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My Mandriva 2008 Rant (I know it's 'Beta')


Steve Scrimpshire
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Ok, I typically urpmi myself up to the latest release with little or no problems, but this is a relatively new laptop that I installed Linux on using a 2007.1 One LiveCD because I couldn't burn a DVD (more on that later). NVidia driver worked perfectly fine. Then I urpmi'd myself up to the 2008 version and could no longer get the NVidia driver to work and it was said to be a known issue:

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=46374

 

So, I buckled down and decided to reinstall with a fresh copy of 2008. I downloaded the DVD iso thinking I might be able to now burn a DVD. Well, nope....can't do that. First off, I've burned DVDs on my Sony DRU-500AX DVD+/-R/RW burner with earlier versions of Mandriva with no problems, but now it no longer recognizes any medium I put in there...well, sometimes it sees a disk but then says it is incompatible or unformatted, when it is of course compatible and formatted. I did a Google search and discovered people saying that the burner doesn't work with Linux (it certainly did when I bought it two years ago), but might possibly work by upgrading the firmware...so I chalk that up to the Linux kernel surpassing the capabilities of the old firmware and say that it is not Mandriva's fault. So, then I go through a whole lot of trouble finding a way to boot from my external drive and install from the extracted ISO (you'd be surprised at how little information is out there on that with no boot floppy....maybe I should write a tutorial...it's easy once you know how) . So, I get it installed, but no wireless (hmmmm...it worked in 2007.1 One). I go to Harddrake and click on the wireless card, but, lo and behold there is no longer a 'Run Config Tool' button in Harddrake. No biggie, I will go to MCC and configure network. I choose 'Wireless' and click Next. It sees my wireless, so I choose it and click Next, then I get an error saying it needs a package that is not available: ipw3945d. I look in my media and, sure enough, it's not there. So, I boot with my 2007.1 One CD (you know, the one where wireless works) and go to the mirror and grab the pkg. Just in case, I also grab every package that has ipw in its name. I reboot back into 2008 and install ipw3945d, go to configure the network and get yet another error: Required package ipw3945-ucode not available...man, was I glad I grabbed that. Installed it and was able to configure my wireless.

 

So, why is Linux in general, and Mandriva in particular, going backwards? You can say 2008 is Beta, but why remove those (I'm sure popular) packages from a DVD iso???

 

I'm about ready to give up on Mandriva

 

Edit: Not to mention the fact that I installed 2008 fresh and NVidia is still borked.

Edited by Steve Scrimpshire
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If 2007.1 worked well for you, why don't you skip 2008 then? Remember that there is not always a "need" to upgrade a system. ;) In my case, I tried 2007.1 for a long time but it always froze on me. Thus I went back to 2007.0 until 2008 was available. And 2008 works perfectly with my hardware.

 

My experience is that every distro publishes the one or other release which will annoy you. I found Ubuntus 6.04 (big-time networking problems) and 7.10 extremely disturbing (partition tables trashed, hibernation not working) and was less than happy with Fedora 2 (refused to install properly and mount my usb-sticks). And SUSE 8.2 was buggy as hell and self-destroyed my KDE back then...

 

Bottom line: use what works - even if it ain't the latest and greatest.

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Install a rolling distro (Debian any flavour, Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Mepis... even PCLinuxOS). Problem solved.

Releasing new versions that break pretty much everything was common practice some years ago, when regular upgrading via a phone line was translated to $$$.

It's incomprehensible that not all distros follow a rolling release cycle anno 2008, but sadly enough quite a few (and major ones) still do just that.

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Install a rolling distro (Debian any flavour, Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Mepis... even PCLinuxOS). Problem solved.

Releasing new versions that break pretty much everything was common practice some years ago, when regular upgrading via a phone line was translated to $$$.

It's incomprehensible that not all distros follow a rolling release cycle anno 2008, but sadly enough quite a few (and major ones) still do just that.

 

I have to totally agree with your point. In some cases users will use older version distro's which have stopped security updates & the reason the users are still using the older version is because it works the way they want, it's configured the way they want & to upgrade in most cases will mean breaking their system in one way or another - though these systems are now are at times vulnerable..

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It's incomprehensible that not all distros follow a rolling release cycle anno 2008, but sadly enough quite a few (and major ones) still do just that.
I guess the main reason is that DSL connections are still not available everywhere. Even in Germany, there are some areas where you simply cannot get DSL. Now think of Africa, China, India, Brazil,... Most users there still use Modems, thus they would not benefit from rolling-release distros at all.

 

Would it be great if Mandriva would be a rolling release? Hell, yes! Can I use a rolling release right now like Debian? Sadly not, due to some bloody hardware drivers for my printers ([sarcasm]Thank you, Canon. [/sarcasm]) that only work with .rpm based distros (PCLinuxOS is not my cup of tea).

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Ok, so 2008 is not Beta. That makes it even worse.

 

As for the question about why upgrade when what I had worked...Like I said: "I typically urpmi myself up to the latest release with little or no problems, but..." (emphasis added)

(And I've done this since 8.1) This post was meant to be a warning about the direction Mandriva seems to be heading.

 

I like Mandriva. I've tried other distros and keep coming back. Ubuntu is a close second and, from reports I have heard from friends, is constantly improving, while Mandriva seems to be going backwards. Maybe in a week or two, I will go buy some more blank CDs and install Ubuntu again. Or maybe I will use the Ubuntu CDs I have to install again. There is still that one fatal flaw to me...I love urpmi and apt/yum/whatever package managers are just so inferior IMHO...but maybe it's just that I have so much more experience with urpmi.

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it doesnt include ipw3945d? what a joke.

 

*shrug* I havnt used mandriva because well... I can't. They still havnt fixed my install bug, which is ridiculous seeing as not only is it a bad regression, but a simple fix.

 

ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/...2008.0.i586.rpm

ftp://distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr/pub/...07.0.noarch.rpm

automatically and succesfully set up here with mandriva one

Edited by ffi
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ffi. If you read my post, One includes the module, 2008 'Official' does not. If you notice the paths to the modules you posted, they are in the 'non-free' directory, which is not included on the installation DVD and how can I get it when my wireless doesn't work?

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ffi. If you read my post, One includes the module, 2008 'Official' does not. If you notice the paths to the modules you posted, they are in the 'non-free' directory, which is not included on the installation DVD and how can I get it when my wireless doesn't work?

 

2008.0 one does include it too but the free version only includes free and open software, so if you want to install you either need the powerpack or the one cd, which include the non-free stuff.

Edited by ffi
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So, let me get this straight....I can install with the One CD (Free), which includes some 'non-free' stuff and have a broken X and working wireless, or I can install with Official and have a broken wireless and working X, or I can buy the PowerPack and have both (maybe) work?

 

That's my point. We're going backwards. So, if Mandriva wants to remain completely 'open', why include 'non-free' in Mandriva One? Double standards are just confusing, not helpful.

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I think that if you dont enable the backports, they are unsupported..., it will all work. But I agree that this is a bug of XFdrake. I have found that it tries to download nvidia or ati-kernelflavour-latest and maybe set up some sym links to those kernel modules instead of using the dkms ones....

 

That's my point. We're going backwards. So, if Mandriva wants to remain completely 'open', why include 'non-free' in Mandriva One? Double standards are just confusing, not helpful.

 

some people have a problem with closed source others don't. Mandriva offers you a choice: get the most out of your hardware or stay completely opensource and maybe have things not working 100%

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