Mandriva SA to transfer distro to an independent entity, says CEO

[Warren Post]

Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva SA took
the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux
distribution to an independent entity":

http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/

--
Warren Post
http://my.opera.com/wpost/

[Adam]

Warren Post wrote:
> Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva SA
> took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva
> Linux distribution to an independent entity":
>
> http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/

Thanks for the link, Warren! Does anybody have any guesses yet as
to what that might mean for the future of the Mandriva Linux
distribution? Are there likely to be Mandriva 2012, 2013,... or is
it being abandoned or is that up to the people comprising the
"independent entity", whoever they may be?

Adam
--
Registered Linux User #536473

[Bobbie Sellers]

The development community will produce the Mandriva Linux
and one supposes that Mandriva SA will combine some proprietary
products to produce Mandriva Powerpack Linux which will be sold
as in the past. It seems some progress has been made on Mandriva
2012 already but since I don't pay close attention to that phase
of Mandriva(i.e. cooker).

IMO of course, but you wanted guesses.

bliss

[Jim Beard]

On 05/17/2012 06:45 PM, Warren Post wrote:
> Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva
> SA took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the
> Mandriva Linux distribution to an independent entity":
>
> http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/

Another item has appeared, courtesy of Raphaël Jadot, complete
with errata.

QUOTE
http://blog.mandriva.com/en/

It's now official.
Mandriva Linux project will be lead by an independant entity.


- Mandriva will still support this project in it and invest time,
work
and money in it.

- Now, at this moment, there is a temporary "arbitrary"
workgroup, which
is working on how organize the structure, the processes etc. I say
"arbitrary" because we (i am in this group) are not elected by the
community. So this situation is only temporary as we are working
on how
having a democratic structure.

- Still temporary "arbitrary" but for the same reason, Per Øyvind
Karlsen (proyvind) will be acting as project leader for the course of
Mandriva Linux 2012 development, with Bernhard Rosenkränzer (aka
bero) &
Matthew Dawkins (aka mdawkins also founder of Unity Linux
Project, close
partner of Mandriva) as release managers of. Thanks to them for
accepting these roles, and to maintain this project during this
transition, it's a huge work.

- The wiki is still hosted on mandriva.com domain, so does the forum,
but as annouced by JM Croset, it's now the community wiki : don't
hesitate to fill it, give your ideas, etc here
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2012_Development
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2012.0_specs_proposal
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Ideas_Mandriva_2012.0

- Many people told us (especially in community@ boxmail) to have
RedHat/Mandriva as an example to follow. Even if we get closer to
this
model, the relation will not be the same (correct me if I'm
wrong) as
Fedora is not independant from RedHat and its decisions.
In our case, when the structure will be created and all legal stuff
solved (trademark etc), the governance of Mandriva Linux will be on
behalf of the community and only the community (maybe in a model
closer
to Debian), and will be totally independant from Mandriva SA.
Mandriva
Sa will be a partner like any other people or company wanting to
contribute to the project : no more voice, no less.

- Soon there will have new channels especially for this project,
but at
this moment, don't hesitate to give your advice/feedback in this
list,
in the wiki or directly to the CEO (JM Croset) at
comm...@mandriva.com
(you can also write to this mailbox if you want more explanations, or
wanting to be part of the temporary workgroup).

ERRATA QUOTE

> - Mandriva will still support this project in it and invest
> time, work and money in it.
Mandriva SA will...

> - Many people told us (especially in community@ boxmail) to
> have RedHat/Mandriva as an example to follow
RedHat/Fedora

> the governance of Mandriva Linux will be on
> behalf of the community and only the community
Under the responsibility of the community

> - Soon there will have new channels especially for this
> project, but at this moment, don't hesitate to give
> your advice/feedback in this list, in the wiki or directly
> to the CEO (JM Croset) at comm...@mandriva.com
> (you can also write to this mailbox if you want more
> explanations, or > wanting to be part of the temporary
> workgroup).
And of course, in our forum

END QUOTES

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

[John_Danielson]

On 5/17/2012 10:32 PM, Jim Beard wrote:

> > - Mandriva will still support this project in it and invest
> > time, work and money in it.
> Mandriva SA will...
>
> > - Many people told us (especially in community@ boxmail) to
> > have RedHat/Mandriva as an example to follow
> RedHat/Fedora
>
> > the governance of Mandriva Linux will be on
> > behalf of the community and only the community
> Under the responsibility of the community
>
> > - Soon there will have new channels especially for this
> > project, but at this moment, don't hesitate to give
> > your advice/feedback in this list, in the wiki or directly
> > to the CEO (JM Croset) at comm...@mandriva.com
> > (you can also write to this mailbox if you want more
> > explanations, or > wanting to be part of the temporary
> > workgroup).
> And of course, in our forum
>
> END QUOTES
>
> Cheers!
>
> jim b.
>

I wish Mandriva community the best, and hope to have Mandriva again run
on my computers one day, hopefully sooner rather than later. While I am
not a Linux veteran in the true sense, and do not understand the console
work well, I am encouraged by the progress Linux is making.

I do not say the above lightly-- I purchased a 3-year Mandriva Power
Pack subscription before Mandriva went uncertain as to continuance, and
I am on a disabled person's income. So, you might say I have a somewhat
small multi-way vested interest in Mandriva continuing also.

However, I cannot really help debug stuff, so I have to look for what
works on my hardware with minimal investment of time and effort at setup
and configuring. So, for now I will mostly lurk and learn and try to get
the results working here as best as I can from time to time.

As Jim B. says, Cheers for better news!

John.

[unruh]

On 2012-05-17, Warren Post <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva SA took
> the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux
> distribution to an independent entity":
>
> http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/
>

What does this mean? And what does this do vis a vis Mageia, since that
is already a "community version" of Mandriva.

[Jim Beard]

On 05/17/2012 06:45 PM, Warren Post wrote:

> Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva
> SA took the decision to transfer the responsibility of the
> Mandriva Linux distribution to an independent entity":
>
> http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/

Another item from the Cooker mailing list, from Per Øyvind.

QUOTE
2012/5/18 Alexander Burmashev <alex.bu...@rosalab.ru>:
> This is interesting, while i think there are some interesting
questions that come to my mind right now:
> - What will be the build infrastructure ? Kenobi ? Will it be
open and also given to community support, or it will be closed
project on mandriva's support ?

As there's no specific plans in place quite yet, it'll initially
still be hosted on kenobi, but as we're moving towards making the
project independent, the current situation would clearly not be
acceptable for this and improvements concerning this will
certainly be required. It's a bit early discussing these details,
remember, we've just started assembling a work group to discuss
the initial details, where the first meetings has yet to take
place.. ;)

ROSA will be participating in this work group, with Vladimir
Rubanov & Eugene Sokolov representing it.

> - Who will manage repositories ? The package cleanup, keeping
it "closed", checking it for consistency, someone from the
community or mandriva employee ? Resolving the maintainer
conflicts and asking people to fix the packages ?

This is obviously something that the community should be
responsible for, which it will be.

> - Is mandriva still going to release PWP and sell it ?

I don't think Mandriva as a company is really much in a position
to generate sufficient revenue from it as currently stands to
really consider considering releasing and selling Powerpack itself..
Yet, given the fact that what really actually drives the sale of
Powerpack is very much related to the community and favorability
towards it rather than the product itself, it seems quite
plausible that an independent entity would be able to have more
success at selling, with the potential to generating a
considerable source of income from it, I have very much hope of
the rights for the product, with existing deals with independent
software vendors etc. would be possible to transfer.

I guess it's a topic that will be discussed over the next period. :)

I've made a draft proposal for a Mandriva Linux 2011.1 based on
Mandriva Linux 2011/ROSA Marathon 2012 btw.:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2011.1

If the future community organization could take over the rights
for Powerpack, it certainly sounds like a good candidate for it's
first release within the not so distant future.. :)

> - What about internal mandriva projects - ARM port, pulse, MDS?

What about them? ;)

The ARM port will most likely follow with the distribution, where
work done by Mandriva revolving around the community
distribution. For pulse & MDS, I really don't have sufficient
insight to discuss any possible future for this.
As said, it's quite early! ;)

> - Who will form the majority of arbitrary organ - community or
paid people ?

Hopefully a mix of both?

There certainly needs to be some people employed on it at least I
guess.. :)

Very little related to this has been going on behind the scenes
in advance, so unfortunaly I'm not in a position to give any
actual answers on anything quite yet and we will start to discuss
the very first details over the next days.

Meanwhile I encourage people to actively participate in cooker
development, and help contributing in planning of the next release:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Mandriva_Linux_2012_Development

Also there's a dedicated wiki in place where ideas etc.
discussing the future community organization can take place:
http://foundation.zarb.org
(If someone would like to volunteer for maintenance of it, and
also clean out the spam mess on it, feel free to contact me by
mail, and I'd be very happy to provide the necessary access!)

There also exists a dedicated mailing list on zarb as well, which
despite of being pretty much silent since 2007 is still open for
us to use. :)
END QUOTE

Plenty of questions. Answers to be determined. Who will
actively participate also uncertain (to me at least). Per Øyvind
Karlsen, Bernhard Rosenkränzer, and Matthew Dawkins (founder of
Unity Linux Project) will surely figure prominently in things
initially. Beyond that, my crystal ball fades out.

[Adam]

Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 05/17/2012 07:10 PM, Adam wrote:
>> Does anybody have any guesses yet as to what that might
>> mean for the future of the Mandriva Linux distribution?
>

> The development community will produce the Mandriva Linux
> and one supposes that Mandriva SA will combine some proprietary
> products to produce Mandriva Powerpack Linux which will be sold
> as in the past. It seems some progress has been made on Mandriva
> 2012 already but since I don't pay close attention to that phase

> of Mandriva (i.e. cooker).

>
> IMO of course, but you wanted guesses.

Thanks, Bobbie! It sounds like there are a lot of guesses and "we
don't know yet"s floating around. There are already articles
available through Google Search, and of course lots of info
continually being posted here in this NG, which I appreciate.

I know little about corporate structure and management, but my
impression is that the company Mandriva SA ("SA" is the French
equivalent of "incorporated" or "limited" or "LLC") is basically
going to let the Mandriva Linux distribution be handled by others,
so the future of the distribution depends largely on which of the
"others" end up in charge. That was probably obvious to everybody
else here already. I see the beta of 2011.1 is scheduled for the
end of this month, so I suppose my best option is still "wait and
see". There's still the question of how Mandriva SA will get any
income if they're not selling versions of Mandriva Linux, but I'm
not going to worry about that yet.

[unruh]

There WAS a user version of Mandriva set up already. It is called
Mageia, which has a bunchof the old Mandriva developers on it as well.
It would seem silly to now have yet another user controlled version.
So why does't Mandriva SA come to some agreement with Mageia. Or is
there too much bad blood for that. I am not sure that we have enough
"volunteers" in the community to do both Mageia and MandrivaFree.


>
> Adam

[phil]

unruh wrote:
.......<snip>

> There WAS a user version of Mandriva set up already. It is called
> Mageia, which has a bunchof the old Mandriva developers on it as well.
> It would seem silly to now have yet another user controlled version.
> So why does't Mandriva SA come to some agreement with Mageia. Or is
> there too much bad blood for that. I am not sure that we have enough
> "volunteers" in the community to do both Mageia and MandrivaFree.
>
>
>>
>> Adam

hear hear!!

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-18, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> my impression is that the company Mandriva SA ("SA" is the French
>> equivalent of "incorporated" or "limited" or "LLC") is basically
>> going to let the Mandriva Linux distribution be handled by others,
>> so the future of the distribution depends largely on which of the
>> "others" end up in charge.
>

> There WAS a user version of Mandriva set up already. It is called

> Mageia, which has a bunch of the old Mandriva developers on it as well.

> It would seem silly to now have yet another user controlled version.

> So why doesn't Mandriva SA come to some agreement with Mageia. Or is

> there too much bad blood for that. I am not sure that we have enough
> "volunteers" in the community to do both Mageia and MandrivaFree.

<sigh> You may be right about not enough volunteers, which would be
to the detriment of both. It looks like a considerable portion of
this newsgroup has already switched to Mageia but is still posting
questions here. OTOH this NG is one of the reasons I've stayed with
Mandr*. I suppose I'll have to research both (maybe even install
both dual-boot) and see which one is better for me (for my
definition of "better").

[unruh]

I switched to Mageia 2 on my laptop because Mandriva 2011 and Mageia 1
did not work ( crashes on bootup, or if I got it running, on running)
When I put on the grub bootloader (I like lilo but it crashed with no
message) I decided to try noapic, and then Mageia 2 worked, so I have no
idea if Madriva 2011 or Mageia 1 would work with noapic. Everything
works. (CFS10 toughbook) I am worried
about mandriva with their latest floudering. Mageia does not have the
software that Mandriva has (PLF, contrib), so I hope that either Mageia
and MandrvaFree unite, or that all of the software that is there for
Mandriva comes over.

In fact, what is the equivalent of contrib under Mageia?

And where is "restricted" and non-free (eg Acroread, Flash) for Mageia?




>
> Adam

[Bit Twister]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 21:07:28 GMT, unruh wrote:

> I switched to Mageia 2 on my laptop because Mandriva 2011 and Mageia 1
> did not work ( crashes on bootup, or if I got it running, on running)
> When I put on the grub bootloader (I like lilo but it crashed with no
> message) I decided to try noapic, and then Mageia 2 worked, so I have no
> idea if Madriva 2011 or Mageia 1 would work with noapic. Everything
> works. (CFS10 toughbook) I am worried
> about mandriva with their latest floudering. Mageia does not have the
> software that Mandriva has (PLF, contrib), so I hope that either Mageia
> and MandrvaFree unite, or that all of the software that is there for
> Mandriva comes over.
>
> In fact, what is the equivalent of contrib under Mageia?
>

My guess would be Tainted. :)

Things like skype, flash can be found in nonfree.

[David W. Hodgins]

On Sat, 19 May 2012 17:07:28 -0400, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:

> In fact, what is the equivalent of contrib under Mageia?

In Mageia, Core contains what would be in either Main or Contrib
in Mandriva.

Nonfree contains what would be on Non-free In Mandriva.

Tainted contains what would be in PLF Free.

Only PLF Non-free is not available in Mageia, as the council
members have decided not to allow them.

There were discussions, and if they do decide to include them
in the future, the probable name of that repository will be
twisted.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email.
(nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for
use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.)

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-19, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:

[Mandriva and Mageia]

>> I suppose I'll have to research both (maybe even install
>> both dual-boot) and see which one is better for me (for my
>> definition of "better").
>

> I am worried
> about mandriva with their latest floudering. Mageia does not have the
> software that Mandriva has (PLF, contrib), so I hope that either Mageia
> and MandrvaFree unite, or that all of the software that is there for
> Mandriva comes over.
>
> In fact, what is the equivalent of contrib under Mageia?
>
> And where is "restricted" and non-free (eg Acroread, Flash) for Mageia?

Really elementary question: Are the two distros already different
enough that packages from the Mandriva repository won't work with
Mageia?

[TJ]

Depends on the individual package, mostly on dependencies. If, for
example, a Mandriva package was put together dependent on libvital 2.3.0
(totally made up library), and Mageia is using libvital 3.0.7, with the
older library not easily available on the Mageia repositories, then it
won't work.

That particular problem showed up right from the start of Mageia 1 with
VirtualBox. Mandriva was using an older version of a dependency, so the
vendor's Mandriva rpm was very difficult to install in Mageia.

Fortunately, in that example the vendor's VirtualBox is available in a
universal install package that works just fine with Mageia. But it
illustrates the problem with using rpms built for a specific distro on
another distro. Some will work, some won't no matter what you do, some
will work if you're willing to jump through enough hoops to get there.

TJ

[unruh]

How does one get say chrony into the distribution (far better than ntpd
for timekeeping)



And why does Mageia list nonfree and tainted as "ignore" in the setup of
urpmi?

[unruh]

They may work now. But they will diverge more and more very rapidly
(exponentially) unless of course Mageia becomes MandrivaFree (which
MandrivaSA seems to want to set up).


>
> Adam

[Bobbie Sellers]

And if all of this seems somewhat slapdash and confusing
consider that Blue Systems took over the Kubuntu development. This
is the result of the Canonical focus on Unity.

<http://www.linuxtoday.com/it_management/blue-systemsno-plans-to-change-kubuntu.html>
Blue Systems produces the Netrunner distribution in both free and
Enterprise versions. All Netrunner needs is a Netrunner Control
Center to look a bit more like Mandriva with KDE and I mean KDE
3.5.9.

Which shows that for various reasons among which are the
"economy" and following "visions" of the future a lot of the Linux
distributions are re-organizing their production. Mandriva just
had problems earlier than most. Maybe they will get their act
together before most.

bliss

[Bit Twister]

On Sun, 20 May 2012 15:09:53 GMT, unruh wrote:
> How does one get say chrony into the distribution (far better than ntpd
> for timekeeping)

Become part of the Mageia developer community, create the package and
maintain it.

Or, fill out an enhancement request and see if they get around to
adding it.

> And why does Mageia list nonfree and tainted as "ignore" in the setup of
> urpmi?

Their decision. Since distribution some of the code violates
copyright/IP laws in some countries they leave it up the user and
mirror maintainer if it is to be used/available.


PS:
You might want to consider asking your Mageia questions in the
alt.os.linux.mageia usenet group.

[Adam]

TJ wrote:
> On 05/20/2012 12:04 AM, Adam wrote:

>> Really elementary question: Are the two distros already different
>> enough
>> that packages from the Mandriva repository won't work with Mageia?
>

> Depends on the individual package, mostly on dependencies.

[...]

> That particular problem showed up right from the start of Mageia 1
> with VirtualBox. Mandriva was using an older version of a
> dependency, so the vendor's Mandriva rpm was very difficult to
> install in Mageia.

I'm still running Mandriva 2010.0, so the VirtualBox package in
Mandriva's repository is relatively old. I've been using the RPM
package directly from the VirtualBox website and that's been working
well for me. Same for gphoto2, from the source code on the gphoto2
website. I couldn't uninstall Mandriva's package (too many others
depend on it) but I installed the newer one into directories earlier
in my path. OTOH there are other programs where building from
source from the program's website was such a hassle that I gave up.

Thanks very much for your answer, which I interpret as "usually not
(Mandriva vs. Mageia repositories) -- but often (not always) the
generic version from the program's own web site will work." I know
that sounds wordy, but (at least to me) it's a clear answer. Once
the dust settles with Mandriva or I buy my next computer, whichever
happens first, I'll be installing a newer release of at least one
distro.

[Adam]

Thanks for your answer, Bill! IOW the two repositories aren't, or
soon won't be, able to complement each other.

Mageia becoming Mandriva Free? That sounds like it would be a good
thing, at least for me as an end user. Ongoing development by folks
who know what they're doing, plus all the packages from the Mandriva
repository.

[unruh]

On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
> unruh wrote:
>> On 2012-05-20, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>>> Really elementary question: Are the two distros already different
>>> enough that packages from the Mandriva repository won't work with
>>> Mageia?
>>
>> They may work now. But they will diverge more and more very rapidly
>> (exponentially) unless of course Mageia becomes MandrivaFree (which
>> MandrivaSA seems to want to set up).
>
> Thanks for your answer, Bill! IOW the two repositories aren't, or
> soon won't be, able to complement each other.

AFAIK there are packages from the SUSE repository that can run on
Mandriva. And they have diverged for a while. The problem comes when
packages have specific dependencies on package names which are not
generic.

>
> Mageia becoming Mandriva Free? That sounds like it would be a good
> thing, at least for me as an end user. Ongoing development by folks
> who know what they're doing, plus all the packages from the Mandriva
> repository.

I do not think that MandrivaFree plus Mageia separately is stable.
>
> Adam

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:

>> IOW the two repositories [Mandriva & Mageia] aren't, or

>> soon won't be, able to complement each other.
>
> AFAIK there are packages from the SUSE repository that can run on
> Mandriva. And they have diverged for a while.

I didn't know that (some?) packages from the SUSE repository would
work under Mandriva.

>> Mageia becoming Mandriva Free? That sounds like it would be a good
>> thing, at least for me as an end user.
>

> I do not think that MandrivaFree plus Mageia separately is stable.

Hmmm. I'm watching what others say here for comments on the two
distributions. I may need to quantify my own definition of a
"better" distro. Certainly "stability" would be a part of it.

[unruh]

Different use of the word stability. I meant that having the two free
distributions, both largely Mandriva, is not stable. One or the other
would slowly, or rapidly loose both users and volunteers to the other.

The "better" distro might also be the one that is most likely to survive
the longest.


>
> Adam

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>>> I do not think that MandrivaFree plus Mageia separately is stable.

[...]

> Different use of the word stability. I meant that having the two free
> distributions, both largely Mandriva, is not stable. One or the other
> would slowly, or rapidly loose both users and volunteers to the other.

I see exactly what you mean. I'm waiting on migrating from Mandriva
2010.0 until I have some idea which of the two distros is likely to
be around long-term. It's similar to the recent Blu-ray vs. HD DVD
competition, which eventually did resolve itself.

> The "better" distro might also be the one that is most likely to survive
> the longest.

That certainly will be a major factor in my decision. I don't want
to be using a distribution where development has ceased and
DistroWatch calls "dormant".

I suppose I could start following Mageia newsgroups to see what
support is offered there. This newsgroup has certainly been a major
factor in my decision to stay with Mandr*.

[unruh]

On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
> unruh wrote:
>> On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>>>> I do not think that MandrivaFree plus Mageia separately is stable.
> [...]
>> Different use of the word stability. I meant that having the two free
>> distributions, both largely Mandriva, is not stable. One or the other
>> would slowly, or rapidly loose both users and volunteers to the other.
>
> I see exactly what you mean. I'm waiting on migrating from Mandriva
> 2010.0 until I have some idea which of the two distros is likely to
> be around long-term. It's similar to the recent Blu-ray vs. HD DVD
> competition, which eventually did resolve itself.

Yes, but this could take a while. I have been using mageia 2 now for a
week, and things seems to be working fine (Intel graphics).
Mageia 2 is still in RC status, so waiting a week or so would be good.
But in any case, a reinstall rather than an update would be a good idea.

[Bit Twister]

On Mon, 21 May 2012 12:31:42 -0400, Adam wrote:
>
> I suppose I could start following Mageia newsgroups to see what
> support is offered there. This newsgroup has certainly been a major
> factor in my decision to stay with Mandr*.

I think you will find a few subject matter experts lurking in
theMageia news group that post here.

The stability of the release has kept the amount of postings to a
pretty low level just like postings here are at a low.

I also feel the people who have migrated are a pretty knowledgeable
group which do not need much support. :)

Still holding at 6'th place at http://distrowatch.com/ with 1308 daily
hit count is not shabby.

[TJ]

On 05/17/2012 06:45 PM, Warren Post wrote:
> Mandriva SA CEO Jean-Manuel Croset blogged today that "Mandriva SA took
> the decision to transfer the responsibility of the Mandriva Linux
> distribution to an independent entity":
>
> http://blog.mandriva.com/en/2012/05/17/mandriva-linux-will-return-to-the-community/
>
>

Just to muddy the waters a bit:

http://blog.mageia.org/en/2012/05/21/mageia-comes-full-circle/

TJ

[unruh]

It really is nice to give a brief summary of a post you point to.

For those people, this post is Mageia's reasons why they are not joining
with MandrivaFree. So, we have the worst of all possible worlds--maybe.


>
> TJ

[Jim Beard]

There was an add-on to the "big news" that I find curious.

"In other news, Mandriva announced that they will use the Mageia
distribution as a technical platform for their new Business
Server product."

What, precisely, is a "technical platform"? I could be wrong on
how to interpret this, but it smells to me like Mandriva will be
using Mageia as their server OS.

Where does that leave the desktop? My guess is the Italians
(MIB) will be providing GNOME for the foreseeable future, so my
needs may be addressed in a way I like there, but with more
pieces being whittled off, one might wonder just what will be left.

[Aragorn]

On Monday 21 May 2012 18:54, Bit Twister conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> On Mon, 21 May 2012 12:31:42 -0400, Adam wrote:
>>
>> I suppose I could start following Mageia newsgroups to see what
>> support is offered there. This newsgroup has certainly been a major
>> factor in my decision to stay with Mandr*.
>
> I think you will find a few subject matter experts lurking in
> theMageia news group that post here.

s/a few/many ;-)

> The stability of the release has kept the amount of postings to a
> pretty low level just like postings here are at a low.

Yes, that is true. I'm still running Mageia 1 and it definitely has its
niggles but in overall it has become very stable by now. The developers
and QA team are working hard to squeeze the bugs out of it.

Traffic may seem a bit lesser in volume in alt.os.linux.mageia than it
does here, but then again, it doesn't have an "[Off-topic]" thread. :pp

> I also feel the people who have migrated are a pretty knowledgeable
> group which do not need much support. :)

That is certainly true. No absolute n00bs there. Almost everyone using
Mageia had already been using Mandriva/Mandrake or another distro prior
to that. No Windows refugees there. :p

A small selection of poster names and pseudonyms that Adam would
recognize in alt.os.linux.mageia includes...

- Maurice Batey
- TJ
- David W. Hodgins
- Vince Coen
- Ar
- Pinnerite (Alan Secker)
- Jim Beard
- Bill Unruh
- sctvguy1
- Bobbie Sellers
- you (Bit Twister)
- me (Aragorn)

And that's just going back to a thread that Maurice Batey started on
April 27th 2012. Everything before that has already been expired by my
newsreader.

Some of the names of the above list have already either left from
alt.os.linux.mandriva or gone into lurk mode a while ago, but they have
all been subscribed here at some point, or are still monitoring this
group. I'd say that there's a sufficiently reliable knowledge base
between those selected people already to guarantee that anyone new to
Mageia would be able to overcome any difficulties associated with the
migration from Mandriva.

In addition to that, Mageia is still so relatively new that you don't
get many of the trolls and Win-droids you find in groups dedicated to
other (and more hyped) distributions such as alt.os.linux.ubuntu or
alt.os.linux.mint. I don't think Adam will be seeing too many
unfamiliar faces in alt.os.linux.mageia, and I would even say that it's
a shame he hasn't decided to monitor that group a long time ago already.

PCLinuxOS is also a Mandriva spin-off, but there is - at least, at this
stage still - a far greater uniformity and commonality between Mandriva
and Mageia than between either of those and PCLinuxOS. Among other
things, PCLinuxOS comes as an installable live CD/DVD only and uses
Debian's APT and Synaptic package managers in combination with .rpm
packages. Mageia still looks and feels like Mandriva in every way,
except for the branding and the fact that the distribution clearly has
its own personality in terms of how its community and QA/developer team
work. It really is a community distro, without a corporate overlord
breathing down the developers' necks. And personally, I like that.

Mileage may vary. ;-)

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

[TJ]

On 05/22/2012 01:31 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> Mageia still looks and feels like Mandriva in every way,
> except for the branding and the fact that the distribution clearly has
> its own personality in terms of how its community and QA/developer team
> work. It really is a community distro, without a corporate overlord
> breathing down the developers' necks. And personally, I like that.
>

I like it too, Aragorn, but I would have said it just a bit differently.
I'd say "Mageia still looks and feels much like the Mandriva before 2011
in almost every way..."

It's always been my opinion that Mandriva is the one that forked off,
because of that "corporate overlord." Mageia kept to the course that
Mandriva probably would have taken, had all that corporate shakeup (or
was it a shakeDOWN?) not happened.

I don't know if Mandriva Free and Mageia can both survive as separate
community-based distros, but with all the Linux distros and derivatives
out there, it's not inconceivable. What it takes is a group of people
dedicated to the distro's survival, a group willing to work long hours
for something other than a paycheck. At present, Mageia has that. Does
Mandriva?

TJ

[TJ]

One thing you could do is, assuming you have the space, install Mageia
and work with it for a while, get to know what it offers and what it
lacks for you. Then, if there is a package you'd like to see added to
the Mageia repositories, make a package request. I can't promise they'll
add the package, but I can say your request will be at least looked at
and considered.

But whatever you decide to do, waiting much longer isn't a good idea.
Mandriva 2010.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth, and those
repositories you're relying upon aren't going to be available forever.
And I'll bet you haven't seen many security updates in a while, either.
That doesn't mean Mandriva 2010.0 doesn't have vulnerabilities. It means
they aren't being fixed.

TJ

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 13:52, TJ conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> On 05/22/2012 01:31 AM, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Mageia still looks and feels like Mandriva in every way,
>> except for the branding and the fact that the distribution clearly
>> has its own personality in terms of how its community and
>> QA/developer team work. It really is a community distro, without a
>> corporate overlord breathing down the developers' necks. And
>> personally, I like that.
>>
> I like it too, Aragorn, but I would have said it just a bit
> differently. I'd say "Mageia still looks and feels much like the
> Mandriva before 2011 in almost every way..."

Well, okay... ;-)

> It's always been my opinion that Mandriva is the one that forked off,
> because of that "corporate overlord." Mageia kept to the course that
> Mandriva probably would have taken, had all that corporate shakeup (or
> was it a shakeDOWN?) not happened.

Unfortunately, this corporatitis has always been around ever since
MandrakeSoft went to the stock markets. Now, my personal considerations
with regard to stock markets and the entire financial-economic society
model all aside, it does appear to be the case that MandrakeSoft and
later on Mandriva have always somehow managed to attract the worst kind
of corporate management.

> I don't know if Mandriva Free and Mageia can both survive as separate
> community-based distros, but with all the Linux distros and
> derivatives out there, it's not inconceivable.

If Mandriva stays on the path where they are no longer supporting GNOME
or where they are offering desktop environment segregation as is the
case in PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu and several others, then I think there's a
place for both in the field.

Mageia could then remain the general purpose distribution for people who
are a little more experienced already and know how to make their own
choices at install time, and Mandriva could focus on the new users, who
prefer that their choices having been made for them.

But this is all academic, mind you. Time will tell how Mandriva will
evolve and whether it will survive. There is however no doubt in my
mind that Mageia is a survivor. Community distros generally are. Look
at what happened with OpenOffice and OpenSolaris when Oracle took over
Sun Microsystems. They nuked OpenSolaris and it was immediately forked
as OpenIndiana. And Oracle hadn't even nuked OpenOffice yet - and they
haven't chosen to do that, as they have handed it over to the Apache
Foundation - and immediately you got a fork, LibreOffice.

> What it takes is a group of people dedicated to the distro's survival,
> a group willing to work long hours for something other than a
> paycheck.

Exactly. And this brings Free & Open Source Software back full circle.
That's how it should be, and how it is at its best.

> At present, Mageia has that. Does Mandriva?

That will remain to be seen. Mandriva certainly did have that at one
point in time, and this is what Mageia is today, because most of the
Mageia developers are ex-Mandriva developers. When that community left
from underneath Mandriva's corporate wings, it left a huge gap.

So the big question is, how many of those who stayed behind under the
control of that corporate overlord after the departure of those
developers who are now behind Mageia are there left to carry on with the
development of Mandriva Free after that corporate overlord backs out?

I don't mean to sow any FUD, but I do not think it inconceivable that
Mandriva's decision to finally make Mandriva Free into a community
distribution may have come a little too late.

We'll see. The future's not written in stone. Only the past is. ;-)

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 14:10, I butterfingered the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> I don't mean to sow any FUD, but I do not think it inconceivable that

^^^
That word should not be there. :p

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 14:14, I butterfingered even more

> On Tuesday 22 May 2012 14:10, I butterfingered the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>> I don't mean to sow any FUD, but I do not think it inconceivable that
> ^^^
> That word should not be there. :p

Ehm, in hindsight, yes it should have been there. :p

Note to self: Need more sleep. :p

[Bit Twister]

On Tue, 22 May 2012 08:04:08 -0400, TJ wrote:

> But whatever you decide to do, waiting much longer isn't a good idea.
> Mandriva 2010.0 is getting pretty long in the tooth, and those
> repositories you're relying upon aren't going to be available forever.
> And I'll bet you haven't seen many security updates in a while, either.
> That doesn't mean Mandriva 2010.0 doesn't have vulnerabilities. It means
> they aren't being fixed.

Seeing slow security fix turnaround, Main web page security certificate out of
date, mirror list going dark, little to no problem reports in English bugzilla,
low response support in http://mandriva.598463.n5.nabble.com/ showed
me there are some basic problems and pretty much gave me the incentive
to drop mandriva.

The half smart/lazy criminals going after the known exploitable holes
in un-patched software by using malware on cracked webservers. I feel
it's better to be a moving target than being a sitting target.

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-21, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> I'm waiting on migrating from Mandriva 2010.0 until I have some
>> idea which of the two distros is likely to be around long-term.
>

> Yes, but this could take a while.

True. There's even a (IMHO small) chance it might never happen at
all and both distros continue development.

> Mageia 2 is still in RC status, so waiting a week or so would be good.
> But in any case, a reinstall rather than an update would be a good idea.

Okay, once the official release of Mageia 2 comes out, I'll install
it on another partition. I've intentionally never done a distro
upgrade, only fresh installs, and on separate partitions from my
"production" system.

[Adam]

TJ wrote:
> On 05/21/2012 12:10 AM, Adam wrote:
> One thing you could do is, assuming you have the space, install
> Mageia and work with it for a while, get to know what it offers and
> what it lacks for you.

I'm now planning to do that, once there's an official Mageia 2.
Yesterday I did a little repartitioning so now I have 4 20GB
partitions on my internal HD for various distros/releases.

> But whatever you decide to do, waiting much longer isn't a good
> idea.

I normally wouldn't have waited this long, but I was waiting until I
could see which way Mandriva vs. Mageia was headed.

> And I'll bet you haven't seen many security updates in a
> while, either. That doesn't mean Mandriva 2010.0 doesn't have
> vulnerabilities. It means they aren't being fixed.

Yeah, I know. In several cases I've replaced the Mandriva 2010.0
package with the latest generic release.

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:15, Adam conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> TJ wrote:
>
>> One thing you could do is, assuming you have the space, install
>> Mageia and work with it for a while, get to know what it offers and
>> what it lacks for you.
>
> I'm now planning to do that, once there's an official Mageia 2.

There is now. The Mageia 2 Official .iso images are on the mirrors
today. ;-)

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Monday 21 May 2012 18:54, Bit Twister conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>> On Mon, 21 May 2012 12:31:42 -0400, Adam wrote:
>>>
>>> I suppose I could start following Mageia newsgroups to see what
>>> support is offered there. This newsgroup has certainly been a major
>>> factor in my decision to stay with Mandr*.
>>
>> I think you will find a few subject matter experts lurking in
>> theMageia news group that post here.

Just yesterday I subscribed to a.o.l.mageia now that
eternal-september carries it (back to about New Year's), and I see
numerous familiar names posting there.

> Traffic may seem a bit lesser in volume in alt.os.linux.mageia than it
> does here, but then again, it doesn't have an "[Off-topic]" thread. :pp

I'm trying hard to stay on topic, or close to it, in this and other
threads here. The subject line here is "Mandriva SA to transfer
distro to an independent entity, says CEO" and my questions started
with "What does this mean to users, in practical terms?" and now
"With that change, what should I do?" I do /not/ want to be known
as "the off-topic guy" or as a thread hijacker, because I'm not.

> That is certainly true. No absolute n00bs there. Almost everyone using
> Mageia had already been using Mandriva/Mandrake or another distro prior
> to that. No Windows refugees there. :p

Yes, I see some familiar names there. I don't mind newbies when
their questions are relevant -- after all, I was a newbie once, and
so was everybody else in both groups. What I look for more is S/N
ratio.

> And that's just going back to a thread that Maurice Batey started on
> April 27th 2012. Everything before that has already been expired by my
> newsreader.

My news server, eternal-september, seems to have a.o.l.mageia back
to about New Year's.

> I would even say that it's
> a shame he hasn't decided to monitor that group a long time ago already.

Until recently, I was sticking with Mandriva 2010.0, so I didn't see
any point in following another distro's group.

> PCLinuxOS is also a Mandriva spin-off, but there is - at least, at this
> stage still - a far greater uniformity and commonality between Mandriva
> and Mageia than between either of those and PCLinuxOS.

But IMHO questions about Mageia seem inappropriate in a.o.l.mandriva
unless they also apply to Mandriva.

> Mageia still looks and feels like Mandriva in every way,
> except for the branding and the fact that the distribution clearly has
> its own personality in terms of how its community and QA/developer team
> work. It really is a community distro, without a corporate overlord
> breathing down the developers' necks. And personally, I like that.

As I said, my definition of a "better" distro for me will include
numerous factors of varying importance. Possibly the "best" distro
for me right now IMO might even be something else entirely.

A while back, I learned a technique for quantifying subjective
decisions into objective ones, and I may end up using that method
here too.

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:15, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> I'm now planning to do that, once there's an official Mageia 2.
>
> There is now. The Mageia 2 Official .iso images are on the mirrors
> today. ;-)

I don't see it yet, only mageia-1-dvd-i586 which I'm assuming is
Mageia 1. I'll look again later today.

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:38, Adam conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Monday 21 May 2012 18:54, Bit Twister conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>>
>>> On Mon, 21 May 2012 12:31:42 -0400, Adam wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I suppose I could start following Mageia newsgroups to see what
>>>> support is offered there. This newsgroup has certainly been a
>>>> major factor in my decision to stay with Mandr*.
>>>
>>> I think you will find a few subject matter experts lurking in
>>> theMageia news group that post here.
>
> Just yesterday I subscribed to a.o.l.mageia now that
> eternal-september carries it (back to about New Year's), and I see
> numerous familiar names posting there.

I'm on eternal-september too and I've been monitoring a.o.l.mageia there
since last year in June or something. I think that's when they added
it.

>> Traffic may seem a bit lesser in volume in alt.os.linux.mageia than
>> it does here, but then again, it doesn't have an "[Off-topic]"
>> thread. :pp
>
> I'm trying hard to stay on topic, or close to it, in this and other
> threads here. The subject line here is "Mandriva SA to transfer
> distro to an independent entity, says CEO" and my questions started
> with "What does this mean to users, in practical terms?" and now
> "With that change, what should I do?" I do /not/ want to be known
> as "the off-topic guy" or as a thread hijacker, because I'm not.

No, but at times it seems like the OT thread is the only one getting any
traffic in here. :p

>> That is certainly true. No absolute n00bs there. Almost everyone
>> using Mageia had already been using Mandriva/Mandrake or another
>> distro prior to that. No Windows refugees there. :p
>
> Yes, I see some familiar names there. I don't mind newbies when
> their questions are relevant -- after all, I was a newbie once, and
> so was everybody else in both groups. What I look for more is S/N
> ratio.

Well, that's sort of where the problem lies. In my experience - and I'm
sure many others here can vouch for that as well - the latest batch of
GNUbies are rather ardent Windows refugees, who are only in refugee
status because of the insecurities or TCO of Windows, but not because of
Windows itself as an operating system design. And so they're typically
also bordering "trollism", constantly complaining about how GNU/Linux
isn't exactly like Windows.

So among posts made by the most recent batch of GNUbies, the signal-to-
noise ratio is typically very low these days. It would appear that
Microsoft is really like a drug. Most people who use it get addicted to
it, and even though they're trying to wean themselves off of it, they're
still addicted to it, and in denial about that.

>> And that's just going back to a thread that Maurice Batey started on
>> April 27th 2012. Everything before that has already been expired by
>> my newsreader.
>
> My news server, eternal-september, seems to have a.o.l.mageia back
> to about New Year's.

No, it was much sooner. I remember that I was one of the people who
requested that they add it, because I too am using eternal-september,
and I think it was around June or so last year that they did, if not
sooner.

>> I would even say that it's a shame he hasn't decided to monitor that
>> group a long time ago already.
>
> Until recently, I was sticking with Mandriva 2010.0, so I didn't see
> any point in following another distro's group.

I monitor several GNU/Linux- and UNIX-related newsgroups. Even if I am
not using the distro of topic there, I can still offer help about or
discuss general GNU/Linux-related issues.

>> PCLinuxOS is also a Mandriva spin-off, but there is - at least, at
>> this stage still - a far greater uniformity and commonality between
>> Mandriva and Mageia than between either of those and PCLinuxOS.
>
> But IMHO questions about Mageia seem inappropriate in a.o.l.mandriva
> unless they also apply to Mandriva.

Yes, but that is not what I was referring to. What I was referring to
was that the transition from Mandriva to Mageia will be more smoothly,
and that this is made even more smoothly Usenet-wise because of so many
of the people from a.o.l.mandriva also being subscribed to a.o.l.mageia.

>> Mageia still looks and feels like Mandriva in every way,
>> except for the branding and the fact that the distribution clearly
>> has its own personality in terms of how its community and
>> QA/developer team work. It really is a community distro, without a
>> corporate overlord breathing down the developers' necks. And
>> personally, I like that.
>
> As I said, my definition of a "better" distro for me will include
> numerous factors of varying importance. Possibly the "best" distro
> for me right now IMO might even be something else entirely.

Only you would know that. As long as you realize that Ubuntu and
derivatives are things you best stay away from, coming from Mandriva. :p

> A while back, I learned a technique for quantifying subjective
> decisions into objective ones, and I may end up using that method
> here too.

And now I have no idea what you're talking about. :p

[Aragorn]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:49, Adam conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:15, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>>> I'm now planning to do that, once there's an official Mageia 2.
>>
>> There is now. The Mageia 2 Official .iso images are on the mirrors
>> today. ;-)
>
> I don't see it yet, only mageia-1-dvd-i586 which I'm assuming is
> Mageia 1. I'll look again later today.

Check here...

ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/mageia/iso/2

Seems to be all there. ;-) Of course, there may be somewhat of a
decrease in download speed, given the distance between you and this
mirror - it's in Belgium - but at least you can get started, should you
wish so, or simply find confirmation of the veracity of my statement.

[unruh]

Mageia 2 is "out" (ie on the mirrors) -- not as an iso yet, but the
i586/x86 directory trees.

>
> Adam

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:38, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> I don't mind newbies when
>> their questions are relevant -- after all, I was a newbie once, and
>> so was everybody else in both groups. What I look for more is S/N
>> ratio.
>
> Well, that's sort of where the problem lies. In my experience - and I'm
> sure many others here can vouch for that as well - the latest batch of
> GNUbies are rather ardent Windows refugees, who are only in refugee
> status because of the insecurities or TCO of Windows, but not because of
> Windows itself as an operating system design. And so they're typically
> also bordering "trollism", constantly complaining about how GNU/Linux
> isn't exactly like Windows.

Okay, I can see where that would be annoying and lower the S/N
ratio... but I'm not sure which newsgroups you're referring to. I
gather you /aren't/ referring to aol.mandriva and aol.mageia... I hope.

>> My news server, eternal-september, seems to have a.o.l.mageia back
>> to about New Year's.
>
> No, it was much sooner.

I was referring to their retention. They only have aol.mandriva
back to December, and it's been around much longer than that.
Teranews has aol.mandriva back to 2005, but doesn't have aol.mageia
(yet). There are separate Mageia groups on the (free) Gmane server,
and they have g.l.m.user back to September 2010. I see a few
familiar usernames there among many unfamiliar ones.

>> Possibly the "best" distro
>> for me right now IMO might even be something else entirely.
>
> Only you would know that. As long as you realize that Ubuntu and
> derivatives are things you best stay away from, coming from Mandriva. :p

I get the impression some of the Linux community looks down on
Ubuntu. No, I wasn't thinking of *buntu. :-)

>> A while back, I learned a technique for quantifying subjective
>> decisions into objective ones, and I may end up using that method
>> here too.
>
> And now I have no idea what you're talking about. :p

I can explain it if you want. Basically it uses one's own
priorities to determine the "best match", whether it's where to live
or what career to go into or which distro to use.

BTW I had to look through several Mageia repositories to find one
that had the final release of Mageia 2, but I'm downloading it as I
type this. My internal HD now has four 20 GB partitions for four
different distros/releases, so I can try up to three others at a
time without affecting my "production" system.

[Bud]

Aragorn wrote:
>> Aragorn wrote:
>
> ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/mageia/iso/2

I did and found it was not there. I did get an
index.html by leaving off the 2. Which is firefox 11.
--
Bud

[TJ]

Personally, I'd use http://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/. But hey, that's
just me.

TJ

[Doug Laidlaw]

I saw that too. Talk about muddying the waters!

> What, precisely, is a "technical platform"? I could be wrong on
> how to interpret this, but it smells to me like Mandriva will be
> using Mageia as their server OS.

Mageia point out that they are open source, so Mdv are free to do that if
they wish.

> Where does that leave the desktop?

Both sides are promising co-operation, but a fusion is not possible, for the
reasons they state. If the Mandriva board are still wanting to push the
commercial side, I suspect that they simply offloaded the open source
desktop, to sink or swim.

Doug.

[Doug Laidlaw]

Bit Twister wrote:

> On Sun, 20 May 2012 15:09:53 GMT, unruh wrote:
>> How does one get say chrony into the distribution (far better than ntpd
>> for timekeeping)
>
> Become part of the Mageia developer community, create the package and
> maintain it.
>
I have often taken Mandriva SRPMs and run them through rpmbuild. They are
re-branded automatically. That would get you started.
>
> Or, fill out an enhancement request and see if they get around to
> adding it.
>
There is a special department of Bugzilla for those requests, but they do
expect the proposer to be the maintainer. The Release Notes mention
packages that have been dropped for want of a maintainer. They don't want
outdated packages hanging around.
>
>> And why does Mageia list nonfree and tainted as "ignore" in the setup of
>> urpmi?
>
> Their decision. Since distribution some of the code violates
> copyright/IP laws in some countries they leave it up the user and
> mirror maintainer if it is to be used/available.
>
Defaults can always be changed.
>
> PS:
> You might want to consider asking your Mageia questions in the
> alt.os.linux.mageia usenet group.

Thanks for letting me know that there was one.

[Aragorn]

On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:38, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>>> I don't mind newbies when their questions are relevant -- after all,
>>> I was a newbie once, and so was everybody else in both groups. What
>>> I look for more is S/N ratio.
>>
>> Well, that's sort of where the problem lies. In my experience - and
>> I'm sure many others here can vouch for that as well - the latest
>> batch of GNUbies are rather ardent Windows refugees, who are only in
>> refugee status because of the insecurities or TCO of Windows, but not
>> because of Windows itself as an operating system design. And so
>> they're typically also bordering "trollism", constantly complaining
>> about how GNU/Linux isn't exactly like Windows.
>
> Okay, I can see where that would be annoying and lower the S/N
> ratio... but I'm not sure which newsgroups you're referring to.

Uhm, certain over-hyped Debian derivatives... :p

> I gather you /aren't/ referring to aol.mandriva and aol.mageia... I
> hope.

Nope, those are unaffected by the phenomenon. About ten years ago, we
still regularly saw Win-trolls over here - well, in a.o.l.mandrake, to
be precise - but those were easily chased away at the time because this
is a relatively strong community and people would soon killfile the
trolls.

These days, Mageia and Mandriva are not "top of the bill" distros in
terms of popularity. Mageia is still too new and lesser known to the
wide public, and Mandriva has already long lost its high ranking in the
popularity polls, which may in part be because of the namechange, but
I'm just guessing on that part.

The buzzword these days still /is/ Ubuntu, and Mint comes as a good
second (even though Mint is currently ranked higher on Distrowatch).
But saying "Ubuntu" is like saying "Android", i.e. you're not mentioning
GNU or Linux in the name, and so in the mainstream media - who for most
part really do have some kind of embargo on news regarding GNU/Linux -
Ubuntu has become a popular buzzword - possibly because there's a
corporate entity behind Ubuntu - and is touted as "an alternative for
Microsoft Windows", which is also how Canonical itself profiles it.

So... That's where the MickeySoft drones go now. Most of my killfile
entries are for alt.os.linux.ubuntu, and as of recently, I've also had
to add a few for alt.os.linux.mint. I don't think I have any entries
for alt.os.linux.mageia or alt.os.linux.mandriva specifically, but I do
have some entries that span multiple groups, and that may include this
one here.

>>> My news server, eternal-september, seems to have a.o.l.mageia back
>>> to about New Year's.
>>
>> No, it was much sooner.
>
> I was referring to their retention. They only have aol.mandriva
> back to December, and it's been around much longer than that.
> Teranews has aol.mandriva back to 2005, but doesn't have aol.mageia
> (yet). There are separate Mageia groups on the (free) Gmane server,
> and they have g.l.m.user back to September 2010.

As I understand it, those Mageia groups on Gmane are actually the
mailing lists, published as newsgroups. They do that for the Gentoo
groups as well.

> I see a few familiar usernames there among many unfamiliar ones.

Well, mailing lists are a different medium, of course. It's a different
part of the community.

>>> Possibly the "best" distro for me right now IMO might even be
>>> something else entirely.
>>
>> Only you would know that. As long as you realize that Ubuntu and
>> derivatives are things you best stay away from, coming from Mandriva.
>> :p
>
> I get the impression some of the Linux community looks down on
> Ubuntu.

<feign mode> Hmmm... I wonder why that would be? </feign mode> :p

> No, I wasn't thinking of *buntu. :-)

Good, then there is still hope for you. :p

>>> A while back, I learned a technique for quantifying subjective
>>> decisions into objective ones, and I may end up using that method
>>> here too.
>>
>> And now I have no idea what you're talking about. :p
>
> I can explain it if you want. Basically it uses one's own
> priorities to determine the "best match", whether it's where to live
> or what career to go into or which distro to use.

Ah okay, now I get it. Well, in the grander scheme of things, all
observation is ultimately subjective. That's how the universe works.
The art lies in being able to attain the grandest vision, so that the
greatest degree of neutrality can be assumed. ;-)

> BTW I had to look through several Mageia repositories to find one
> that had the final release of Mageia 2, but I'm downloading it as I
> type this. My internal HD now has four 20 GB partitions for four
> different distros/releases, so I can try up to three others at a
> time without affecting my "production" system.

Okay, so you've got room for...

° Mandriva,
° Mageia,
° PCLinuxOS, and
° openSUSE

Those four seem the closest related. Of course, some could argue that
openSUSE would be less related to the other three than Fedora, but
Fedora is not a reliable distro for production use. It's too bleeding
edge, and too much of a nanny, given its relationship to RedHat.
openSUSE on the other hand is highly usable as a day-to-day
distribution, and doesn't suffer from RedHat-itis. ;-)

[TJ]

On 05/23/2012 01:14 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>

>>

>> I get the impression some of the Linux community looks down on
>> Ubuntu.
>
> <feign mode> Hmmm... I wonder why that would be?</feign mode> :p
>
>> No, I wasn't thinking of *buntu. :-)
>
> Good, then there is still hope for you. :p
>

I looked at the 'buntus about a year and a half ago, shuddered, and ran
in another direction as fast as I could. The newsgroups turned me off
more than the distro, both the advocates and the detractors. I'm too old
and feeble to deal with that kind of crap anymore.

TJ

[Maurice Batey]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 07:14:09 +0200, Aragorn wrote:

> ° Mandriva,
> ° Mageia,
> ° PCLinuxOS, and
> ° openSUSE

Those are the ones I have installed.

OpenSUSE's attracton for me is its option to stay with KDE3!
(There is an opensuse-kde3 mailing List!)

--
/\/\aurice
(Replace "nomail.afraid" by "bcs" to reply by email)

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....

> Okay, so you've got room for...
>
> ° Mandriva,
> ° Mageia,
> ° PCLinuxOS, and
> ° openSUSE
>
> Those four seem the closest related.

Well, it /may/ turn out that the best distro for me isn't related at
all, maybe Slackware or FreeBSD or something. It does make sense to
start looking with something similar, though.

> Of course, some could argue that openSUSE would be less related

What about their (former?) connection with Novell? What's SuSe's
reputation because of that?

[Aragorn]

On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
> We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....

Well, ultimately, that's what all of this is about, isn't it? Given the
uncertainty surrounding the future of the Mandriva distribution,
contemplation of going with another distribution is pretty much
mandatory.

>> Okay, so you've got room for...
>>
>> ° Mandriva,
>> ° Mageia,
>> ° PCLinuxOS, and
>> ° openSUSE
>>
>> Those four seem the closest related.
>
> Well, it /may/ turn out that the best distro for me isn't related at
> all, maybe Slackware or FreeBSD or something.

Mind you that FreeBSD is not GNU/Linux. It too is a UNIX-family
operating system, but you wouldn't be running a Linux kernel. Also,
hardware support in FreeBSD is seriously lagging behind Linux.

> It does make sense to start looking with something similar, though.

Of course. I'm assuming that someone who stuck with a particular
distribution for so long as you have, and as most of us here have, will
be most comfortable with a distribution that has roughly the same look &
feel - by which I'm not talking of one's choice of desktop environment,
but rather in how the distribution is organized and handled - and the
same kind of reliability.

>> Of course, some could argue that openSUSE would be less related
>
> What about their (former?) connection with Novell? What's SuSe's
> reputation because of that?

Novell has always had a good reputation, and Novell SuSE - i.e. the
commercial versions - are often being deployed in organizations and
companies, on par with RedHat. Novell SuSE and RedHat are both endorsed
by IBM for use on their own machines, so that says a lot about their
reliability.

Now, Novell has of course been acquired by Attachmate a while back, and
the current business-oriented distributions are called SuSE Linux
Enterprise Desktop and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. The community-
developed distribution is openSUSE, but unlike Fedora, openSUSE isn't as
volatile or bleeding edge. Version-wise, the packages that go into
openSUSE are roughly on par with what Mandriva and Mageia are offering.

For instance, openSUSE has now for the newest release decided to use
systemd as the init replacement, and systemd was already present (and
the default) in openSUSE 12.1, but in 12.1 you still had the option to -
at boot time - temporarily choose a traditional SysV init, as well as to
replace systemd permanently later on with the traditional SysV init.
This is even documented on the openSUSE website.

Now, on account of Novell, it is of course a well-known fact that Novell
has entered a pact with the devil a number of years ago, when they
signed that interoperability deal with Microsoft, but Novell's version
of the facts has always been different from Microsoft's, in the sense
that Microsoft claimed that it was a kind of non-litigation pact on
account of SuSE and its users with regard to Microsoft intellectual
property in any version of SuSE.

Novell itself has always maintained that they have never acknowledged
the existence of Microsoft intellectual property in their distribution,
and I am more inclined to believe anyone other than Microsoft.
Microsoft is well-known as a master FUDster and a patent troll. And if
I had been the CEO of Novell back at the time, then common sense would
have told me that interoperability with GNU/Linux [*] is by definition
the very last thing on Microsoft's mind, and that it would have been
stupid to reach out to Microsoft, because the one thing you can say
about Microsoft with the utmost certainty is that they want GNU/Linux
(and all FLOSS in general) dead and buried by yesterday.


[*] Yes, Microsoft does supply patches to the Linux kernel to allow it
to run on top of Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor, but this is only
because Microsoft were caught red-handed hard-linking against a
GPL'ed network driver, and thus violating the GPL. As such, they
were legally forced to release the source code under the GPL, but
- despite their own statements about this, which were of course
not to be interpreted in any other way than that it was spin -
they would soon abandon the development of the submitted code
from there on, requiring the Linux kernel developers to prod them
several times before they would maintain it again. And at present
they are again maintaining the patches, but $DEITY knows for how
long that will be. And Linus has stated that if it's not being
maintained anymore, it'll be thrown out of the kernel source tree,
just like with any other obsoleted code.

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 05/24/2012 12:58 AM, Aragorn wrote:
> On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>> Aragorn wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday 23 May 2012 00:41, Adam conveyed the following to
>>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>>
>> We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....
>
> Well, ultimately, that's what all of this is about, isn't it? Given the
> uncertainty surrounding the future of the Mandriva distribution,
> contemplation of going with another distribution is pretty much
> mandatory.
>
>>> Okay, so you've got room for...
>>>
>>> ° Mandriva,
>>> ° Mageia,
>>> ° PCLinuxOS, and
>>> ° openSUSE
>>>
>>> Those four seem the closest related.

Include Netrunner if you are interested in the look and feel
of the older KDE, this is from Blue Systems which supports the Trinity
branch of KDE.
I tried out the Live DVD and it worked very nicely.
Their is an enterprise version as well.

bliss

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....

[...]

>>> Okay, so you've got room for...
>>> ° Mandriva,
>>> ° Mageia,
>>> ° PCLinuxOS, and
>>> ° openSUSE
>>> Those four seem the closest related.
>>
>> Well, it /may/ turn out that the best distro for me isn't related at
>> all, maybe Slackware or FreeBSD or something.
>
> Mind you that FreeBSD is not GNU/Linux.

I know; I gather that's about as far from Mandriva et al. as one can
get within FOSS *nix. I just wanted to emphasize that I'm open to
trying something different with a learning curve, /if/ it turns out
to be the best choice for me.

> I'm assuming that someone who stuck with a particular
> distribution for so long as you have, and as most of us here have, will
> be most comfortable with a distribution that has roughly the same look&
> feel - by which I'm not talking of one's choice of desktop environment,
> but rather in how the distribution is organized and handled - and the
> same kind of reliability.

I tend to over-research, but this way I can try out other
distros/releases while keeping my current install intact so I can
research any problems I'm having with any of the others. :-) Since
I have unlimited downloads (so far!), the only cost of getting other
distros is time (about 4 hours for a full DVD) and the small cost of
the DVDs to burn them to. So far (while running Mandriva 2010.0),
I've downloaded Mandriva 2011, Mageia 2 (official release),
PCLinuxOS 2011.09, openSUSE 12.1, and out of curiosity Slackware
13.37, CrunchBang 10, and Debian 6.0.5 in progress (8 DVDs!). I'll
also check out opinions online of all of those. Offhand, would you
happen to know whether any of them prefer ext3 or ext4 for their
root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty much standard already?

[unruh]

On 2012-05-25, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
> Aragorn wrote:
>> On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>>> We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....
> [...]
>>>> Okay, so you've got room for...

>>>> ?? Mandriva,
>>>> ?? Mageia,
>>>> ?? PCLinuxOS, and
>>>> ?? openSUSE

The 4 hours downloading is trivial (you do not have to be there. ) the
8-40 hours spent installing it, testing it out, trying to fix the
inevitable problems each has is the real expense. If you are
unemployed/retired without a social life, perhaps this is a possible use
of your time. For most however it is not.


>
> Adam

[Whiskers]

On 2012-05-25, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>> On Thursday 24 May 2012 01:08, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>>> We seem to be drifting onto "choosing a distro" here....
> [...]
>>>> Okay, so you've got room for...
>>>> ° Mandriva,
>>>> ° Mageia,
>>>> ° PCLinuxOS, and
>>>> ° openSUSE
>>>> Those four seem the closest related.
>>>
>>> Well, it /may/ turn out that the best distro for me isn't related at
>>> all, maybe Slackware or FreeBSD or something.
>>
>> Mind you that FreeBSD is not GNU/Linux.
>
> I know; I gather that's about as far from Mandriva et al. as one can
> get within FOSS *nix. I just wanted to emphasize that I'm open to
> trying something different with a learning curve, /if/ it turns out
> to be the best choice for me.

[...]

I'm getting along fairly well with Arch Linux. I wouldn't have dared
try it without having a few years of Mandr[ake|iva] experience, and a
lot of help from the associated newsgroups, already under my belt; even
so, the learning curve is pretty steep. Its main attraction is that
it's a 'rolling release' distro, so there's (theoretically) never a need
to install a new version of the whole system; upgrading is happening
continuously.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Aragorn]

On Friday 25 May 2012 17:07, Adam conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Since I have unlimited downloads (so far!), the only cost of getting
> other distros is time (about 4 hours for a full DVD) and the small
> cost of the DVDs to burn them to.

Wow, that long? I can download a complete DVD in about 20 minutes. 8-/

> So far (while running Mandriva 2010.0), I've downloaded Mandriva 2011,
> Mageia 2 (official release), PCLinuxOS 2011.09, openSUSE 12.1, and out
> of curiosity Slackware 13.37, CrunchBang 10, and Debian 6.0.5 in
> progress (8 DVDs!). I'll also check out opinions online of all of
> those. Offhand, would you happen to know whether any of them prefer
> ext3 or ext4 for their root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty
> much standard already?

Well, when it comes to the Linux kernel, there is no such thing as a
standard filesystem - because it can be installed on ext2, ext3, ext4,
reiserfs, XFS or JFS - but most distributions now do default to ext4.
It is a robust and very fast filesystem.

Do however bear in mind that if you're going to use ext4 on the
partition which holds the kernel images and the bootloader files, then
you will need grub2, as grub-legacy can't handle ext4 yet.

[Bit Twister]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 19:51:46 +0200, Aragorn wrote:

> Do however bear in mind that if you're going to use ext4 on the
> partition which holds the kernel images and the bootloader files, then
> you will need grub2, as grub-legacy can't handle ext4 yet.

Oh, no. I hope my systems does not hear that. I have all my new stuff on
ext4 and booting without grub2.

$ grub --version
grub (GNU GRUB 0.97)

[Jim Beard]

From /etc/fstab on my main machine:
# Entry for /dev/sda8 :
LABEL=2011pwp / ext4 noatime 1 1
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
LABEL=2010.2 /2010.2 ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2

From /etc/fstab on my backup machine:
# Entry for /dev/sda11 :
LABEL=2011PWP / ext4 noatime 1 1
# Entry for /dev/sdb13 :
UUID=c<snip>e /2010.2 ext4 noatime 1 2
# Entry for /dev/sdb8 :
UUID=a<snip>0 /2011.0 ext4 noatime 1 2
# Entry for /dev/sdb10 :
UUID=b<snip>d /2011a2 ext4 noatime 1 2
# Entry for /dev/sdb9 :
UUID=9<snip>3 /2011pwp ext4 noatime 1 2

Grub is doing fine with both ext4 and ext3 on my systems.
In all cases above, the kernel images and bootloader files for
the OS named in the LABEL are on the partition listed.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

[Bud]

Adam wrote:
>
> I know; I gather that's about as far from Mandriva et al. as one can
> get within FOSS *nix. I just wanted to emphasize that I'm open to
> trying something different with a learning curve, /if/ it turns out
> to be the best choice for me.
>

> I tend to over-research, but this way I can try out other
> distros/releases while keeping my current install intact so I can
> research any problems I'm having with any of the others. :-) Since
> I have unlimited downloads (so far!), the only cost of getting other
> distros is time (about 4 hours for a full DVD) and the small cost of
> the DVDs to burn them to. So far (while running Mandriva 2010.0),
> I've downloaded Mandriva 2011, Mageia 2 (official release),
> PCLinuxOS 2011.09, openSUSE 12.1, and out of curiosity Slackware
> 13.37, CrunchBang 10, and Debian 6.0.5 in progress (8 DVDs!). I'll
> also check out opinions online of all of those. Offhand, would you
> happen to know whether any of them prefer ext3 or ext4 for their
> root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty much standard already?
>
> Adam

Slack uses ext3 or you can use ext4. I use the former.
And still sticking to Slack 12.2 though I have 13.37 on
another disk. Happy with either.
--
Bud

[Adam]

unruh wrote:
> On 2012-05-25, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:

>> Since
>> I have unlimited downloads (so far!), the only cost of getting other
>> distros is time (about 4 hours for a full DVD) and the small cost of
>> the DVDs to burn them to.
>

> The 4 hours downloading is trivial (you do not have to be there. ) the
> 8-40 hours spent installing it, testing it out, trying to fix the
> inevitable problems each has is the real expense. If you are
> unemployed/retired without a social life, perhaps this is a possible use
> of your time. For most however it is not.

You are absolutely correct about the real expense being the time
installing and configuring. OTOH most of the time I enjoy it, so it
doesn't bother me as much as it might someone else.

Also, I know I over-research, and of the seven new releases I've
downloaded, I'm pretty sure that no more than two or three will even
make it past the "install and configure" stage. :-)

[Adam]

Thanks, Whiskers! I hadn't even considered that one, although I know
it's in Distrowatch's "top ten". Which newsgroups associated with it
are helpful? Also, do you mind if I ask why you chose Arch after
several years with Mandr*?

In fact, that's a good general question. For anyone reading this who's
not using Mandriva/Mageia/PCLinuxOS, why did you choose the distro
you're using? What are the strengths and weak points you've found as
you've used it? Thanks in advance!

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Friday 25 May 2012 17:07, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> Offhand, would you happen to know whether any of them prefer
>> ext3 or ext4 for their root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty
>> much standard already?
>
> Well, when it comes to the Linux kernel, there is no such thing as a
> standard filesystem - because it can be installed on ext2, ext3, ext4,
> reiserfs, XFS or JFS - but most distributions now do default to ext4.
> It is a robust and very fast filesystem.

Thanks! I realize there's no absolute "standard", but I understand most
distros have a preference or recommendation. I was thinking that I
could use mkfs to create the filesystem for each distro while using my
"production" distro, which would (I hope) eliminate the need to
re-create it during installation.

> Do however bear in mind that if you're going to use ext4 on the
> partition which holds the kernel images and the bootloader files, then
> you will need grub2, as grub-legacy can't handle ext4 yet.

Strange. Under Mandriva 2010.0:

[adam@eris ~]$ df /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 19G 11G 7.3G 60% /
[adam@eris ~]$ sudo grub --version
grub (GNU GRUB 0.97)
[adam@eris ~]$

[Adam]

Bud wrote:

> Adam wrote:

>> Offhand, would you
>> happen to know whether any of them prefer ext3 or ext4 for their
>> root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty much standard already?
>

> Slack uses ext3 or you can use ext4. I use the former.
> And still sticking to Slack 12.2 though I have 13.37 on
> another disk. Happy with either.

Thanks, Bud! Mind if I ask you why you chose Slackware and why you like it?

[Adam]

Jim Beard wrote:
> On 05/25/2012 01:51 PM, Aragorn wrote:
>> On Friday 25 May 2012 17:07, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>>> Offhand, would you happen to know whether any of them prefer
>>> ext3 or ext4 for their root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty
>>> much standard already?
>>

> From /etc/fstab on my main machine:
> # Entry for /dev/sda8 :
> LABEL=2011pwp / ext4 noatime 1 1
> # Entry for /dev/sda1 :
> LABEL=2010.2 /2010.2 ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2
>
> From /etc/fstab on my backup machine:
> # Entry for /dev/sda11 :
> LABEL=2011PWP / ext4 noatime 1 1
> # Entry for /dev/sdb13 :
> UUID=c<snip>e /2010.2 ext4 noatime 1 2
> # Entry for /dev/sdb8 :
> UUID=a<snip>0 /2011.0 ext4 noatime 1 2
> # Entry for /dev/sdb10 :
> UUID=b<snip>d /2011a2 ext4 noatime 1 2
> # Entry for /dev/sdb9 :
> UUID=9<snip>3 /2011pwp ext4 noatime 1 2
>
> Grub is doing fine with both ext4 and ext3 on my systems.
> In all cases above, the kernel images and bootloader files for the
> OS named in the LABEL are on the partition listed.

Thanks, Jim! I gather you're using ext4 for all your installs of
Mandriva 2011, any version, and ext3 for Mandriva 2010.2. I'll have to
look into 'noatime' in /etc/fstab, as right now I have 'defaults' for
all the ext3/4 partitions.

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 26 May 2012 04:56, Adam conveyed the following to

alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Friday 25 May 2012 17:07, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>>> Offhand, would you happen to know whether any of them prefer
>>> ext3 or ext4 for their root partitions? Or is ext4 already pretty
>>> much standard already?
>>
>> Well, when it comes to the Linux kernel, there is no such thing as a
>> standard filesystem - because it can be installed on ext2, ext3,
>> ext4, reiserfs, XFS or JFS - but most distributions now do default to
>> ext4. It is a robust and very fast filesystem.
>
> Thanks! I realize there's no absolute "standard", but I understand
> most distros have a preference or recommendation. I was thinking that
> I could use mkfs to create the filesystem for each distro while using
> my "production" distro, which would (I hope) eliminate the need to
> re-create it during installation.

Of course. ext4 is ext4 is ext4 is ext4... ;-)

Every new kernel release, there will be patches to the ext4 code - as
well as that of other filesystem types - but that's just code with
regard to how the kernel handles the on-disk data. The on-disk
filesystem structure itself remains the same. (They can't afford to
break that with every new kernel release.)

>> Do however bear in mind that if you're going to use ext4 on the
>> partition which holds the kernel images and the bootloader files,
>> then you will need grub2, as grub-legacy can't handle ext4 yet.
>
> Strange. Under Mandriva 2010.0:
>
> [adam@eris ~]$ df /
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda5 19G 11G 7.3G 60% /
> [adam@eris ~]$ sudo grub --version
> grub (GNU GRUB 0.97)
> [adam@eris ~]$

Yes, but as I gather, ext4 support in grub-legacy is a backport from
grub2. If my sources are wrong, then I am wrong too, but I was told
that upstream grub-legacy does not have ext4 support. So if the
Mandriva grub-legacy does, then that may be because of said backport
patch.

[Jim Beard]

Correct. Ext3 was the default on installation of 2010.2 I seem
to remember, and I never bothered to change it. I also have
Fedora 15 on a partition of my backup machine (normally not
mounted, so no entry in fstab) and that too uses ext4 and grub.

The noatime simply reduces wear on the disk a little. I am not
even sure the difference is significant, but at a little over
$100 for a hard disk and two on each machine I tend to try to
minimize need for replacement.

[TJ]

On 05/25/2012 11:10 PM, Adam wrote:
> Jim Beard wrote:

>>

>> Grub is doing fine with both ext4 and ext3 on my systems.
>> In all cases above, the kernel images and bootloader files for the
>> OS named in the LABEL are on the partition listed.
>
> Thanks, Jim! I gather you're using ext4 for all your installs of
> Mandriva 2011, any version, and ext3 for Mandriva 2010.2. I'll have to
> look into 'noatime' in /etc/fstab, as right now I have 'defaults' for
> all the ext3/4 partitions.
>
> Adam

My machines are all using Ext4, and grub-legacy with no problems
whatsoever. The partitions on two were created with a Mandriva installer
- 2009.1, I think. (But I can't remember for sure.) The latest was
created with the Mageia 1 installer, on my Dell Dimension E310.

But I must say, Mageia is the only Linux I'm using these days. YMMV with
another distro.

TJ

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Saturday 26 May 2012 04:56, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> I was thinking that
>> I could use mkfs to create the filesystem for each distro while using
>> my "production" distro, which would (I hope) eliminate the need to
>> re-create it during installation.
>
> Of course. ext4 is ext4 is ext4 is ext4... ;-)

Ah, good. That would save me about an hour of waiting during each
install... unless the installer insists on running mkfs anyway.

> Yes, but as I gather, ext4 support in grub-legacy is a backport from
> grub2.

For each distro, I'm planning on installing grub (or whatever boot
loader it uses) in the root partition, not the MBR, and I'm sure each
distro's own boot loader can handle the distro's own filesystem. In
sda's MBR I have GAG boot manager so all I have to do is to create a new
entry in it for each installation.

[Adam]

I figure each distro's boot loader will support that distro's
filesystem. Anyway the absolute worst case is that an install will take
an extra hour or so while it does a mkfs.

[Jim Beard]

On 05/26/2012 12:45 PM, Adam wrote:
> Aragorn wrote:
>> On Saturday 26 May 2012 04:56, Adam conveyed the following to
>> alt.os.linux.mandriva...
>
>>> I was thinking that
>>> I could use mkfs to create the filesystem for each distro
>>> while using
>>> my "production" distro, which would (I hope) eliminate the
>>> need to
>>> re-create it during installation.
>>
>> Of course. ext4 is ext4 is ext4 is ext4... ;-)
>
> Ah, good. That would save me about an hour of waiting during each
> install... unless the installer insists on running mkfs anyway.

An hour for mkfs does not seem right. Are you having it run
badblocks on the partition?

[Adam]

Jim Beard wrote:
> On 05/25/2012 11:10 PM, Adam wrote:

>>> Grub is doing fine with both ext4 and ext3 on my systems.
>>> In all cases above, the kernel images and bootloader files for the
>>> OS named in the LABEL are on the partition listed.
>>
>> Thanks, Jim! I gather you're using ext4 for all your installs of
>> Mandriva 2011, any version, and ext3 for Mandriva 2010.2. I'll
>> have to look into 'noatime' in /etc/fstab, as right now I have
>> 'defaults' for all the ext3/4 partitions.
>
> Correct. Ext3 was the default on installation of 2010.2 I seem to
> remember, and I never bothered to change it.

I figure each distro's boot loader will support that distro's own
recommended filesystem. I'll have make sure each one I install can r/w
ext4 on other partitions, and also what's involved in converting an ext3
partition to ext4. Most of my data directories are still ext3. In my
case another consideration would be my external USB HD. One partition
is VFAT and has programs for both Windows and Macs to read the files in
my ext3 backup partition and un-tar them. My purpose was that, if
necessary, I could connect the external HD to anyone else's computer and
copy my backups to a flash drive. (Maybe it would make more sense to
just have my backup partition be VFAT, but I'd still need programs for
Windows and Macs to handle my .tar.gzip backup files.)

> The noatime simply reduces wear on the disk a little. I am not even sure
> the difference is significant, but at a little over $100 for a hard disk
> and two on each machine I tend to try to minimize need for replacement.

Interesting point. I'll see whether there's anything about that on the
web. I was just mucking about in my /etc/fstab after repartitioning to
fit more distros on my internal HD. I also learned /not/ to list my
removable devices (all VFAT flash drives, some of which are MP3 players)
in fstab, so Mandriva 2010.0 will automount them using the partition's
volume label.

[Adam]

Jim Beard wrote:
> On 05/26/2012 12:45 PM, Adam wrote:

>> Ah, good. That would save me about an hour of waiting during each
>> install... unless the installer insists on running mkfs anyway.
>
> An hour for mkfs does not seem right. Are you having it run badblocks on
> the partition?

Yes, I figured that it couldn't hurt to run badblocks's read/write test
on each partition once a year or so. The new 20 GB partitions took
about an hour each. I also ran the r/w test on my existing ext3/4
partitions. (I used a live CD to check my root partition.) I'm aware
that most of the time even the read-only test isn't necessary, but my
theory is "it couldn't hurt". :-)

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 26 May 2012 19:07, Adam conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

> I'll have make sure each one I install can r/w ext4 on other
> partitions, and also what's involved in converting an ext3
> partition to ext4. Most of my data directories are still ext3.

ext3 can be converted in-place to ext4 using /sbin/tune2fs, but with the
connotation that your _existing_ files on the converted partition will
not make use of extents yet until you've copied them all over to
somewhere else, deleted everything on the partition, and then copied
them all back again.

[Bud]

>> Adam wrote:
>
> Thanks, Bud! Mind if I ask you why you chose Slackware and why you like it?
>
> Adam

Because I've started with it when I became disgusted
with winders. Back to distro 7. Which I used for many a
year then when 12.2 came out I had a friend download it
for me. Just upgraded without any problems. It had a
learning curve but that was back when my mind could work
without some dificulty. Now I work at it if I have fix
one of my mistakes. Puts hair on your chest.
--
Bud

[Whiskers]

On 2012-05-26, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
> Whiskers wrote:
>> On 2012-05-25, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:

[...]

>> I'm getting along fairly well with Arch Linux. I wouldn't have dared
>> try it without having a few years of Mandr[ake|iva] experience, and a
>> lot of help from the associated newsgroups, already under my belt; even
>> so, the learning curve is pretty steep. Its main attraction is that
>> it's a 'rolling release' distro, so there's (theoretically) never a need
>> to install a new version of the whole system; upgrading is happening
>> continuously.
>
> Thanks, Whiskers! I hadn't even considered that one, although I know
> it's in Distrowatch's "top ten". Which newsgroups associated with it
> are helpful?

None specifically; alt.os.linux would probably be the place to start
discussing it if a sufficient number of Arch users could be convinced to
take part. There are useful web forums, and mailing lists, and a very
comprehensive wiki; I haven't actually needed to post any questions yet
(which shows how good Mandr* and its newsgroups have been as a learning
environment, as well as how good the Arch documentation is).

> Also, do you mind if I ask why you chose Arch after
> several years with Mandr*?

I got fed up with reinstalling the whole system every 6 or 12 months and
then finding all the things that meant I had to change my way of doing
things. A rolling release cycle means that only one or two significant
things need re-learning at any one time; the downside is that something
or other is likely to break at any time. (A recent kernel upgrade led
to complete system lock-up at random intervals; pretty scary - but I
began to learn about things like chroot after booting into the
installation media to get a stable kernel running, so in the long term
probably a useful experience).

I also like the way the original installation is a bare minimum from
which a useful system can be built by installing only the stuff you
actually want. The Wiki is a superb resource for beginners installing
and maintaining a system.

Configuration is entirely by editing text files, which is an excellent
way of learning about Linux basics.

If you don't like the official binary package from the main repos, there
are 'community' packages which may have the compile options you prefer,
and if not you can create your own "PKGBUILD" script to customise your
build from source - even development versions from eg "git" - and still
have the package managed by the normal package manager ("pacman"). So
you could probably build everything locally, if you really wanted to
emulate Gentoo et al.

> In fact, that's a good general question. For anyone reading this who's
> not using Mandriva/Mageia/PCLinuxOS, why did you choose the distro
> you're using? What are the strengths and weak points you've found as
> you've used it? Thanks in advance!
>
> Adam

Could be interesting :))

[Whiskers]

I've got to the age at which such things tend to put hair on the floor ...

[Jim Beard]

There should never be a need to resort to intellectual exercises
for that sort of thing.

Buy quality coffee (any 100-percent Columbian with the guy and
his burro on the label somewhere) and use enough of it. No
skimping on how much to use for a pot, if you want excellent taste!

Drink it, and it puts hair on your chest. Spill it, and it
removes it.

[Adam]

Whiskers wrote:
> On 2012-05-26, Adam <ad...@address.invalid> wrote:
>>> I'm getting along fairly well with Arch Linux.

[...]

>>> Its main attraction is that
>>> it's a 'rolling release' distro, so there's (theoretically) never a need
>>> to install a new version of the whole system; upgrading is happening
>>> continuously.
>>
>> Thanks, Whiskers! I hadn't even considered that one

The "core" install CD is now in my pile of distro install discs to check
out. :-)

>> Which newsgroups associated with it are helpful?
>
> None specifically

[...]

> There are useful web forums, and mailing lists, and a very
> comprehensive wiki

Good enough! I said "newsgroups" but I was really thinking of anyplace
online where I could ask questions and find answers.

>> Also, do you mind if I ask why you chose Arch after
>> several years with Mandr*?
>
> I got fed up with reinstalling the whole system every 6 or 12 months and
> then finding all the things that meant I had to change my way of doing
> things. A rolling release cycle means that only one or two significant
> things need re-learning at any one time; the downside is that something
> or other is likely to break at any time.

Okay, that's one point in favor, and one against. :-)

> (A recent kernel upgrade led
> to complete system lock-up at random intervals; pretty scary - but I
> began to learn about things like chroot after booting into the
> installation media to get a stable kernel running, so in the long term
> probably a useful experience).

That sounds a little scary to me too. Still, I might try it out -- it
sounds interesting.

>> For anyone reading this who's
>> not using Mandriva/Mageia/PCLinuxOS, why did you choose the distro
>> you're using?
>

> Could be interesting :))

No responses to that yet. I think I'll ask the same question on my
local LUG's mailing list, which isn't specific to any one distro as this
newsgroup is.

[Adam]

Bud wrote:

>>> Adam wrote:
>> Mind if I ask you why you chose Slackware and why you like it?
>

> Because I've started with it when I became disgusted

> with winders. Back to distro 7. [...] It had a

> learning curve but that was back when my mind could work

> without some difficulty.

I can handle a learning curve, which I know Slackware is famous for.

> Now I work at it if I have fix
> one of my mistakes. Puts hair on your chest.

I understand what you mean, and that would be fine to me. Thanks, Bud!

[Adam]

Aragorn wrote:
> On Saturday 26 May 2012 19:07, Adam conveyed the following to
> alt.os.linux.mandriva...

>> I'll have make sure each [distro] I install can r/w ext4
>> on other partitions
>

> ext3 can be converted in-place to ext4 using /sbin/tune2fs, but with the
> connotation that your _existing_ files on the converted partition will
> not make use of extents yet until you've copied them all over to
> somewhere else, deleted everything on the partition, and then copied
> them all back again.

Sounds to me like it's /possible/, but in practice would be easier (and
possibly more stable) to just move all the files, use "mke2fs -t ext4",
then move all the files back. Thanks for the info!

[Nanci .]

> >> That is certainly true.  No absolute n00bs there.

...well there is almost one...me..and am not a Linux refugee...used
linux since Mandrake9.3
.I follow this tread- when I can -with some concern...now that I was
getting used to mandriva its future seems uncertain...haven't got my
hand on Mageia yet ..I guess the only way to get it is to download
from their site....prefer to wait till the end before switching...do
not know if it is wise... do not follow any other Linux group at the
moment, have no internet at home so cannnot subscribe to
alt.os.linux.mageia...I really really hope i do not have to start
everything again when and if...) I switch to Mageia...tryed Ubuntu and
really do not like it, and slackware, beautiful but too difficult for
me...and then I got used to the names of Bit twister, and all the rest
who regularly contribute here...anyway, all this just to say that
there 'might' be a newbie in the future in the mageia newsgroup...be
ready...
;-)

santo

sorry for posting from Google groups...it will be like this for some
time...

[unruh]

On 2012-05-28, Nanci . <na...@auroville.org.in> wrote:
>
>
>> >> That is certainly true. ?No absolute n00bs there.

>
> ...well there is almost one...me..and am not a Linux refugee...used
> linux since Mandrake9.3
> .I follow this tread- when I can -with some concern...now that I was
> getting used to mandriva its future seems uncertain...haven't got my
> hand on Mageia yet ..I guess the only way to get it is to download
> from their site....prefer to wait till the end before switching...do
> not know if it is wise... do not follow any other Linux group at the
> moment, have no internet at home so cannnot subscribe to
> alt.os.linux.mageia...I really really hope i do not have to start
> everything again when and if...) I switch to Mageia...tryed Ubuntu and
> really do not like it, and slackware, beautiful but too difficult for
> me...and then I got used to the names of Bit twister, and all the rest
> who regularly contribute here...anyway, all this just to say that
> there 'might' be a newbie in the future in the mageia newsgroup...be
> ready...

Well, since Mageia at present is just Mandriva repackaged, the switch
will not be anything like Mandriva->Ubuntu or Slackware.
The main difference right now is that the "connected"icon in wireless
mode is a globe rather than a tv screen (still blue) and the desktop
says mageia not Mandriva.
It will almost certainly diverge after a while.

[Bit Twister]

On Mon, 28 May 2012 01:04:11 -0700 (PDT), Nanci . wrote:

> from their site....prefer to wait till the end before switching...do
> not know if it is wise... do not follow any other Linux group at the
> moment, have no internet at home so cannnot subscribe to
> alt.os.linux.mageia...I really really hope i do not have to start
> everything again when and if...) I switch to Mageia...tryed Ubuntu and
> really do not like it, and slackware, beautiful but too difficult for

Not subscribing to other news groups, can slow down your learning
Linux experience.

As for alt.os.linux.mageia, you could be missing tips and tricks to
getting your mageia install running from the get go. :(

[Maurice Batey]

On Mon, 28 May 2012 15:30:01 +0000, unruh wrote:

> The main difference
> right now is that the "connected"icon in wireless mode is a globe

If that is Mageia-2 Official, then something has changed from
Mageia-2 Beta3 fully updated, for the wireless 'connected' icon here
on my laptop looks like a little green fir tree!
--
/\/\aurice
(Replace "nomail.afraid" by "bcs" to reply by email)

[unruh]

On 2012-05-28, Maurice Batey <mau...@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 May 2012 15:30:01 +0000, unruh wrote:
>
>> The main difference
>> right now is that the "connected"icon in wireless mode is a globe
>
> If that is Mageia-2 Official, then something has changed from
> Mageia-2 Beta3 fully updated, for the wireless 'connected' icon here
> on my laptop looks like a little green fir tree!

That is on the network applet (and I think is the same as on Mandriva). In th
e Network Center, the connection with IP is a blue globe with a tiny green
checkmark on it. The "connected to AP but with no IP" is in both a
green circular arrow.
On the applet, the mageia Not Connected icon is a blue globe with a tiny red cross on it.

[Wolfgang Schelongowski]

Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> writes:

>The buzzword these days still /is/ Ubuntu, and Mint comes as a good
...
>So... That's where the MickeySoft drones go now. Most of my killfile
>entries are for alt.os.linux.ubuntu, and as of recently, I've also had
>to add a few for alt.os.linux.mint.

The _number_ of trolls is small, but they morph. You have to kill them
by Injection-Info|NNTP-Posting-Host|X-Trace|X-User-ID etc. because
some servers allow using arbitrary From:'s.

As to your question in a different article
| In fact, that's a good general question. For anyone reading this who's

| not using Mandriva/Mageia/PCLinuxOS, why did you choose the distro

| you're using? What are the strengths and weak points you've found as
| you've used it? Thanks in advance!

I started with SLS (60+ floppies), tried the Yggdrasil CD unsuccess-
fully, then SuSE 1.2 (3 CDs, I still have them). I also tried BSDI
unsuccessfully (bad support), but remained with SuSE for two reasons:
1) inertia
2) based in a non-English country (here: Germany) - software companies
in the USA have to learn that there are other countries besides the
USA with different languages and different customs (yes, I've been
burnt _severely_ before)

I've remained with SuSE/openSuse mainly for reason 1), but I'm
currently worried that no release 12.2 has turned up yet. Besides
they seem to be going the way of Ubuntu - targeting those who
merely want to drag and drool - and they seem to be disinterested
in German specialities - e.g. their Mediathek package doesn't work,
I had to install the one from heise.de. What's more, their ADSL
in 11.4 was broken in such a way that a normal user would never
be able to fix it, so I used 11.3. I'll see if I'll ever upgrade
to 12.[12].

Does anybody know what type of business the new owners of SuSE are?
I hope that they're not what we call Heuschrecken (locusts).

In the meantime (the last 18 years) I've tried
A) FreeBSD - 4.6 was blazing fast but the next release didn't really
support my hardware any longer. Besides, a few years ago I read
a thread in comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc which was about kernel
panics when you removed a still mounted USB-stick. The opinion of
the regulars was "that won't be changed to `remount read-only'.
IOW FBSD targets only people who are permanently in sysadmins mode.

B) I played a bit with Mandr{ake,iva}, but not enough to have an
opinion about it.

C) I installed a variant of Ubuntu (Medibuntu?) in 2008 on a laptop
to edit videos recorded on TV. It works OK for that porpose.

D) I'm typing this on a 350MHz SuSE 6.4 which has been my workhorse
for practically all text oriented things for about twelve years.
It has a few (cough) non-standard add-ons, and it does DHCP,
DNS, and wwwoffle (WWW proxy) for every other local machine
attached to it. And I still start the GUI (KDE) manually, and its
internet presence is about once a fortnight[1].

E) I have tried other versions of SuSE but they were not really useful
to me because I didn't have ADSL then. Sing it: "Patches, I'm
depending upon you, son ..."[2]

F) I haven't really tried NetBSD, OpenBSD, Debian or Slackware yet,
but I may in the future.


[1] I'm getting pinged by 128.9.160.132 (jar.isi.edu) aka
203.178.148.19 aka pinger.* aka 129.82.138.38 aka 128.9.160.132 ...
every 11 minutes, but not today, on pentecost monday. Is it a
holiday today in Colorado?

Besides, pinging somebody every 660 secs after receiving the last
ping reply sometimes leads to 666 seconds between pings. Has
anybody seen an angry pack of peasants with torches and holy water
wielding pitchforks and crucifixes around Boulder lately?

[2] The refrain of a rather corny song from some 40 years ago. It
always comes to my mind when I hear/think about patches.

[12] NAF - not a footnote
--
The first entry of Sin into the mind occurs when, out of cowardice or
conformity or vanity, the Real is replaced by a comforting lie.
-- Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas

[Jim Beard]

On 05/28/2012 07:54 AM, Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:

> [1] I'm getting pinged by 128.9.160.132 (jar.isi.edu) aka
> 203.178.148.19 aka pinger.* aka 129.82.138.38 aka 128.9.160.132 ...
> every 11 minutes, but not today, on pentecost monday. Is it a
> holiday today in Colorado?

Yes. It is Memorial Day (observed) in the U.S. The traditional
date of Memorial Day is 30 May, but it is shifted to the Monday
preceding for observance.

[TJ]

On 05/28/2012 12:55 PM, Maurice Batey wrote:
> On Mon, 28 May 2012 15:30:01 +0000, unruh wrote:
>
>> The main difference
>> right now is that the "connected"icon in wireless mode is a globe
>
> If that is Mageia-2 Official, then something has changed from
> Mageia-2 Beta3 fully updated, for the wireless 'connected' icon here
> on my laptop looks like a little green fir tree!

I believe the "little green fir tree" is supposed to be RF waves
emanating from an unseen antenna. They briefly turn red when the
connection is lost, to be replaced by the globe trying to reconnect.

In Mandriva 2010.x, as I recall, the wireless connection icon looked
like a series of steps.

TJ

[TJ]

On 05/28/2012 07:54 AM, Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:

> [1] I'm getting pinged by 128.9.160.132 (jar.isi.edu) aka
> 203.178.148.19 aka pinger.* aka 129.82.138.38 aka 128.9.160.132 ...
> every 11 minutes, but not today, on pentecost monday. Is it a
> holiday today in Colorado?
>

A bit of history on our Memorial Day...

It started in Waterloo, NY (though several other small towns claim that
honor)in the late 19th century as "Decoration Day," an unofficial
holiday where the graves of the American Civil War dead were to be
decorated with flowers in an effort to honor their service in the war.
After WW1, the meaning was expanded to honor all those who died in
military service. Observance was moved to the present day in 1971, when
Congress did the same with other national holidays, creating three-day
weekends for federal workers. It has morphed into a day of small town
parades and barbeques, with many populations taking a few moments to
listen to speeches of gratitude in cemeteries. The President
traditionally lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.

But Waterloo, NY refuses to accept the new day, and will have their
observance on the original date.

[Adam]

Nanci . wrote:
> haven't got my
> hand on Mageia yet ..I guess the only way to get it is to download
> from their site

Other possibilities would be to copy it from someone else (is there a
Linux Users Group near you?), or have a friend download it for you
(could even be a far-away friend who mails it to you), or download it
using a friend's computer (doesn't have to be a Linux system, as long as
they have high-speed Internet). One last possibility would be to buy it
-- there are places that will the downloaded version for a few dollars
per DVD. Some of them advertise on DistroWatch and elsewhere.

I'm sure regardless of your skill level, you'll be welcomed in Mageia
groups. I think the original poster was referring to recent refugees
from Windows complaining that something in Linux doesn't work the way it
did in Windows... but then, why should it? :-)

[Adam]

Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
> | In fact, that's a good general question. For anyone reading this who's
> | not using Mandriva/Mageia/PCLinuxOS, why did you choose the distro
> | you're using? What are the strengths and weak points you've found as
> | you've used it? Thanks in advance!
>

> but remained with SuSE for two reasons:
> 1) inertia

A common reason with every distro. :-)

> 2) based in a non-English country (here: Germany) - software companies
> in the USA have to learn that there are other countries besides the
> USA with different languages and different customs (yes, I've been
> burnt _severely_ before)

What happened there? I assume by "different customs" you mean much more
than just the currency symbol, date format, thousands separator, et al.

> I've remained with SuSE/openSuse mainly for reason 1), but I'm
> currently worried that no release 12.2 has turned up yet. Besides
> they seem to be going the way of Ubuntu - targeting those who
> merely want to drag and drool

Thanks for the insights! openSUSE was one of several distros that was
recommended to me here in this NG. I now have 12.1 (the newest one on
their website last week, dated November 2, 2011) installed and will be
playing with it. "Targeting those who merely want to drag and drool"
(nice expression!) might count as one point against it for me. You also
leave me wondering whether /I/ would be facing different (German)
customs when using it! Well, I'll try it and see. I'm not switching my
daily activities to another release or distro until I've tried it and
confirmed that it's a fairly good "fit" for me and what I do.

> In the meantime (the last 18 years) I've tried
> A) FreeBSD - 4.6 was blazing fast but the next release didn't really
> support my hardware any longer.

[...]

> IOW FBSD targets only people who are permanently in sysadmins mode.

I know that FreeBSD is different from Linux, and /seems/ IMHO to be
targeted towards more "serious" users, including sysadmins.

> B) I played a bit with Mandr{ake,iva}, but not enough to have an
> opinion about it.

I'm surprised at the number of people in this newsgroup who /aren't/
using Mandriva or its derivatives. (It doesn't bother me at all; I'm
just curious.) What does this group offer them that a newsgroup or
forum for their particular distro doesn't? Is a gathering of friendly,
knowledgeable, helpful people specific to Mandriva? In any case, this
NG itself is one point in favor of Mandr* or something close to it.

> D) I'm typing this on a 350MHz SuSE 6.4 which has been my workhorse
> for practically all text oriented things for about twelve years.
> It has a few (cough) non-standard add-ons, and it does DHCP,
> DNS, and wwwoffle (WWW proxy) for every other local machine
> attached to it. And I still start the GUI (KDE) manually, and its

> internet presence is about once a fortnight.

That sounds good (and stable), but I'm looking for something a bit
newer. I assume security advisories and fixes and package updates for
everything on that system ended a long time ago, and that it can't
always handle newer versions of some apps.

> E) I have tried other versions of SuSE but they were not really useful
> to me because I didn't have ADSL then.

Before I had broadband (also ADSL), I once dragged my desktop system to
one of the local LUG's "Installfests" just to be able to download all
the updates.

> Sing it: "Patches, I'm depending upon you, son ..."

http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/clarence_carter/patches.html

> F) I haven't really tried NetBSD, OpenBSD, Debian or Slackware yet,
> but I may in the future.

After my latest repartitioning, my 120 GB internal HD has enough room
for five 20 GB root partitions, the distro I'm using now plus four
others to play^H^H^H^Htry out at a time. Right now I'm still using
Mandriva 2010.0 for my daily tasks, and have Mandriva 2011.0, Mageia 2,
PCLinuxOS 2011.09, and openSUSE 12.1 installed for evaluation. All
somewhat close to the Mandriva I'm familiar with. I've also downloaded
the latest Debian, Slackware, Arch, and CrunchBang for possible
experimentation. Besides learning about new distros and their quirks,
I'll have to figure out which one's the best match for me and what I do.
I know that part is totally subjective, and also that (1) no distro is
going to reach 100% on whatever subjective scale I use, and (2) that
probably any of several would be "good enough".

Thanks again for your very informative comments on all those distributions!

[Nanci .]

On May 30, 1:16 am, Adam <a...@address.invalid> wrote:
> Nanci . wrote:
> > haven't got my
> > hand on Mageia yet ..I guess the only way to get it is to download
> > from their site
>
> Other possibilities would be to copy it from someone else (is there a
> Linux Users Group near you?), or have a friend download it for you
> (could even be a far-away friend who mails it to you), or download it
> using a friend's computer (doesn't have to be a Linux system, as long as
> they have high-speed Internet).

Yep this is what I was planning to do ...ask a friend with a good
connection to download Mageia 2 for me, it shouldn't be a
problem...regarding the Alt.os.linux.mageia to subscribe I have to
wait couple weeks more...I'll try to connect with a Vodafone dongle
( I believe this is the proper name of the USB stick for internet...)
and then through Knode subscribe...at the moment through google I do
not seem to be able to reach that group at all, if I type
alt.os.linux.mageia i reach this place :

http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/heads-up-more-mageia-quirks-bugs-found-help-203798342.html

old postings and no option to subscribe...anyway, thanks to you ,
Bit and Unruh for the for the encouragment

> I'm sure regardless of your skill level, you'll be welcomed in Mageia
> groups.  I think the original poster was referring to recent refugees
> from Windows complaining that something in Linux doesn't work the way it
> did in Windows... but then, why should it? :-)

yep...Like people who come to live in India and complain that it is
not like europe or the USA...like it or not in Rome you do like the
romans do...

thanks again,

santo

[TJ]

On 05/30/2012 05:20 AM, Nanci . wrote:
> On May 30, 1:16 am, Adam<a...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> Nanci . wrote:
>>> haven't got my
>>> hand on Mageia yet ..I guess the only way to get it is to download
>>> from their site
>>
>> Other possibilities would be to copy it from someone else (is there a
>> Linux Users Group near you?), or have a friend download it for you
>> (could even be a far-away friend who mails it to you), or download it
>> using a friend's computer (doesn't have to be a Linux system, as long as
>> they have high-speed Internet).
>
> Yep this is what I was planning to do ...ask a friend with a good
> connection to download Mageia 2 for me, it shouldn't be a
> problem...regarding the Alt.os.linux.mageia to subscribe I have to
> wait couple weeks more...I'll try to connect with a Vodafone dongle
> ( I believe this is the proper name of the USB stick for internet...)
> and then through Knode subscribe...at the moment through google I do
> not seem to be able to reach that group at all, if I type
> alt.os.linux.mageia i reach this place :
>
> http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/heads-up-more-mageia-quirks-bugs-found-help-203798342.html
>
> old postings and no option to subscribe...anyway, thanks to you ,
> Bit and Unruh for the for the encouragment
>

The Mageia newsgroup is available from Google Groups - I've seen it,
though it's been a while since I looked. Unfortunately, a number of
newsgroup members filter out postings from Google Groups, because it has
a reputation for spam, so some very knowledgeable and helpful people
would never see them if you subscribed that way. A better choice would
be to use a newsreader (I use Thunderbird, but many prefer others) and
obtain an account from www.eternal-september.org. It's a free service,
and very good. A lot of members both here and on the Mageia group use it.

TJ

[Adam]

Nanci . wrote:
> On May 30, 1:16 am, Adam <a...@address.invalid> wrote:
> regarding the Alt.os.linux.mageia to subscribe I have to
> wait couple weeks more...I'll try to connect with a Vodafone dongle

[...]
> and then through Knode subscribe

I hope that works for you! I assume at the moment you're accessing the
'net from a library or other public computer setup, and so you're unable
to change or install anything there.

> at the moment through google I do
> not seem to be able to reach that group at all

Maybe nobody at Google knows it exists yet. Have you asked them about
carrying it?

[Wolfgang Schelongowski]

[Subject changed for obvious reasons]

Jim Beard <jdb...@patriot.net> writes:

>On 05/28/2012 07:54 AM, Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
>
>> [1] I'm getting pinged by 128.9.160.132 (jar.isi.edu) aka
>> 203.178.148.19 aka pinger.* aka 129.82.138.38 aka 128.9.160.132 ...
>> every 11 minutes, but not today, on pentecost monday. Is it a
>> holiday today in Colorado?
>
>Yes. It is Memorial Day (observed) in the U.S. The traditional
>date of Memorial Day is 30 May, but it is shifted to the Monday
>preceding for observance.

Thanks to you and TJ for the facts. I already knew that there is
something similar in the UK, a so called "bank holiday" early in May.
I encountered it some two dozen years ago in London. My then boss, a
Kiwi, hadn't thought of that when he directed me to areas of interest
where I wanted to lose much money fast. For English books, of course.
But only very few shops were open.

BTW my pinger is now at 203.178.148.19. Last delta t was 663.