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Mandriva Businesses

MandrakeSoft's Status Update 264

Posted by timothy from the smooth-install-pretty-desktop dept.
joestar writes "MandrakeSoft today posted an update letter from its CEO about the company's health. Among other things, it's interesting to learn that the company seems to be on the good track to go out of the "chapter-11 protection" before the end of the year, that it's taking part to several publicly-funded research projects, and that Mandrake 9.1 is having a good success. They also thank for the warm support they received from the community. Worth a read for all Mandrake fans, like myself. Viva la Mandrake!"
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MandrakeSoft's Status Update More

MandrakeSoft's Status Update

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  • Stock Prices? (Score:4, Funny)

    by haydenth ( 588730 ) <haydenth AT msu DOT edu> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:41PM (#6344747)
    If they go out of Chapter 11, does that mean that my 175 shares of mandrake stock will be worth anything? It was doing okay, until they went bankrupt.

    • Who translated that, Babelfish? (Score:5, Funny)

      by ThePatrioticFuck ( 640185 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @08:54PM (#6345246)
      Quoting from the statement...

      we are happy to report that since January MandrakeSoft has been 'cash-flow positive'. Our immediate goal is to exit from this status before the end of the current year.

      Okay, either there's a small mistake in that statement, or I think I may have found their problem ;)

      TPF

  • Mandrake 9.1 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gortbusters.org ( 637314 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:42PM (#6344756) Homepage Journal
    Downloaded, tried it, and I liked it... was much more for home users than say Red Hat 9. Unfortunately Ximian Desktop 2 doesn't support it yet so I put on my redhat and resorted to primate behavior with Ximian.

    • I hate to "me too" (Score:5, Informative)

      by mhesseltine ( 541806 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:46PM (#6344779) Homepage Journal

      I agree completely. Mandrake 9.1 is a really great desktop Linux. I tried RH9. Didn't detect my SB Audigy, still hate RPM, even with up2date. Mandrake 9.1 detected everything, including my crappy Epson USB printer, configured everything, DrakRPM is a wonderful tool.

      If I continue to use this, I'll probably buy the 9.2 pack to support Mandrake. If you're looking for a desktop to try, Mandrake 9.1 is fabulous.

      </happy rant>

      • Let's make sure to keep it alive (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dspeyer ( 531333 ) <dspeyer&wam,umd,edu> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @10:28PM (#6345816) Homepage Journal
        I agree completely. Mandrake 9.1 is a really great desktop Linux. I tried RH9. Didn't detect my SB Audigy, still hate RPM, even with up2date. Mandrake 9.1 detected everything, including my crappy Epson USB printer, configured everything, DrakRPM is a wonderful tool.
        It's a rather unpleasant though that the leader of User-Friendly Linux could go down. I'm glad to hear they're doing better at the moment, but who can understand corporate accounting?

        But this is Free Software, and if Mandrake falls, someone else can take it up. So far,a lot of user-friendliness work has been done by for-profits. There's no reason this has to be the case. If Mandrake fails, is there anyone planning to start where they left off? Are there people ready to work on this?

        I'll put in as much time I can.

      • You might want to check out more details on urpmi and the associated commandline tools:

        urpmi mini-HOWTO [tiscali.co.uk]

        TWiki > Main > MandrakeSpecific > UsingUrpmi [vmlinuz.ca]

      • Re:I hate to "me too" (Score:3, Insightful)

        by egghat ( 73643 )
        Join the Club! It's 60 dollars that go 100% and directly to Mandrake. When you're buying the box, only sth. like 50% will go to Mandrake.

        MandrakeClub is wonderful. You can vote for your preferred packages and the ones with the most votes get packaged by Mandrake. You'll get a lot of discounts for books, commercial software, etc. Silver members can download StarOffice for free. That alone is worth half of the yearly price.

        It's really worth it AND you support Mandrake's future! (I don't find that the boy of
    • By "primate behavior" I assume you mean you howled and flung your feces at the computer? =)

  • mandrake must survive! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:44PM (#6344767)
    mandrake, imho is the best desktop linux there is. installation is easy, and it's much more user friendly than the more advanced linux distributions out there.

    long live mandrake!
  • Posting mandrake accolades on Slashdot is great, get the word out. More importantly, invest in a great company providing a quality product. Perhaps this will help them out of trouble! Interestingly, there is a rumor that this downturn is because of the US & pro-Us policy geeks not spending their money in France.

  • Another interesting link: interview with G. Duval (Score:5, Informative)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:46PM (#6344776) Homepage
    Linux Weekly News just released (today) an interesting interview with Gaël Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux. He covers topics such as the Mandrake Club business model, Linux on the desktop and the SCO lawsuit, and others. It's on: http://lwn.net/Articles/38405/ [lwn.net]

  • Correction. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:46PM (#6344785)
    > Viva la Mandrake!

    It would rather be: `Vive Mandrake!'

  • Apologies to Monty Python (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:53PM (#6344832)
    SCO: For, since the tragic death of MandrakeSoft--

    MandrakeSoft CEO: We're not quite dead!

    SCO: Since the near fatal wounding of MandrakeSoft--

    CEO: We're getting better!

    SCO: For, since MandrakeSoft... who, when they seemed about to recover, suddenly felt the icy hand of lawsuits upon them,...[ugh]

    CEO: Oh, we're bankrupt!

    SCO: And I want MandrakeClub to look upon me... as their own CEO -- in a very real, and legally binding sense.

  • Good (a reprise) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by donnz ( 135658 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:56PM (#6344857) Homepage Journal
    At the risk of repeating myself [slashdot.org]...

    One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the adoption of Linux on the desktop has been the nerdish nature of the whole installation, configuration and user experience

    Ok, I'll bite. I've never installed Windows or Linux. It's always, like, just there (or not). Anyway, as a joint owner of a mainly Open Source based company I thought it was time I tried installing Linux on my home PC (my sysadm's already taken care of my work PC for me, I never touch the config stuff).

    So I take three Mandrake 9.1 disks home. Whack them in my CDRom. I had to worry about how much disk space to leave poor old Windows and ignore the "warning, warning, make sure you have backups" prompts. Phew. Spin spin spin everything is installed, even sorted out that it was my external modem that is really used to connect to the internet. When the PC powers on I can chose Windows or Linux - sorry I still need to test our software for Windows users.

    Who am I? A user of desktop tools, email, office the internet. A typical office worker who gets techies to help out whenever anything goes wrong. If any one can suggest a replacement for MSProject (clients like the pictures) I'll be off MS completely.

    So, its official, as of last week I can confirm that Linux *is* ready for the desktop - go Mandrake and all those Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, Gimp, Evolution etc etc developers.

  • When possible , buy Linux. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arcanumas ( 646807 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:56PM (#6344858) Homepage
    I have bought Mandrake , not because i had to but because i chose to. Even thought we all accept that Free Software mainly refers to freedom of speach , we always use the "free as in beer" part.
    I bought Mandrake because i believe i should support a company that contributes to Linux.
    I could have copied or downloaded it, but i thought that if everyone did that then there would be no Mandrake (and indeed they were close). Can anyone guess how the Linux world would be without the Large Distros? No. Linux would not disappear but much less people would make the step of trying it and less people would use it as a platform , consequently less people would write software for it.
    So buying you Linux is not a curse. You don't have to. But when possible, support your vendor.
    I mean .. i have paid a truckload of money for MS and thought it reasonable in the past. Now that i found something that i actually enjoy, will i let it die?
    • That way:

      1. More of the money you spend actually goes to improving the distro
      2. You get to actually vote on what packages get included in the distro
      3. Other members will be more willing to help you when you go to the site for help
      4. The environment is less impacted
      5.

    • Even better, buy a Mandrake Club subscription. You get nice services and all the money goes to Mandrake.
      If you buy a disk, not all the money goes to Mandrake.

  • Even my mum likes it! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @07:57PM (#6344864)
    I've been progressively educating my parents about using Linux, and a few months ago swapped one of their 2 PCs over to Lycoris. My parents didn't really see it as significantly different to Windows, but kept having problems at approximately the same rate as they did under Windows. I knew I wouldn't be faced with the regular 6-9 month full rebuild of the box any more, but the trivial end-user problems kept going at about the same rate.

    Two weeks ago, I swapped that same PC over to Mandrake 9.1. It's now become mum's full-time PC, meaning that she doesn't work on the other, Windows PC at all. Dad's now starting to play with Gimp on Mandrake; his most common app is Photoshop on Windows. Dad's now asked me to let him dual boot the Windows PC, so he can run both Windows and Mandrake on it.

    As far as I'm concerned, this is the most ringing endorsement possible for Mandrake's useability. While my parents are smart people, they're from a non-PC generation and sometimes struggle with concepts like folders and filenames. For whatever reason, Mandrake, even though it still uses folders and filenames, has let them get beyond the point they were at with Windows, and now I'm getting asked "can I do gamma transforms with Gimp like I do in Photoshop?" rather than "where's my file gone?"...


    • Then you can run photoshop under Linux
      • I've got Crossover Office at *my* house, since I still have to deal with ridiculously complex Word+PPT+Excel documents that have attachments and macros all over the place.

        If Dad decides that he likes Linux, but wants Photoshop, then I'll get him started with Crossover. At the moment, though, he's making good headway with Gimp, so I'll leave him with that till he finds something he can't do with it.

  • No no - don't use Mandrake Linux. Use "Freedom Linux". :)

    Seriously. Was a mandrake user for years but things kept happening with the dist I didn't like. Weird things that didn't make sense. I just moved to SuSE. Certainly also worth a look. (Of note - I find it easier to setup than Mandrake - which was supposed to be their forte).

  • Mandrake's channel sales suck (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Centinel ( 594459 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @08:16PM (#6344981) Homepage
    I don't use drake anymore, but you can't find a boxed set of 9.1 anywhere for retail sale in the US. Walked into Best Buy yesterday and all they had was RH and SuSE. I'd imagine it's the same at Fry's and Wal-Mart (which was probably the best outlet they ever had).

    Not even any vendors on PriceGrabber.com [pricegrabber.com] have 9.1 for sale

    So the only people in the US using Mandrake are freeloaders downloading iso's, with a fraction of those joining Mandrake Club.

    If Mandrake wants to survive, they have to find a way to revive their US channel sales.

    • Even Amazon.com has it (through J&R).
    • As a Silver member living IN the U.S., I must say I disagree about the importance of Channel Sales for Free software. There are currently more than 15,000 paying members supporting Mandrake. I don't consider myself a non-freeloader, but someone with enough invested in the distro that it is worth me paying some $ in order to have some say in what direction it goes. Also, club member get great support from other members and VIP members (usually developers). This gives me a valuable advantage in my profession.

    • So you're the one who buys boxed "broadband kits" at Best Buy. Did you buy your AOL cd, too?

      See, here's what you don't understand about the Mandrake business model. Your use of the term "freeloaders" suggests that you subscribe to the theory that a specific cost is associated with someone using a copy of a software package. The reality (for both free and proprietary software) is that there are no incremental costs associated with the use of software. Mandrake doesn't mind its software spreading far and

    • Ditto for CompUSA. They haven't had Mandrake since 8.2.

  • Always a market for Mandrake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rob-fu ( 564277 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @08:16PM (#6344983)
    Mandrake is the best distribution for those who want to make a transition to Linux. Even if they're not really profitable, there will always be a niche.

    It's just like AOL. It's turned a lot of people on to the 'internet' (or at least something like it). You don't start people who have no idea about the internet out with a shell account. Same goes for Linux -- if someone who is comfortable in Windows who knows enough to know the difference, then give them a copy of Mandrake -- don't start them out with Debian or gentoo. Therefore, I think that Mandrake will be around for a long time -- as long as there are people who want to learn how to use Linux.

  • I Gots A Plan (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rinkjustice ( 24156 ) <rinkjustice&NO_SPAMrocketmail,com> on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @08:39PM (#6345129) Homepage Journal
    Mandrake should grab the bull by the horns and give Linux users what they really want: a distribution that can deftly handle any media type and play big-name games. Adding a boss commercial game and WineX in a pre-configured way ala Sims will encourage people to throw down much needed ching instead of just freeloading (I meant downloading) and may even persuade Redhat users who are bored out of their skulls to switch. The game CivIII makes a good candidate in my mind because the hardware requirements aren't outrageous and the game is addictive as hell.

    Also, get rid of all the crufty useless mediaplayers that don't work and replace with one of two that will work. I'll say Quicktime4Linux [heroinewarrior.com] or RealPlayer [real.com] with all the codecs so it's ready to play any media format right out of the box. In fact, strip down alot of the unnecessary apps that litter my main menu. More isn't always better.

    • Re:I Gots A Plan (Score:2, Informative)

      by bluesky74656 ( 625291 )
      Didn't they already do this? As I recall, it was with the Sims, Mandrake 8.3 Gaming Edition. It was my first Linux distro. Came with WineX and The Sims for linux.

    • Re:I Gots A Plan (Score:3, Informative)

      by moeman ( 11668 )
      If you want a good media player try Mplayer with all the codecs correctly installed. There are some legality issues with including this in the main distribution, but the Penguin Liberation Front has got that covered. Once you got Mandrake 9.1 installed, just type the following as root at the prompt:

      urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/linux/plf/9.1 with hdlist.cz
      urpmi mplayer

      wait a bit (maybe hit "Y" twice) and then you will have your ONE media player that works with everything. easy.

      -micah

  • 9.1 Sales not surprising (Score:5, Informative)

    by kenneth_martens ( 320269 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @08:47PM (#6345179)
    I've been a Mandrake user since 7.0 and I must say that Mandrake 9.1 is far and away the best release I have used.

    As far as hardware compatibility, let me say that Mandrake 7.1 through 8.1 would not install on my computer; 8.2 installed with difficultly, 9.0 worked fine but the install wasn't painless, but 9.1 installed perfectly the first time.

    Plus, 9.1 configured everything right the first time, without asking me any stupid questions. For example, it auto-detected my DCHP server and set up my network connection without needing to ask me. That's not such a huge deal for me as an experienced user, but for a novice that sort of automation could make all the difference. (In case you're interested, it *did* give me an opportunity to change all the settings it had automatically configured, in case I wanted to do anything unusual or special. It's important to have that option too.)

    With the professional feel and slick installer, I'm not surprised that Mandrake 9.1 sales are going well.

    I'm excited about 9.2 and I plan on buying it too, but wonder how much improvement it can really show. Because for the first time, I have a distribution that does (almost) everything I want.
  • Several weeks ago I downloaded 3 cds of Mandrake 9.1 and tried installing to my Asus A7N8X system. Them pre-compiled kernels simply would not load. Mandrake may have an easy installation process, but it sure doesn't seem to work on cutting edge hardware.

    I was about to give up and settle for my XP Corp bootleg that M$ published years ago but happens to install to my A7N8X just fine. But then I discovered Slashdot and heard about Gentoo. I downloaded that small stage1 tarball and set to work bootstrappin
    • You must have gotten up early that day.

      But I agree, Gentoo is great and the installation is not hard. It's a little forbidding if you aren't comfortable with a command line. But anyone who can read and follow directions can do it. Indeed, so much of the installation procedure is just cut and paste from the instructions that it's a wonder they didn't script it. I think the point is to use installation as an opportunity to introduce people with basic administration commands they may not be familiar with.
    • If you really want to get away from that wimpy GUI-ness what you need is a real operating system [drdos.com]. ;-)

      Personally I consider Mandrake's gui configuration stuff less of a problem and more of a time saver.

      Extra Time=Fun mmmmm fun.
    • I'm not sure sure if your remark is honorable?

      I am also running Mandrake 9.1 on an Asus A7N8X and my PC works just fine. I even installed all the patches from NVIDIA's site for both my nForce2 chipset and my GeForce 3 screen card. (NVIDIA distributes RPM's directly for Mandrake 9.1)

      The nForce2 chipset makes use of standards compliant technologies such as those that Linux supports. The NVIDIA rpm's just add additional support for SOUND,NETOWORK, GART etc.

      I also love the way NVIDIA distributes these RPM's

  • Gail Duval's interview about Mandrake finances. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is an interesting interview [mozillaquest.com]with Mandrake founder Gail Duval about Mandrake's finances and how Mandrake's business products are helping to get Mandrake back in a good financial position on Mozillaquest.com. It ran Friday.

  • I am a distro junkie... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by invisibastard ( 620915 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @09:34PM (#6345478)
    I keep going back to Mandrake 9.1. I have tried Debian Sarge via Knoppix, Suse 8.2, RedHat 9, J.A.M.D. (nice little distro), Slackware 9, Alt, annoying Yoper, even managed to install the G-word.

    They all have good and bad points. It is annoying to install a distro and be missing something that was nicely set up in another. 9.1 has the best combination I have seen. Mandrake seems to be the best mix of not too easy and not too hard. Everything works the way I want it too. There is a wonderful community site Mandrakeusers.org [mandrakeusers.org], that is friendly and a great source of info. Texstar provides excellent add-ons through urpmi. If I want eye candy or some helpful command line program (like unrar), it is simple for me to get.

    I don't find Mandrake 9.1 makes things too easy for me. I don't feel babied, but I do feel sometimes I save time. I hope the company does well. I find it to be a great distro, and I have tried a lot of them.

    Thanks, Rich

  • Mandrake 9.1 was our ticket (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deathcow ( 455995 ) on Tuesday July 01, 2003 @11:05PM (#6346047)
    I've been using Mandrake 9.1 to finally land some Linux boxes at work, among the throngs of Windows and Sun/Solaris machines.

    Half of the machines are for telecom network monitoring purposes and will have 6 to 8 displays apiece (using Xinerama and a combination of Nvidia and Matrox video cards.) These will let us retire Windows NT and the Exceed X server.

    The other half of the machines are rack mount servers running LAMP and stand alone perl apps. These will let us retire some Solaris/Sun boxes.

    After developing TCP/IP serving applications in perl on Solaris for years, it's nice, real nice, to see them run at previously unheard of speeds on a cheap P4 box with a gig of 533mhz RAM. The performance lays waste to our Solaris servers.

    Mandrake 9.1 was an easy way to pull it off. It has detected all hardware we've used and all the built in peripherals on some new Intel motherboards flawlessly.

    My only headache so far was trying to run quad-heads off an matrox AGP 550 and a PCI 450. It does not work. Keeping the dual head 550 and adding SIX Nvidia TNT2 cards allowed us to flawlessly run eight monitors. Thats what we'll be doing.

  • I've been using Mandrake almost a year now (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @12:29AM (#6346565)
    and I LOVE it compared to M$..
    It's just good stuff.
    I started on 8.2 and just about the time I got it good and screwed up 9.0 came out. Well, that sucked pretty much, so much that I tried to switch to suse 8.1 Suse 8.1 had some problem with my mobo so I went back to 9.0
    A few weeks later 9.1 was out and since then it's been great.
    I've put several friends and family members on it and they like it too. And they went cold turkey from M$ to Linux. They are still and always will be lost, but they were anyway. Better to be lost on the same island as your support guy though eh??

    I had to learn and old lesson that I had forgotten from the DOS days. Stay away from .0's (dot-ohs) .0's ALWAYS suck. ALWAYS.
    As far as I'm concerned, I think I'll stay with Mandrake 9.1 even if they do come out with 9.2 or 9.3 or 10.0...

    I don't want M$ compatibility in my Linux. I do not want it. Please, please don't push it in on us, don't force it on us, don't sneak it in on us. We want absolute freedom from the tyranny of M$...

    Thank you Mandrake..

  • Ok, the first part is the story of course.

    I used Red Hat from 5.1 to 7.3. Good distribution in my opinion (I've used Caldera, Debian, Suse, Corel [ya, sorry about that], and some others that aren't important enough to me to mention). But I'll never forgive them for f***ing with KDE. Seriously. I have no qualms with them not preferring KDE. But making KDE appear as GNOME and f***ing up the way KDE is setup just drove me to anger. I really *hate* when someone takes something that has tremendous value to

  • MDK beats RH (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elusive-daemon ( 319177 ) on Wednesday July 02, 2003 @08:51AM (#6348431)
    Mandrake is much more polished for the desktop than redhat. MDK has urpmi, basically apt-get for rpm, a seriously useful tool. The other drake (gui/console) tools are great too. Mandrake may have started as a branched version of RH, but it's definitely taking the lead now. Release 9.1 has proved to be very solid. I run it both at home and the office.

    Redhat tends to lag far behind with their releases. You can thank RH for changing standard locations of files too. They are starting to suffer from all the incumbencies of a large corporate.

    Having said that they are both basically the same, and you can add Susi to the list. The main thing these distro are based on is RPM and how they group their files into packages. Both target the desktop and server markets. RH has been very successful in establishing its name in the corporate world.

    My main concern is that I am starting to hear "Redhat" mentioned more than "Linux", and sometimes interchangeably. it's all about perception. Business is starting to think that Redhat is the only choice !

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