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Your vision of Mandriva 2007/2008/2009/...


arctic
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Since version 0.91 localization in PCLOS is as good as Mandriva's.

Its stock packages are of clearly better quality, and they are also several months newer.

The main issue with PCLOS is that the devel structure and packages suck... just try compiling a gtk/gnome package in PCLOS, and it will immediately look like quantum physics- instead of working right out of the box, as it does happen in my favorite distros (Arch, Slackware).

The kernels are also too bloated and heavy (hey, just like Mandy!), but building a custom kernel in PCLOS is somewhat easier than in Mandy (still quite complicated for the average Joe, though).

Overall, PCLOS is a better choice right now than Mandy- both for the n00b and the average Joe. A geek will probably prefer Cooker.

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Now the developers also answered to the mail. It seems that the CEO forwarded the mail to them. Wow, it looks as if they are really interested in our wishlist. :)

 

> Hi,

>

> thank you very much for using and supporting our distributions for such a long

> time. Be sure that all your suggestions will be carefully read and studied by

> our teams for coming distributions.

> Users' suggestions and help are always welcome.

>

> Thanks again.

>

> Best regards,

>

> Nadège - Mandriva

>

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Certainly sounds interesting, let's hope they take note. It will certainly make the distro better if they do achieve it. In all honesty, from the list we provided, it shouldn't be impossible for all what we listed to arrive in Mandriva 2007, since it's due for release end of this year, plenty of time :P

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Hi,

 

Here's my "wishlist" for mandriva 2007 (btw, I'm still on MDK 2005).

 

1. Fix cdrom drive mounting! I've had trouble of this right from the days of MDK 9.0, and on different hardware. It's all too easy to upset cd drive mounting by having a task die, then you have to go and chase and kill it with lsof at the command line. I know there's a graphical tool, but (at least to a beginner) it's not that user friendly. How's about just a very simple "list of tasks", so if that a program/task does go funny, then you can just choose it (as opposed from choosing from a long list of other running programs a newbie might accientally kill) and kill it.

 

2. Fix the current bugs - Last time I tried mandriva 2006, I noted 2 problems;

1) KDE had an annoying bug whereby sometimes buttons got 'stuck';

2) ndiswrapper (it didn't seem to work at all).

 

My atmel-based wlan device which works fine in 2005LE (all I have to do is to plug it in, less configuration); in 2006, I had to continually stop and start it with "ifup" and "ifdown", a la MDK 10.0 :(

 

3. It's been mentioned before but yes some newbie help too; how's about just something even really simple - e.g. a menu option in the star menu called "Mandriva library". It could be something just as simple as a directory on the hard drive containing some of the normal text-based HOWTOs found on the net.

 

4. Please reinstate Kpackage!

 

5. Tell newbie users "what to do next", i.e. a user might download an RPM (e.g. wotsit_mdk_10.rpm) and install it, but then have no clue as how to start it running. How's about a little message (which could be disabled so as not to appear for more advanced users) saying "You have to type 'wotsit' at the command line to make it work', or 'look in the star menu under games'. Some programs are non-obvious as how to start them, esp. if they don't appear in the star menu.

 

6. This last one is for the long tern, but some better way of installing software - end RPM dependency hell (I've found urpmi often *dosen't* have newer RPMs/programs/etc in some cases).

 

ljones

Edited by ljones
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Since version 0.91 localization in PCLOS is as good as Mandriva's.
I don't know what language is your mother tongue but for mine it's not true. If I choose a language at installation in Mandriva then everything will be setup for that language automatically if it's available. In PCLOS the installer worked only in English in 0.92 and I have to setup my localization everywhere.
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I don't know what language is your mother tongue but for mine it's not true. If I choose a language at installation in Mandriva then everything will be setup for that language automatically if it's available. In PCLOS the installer worked only in English in 0.92 and I have to setup my localization everywhere.

It's Greek, and since 0.91 there's full support by simple means:

apt-get install locales-el

mcc / language (or something very close to that). Of course you should switch to advanced mode there and enable unicode.

I have no idea how good it is for languages that need scim, but it shouldn't have trouble with just about any other language.

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I wonder would it be possible technically, for Mandriva to replace the graphical package manager with Synaptic (the package manager from Ubuntu)? It's a great package manager, easy to navigate and very fast.

 

The copyright message in Ubuntu says it's copyrighted by Conectiva, so I'm guessing legally there's no problem.

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  • 2 months later...

I agree with a lot of the suggestions but there are a few that are a bit off-base:

 

I could wish Cooker (as I really don't care about the stable releases anymore) being more "bleeding edge"- especially kernel-wise, so one could get a decent and up-to-date Mandriva version, but since Cooker is just the vehicle to develop the conservative 12-month "buggy-but-stable" Mandriva release cycle, this is ultimately unlikely to happen...

 

Cooker is very bleeding edge, for eg. they're just now starting to put up 2.6.17 kernel RPMs only a few days after they've been released. Cooker will always be a developers plaything and will always be a unstable and buggy because of that.

 

11. Clean up the menus a bit. It is somehow unlogical that Games are placed in an „other applications“ section and that Gimp, Inkscape, etc. are defined as multimedia apps instead of graphic-tools.

 

Actually Gimp and Inkscape are under Multimedia->Graphics which seems pretty consistent to me. Or do you think we should have a Graphics menu at the top level?

 

14.Set up a working firewall by default. The average users does not know what this is and how to activate/deactivate it. An activated Firewall is preferrable imho.

 

It already does this in the installation AFAICT. That said the firewall UI needs a lot of work - its very basic and primitive.

 

2. Stop heavily patching the kernel, what's the need for the bootsplash patch and supermount patch which stopped being developed in the early stages of 2.6.3 from what I see. Use autofs instead.

 

If these were looked at, even more hardware would be supported. Even if they don't decide on using new kernels, stop patching it. That way the user themselves can compile and install their own kernel without having to resolve issues because things now don't work.

 

We first found that bootsplash stopped after a 2.6.15 upgrade. OK, patched it, recompiled, sorted. Then we found that supermount errors were being generated for CD-ROM's, etc, being mounted. Can't find a patch, OK, we used autofs, and then sorted it that way. Unfortunately mcc stopped working for one reason or another, certain apps couldn't be launched.

 

and..

 

use the appropriate hal/udev/{ivman,gvm,media://} for automounting.

 

No offence but you guys are way off here. Mandriva has used udev/hal/fstab-sync/gnome-volume-manager for automounting CD/DVDs and USB devices for a long time now, since at least 10.2 and I think even before that. Supermount has been deprecated to floppy devices only since floppy devices don't provide notifications when media is inserted so the udev/hal/fstab-sync/gnome-volume-manager stuff won't work with them.

 

I've compiled several vanilla-kernels fine without any patching and CD/DVD and USB automounting and unmounting works perfectly without any fiddling required. I'm guessing your problems came about because you tried to use supermount in your vanilla-kernel for everything, not realising that Mandriva doesn't actually use it except for floppy drives.

 

The stated reason for not using autofs instead of supermount for floppys is that it continuosly polls the floppy looking for inserted media, meaning the floppy light flashes all the time.

 

Yeah, but for an install CD I think you need to be a member not for the cooker repos....

 

Club membership gives you access to Powerpack CDs/DVDs with commercial applications on them, as well as things like Mandriva Kiosk with upgraded packages for things like KDE, GNOME, OO.org and Firefox. The development process (Cooker) is open to all.

 

i may be alone here. i don't know if mandriva is able to do this, however other rpm distros appear to do it.

i would like mandriva to set the mouse click in kde to "single click" as default.

 

This is a user setting in the KDE control centre, if you want it then set it yourself. The majority of people are used to double-click so that's the default.

 

I've recently decided to go back on the Cooker list to try and help with 2007 development. Hopefully I can get some of the issues like you guys have suggested fixed or improved.

Edited by timelord100
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Actually Gimp and Inkscape are under Multimedia->Graphics which seems pretty consistent to me. Or do you think we should have a Graphics menu at the top level?

Exactly. That is what it is all about. The basic menu layout is fine, but some things are unlogical. All graphic applications are actually placed under "multimedia" (and its sub-folder of course) and, sorry, graphic-design applications are not even close to the definition of multimedia. Multimedia is and has always been video, music, tv and such things. I remember, the first time I installed a Mandriva distro, I had to look around a bit before I could find Gimp. Having a separate "graphic" menu entry would be a much more natural choice imho.

14.Set up a working firewall by default. The average users does not know what this is and how to activate/deactivate it. An activated Firewall is preferrable imho.

It already does this in the installation AFAICT. That said the firewall UI needs a lot of work - its very basic and primitive.

No. After a default installation, the firewall is disabled. And the UI can be reworked but it is imho quite okay for a new user. Advanced users will probably use other tools to set up a proper firewall (maybe even creating iptables rules by hacking the config files).

 

The stated reason for not using autofs instead of supermount for floppys is that it continuosly polls the floppy looking for inserted media, meaning the floppy light flashes all the time.
Good point. But I guess the constant flicking problem could be solved in udev, if the udev developers really want to solve it.

 

Oh, I forgot: Welcome aboard. :)

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No offence but you guys are way off here. Mandriva has used udev/hal/fstab-sync/gnome-volume-manager for automounting CD/DVDs and USB devices for a long time now, since at least 10.2 and I think even before that. Supermount has been deprecated to floppy devices only since floppy devices don't provide notifications when media is inserted so the udev/hal/fstab-sync/gnome-volume-manager stuff won't work with them.

 

I've compiled several vanilla-kernels fine without any patching and CD/DVD and USB automounting and unmounting works perfectly without any fiddling required. I'm guessing your problems came about because you tried to use supermount in your vanilla-kernel for everything, not realising that Mandriva doesn't actually use it except for floppy drives.

 

You're not quite correct there. I configured a kernel on Mandriva, 2.6.16 in fact, and supermount IS still being used for CD-ROMS's. I found that after kernel compiling, it would give an error when attempting to mount a CD relating to supermount. I never even introduced supermount into my kernel. You can't because it doesn't exist, and the patch was for earlier 2.6 kernels, and therefore I couldn't even introduce it even if I wanted to. I got around this by simply using autofs for mounting the CD's, because this was the only way I was able to find. If you didn't have this problem, then I'd obviously be interested in the steps you chose to compile your kernel.

 

The problem is when you compile, it reads your config from /boot/config, etc, so the default Mandriva kernel options were being used in my kernel. However, if an option didn't exist in my kernel, due to the lack of a patch, then my kernel didn't attempt to use this option. It can't if it doesn't exist.

 

Here's the post here that relates to this, the steps taken for compiling, and all the problems encountered. I'm not the only one who experienced this, so it's not just me!

 

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?act=ST&...=22&t=31270

 

so if you have any ideas as to what you did, then please add them to this post, so we can at least attempt it again if you compiled differently.

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I agree with most of what arctic and others said, but can not refrain from adding my two cents:

 

It would be good if the next mdk did not miss the latest releases of KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird.

These are probably the most important "work horse" applications, and they really should be of late release.

It would also be good if the included X-version actually worked.

 

Practical examples:

 

A.) I often receive .odt files from clients, but mdk can not open them with ancient OO-versions which makes mdk 2005 and mdk 2006 useless for this work.

 

B.) I need to record audio-files via the headset microphone. In other Linux's (eg.Suse 10.0, 10.1) I can add the very much needed +20dB to the microphone input, but the older mixer and sound recorder (Gnome 2.8) in mdk does not have this feature yet. Because of this, mdk is useless for this work.

 

C.) In a very security-sensitve situation, I really should have latest Thunderbird and Firefox. But with mdk 2006 and 2005 having both of them in ancient 1.0xxx versions, I can not use Mozilla's update function which only works with versions 1.5xx and later. So I am forced to stick with less secure Internet software, something which I should definitly not be doing.

 

D.) One of my computers has a NVIDIA MX440 video card, and a Samsung SyncMaster 700s + CKG7507L monitor. With that combination, there is no way mdk 2006 can be installed using regular means. After installation, the monitor only displays horizontal psychedelic colour stripes. This can initially be corrected by using mcc via a console. But after adding NVIDIA 3D drivers, nothing including the mcc via a console, or editing xorg.conf can make it work again! Then only Knoppix or DamnSmallLinux can retrieve my data before making a reinstall of an older mdk (2005) version.

 

E.) I think the MCC (and other mdk GUI's) are one of mdk's best features, because it makes mdk suitable for noobies and Guru's alike. Users can always choose either GUI or console according to their current knowledge level. In the English version, (can only speak for real English, not American) the mcc and other GUI's are fine for me.

However, some German translations in the German MCC version are sometimes so puzzling that I fail to understand what might be meant! I would like to point out I am saying this as a German-born citizen with a PhD, who prefers the English mdk version. I know other Germans of the same opinion, although one particular German user (a member of a German mdk user-forum) is of different opinion. I certainly respect that person's opinion and am sure he/she believes there may be good reasons for it. But I may add his/her use of German grammar and sentence-composition is certainly not what I personally would consider being everyday missunderstanding-free language. Therefore I would like to uplhold my suggestion of checking the German MCC translations.

 

Cheers,

Helmut

Edited by Helmut
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A.) OpenOffice 2.0 is available from the mirrors, so you can open odt files in Mandriva 2006. However, the packages are not on the CDs by default and that is, I agree, a bit frustrating.

 

C.) AFAIK, Mandriva patched e.g. Firefox a lot in order to make it very secure. But I have to admit that I have no clue which security features from FF1.5 cannot be backported to FF1.06. But still, Mandriva is a very secure distro if you do some basic system-hardening.

 

D.) Yeah, we all remember that Xorg disaster... I guess they will never do something like that again at Mandriva. :D

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That is interesting, indeed. So... should I switch to Epiphany? :)

 

Actually, I don't know how they came to these results. And where is IE in that list? It is a completely insecure browser and isn't even mentioned, although it has more holes than a swiss cheese! And, honestly, I do trust my own penetration tests more than some statistics that weren't falsified by myself. I checked my system thoroughly, and being behind three nicely configured firewalls (NAT+SPI+Shorewall) on a DHCP LAN, a hardened Mandriva-box, the only "vulnerability" that could be found by penetration tasks on my box were that I have Java scripts enabled in Firefox. :rolleyes:

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