Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter – Issue #23

“This Week’s Summary: Mandrake in the News; Hot topics from the Cooker
mailing list; Business Case of the Week; Software Updates; Top Stories
from MandrakeForum.”

Mandrake in the News
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ExtremeTech.com -- Linux: The Time is Now!

The technology website "ExtremeTech" reviews four Linux distributions 
and concludes:
"We can't end the review without mentioning that Mandrake Linux 8.1 was 
the easiest to install, maintain, and use of all the distros tried... 
We can say there is indeed something lacking from Mandrake: problems. 
It is as powerful as any distribution on the market, and offers the 
very same choices as the other distros, with one more added: facility 
of use. Of the four distros we have used to research and produce this 
article, Mandrake 8.1 remains in each of our PC's as our primary 
operating system."

A very thorough review covers the following topics:
Key New Features; Initial Installation Steps; Partitioning; Packages; 
What Next?; Closing Thoughts.
http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s%253D1027%2526a%253D19919,00.asp

--

NewsForge.com -- Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition opens Linux to more games, 
more users.

The NewsForge website hosts a review & discussion of the Mandrake 8.1 
Gamer's Edition:
"If you are maintaining a dual boot system just to run The Sims, or any 
other game on the TransGaming fully supported list, you no longer are 
doing so by necessity. Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition delivers on the 
first game in its promise to bring a greater number of first-rate games 
to the Linux desktop. At a retail of $69 USD, and a street price around 
15% less than that, it is an excellent value only slightly more 
expensive than The Sims for Windows alone. The installation was easy, 
complete, and well polished overall, making it accessible to new and 
experienced users alike."
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/11/2337252


What's Cooking at MandrakeSoft?
----------------------------------------
Hot topics from last week's Cooker mailing list include discussions 
about:

1) Unsupported action listdir in Konqueror2.
Silvan Pagan said that he had seen many references but no fixes for: 
"Click the floppy icon, the drive mounts, then Konq. opens and pops up 
an "unsupported action listDir" box and barfs." Richard Wenninger later 
solves the problem. 

2) Tux.
Oden Eriksson asked if the patches he submitted for the Tux webserver 
were going to be accepted. Oden replied that it could be built as a 
module, but Vincent summed up the main concern: "But, even then, what 
if this starts a trend? Do we expect to see an FTP server, dns server, 
a proxy server, in the kernel next? Scares me." 

3) Samba upgrade disables samba at boottime.
Alexander Skwar reported that after he upgraded to the newest Samba 
RPM, it had disabled Samba from starting at bootup. Sylvestre Tabur 
pasted the section of the spec file "/sbin/chkconfig --level 35  smb 
on" which should take care of that.

4) PCMCIA network install failure.
Robert Fox reported that a pcmcia net install failed and provided a 
little info on what he did and what he saw.

Read the Cooker Mailing List Archives at
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker&r=1&w=2


Business Case of the Week
----------------------------------------
Horizon IS charter school: Complete ISP services for 7000 students, and 
more!

A California public school makes extensive use of Mandrake Linux 
resulting in higher productivity and immense savings:
"Our school also provides Internet connection for our students. In 
fact, we are our own ISP with a OC3 backbone connection to the net. We 
handle dialup Internet services, email, FTP, student web sites, company 
web site, web-based calendars and databases, video-conferencing, as 
well as web office suites, for approximately 7000 students."
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=237

Every "bizcase" counts; please share your story by submitting it to
MandrakeBizcases.com
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/submit.php


Software Updates
----------------------------------------
openssh -- fixes local vulnerabilty
passwd -- fixes lack of md5 support

View the entire list at:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/security/


Top Stories from MandrakeForum
----------------------------------------
Workarounds for common printing problems in ML 8.1.
MandrakeSoft printing guru Till Kampeter provides solutions for two 
printing problems in Mandrake 8.1:
1. Printerdrake can completely freeze the system (depending on your 
motherboard).
2. Some printers which worked well in Mandrake Linux 8.0 produce 
inferior output, or fail to work in 8.1.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1485?=en

Using A Digital USB Camera With Mandrake Linux.
In this article, Tom describes how he uses his shiny new Canon 
PowerShot A20 digital camera with Mandrake 8.1; many readers also 
discuss their experiences with digital cameras in Linux.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1476?=en

Windows XP - the end of the road?
The new WindowsXP license seems to be pushing users away from 
Microsoft; will they flock to Linux? An interesting column here. 
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1475?=en

Cooker: supermount is back!
This hot story is from Denis: "It's still too early for a full-scale 
celebration, but this is so good to miss, at least as a "rumour": I 
talked with our QA guys about rpmDrake today, and they mentioned that 
supermount has been tested, and worked fine in latest Cooker kernels."
&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Configuration Quickie: The Basic Firewall.
Tom describes how to configure the "Bastille" desktop firewall.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1467

Read these and other stories at:
http://www.MandrakeForum.com/