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Mandriva 2006 RC1 has arrived!

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Mandriva 2006rc1 quietly hit the mirrors yesterday and as we continue our coverage of this upcoming milestone release we find some new features and as always, many many bug fixes. Mandriva's been through a lot of changes in the past year and the world waits with bated breath to see how all will effect their popular operating system.

When Mandriva aquired Connectiva early in 2005 users wondered what would be in store for them from the dedicated and creative development team at then Mandrakesoft. Would they incorporate some of Connectiva's features and applications? Rumors ran rampant, but one thing was almost assured. Mandrake would probably include their software installer. Thanks to the heads up at DistroWatch we find that this speculated event has come to fruition. "Gaël Duval hinted that the distribution's long-established urpmi package manager will soon incorporate some elements from smart, a package management tool developed by Conectiva." In fact it's available at this time as seperate optional package. As I looked at the smart package I keep having one thought. Synaptic. It's look and feel are almost exactly like synaptic. Unable to ascertain if one is based on the other, and not delving into the code, but I suspect this might be the case. As one opens smart --gui, the same options and buttons are available. First order of business is to click the Reload button to update the source database. As in synaptic, it downloads the source list from remote mirrors.

Then one picks a package they desire and "marks" it for install or upgrade.

Once all the packages have been marked, click "apply" and it verifies the dependencies and seeks the user approval.

Click ok, and it downloads the packages and dependencies.

Then it installs the packages and keeps the user informed by a graphical progress bar.

Then it updates its cache to correctly reflect the new installs.

In the above referenced interview Gaël Duval he states that Smart has "better algorithms and it's more sophisticated." So many years and so much work has gone into Mandriva's own urpmi. I predict we will still see the gurpmi front-end with the smart back-end in future releases. As it is presently, one can choose either one or the other. ...or both.


Mentioned in previous reviews of Mandriva 2006 beta, Kat desktop search will also be new this release. It's an exciting addition and as developer Roberto Cappuccio states it "index files and content, but then we go beyond this and link the items based on their context."

In operation one first must define which directories they wish indexed to use in their searches. So, if you wish your entire system to be searched, you should define "/" as the directory.

Then it does its indexing.

When the indexing chore is complete, it will graphically represent the directory.

Then you can search for your file and again, it will present the finds.


However, this is after the install. One finds that new graphics begin before that. New installation graphics are offered this release. They are flatter, less 3-D like, and give one almost a nostogic feeling if they remember Mandrake past. However the new graphics are updated to a modern and professional presentation and sure not to disappoint.

    

Also new is Mandriva's slide show screensaver. It's pretty cute as it protects your screen from burnout. Well, okay, that's not likely with modern monitors, but it still gives one some cute images to distract you from your daily grind.

        

And we see a nice new index.html for our browsers.

    

And man oh man, is this thing fast!!! It's blazing! I clocked the times this release and here are my results on an AMD 2800+, kt400 mb, 512mb 333ddr ram, and a NVIDIA 6800.

  • Boots: 20 seconds
  • KDE: 12 seconds
  • OpenOffice: 4 seconds
  • Mozilla: 3 seconds
  • Shutdown: 15 seconds

Of course as we know Mandriva, most of the work is done under the hood. Some Package Highlights this release include:

  • kernel-2.6.12.11mdk-1-1mdk
  • xorg-x11-6.9-0.cvs20050901.1mdk
  • kdebase-3.4.2-30mdk
  • qt3-common-3.3.4-21mdk
  • gnome-desktop-2.10.2-1mdk
  • smart-0.37-3mdk
  • rpm-4.4.2-3mdk
  • urpmi-4.7.13-1mdk
  • kat-0.6.3-1mdk
  • mozilla-firefox-1.0.6-9mdk
  • perl-5.8.7-3mdk
  • Full package list as tested.

Many many other Screenshots HERE.

All coverage of Mandriva HERE.

Changelog:

  • Mandriva Linux 2006 rc 1
    • 283 fixed since 2006-0.3
    • 14876 packages rebuilt (6291 i586, 4167 x86_64, 1592 noarch, 2826 ppc)
  • DrakX 1.1074 / Drakxtools 10.3-0.55mdk
    • don't package drakvpn as it is unusable
    • Packaged installed
      • Don't install gnome-alsa-mixer when detecting alsa, gstreamer-alsa is enough
      • Don't crash when xorg-x11 is not available
    • printer:
      • Install "desktop-printing" only on sytems with installed gnome-panel, Discovery does not ship GNOME and also not desktop-printing.
      • Fixed endless loop when clicking "Back" in model selection, when by autodetection no model was found.
      • Do not set margins in CUPS when HPIJS is the driver, for this driver the margins are already well set.
      • Also match model name with added lower-case "hp" with HPLIP XML database.
      • When auto-detecting network printer models via SNMP, guessmanufacturer name from model name
      • Fixed printer list filtering in the main window, now one can also filter on the state field, and pressing <Enter> after typing in the filter string does not cause the filter being lost when hitting the refresh button or doing some action.
      • Taken care that auto-refreshing does not happen when the refresh function is running.
      • Auto-refresh the list of remote printers in the main windows every 5 seconds.
      • Made reloading of parallel port kernel modules (for auto-detection) also working if "ppdev" module is loaded.
      • Let also network printers be found which do not answer to a broadcast ping (most newer HP). This is done only in class C and smaller networks, to not scan too many machines.
      • Check for CUPS daemon running without console output.
      • Fixed retrieval of parallel port base address.
      • Fixed parallel printer auto-detection and registered IEEE-1284 ID string for Mandriva hardware database.
      • Fixed USB IEEE-1284 ID string output.
      • Added recording of IEEE-1284 device ID string, for USB printers.
      • When having added one's own PPD file now it gets pre-selected in the printer/driver list.
      • Fixed recognition of alredy set up queues for auto queue setup, for several Xerox Phaser printers the user was asked again and again to set up a print queue.
      • When setting up new queue with HPLIP old HPOJ config was not deleted during installation. Fixed.
      • Support for HPLIP URIs with "?device=...", possible fix for bug #18041 and bug #18053.
    • authentication :
      • fix bug #18180,
      • allow Active Directory even on non corporate product (requested by our commercial team)
      • Change definition for Active Directory with SFU and Active Directory Winbind
      • Remove idmap ldap backend for winbind AD (obsolete, see Samba 3.0.20)
      • Remove default_tgs_enctypes, default_tkt_enctypes, permitted_enctypes from /etc/krb5.conf for winbind configuration, Buzgilla 15232
    • bootloader: handle "=" between keyword and value (esp. useful for reading conectiva's menu.lst) (bug #18090)
    • Conectiva:
      • set isUpgrade to conectiva when we found a conectiva release file, also look for conectiva-release
      • new functionality: upgrade_by_removing_pkgs, enabled when upgrading redhat and conectiva distributions
      • add file upgrade-map.conectiva.10 for precise choice of packages
    • Look&Feel: simpler and better code, allowing forcing scrolling to bottom
      • new advertising
      • nicer "Details" mode
      • do summaryBefore() only once (this will reduce damage caused in bug_small.png Bug #18277)
      • new "Image_using_pixmap" which is rendered using DITHER_MAX which is much better on 16bpp displays
    • Network: don't translate strings here
      • configure wpa_supplicant correctly for shared or passwordless connections
      • wpa_supplicant may list some networks twice, handle it
      • rewrite drakroam to use wpa_supplicant
      • fix isdn config in manage interface use lower case 'i' in iwconfig/iwpriv/iwspy (bug_small.png Bug #18031)
      • Drakroam: really allow to select the network
      • sm56 support allow to run perl code as post command
      • don't display keyring icon if the wireless network doesn't need a key
      • set SSID for rt2400/rt2500 cards using WPA with an iwpriv command (bug_small.png Bug #18205)
      • enable Interactive firewall by default in high security levels and enable the psd rule

  • kernel 2.6.12-11mdk
    • assorted x86_64 fixes from current git tree:
    • fix 32-bit thread debugging
    • fix TASK_SIZE for compatibility mode processes
    • fix overflow in NUMA hash function setup
    • fix bug in csum_partial_copy_generic()
    • fix HPET for systems that don't support legacy replacement
    • add support for more than 8 cores on AMD64 systems
    • tell VM about holes in nodes
    • avoid wasting IRQs

  • disksearch 1.1.0 Catalog and search tool for removable media
  • pxelinux 3.10 A PXE bootloader
  • klamav 0.22.1 KDE frontend for the Clam AntiVirus? virus scanner
  • rpmdrake 2.20 Mandriva Linux graphical front end for sofware installation/removal
  • zapping 0.9.6 A TV viewer for GNOME
  • bazaar 1.4.2 A distributed revision control system compatible with arch
  • gxine 0.4.7 GTK+ frontend for the Xine multimedia player
  • kdetv 0.8.8 Kdetv - KDE Video4Linux Stream Capture Viewer
  • poppler 0.4.1 PDF rendering library
  • evince 0.4.0 GNOME Document viewer
  • pygame 1.7.1 Python module for interfacing with the SDL multimedia library
  • streamtuned 0.16.2 Audio/Video stream player and recorder
  • aptitude 0.3.3 Curses-based apt frontend
  • penguintv 0.76 Media-rich RSS reader
  • openldap 2.3.6 LDAP servers and sample clients
  • gnome-photo-printer 0.6.5 Simple Photo Printer for Gnome
  • sympa 5.1.0 SYMPA is an electronic mailing list manager
  • dvgrab 1.8 DV grabber through the FireWire? interface
  • gtk+2.0 2.8.3 The GIMP ToolKit? (GTK+), a library for creating GUIs
  • sylpheed2 2.0.1 A GTK+2 based, lightweight, and fast e-mail client
  • ImageMagick? 6.2.4.3 An X application for displaying and manipulating images
  • slune 1.0.9 A multiplayer 3D racing and car-crashing game in Python
  • warzone2100 0.2.2 Warzone 2100 Screenshot 3D realtime strategy on a future Earth
  • smb4k 0.6.3 A KDE SMB share browser
  • geos 2.1.4 GEOS (Geometry Engine, Open Source) topology library
  • msec 0.47.3 Security Level management for the Mandriva Linux distribution
  • drakpxelinux 1.2.0 PXE default file configurator
  • indexhtml 2006.0 Mandriva Linux html welcome page
  • ximian-connector 2.2.3 Exchange Connector for Evolution
  • eclipse 3.1.0 An open, extensible IDE
  • mandi 0.7.2 Monitoring daemon bridge
  • kernel-multimedia-2.6.11-9.mm.7mdk 1 The Linux kernel (the core of the Linux operating system)
  • synaptic 0.57.2 Graphical package management program using apt
  • gstreamer 0.8.11 GStreamer Streaming-media framework runtime
  • valgrind 3.0.1 Valgrind, an open-source memory debugger for x86-linux
  • openh323 1.15.6 OpenH323? Library
  • openssh 4.2p1 OpenSSH? free Secure Shell (SSH) implementation
  • gnomemeeting 1.2.2 Gnome H.323 compatible client
  • amarok 1.3.1 A powerful media player for Kde
  • gdm 2.8.0.4 The GNOME Display Manager
  • kat 0.6.3 Desktop Search Engine for Linux

Many many other Screenshots HERE.

All coverage of Mandriva HERE.

mdv 2006.04 Q&A

I received an email asking what about bugs? Here's the exchange, short and sweet:

> What about the bugs?!?!

I didn't run across many. But you know me. They got to be obvious.

> Gnome works now?

Yes, it did fine here.

> Usbkeys mounting?

Still broke here.

> usb hard drives mounting?

don't got none to test.

> Network connections working?

worked fine here.

----
You talk the talk, but do you waddle the waddle?

re: Great review but...

lol... dang, one of my major shortcomings... I need an editor! Thank you so much, just wish you'da told me 7000 hits ago! hehe Blushing

----
You talk the talk, but do you waddle the waddle?

re: Great review but...

What kinda editor? gedit or an editorial editor? Smile

Re: re: Great review but...

Béranger wrote:

What kinda editor? [b]gedit[/b] or an editorial editor? Smile

teehee. I have plenty of the gedits and the like. I mean one of those guys who circle the extraneous or redundant info, bad grammar and misspellings in red. Big Grin

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