Test Release Thread

masinick · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2024 1:50 am Post subject: Test Release Thread

Hey Melloe, I know that over at Newbies Linux you have both a test release thread and a mini distro release thread. Here, you have a mini distro release thread.

Perhaps instead of putting the Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate notes all over the Distribution section, we could maintain at least most of them in this thread, then produce separate threads for the final released distro versions.

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

masinick · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2024 2:03 am Post subject: Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha 6

The final Alpha test of the April release of Kubuntu (as well as the other Buntu derivatives), has come out. I've been following Kubuntu with interest because I have wanted to see how well KDE 4 is coming along. Mandriva and Kubuntu (along with openSUSE and recently Fedora 11) have been among the leaders in making KDE available, though you can certainly get it elsewhere - Arch is a big one I can think of, and also Debian Experimental - Danum, a community member at MEPIS Lovers Forum, made a really nice KDE 4.2 implementation from SimplyMEPIS RC 3 and KDE 4.2 back in January.

Anyway, I digress. The Kubuntu updates have been a pretty good barometer of changes with KDE. When Kubuntu's current test release is erratic, it shows a lot of KDE activity.

Kubuntu 8.10, which I have on my Lenovo Y410 laptop, and which I updated earlier today, contains a maintenance version of KDE 4.1 - I believe it is KDE 4.1.3. That version, whether it is truly "complete" or not, at least has been quite stable and has worked pretty well for me.

The other instance I've been maintaining is Kubuntu 9.04. Early Alpha 1 was OK because not much changed from 8.10, but as soon as the changes really began in earnest, the Alpha cycle was pretty unstable. Alpha 2 was not that good, Alpha 3 was only a little better. Alpha 4 started to clean up, and I caught Alpha 5 when there were quite a few changes, and I have had more problems keeping the knetworkmanager running wirelessly, and I am now going into Alpha 6 running wired, but hoping that I can get wireless working again.

KDE itself is looking a lot better, and this spring may actually represent a decent release. Hard to tell though, the repos have been more volatile in this release than I've seen in many other releases. I think that the 8.04 release was one of the finest six Alpha releases that I'd seen - makes sense, since it was lining up as a Long Term Support (LTS) release. I still think it is THE release to use if you are a Ubuntu fan but you prefer stability to new fangled features. The 9.04 release, however, is the one to fiddle with for those with itchy hands that like the latest stuff - even with a few bugs. People that love to find and report bugs should definitely get the 9.04 stuff soon and help squelch bugs, because they can impact the dozens of derivative Ubuntu projects as well.

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

masinick · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2024 2:11 am Post subject: Mandriva 2024.1 Spring Cooker

I have been running the Mandriva Cooker on my Lenovo test system and I have well over 1100 updated packages to update, so it has been a while since I last ran the Cooker on the Lenovo Y410 laptop!

I keep oscillating which window or desktop manager I use, because I break them at times when updating with the Cooker. I use IceWM most of the time while updating, then I try KDE 3 and KDE 4 once updated. The Cooker also has the new XFCE 4.6, so I want to try that out as well.

Mandriva, for the most part, has seemed to do a somewhat better job with KDE 4 than Kubuntu has in recent months. I've had good success with KDE 4, though one round of updates did break it pretty badly (they were probably in the middle of updating the entire KDE 4 tree at the time that I did that particular update).

Anyway, overall it looks like the Mandriva Spring release in April will be a very visually appealing distribution once again - they always have some creative art work. It also appears that it will remain a leader in hardware support - all of my systems can handle it; very good at wireless - the Lenovo rarely gets attached to my wired network unless something breaks. Mandriva is consistently one of the distros that I enjoy testing. This upcoming version is no exception.

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

masinick · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2024 2:15 am Post subject: PCLinuxOS in third Beta test

PCLinuxOS continues to crawl along at a conservative pace, which has, in the past, led to a very good end result. I've done some testing of a couple of the test releases, and I am not quite as impressed with them as I have been with PCLinuxOS in the past, but they ARE, after all, test releases and they are NOT the final versions. The most recent release is quite a bit better than the bust I tried in November, which really disappointed me. Hopefully they are on track to release before the end of this spring, if not sooner.

I would be interested in anyone who has played with this test cycle of releases and the impressions you have.

_________________
Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

masinick

Wow, LOTS of updates, took quite a while. Did have to repeat the updates once because a few did not download the first time. IceWM is still functional after the updates; will have to check the other window and desktop managers to see how well they fare with the latest changes.

I will say one thing; Mandriva is one of a couple of distributions that puts their unique theme on just about all of the window managers and desktop managers, including IceWM. This is one of the reasons that Mandrake was long one of my favorite desktop systems, and it continues to be a reason that I test Mandriva often today.

I will also say that assuming that Mandriva continues to stabilize their KDE packages, the Spring release ought to be an excellent example of what KDE 4 can be, so any of you who want to try out KDE 4 this spring may find Mandriva to be a good distribution to use with KDE, and the fact that you can also use GNOME, XFCE, IceWM, and other window managers as additional options makes Mandriva a good platform for desktop and window manager testing.

Though I am a strong Debian advocate, Mandriva is probably my favorite non Debian based distro, and the fact that the Cooker gives me a rolling release setup, albeit a very bleeding version, it makes for an excellent testing platform. Any of you who test and like Mandriva will find the Cooker a good way to test - and potentially a way to "give back", by testing and reporting defects. I am pleased with the progress that I have seen with this release, well over 1100 updates, which appear, for the most part, to have worked.

urpmi --clean --auto-update
is a quick way to update Mandriva Cooker from a console terminal. That's what I did and it worked well.

Checking back in, KDE 4 seemed to survive the updates well and it is starting to look pretty solid.

_________________
Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

inactive · Sr. Member Joined: 29 Aug 2024 Posts: 1207

You might want to add to /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg (at the top of the file):

masinick · Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2024 4:28 pm Post subject:

good tips.

I was successful updating Mandriva Cooker last night - have KDE 3, KDE 4, Fluxbox, IceWM, XFCE, and LXDE environments working.

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

inactive · Sr. Member Joined: 29 Aug 2024 Posts: 1207

Very cool. I gave it up a while back. The later distro releases, it turns out, don't work well with my audio hardware. I had a too-long-standing bug on sound in Cooker that is still unresolved, and needed it back, so for Mandriva distros, I'm using 2024.1, and will stop there. Fedora doesn't work well with it either, so am not sure what to do there. ArtistX is the only one left that works with it, unfortunately, and that's because they're still on KDE3 and are multimedia-centric.

I don't know what I'm going to do in general. I do a lot of sound work. I guess buy yet *another* sound card, and hope and pray it works with the later distros.

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Mandriva 2024.1 PWP
Mandriva Cooker
ArtistX live

masinick · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2024 3:26 am Post subject:

My boxes tend to be old and I also buy very mainstream stuff. Much of it either works immediately or is very easy to set up. Brands I use: Dell - Dimension 4100 desktop (ancient) and Latitude D600 laptop, (getting old), Compaq/HP D530 desktop - ironically enough, could not get either my graphics card or my network working on the D530 when I went to install XP on it, so I ditched XP, but it runs Debian variations and Arch really well, so it is my desktop test box. Then I have a Gateway PA6A 17" laptop that I really use more as a desktop, replacing both the 4100 and the D530, and I have an excellent Lenovo 3000 Y410 laptop as well. All have superb Linux device support. The Gateway and the Lenovo are my two newest systems; I am unlikely to be getting anything else soon.

_________________
Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

melloe · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2024 8:46 am Post subject: Parsix GNU/Linux 2.0 Test 3

melloe · Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2024 9:03 am Post subject: Ubuntu 9.04 RC Apr 16 2024

Development Release: Ubuntu 9.04 RC
ubuntu Steve Langasek has announced the availability of the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope": "The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop and Server editions and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop edition brings faster boot speeds and a new notification system to your everyday computing experience. Ubuntu 9.04 Server edition makes it easy to experiment with cloud computing using Eucalyptus on your own servers, and sports an improved mail server integration stack based on Postfix and Dovecot. Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix brings a new, easy-to-use interface that is designed to be used on the smaller screens of netbook devices." Read the release announcement and release notes for a detailed list of changes and new features.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2009-April/000121.html

Download on page and also at www.distrowatch.com
The Ubuntu 9.04 family of variants, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and
Mythbuntu, also reach RC status today.

also
http://www.kubuntu.org/
http://www.edubuntu.org/
http://www.xubuntu.org/
http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://www.mythbuntu.org/hardyrc

NOTE: http://mythbuntu.org is temporarily down due to a problem with the hosting provider. RC images will still be available at
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/jaunty

Kubuntu discussion at http://usalug.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.html?t=14295

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mell0: 1. Kubuntu, XP, Sabayon 2. Mandriva,Mint, Mephis
Thor: 1. VISTA, Fedora 2. Chakra, Debian
Sam:XP, SuSE Zues: win7, SuSE testing

masinick · Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2024 3:17 pm Post subject: Re: Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 6

masinick

Note that this is a beta test of the legacy line of products. Red Hat is also well along in their Version 5 series - at LEAST 5.3. This shows that Red Hat continues to support their older legacy enterprise server releases. I endorse Red Hat Enterprise Linux products; I have personally used RHEL 2.1 and 3.0 on the job - these were already quite old, yet Red Hat has continued to support them as well.

For those who cannot afford Red Hat Enterprise products, but want something with similar capabilities (but are capable of supporting it themselves or through a less expensive alternative) will do well to examine CentOS.

masinick

masinick

I've been mentioning the Mandriva Cooker, but notice that Mandriva is closing in on their release. Their use of Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidates differ somewhat from the Ubuntu project, but also note that Mandriva is closer to their final Spring release, Mandriva Linux 2024.1 than Ubuntu is with theirs - I believe that both are scheduled for April; the Ubuntu release is the END of April. Haven't double checked the date, but Mandriva is probably mid April. DistroWatch has a section that covers published release plans; you can find the exact dates there if you are interested.
DistroWatch Link

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