Beta 3
The third Beta of the upcoming Mandrake Linux 9.0 is now available. Thanks to many helpful suggestions and reports, Beta 3 contains numerous corrections and improvements to the DrakX installer and assorted software:
* DrakX installer
A few of the most notable improvements include:
- 'Upgrade' mode now removes conflicting packages
- 'Rescue' mode and option passing is now fully functional (by pressing F1 key at startup)
- Authentication from a Windows domain in 'Expert' installation mode is now available
* Other software
- i810 support has been fixed
- rpmdrake has undergone many ergonomic improvements
- drakbackup is now fully functional
- Printer drivers have received many corrections
- msec no longer changes remote directories and files
- Palm pilot support is now corrected
- The 'explanations' in drakconf have been reworked
New features
The third Beta also introduces new features, including:
- The first release of 'drakcronat'. Drakcronat is a utility for configuring 'at' and 'cron' jobs.
- WebDAV file system support has been integrated into the kernel and in drakconf. WebDAV allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.
- koffice 1.2rc1, an office productivity suite from KDE, is now available in a new fully-functional version.
- i845 support for 2D in XFree86 appears with this third Beta.
The complete changelog is available here, or download just the DrakX installer changelog.
There's still room for improvements and additional testing, so we would greatly appreciate your participation.
How to report bugs for Beta 9.0?
We'd appreciate feedback from the largest number of Beta testers, so there are a number of ways to help make sure Mandrake Linux 9.0 is the best release ever:
1) If you enjoy getting "hands-on" and are quite good with Linux (with several years of experience), the best bet is for you to subscribe to the Cooker mailing list so you can directly communicate with the MandrakeSoft developers.
2) If you don't have time to get deeply involved but have a good level of Linux knowledge, the best bet is to ask for a BugZilla account for posting bug reports. To obtain a BugZilla account, send an email to 'request@qa.linux-mandrake.com' with "canpostabug" in the body of your message. Note: you must first create a BugZilla account if you do not have one yet.
3) If you are quite new to this whole Linux/UNIX(TM) thing, you can report bugs by submitting them to MandrakeExpert -- just cite 'Mandrake Linux 9.0 beta1' as the product version.
Download:
There is no point downloading the Beta unless you are ready to spend some time writing bug reports. Don't blame us if the final version of 9.0 fails on your PC because you didn't file an early bug report!
Download now
Follow this link to download Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 2. Happy bug hunting!
Beta 2
The second Beta of Mandrake Linux 9.0 is available for download and testing. Changes from the first beta include:
* A new rpmdrake (rpm installation tool) written in perl has been introduced. It is much simpler to use and performs faster. The development team would like testers to focus on this new tool.
* java support is back in mozilla/galeon (compiled with gcc 2.96).
* msec (security tools) has been modified to ensure that security during check tasks remains as efficient as in normal mode.
Your help is crucial, everyone is invited to participate in the beta test cycle. Please keep in mind that this beta is experimental software and should be installed on test machines.
Beta 1
Given the choice of enjoying the summer in beautiful southern California or working on the Mandrake Linux distribution, the twisted MandrakeSoft developers chose to stick around and present "Mandrake Linux 9.0 Beta 1."
As with any Beta, this one is probably loaded with nasty bugs which may cause serious problems on production systems. Betas are only suitable for installation on test systems -- you've been warned!
A "feature freeze" will happen soon, so for anyone willing to put down their bottle of suntan lotion long enough to download & test the new Beta, you will enjoy:
New desktops:
KDE 3.0.2 and GNOME 2.0 with
- new icons on the KDE desktop
- new user images
- new wallpaper
Tools:
A new tool has been added to the 'drakxtools' family: The 'Drakbugreport' client is included with the current beta, and the server version will be ready for Beta 2. These tools allow users to easily report bugs for the entire drakxtools family.
Many tools have been reworked (bugfixes, better ergonomics, added functionality, etc), such as:
- Diskdrake now supports SMB ACLs
- urpmi has been rewritten to perform much faster
- Harddrake now uses the same detection engine as DrakX and therefore supports many more hardware devices
- XFdrake has been rewritten to make configuring the X server a snap
- DrakXTV now supports a larger selection of TV cards for you couch potatoes
- Draknet has been renamed 'Drakconnect'
Install:
The new Beta uses ISOlinux instead of Syslinux (a new way to boot from CD-ROM). Please test as many different types of CDROM drives as possible and report any problems.
