Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring released
 

Mandriva is proud to announce the release of its latest distribution, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring. This new release brings features like full support for the Asus Eee, easy synchronization with Windows Mobile 5 and later, Blackberry, and Nokia devices, a new parental control utility, the Elisa multimedia center, Codeina for easy installation of necessary media codecs, PulseAudio by default and much more. Software updates include KDE 3.5.9 (with 4.0.2 available from the official repositories), GNOME 2.22, OpenOffice.org 2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.24.4, X.org 7.3, Compiz 0.7, and more.

If you just can't wait, you can download the One (live / install CD) or Free (traditional installer, 100% free / open source software) editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring right here. Direct BitTorrent download links can be found here, as the mirrors are likely to be overloaded for several days. The commercial edition, Powerpack, featuring exclusive commercial applications, is available immediately for direct download, and can be pre-ordered in boxed form (delivery will begin in two weeks), at the Mandriva Store. A large amount of information on the new release is also available at the Mandriva Wiki:

Main 2008 Spring page
2008 Spring Release Tour: a graphical guide to what's new in 2008 Spring
2008 Spring Release Notes
2008 Spring Errata
2008 Spring Reviewer's Guide: a useful read if you plan to review 2008 Spring

Thank you for the heads-up.

Got it yesterday. Runs better than 2008.0 on this old Presario (AMD K6-2 350 Mhz, 320 MB RAM). ntfs-3g is default for Windows ntfs partitions. MCC seems better organized with a few new tools including Parental Controls (for those with minor children using the computer). I used the rc2 for a few days (it was not much better than 2008.0 here), but a fresh install of the final release has restored my faith in Mandriva. From my one day experience with the new release, it is well worth the effort of doing the install. Check back in a week and I will post any further impressions (or changes of heart) to this thread (if the originator does not mind).

Bang on schedule! Well done the Mandi team! A couple of niggles: a) Been trying to find the 64 bit free DVD on the Mandriva site to no avail... Any clues? Or is it not released yet? b) URPMI update from 2008.0 to Spring - wtf has happened here folks? Can it even be done without going into MCC & changing the url's manually? Adding from EasyURPMI brings the annoying mesage "Bad <url>. Must be an absolute location" or somesuch...

Edit - found a torrent for the 64 bit Free version at btjunkie

Thanks for letting us know. I will upgrade in a few days.
I was wondering, if it is ok to try to upgrade Mandriva 2008.0 to 2008.1 without doing a clean install?

You will always get the best result from a clean install. The one caveat is that you should have a /home partition so your user settings will not be lost (you can format the root partition while the /home partition is unchanged). I have a 7-8 GB Root (/) partition, a 2 GB swap partition (size chosen by the installer when I installed MDV2k8.0), and the remaining space for my /home partition. These values are what work for me. Your needs may differ.

I want as much space as possible for user data (/home partition), especially if I intend to keep large files such as music, video, iso images, or virtual hd's for use with a vm on my hard drive. I want enough room for the software I intend to install (root partition), but that will usually be a fairly static value. I have found that 7 or 8 GB is enough for my needs. If you install many games system wide (under/usr), you may want more space for the root (/) partition, perhaps 10 or 12 GB.

After your initial setup, if you find that you have allocated too much (or too little) space to the root (/) partition, you can adjust your partition sizes using Gparted from a live CD. As a rule of thumb, the used space in a partition should not exceed 75 per cent of the total space. You can run the MDV One CD, install Gparted and make your changes. Note: You will have to install Gparted each time you boot the MDV One Live CD since the installation will not be written to the disk. You can get the Gparted Live CD or the System Rescue CD (which includes Gparted) if you think you may be using Gparted fairly regularly. Google 'gparted' or 'system rescue CD' (no quotes) to get the URI's.

Finally, I choose to avoid the Upgrade Install path because I have found in the past that upgrade installations can have issues from conflicts between the old and new release configurations. Since I still hear complaints from users who have selected this route, I prefer the clean install path because I believe it is safer and results in a more stable system.

HTH,

Just a little question jumped to my head:
What will happen to the software that is installed inside the home folder, like Opera and firefox for example, How will they be affected by the new distro install?

FWIW, I updated my RC and it went fine. I was running cooker this go round just for the thrill. (It only broke once!) I may try to update the laptop, which is still 2008, just to see how it goes.

The upgrade function of the installer has a rather bad bug (which snuck in at the last minute because the wrong version of an installer component was inadvertently included), but you can work around it:

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_E...m::uniq_called

In general I'd probably recommend doing a clean install, fake upgrade (clean install but not formatting /home , if you have it on a separate partition), or urpmi upgrade.

I second ernie's advice....do a clean install...that way you are getting libraries and links to the correct new stuff and not risk having any forgotten links go bad?

first impression...ooo is still slow to load but on re-opening is down to 2 seconds woo hoo.

2) fstab for hd partitions have moved away from /dev/ to uuid

3) after a fair amount of complaints b4 on pulseaudio....my soundcard uses alsa and pulse and I had no tweaking required.

4) includes HP setup for those who prefer hp printer control thru hp rather than thru cups even tho its still cups server.

5) there is a new media applet....that uses a floppy icon in the system tray....have not yet found a way to disable it...not in services and right hand clicking it does not work...may be a KDE function but have not had time to check out.

6) mcc has a new Parental controls for internet related activity.

I am back off it....to back up some of my old files but the main negative point AFAIK is the default size is bigger than 2008.0....I will have to put it on a diet as I use partimage and not the new snapshots found in mcc

Problems with release 2008 Spring
 

If you running 64Bit and have one of the
"Amd Athlon(tm) 64 x2 Dual Core processors" better expect
random freezing. The 32bit dosn't have this problem just the 64Bit.

Some Issues with Mandriva
 

Hi Everyone
As usual I cleaned my hard drive and went for a clean install. I ran into a problem as soon as the installer started. The display just went mad, all I could see on the screen was a blue blur, shaking and waving like a curtain in the breeze. I tried to run the installer several times, but to no avail. Having spent a lot of time on that I put away the CDs and installed the Mandriva 2008.0 version.
I believe it is due to the fact that my computer is a pretty ancient one(P3, 1137 MHz, 512 megs RAM, Intel 810 chipset). But the system requirement showed that i810 video is supported. I am wondering what is going on.
I had certain issues with the 2008.0 installer too, but I was able to resolve them. I was hoping to be able to upgrade, and to say that I am disappointed would be an understatement.
I am still fond of Mandriva Linux, and would recommend it to any new user, but my experience with installing it on several computers has been mixed--some hardware did not seem to support it. Both old and new PCs seem to have issues of hardware detection, and I think Mandriva should look into it. Otherwise once you have it up and running, it is a very good distro to use.
Any comments on this would be appreciated.

Tank

you just meet the 2008.1 min specs. Can I suggest that if you can get to the menu screen....you have options of F1 F2 etc choose F3 and go for text install or 640x480.

forgive me if you never get this far.

Sounds like a problem with the fbdev driver (which is the only one the installer uses) and your graphics card. I would second aus9's suggestion to try the vgalo or text install methods.

It has been about a week and I believe that Mandriva 2008.1 is about the most solid release to date, at least on this old Presario powered by an AMD K6-2 350 Mhz CPU, 320 MB RAM and an old nVidia GeForce 2 card with 64 MB video RAM on board and a Maestro3 sound card. I am using KDE 3.5.9 so the box runs a bit slow, but it is still usable. I have not tried to watch a DVD yet, but Amarok works well (I can finally listed to the audio streams from a few local radio stations) and my two podcasts of choice (LQ and the Roadhouse) work as well. If there are any serious issues with this release, I have not uncovered them yet (or they do not affect my hardware). I hope everyone else has as good an experience as I have had so far (Tank, hope you get past the installer issue).

Spring has really nailed some PITA issues such as HDA audio and suspend to RAM on my laptop. Have a go with KDE4 as well - looks stunning and works much, much better than I'd been lead to believe.

I think Mandriva do a really superb job with their distribution.

I have done a separate post on open office and slideshow.

for those using it, see if slideshow works or fails pls post here

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...73#post3122973

if it works for you then I have more work to do.

Its the 64bit that has problems. Here are just a few thins that don't work right:

Nis server, dhcp server not serving up system names, freezing up, flash not working, ssh server to internet inaccessible.

This is as far as I got because of the freeze ups. My 32 bit system runs without a problem. I just don't like having 1 system out of 5 being on a different rev not to mention the 15 other friend systems I service.

Since I install all my friends systems keeping a local rpm repository really speed thing up so doing so forces me to keep 2 rpm .repository's for different rev's. So instead of 41G I have to use 83G

Hi everyone,
I rolled back to Mandriva 2008.0, as I mentioned. Right now I will be using my box for a few more months, and then I'll go abroad to attend grad school. I'll upgrade to 2008.1 later.

this seems a good place to report issues. Partimage site says xfs is stable but when you run in a live cd...it always reports xfs format as being beta support....in 2008.0 I had no probs saving or restoring.
2008.1 unable to start the save image. The PI forum has a number of messages on bitmap error but they relate to error on restore and I found a post on save...but zero reply.

I could not wait any longer as I just found out when I run stat / I did not have an inode of 2 on 2008.0 so am now on ext3 2008.1 first image saved.

2) On a positive note, HP setup is better embedded so I can now see my ink levels...and run xsane from hp setup...woo hoo

FYI

I'm confused
 

Mandriva Free 2006 took up 3 CDs, but the only free version of Mandriva 2008 Spring that I can find fits on one CD. What am I overlooking?

From what I saw, Mandriva 2008.1 also comes in three CDs. In the ftp server I went to, there were three such links.

Yes, Mandrvia 2008 Spring Free, is available in a 3 CD set, as well as the DVD, One KDE and Gnome, and mini dual.

No 3-CD 2008 Mandriva Free download option
 

I go to Mandriva's web site and I have an option to download 2008 Spring Free One (698 meg) or Spring Free (393 meg). No 3 CD Free version. Where are people getting it?

I think you need a bittorrent to download,

http://torrent.mandriva.com/public/
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-cd1-i586.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 55K
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-cd2-i586.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 55K
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-cd3-i586.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 54K
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-dvd-i586.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 348K
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-dvd-x86_64.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 349K
[ ] mandriva-linux-free-2008-spring-mini-dual.torrent 09-Apr-2008 09:19 55K

http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux...al/iso/2008.1/

Try there.

Or, go here:

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

Select your country, choose Free, then when it tries to get you to download the DVD, cancel, click on the link in point 1 at the top and choose the CDs.

Freezing Solved!!!!!
 

I was able to solve the freezing problem I was having.
It turned out to be a mixed up drive partition arrangement. See below

SDA1 SDA5 SDA6 SDA12 SDA7 SDA8 SDA9 SDA10 SDA11

See were the SDA12 is? this what was causing the freezing.

What I did was move everything off those partitions onto backup.
Reformatted the drive put everything on order and put everything back.

Once I had a stable system I was able to fix all the rest of the issues.

Great to see you found(and posted) a fix.

Those pesky partition tables.

Live and learn eh?

I had a similar problem resizing partitions, last week. It was a good test of my patience, perserverense and knowledge of linux cli skills.

I found that I can use the mandriva cd to boot the system, reconfigure the partitions and then do a hard-reset (before the installation of any packages) to reboot the installed system. Thankfully I keep notes about partitions sizes and order.

Thanks, Glenn

Thanks. I went to the first site and found all three CD file images. I appreciate the help.

Makes you wonder why, though, with Linux able to use all the help it can get in spreading the word, a distribution would make it hard and not easy to find.

Moxieman

Very pleased with 2008 Spring myself. Its the first time I have been able to install 64bit without there being any missing software.

Biggest problem I have is issues with HDA Audio on my ASUS P5K-E WiFi board. For some reason PulseAudio doesn't want to work, although I suspect it was a conflict with the .asoundrc in my home directory conflicting with the new configuration. The problem is using ALSA alone my receiver is cutting off the first 2 seconds of any sound as it detects the frequency and fires itself up. Anyone know how to setup ALSA to ALWAYS output a signal even when and/or should PulseAudio do that if I got it working? Its dead annoying losing 2 seconds of every song I play as it even happens between songs as the SPDIF output stops and starts again, forcing the receiver to re-detect the frequency each time and drop those seconds.

Hey, I just got my copy of the dvd (2008.1 official), took a week to dl.

Thanks for all the posts, I'll keep my eyes open and post back with anything I find.

Setup is running now on my second system.

Back to you....