MandrakeMove 2 And Mandrakesoft Profit Reports

Mad_Rain writes "Two new developments in the Mandrake Linux camp: For the beta-testers and live-cd crowd, MandrakeMove 2 (which is based on Mandrake 10) is undergoing beta testing. 2.6 Kernel anyone? Financially, Mandrake seems to be improving, as they cite a report from EuroLand Finance about how they compete with Red Hat or SUSE, at least in the marketplace (as opposed to on the desktop)."

Flashy Financial Analysis

[John Hurliman]

I like the flashy presentation, the "ooh look over here!" aspect, and how they seamlessly tied the financial forecasts in with the real data, but I'm not sure I would take that analysis as a reason to invest. Most of it consisted of "Mandrake is losing less money than Novell, that's gotta count for something". That and the strong growth forecasted, while their debt ratio continues to climb.

I came, I saw, I left

[whitis]

Maybe if they improved their website they could actually make some money?

I could not find answers to simple questions with a reasonable amount of effort.

Q) What is Mandrake move vs. mandrake 10? I actually had to come back to slashdot to find a link with the answer to this one. It is a
standalone live CD-ROM version of linux.

Q) How much does it cost? I actually had to click on the order link, fill in my state and country,
and sort through a bunch of irrelevent products and I still didn't get an answer. I know how much it costs with a keychain USB flash memory ($70-$330) but I don't know how much it is by itself. Price needs to be listed before you hit the shopping cart.

Q) Free downloads? Well, if you click on downloads it looks like you could probably
download it for free (if the ftp server wasn't /.ed) but you have to click the button that
says something to the effect of "I am already a member of the mandrake club or I plan to join real soon now". So you either need to join the club (about $70/year) or promise to join the club before you can download. I don't have the slightest intention of joining their club unless I find the software useful and shouldn't be required to state otherwise. Plus it reminds me of those sleazy subscription cards for magazines: "Yes! I want to subscibe to the worlds greatest basketweaving magazine! Send me one year (12 exciting issues) of basketweaving today for just $17.97. I'll save 62% plus I'll receive the basketweaving 101 book FREE!"

Re:Is it downloadable or only buyable

[0racle]

So let me get this straight, you have XP, 2 support incidents for free, NO software, NO development tools, and it seems you think that MS is the devil, and you pay $150 for this pleasure, yet you whine about the choice of free with community support or $66 for a years support in addition to the community support, with thousands of applications and more development tools then you can shake a stick at.

Between us, where you believe every Linux company should bend over, kiss your ass and give everything to you on a silver platter and if they don't they're as evil as MS, or me who actually understands that people have to put food on their families table which means shipping a product that costs money, how am I the one holding Linux back. It seems that if it were up to you, there would be no Linux business to be held back.