I am a bit of a newbie as they say around here. But I have followed the advice posted by many Gurus around here and decided the use rpmdrake to load any updates or new software. I have the free version of Mandrake 10.0 installed. I have created (thanks to easy urpmi) the following Media with appropriate FTP sites:
Config
Plf
Updates
Main

But I am quite disappointed by the versions of the RPM's for Mandrake, especially for the latest versions of my favorite Browsers and email client: Firefox and Thunderbird.

It seems like the RPM's for Red hat for example are more readily available. Is that really true or am I doing something wrong in my research?

for example. The latest version of Firefox for linux (posted on the Mozilla site) is 0.9.3
but the one available with the mandrake control center is 0.8-14mdk. (by the way what does the -14 stand for?

My question is the following: How quickly do theses "official" mdk rpm's become available? and do all the sites/mirrors (chosen through easy urpmi) have the same versions? Can I be sure that I have the "latest approved" mdk versions of my programs?

thank you for your help.

Cgl

I can't answer your question directly, but I can say this:
The mirror sites found on easy urpmi do host different packages. I found this out when I did another install of Mandrake after an HDD died. I originally used the mirrors in the UK. For the new install I used the Belgian mirrors as I couldn't get a connection to the UK mirrors, and got a totally different (larger and more comprehensive) set of packages.

If you want the latest versions of Firefox etc, your best bet is the Mozilla site.
The Firefox install is a bit notorious though - there are loads of threads here dealing with installing FF, so do a search before you download/install it.

The "14" is the version of that particular RPM, which in this case was designed for Mandrake. So, the program itself (Firefox) is 0.8, and someone made 13 prior versions of the RPM before settling on this one. RPMs control where the program various files is installed, update the K-button menu (or in the case of Mdk 10, the "Mandrake Star"
button menu), etc.