Mandriva SA Cedes Control To Mandriva Community 88
jfruh writes "Mandriva SA, one of the oldest pure Linux companies still out there, was on the verge of shutting down earlier this year, but escaped by the skin of its teeth. Now, however, the company is punting control of its flagship Linux distribution to its developer community, leaving Mandriva SA's future prospects up in the air. From the blog post: 'This means that the future of the distribution will not be arbitrary[sic] decided by the Mandriva company anymore, but we intend to let the distribution evolve in and under the caring responsibility of the community.'"
And THERE'S The Value of FOSS (Score:5, Interesting)
I cut my teeth on the old Mandrake stuff over a decade ago. It had its quirks, but it was a great way to introduce a newbie to Linux. Glad that the code base isn't going away.
Of course, the whole Mandrake/Mandriva story is a sad one in many ways. While Red Hat and SuSE were making money off of support, Mandrake decided to go with education and certification. (This was several years ago, before the name change.) They lost their hineys on it and almost went under then.
Good distribution troubled by a bunch of inexplicably bad business decisions. Just my opinion, anyway.
(Any of my fellow old timers here remember Mandrake 7.0's infamous "Move Your Mouse Wheel!" thing during installation??? Heh. More fun than Duke Nukem getting that thing to work!!!)
Re:And THERE'S The Value of FOSS (Score:5, Informative)
They can't go back to Mandrake because they lost the case to Hearst who own the Mandrake comic strips.
Mandriva History about name change [wikipedia.org]
Mandrake, Mandriva, Mageia (Score:3)
That's a shame - they should have worked out an arrangement w/ Hearst to popularize the character. After all, Mandrake Linux did use all of Mandrake's signature accessories - hat, wand and so on.
Why not just hand over what remains of the distro to Mageia? Not like there's a shortage of redundant distros. Although one thing I wish - that Mandriva/Mageia switch their package manager from rpm to apt. Other than that, it's great - using KDE as its default DE.
Re:Mandrake, Mandriva, Mageia (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just hand over what remains of the distro to Mageia? Not like there's a shortage of redundant distros. Although one thing I wish - that Mandriva/Mageia switch their package manager from rpm to apt.
What, and be even less distinguishable from all the "redundant distros", most of which are Debian based?
With Mandrake drawing its last breaths, and uncertainty on whether Attachmate is going to do more with SuSE than keeping it on life support while milking the last drops, there aren't many independent distros left (ones that don't depend on an upstream distro), and that is sad.
Fedora[*], Slackware, Debian, Arch, Gentoo - that's about it?
Most of the rest seem to be dependent distros or narrow niche products.
[*]: I'd say Red Hat, but these days Red Hat is mostly based off Fedora, not the other way around. Patches often flow in the opposite direction, though; support contracts tend to cut down on the WONTFIX or ignoring.
Re:Mandrake, Mandriva, Mageia (Score:4, Interesting)
Please update your list - slackware is dead. No new release in more than a year, the "updated package browser" that was supposed to take a couple of weeks has also been missing in action for more than a year, the server has had many outages (it's currently responds to pings, but no page loads), and the few mirrors don't have much in the way of security and other updates (2 - 3 dozen packages in the last year, depending on the mirror).
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Begone, troll.
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"Oh, slackware's not dead. It's pining for a new server."
All good things come to an end, and I have fond memories of slackware, but that was the previous century.
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http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/54538-slackware-is-alive-and-kicking-volkerding [itwire.com]
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Do you want to turn this into a Monty Python "Dead Parrot" skit?
Any distro that goes for 9 months with only a couple dozen updates is dead.
Any distro that is "off the net" for months is dead.
Any distro with a link on its main page to their official package browser that doesn't exist, and hasn't existed for a year [dannagle.com], is dead.
It's not just "pining for a new server." It's not "resting". It's not "a fine example of the breed." It's dead. Who in their right mind is going to recommend slackware after a yea
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and
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How does this affect the distros who have slackware as its upstream? Or have they moved already?
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You're not the only one asking that question.
People have been noticing [lwn.net] the lack of security and bug fixes for a while.
More directly towards your question, this thread [distrowatch.com] raised what some people called a sh*tstorm when Caitlyn Martin wrote about rebasing off another distro because a slackware.com contributor wrote about the problems being due to an old server and finances.
Realistically, who wouldn't be worried after a year of semi-somnolence, long outages (in a distro that people use as a server because of i
Are you claiming SUSE is dead as well? (Score:2)
Your obsession with this online 'package browser' is slighlty odd. It is just a contributed nicity. Not an official part of the project. If you want to search the contents you use slackpkg (like a Debian/Ubuntu user would use apt-cache or apt-file). If you don't have Slackware installed yet, look at the MANIFEST and FILELIST files within the directory structure on your mirror of choice.
As a side note, SUSE used to have a site called Webpin that allowed you to search through the contents of packages. There i
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Now that you have proved yourself to be a complete and utter troll and with you so obviously having lost this argument I won't bother to waste any more time on you, since you are clearly a lost cause.
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Look, if you don't like the truth, don't ask for it.
You're the one who picked suse, which was a bad example. What do you think they'd be doing right now if they hadn't gotten the $100 million last year from Microsoft? It's not like Novell hadn't been laying off linux devs before the sale.
But back to zombie slackware - the site still takes 5 minutes to load the home page, a month after this was supposed to be addressed.
Archive.org confirms this has been going on since mid-February. That's 3 months.
So
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please keep using your distro, you know nothing about slackware development cycle and how most things happens in the background
if you really want to understand a little, just search slashdot for slackware and read the last story about slackware problems with the web server.
the next release is always: "when its ready" ... not sooner, not later
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Abandoning the old package browser, because the new one will be ready in a few weeks ... that was last year too.
What point is there installing a distro that had no security updates for ages? That's just too slack for most people.
It does receive security updates (Score:2)
It does receive security updates, you have admitted as much yourself. Perhaps you could back your claims up by listing a package found in the stable that is known to be insecure. Have fun searching.
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Two months with no activity whatsoever, and only sporadic activity prior to that, an often-dead website, and a refusal by you and yours to address the obvious - that only a few people even noticed ... "It's dead, Jim."
Why don't YOU do the audit, if you're so hot and bothered to try to avoid answering the obvious question - which is why should anyone use a distro that can't even keep its own website up, even when there's no load? That reeks of incompetence.
A quick hop to netcraft gives connie.slackware.c
Bullshit! Slackware is very much alive (Score:3)
Please update your list - slackware is dead. No new release in more than a year, the "updated package browser" that was supposed to take a couple of weeks has also been missing in action for more than a year, the server has had many outages (it's currently responds to pings, but no page loads), and the few mirrors don't have much in the way of security and other updates (2 - 3 dozen packages in the last year, depending on the mirror).
I haven't logged in to /. in ages but I couldn't let this crap you have posted go without a comment. Are you simply trolling or do you genuinely believe this? Slackware does not have a set release cycle. It releases WIR (when it is ready). It has often taken more than a year. Look back at its release history and you will see this. To be honest I don't know what "updated package browser" you refer to but if you want to scan available packages use "slackpkg search" like everyone else. The development branch (
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I checked a whole slew of mirrors 2 months ago, the most that anyone had was 3 dozen updated packages - the majority had a couple dozen or less. Slacker zombie or dead, whichever, but to someone looking to switch back to a long-abandoned distro, that was both a big disappointment and an absolute vote of non-confidence.
Stuff like this [dannagle.com] doesn't inspire any confidence whatsoever. "A few days" has turned into a year. And remember - this is the recommended package browser linked to from the slackware.com hom
Wrong again (Score:2)
Since May 13 2011 until now, -current has had 728 packages rebuilt, upgraded or added. 435 of those have been within the last 2 months.
My source? http://ftp.uninett.no/linux/slackware/slackware64-current/ChangeLog.txt [uninett.no] (a decent mirror if you are looking for one)
The link you provide is equally uninformed since it stated,
"Slackware does not have an apt-get (Ubuntu), portage (Gentoo), or some other variant to allow automatic pulling from an approved repository. Instead, you browse and download .tgz listings an
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According to your own link, there were NO updates between December 14th and February 1st, ONE update in December, Moz and 5 other updates in November, Moz in October, Moz again in September (plus an update to httpd), 10 (including Moz again) updated in August, 6 (including Moz yet again) in July, half a dozen (including Moz, duh!) in June. That's pretty slack behaviour.
Take out the Moz/Seamonkey stuff and you've got almost NOTHING going on between June of last year and to
You seem to be ignorant of the facts altogether (Score:2)
Updates to -current happen in spurts after much internal testing by the core team. Updates to stable happen only if there is a security problem with a packages. The Moz updates are due to security fixes in their releases. Also Slackware itself doesn't have that many packages comparative to distros like Debian. So what you see isn't bad at all and largely expected.
It may come as as shock to you if you use a distro that is forced on a regular release cycle and hence ships with lots of broken packages because
The facts say otherwise. Slackware is dead. (Score:2)
You're missing a LOT of the main points here.
# 1. I made a direct comparison to Mandriva, another distro that is in financial straits, not a "we have 28,0000 packages on 9 dvds" like debian. Mandriva issues security updates almost daily. Slackware? Months can go by.
The comparison with Mandriva is apt, because both Slackware and Mandriva are dvds, so they're more or less within the ballpark in terms of being comparable. In other words, I made an apples-to-apples comparison, not the apples-to-oranges y
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Stuff like this [dannagle.com] doesn't inspire any confidence whatsoever. "A few days" has turned into a year.
The best you can do is link a page written by an equally uninformed user? Nice evidence. The poster doesn't even know about slackpkg being part of Slackware. No need to manually download and install packages, or use a web based package browser. Slackpkg does all of this for you.
SUSE used to have a site called Webpin that allowed you to search through the contents of packages that broke around the release of 11.4. Yet even openSUSE 12.1 the menu item is still listed.
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-tec [opensuse.org]
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As I pointed out to another slacktroll, suse is also going downhill fast. The quality is just no longer there. The only difference is that Microsoft gave them another $100 million to take them to 2016 - otherwise, they'd be in the same situation as slackware.
Can SUSE recover? I don't know - $100 million takes the pressure off of fixing the underlying problems, making them complacent, and not lean and hungry.
Consolidation in the linux distro world needs to happen, and for that to happen, the least via
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No new release in more than a year
That doesn't mean a thing - by that measure, Red Hat is dead too, and FreeBSD has been dead several times. Some release often, some release as stable as possible. There's room for both.
It could be that Slackware is dying for other reasons, though - I hope not, because I think it serves a purpose, just by not automatically embracing mainstream.
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Slackware, on the other hand, has really been slacking - for a year now.
I was really dismayed when I went to switch back to it and found out just how badly it's deteriorated. I figured slackware would be around forever, but even if they do "revive" it, it's always going to be more like a zombie now than a viable distro; the damage has be
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I've just dropped aptosid for Magiea. Started having problems w/aptosid. Some probably my fault, but I didn't want to deal with it anymore. Plus the distro has forked and I can't tell what is going on anymore. Again, probably my ignorance. Whatever.
So I went to DistroWatch and searched for any 64-bit distro. Eventually I found Magiea. And I have to say, it is slick. And so far so good re operation.
I too cut my (very dull) Linux teeth on Mandrake. I used a "SAMS" book. I think it was version 7. But I liked i
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Can't go back, but can get rid of that god awful name "mandriva".
How about Drake OS? or Drake Linux?
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Oh, and about the summary... isn't it correctly spelled "arbitrary"? what's up with that?
It should be "arbitrarily". Adverb, not adjective.
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Dragon or Duck?
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They had a decent name once: Conectiva Linux.
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I remember that.
Conectiva Server 1.0 was my second bite on Linux, and it was a tasteful one.
I enjoyed that printed manuals for weeks. Still have them.
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How about Man/Drake? =]
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IIRC, the underlying reason for the name change was that King Features Syndicate rattled their sabers - the combination of the name Mandake combined with magic related icons and graphics was a clear reference to the comic.
Now that Mandriva's Mandrake trademark has been abandoned, other companies may have used it (sans magic references), so it may be hard to go back.
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I don't think they were inexplicable. There is no money in Linux desktop sales. Mandrake was not going to beat RedHat or United Linux (Suse, Caldera, Turbo, Conectiva) in the enterprise market. They had always been a desktop product so they couldn't move strongly into servers. So going into specialized desktop areas makes sense. With Apple being weak, the education market was, and remains wide open. Had they executed better, and had Microsoft not been willing to lose money to keep this niche they coul
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> There is no money in Linux desktop sales. Mandrake was not going to beat RedHat or United Linux ... in the enterprise market.
> They had always been a desktop product so they couldn't move strongly into servers.
Who knows? If it had worked, no doubt Gael Duval would have been hailed as a genius. But thinking back on that time, I was a *huge* Mandrake Fanbois. I installed it every chance I could (my first Web server was Apache on Mandrake) and loved it.
As I recall, though, the reason it was a dumb move
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As I recall, though, the reason it was a dumb move (again, my opinion) was because what people were looking for was Red Hat Certification. If you'd paid and passed a Mandrake course, it was hard to imagine getting a job off of that. But everyone had heard of Red Hat.
That Red Hat certification was for server. Mandrake's certification program was directed at companies that were using Mandrake and wanted certified administrators. I don't know if they existed.
When I talk about education I mean the actual i
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Any of my fellow old timers here remember Mandrake 7.0's infamous "Move Your Mouse Wheel!" thing during installation???
No, and I first installed Mandrake in 2002. Maybe my mouse didn't have a wheel back then and the install software "knew" it and acted accordingly.
Bye Bye Mandrake (Score:1)
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> [I] bought their stock ...
I remember the first time they fell into deep economic doo-doo, because I was a regular in their forums online. They were asking for people to pay $130 euros to join the Mandrake Club, but they required it in a lump sum. I pointed out that they might get more response if they permitted people to do it monthly. But one of their people (might have been Gael himself) posted, "we need the cash NOW." That was when I began to suspect that they were in even more trouble that most peo
Mandriva Directory Server (Score:5, Interesting)
Was a complete disaster.
If you ask my opinion, Mandriva had no corporate offerings that actually offered any actual value. Everything server wise you wanted to do to Mandriva could be done with the base Mandriva Linux distribution.
I run an Open Directory Server with:
OpenLDAP + Samba + Kerberos + FreeRadius. On Mandriva Linux. I modified libuser myself to enumerate LDAP accounts. I use Fog for imaging. I use LDAP to administer sudoers, It all works. Mandriva could have taken the Linux Domain controller Market. How? Adding a Widget that said "Create Open Directory Domain" in Mandriva Control Center.
Instead they created this convoluted mess of a service called Mandriva Directory server that complicated everything five or six times. I tried to warn them. They should have handled the creation of Open Directory Servers the same way they handled Open Directory (And Active Directory Clients):
You click on an MMC Widget
The Needed Packages for dhcpd, bind, openldap, samba, kerberos, libuser-ldap, etc etc etc... were all installed, and configurations were written, CLEANLY. Services restart... boom Open Directory Domain.
I filed bugs, I pissed and moaned, my bugs got marked Invalid or won't fix.
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Please submit a patch.
TL;DR (Score:1)
Community did this already in 2010... (Score:4, Insightful)
The community already took control of Mandriva's distro by forking it to Mageia in 2010. Mandriva, as a distro, has seemed almost pointless since then despite some inherent design changes. So, what Mandriva is now proposing seems to be an anachronism.
The nice Mageia distro was born from all the Mandriva uncertainty of the past several years and is about to launch version 2 any day now. Again, Mandriva seems almost pointless, but all the power in the world to people who take them up on their offer.
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Mandrake/Mandriva/Megia was buggy (Score:1)