Mandriva Linux 2009 released

Mandriva has released its latest desktop edition which comes in 4 edition: One, Free, PowerPack and Mandriva Flash.

Mandriva One comes in CD and suitable for those who want to start using Mandriva Linux in no time. You can boot in to live CD and start working. It has the option to install to hard disk. This edition comes with proprietary softwares.

Mandriva Free is the free edition. It doesn't contain proprietary softwares. You can add those later though if you add the relevant repositories.

Mandriva Powerpack is a commercial pack containing proprietary packages such as flash plugin, nvidia, nvidia, ati, mp3 codec etc.

Mandriva Flash is a USB disk version of Mandriva. It now uses 8GB USB drive instead of 4GB in previous version. You have to order it from Mandriva Store.

More info on this release

I have been using Mandriva Linux for almost 7 years now and in my opinion it is one of the best distributions out there.

Upgrading Mandriva 2008 to Mandriva 2008.1 aka Mandriva Spring

Screenshot of KDE 4 on Mandriva Spring 2008

Here are the steps to upgrade mandriva 2008 to 2008.1 via online repos.

1) Back up the current urpmi.cfg
2) Change the repos mentioned in urpmi.cfg from 2008.0 to 2008.1
3) Run urpmi.update -a to verify repos
4) urpmi --auto-update -v

If there are problems with dependencies, remove the old versions (notably KDE4 as in my experience, yours maybe with different packages). Then in some cases you have to run this command:

5) urpmi --auto-select

Relax and sit back while watching the packages being upgraded. For my system, almost 1600 packages upgraded. Lastly, you will be instructed to reboot the system because of kernel and dbus upgrade. So far the new system is running smoothly without problem.

reference: Mandriva Forum

Setting up wireless with Mandriva 2007

I rarely install Linux on laptop. It was great to have one and saw how Linux distros progressed in this area. Since last week, I have been a responsible person for one of my office's laptop. I tried installing Fedora Core 6 on it. It was no good. After a couple of minutes, it started to become slower like something was going on in the background. It was so annoying. I tried upgrading the kernel and all the latest updates using yum but to no avail. Of course your mileage may vary.

Mandriva 2007

With Mandriva 2007, I was in luck. I got the DVD from LinuxForYou magazine. I am no stranger with Mandriva. I have been using it for 5 years and one of servers I managed using it. As any desktop-oriented distros, Mandriva is one of the user-friendliest distros out there. It is good and will be better in the future.

Wireless

My laptop is Intel-based. What i mean here is the wireless, CPU and VGA chipsets are from Intel. My wireless is ipw3945. No driver for this chipset I could found in the DVD. After googling, the driver is here. This is the kernel module (driver) for the wireless chipset. Hence, I activated it with modprobe : modprobe ipw3945. It created a device called eth1 (eth0 was reserved for wired connection).

Connecting to AP
Open Mandriva Control Center and go to Network And Internet:
Click on the Wireless connection.


As you see in the diagram below, the AP signal was detected and shown. The button Disconnect should be Connect before you connect your laptop to the AP.


If the connection is successful, then you can connect to your network and internet. Contact your network administrator if you have problem. Good luck.

urpmi made easy - Step by step

Ok. to make easier for newbie, a step by step guide is preferable or a series of commands will make their life wonderful :). Here the shortcut for my previous post. You have to be root to run these commands.

urpmi.removemedia -a
urpmi.addmedia --update updates http://ftp.kddlabs.co.jp/Linux/distributions/Mandrake/official/updates/x86_64/2006.0/main_updates/ with media_info/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia main http://ftp.kddlabs.co.jp/Linux/distributions/Mandrake/official/2006.0/x86_64/media/main with media_info/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia contrib http://ftp.kddlabs.co.jp/Linux/distributions/Mandrake/official/2006.0/x86_64/media/contrib with media_info/hdlist.cz

Please notice any error produced. The server may experience busy traffic or it may be down. You should run the particular command once again. This time you have to choose another server. After all commands run successfully, you can install and update packages through internet by issuing :

urpmi name_of_package

That's all there is to it.