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Mandriva Businesses Software Linux

Mandrake Linux Development Process Changes 232

Posted by simoniker from the still-potent-mandragora dept.
joestar writes "Just found at MandrakeLinux.com: 'MandrakeSoft today announced a major evolution in the way that future Mandrake Linux distributions will be engineered and released. The purpose of this new development process is to provide the highest level of new features, as well as maximizing the quality of new products.' In short: for each release, there will be a 'Community' release, equivalent to a common Mandrake release, with all latest features. Several months later an 'Official' release - based on the 'Community' - will be available. Both of them will be released publicly and supported. The new process will start with the upcoming Mandrake 10.0."
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Mandrake Linux Development Process Changes More

Mandrake Linux Development Process Changes

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  • Wow.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:30PM (#8163003)
    A Business plan based on the actual Open Source community instead of just their products. Wow. I may weep openly.

    Joe

  • so how much (Score:3)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:30PM (#8163004) Homepage Journal
    does the 'community' get for beta testing?
    how big is the 'community' compared to the buyers of the 'official' release?

    • Re:so how much (Score:5, Insightful)

      by autocracy ( 192714 ) <slashdot2007@sto ... .com minus berry> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:35PM (#8163075) Homepage
      Nobody gets paid to use the 2.5 series kernels to prove 2.6 is good. There will always be people out for the latest & greatest... and plenty of whom would not care about being paid.

      • Re:so how much (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dubdays ( 410710 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:44PM (#8163197)
        And the great thing about all this is that those who want the bleeding-edge stuff get it, and the others (e.g. newbie, corporate user, etc.) get something that's stable right out of the box. I can see this as being a great way to sort out the bugs before the corporate guys install it and toss it to the side after playing with it for 10 minutes. This way, they get something very stable and usable that could gain widespread use throughout various companies.

      • Note: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )
        I did not say anything about money.
        I asked what they get.

        It doesn't have to be cash. I feel this is an important point, because the drive that makes Linux great, may not be the same as today contributors get older, and the young tech see linux as something thats been 'done'.

        • Re:Note: (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Afrosheen ( 42464 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:56PM (#8164006)
          What they ultimately GET is self-evident. If you're downloading betas and release candidates and providing feedback (via mailing lists, bugtraq, whatever), what you end up getting is a more stable distro with features yourself and others have requested. Input is valuable in projects of this scale *particularly* with the unbelievable variety of x86 hardware. What works for you may not work for someone else with identical hardware, differing only by something as miniscule as a single piece of usb hardware.

        • Actually, Mandrake is one the only (or maybe the only?) open source company that offers benefits to their developers and testers outside of a free product. About a year and a half ago when the company was in severe financial trouble and needed to raise cash, they started a special program where developers and testers could buy stock in the company at a discounted rate.

          If you ever get involved with the cooker community and interface with the developers and corporate types at Mandrake, you'll understand t

    • "[so how much] does the 'community' get for beta testing?"

      Everything they produce (including the 'Official' release), downloadable and useable for free.
    • What they never got before...... Stable CDs when they buy thier Power Packs.... *sigh* love it love it love it!!!!!

  • Isn't this what RedHat is doing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <`bc90021' `at' `bc90021.net'> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:30PM (#8163005) Homepage
    It seems a little too coincidental that Mandrake (originally a derivative of RedHat) is now switching to the same model as RedHat. RedHat has their "community" version, Fedora, and an "official" version, the Red Hat Enterprise Server.
    • Well, after the QA problems they had with the last release, it's not that bad of an idea. I was happily running 9.1, and upgraded to 9.2. I was so disappointed with 9.2 I started checking out other distros. At least this way, they will have a higher quality product with the "Official" version.

    • It's not the same at all (Score:5, Informative)

      by joestar ( 225875 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:36PM (#8163096) Homepage
      1) Both Mandrake Linux Community and Mandrake Linux Official versions will be publicly released and supported.

      2) Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker project, which started... 5 years ago.

      So I'm afraid that *Mandrake* is innovating with this new scheme. Red Hat is just leaving its users alone...

      • Re:It's not the same at all (Score:5, Funny)

        by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@syber ... S.com minus poet> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:44PM (#8163193)
        Red Hat is just leaving its users alone...

        Yes, leaving them alone. By hosting servers, paying employees to work on Fedora, and spending lots of other money on the project.

        I feel so alone. Hold me.
      • Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker

        No. Fedora is like Mandrake releases, though I think it also has a cooker-style release.
        • I didn't know Fedora was officially supported by Red Hat.
          • From the Fedora Release Notes

            "An Introduction to the Fedora Project

            The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project."

            "For more information, refer to the Fedora Project website:

            http://fedora.redhat.com/"
          • Well, that's about the only difference. Anyway, what I mostly meant is that Fedora stability is that of a release, not a beta/community release.
            • Community release != beta release. It's a finished OS, and Mandrake 10 is currently in beta. The way Mandrake normally does it goes something like this:

              1. Release beta 1 through 4
              2. Release release candidates 1 through 4
              3. Final release.

              The process is usually around 6 months or so. There is a cooker freeze that takes place at some point during the process where all new packages get locked into a specific version number. This cuts down on problems later in the beta testing phases.

              By summer Mandr

              • When the distro is ready, mdk10 will allow ISO downloads to club members FIRST, while everything is available via ftp mirrors. Next comes the shipping boxed sets, finally a box set on store shelves and freely downloadable ISOs. The boxed set/iso downloading scheme is new and while some people have complained, it's really in Mandrake's best interests to do it this way.

                I'm not sure I completely understand what you said, but your summary of how they used to do it is correct.

                If you recall, and I waited breat

      • Bzzzz Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bogie ( 31020 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:04PM (#8163387) Journal
        "2) Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker project, which started... 5 years ago."

        Nope sorry Fedora is NOT the same as Cooker. Ever heard of Rawhide? Who is copying who again?

        Second off Fedora releases go through a LOT of public testing unlike Rawhide and Mandrake Cooker. Fedora IS designed to be a stable release. Cooker, "Cooker is an experimental distribution, it's not for daily use!". Contrast that with "The goal of the Fedora Project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software.". Pretty dam big difference.

        The ONLY difference between Fedora and Mandrake's new "community" product is the respective QA of each company and how long the releases are supported.

        Good Troll, but *Red Hat* is the one innovating here.
        • Well following rawhide was pretty impossible with only a package manager, and no dependency resolver.
        • That's the Fedora Core-1 that doesn't bring up networking on a laptop with the net adapter on a PC card? I had to track down that problem on the redhat mail list archive -it turns out that its related to the fancy new boot time GUI? After that experience I concluded that broad QA is something lacking in the core-1 program.

          I don't know if mandrakes' is any better, and I don't know if their business model is going to prove any better in the long term either. But I can say I do not like Core-1 and can not aff

        • Red Hat is the one innovating? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @08:03PM (#8164670) Homepage
          Good Troll, but *Red Hat* is the one innovating here.

          I'll be sure to tell the Debian project that the way they've been doing things for the past 10 years [debian.org] is now an "innovation" from Red Hat.

          Jay (=
      • 2) Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker project, which started... 5 years ago.

        Assuming my assumption that Cooker is an ever-changing set of newly created packages which have not been tested/approved/released is correct, than Cooker is the same as Red Hat's Rawhide, which has been around for quite a few years itself, the exact number of which I don't know. Neither Cooker nor Rawhide should in any way be considered actual releasable distributions.

        Fedora is not remotely like either of these. It

        • That's partially true.

          Cooker was from the begining available in real time on Internet (mirrored every hour) with a transparent development scheme (CVS, mailing list, changelog altert) while Rawhide was only available from time to time and with no transparency.

          Additionnaly Cooker is useable. There is many people who are using it on their Desktop. This make the strenght of the system.

    • Re:Isn't this what RedHat is doing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MysteriousMystery ( 708469 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:41PM (#8163164)
      Well, the community version of Mandrake is just an early build of the release. Unlike Red Hat, Mandrake is actually releasing the "official" version for public download, as it's stated "after a short delay, Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official Download Edition will be made available on public FTP mirrors". This is a signficiant difference from Red Hat's business model.

  • Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)

    by dubdays ( 410710 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:31PM (#8163025)
    This is actually similar to what Mandrake (and others) already do. Isn't this kind of like just releasing another release candidate in the alpha-beta-rc-final flow? Still, I like the idea, because there have been numerous times I've purchased the boxed version, and it has had major problems that immediately needed to be patched. This is just a way to better refine the distro before selling it on the shelves.
    • There may be a cash-flow advantage, too. Rather than having two "peaks" a year when new releases of the distro come out, they might end up with four, smaller "peaks", with some people going for the initial release, and others waiting for the "Official" release (if a significant number of people pay for the "download" edition CDs/DVDs, that is).

      For a business, a smoother cash flow has got to be good. The Mandrake Club might also help with this.

      Overall, I think it's a great idea.

  • Is this going to help? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:32PM (#8163033) Homepage Journal
    Here is the problem I see with this. They are trying to have their "Official" release be less buggy than recent releases. They claim that the problems with the recent releases are because not enough gets ironed out in the betas.

    So, they are breaking the final release into "Community" and "Official" branches. Won't the "Community" release eventually become synonomous with "beta." In the end, fewer people will run this community release, and fewer bugs will be found in it. If this happens, problems will undoubtedly creep into the "Official" release and only be found then because more people are running it.

    Anyway, it seems to me they are just trying to rename the word "beta," which is not a solution to the problem they are trying to fix.

    • Read the PR... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by joestar ( 225875 )
      If you read the PR, the Mandrake Community version will be exactly the same as a regular Mandrake Linux release. No more, no less, and their goal is to have the Official version totally polished/bug free... I'm not as pessimistic as you are!
    • How many people run Fedora? How many people run Debian Sid, Debian Sarge? Just because its a "beta" doesnt mean it wont attract a crowd.
    • Well, the way I look at it is that they are trying to make the "Official" release more stable though it will probably have the downside of being "older" technology then in newer distro's. The Official version will be availble for public download shortly after it's available to club members so I don't see this as a big deal. With regards to the "renaming beta", the community version will likely be "as tested" as their recently releases which many have complained have some stability problems (I personally ha
    • Hmm, you have a point. There is of course a risk that there will be fewer users of the community release than with the current release as some people will choose to wait until the official release.

      Anyway, they will have a couple of months of extra freeze time to iron out the bugs. It would kinda defeat the whole purpose of it, if they would make major upgrades to the packages in the time between the community and official releases, now wouldn't it?

    • Re:Is this going to help? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ninjaz ( 1202 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:05PM (#8163402)
      I think Mandrake's proposition is great, personally. I even suggested just this a while back: Re: Quality Impact? [slashdot.org]

      One of the main things I like about Mandrake is the up-to-dateness of everything in a standard release. I disagree about it being a renamed beta. After all, a beta can (and does) have changing versions the included software prior to release. Also, with betas, you're using software that is subject to serious change without much suport going from point A to point B. From what it looks like, this will be more like the FreeBSD -release branch, where only bugfixes and security updates are made to the previous release. And, there is a continual update path - just apply the update packages and you're there. No need to run the installer to install/upgrade each time as with a new beta.

      I think this move helps reconcile the differences between catering to people like me, who use Mandrake at home and don't mind a few rough edges here and there (which I didn't even notice this time around) in order to get the latest and greatest with serious computing environments (i.e., servers) that need stable, tested software in order to effectively serve their purposes.

      I think no matter what amount of pre-release testing they put into a release, it won't become seriously stable until it has been in the wild serving real-world needs. This just acknowledges that reality and solidifies it into a process.

      • I read your post, and I realized: that's what they're doing, except it's the club members who get the updated ISOs. I personally think that if it's a showstopping problem (for example, the LG drive bug), they NEED to release the fix in an updated ISO TO THE PUBLIC.
    • you would be amazed how much not having a 'beta' label on it can help to get people using it.

      heck, look at debians 'unstable', thousands of possible users won't touch it because they think their computers would explode with it or that it wouldn't stay up for more than 15 minutes at a time. yet it is pretty stable and pumps out pretty new software that runs quite reliably(very reliably).

  • OT,but someone has to make the [NO CARRIER] joke (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:32PM (#8163037)
    I use mandrake because of its superior networking capabil=20 ]} } } }&..}=3Dr}'}"}[NO CARRIER]

  • Idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by BradleyUffner ( 103496 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:33PM (#8163042) Homepage
    They could do something way far out there and call the community release something like a "beta version", and, well... you get the idea

  • Great move! (Score:5, Informative)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:33PM (#8163054) Homepage
    Once again, Mandrake listened to its community of users and developpers, and I think that this is a great move for Mandrake to offer an excellent level of feature and innovation in its new releases, as well as an excellent level of polishment in a second time... And another good news is that both versions will be officially supported!

    I think it's a very smart understanding of a community project, and I think Mandrake can be thanked for its continued sense of innovation since 1998...

    After the recent and excellent financial from MandrakeSoft, this is all good news!

  • What this really is (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:36PM (#8163091)
    Honestly, it sounds like they are renaming the unstable version in order to get more user testing. It sounds like the idea is to produce a user version based on updated packages but w/o the rigorious testing demanded by companies.

    I honestly don't think it sounds like that bad an idea. Most home users don't need the testing and would like the features. With easy updating most home users can afford to use a less tested package. And for those who do not like the idea, they can wait for the official release. It gives them a situation akin to Debian's unstable/stable development where the stable branch is solid but aged, and the unstable branch is usable but current.

    • And since, unlike debian, stable releases will be regular (probably two per year), stable will actually be sort of current!

    • I agree.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by msimm ( 580077 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @06:11PM (#8163451) Homepage
      We'll end up with a Mandrake stable, which we've never had (and probably keeps them off some corporate desktops) and I'd imagine the testing Mandrake will be pretty much the same as regular Mandrake has always been (bleeding edge, sometimes buggy and still the best of both worlds).

      For those posters complaining about the new 'Official' release being out of date, bleeding edge will *still* be in the community version, nothings changed. I'd guess the 'official' version will focus more on thier new Corporate desktop push and configuration/usability technologies. Makes perfect sense to me and maybe we can see some more serious usability enhancements (DrakConf is great, but not much has changed lately) now that some of their costs will be more focused (if the community comes together, which seems pretty active already in the club).
    • Thing is, what Mandrake's calling stable now will become testing level. Basically, right now, they take Cooker, work the bugs out, and get Official. What they're going to do, is take Cooker, work the bugs out, get Community (same level as old Official), work some more bugs out, and release Official.

      Here's how it's going to match up:

      Cooker's going to stay Cooker, and it's equivalent is Debian Unstable if you're looking at the Debian model.
      Official is going to become Community. It's about at Debian Testing

  • Translation for the short-attention-span-equipped (Score:4, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:36PM (#8163103)
    announced a major evolution in the way that future Mandrake Linux distributions will be engineered and released. The purpose of this new development process is to provide the highest level of new features, as well as maximizing the quality of new products.' In short: for each release, there will be a 'Community' release, equivalent to a common Mandrake release, with all latest features. Several months later an 'Official' release - based on the 'Community' - will be available.

    Translation from Long Marketingspeak: We'll take Cooker and freeze it, and then a couple months later, after we've fixed everything, it will be released. By which time it will be completely outdated, of course...and you won't be able to install (insert KDE or GNOME package here) because it needs version 3.4.2.5.34, not 3.4.2.5.33...you'll have to wait for the NEXT release(which will be unusable of course until -it- is sorted) to get .34....

    Boy, they're right, that does sound nicer :-)

  • It will be a better and smoother process.
    I always want to convince my self to buy a Mandrake pack, but I can have it free :-)
    Now, I will have a reason :-)

    Anyway, I hope, they will find a way to upgrade application for end user more easy that the current shame. I never able to upgrade the mozilla 1.4 of the 9.2 to the new Mozilla 1.6 with scapping a reverence to XZY !

  • If you can't beat them, join them? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joeytsai ( 49613 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:37PM (#8163114) Homepage
    It's interesting to see the different distributions slowly moving towards Debian's release policies. My question for the Fedora and now Mandrake is, why not utilize a very organized and effective "community" that exists right now of free software developers?

    Certainly Debian's release schedule could be improved, but Debian is hard to beat in "stuff just working" when it is released.
    • Mandrakesoft have created the cooker system since 1999 which is well organized with multiple tools (changelog, cvs, wiki, etc).

      The difference between the Debian release cycle and the Mandrake release cycle is that Mandrake is much faster to include new features/easy to install. This idea behind this new process is to add an additional cycle with a stable branch. So increase the stability while keeping the cutting edge.

    • It's interesting to see the different distributions slowly moving towards Debian's release policies.

      My first thought was that they were going Redhat's biz model, not Debian's. I immediately thought "OK... how long before they start charging more for the polished version?". Paranoid? Perhaps, but I have Redhat to thank for getting me to think it.

    • Even the Java projects I work on at apache are scared of debian unstable.

      The last recent one -java code (in Ant) that was doing a touch wasnt working. The cause? the c library code to set the filetime was broken. Fundamental things like that going wrong worry me.

      Still, it is easier to replicate a debian-unstable build than a redhat enterprise system -if someone files a bugrep on the latter, I cannot just bring it up in a VMware window for a closer look.

    • It's interesting to see the different distributions slowly moving towards Debian's release policies. My question for the Fedora and now Mandrake is, why not utilize a very organized and effective "community" that exists right now of free software developers?

      I think the problem with this scenario is that Debian's developers do what they want to, and can't just be "utilized" by a company. From what I saw in my years as a Debian user, Debian is more developer-oriented than user-oriented. For instance, NM

  • It's for the money.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SailFly ( 560133 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:38PM (#8163126) Homepage
    I think it's a way of getting people to join the Mandrake Community which is not very expensive anyway. I see it as a gentle nudge for those who actively use Mandrake and want immediate access to new releases. It really is for a good cause. I support their decision as I use their Linux distro on many customer sites.

  • The main change here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:38PM (#8163127) Homepage
    ...as far as I can tell, is that they're adding a "gamma testing" phase between the open-beta-test phase of the Cooker process, and the official put-it-in-boxes-and-call-it-done release. Seems like a reasonable move, because it lets users be a little more granular in deciding just how bleeding-edge or risk-averse they want to be with new versions.

    • Re:The main change here... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Akai ( 11434 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:45PM (#8163204) Homepage Journal
      I agree. They're not doing (as has been accused here) this:
      Old New
      Alpha Beta
      Beta Community
      Stable Official

      what they are doing is adding a cycle after the release "goes gold", which to me is an excelent idea.

      They basiually did the same thing for Mandrake Club members where they took 9.2 and all the errata and did a 9.2.1 ISO release.

      This truely provides the best of both worlds. If you want the latest kung fu, and can deal with a few bumps and bruises, go for it, but if you're waiting for enlightenement (not the window manager), wait for the Official, which might be a bit behind, but will have the last of the bugs hammered out of it.

  • Different than Fedora (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GOD_ALMIGHTY ( 17678 ) <curt DOT johnson AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:41PM (#8163165) Homepage
    It's a bit more like Debian than RedHat's model I think. The Community release will be functionally complete, but has bugs.. i.e Beta. The Official release will be the Community Release put through a QA process which seems to depend heavily on feedback from Community users. This is pretty much how I've seen Debian handle it's stable/unstable branches, although I'll admit I pay less attention to the Debian dev process than RedHat's.

    Personally, I think it's not a bad model for getting higher quality on a shoestring. I don't think Mandrake is out of the deep water yet, so I definately commend their ability to find innovative solutions to providing higher quality in their products.

    Fedora seems to be a sort of less public version of this policy. Fedora (Community) users add features and test the Beta quality software. The cream is incorporated into RH products and put through traditional QA testing, which is probably a much larger operation than what Mandrake can muster.

    Just my 0.0160900 EUR on the announcement.

  • Surprise (Score:3, Funny)

    by fredrikj ( 629833 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:44PM (#8163194) Homepage
    The purpose of this new development process is to provide the highest level of new features, as well as maximizing the quality of new products.

    I'm glad this was clarified. One might have thought the opposite.
  • Their previous strategy of just shovelling packages onto the CDs and not even bothering to test if they worked together was going so well.

    I mean really, who *doesn't* want to spend a week identifying and ironing out all the bugs, and downloading several hundred megabytes of patches as soon as you install Mandrake Linux?

    Surely thats part of the 'Mandrake user experience' that makes it such a wonderful product.

  • Great move for Mandrake (Score:3, Interesting)

    by clusterix ( 606570 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:45PM (#8163212)
    Having been disappointed many times with the 'release' quality of Mandrake (but loving their attempts at ease of use) I think this is a great solution. It is obvious that their rpm catalog needs much more work than what it is currently getting (especially for big version updates), this should iron out the bugs and make a superior product when it is ready to ship CDs to off-the-shelf first time users and nonhacker corporations.

    Hopefully this will finally make Mandrake suitable for corporate use (since Redhat Enterprise did the same thing against regular Redhat and now Fedora and Debian does a similar but MUCH slower version).

    I hope that source based distros start to find a similar solution ie. Gentoo and Gentoo"Stable" (well mirrored and tested) so that they can reach a more mission critical set of users. I use ROCK Linux and they have been trying and failing to bridge this gap. It is important especially if distro makers want big contracts.

  • Smart move by Mandrake (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Krafty Koder ( 697396 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:55PM (#8163307)
    This is a very smart move by Mandrake. The Cooker idea worked well, but it was never officially promoted in a big way i.e. you never hit the Mandrake home page and saw "Cooker release 9.2 available for download"

    Dare I say, but it sounds very like the Debian way of doing things (unstable - testing - stable).

    But there's a double-edged sword with doing things this way , in that you'll never have the bleeding edge stuff in a "Community" Mandrake release.

    But then, if you want that ,you must know what you are doing - and you'll just end up using Cooker anyway.

    imho,the Community thing is more aimed at the general casual Linux user - a bit experienced ,but not experienced enough to compile their own kernels. And that's a good thing - more exposure to a wider range of platforms and better bug feedback.

    As an example on why they had to introduce this (possibly), the much advertised MandrakeMove Live CD doesnt even recognise some PCMCIA wireless cards in laptops. A bad oversight.

    A MandrakeMove community edition would have helped in identifying this glaring omission.

    Overall, it's a big big thumbs up from myself - well done Mandrake for introducing the Community Edition idea.

  • Pay for Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by humandoing ( 237262 ) on Monday February 02, 2004 @05:59PM (#8163347) Homepage
    How many /. type folx are actually paying for linux distributions these days? I'm not seeking flamebait, but just curious. With distro's like Mandrake, Suse, and Redhat all starting to charge some cash for their production releases, are more people starting to look to alternatives such as Gentoo and Debian? Are others starting to scrap the idea of Linux and move to OSX?

    What gets you stoked about Linux? The price tag? Quality? Security? or the fact that it isn't M$.

    I'd be willing to pay for a distro like SuSE (or whatever) if I knew that the quality was uber-superb. But even my latest go-round with RedHat 9 has left me fairly unimpressed... Maybe I just love OS X too much?

    • Re:Pay for Linux... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jzarling ( 600712 )
      I dont mind paying a few bucks for Linux. A couple of bucks for the ISOs is better than say 200 for the pretty box.


    • What gets you stoked about Linux? The price tag? Quality? Security? or the fact that it isn't M$.

      I'd like to answer that question: Yes. ;)
    • Gave 'em about 120 bucks. Bought a year of the Club, then bought a boxed 9.2 set with the discount Club membership gives you. That throws an extra month into the Membership as well.

      The way I see it, they deserve some support for services well rendered. I downloaded 8.2 and am still using it. (Very good release overall.)

      9.2 was a bit of a wash for me. Lots of new stuff, but some rather annoying bugs. The 9.2.1 iso looks to be well worth the club membership. (When I get to downloading it that is..)

      B

  • Big picture: (Score:2, Informative)

    by capn_buzzcut ( 676680 )
    Mandrake is responding to its user's wishes. If you don't like the way Mandrake does things, the good news is that there are several other distros to choose from. There's no need to rag on Mandrake for making this change - it's certainly more innovative and user friendly than what Redhat and Suse have done with their sales model. Remember, you can still download free Mandrake iso's and updates are still free too.

  • Gentoo (Score:2, Informative)

    by destiney ( 149922 )

    If you guys would just shutup and install Gentoo [gentoo.org] you wouldn't be having these stupid distro discussions.

    Gentoo is simple, one install per machine for life.

    Put this in your daily cron to keep the whole system up to date:
    emerge sync
    emerge -pvu world
    Then every morning you can see what new stuff you may want to update that day.

    Look for new software with:
    emerge -s whatever

    Remove software with:
    emerge -pvC whatever

    Unless you have and run exactly what chipset and compiler flags your "distro" based binarys ar

    • Re:Gentoo (Score:3, Informative)

      by buchanmilne ( 258619 )
      Gentoo is simple, one install per machine for life.

      On Mandrake also, except it doesn't take a week to get a functional system.


      Put this in your daily cron to keep the whole system up to date:
      emerge sync

      urpmi.update


      emerge -pvu world

      urpmi --auto-select --auto


      Then every morning you can see what new stuff you may want to update that day.

      On Mandrake it's already updated for you, you don't have to wait the rest of the day for it to compile ...


      Look for new software with:
      emerge -s whatever

      u
  • Can grandma use it? Are programs and drivers simple to install? If not, it's back to the drawing board fellas.

    One of the major problems with any Linux distro is the designers (nerds) make it for themselves. XP isn't dominant because of a monopoly, it's dominant because it's so damn easy for even the most inept of users. People could care less about security holes, instability, support-a-coroporate-monolith, if it means they can actually get their computer to do what they want it to.
    You can be a Linux eli
  • This sounds like a refinement of RH's strategy to me. Fedora's designed for consumer usage, with certain features from Fedora eventually finding their way to RHEL (say, if someone working on Fedora comes up with an amazingly good idea, or some such).

    Of course, the only difference seems to be that Mandrake's "official" releases are still targeted at the consumer with download editions, while the "official" fedora releases are meant for corporate consumption.
  • Err... I presume the PR meant first with *graphical* partitioning utility, since even the bare-bones fdisk counts as one.

    In fact, I still use fdisk in conjunction with Anaconda's GUI to GNU parted; when one is fussy about the positioning and naming of partitions on disk, one have to.

    To their credit, Mandrake has one of the more powerful GUI partitioning utility around. Apart from that one release (9.0 IIRC?) where you could not enter the partition size manually and have to use sliders!

  • drat (Score:2)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
    And here I was, hoping that "Switch from use of RPM to DEB package management" and "Get rid of /etc/sysconfig and do things in a less redundant manner" were on their list.

    Maybe they're saving that for a later release? Doubt it, personally. You'd think they'd make the change, though - package management is much easier with debian than with an RPM system.
    • ... comparing apt to rpm?

      package management is much easier with debian than with an RPM system.

      So I'm guessing you use dpkg to install all packages on your Debian box? What, you don't???

      Just as I don't use rpm to install all RPM packages on my box, I use urpmi for 99.9% of them, I only use rpm when I want to revert a package to test scripts in an upgrade scenario for the packages I maintain.

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