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6 months on Mandriva 2006


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after 6 months on 2006, its still working great and I haven't broken anything yet... :D

 

So I'll have to give it a :thumbs:

 

uprmi is pretty nice once you get it down pat. Did a urpmi.update -a, and then a urpmi --auto-select last night (took a couple hours). Went fine, no probs. Then a reboot to get the stuff situated properly (nvidia and whatever) and everything's upgraded... Pretty damn easy. Can't do that in winblows.

 

I know mandriva is not really considered a "learning" distro, but I've learned a lot while using it. Especially while trying to get video capture working in kino. Learned all about modprobe, lsmod, rmmod, and "grep".

 

Too bad its not a rolling disro. I've decided to change to a rolling distro, after all the discussions in the rolling vs point releases thread.

 

So anyway, I think its a great distro, at least for the average home user, although maybe not for the linux uber-geeks.

Edited by null
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Another thing, your kernel doesn't get automatically updated, as part of the update process, so you would have to manually do this.

 

As for rolling updates, you can nice and easily, but sometimes you get little niggles but it mostly works fine. It's simple really, just:

 

urpmi.removemedia -a

 

to clear your urpmi sources. Then go to the easyurpmi page, and choose 2007 or whatever release comes after, and then to upgrade, do this:

 

init 3
(login again from console prompt)
urpmi --auto-select

 

and sit back while it upgrades. I hear clean installs are better, regardless of rolling releases. However, it is possible, and I'm sure even the little niggles can easily be fixed.

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Another thing, your kernel doesn't get automatically updated, as part of the update process, so you would have to manually do this.

 

As for rolling updates, you can nice and easily, but sometimes you get little niggles but it mostly works fine. It's simple really, just:

 

urpmi.removemedia -a

 

to clear your urpmi sources. Then go to the easyurpmi page, and choose 2007 or whatever release comes after, and then to upgrade, do this:

 

init 3
(login again from console prompt)
urpmi --auto-select

 

and sit back while it upgrades. I hear clean installs are better, regardless of rolling releases. However, it is possible, and I'm sure even the little niggles can easily be fixed.

 

Maybe itwould be and idea to do an apt-get dist-upgrade instead of using urpmi, apt-get dist-upgrade is what makes roling distros roling.

 

I tried Kanotix last week but it turned out to quite a hassle to get the software I wanted and it wasnt even very cutting edge, the only recently switched to xorg 7.0, so I reinstalled Ubuntu.

Edited by ffi
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I just checked the urpmi repository for this, and found this in the description:

 

Under development, use at your own risk!

 

so, I think it's best if you use Mandriva, to stick with urpmi for rolling the distro. Here's the command to find out the info:

 

[ian@europa ~]$ urpmf --description apt-get
apt:A port of Debian's apt tools for RPM based distributions,
or at least for Mandriva Linux. Original RPM port done by and
for Conectiva. It provides the apt-get utility that
provides a simpler, safer way to install and upgrade packages.
APT features complete installation ordering, multiple source
capability and several other unique features.

Under development, use at your own risk!
perl-Algorithm-Dependency:Algorithm::Dependency is a framework for creating simple read-only
dependency hierachies, where you have a set of items that rely on other
items in the set, and require actions on them as well.

Despite the most visible of these being software installation systems
like the CPAN installer, or debian apt-get, they are usefu
situations. This module intentionally uses implementation-neutral words,
to avoid confusion.
poldek:poldek is an RPM package management tool which allows you to easily
perform package verification, installation (including system
installation from scratch), upgrading, and removal.

Program can be used in batch (like apt-get from Debian's
APT) or interactive mode. The interactive mode puts you into a
readline interface with command line autocompletion and history,
similar to the shell mode of Perl's CPAN.
rpm-get:rpm-get is a simple clone of Debian's apt-get utility for
automatically download and install files.
Use the /etc/rpm-get.conf file to set up your favorites ftp mirrors.

 

of course, if you're using a Debian based distro, then sure, use apt ;)

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if you want to further that learning, I reccommend trying Gentoo or Arch next

yeah, I already d/l & burned the arch install CD a couple weeks ago. Gonna put it on my win2k box, as a dual-boot, and use it to learn more about linux. My win2k box is a little better than my mandriva box - its an AMD-64, 1 GB RAM.

 

CODE

urpmi.removemedia -a

 

to clear your urpmi sources.

that reminds me, I have the mandriva DVD (I bought it) and when I use urpmi, its always asking me for my DVD...

I think I did a urpmi.removemedia cdrom, but it still asks for the dvd. Guess I did it wrong. I'll try MCC software managment when I get home. But what's the right way to remove the DVD source using the command line? have to use mnt/cdrom or something?

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I know mandriva is not really considered a "learning" distro, but I've learned a lot while using it.

IMHO, you can learn everything about Linux on any distro. The difference between distros like Mandy, SUSE, Ubuntu,... and Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, ... is: Mandriva forces you to kick yourself in your butt in order to learn the expert stuff. other distros kick you in the butt for learning the expert-stuff. That's the whole difference imho.

 

And, yes, Mdv 2006 is a nice distro. It had its probs first, but now, fully patched, I have nothing to complain about.

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IMHO, you can learn everything about Linux on any distro. The difference between distros like Mandy, SUSE, Ubuntu,... and Arch, Slackware, Gentoo, ... is: Mandriva forces you to kick yourself in your butt in order to learn the expert stuff. other distros kick you in the butt for learning the expert-stuff. That's the whole difference imho.

er..............what? :huh:

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What he means is that with an easy distro like Mandy you can still learn but you have to make the effort yourself because Mandy makes things easy for you. But with Gentoo, Arch etc., you have to learn in order to use them. In otherwords you can learn using any distro, you just have to have the drive to do it. With me Mandy made things too easy so I didn't learn. Gentoo kicked me in the butt and made me learn. I hope that makes sense! :D

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What he means is that with an easy distro like Mandy you can still learn but you have to make the effort yourself because Mandy makes things easy for you. But with Gentoo, Arch etc., you have to learn in order to use them. In otherwords you can learn using any distro, you just have to have the drive to do it. With me Mandy made things too easy so I didn't learn. Gentoo kicked me in the butt and made me learn. I hope that makes sense! :D

 

:thumbs:

 

Your right! I just completed my OpenSuse/SLED experiment over the past month and I must admit that I was very impressed. To insure that I really had to learn a thing or two, i also switched from KDE to Gnome (my true roots anyway) and forced myself to operate by not even installing KDE. SLED/OpenSuse is very polished, and you can clearly see that they have a lot more money to put into their distro than Mandriva. However, there is somthing about Mandriva/Mandrake, that keeps pulling me back. Yast/APT/YUM/ Pure RPM/Portage and a host of others are effective and they aren't difficult to learn if you're commited, but urpm and smart on a Mandriva system is hard to beat. Many people point out that the Mandriva configuration tools duplicate the work of other tools, but those tools always seem to work for me when I use them, so that can't be a bad thing.

 

Truth is, i wanted to extensively try out Gentoo and power tune my AMD 64 box, but after two days of going through the instilation manual, i quickly saw that after the initial install, I was in a for a real learning experience. I know more about computers today as a result of my extensive learning experience with Mandrake, but Gentoo put a little waekness in my knees, and I'm not sure I have the time to put myself through a real hell weak while learning a distro that is signifcantly different form my bread and butter (Mandriva) RPM based distro.

 

All and all, maybe I can't shake Mandriva becuase it was my first linux distro. However, the truth is that the Mandriva community is hands down the best to me. Mandriva has just about every piece of software you can imagine in it's repositories. I can find answers to problems faster here than anywhere else. Heck, i can even find answer to other distro related question faster here than most places. Sure we tease the noobs a little bit, but we always answer their questions, and the solutions work.

 

Gentoo is a tweakers paradise, Ubuntu is cool (though the fanboys irq the hell out of me), SLED is just palin sick with a stable version of XGL, and Debian is as rock solid as ever, but Mandriva is like putting them all in one. I can get really creative with a Cooker install, I can get a rock solid setup with a base install and all the updates, or I can mix and Match the two. Also, I can install Mandriva from the DVD in 12 minutes. SLED takes 35 minutes with the DVD and Minimal software selections. Mandriva defintely has a lot of work to match the polish of some of these other distros, but it has all the experience and the community to do it.

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that reminds me, I have the mandriva DVD (I bought it) and when I use urpmi, its always asking me for my DVD...

I think I did a urpmi.removemedia cdrom, but it still asks for the dvd. Guess I did it wrong. I'll try MCC software managment when I get home. But what's the right way to remove the DVD source using the command line? have to use mnt/cdrom or something?

 

You can remove it in MCC software mgmt or at the commandline as root:

< root ~> urpmq --list-media

And then do

urpmi.removemedia <<name of media that it is says your dvd is>>

 

OT, kinda: Every time someone mentions how great apt is compared to urpmi, I'm going to defend urpmi. Ever since I started using Linux at Mandrake 8.1, which was 4(?) years ago, I have done every upgrade through just changing my mirrors and doing

urpmi --auto --auto-select

and only once did I have any trouble and that was due to naming-convention changes (even going from 2.4 kernels to 2.6 kernels and from dev to udev didn't phase it) and was easily corrected.

 

I've tried Debian-esque distros (Knoppix and Kanotix HD installs with sources changed to straight debian repos) several times and always came back to Mandr(ake|iva) because apt always made me wanna tear my hair out:

 

"Package webmin has no installation candidates"

 

WHAT?! My sources.list file has 14.734 million lines in it with various repos, what do you mean "Package webmin has no installation candidates"???????

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:lol:

 

Well, maybe I could add quick* and use the asterisk to see the small print at the bottom :lol2:

 

*NB - can be quick if your hardware spec is good :D

 

I've actually found my home PC, Athlon XP1800+, 1GB RAM is really nice for Gentoo. I did install to a USB2 disk, but it was damn quick. I had it all finished within the hour. Some other hardware, that even had a better spec than this took longer :unsure: dunno why, just seemed to. Either that, or it was when I hadn't good experience of installing gentoo many times before I streamlined myself.

 

Of course, I'm as of the sources on the CD, but syncing portage and all that gets me up to date, in, well, a couple of hours or so depending on my internet connection speed, and erm, compile times. ;)

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