Shortly after announcing the merger of Mandrakesoft and Conectiva into Mandriva, the newly combined company released a transitional “limited edition” GNU/Linux distribution to bridge the gap between the two parent distributions. Mandriva Limited Edition 2005 may look a little different, but it’s the same great Mandrakelinux desktop distribution that you’re used to.
Review: Mandriva Limited Edition 2005
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Mandrake has always had good releases. They are the best when it comes to a balance between user friendliness and allowing the user conrol over the system. I wish them good luck in their new venture.
P-J go troll elsewhere. You just display your total ignorance and immature behaviour here.
Linux is as open as it can get and therefore is not obfuscated as you seem to troll here.
Which DE is shitty- KDE as well as GNOME are light years ahead of what Windows offers. Go bang your head on the wall if you have no other job to do but troll around.
Complex?
My 11 years old daughter uses it every day, and believe me she is not a 130 IQ!!
fonts have been a mess on Linux but the situation has improved drastically in the last 1-2 years…but when I looked at the lone screenshot on the review, the fonts look a bit blurred again… did anyone else notice that? or is just me with blurred eyes
“fonts have been a mess on Linux”
EDIT: fonts have been a mess on DESKTOP Linux
i’ve been using mandrake for a long time – from version 6.x i think.
anyway, i am considering changing because of the following issues:
* i never feel safe with the package managers – be they ports, urpmi, rpm, swaret, … whatever. the only one i haven;t use din anger is apt.
* i don’t use kde/gnome and feel that modern desktop distros are including libraries, linking, added functionality to apps which i don’t use (eg compile with gnome)
* for critical apps i always compile and install in an isolated namespace – i don’t know what has gone into the distros packages – not do i like the way they pollute the fielsystem, nor do i trust package upgrades.
* i am eternally frustrated by the gui “sysadmin” tools doing magic behind my back. on graphical gui systems i never feel 100% certain that a config file-edit won’t lead to an inconsistency or to be overwritten by the period or gui tools.
* i don’t like the distros making too many decisions on my behalf. its a pain to undo. thsi applies to the desktop apps as well as to lower level things like sound services.
so, why don’t i just roll my own? why bother with a distro?
indeed you would be right to suggest that i don’t bother with a distro and use something like LFS. (gentoo by the way is terrible, totally inconsistent, and the multitude of USE variables in not managable at all defeating their purpose – i remember when there were about 10 of them).
but i need hardware detection</>. that’s the catch. sure i like to manage my own software but hardware configuration is a pain.
on a higher level – the ideal would reason thus: “i have bought hardware X” – hence it is reasonable to assume the the OS is not being too patronising by configuring for hardware Y.
so the ideal linux/bsd OS for me is:
* provides a minimal base – which is easy to support by the ocmmunity (kernel, toolchain) – and which is flexible enough to build what you want on top of it
* doesn’t intrude on my software decisions
* but the OS does make hardware detection and configuration easy. (perhaps a tool which identifies hardware, but only configures it when i want it to, not “detected new hardware, will oveerwrite your fstab …”)
so mandrake, ubuntu, fedora, .. they don’t match this list of wishes.
Try investigating ivman. It works on top of hal/dbus to automatically mount your media (hard-drives, cd/dvd drives, usb media etc) without interfering with things like your fstab file.
It shouldn’t be difficult to set up on Mandriva (was a doddle on Gentoo).
ivman homepage:
http://ivman.sourceforge.net/
the same function is handled by gnome-volume-manager, which is a standard part of gnome 2.8+
Hey tech_user
Try Arch or CRUX
They seem to be just what you are looking for
When will be Mandriva available for download to the general public?
the thing is that ivman is independent of any desktop setup you have, or can even be used while your not running any desktop…
the LE realease is available to the general public. hunt around for an install set labelled 10.2rc2 in the devel section of yur favorite mirror. its really the finall 2005 LE edition.
ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mirrors/mandrake/Mandrakelinux/devel/is…
My first experience with MLE2005 is almost non-existant. I d/l the whole x86_64 version tree to my hdd, burned the mini-iso and used the hdd as the installation source. The installation still hangs (all 10.x versions due the same in my case) due my pci wireless card (desktop pc, but hangs too because my laptop pcmcia wireless card). This is why in the first place I d/l the whole tree to my hdd. This is a known issue for me, so I just press F1, and use “linux noapic” instead.
Using the mini-CD requires you to choose your installation source. If my USB FDD is connected (laptop/desktop) then when I choose HDD as the source I just get “No partitions found”. There are two workarounds,
1. unplug the USB FDD
2. choose CDROM as source, you will get an error saying no packages found, then you choose using HDD as source et voila, now auto-magically installer sees the partitions. (don’t ask me why)
After this, just a regular/normal/working MLE2005 installation. After reboot, nice lilo screen and everything hangs! Damn, no problem, used to this. Reboot, choose Failsafe and hangs again!! But now I get to see the error:
error 6 mounting ext3 / error 6 mounting reiserfs / error 6 mounting <put your filesystem of preference here>
All modules are being loaded (i see the ext3.ko, reiser.ko being loaded before), it is a fresh new installation, dual-boot with XP Pro, I have done it thousand times before (not in this machine though). And that is it. Magic is gone, I haven’t found a workaround for this.
My mobo (MSI-RS480) contains a SATA controller, but my main hdd is a PATA Maxtor 200GB , so I disabled the SATA controller because I read sometimes kernel may enumerate first SATA controller and then PATA controllers. No luck.
I’ve switched to the available bash shell during the last stage of installation (after everything is setup and just waiting for the reboot), reviewed and edited the lilo.conf/fstab files, used chroot to work with the proper partition which during installation is and works as hda7. No luck.
Grub didn’t solve the problem either, so it seems to be a problem with partition mounting.
No ideas so far (Linux is in the last 20GB of my 200GB hdd, could it be?).
So for now my review would be:
-Installation still needs workaround for wireless cards
-Installation from HDD is functional but not perfect – detection of partitions is buggy (a USB FDD screws it up)
-Installation procedure after that is nice as always, autodetection of hardware works nicely (from what I can gather in the installation summary screen ).
-Not so nice lilo/bootsplash (looks like Linux(or Tux) goes Disneyland)
-and that’s it … oh well, nice kernel errors?
Please note that this is just my experience on my specific hw configuration, your mileage may vary!
Personally, I would just download and install PCLinuxOS which I did and it’s the best distro I’ve tried. A forked Mandrake distro that uses apt.
EXCELLENT DESCRIPTION!
I would prescribe a large dose of libranet, if that has too many side effects then go pure debian or maybe a ‘lite’ ‘debian based’ distro
if you still are still feeling a bit too managed then just jump into slackware or gentoo
that’ll be 100bucks sir
It sounds to me like the ideal distro you just described is Archlinux. It’s base is practically a clean LFS but with package management tools. It has a hardware detection tool, but all it really does it detect the hardware but does not install it – it generates a report with instructions on how YOU can install it. I haven’t used Archlinux in a while (ok, I admit it, I’m a distribution whore), but it sounds like something you might like. I suggest you check it out.
or alternatively, what you try instead of distro x y or z (they all tend to suck, just some less than others), is to use one them with a decent installer, say fedora with it’s rather nice anaconda for instance, but only do the minimal install. Then on top to that, manually build from source whatever the heck you want. You could even use something like one of those rpmbuilders that write the spec, forget their names right now, and roll out an rpm from source if you wanted to maintain the advantages of using rpms for instance (queryable database, easy uninstall, etc). That way, you get the nicety of having your hardware and all that configured for you, but can choose the rest of the direction you want your distro to go. Just because a distro offers everything out of the box so to speak, doesn’t mean you have to use it.
I just upgraded from MDK 10.1 to LE2005 and it looks much nicer graphically, but didn’t autodetect my Dell monitor (a first in years for MDK!), and the default Firefox freezes when DLing PDFs (I hafta save->then open). However my biggest gripe is how slow it’s gotten. My old MDK 10.1 took 21 seconds to boot, this takes 60 seconds with portmap taking 25 of those 60. Since I use this as a desktop, boot time (and the not-so-quick KDE login time following it) are an issue with me, since I’m now booting into/logging into/shutting down XP more and more to simply get info I need quicker than I can simply boot MDK (much less log into, then shutdown). Sadly, I was really hoping LE2005 would offer speed improvements that would be incentive to keep using MDK over XP, but it’s only gotten much slower.
I would complain to MDK but the last many bugs I submitted were either ignored in their entirety or closed incorrectly.
I keep MDK around for development work, but with OpenOffice and FireFox available on XP, I’m using it more than MDK for day-to-day (i.e., desktop) stuff.
(NOTE: YES I’ve turned off superfluous services, no it’s not special HW, yes I want to use KDE, etc, etc, etc)
If you don’t run an NFS server, just turn portmap service off, you don’t need it. If you don’t change your hardware often also turn off the harddrake service, that’ll save some time too. Yeah, boot time is not one of the greatest things about 2005.
Some other comments – 2005 is indeed already downloadable by the public, but RC2 is *not* the same thing as the final release. There were a lot of changes made and bugs fixed from RC2 to final. If you’re not a Club member but you want to try it out, there’s no ISOs available yet (they will be available around the middle of next month), but you can do a network install. Download boot.iso from an FTP mirror (in /Mandriva/official/2005/i586/install/images), write it to a CD, boot from it, and tell it you want to do a network install. You may also want to write down the server and name and IP address of your favourite mirror – the network installer does have a system whereby it gets a mirror list and asks you to select from the list, but I think this may not work properly since the name change, so best to be prepared. This will work fine so long as you can get an internet connection directly through a wired LAN socket (the network installer doesn’t support wireless yet, unfortunately).
I don’t think we changed anything significant with rendering Roman fonts between 10.1 and 2005. CJK fonts were changed a little (they’re now anti-aliased less aggressively which makes Chinese / kanji a whole lot easier to see), but nothing for Roman characters.
Mandrake rocks!
That’s all I have to say. Powerfu, easy, stable.
You know, the -iva in Conectiva is really [Iv@], which is more or less -eeva or -iva (short i) in english.
Mandrake rocks! – Oh yeah!
I have been a Mandrake user for about three years now from Mandrake 8.2. I was ecstatic when I brought a HP750 all in one printer and 8.2 recognised it just like that then automatically instaled the driver. It was a great change after all the problems I had had with printers in Red Hat 6 I thought in the future Mandrake Linux would plug and play as easily as Windows.
When I upgraded to 9.1 it seemed a cumulative improvement and urpmi worked excellently. Recently I upgraded to 10.1 it worked but there wre problems, urpmi seemed basically broken with a descent in dependancy hell for the installation of many programs.
The system seemed to have an excessive use use of cpu for video applications. Realplayer 10 which worked perfectly in 9.1 was broken and even though Totem/Xine worked well for most files, some would drop sound and this could be only corrected by reniceing X down then sound would reappear together with a lot of dropped frames.
Finally it would not mount my usb flashdrive after some investigation I came to the conclusion it was a kernel problem so I upgraded from 2.6.8.1-12mdk to 2.6.11.6 using the kernel-2.6.11.6mdk-1-1mdk.i686.rpm. Yeah ! it mounts my usb flashdrive, and yeah! the video problems are gone!. But, but, but my usb printer no longer works the kernel can’t even find it and hangs on trying to autodetect it. Now I will probably try and roll my own kernel again, I’ve done in Red Hat years back and maybe it will work and then maybe it won’t.
I reckon I’m going to install Ubuntu.
I just installed LE2005 and it is excellent as 10.1 was. I have never understood why some call it a newbie distro or find it unstable. It has always been rock solid for me. Plus it has a very well thought out selection of installed programs and urpmi is as good as apt.
I have experimented with other distros like Ubuntu, Xandros, Mepis and gone back to Mandriva. Hope the merger with Connectiva turns out to be a good decision.
I’ve seen that KDE 3.4 and Gnome 2.10 are now available in the Mandriva Cooker (previously, only Thac’s KDE 3.4 binaries were available): is it reasonably safe to install them on top of the LE2005 distribution, or will everything break catastrophically? Has anyone tried this…?
In general, how much “unstable” is the Cooker distribution? At the minor annoyances level or at the almost unusable level…?
Anyway, also for me Mandrake was the first distro I tried, some years ago: I really hope it will become bettere and better, in the next years…
I just installed LE2005 and it is excellent as 10.1 was. I have never understood why some call it a newbie distro or find it unstable.
Yes, I found 10.1 to be rock solid, and clearly one of the most polished distros out there.
“Yes, I found 10.1 to be rock solid, and clearly one of the most polished distros out there.”
Hands up how many people out there have got an unpartitioned USB flash drive to mount on an out of the box 10.1 installation with the default kernel?
There are issues with the 2.6.8 series kernels. Fair enough this is a problem with the kernel but it is a Mandrake problem for releasing a point distribution on a kernel with unresolved issues.
but I am too tempted by LE2005. I am gonna try an experiment. I will update the sources and try urpmi from 10.1 to le2005.
dunno what I will break, if anything.
I will let yous know how it goes…. even if I have to boot mepis to get a net connection afterwards hahaha
most of the time it’s minor annoyances; utterly unusable happens maybe once in a few months and it’s avoidable if you read the mailing list and avoid the bad package (for e.g. there was a duff upgrade of udev yesterday which stops it being able to start up, fix is to copy a couple of files from an older version of udev and fix was posted to cooker list a few hours after the package was updated). I’ve run Cooker as my only OS for three years or so now, it’s entirely do-able you just have to be careful.
KDE 3.4 should install OK over 2005 (but of course it’s not supported) as it was about the first thing to go in after the unfreeze. GNOME should be alright too. There will be a set of 2005 KDE 3.4 packages released for Club members before 2006 comes out.
Er, it’s easy. mount /dev/sda /mnt/removable. It doesn’t *auto*mount, yes (annoying bug, fixed in 2005) but it’s easy enough to mount. Everyone who ran Linux had to do this by hand not so long ago, come on…
(oh, and the bug wasn’t in the kernel but in hal).
not nice
the upgrade seemed to go ok, but when I rebooted X would not start, and there is no prompt either !
I have not messed around with any config files yet, that is a job for later on tonight. I just wanted to see how easy it would be for newbies to upgrade using urpmi.
it is probably something really silly, but not getting into X is not good.
wtf ?
are you all retarded or what ?
I posted the results of the previous experiment and some fucktard hit the report abuse link on it ?
that is true zealotry if I ever saw it, no wonder it is hard enough getting people to switch from windows if there is some muppets in linuxland who cannot stand anything bad being said about their OS.
If I had you here I would slap you sensible
<<Hands up how many people out there have got an unpartitioned USB flash drive to mount on an out of the box 10.1 installation with the default kernel? >>
I have an unpartitioned Kingston USB 2.0 drive which I had no trouble mounting under 10.1 except that I had to do so manually. In LE2005 it is mounted automatically.
The one problem I have observed with LE2005 is with sound under xine. I can play streaming quicktime videos with embedded mplayer in Firefox fine but when I try to play them using Kaffeine in Konqueror I do not get any sound while the video is displayed ok. Updating with libxine from plf has not helped.
“Er, it’s easy. mount /dev/sda /mnt/removable. It doesn’t *auto*mount, yes (annoying bug, fixed in 2005) but it’s easy enough to mount. Everyone who ran Linux had to do this by hand not so long ago, come on… “
Er. you dont’t think I didn’t try that – it just didn’t work. I have been using Unices since before Linux was written and I know how to mount a drive. It would not mount manually full stop. There were various on-line threads where people were given this advice for flash drives that worked in 9.x and which no longer worked in 10.1, then they came back to report this didn’t work. In my case data transfer light was stuck hard on: tail /var/log/messages and dmesg reported correctly identifying the device but timeout on attempting to mount it.
The problem went away when I upgraded the kernel. Explain therefore how the the problem was in Hal rather than with the kernel. Interesting that the video problems went away with the same upgrade eh!
PS don’t be so damned patronizing Adam.
well, sorry, but you implied it was a universal problem (which it clearly isn’t, there are piles of unpartitioned devices which mount cleanly manually) and I therefore concluded you were referring to the hal-can’t-automount-unpartitioned-devices bug, which _is_ universal on 10.1. so quit it.