Submitted by The fourth pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring is here. This pre-release brings recognition of other installed distributions during installation, NTFS-3G (with write support) by default for all NTFS partitions, significant improvements to the Mandriva graphical software management tool and more. See here for download information.
Well since no one has commented yet, let me do the honest
I have been waiting for an NTFS-3G for a long time in a commercial/desktop distribution such as Mandriva. Last time I installed it manually via their package manager and now comes as the default one. Good work Mandrake, keep up the good work + their KDE is setup just the way I like it — Windows-like but with the power of Linux!
Edited 2008-02-15 09:50 UTC
I can never hold out long after a full release before my primary machine get’s the latest Mandriva release. Another step closer to a new 2008 release to install.
A question though or suggestion; can the USB flashdrive recognition be changed to use unique identifiers by default? (If there’s info out there that I haven’t managed to find, links would be apreciated)
It seems the default for USB flashdrives is to base the mount folder name on whatever random /dev item. This means that any USB devices accessed by scripts or shared by samba/nfs have to be corrected when that dev name changes. Could the default for the mount and the “devices” in KDE be changed to use either the flashdrive label or unique identifier to make the mount point more stable?
I know there are a few ways to mount a drive based on the various symbolic links under the /dev tree. It’s just that it’s a hastle to make the config changes after install on removable media that has to regain the same mount point.
(sorry for the long off topic post all. I’m a long time Mandriva user but only recently trying to become familiar with the distribution forums else this would have been there.)
Sorry, previous comment wasn’t quite accurate, so I’ll change it.
We already try to give a unique and usable mount point by just using the volume name (HAL handles this). If you’re using MDV 2008 and plugging in a storage device which has a volume name set, but it’s not being mounted as /media/volumename , that’s a bug and you can file it at http://bugzilla.mandriva.com/ and we’ll try and fix it (bug could be in HAL or in the KDE / GNOME mounting components). If your device doesn’t have a volume name, then it will just be /media/disk , IIRC – so, um, give it a volume name
Edited 2008-02-15 18:24 UTC
I tried the live CD on a laptop and I must say, it is probably one of the most responsive live CDs I have used. I actually didn’t mind it running from CD.
I installed several of the software packages that I use (Thunderbird, GnuCash, etc) to see how they worked and they installed with no issues and were quick as well.
My only 2 issues dealt with NFS.
1. When you launch the DrakNFS (I forget the actual name) and scan the network, it came bad with nothing. I read on-line about the firewall and had to disable it for the NFS scan to work. If the scan comes back empty, it would be nice to have a little window open stating that no machines could be found and to check the network, servers, or the firewall. This would remind people about it. Ideally it would know about the firewall and prompt you to disable the NFS ports, but I would settle for a reminder box.
2. In NFS, I couldn’t get the gid/uid working correctly. It kept giving me an error about invalid options.
Besides those two issues, I’m a happy camper with this.
chipper: that’s a great suggestion, I’ve filed it as a feature request: http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=37808 . I’ll check into your UID / GID issue and see if I can reproduce it.
ftp server is overloaded and keeps stalling.
Why don’t distros use more torrents?
There’s about thirty servers listed on the page, just try different ones.
We don’t do torrents for pre-releases as the demand isn’t really high enough to justify it. We do use torrents for final releases, though.
I am running Mandriva 2008 on Asus G1S, everything working perfect, but this beta2 for some reason cannot boot. Stalled on PCI (sysfs) after swap:, so this is the kernel bug, i am hope they fixed it for the final release.
sasha: see – http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=36696 . please add your info there. thanks.
The Firefox web browser crashes on the LIVE CD whenever you try to watch a YouTube video. Has anyone else experienced this?
Edited 2008-02-16 02:51 UTC
More: It doesn’t always crash but now 4 out of 5 times, it crashed.
2. My SATA /dev/sda1 is inaccessible. When I go to Storage Media and selected my 95GB NTFS file system, it says: Cannot enter /media/hd. My home partition is sda6 and swap is sda5. However, FreeAgent’s NTFS seems to be fine. I think it has to do with the pemissions. I went to /media/hd and it has a padlock icon on it. The combo boxes for “Owner, Group, Others”, are all disabled. I will try accessing it as “root” and adding my self to the “root” group, may be that will fix the problem.