody to use that and only that video card.

 

Heheh.. if you read that link, you'll even find a commentary of mine in there (buried on 2nd or 3rd page) - this was actually what I was hinting at before.. :D

 

BTW NVidia won't turn support off, they design most of their stuff on Linux systems nowadays. And they have the high end market in 3d stuff on Linux (think quadro and such), which is growing. it's easier to keep the market than to gain it.

 

 

adamw, veedub is somewhat right, although I would tend to agree with you....

Check the old threads on the subject, ... to me it was clear what CE and OE were meant to be. But on this and other boards there was a lot of confusion.

It's irrelevant why there was confusion (imho some who didn't get it started shouting wrong ideas, and stuff..), it's just relevant that there was confusion. Which was not good.

I hope they do better with Limed05 and Ed2006....

 

 

Gowator,

But they distribute the closed source drivers to club members and powerpack Cd's, Its neither one nor the other. Its dishonest of mandrake to claim its licensing... it is a choice not to and an extremely hypocritical one at that.

Open Source / Free Software means making money off services. The only thing they can do is charge for those things they do extra, which means they hardly have a choice but to charge for the packaging of the non-FLOSS stuff.

BTW read the Sun java license, and tell me it's dishonest. I thought the same, until I read it. One cannot distribute it. Mdksoft must have a deal under which they are allowed to do so.

 

Please tell me what other business model they should use. With examples of successful companies that use same business model, of course.

 

How do you figure that? I bought my laptop because it was cheap... and XP was never even activated... This doesn't even cover the reinstall or upgrade process.

This is nonsense, one can use XP without activating, it will just remember you about it, and only after 30 days you get into trouble. Realistically, no one has no internet access who needs the closed source drivers.

Case one: those who have a pc with win who want to put linux on it - no issue, they can download with windows.

Case two: those with a preloaded linux machine: the machine should be fully functional, else the shop should take it back.

Case three: those who assemble their own machine - they need to be picky about the parts, so they should get a real modem, not a winmodem.

Case four: those who get a machine without an OS - same as case 3.

You're just looking for excuses. To complain and to bash. I frankly don't see the point.

 

Personally I find the dishonest marketing of Mandrake a major put-off.

Well, the day you found your company that does everything so perfectly, let me know.

For now, all I can say is: dishonest marketing, does that classify as a pleonasm?

Think back of what the RH CEO said about Linux on the desktop about 2 years ago: better stick with MSWin. How's that for backstabbing?

But anyway, back to marketing, please give me an example of a company that hasn't exaggerated on the marketing side.

 

Lying on the powerpack on dvd playback? Who knows, never seen that, nor has anyone else I know; the powerpack I mean. BTW is that still on the latest powerpacks, I actually did see those, didn't notice anything wrong.

 

Doc withholding - not really. The stuff people can't get at without being a clubmember is clubmember contributed. I'd hardly call that docs. Oh, and they will likely open up all stuff, but I think it's better to have a fully community driven wiki.

 

About the kernel stuff - see adamw's comments. That you don't know how to get it is your problem, that they didn't tell you is also _your_ problem. Stop bitching. The kernel source rpm is out there.

 

[edit before final posting - our messages have just crossed...]

 

Yep but they don't document the patches...

If I cannot urpmi kernel-source-xxx-yyy and it does not compile to kernel-xxx-yyy then its not the same kernel.

Non of the 9.x enterprise kernels did.

Using their .config made a kernel of a different size and different symbols hence the patches were NOT applied to the kernel source.

True, I tried this too. However, the kernel source is not claimed to be the exact source of the running kernel - the kernel src.rpm is; enjoy:

ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mand...-1-1mdk.src.rpm

as an example of the source of the latest limed05rc2 kernel.

 

It is showing a preference to club members in non free software.

Well, yes, since that does make life easier. And it's worth paying for to some degree to some people. There's nothing wrong with that; as a clubmember, one can still just use the download edition; don't forget, the regular member level clubmember isos don't have the non-free stuff either - that's downloaded separately; only silver members and up get the iso's with all proprietary stuff.

 

Ive said before..make the OE non-free and pay only for me but keep the CE open..open...

The problem is Mandrake can't decide which way and don't publicise it very well.

You shouldn't have to be making these corrections, they should be on the first page on Mandrake.com in big letters...

 

Same like someone said over OE and CE... actually finding out what they were was half the battle!

No, nobody is making a real fuss about it, except you. You're a small minority. Not part of a large group of people who have problems here. Sometime you manage to get people on your side, and I'm not saying you're 100% wrong (au contraire), I'm just saying that you're blowing up these issues or at least some of them.

Finding out what CE and OE were was really easy, I read the press releases and it was clear to me. It only became a problem once others thought they'd understood started shouting their (wrong) interpretation that people got confused.

 

That there was confusion was due to Mdksoft leaving room for confusion - not due to them not being clear on what CE and OE were.

 

I'd like to repeat what I said in that other thread: don't attibute to malice that which can adequately be explained to incompetence.

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How do you figure that? I bought my laptop because it was cheap... and XP was never even activated... This doesn't even cover the reinstall or upgrade process.

 

This is nonsense, one can use XP without activating, it will just remember you about it, and only after 30 days you get into trouble. Realistically, no one has no internet access who needs the closed source drivers.

I was in that problem myself ....

I just don't want XP, not do I wish to find out anything about it.

The first thing I do is destropy all partitions, I have never even booted it so when I get to wanting to use the Internet.. ??

 

Also what happens when you install the new version? Same problem if you do a clean install.

 

adamw, veedub is somewhat right, although I would tend to agree with you....

Check the old threads on the subject, ... to me it was clear what CE and OE were meant to be. But on this and other boards there was a lot of confusion.

It's irrelevant why there was confusion

Couldn't agree more...

This is what Im saying about practically every aspect of their markting. Perhaps as a club member or insider it seems different but the releases for CE/OE etc. were not clear.

 

I remember a (long) while back you were convinced it did MP3 playback ... and finally you checked and it doesn't you need plf. Lots of things with Mandrake are totally unclear including their open/closed source stance etc.

 

Open Source / Free Software means making money off services. The only thing they can do is charge for those things they do extra, which means they hardly have a choice but to charge for the packaging of the non-FLOSS stuff.

BTW read the Sun java license, and tell me it's dishonest. I thought the same, until I read it. One cannot distribute it. Mdksoft must have a deal under which they are allowed to do so.

 

This does not prevent them distributing say the nvidia drivers as RPM, they choose not to...

IMHO it is an incentive to force noobies to join the club. If they would just be honest and say so then fine! But they say loads of shit about licensing.. its typically French... I recently had dealings with archos who lied to me through 10-15 emails saying they couldn't post batteries .. when I offred to collect they said they couldn't... etc etc. all regardless of the fact they sell other spare batteries on thier website ... they just couldn't bring themselves to say the would not support mine... they demanded a receipt and serial no.. then said they couldn't post the battery which is just straight lying..what they mean is we want you to buy the new product!

That there was confusion was due to Mdksoft leaving room for confusion - not due to them not being clear on what CE and OE were.

 

I'd like to repeat what I said in that other thread: don't attibute to malice that which can adequately be explained to incompetence.

I think its incompetence and lassez faire. Someone writes it plays DVD's, tech person corrects, marketing person doesn't care about accuracy.

Same goes for many of these issues but the mandrake club and expert stuff is just a con job on people who don't know better. They join thinking they gain something, realise bronze is useless and don't renew but Mdk got its years membership.

 

Linus is hardly a business mastermind... but even he said a subsrciption based model would never work...

 

No, nobody is making a real fuss about it, except you. You're a small minority.

Partially but I am also sticking to what I 'felt' when I started using Mandrake not what I had to dredge for. Mandrake need to clean up their image and what I felt is probably the same as others who drift into mandrake for a short while (between a botched install and months) and then move-on without ever finding the good technical stuff behind it.

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