Linuxlookup.com is reporting the first Mandriva Linux release is now available. Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005 is a transitional release which provides all the best and up to date open source applications to power-users, 32-bit/64-bit trouble-free coexistence, capability to boot from a USB key and many other features, with an excellent stability.
Mandriva’s first release, Limited Edition 2005, for Club Members
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Viva Mandriva
curious?
yeah, it’s 10.2.
that was fast…
Anyone!?!?
Torrent available for the moment only for Club members; as usual. The public will have FTP access to the isos in a couple of weekes, probably.
will this be available for public download sometime later?
Sorry, question got answered while I was typing it.
More like the Mandrake 10.2 community release.
no, there is no Community / Official split for this release. there is one release. this is it.
I look forward to trying out the free download version.
Oh Just great another Linux distro with bunch of system config wizards. Is there a Linux distro out there that is meant for the real power user where he/she can configure and tune the system by text files, no wizards?
OK, I’m a longtime Mandrake/iva user and admin a half-dozen production servers running Mandrake versions from 9.1-10.1. But this nonsense with constantly changing naming schemes is really starting to irritate me, and it certainly hampers my ability to explain and recommend Mandrake to consulting clients.
What does “Limited Edition” really mean for current customers/users? Is this a new, stable product (i.e. 10.2 Official) that I should point my 10.1 RPM mirrors to? That I should tell clients who need new Mandrake licenses to purchase?
Or is this an interim release, or a semistable “Community edition” 10.2 release, and I should really wait a few weeks for the real release, or until the fall for Mandriva 2006?
In the absence of a clear explanation of what they’re doing, Mandrake isn’t going to sell many licenses to Limited Edition, which for them is the whole point of the release — to earn some revenue pre-Mandriva 2006. Otherwise, they’d just release a bunch of update packages to 10.1. Didn’t Mandrake learn anything from the whole “Official/Community/Download” fiasco?
I mean, right now there’s a release schedule like this: the “Cooker” version, then “Beta,” then “Community,” then “Official,” then “Download,” which means “all the software in Community only upgraded to the versions in Official.” Then, a month after that, enough stuff has been patched that the software actually becomes safe to use, because Mandrake basically relies on the community for their testing and Q&A.
Looking at the package versions, Limited Edition looks like a maintenance release. So yeah, I can figure it out, but I’m getting tired of having to read Mandrake’s mind to figure out what its releases actually are.
I know Mandrake is trying to make this whole system less confusing. I don’t fault their intentions. It’s the execution that’s crap.
I mean, one day Mandrake changes its name and announces a new naming scheme for the first time, and then less then a week later puts out a release under the new scheme! Without any explanation as to how it relates to current 10.1 users!
Real OS vendors like Microsoft/Apple/Sun/IBM/Novell/Red Hat alert customers to these kinds of changes months, if not years, in advance. To say nothing of 100% open-source projects, such as Gentoo and Debian, that use easy-to-understand schemes that let me make basic sysadmin decisions such as whether to run cutting-edge or super-stable versions of things.
One can always tune up a Mandriva Linux OS by editing text files if that’s what the users wishes. The implementation of more or less sophisticated tools for system administration is the obvious step towards getting popular on the desktops around the world.
Its a newbie’s distro hence the wizard oriented approach.
Oh Just great another Linux distro with bunch of system config wizards. Is there a Linux distro out there that is meant for the real power user where he/she can configure and tune the system by text files, no wizards?
Plenty of choice out there really – Arch & Gentoo being two – keep in mind though that you can still configure certain aspects within Mandriva via text files etc
Oh, and good luck to Mandriva – should be another polished, solid release as ever – fair to say that they’ve contributed positively to making “desktop Linux” accesible over recent years
Stability is not the issue. The development of 2005 was exactly the same as every previous MDK release; this is MDK 10.2 in terms of scale of development and stability. Support and distribution is the issue. Because we want to have a kind of smooth transition to the new annual release cycle, this release is not being distributed via retail channels with corresponding technical support, and to save development time and focus effort on the development of 2006, the Community / Official split has been dropped. That’s why it’s ‘Limited Edition’. Marketing are going to position this as a release for enthusiasts, 10.1 will still be promoted as the stable, ‘gold-standard’ version with retail distribution and technical support available. I hope that helps you make a decision.
There is not going to be a follow-up release of 2005. This is 2005. It’s done and released. You don’t have to wait.
“I mean, right now there’s a release schedule like this: the “Cooker” version, then “Beta,” then “Community,” then “Official,” then “Download,” which means “all the software in Community only upgraded to the versions in Official.””
Not really accurate. There isn’t a Cooker ‘version’, that would be like saying Debian has a sid ‘version’. Cooker is a distribution. Then there’s Beta and RC release, which I hope everyone can figure out. Download is not really a separate edition, and it’s not the same software as in Community but different from Official. There are Download releases of *both* Community *and* Official. The Download releases use the same base as the other types of releases – box sets and Club – but with differing package selections. Download release of Community *or* Official is three CDs of 100% free software. The Powerpack boxed release is six to seven CDs and/or one DVD of both free and non-free software, including virtually the entire MDK repository. The Discovery boxed release is two CDs of mixed free and non-free software focussed on being compact and easy-to-use for newbies. Club members either get everything in the Powerpack boxed version (if they’re a high enough level) or the download version plus an extra CD with proprietary drivers and a few commercial apps on it, total 4 CDs.
So basically imagine a huge tank named Community and a huge tank named Official; the Download editions and the various Club and boxed set versions are just different amounts of water drawn out of the same tank into a different sized bottle. Sorry for the patronising analogy.
You can configure _everything_ in MDV via text files, usually the conventional ones. Not a single MDV wizard does something that you can’t equally as well configure by whacking a text file with emacs. Most MDV wizards are simply interfaces for changing certain settings in completely standard configuration files (for e.g. all the Apache setup wizard does is set values in the standard config files in /etc/httpd ).
magus, MDV isn’t a newbie’s distro. It’s a general-purpose distro intended to be usable in pretty much all roles by many different types of user.
“magus, MDV isn’t a newbie’s distro. It’s a general-purpose distro intended to be usable in pretty much all roles by many different types of user”
Well yea , I wanted to say that but you did much better than me.Long time user of Mandrake(riva) as well.
If you want a distro suited toward power users, and configing text file, you might what to look at Slackware. That would be the distro that you are looking for. You could try some of the source based distros (Gentoo, SoureMage, etc..)
~Alan
I am happy to say that Mandrake was the distro that pulled me away from Windows, and i will always have fond memories of it.
But i’m not happy with the new release cycle.
I have to wait 12 months now to be a release or 2 behind KDE?
I’m sorry that’s just not acceptable to me.
Mandrake 10.1 will be the last version i use, and i will remember it well.
I won’t say what i’m switching too.. because i don’t want to cause further arguements.
Goodbye Mandriva. (And seriuously… that name hella sucks… they never did have much in style.. but a rock solid distro.)
Anonymous (IP: —.bak.res.rr.com) wrote:
>>Oh Just great another Linux distro with bunch of system config wizards. Is there a Linux distro out there that is meant for the real power user where he/she can configure and tune the system by text files, no wizards?<<
Great post, great humor. Thank you for making my day.
You’re just trolling. There are literally hundereds of distros for power users. If you don’t know that, you don’t know much about Linux.
Besides, like someone already said, you don’t HAVE to use the wizards.
The problem of not being synchronised with the latest KDE and GNOME releases is one that should really be solved in Mandriva Linux 2005/2006: many people will probably choose Kubuntu and Ubuntu only for this reason. There should be official MDV KDE 3.4 and GNOME 2.10 binaries available for download as soon as possibile, IMHO.
That said, I don’t find the name “Mandriva” all that bad: it also has some history in it, as it strongly reminds of “Mandrake”. Anyway, you should definitely keep the “magic” star as the main logo: even more important now, with the new name, also as a visual sign of continuity with the glorious past of this distro…
If you think you are forced to use the GUI wizards in Mandrake to configure the system, then you are not much of a linux user.
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation. But don’t you see how you’re kind of making my argument for me?
All these versions of Mandrake, but the core software (kernel, FOSS packages) in the 10.1 Discovery, PowerPack, PowerPack+, Community, Download etc. versions is all really the same. I know there are a few proprietary add-ins on the commercial versions, but if I’m running a LAMP stack or Tomcat or small-office server I don’t really care about that.
There need to be fewer versions of the same thing. And all these plain-vanilla distributions need to be branded something like “Mandriva Desktop” or “Mandriva Home” — not because you can’t use them as a server, but to differentiate them from the actual server products.
If you read the sales copy, you’ll see the 80-euro PowerPack is supposed to be for desktops, but the 200-euro PowerPack+ is a small-office network/groupware server distro. Huh? Why not just call PowerPack+ “Mandrake Small Office Server”?
And why not call the new “Limited Edition” just “Mandrake 10.2” or “Mandrake 2005” instead of coming up with a special name that doesn’t have anything to do with either past, present or future naming schemes?
It seems like Mandrake’s product management people just come up with these new names and naming schemes, but don’t do any market testing or even just run them by uncle Bob for a reality check.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Mandrake is great. Just the other week I had to set up a small mod_perl environment on an existing Apache2 stack. I urpmi’ed mod_perl etc., and ADVX had a whole Apache2 mod_proxy vhost frontend and Apache1 mod_perl backend running with no effort on my part. I just had to tweak some rewrite rules, and there it was. Super sweet!
When Mandrake does stuff like that for me, I don’t care what they call it. I just wish they’d stop shooting themselves in the foot.
If you think you are forced to use the GUI wizards in Mandrake to configure the system, then you are not much of a linux user.
I use FreeBSD, but I also want to add a Linux distro. I thought Linux also was meant for the hackers to hack it, configure the system, modified the source code, etc, but almost all the Linux distros are starting to look like something that came from AOL labs. I was looking for a linux distro that followed the hacker tradition, where everything is done from the CLI not from the AOL or Windows tradition, where we can’t work with out a GUI. I was recommened Slackware and I gave a try and I liked it, Thank You!