[ Thanks to Phil
Lavigna for this link. ]
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Issue #67 Thursday, 7 November 2002
Welcome to the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter -- dedicated to
keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandrake-related news & info.
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This Week's Summary: New "CLIC" Distribution Launched; Mandrake in the
News; Top Ten "freshest" RPMs from MandrakeClub; Business Case of the
Week; Website Watch; Tip of the Week; Software Updates; Headlines from
MandrakeForum
Top Story
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MandrakeSoft & partners launch "CLIC" Clustering Linux Distribution.
On October 30th, 2002, MandrakeSoft announced the first release of a
new Linux Clustering Distribution named "CLIC", a project publicly
funded by the French Agency for New Technologies (RNTL).
The goal of the CLIC project is to provide a powerful, simple and easy
to install Linux Clustering system. One week after the initial
announcement, a new version was released which contains additional
features from Mandrake Linux 9.0, a parallelized version of URPMI
(MandrakeSoft's automated software management utility), plus numerous
improvements and bug fixes.
Learn more about this exciting new product.
Mandrake in the News
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Many news and discussion sites reported on the new "CLIC" distribution:
CNet.com -- Linux firm promises low-cost clusters.
"MandrakeSoft announced the release of a version of the open-source
operating system that it says is optimized for creating low-budget
supercomputers."
Slashdot.org -- Mandrake Announces Turn-Key Clustering Distribution.
"According to their website, Mandrake and partners (Bull,
INPG/INRIA...) have launched an 'easy-to-deploy easy-to-use Linux
Clustering solution,' that has already been tested on a 40-node
cluster. Of course, it's published under the GPL, comes with parallel
applications, and is available for download as an ISO."
MandrakeClub
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You want 'em, you got 'em. This week's Top Ten "fresh" RPMs include:
* fluxbox 0.1.10 (PPC) (8.2/ppc) -- The fluxbox window manager
* mldonkey (9.0/i586) -- file sharing utility
* acroread 5.0.6 (8.2/i586) -- Adobe Acrobat Reader
* gtkcdlabel (9.0/i586) -- GTK interface for creating CD labels
* SimpleCDR-X 1.2.1 (9.0/i586) -- nice frontend for burning CDs
* mjpegtools (9.0/i586) -- Tools for creating various MPEG
streams
* gnome file manager (9.0/i586) -- Fast file manager for GNOME2.
* gnupg 1.0.7 (8.2/ppc) -- gnupg encryption tool
* Nessus (8.2/i586) -- Open Source Security Scanner
* DotGNU Portable .NET (8.2/i586) -- GNU implementation of C#
Not yet a Mandrake Club member? To learn more, please visit:
http://mandrakelinux.com/en/club/
Business Case of the Week
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Mandrake powers our DNS and mail servers as Windows just kept failing.
A frustrated network manager wanted to replace their "ridiculously
unreliable" MS-Windows email and DNS servers with Linux, but the
powers-that-be claimed Linux was unproven.
'cabletastic' explains:
"So, without their knowledge I changed our DNS servers. Armed with this
fresh confidence and getting steadily more peeved with a mail server
that needed fixing every day, we casually slipped a postfix box in
which has had absolutely no problems at all since it went live. All
without sanction from the aforementioned powers that be who have now
commented on how the mail appears to be a lot quicker and how it never
needs fixing! That showed em. Mandrake is now the distro of choice for
the mail servers for all of our offsite mail/DNS servers and is used in
one of our Firewalls (ipchains) to protect the clients on our internal
network."
For many more examples of Mandrake in the workplace, see MandrakeBizCases.com.
Website Watch
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MozillaQuest.com -- Using LinNeighborhood to Create a Network
Neighborhood for Linux.
This introductory tutorial provides a nice overview of how a Mandrake
system can be used to access shared resources on remote, networked,
Windows-based computers.
"Today, we will add a Windows-like, Network-Neighborhood area to a
Linux-based computer -- in a peer-to-peer network environment. That
will give us full access to all the shared resources on all the
computers connected to our LAN."
Tip of the Week
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Command-line equivalents for Mandrake utilities.
Did you know that all of those handy utilities in the Mandrake Control
Center can also be used from a terminal or console? Let's say for some
reason your mouse stops working, and you can't click the mouse
configuration utility in the Mandrake Control Center. What do you do?
You can switch to a virtual console (Alt-Ctrl-F2), login as root, and
enter 'mousedrake' to launch a command-line version of the mouse
configuration tool. Then when that's done, switch back the desktop by
pressing 'Alt-Ctrl-F7' to see if the rodent problem is fixed.
Some other command-line equivalents include:
* XFdrake -- for configuring/reconfiguring the video
* mousedrake -- for configuring/reconfiguring the mouse
* drakgw -- Internet connection sharing
* draknet -- configure/reconfigure the network connection
* keyboarddrake -- configure/reconfigure the keyboard
* printerdrake -- configure/reconfigure a printer
* drakconf -- the whole shebang in one convenient interface
Software Updates
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9.0 software updates have been released for:
initscripts -- fixes wireless problems
printer-drivers -- fixes various printing issues
krb5 -- fixes remote root vulnerability
View the complete list at MandrakeSecure.net.
Headlines from MandrakeForum
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LinuxWorld flashback.
Denis returns from the Frankfurt LinuxWorld Expo and files this report.
Mandrake now preinstalled on computers in New Zealand.
'dlynch' talks about Dick Smith Electronics, a company based in New
Zealand that sells reasonably priced PCs pre-loaded with Mandrake.
Mac-on-Linux: PPC users got us on this one!
Deno discusses the latest version of 'Mac-on-Linux', an Open Source
program that allows PPC Linux users to run Mac OS 9 -- and now Mac OS X
-- in Mandrake PPC.
Read these and other stories at MandrakeForum.