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Mandriva Businesses

MandrakeSoft Covered in Upside 63

Posted by Hemos from the out-from-the-woodwork-it-came dept.
oleo wrote to us about MandrakeSoft's latest popular coverage in Upside. Talks a bit about the roots of the system, some quotes from Red Hat about Open Source Software, and some of MandrakeSoft's potential future plans. They also have a little commentary on the LinuxOne history as well.
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MandrakeSoft Covered in Upside More

MandrakeSoft Covered in Upside

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  • Re:There's better: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RedHat is clearly more GNOME-oriented, you can't deny that. GNOME is installed as default and to this day when you select KDE as interface, GNOME still gets installed. All RedHat marketing is about GNOME, not KDE. Many RedHat developers have been antagonistic about KDE.

    Are you saying that RedHat's attitude to KDE is changing? How is it changing? Will RedHat start treating KDE fairly?
  • I was very pleased to see a fairly mainstream publication cover Mandrake's model, why this is considered acceptable -- even desirable -- in the open source world, and the difference between Mandrake and LinuxOne.

    Enough coverage like this and more people might start to understand the rules and mores of the open source community, and why it's as effective as it is at getting things done. Rather than fight things out in court, things are fought -- and borrowed and exchanged -- in the market.

    If only the hard core free market capitalist types would wake up and realize that open source is one of the closest approximations there is to a classic free market. But I suppose free markets are too unpredictable and not profitable enough...
  • That Mandrake installer is 2.2 kernel-framebuffer based, isn't it?

    The Cal Poly LUG [calpoly.edu] was doing an install shindig in January with Mandrake 7.0... and one machine just wouldn't go to the graphical part of the install. I thought it was because he (like me) had an unsupported card and the framebuffer didn't work. And of course there's no way to fallback to the text installer...
    (BTW... Caldera's X-based installer worked fine for him.)

    --Ben (very happy with Mandrake 6.1, thanks) August

  • Ahem:
    1. It's Nicolas, without an h
    2. I'm French
    3. I don't take English classes
    4. Could you point out the mistakes
    Thanks
  • why don't you just fuck off and die?

    Good way to get credibility: swear at your opponent. -1, flamebait.

    Isn't the Karma Whore thing a little tired?

    Yup, infact I stopped almost 8 months ago. +1, informative.

    Sure, I'm the one who's going to be marked as flamebait

    *sarcasm* Was it that obvious? */sarcasm*

    - Long time /. reader.

    No comment. -1, overrated.

  • This might be slightly off topic, but i think too much ado is being made about the installation programs various distro's use, and not enough about the quality of the GUI's. I mean, you might need to install a distro once or twice to get it right, but after that, the installation program has served it's purpose.

    Haven't played with Mandrake ever, though I've heard that they've started diffentiating their distro more from Redhat's. How, I don't know unless it's in all the extra apps they bundle. But they had to. It was funny to see people defending Mandrake and bashing LinuxOne in the same sentense.

    Which brings something else up - why haven't we seen more stories about LInux One? They were always a lot of fun!
  • Had to stop reading when I got to "Jack _in_ the Beanstalk". If they can't get something right that isn't related to the article I can't trust them to get the facts straight on the rest of it.
  • It was funny to see people defending Mandrake and bashing LinuxOne in the same sentense.
    I make no claim to be a linux veteran; I've been using Mandrake since last summer, probably nine months now. However, in my experience with Mandrake they are vastly different from LinuxOne: Mandrake has a large and extremely knowledgable online support base (populated by both Mandrake staff and users), their distro has worked nearly flawlessly for me, and they're delivering a real product that fits with the spirit of open source software. It's really not fair to say they're similar to LinuxOne.

    With that experience in mind, I have been a little worried by LinuxOne's reports of their close association with Mandrake -- as it appears that those relations don't really exist, at least to the extent that LinuxOne characterized them, I continue to think very positively of Mandrake. If I bite and actually do a new install (I'm just a home user) again, I'll use Mandrake.

    -schussat

  • Anyone heard anothing from/about them recently?

    IIRC, their IPO was initially set for late January or early February and evidently hasn't happened yet. Also, their web site looks like it hasn't been updated in a while.
  • I had to read that twice to understand it. I kept seeing Signal 11, and wondering if this AC was a friend of his asking for help or something...
    ----

    "So, I removed a FAT partition. Signal 11 !!!!"
    --
    "What about him?"
    ----
  • " Mandrake (which is pure Red Hat at the core) " doesn't mean anything: all Linux core distributions are... Linux kernel itself ! Red Hat components comme 99% times from the open-source community, in Mandrake it's the same... Ok Mandrake _used to_ be based on Red Hat, but this is finished: they just have kept compatibility (this means that most time you can install a RPM made for Red Hat in Mandrake), but Mandrake is not based on RH anymore, and I'm very very happy with that: Mandrake is the real place for innovation - they don't claim it, they just do it!
  • Mandrake is also pushing internationalization and localization pretty hard. They have found translators to handle translation of the install instructions and messages for their install tools into quite an array of languages. This has the potential to get Linux into more non-English-speaking places.
  • I have used Redhat 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, Mandrake 6.1, 6.1, and I am currently getting Mandrake 7.0. I have found Mandrake to be a bit nicer mainly in it's default user settings (e.g. desktop stuff, etc.) They also have some handy programs installed , e.g kdevelop, kpackage. The pentium optimisations are nice too.

    It seems that they started with redhat, but they are trying hard to develop their own identity

    "Oh, I got me a helmet - I got a beauty!"
  • After installing Mandrake 6.5 for the first time, I was quickly a Mandrake addict. My body speaks Red Hat, so Mandrake was a welcome addition to my linux CD collection. I find Mandrake to be everything that Red Hat is, plus all the utilities that I would have downloaded anyway. I was a bit thrown off at first by the 7.02 installer, namely the "security level" setting. After a couple re-installs I got my Mandrake system running perfectly. 7.02 is everything that RH 6.1 should have been. No complaints from me.
  • Yes, I agree entirely that distro wars are basically dumb. Everyone likes different things on their system, and there's no way you can really say that one distro is superior to another. I like Mandrake, but for standalone servers I like debian. Why? Because linux says I can. That's my 2 cents.
  • Talk about a short and simple objective.

    That's the point. It's simple...

    BUT. It's one less thing I have to do when I install. It comes with all the extra programs that I usually download right when I get RH installed. Also, it is compiled for the pentium so I don't have to. It may not be hard to do and not insanely better but why would you get something that you have to configure more when you can get exactly what you want the first time.

    Don't re-invent the wheel.

  • I'd like to fix that...

    Which version of Red Hat Linux were you using?
    Did you run any background processes that could affect speed? Which MP3 player did you use?
  • yes.
  • And we are all very pleased. In fact, if you are just the average Joe out there and show up for a free install, odds are you are getting Mandrake.

    I think this is because all of the desktop settings are where you think they should be. Mandrake has a very professional look to it, and the underbelly is looking pretty good too.
  • Speaking from experience with sig 11 errors, you should look into either new memory or a new mobo. Sig 11 usually indicates a fault somewhere in the memory system.
  • Actually if you read on the mandrake site somewhere(I don't remember where) when the cd boots to the lilo prompt you can type linux text and it will boot into the old text installer like rh6 and before.
  • The best quote in the story.

    "It was 1998, and KDE had just come out, " Lemarois recalls. "He wanted to take Red Hat [the Linux distribution], remove the crappy interface, install KDE in its place and make the user links a bit easier."

    Talk about a short and simple objective.

  • Believe it or not, I couldn't get Mandrake installed on my notebook. I heard it was targetted for the newbie, so I figured an old salt like me ought to have no problem. OK, I was using the lnx4win thingy (g'hed flame me for using Windows too), got a panic about a disk device. Anyway, it became easier to repartition the drive and install RedHat.
  • Agreed. However, I don't think we need to visit and re-visit distro wars. I like debian (and i think corel has done something interesting there), and i like turbolinux's clustering solution, and i like suse's video config, and i like....etc. etc., ad nauseum.

    The point is, that Linux is so incredibly cool, and appeals to me (a 28 yo geek) and my father-in-law (a 70 yo retiree), is what matters. Every distribution appeals to someone. Just use one, keep the kernel updated, and away we go....
  • I got it to install on mine fine, but it pasted its logo all over the damn OS, that pissed me off. Then it was even hard to get it to drop me out of X at all, so i just got pissed and went back to redhat.
  • Nicholas... word of wisdom.. pay more attention in English class.

  • So what do you want from Mandrake? That they differentiate themselves as much as possible from RedHat and produce something completely incompatible? What a waste of time! I'm intalling Mandrake from now on, and I've found that I can even just install its RPMs on top of a stock RedHat install without problem. Mandrake is also often more up to date than RedHat, which is quite useful. RedHat's RPM sometimes lag by months or more compared to the source releases.

    Their install is their main selling point, and I can understand that you don't give a fuck about an X based install (I could do without it, that's for sure), but man! their partitioning utility is AWESOME. RedHat's disk druid sucks, as it reacts weirdly (if you hit return sometimes the GUI logic makes it so that what you have just typed gets cancelled, I don't remember how this happens this bites me everytime I install RedHat). Mandrake's DiskDrake is very good in terms of user interface, it offers sane default entries for mount points for example (/home, /var, /usr etc ...), it labels the DOS partitions automagically, it shows the disk partitioning graphically AND interactively (read: you can click on a partition to edit it). It seems to be hard to fuck something up by mistake because the warnings make sense and don't just pop up all the time. You are allowed to change your mind and roll back at any time.

    Also their install handles very well non-linear situations (you can skip a few steps and then come back and forth w/o problem).

    It's not perfect still. The package selection management, even though it's fairly functional, gets really painful to use when in expert mode and it lists thousands of package. Esp. since the package hierarchy does not make sense.

  • Speaking of Upside, Linus and David Ditzel are
    on the cover of the April 2000 issue.
  • Nice system, but I do think there's valid criticism for it being a redhat look-alike. I've found that it's essentially still redhat right now with the following additions:
    • recompiled for pentium machines
    • directory structure *alittle* more sane
    • X-based installer (cooker?)
    • nifty partitioning program in the installer

    In short, the big feature is ease of installation.. but once installed you'd be hard-pressed to tell me it isn't redhat with a different name. :/ This is coming from somebody who has used RH5.2 to 6.1, rawhide, slackware, mandrake 7 (oxygen beta) and mandrake stable. I use it because of the optimizations - compiling takes *forever* from the .src.rpm's.. but the speed difference is appreciable.

    That's just my short review of them. I won't comment on LinuxOne other than to say that Mandrake is making an honest attempt to create a new distribution /based/ on redhat, whereas LinuxOne is ripping redhat off.

  • If only the hard core free market capitalist types would wake up and realize that open source is one of the closest approximations there is to a classic free market.

    BTW, capitalists are not necessarily free marketers. And not all free marketers are capitalists. Those who are hard core free market types already know that open source is *one* of several classic free markets. They also know that it is not the only one.

    The essence of free markets is voluntary interactions. If you can keep the open source community voluntary, we will have no problems.
  • There is another incredible story, made by Duval himself, which has been published on Linux Weekly News last week. It describes how he came to make a Linux distribution... English not perfect but worth a read for all of you interested in Mandrake!

    It's on http://lwn.net/2000/features/LinuxMandrake.phtml [lwn.net]

  • If we're so antagonistic about KDE, why are we providing daily builds of KDE 2.0 RPMs [redhat.com]?
  • Re-read the article.
    They're talking about the initial version, when Red Hat Linux was using fvwm because of Qt license issues (and before GNOME was started).
    Making any of these claims today is ridiculous of course, back then they were valid.
  • They're still around - I've received a free sample copy of LinuxOne OS 1.3 a couple of days ago.

    It's ridiculous though - looks like their current version took Mandrake 6.0 (not even 6.1), renamed the package (rpm -qpi shows a -mdk release, the filename doesn't), removed Red Hat's copyrights from the installer (something we aren't welcoming - not even the GPL permits you the code change printf("(c) Red Hat"); to printf("(c) LinuxOne");), added 4 more packages, dropped in a newer kernel (simply removing patches that didn't apply anymore without adapting them), and released it as an all new distribution.

    They're also including LinuxMac, a proprietary frontend to fdformat, mkdosfs and mkmacfs they wrote - something I could rewrite from scratch in maybe an hour. Guess they call it adding value.
  • Actually this particular decision is less a matter of following one another than of people changing sides.
    I made the decision to split the packages for both of them. ;)
  • Red Hat Linux 6.2 has a lot of improvements for security; default workstation installations won't start potentially dangerous servers by default, for example.
    Also, the telnet, ftp, tftp, ... packages have been split into client and server packages so people don't have to install possibly dangerous stuff they won't ever need.
  • The only problem Red Hat has ever had with KDE was the Qt 1.x license.
    With Qt 2.x, this is hardly an argument since we don't write proprietary code.
    If you take a look at the current 6.2 beta, you'll notice the "KDE Workstation" setup now actually installs KDE as the default desktop. It still installs gtk and gnome-libs; this is intentional because it makes sense to have both libraries around (it's not a problem to run GNOME applications in KDE and vice versa).
    The 6.1 package actually has a KDE logo on its back side.
    The default setting is purely a matter of taste (both defaults are ok as long as a user can change them...); there are arguments for both, and the default setting may or may not change some time in the future - it depends on how the desktops continue to develop.
  • Are the big guns watching? What a great example of the positive influence of Open source ideals in the business community. Instead of being viewed as a bad guy for porting Red Hat and calling it his own, Duval is viewed as a partner and as a player in promoting Open Source. What a stretch for big companies like M$, Sun etc for them to actually understand, much less support this methodology. I know they're analyzing the model and are trying to leverage it where they can, but I don't feel it is in the same way that Duval or Lemarois would. The big guns are trying more to exploit the weaknesses of Open Source and GNU rather than participating as a partner. The ones who adopt and support this alternative business model either in part or in full will be the big winners. The sooner they get on board, the better their long term standing will be. Look at IBM and the story that ran yesterday, Open Source, It's not just for geeks anymore.

  • Re:There's better: (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero AT redhat DOT com> on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @09:52AM (#1182785) Homepage
    Don't say that. The world's most popular distribution supports both, and that will not change anytime soon.
    KDE and GNOME each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, and unless one of them really manages to catch up with the others (and provides compatibility), there's definitely good reason to have both.

  • Security (Score:4)

    by redhog ( 15207 ) on Wednesday March 22, 2000 @09:24AM (#1182786) Homepage
    You forget that Mandrake (At least 7.0) does come with a range of security levels, which you could shoose from from the installer. When I switched from RedHat 6.0 to Mandrake 7.0, and selected the highest security level, I (And I am not a security professional, I'm just a programmer)noticed several security fixes and things done in another and better way than in RedHat 6.0. Perheaps RH61 is better, I don't know. But Mandrake has done at least partly right when it comes to security.
    --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.

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