What's new in Mandriva 2008.0
Frederik's Blog
Tuesday, 25 September 2007

In less than two weeks time, six months after the great Mandriva 2007.1 Spring release, Mandriva 2008.0 will be ready and published. Currently, Release Candidate 2 is out, it's your last chance to test it and make sure everything is working before the final release!

There were great ideas at the start of the development phase, and in in those six months that have passed, Mandriva has always been one of the most active projects on CIA.vc. This gives much hope for lots of improvements, so let's take a look at what can be expected from Mandriva 2008.0.http://artipc10.vub.ac.be/serendipity/archives/38-guid.html

Cedega to be packaged with Mandriva
Linux gaming moonwalks forward

Posted by: arsgeek
Oct. 4, 2007

TORONTO, ONTARIO – October 4th, 2007 - TransGaming Inc. (TSX-V: TNG) , a leading developer of software portability products for the electronic entertainment industry, announced today the renewal of the OEM and distribution agreement with Mandriva, the leading retail distribution for the Linux operating system. Under this agreement, MandrivaLinux 2008 customers will receive access to TransGaming’s Cedega product that will allow them to play hundreds of PC games out-of-the-box. The ability to play blockbuster games rounds out the capabilities of MandrivaLinux 2008 making it a leading desktop of choice for both productivity applications as well as electronic entertainment.http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=2696

Here is the Cedega database of PC games that work or do not work on Linux (select a title letter at the top where it says Browse Games):

http://games.cedega.com/gamesdb/

Anything good in there? :)

There are lots of torrents going, but not many FTP servers ready yet. The FTP servers are slowly replicating from Mandriva so it may take awhile to get 2008.0 via FTP, but as the servers come up they'll be highlighted on this page:

http://www.mandriva.com/en/download.html

Here are the public torrents:

http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/

The free versions were up yesterday but the PowerPacks were not available until this morning. I found a copy on an FTP server last night before the announcement. Lucky me, I beat the rush and got a full speed, no hassle download. I'm installing it on my Samba server now. Now all I need to do is get Samba working again and figure out how to seed the PowerPack 2008.0 ISO for the Mandriva community. :)

The Perfect Desktop - Mandriva 2008 Free (Mandriva 2008.0)

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
Last edited 10/11/2007

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mandriva 2008 Free (Mandriva 2008.0) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_mandriva_2008.0

I have been using Mandriva 2008.0 since its release. I am impressed and plan to keep using it for a file server and also plan to use it to replace WinXP on my main desktop. It does have a few rough edges though.

System administration under KDE is generally simplified and more reliable than with previous releases and other O/S.

The Samba server is fairly easy to set up. (It is much easier than Kubuntu 7.04, due to a bug in that version.) The only issue I had was with setting the system name correctly. Also, the GUI does not set file permissions correctly so they must be managed separately.

Software RAID support using MDADM is included. The RAID5 array that was previously created under PCLinux was recognized and supported automatically. This is great since it makes RAID arrays very robust across O/S upgrades or installations and only requires inexpensive, standard SATA controllers. The disks could even be placed in another Linux system after a hardware failure and still be recognized as a RAID array.

The desktop PC O/S installation also went well. Unfortunately, software installation did not. The Cedega software mentioned previously did not install or run correctly. Also, to obtain support or updates from Cedega, a monthly subscription is required. I had similar issues with the included VMware product. Installation failed part way through compiling the application. Until these issues are fixed, I am stuck with a dual boot scenario (or with spending a lot of money for retail versions of the products.) Another issue I ran into was with the powersave power management package. It also failed to work correctly. This limits my ability to fine tune the server's power configuration. I could not find a solution for any of these problems by searching the internet, though I did turn up similar issues with no applicable resolution.