Submitted by Mandriva has released the
planned schedule and technical specifications for its next release, Mandriva Linux 2009. These can be found on the Mandriva Wiki. The schedule calls for a first alpha release on June 25th, with the final release set for early October. Planned features include KDE 4, Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3, a new design for the installer, a live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate, and improvements to many of the Mandriva tools. Take a look and see what you may find on your system when the final Mandriva Linux 2009 release is available.
Mandriva Linux 2009 Plans Announced
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
Follow me on Mastodon @[email protected]
I really want to like Mandriva. It was the first distro I got real comfortable with for everyday regular work use. And after some fairly uncomfortable experiences with one or two earlier versions of the last few years, like they just would not install, or having installed wouldn’t run properly, I was persuaded by rave reviews to have another go for a client with 2007. The reviews, and as usual, we were seduced by the fact that there is a very complete user guide, and that great GUI administration centre which does everything you will ordinarily want, very simply and intuitively.
We have put in three installs. One is very slow but works. One has had some mysterious hiccups after an upgrade – X just vanished. It was probably due to having lapsed into using proprietary codecs – this was the One KDE version. We fixed it, but have not upgraded again. The third one is also basically OK, except that it refuses to mount some USB sticks. Just some. Which mount fine on other systems. No idea why. And also from time to time it hangs while booting. Always of course when the machine has been switched on by a committed windows user. Again, don’t know why.
And then there is the update issue. No, we do not want to go through a total clean installation every time we have to update, with results which are basically going to be unpredictable.
So, do we go for 2008? Sadly, we’re going to take them all to Debian Lenny. Debian is going to be much harder for the client to administer, but they probably will never need to do it. Keeping up to date is going to be much simpler. And it will never hang while booting, and USB sticks will always mount. Don’t know what would surface if we went to 2008, but something would. Something different of course.
Wish it weren’t so. But that is just experience. It doesn’t always disappoint, when it works, its brilliant, but it does disappoint often enough that you come to the end of it.
“And then there is the update issue. No, we do not want to go through a total clean installation every time we have to update, with results which are basically going to be unpredictable.”
Well, if you read the article, you’d see:
“live distribution upgrade mode for MandrivaUpdate”
Really?
I installed Mandriva 9.1, 9.2, 2007, 2007.1, 2008 and 2008.1 on many machines and I never ever had any problem. Can’t wait for the first alpha. Let’s start the testing season!
Message to all whiners out there: Seize this opportunity to complain about bugs. Later, when the stable release will hit you, you won’t be able to find many opportunities to complain 🙂
Actually Mandriva is using a new build system and the whole distro is rebuilt at each release (since 2008 or 2008.1 if I remember correctly. Many random bugs you had may be fixed by their new build system. Debian is a great distro of course. With Mandriva, you can get (paid) support as well.
Mandriva is about the only flavor of Linux that Almost properly detected all my hardware. I’ve yet to find a distro that properly detects and configures my sound card and monitor.
Otherwise I would have switched permanently by now. I’m just not interested in spending all day trying to fix it. Go ahead and mod me down, but I’m telling the truth about my experience, not trolling.
About once or twice a year I try Linux again to see if it works for me, but so far, not yet. But I’m hopeful that someday it’ll all just work without me having to fiddle.
If you wait for Linux to get better you are wrong. Linux will get better and better but that’s not enough. What’s really important is that the hardware manufacturers should put more effort into making their hardware work with Linux.
Yes, using Linux may require sometimes a little bit of effort but when you use Linux you help it get better (for your own sake) and you learn more about your computer (again, for your own sake).
What sound card and monitor do you have?
I use Linux professionally on servers, desktops, laptops, phones and Mandriva’s current 2008-Spring is simply brilliant for a desktop or laptop computer. Fast, complete, easy to install and maintain.
Yet every time there is a Mandriva story there are a bunch of uninformed comments that seem to take delight in tarnishing Mandriva’s good name. Yes there were some so-so releases, such as Mandriva 10 for me, but for the most part, it has been a great distribution to work with and one that today surpasses many others in easy of use and reliability.
The one thing that I will say is that I am not sure the time to move to KDE4 has arrived yet. I still think it’s too new and uncooked, whereas KDE 3.5.9 has been simply perfect.
If I were Mandriva I would stick to the 3.5 series for at least another release and let other be “pioneers”.
By the way has k3b been ported to kde4?
But hey, to each its own.
Since Adam reads these forums, it would be good to know why they don’t take the items that were not completed during the previous development cycle as the starting point for the current wishlist.
It seems like many good ideas were suggested and not implemented in the previous release cycle and it makes one less inclined to provide input if you see that some of these ideas were never implemented or their status is shown as 0% or 60%. Maybe this is a case of going back to the wiki so that it reflects what was really done and what is missing and moving what wasn’t done to the 2009 wish list.
What do you think? And if you are in favor, could you see to it that it happens?
Thanks for the chance to comment.
KDE 3.5 will still be available in 2009, but it’ll be the reverse of the 2008 Spring situation – 3.5 will be in contrib, 4 in main. We can still reverse this if KDE 4 still looks dodgy in October, but we don’t think it will.
Previous wishlists are taken as the starting point for the next one – that’s why you see the 2008 and 2008 Spring lists mentioned at the top of the Wiki page in this article. But we don’t take everything over to the new list – maybe it’s no longer a compelling idea, or we don’t have the particular expertise to implement it, or a better idea came up that takes priority. Are there any particular issues from previous lists that you feel are left off the 2009 list?
Mandrake has been one of my favorite distros for almost 10 years. Recently I built up a new system for my father so he is running it too.
I bought a new Compaq F759WM laptop, promptly removed Vista by downgrading to XP pro, then installed Madriva 2008.1 for a dual boot. Everything works perfectly (though I had to blacklist the SSB and BCM43xx modules and use ndiswrapper to get the wireless working).
I second the motion to refrain from adopting KDE4 yet.
Edited 2008-06-23 22:58 UTC