Mandriva

[viking60]

27.4.2011 How to add applikations in Rosa panel. It will be possible to drag and drop from the Rosalab menu:

22.5.2011 Information about the Mandriva application manager , or package manager. From the blog

31.5.2011 Changing the look of the Rosalab start menu. Implementing the time-line. Makes it easy to find your files by date.

Panelet : http://wstaw.org/m/2011/05/31/Capture2.png
Velkommen menyen : http://wstaw.org/m/2011/05/31/Capture3.png
Applikasjonsmeny : http://wstaw.org/m/2011/05/31/Capture4.png
Tidslinje-meny : http://wstaw.org/m/2011/05/31/Capture5.png

02.6.2011 Some more pictures on the blog


08.6.2011 Integration of the av Mandriva tools in the KDE control center - some pics:

11.06.2011 Mandriva 2011 will use the latest X.org server 1.10.2 and Mesa 7.10.2
Announced by Eugeni Dodonov who also has begun to look at Wayland.

14.6.2011 Switched to KDE 4.6.4

17.06.2011 Mandriva 2011 will come with Firefox 5

I think Mandriva has a working strategy regarding communication. They do not switch their publications from media to media according to the devs, mood. And above all they avoid arrogant references to the ML when someone asks for information. If they have started to announce in the forum they continue - in the forum. The blogs and ML are used too but they are probably not as "public" as the forums.
So it gives them a good mark for Public Relations - that's new!
The inconsistent dancing between ML Blogs and Forums can be tempting, because it is harder to follow and control the progress. Critique can be avoided like that. Mandriva has the balls to put it in the open (consistently) visible to everyone (and will probably get the critique).
I think it was worth an honorable mentioning! Now lets continue critisizeing that menu

[rolf]

Thanks for making that informative preview!
(p.s. I think try to deliberately slow the mouse for the movies; perhaps the slow frame-rate of the recorder is what makes the cursor move too fast for old berserker eyes to follow )
It is something of a total rewrite of the gui, it does look driven by hand-held ergonomics, that's quite ambitious!

I'll admit I'm a creature of habit, rooted in a simpler, closer to text interface, developed from over a decade of learning. The face of personal computing is changing everywhere and I can change, a little.

The nuts and bolts of Mandriva will be there, I expect. Some inefficient code will be abandoned. Some totally new stuff will be adopted. It's a major change, there's bound to be rough edges, at first. I'm impressed with what's been accomplished and will take a look at the release, hoping for good things.

[viking60]

Yes I think we will have to change a little. At least "desktop wise" When you think about it; How strange is it to have a mouse to point and click with? When I grew up in the pre Computer and Nintendo age we just used the finger to point directly and occasionally a stick or some other pointy object.
If you tell that to children today they probably will not understand remember?

So pointing at the object directly on the screen would probably have been the first choice back then, but the technology would not allow it. I remember declaring Windows 3.11 as a toy and wondered what idiot had come up with the idea to open and close a window at the top right side
It could never compete with my dbase generated menu to Lotus symphony and all the other stuff that I needed - like Word perfect! But I had to admit that the printout looked way better from Excel and Word so It saved me the cost of a dedicated desktop publishing system.
So I accepted that stupid mouse and those stupid pictures and got used to it..... very used to it. At some point I was hooked I don't know when, but no one can take away my mouse.
That is the power of over training and indoctrination. When we train new sky divers they have only three things to train:
Sit in the door
Getting out of it
And pressing the hips forward and spreading the arms and legs so you look like an X in the air.

This is trained for days (it is not hard) to the point that when they dream about it and fall out of their beds they land on their nose with the Arms and legs stretched out to the side.
It does not have to be rational - we just do it because we are trained to.
So maybe we just hold on to the mouse out of habit and conservatism (it is not rational). Gnome3 has given us the first shock and Rosalab does much of the same.
Children love it! Amateurs get it! What are we afraid of?
Loosing our geek status and the exclusivity that goes with it? I searched my soul on this point and decided I COULD LIVE WITH IT but I cannot live with lack of flexibility and the "we have been thinking for you" attitude . Here Gnome3-Shell has commited a sin that made me dive under the hood and change everything they decided I did not need.
The Rosalab menu reminds me a lot of Gnome3-shell and guess what - I like it! They also have kept the flexibility, so they are not forcing you. I know it is not fashionable amongst experienced Linux users to say this - but there it is.
I guess it is evolution:

[dedanna1029]

Loosing our geek status and the exclusivity that goes with it? I searched my soul on this point and decided I COULD LIVE WITH IT but I cannot live with lack of flexibility and the "we have been thinking for you" attitude . Here Gnome3-Shell has commited a sin that made me dive under the hood and change everything they decided I did not need.

Hear, hear. It's the very thing that's making me abandon Linux. I've stopped updating already, and refuse to go any further. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I did NOT get into Linux to run another Windbloze.

Dynebolic maybe? I don't know. We'll see. Whatever it is, it won't do it for me, or I'll abandon computing all together.

[viking60]

I wonder how it is possible to abandon computing these days I think you will have to relate to computers one way or the other. So your user status will change but you sure will have to use computers.
Most people don't care what is under the hood as long as it works. The important thing these days is the design of the hardware - it has to look good and reflect your success. Like this
Abandoning computing is almost like abandoning society these days.

[viking60]

A slight modification of my words above. All my remarks about the Rosa Menu are based on the assumption that it will work as intended. That is not yet the case,

[rolf]

Mandriva 2011 RC1 is at the door..
Posted on June 29, 2011 by Eugeni Dodonov

..and waiting to be released in the coming hours!

as promised some weeks ago, we told you that Mandriva 2011 RC1 should be expected this week. The images are built and are undergoing an internal testing right now, and unless any critical issues are discovered, they will be pushed to the mirrors in the coming hours!

more-->

[viking60]

Yes I think the development is good and they are pushing some tech borders with RPM5 and the bold Rosalab menu.
I just updated and the Menu does work as intended now as far as I can tell. So I can only hope they will implement my improvement suggestion:
http://forum.mandriva.com/en/viewtopic. ... 50#p847380
Hmm that search field still is somewhat moody though... Seems like only the first search is working.
Also there are a lot of dependency errors regarding Firefox and urpmi ! so there still is a lot to do.

[viking60]

OK I downloaded the x86_64 live CD and did a live install from it:

No problems and a dream for a newbie.
So what has changed since beta 3? Well the search in the Rosalab menu is now working - fixed! Quite nice and reminds me a lot of Gnome3-shell.

But it is not as good and flexible. I have suggested to make the search work without positioning the cursor in the search field. That takes time and it should be doable (Gnome has done it).

There is this new thing called "system testing" it prompted me for my name and email and when done I got a "server offline come back later" message.
I don't know what it is good for and I am always skeptical to systems who collect personal data. But it is new

And we have this nice timeline tab in the Rosalab menu I would have thought that it organizes all the files in my Home and shows it per selected month.
So I happily made a document with the extremely exotic name "test" and saved it in June (obviously). Then I went to timeline and June and..... nothing
So I guess I do not understand what that is good for either.
I will take the opportunity to state that I am the impatient type so if something does not work I will draw and shoot from the hip (American western style).
Either this does not work and the devs can consider themselves shot, or I just fail to see the light. I do not understand why it is there at the moment.
I normally never comment artwork and looks because you can change it to your liking anyway. but I will make an exception this time: That splash screen looks like Soviet toilet paper - the old and uncomfortable one

There: I got it of my chest and it really does not matter anyway.
For balance sake I think the Icon theme looks great! In fact this is a good looking familiar Mandriva. The conservative experienced Linux users do not like change almost by definition, so they dislike the Rosalab Menu. I think that is perfectly OK and it can be changed, so the flexibility is there.
The Newbies will like it and that is Mandrivas main forte: Beeing user friendly and inviting to newbies.

So checking further....
There is a daemon running in my tray with only russian text Caramba Crap Scheisse (foreign for "I do not like that). I don't understand russian so I have no idea what it does. Bug must be fixed!

And then there is a button in my tray called client power sync I click it and nothing happens I guess I will have to read up on all the marvelous stuff that happens when I click these buttons - there is nothing like a good mystery.

Firefox works and looks great. In fact most of it works just as I am used to. I am not sure how the RPM5 bit is benefiting this release but I will practice and find out.
So time to do some real work then...
I wanted to use sudo so I did a

Code: Select all

EDITOR=nano visudo

only to discover that nano is not installed by default. I did a urpmi nano as root and fixed it in a second. After that it was no problem to add myself to the sudoers.

Then I did a sudo urpmi --auto-update and the famous sudo urpme --auto-orphans. It actually discovered lib64lo10k10-1.0.24.1-1 (everybody knows what that is, so I will not bother you with the details ) so I removed it.

I logged out and back in to check that everything worked and there a Russian window popped up (related to the icon in the tray -no doubt)

Caramba etc..

Still I get a fairly good impression of Mandriva 2011 RC1. The bugs have to be fixed and I wish I could search without having to aim for that tiny white stripe on top of the Rosalab menu.
If they use the time well this could become a popular Mandriva version.

[jkerr82508]

There is this new thing called "system testing" it prompted me for my name and email and when done I got a "server offline come back later" message.
I don't know what it is good for and I am always skeptical to systems who collect personal data.

Probably one of Mr Putin's cronies has forgotten he's no longer in the KGB

There is a daemon running in my tray with only russian text Caramba Crap Scheisse (foreign for "I do not like that). I don't understand russian so I have no idea what it does. Bug must be fixed!

One of the Rosa dev's wrote in the cooker ML that they forgot the translations. An update is supposed to be on the way.

http://lists.mandriva.com/cooker/2011-06/msg00371.php

Jim

[viking60]

Thanks for the heads up jkerr. The Russian text stuff is fixed now it turned out to be a help desk of some kind. Regarding the TimeFrame function in the Rosalab menu I have tried to ask how it is supposed to work and since no one has been able to provide an answer I am going to anticipate that it does not work.

[viking60]

So having expressed my critique with the changes in Mandriva (Old Linux guys never like changes - that is a firm rule!) I have now played around with it a bit and updated to RC.
The Time/frame organizer still does not work but the rest seems to come together nicely. So I decided to put our RSS feed on the desktop.

Wow that was easy!
I also managed to alter the resolution in Virtualbox via MCC, so it is a joy to work with it in VB.
And guess what; I think that Rosa menu is going to be a hit for greenhorns. I see no reason to remove it myself either so it will stay on my desktop.
RPM5 Rosa menu - Mandriva is making an effort to be the first and unique in some areas. That is a good way to maintain/rescue their old standing in the Linux world.
Mandriva will probably be the engine and the base for forks who will follow and implement the technologies later on. If Mandriva goes I fear that the forks will die too.
Now they have to make that Time frame stuff work.....