Although the news has not yet gone public, downloads are available for Mandriva 2006 Release Candidate 2. Torrents are available for both the single DVD and multiple CD versions. If you spot any bugs in this latest release candidate, please report them to the Mandriva Linux Dev. Team. As always, technical support is available in our Linux Forum. Enjoy, -AT
awesome, started downloading it now, i got LE2005 Mandriva working again but i think i'll try this instead...
If you're already running another version of Mandriva Linux, you can upgrade the existing installation either by using the DVD/CDs or by pointing urpmi at the "Cooker" repository. I've been running 2006 since beta 1, and I must say it's shaping up to be a great release. -AT
Sure. urpmi is the Mandriva tool for automatically installing & updating software. It's a powerful tool -- in fact, it can even be used to upgrade the entire system to the latest version, if you should desire to do so. Imagine being able to upgrade WIndowsXP to Vista without a single reboot -- this is basically the equivilent of what you can do with urpmi. A repository is a public store of software. Urpmi, when used with repositories, can provide you with a list of software that you can install based on what's available in that particular repository. In Mandriva Linux, there are several different types of repositories: Main -- provides everything found on the Mandriva DVD/CDs Updates -- Any updated/patched software found in the main mirror is released through the updates repository. Using this source, you can easily keep your Mandriva Linux system up to date. Contrib -- Contributed packages for Mandriva Linux. Lots and lots of software available in the contib mirrors, highly recommended PLF-Free -- PLF, as in "Penguin Liberation Front". PLF-Free packages are those that were not included in the official mirrors for various legal or political reasons, but are usually not proprietary packages. A good example of a program found in a PLF-Free mirror would be ZSNES, an open-source SNES emulator. Technically legal, and the software's even open source. But Mandriva isn't looking for a lawsuit from Nintendo. PLF-NonFree -- Same as above, but proprietary packages. An example would be the Win32-Codecs package, which includes all of the multimedia codecs found in Windows, such as WMV9. It's a "free" package, but is covered by patents and trademark, so it's in a legal gray-area in many countries. If you add all of these repositories, you'll have a *huge* amount of software to choose from. You can learn more about urpmi and set up your urpmi-repositories using urpmi-addmedia.org. I probably made it sound more difficult than it is, you'll see what I mean. If you need any specific help, feel free to start a thread in the Linux forum. All the best, -AT P.S. - Oops, forgot to mention what cooker was! Cooker is the name Mandriva uses for the packages which are still under development, i.e. not yet well tested. It contains the absolute latest packages available for Mandriva Linux. The cooker has its own main, contrib and PLF mirrors as well, and uses the same basic principles. Unless you want to test out the absolute bleeding-edge-latest of Mandriva software, you would normally avoid using cooker sources and instead use whichever source matches the version you have installed (e.g. 2005LE). Right now, the cooker mirrors contain all the latest packages for the forthcoming 2006 release. If you are running the latest release candidate, you should use the cooker mirrors.
No problem. I'm going to write a urpmi-howto pretty soon here, along with some helpful tips & hints for new Linux users. Due to the popularity of Kubuntu/Ubuntu, I may write an apt-get howto as well.
cool, yeah i'm sure you and thepenguincometh would have everything covered with a bunch of help's and how to's...can't wait to learn more about the lovely linux
I'm no longer seeding the 2006 RC2 DVDs, but the official mirrors for 2006 RC2 are up now and they've got a lot more bandwidth than me anyway. You can find them over here. Enjoy, -AT
cool, i got the RC2 through Bit Torrent, havent put it on a DVD yet as i need to get some more, also can i just install i over Mandriva LE2005? Will it wipe that and start again?
You can certainly do that. If you want to keep all of your setting and documents, do an upgrade and only allow it to format your '/' (root) and/or '/usr' partitions, and not your '/home' (that's where your profile/files/settings are kept).
deep burner has worked before, its a good piece of free software, i have nero startsmart but was never sure how to burn an .iso file
Hmm, it may be called something like 'open disc image' or something. ...Ahhh, here it is. Hope this helps. -AT
awesome i'll try that sometime soon, i wondered why i couldny find it, i thought surely nero should have an option like that...