Mandriva & Ubuntu

After almost ten years of loving, learning, and living in the Mandriva world, I feel, at this time of my first blog post about Ubuntu Linux like an auto mechanic driving a stick shift for the first time. These two operating systems come from two different philosophies when it came to packaging GNU/linux. Ubuntu comes from the Debian Linux fork and Mandriva comes from the RedHat fork. The most obvious difference between these two *nix’s is the package management system. Mandriva took the RPM system and improved on it with the urpmi (command line) and gurpmi / rpmdrake (graphic) systems for package applications management. Ubuntu started with the .deb / apt-get (command line) and improved it with the Synaptic (graphic) package manager.

There are some other obvious differences. Some of them I haven’t even learned yet. In fact I’m still working on finding the commands just to find out some basic information on my new Ubuntu box.

One area that Mandriva and Ubuntu have not forked away from each other is in the commitment to the idea of an open source operating system. I applaud them. I think the open source philosophy is the right way to go in software, education, farming and many other areas.

That said, sometimes you want to watch videos and hear music and play DVD’s. Sometimes that requires software that does not meet the strict demands of companies committed to open source. Luckily for us, the system user, there are people who also dream of a world filled with open source software who don’t mind stepping into the gray area of patent and copywrite.

In Mandriva, and as I understand it, until not long ago, Ubuntu also depended on the good people of the Penguin Liberation Front to offer these third party repositories. I’m a bit late to the game but it appears that the PLF dropped it’s Ubuntu support recently and left Ubuntu users clammoring for their codecs.

The good shoes of the PLF have been filled with the apt-feet of the people at Medibuntu .

I truly wish that someone at Dell would have slipped in a tiny piece of paper as they packed my lappy into the box. Just a short note. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this but if you want all your media types to work, visit this site.”

Had I known about Medibuntu just two short days earlier than I did, I would have spent much less time messing with mozplugger I guarentee you that.

Once I had the repository added to my synaptic package manager, little fixer apps almost threw themselves at me in an effort to help make things work. Mplayer and Xine became much more powerful applications.

So If you are a new Ubuntu user, and you live in a country that doesn’t oppress one’s and zero’s, then Medibuntu is an absolute must for a smoother running operating system.

Happy computing

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This will be a live (real time) blog about installing and configuring Mandriva 2008 on the Dell Inspiron laptop computer which I have purchased and am currently awaiting deliver.

The purpose of this blog is to document the process of converting the 1525 N laptop to use the Mandriva operating system.

Suggestions will be appreciated in the comments section of this blog. I have set up a wiki companion page to this blog for the purpose of keeping the large lists that will be created. If you are familiar with wiki’s, you are welcome there as well. Feel free to use the discussion sections for the associated pages. Pasted lists will be protected pages.

You are welcome to E-Mail Me with any thoughts you may have on the subject as well.

Just for overkill, I’ll also be writing in my forum. It’s yet to be determined if I will be ranting or raving there.

So here we go:

Feb. 29

Ordered Dell Laptop with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.

Waiting for arrival.

Downloading and burning Mandriva 2008 iso image.

MARCH 3rd 2008:

Soliciting suggestions for preperation and pre-install.

[one month later]

Another Backorder Date!

Cancelled!

screw dell.

APRIL 1 2008

Finally got the laptop today. I’ll be putting the Ubuntu configurations on the wiki tonight in preperation for moving the operating system to Mandriva.

I will be installing Mandriva 2008.1 rc2 free. Since this is a free version (not powerpack) the Inspiron needs to be connected to the router by cable. This is because the driver for the wireless card is not available on the free version and will be useless until it has access to the driver online.

I will be attempting to install Mandriva alongside of Ubuntu in a dual boot configuration for now. I chose custom partitioning and resized the large partition to about half it’s original size. I then created on the empty partition I created a / partition a /usr, /var, and /home.

I was given the option of other disks or network I wanted to use. FTP continued to make errors. HTTP seems to have worked and does the same thing so all is well so far.

In the package group selection I chose internet station, Network Computer (client), LSB, Network Computer (server), Firewall, KDE and GNOME workstations and checked Individual Package Selection.

I didn’t need to select/unselect many things. I chose proftpd, iptables, Units (one of my favorite console applications), emacs and a game or two.
I dumped scribus and kpilot and heavy graphics games because I’ll not be using either of those on the laptop.

Since I am installing both KDE and Gnome the installation will take quite a while so I watch some television.

*

First and second installation failed. The installation went okay but I had trouble with the sound card driver. The speakers screeched and couldn’t be turned off until the initial login which took quite a bit of time. I also had some problems getting some packages installed. That was probably because I was using the development version. I will now wait until the 2008.1 release is final before attempting again.

April 13th

Mandriva 2008.1 is now official. I will attempt another install. I decided to go with the powerpack version because it has more restricted drivers which may fix my soundcard issues. I have the disk in the machine and am about to reboot into it.

I must say, after using Ubuntu for the last couple of weeks on the laptop that is a very nice operating system. I particularly like how sudo works on it. I would probably stick with Ubuntu except that it just doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m missing out on something that I can’t put my finger on. I also need Mandriva for some compatibility issues when connecting to my other boxes with Xauthority.

Anyway, here goes.

April 15th

Sadly, It was a complete failure. I tried 6 different times to install Mandriva on the laptop. I fixed bootloaders, I stopped services before booting. I spent twelve long hours messing with it and ended up further behind than I was before I formatted the harddrive.

I’ve spent over 8 years on linux and almost all of that on Mandriva. This is only the second time I could not get it to install on a piece of hardware. The first time was trying to install it on the first Mac I ever got to spend any time with.

I would still like to put Mandriva on this box, but I’ll not be trying again until I see several examples of it working for other people.

Live and learn. I’m going back to testing games.

May 27th:

Thanks to the comments on this blog, I decided to give it another shot.  I’m now using Mandriva on the 1525 N.

The sound card issue was fixed with alsamixer -c0 -V capture.  It was a long time of waiting for the first login process and it was very loud but worth the effort.

Installation was done using 2008.1 version of Mandriva on DVD and http media.  The laptop needed to be plugged into a wired LAN for the installation using http.

Everything works fine.  The webcam and wireless too.

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I ordered a laptop computer from Dell yesterday. It’s expected to ship on March 6th.

I know, I know. After my last Dell ordering fiasco, you would think I would never go through that again. The word on the street is that those problems were because Dell had a lousy paint shop at the time and couldn’t keep up. School was just starting and they couldn’t get the pinks and reds to look right.

So, I decided to give Dell another chance. This time I ordered it in Henry Ford’s favorite color; black. You can’t go wrong with the default.

One of the biggest reasons I chose to go with Dell is that I don’t use Microsoft operating systems. So, anytime I buy a computer with Vista or XP pre-installed, I feel like I’m paying a tax to Microsoft for a service I will never use. Dell offers computers with Ubuntu Linux installed. There are other companies that put linux on laptops but they are usually high end, thousand dollar computers or low end, seven inch screen computers with wind up cranks. The one I ordered, the Dell Inspiron 1525 N, is on the low end of half way between those.

I would prefer to not have anything installed. The free Ubuntu installation will be removed and replaced with my GNU/linux choice, Mandriva. It’s nice to know that all the hardware that require drivers will work under linux though.

Another reason for choosing the Dell was the price. It’s a low end box, but everything in it was “good enough”. The worst thing on it is the graphics card, or, more precisely, the shared memory for the card. This is not a gaming computer.

I’ll be reviewing this laptop here in the next few weeks. I have not been able to find a review of it with any other operating system beside Ubuntu Linux. That’s not counting all the reviews with XP and Vista of course. There are plenty of those.

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In the course of the past week we have received news from Nigeria and France that 17,000 ClassmatePC laptop computers will be loaded with Mandriva Linux.  It was quite a coup for Mandriva if not a profitable one.  License fees, including support, have been reported to be in the $10.00 per computer range.

A day after the report of Mandriva getting the nod from Nigeria, Mandriva received word that Mandriva Linux would be stripped from the computers and have Microsoft Windows installed before delivery to each school.

Possibly smelling a rat, the obviously agitated  CEO of Mandriva, François Bancilhon,  fired off a harsly worded open letter to Steve Ballmer.

The letter resulted in some flame wars on tech sites all around the web.

Today, infoworld news is reporting that the planned re-installation of windows won’t be going forward after all.

Apparently, the government agency that does the funding,  Nigeria’s Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF), wants to keep Mandriva Linux on the laptops.  The official from USPF felt it was best not to give his name to the press however.

Meanwhile, the company doing the deployment of the computers for the government, Technology Support Center (TSC),  seems to want to put Microsoft Windows onto the laptops and have a absolutely huge marketing campaign with $400,000.00 of Microsofts money.   Microsofts licensing fee’s for the computers is unknown.

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A day after Mandriva inked a deal with the Nigerian government, news comes that Nigeria will still purchase the Mandriva software but will then reload the ClassmatePC’s with windows software. Many think this is just business. Others think this is the result of a corrupt government taking bribes from an “unscrupulous Microsoft Corp.”

François Bancilhon put out an open letter to Steve Ballmer in response to the events of the day.

It was a rather poorly worded letter (Bancilon’s native language is French) which came very close to accusing Ballmer of bribery of the Nigerian officials. Bancilhon would have done better to have waited a few more hours before lashing out the way he did. His anger may have been well placed, but many will look at his letter as ‘sour grapes’ in a global business climate. It surely won him no friends in Lagos and Abuja.

Whatever the reasons, I find it sad that these children will not be allowed to work with an operating system that they can use and, with the right skills, adapt to the needs of the Nigerian people. Freely available software that can be freely customized would have been of much more benefit to the future of Nigeria and all of Africa than the closed source code of the windows operating system.

Here is François Bancilhon’s letter in full.

Dear Steve,

Hi, this is François, from Mandriva.

I’m sure we’re way too small for you to know me. You know, we’re one of these tiny Linux company working hard for our place on the market. We produce a Linux Distro, Mandriva Linux. The last edition, Mandriva 2008 was seen as a pretty good version and we’re proud of it. You should give it a spin, I’m sure you’d like it. We also happen to be one of the Linux companies that did not sign an agreement with your company (nobody’s perfect).

We recently closed a deal with the Nigerian Government. Maybe you heard about it, Steve. They were looking for an affordable hardware+software solution for their schools. The initial batch was 17,000 machines. We had a good answer to their need: the Classmate PC from Intel, with a customized Mandriva Linux solution. We presented the solution to the local government, they liked the machine, they liked our system, they liked what we offered them, the fact that it was open, that we could customize it for their country and so on.

Then your people entered the game and the deal got more competitive. I would not say it got dirty, but someone could have said that. They fought and fought the deal, but still the customer was happy to get CMPC and Mandriva.

So we closed the deal, we got the order, we qualified the software, we got the machine shipped. In other word, we did our job. I understand the machine are being delivered right now.

And then, today, we hear from the customer a totally different story: “we shall pay for the Mandriva Software as agreed, but we shall replace it by Windows afterward.”

Wow! I’m impressed, Steve! What have you done for these guys to change their mind like this? It’s pretty clear to me, and it will be clear to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve, in the place where you live? In my place, they give it various names, I’m sure you know them.

Hey Steve, how do you feel looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Of course, I will keep fighting this one and the next one, and the next one. You have the money, the power, and maybe we have a different sense of ethics you and I, but I believe that hard work, good technology and ethics can win too.

cheers

François

PS: a message to our friends in Nigeria: it’s still time to do the right thing and make the right choice, you will get lots of support for it and excellent services!

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The African nation of Nigeria has chosen the Intel powered Classmate PC computer loaded with the Mandriva Linux operating system in a nationwide pilot program aimed at putting a computer within reach of every child.

Mandriva, along with Intel Corp.,  and Technology Support Center  are working to deliver 17,000 of the small but durable laptop computers to classrooms.

Mandriva made the announcement on it’s website and said that the pc’s will be running a customized version of Mandriva Linux 2007 built on Mandriva Flash technology.

“Nigerian government’s decision to choose Mandriva Linux to run on classmate PCs reaffirmed Mandriva Linux as one of the most popular Linux distributions in the world. Mandriva’s emerging market strategy is based around a network of local partners and OEM agreements with hardware providers. Mandriva has been working with Intel on classmate PCs since the very beginning, making Mandriva Linux one of the first operating systems to run on the machine.”

Intel-powered classmate PCs use a low power Intel processor for good performance and battery life and feature 2 GB of internal flash storage. They are small and lightweight and can fit in a backpack. The screen is only seven inches but is quite clear. Anti-theft technology is built in.

With wi-fi technology and small antenna’s at each school connecting to the larger base stations, the students can interact with their teachers in real time or talk to other students from around the world.

About Technology Support Center:

The Technology Support Center is a technology diffusion company focused on providing feature complete solutions to some of the most challenging problems facing Africa. A regional leader in the design, development, implementation and support of computing, pedagogical and healthcare solutions in rural africa.

For more information on the classmatepc vist http://www.classmatepc.com/

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Mandriva Club memberships are now offered for free to anyone who wishes to sign up.

PRESS RELEASE

 The old Club was a mixture of commercial services (including downloads of commercial Mandriva editions) and a community site. The commercial side has now been split out into a standalone subscription service which allows you to download the Powerpack edition of two Mandriva Linux distributions per year at a single fixed price, while the Club is now simply the community of Mandriva users, with no paid memberships: access is free to all.

Just register at https://my.mandriva.com and you get access to all the free community services:

• access to free online training courses: 25 free training modules available at http://etraining.mandriva.com

• access to free technical support from the Mandriva Expert community service

• write access to the forum and its community of knowledgeable users and its 3 Mandriva Trained Admins (awilliamson, RJ and imr (french monkey))

• Free Official Documentation

• a free blog space on the Mandriva Club platform

• a subscription to the Mandriva Newsletter containing security alerts, new package announcements, product releases and special offers.

Are you a Mandriva user? Then you’re a member of the Mandriva community. Registered for a free account at https://my.mandriva.com? You’re a member of the new free Club.

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Mandriva has announced the release of the long awaited Mandriva 2008 edition of the Mandriva Linux operating system.

According to the Mandriva team ” Mandriva Linux 2008 includes all the latest innovations in the fields of office suite applications, Internet, multimedia and 3D-accelerated Desktop technologies.”

The 3D-accelerated Desktop comes with Compiz Fusion 0.5.2, an un-forking of compiz and beryl, and a easy configuration method with drak3D wizard.

An up to date kernel, 2.6.22 comes with it, and on the desktop, there is KDE 3.5.7
and KDE 4 preview. KDE4 is not ready for prime time at Mandriva 2008 release time.

For GNOME lovers, there is GNOME 2.20 and OpenOffice.org 2.2 office suite.

The fast growing Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6 browser is included as well.

Mandriva Linux is available as a free download on
http://www.mandriva.com/download
Power Pack is available here:  http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?products_id=379&language=en

Mandriva Linux in a box will begin shipping in November 2007.

It will be available in  slim pack DVD or full box version including the manual.

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Alastair Otter, the founder and editor of Tectonic, reports that Mandriva has inked a deal to provide technology solutions, training and consulting services in the African nation of Angola’s National Commission for Information Technology (CNTI).

A team from the Brazilian branch of Mandriva will be training 50 Angolan engineers in open source technologies.

Angola is emerging from a lengthy and brutal civil war.

“We think that an intelligent use of information technologies will help to achieve social justice and poverty reduction, due to the way it facilitates the living of the citizens”, said Pedro Teta, Angolan vice-minister of science and technology.

CNTI has identified open source software as a major strategic component in its efforts to build an information society. “The Angolan government drew up a strategic plan of development of information technologies in order to standardize computing solutions in institutions. It is also planning to train public servants. We chose Mandriva to help us in this effort”, said Teta.

Angola is now in a better position to become an information society, thanks to
the progress in the mobile telecommunication and Government projects. Almost all Luanda’s neighborhoods have a cyber cafe and internet is available throughout the country.

Problems facing Angola includes telecommunication infrastructure. The government is working to improve this by laying vast amounts of fiber throughout the country.

Training has been identified by CNTI as another problem which they hope the Mandriva Brazil Team will help them address. The first step is that all public servants know how to use a computer and afterwards the students.

Another problem which the government is trying to address is reaching the goal set forward by the United Nations to have at least one computer in every village by 2015. CNTI intends to distribute over 1000 computers by the end of the year.

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Mandriva Linux 2008 is nearing it’s official release date. To celebrate the occasion Mandriva is in the process of organizing an international Installfest.

LUG’s (Linux User Groups) and/or experts in the use of the Mandriva Linux Operating System, in co-ordination with the Mandriva Team are encouraged to hold an “Installfest” event in their respective cities on the day of the international event.

The Mdv 2007 Installfest brought together experts, enthusiasts and beginners in over fifty cities throughout 20 countries for the event.

The purpose of the event is to assist beginners to help them get started with the operating system. Participants will be able to get help on installing Mandriva Linux 2008 on their laptop or Desktop, get all answers to their questions, be presented with the new features available in the 2008 release, and meet other Linux users.

If you are interested in holding an installfest in your city, contact the Mandriva Installfest Coordination Team at lugs@mandrivalinux.org and they will send you a party pack.

The party pack may vary but will include such things as:

* Mandriva Linux One 2008
* stickers
* posters
* pens
* electronic communication kit

More information, and pictures from previous Installfests can be seen here.

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