[ Thanks to Phil
Lavigna for this link. ]
*********************************************************************** Issue #34 Tuesday, 12 March 2002 Welcome to the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter -- dedicated to keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandrake-related news & info. *********************************************************************** This Week's Summary: 8.2 RC1 available for download & testing; 8.2 Packages at MandrakeClub; Mandrake in the News; Legislative Alert; Business Case of the Week; Security-related Software Updates; This Week's Online Poll; Website Notices; Headlines from MandrakeForum. Top Story ---------------------------------------- 8.2 Release Candidate available for download & testing. Mandrake Linux 8.2 RC1 was released on Saturday, March 9. This is the final testing phase before it is labeled "Gold" and made into the 8.2 Final. The Cooker is now in a deep freeze which means that no new software packages are introduced into the distribution -- only severe bugs will be fixed -- but there is still time to download and test on your equipment. Read the official announcement. MandrakeClub ---------------------------------------- The first commercial software packages from the 8.2 distribution have hit the download area. To kick off the festivities, Denis released a few of the most popular applications, libraries and plugins: * Codeweavers Wine * Opera 6 browser * Acroread (PDF reader) * Acroread plugin * RealPlayer * Turboprint printer drivers * Alcatel Speedtouch USB adsl modem microcode * SUNs jdk and jre (Java stuff) Denis adds: "By the time 8.2 boxes hit the shops, all of the applications from the "commercial CDs" should be available for download here. We may even end up having MORE applications, as the CDs have fixed deadlines, and our download zone has none." Not yet a Mandrake Club member? To learn more, please visit: http://mandrakelinux.com/en/club/ Mandrake in the News ---------------------------------------- Mandrake Linux is Number 2 at Linux Counter. According to the latest Linux Counter survey, Mandrake Linux overcame Debian to became the "second most popular distro". Late last year, Linux Counter conducted a major "house cleaning" by removing many old and inactive accounts. Users were asked to re-register their machines and record their distribution of choice. The latest stats show a big drop for Debian and Slackware, while the percentage of machines running RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE rose. Over 90,000 machines are now registered at Linux Counter. The current results show: 1) Red Hat 30.40% 2) Mandrake 20.01% 3) Debian 12.76% 4) Slackware 12.41% 5) SuSE 11.67% 6) DIY 1.34% 7) Connectiva 1.11% Be sure to have your Mandrake system counted at Linux Counter. -- Netcraft.com -- Web Server Survey. According to Netcraft's February's survey, deployment of the Advanced Extranet Server has jumped 43% since January, exceeding Lotus Domino and Red Hat's Stronghold. Compared to Feb 2001, the number of sites running AES has increased by more than two hundred percent. The Advanced Extranet Webserver is a high-performance version of the famous Apache webserver that is found only in the Mandrake Linux distribution. Legislative Alert ---------------------------------------- U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) held a hearing on Thursday, February 28th to examine copyright protection in the digital age. Some of the ideas that are being considered would seriously infringe on consumer "fair use" rights. The music and movie industry has been spearheading a campaign to control ordinary PCs with a series of laws, such as the DMCA and SSSCA. Senator Hollings is supporting their goals. Leslie L. Vadasz, Executive Vice President of Intel, testified: "For some studios, the objective is total control... Congress should focus attention on the degree to which the consumer interest is being undermined by a slavish adherence to demands for total content protection." The complete hearing is available in PDF form. Business Case of the Week ---------------------------------------- SAIR and Mandrake Linux... hitting the desktop. This week's feature is a nicely written personal story of one man's experience with the SAIR Linux Certified Administrator course, as well as its validity in real-world terms. "Currently, I am interrogating the viability of replacing all Windows desktops with Mandrake Linux instead of moving on to pricey slow Windows 2000 (XP is out of the question for me, our documents are OUR documents). There are only about 4 employees using an application that requires Windows, i.e. our bookkeeping software. Have to keep Windows there, if only to receive my salary..." For many more examples of Mandrake in the workplace, see MandrakeBizcases. Software Updates ---------------------------------------- Security-related software updates have been released for: * mod_frontpage --fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability * mod_ssl -- fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability * openssh -- fixes local root vulnerability View the complete list at MandrakeSecure.net. This Week's Online Poll ---------------------------------------- How important is StarOffice? * Important enough to buy a PowerPack * OpenOffice is good enough for me * I don't care. Cast your vote in the Voting Booth and check the results. Website Notices ---------------------------------------- MandrakeSecure.net has a new paper titled Enabling SASL support in postfix. This document describes how to configure the Postfix email server and Cyrus SASL to provide SASL-based AUTH support for allowing only authenticated clients the ability to relay email. -- MandrakeUser.org has many new contributions and updates this week, including: New pages on: * Installing Java * Handling CD-Images * Configuring An IDE CD/RW Drive On ML 8.1 By Hand * Mounting A Remote Share Via FTP * Accessing WebDAV Shares Updated pages on: * Keyboard in X * Fonts in X * HTTPS And Webmin * Shell FAQ A new Offline Edition of MandrakeUser.org is now available for downloading. Read all the details. Headlines from MandrakeForum ---------------------------------------- Many stories this week about testing Beta 4, including: * What and how to test * USB and USB2 support * Testing TV cards and webcams * Upgrading from 8.1 * And lots more Mounting A Remote Directory Locally Via FTP. Tom describes an interesting way to mount a remote FTP share on a local machine so it appears like any other normal disk. Trouble with libpng2 and libpng3. The way that libraries are named in Unix/Linux allows users to install several versions of the same library if/when needed. This is a great thing for assuring backwards compatibility... that is, until libpng3 came out. Configuring An ISA Sound Card. An anonymous Mandrake Linux user asks: "I have an aopen aw37 sound card, and i cant get it to work with mandrake linux. Can anyone help me?" Tom responds with some good tips, and several readers contribute their own. Read these and other stories at MandrakeForum. ---------------------------------------- To subscribe to the weekly Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter, please visit the MandrakeSoft website and enter your email address into the "Sign in" box located on the right side of the webpage.