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Mandriva Businesses Software Linux

MandrakeSoft Improves Financial Health 183

Posted by simoniker from the put-back-in-pot dept.
joestar writes "MandrakeSoft's latest financial results have been posted to their website. Despite a slight decrease in revenues - mostly due to the dollar/euro rate and negative effects of the Chapter 11-like protection - first results seem impressive: "the company reduced operational expenses by a factor of 5, increased gross margins by a factor of 5 and reduced its losses by a factor of 7". As a result, MandrakeSoft has been cash-flow positive since January 2003, and expects its first positive result for the current quarter! Along with latest Mandrake Linux cool products, these are excellent news in my opinion because it shows that an appropriate business model can help Linux companies greatly."
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MandrakeSoft Improves Financial Health More

MandrakeSoft Improves Financial Health

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  • Way to go!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by An0maly ( 448481 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:01PM (#7726297) Homepage
    It's good to see a company that makes a fine product doing well. See, Darl? Money CAN be made from selling software.
    • As others have pointed out, the haven't been sucessful just by making a fine product, as in here [slashdot.org]
    • Well Darl did the same thing. He sold off his UK operations as a way to boost the bottom line. Reducing expenses so drastically usually is an indication that they cut employment or sold buildings and closed down shops. It removes expenses immediately, but it also removes future revenue and especially growth.

      Nevertheless, shareholders are often short sighted and think this is so good that the CEO gets a hefty bonus...just before he bolts for a new company.
    • I ordered Mandrake 9.2 from them and after a few weeks of them not shipping the product, I cancelled my order. It's been over a month of trying to get my money back and now they are not even replying to my emails. Unfortunately, I will have to treat this as fraud to my bank in a few days if my money is not refunded. Way to go Mandrake...

  • Mandrake Move (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) * <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:02PM (#7726298) Homepage
    Now mandrake move looks a cool idea in storing all the files on the move however what would be even better is a system which boots from a USB device. Now that would be cool

    Rus

  • good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by andih8u ( 639841 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:02PM (#7726306)
    I'm glad that mandrake is able to make a bit of a profit while still providing a free download edition; without going the redhat way of dropping the home user line entirely. Hopefully other linux companies will see that the Redhat way is not the only way to profitability.

    • Re:good for them (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MoonFog ( 586818 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:14PM (#7726440)
      I totally agree, and Mandrake is a great distro. I don't like SuSE's way of releasing their distro (ftp anyone?), and Redhat dropped the free version entirely, so for the desktop I usually recommend Mandrake for people just wanting to try Linux. I have great respect for their installer, which I find to be excellent!
      IMHO this is great news, and as you say hopefully others will follow this model.

      The latest version can be bought of Mandrake [mandrakestore.com] or downloaded from Linuxiso.org [linuxiso.org].
      Feel like supporting [mandrakelinux.com] ?

      • MandrakeClub Subscription (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:00PM (#7726910)
        If you find yourself looking for Mandrake rpm's all the time, searching forums with the keyword Mandrake often enough, or want to join a productive and growing community, consider joining MandrakeClub.

        You are supporting Mandrake (the developers, company, and distribution) through MandrakeClub. There are several benefits [mandrakelinux.com] that are nice to have (select mirrors, a huge archive of Mandrake rpms, and bittorrents for ISO's) not to mention the fact that you are supporting an operating systems designed with you in mind. There are even forums for different languages. This is a volunteer community by-and-large. No one was forced to come because they found Mandrake preloaded on their computer.

        You pay for one year, with 4 levels of subscription. A silver subscription gets you most everything you want for $120/year. Remember, you are not just supporting a corporation. You are supporting a free product [mandrakelinux.com] (development, patching, documentation, and web hosting) which brings free software that much closer to everyone (including you).

        I do not work for Mandrake. Look at the options yourself. And remember Linux and Mandrake are not free because they don't cost anything - they are free because they are supported by people who believe they should be free.
      • I don't like SuSE's way of releasing their distro (ftp anyone?)

        What do you mean, are you looking for this [suse.com]?
      • I think Red Hat has a great bang for the buck with their academic edition [redhat.com]. For US$ 25 you can get a good Linux-based operating system, without any rough edges but that still gives you acess to the source. You qualify if you are a a full time or part time student on a higher education institution, or if you are a teacher. I think an MBA will also get you qualified.

        Mandrake is a fine distro, but every time I tried I found some little problems, submited a bug report and hopped on the next version these probl

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:21PM (#7726510)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I'm not talking about a subscription. I want to update when I want to update, and I want to pay $30 for an entire automatic system upgrade.

        Several of the previous posts have mentioned a shortage of local Linux suport. This could be a great opportunity for any un/under-employed slashdotters. Put up flyers and such advertizing your services doing Linux installs and maintenence. Not a terrible line of work, and there seems to be a demand.

        This nice article on doing freelance technical support [mac.com] has lots of re

    • Re:good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:23PM (#7726539) Homepage
      It may be because MandrakeSoft knows something that RedHAT should.

      Microsoft got where they did by getting in everyone's home and office. For the first 6 years Microsoft almost encouraged piracy of their operating system from the DOS 4.X to the windows 3.11 Era..

      This one act, set micrsoft up to gain complete dominance on the desktop... Businesses used Microsoft because that is what people had at home. OS/2 was not really viable as there were very few people that had it at home or in use... it was a rarity.

      so do you set up your business IT infrastructure on something that is superior but nobody knows or do you select what everyone is using at home?

      Bingo...

      MandrakeSoft hopefully realizes that the larger number of small/home users out there the greater the chance of business adoption.

      When the CEO starts talking about this Mandrake thing, the CFO hear's that it has a much lower TCO than microsoft (and it really does... the cost of licensing Microsoft products alone makes this case) then things will happen.

      Redhat as far as I'm concerned slit their own throat. us end users at home and in garages are who made redhat what is is today because we could reccomend it at work for no cost/risk with the first taste and segway into a full blown server/enterprise + support setup.

      Mandrake.... Hope you guys have a better grasp on reality than the rest of the IT industry.

      • I agree compleatly, I don't even think that the Fedora project, and opening the distribution is a bad idea. But it was certainly done compleatly wrong. It only scared the custumers away. It made every one distrust redhat.

      • Re:good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

        by deque_alpha ( 257777 ) <qhartman&gmail,com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:43PM (#7726720) Journal
        You make decent argument, but in my experience, it is usually the other way 'round, people use Windows at home because it's what they use at work. Never have I seen any business or organizational choices made based around what people use at home. I've seen them based on what other businesses and orgs use, but never based on what employess choose.

        Where I work, people are always asking me for computer advice (I'm "the IT guy") and in many cases a Mac or a PC running Linux would be what I recommend for their needs, and their first response is always "But I use Windows at work...". I even hear this from people who admittedly prefer Macs, but are so convinced that they don't work with files from Windows machines, they don't consider them a real option.

        I don't think redhat cut their throat, in fact they made what is in my opinion a very sound decision. They are focusing on Biz / Org sales instead. It's not a worse choice, just a different one.

        • Re:good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:12PM (#7727032) Homepage
          the thing is that what is happening now is based on the past. Businesses had minicomputers + text terminals... Unless you were an Uber geek you couldn't get that at home... and many companies were running unix and even SCO Xenix in the 80's yet nobody bought that for home use....

          DOS was cheap and came with every IBM PC. Windows 3.11 was for the most part free as it took one person to get a new pc with it and then copy the 10 floppies for friends. (I know of at least 50 Windows 3.11 installs in 1993 that were that way. and most businesses were that way.)

          Now microsoft makes it impossible for that to happen, Steve the IT guy that the rest of the IT people hate gives dan a copy of mandrake and says," this is free, you can give copies to everyone you know, and it has an Office suite built in that is also free." people will pay attention, espically after trying to upgrade their W98 box with XP only to have it complain about not looking legit and asking for them to call Microsoft.

          Granted, Linux even Mandrake Linux is not ready for the regular PC user. But, it will be.. and Microsoft is making it easier and easier for the regular user to accept the "difficulties" of Linux+Mandrake..

          Remember only about 6 years ago people were using DOS, having to fight with config.sys and autoexec.bat files to get a game to run. asking them to deal with some minor difficulties in Mandrake is really simple if their only other choice is to spend $199.00 to upgrade their OS.
      • has a much lower TCO than microsoft (and it really does... the cost of licensing Microsoft products alone makes this case).

        Whoa. Hold on here. TCO means Total Cost of Ownership. The cost of licensing MS software may be high, but the whole idea of TCO is that this is only part of the picture. Whether it's the lion's share or not depends on the size of the transition, the organization involved, and whose numbers you trust.

        Yes, you're right, if you're an enterprise with no ties to current software, a goo
        • If your customers are the "self-serve" type like you say, then yes.. It's going to be like switching from DOS to Windows... major changes and hurdles to the non IT person. And the costs are still really there... what you pay for Windows Support is what you will pay for Linux Support... A Linux Specalist doesn't cost more than a Windows Specalist.. but they are harder to find... one valid point you bring up is the vertical apps that cant be replaced with Linux versions...

          Office? it certianly can be repl
      • Microsoft got where they did by getting in everyone's home and office. For the first 6 years Microsoft almost encouraged piracy of their operating system from the DOS 4.X to the windows 3.11 Era.

        True, I reckon that the biggest breakthrough for free software will be when Microsoft makes a decent anti-piracy system, I first considered Linux when I got sick of ME but saw the major hassle of XP product activation and didn't much fancy paying daft amounts of money for every computer I own every 2-3 years. I
    • " without going the redhat way of dropping the home user line entirely. "

      As pointed out above they obviously didn't drop the home user.

      Also I'd like to point out that Mandrake now has a policy of only allowing paying users to access Mandrake linux when it comes out. Only later does the rest of the world get access to it. Since the paying users are the only ones making Mandrake any money its not unlikely that sooner or later Mandrake will stop offering it for Free.

      Red Hat still pays developers to code on

      • Also I'd like to point out that Mandrake now has a policy of only allowing paying users to access Mandrake linux when it comes out. Only later does the rest of the world get access to it.

        Yes, when 9.2 came out, Club members got privileged access to the ISO-torrents, but at that time anyone could update his current install or do a network install from the ftp mirrors. Plus, of course the ISO's appeared on public P2P networks anyway, and while perhaps not so nice towards Mandrakesoft, this was completely

  • good business model until... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:02PM (#7726307)
    ...Slashdot found out and saturated their web site with so many hits that they'll spend the next three years paying for the bandwidth...
  • it shows that an appropriate business model can help Linux companies greatly

    I don't think that MandrakeSoft's business model really scales very well.
    1. Tell everyone that you're about to go out of business.
    2. Ask for donations.
    3. PROFIT!
    may have worked so far, but it's self-limiting -- as soon as you start to PROFIT!, it becomes hard to claim that you're about to go out of business.

    • Re:Business model? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MoonFog ( 586818 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:23PM (#7726535)
      Have a look at this [mandrakelinux.com] page;

      In November 2001, MandrakeSoft introduced MandrakeClub -- a new concept of offering special services and benefits to Club members which also helps the distribution stay true to the Open Source spirit.
      They filed for chapter 11 this year. That means they have been asking for donations through the club for two years before they started having real financial troubles.

      • Re:Business model? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cperciva ( 102828 )
        They filed for chapter 11 this year. That means they have been asking for donations through the club for two years before they started having real financial troubles.

        That's my point. Simply asking for donations wasn't enough to keep them out of bankruptcy. MandrakeSoft only turned around after telling everyone that they were about to go out of business.
        • MandrakeSoft only turned around after telling everyone that they were about to go out of business.
          Seems to work for the local furniture store. GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!. It's worked so well, they've been `going out of business' for several years now :)

          In fact, I think they've even opened a new location up north, and after a month or so it started GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! too!

      • > They filed for chapter 11 this year. That means
        > they have been asking for donations through the
        > club for two years before they started having real > financial troubles.

        But the Mandrake Club is not a donation service... It's a full-featured service...

  • What? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 1000101 ( 584896 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:06PM (#7726360)
    Since when is "Chapter 11-like protection" a good business model??

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)

      by BigGerman ( 541312 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:26PM (#7726570)
      Because they just follow the standard path of any software/web business:
      B2C -> B2B -> B2Chapter11

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jmb-d ( 322230 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:46PM (#7726752) Homepage Journal
      Since when is "Chapter 11-like protection" a good business model??

      Since staying in business is better than going out of business, quite a while.

      In the early 90s, I worked for a company that filed for Chapter 11 protection while I was on vacation.

      "D'ah!" thought I.

      Not a terrible thing, really. Debt got restructured (read: our creditors took it in the a**), we got rid of a whole lot of things we didn't really need (read: way too much floorspace (including a no-longer-used manufacturing area)), and got out of a lease on said space, moving to a more appropriate-sized office at a much lower per-foot cost. Then came a couple of years of consecutive positive cash-flow, and *poof* we were out of Chapter 11. Never missed a paycheck, got raises during that time, etc.

      No big deal from where I stand.

      Would it have been better to have had a better handle on what was going on before it got to the point where Chapter 11 protection was necessary?

      You bet.

      Was it a handy way of saving the company?

      Damn skippy.

  • Mandrake is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:07PM (#7726370) Homepage
    I pretty much only use Debian for linux, but Mandrake is pretty cool. Mainly for how simple it is. It's a distro that I know I could give to most people (largely computer inexperienced) I know if they wanted to play with Linux. The simple installer is as easy as installing a *nix distro gets. Period. It is, in fact, easier than the Windows installer is.

    • Re:Mandrake is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:19PM (#7726498)
      It's really nice to hear a Debian devotee praising Mandrake. I've been using Mandrake since I started seriously using Linux (my first exposure was Suse 6.4). I've tried Debian and, while I like apt, I found that I didn't have time to do all the setup things I needed to -- like setting up the mount points when I wanted to play DVDs (which isn't just for entertainment if you're doing video production). I respect Debian and the power it provides, but I prefer Mandrake, since I can get a production box up and running extremely quickly.

      I've found it frustrating because many times I've heard people deride Mandrake because it is so easy to use, and I've especially heard a lot of Debian users deride it (then again, I've heard many Debian users deride anything BUT Debian). I've always thought there was a place for most of the distros out there, and Mandrake is great for beginners, or experienced users who need easy and quick installation.

      I'm glad to hear from another distro user (especially an advanced one like Debian) recognizing the value of Mandrake.

      • Re:Mandrake is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Lane.exe ( 672783 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:38PM (#7726670) Homepage
        Mandrake is good period. It's Linux. It's not like there's something other Linux distros do that Mandrake can't. Package management? urpmi. What advantage does apt have over urpmi? I can't think of one. Ease of install? Hands down to Mandrake. Ease of configuration? Drakconf, userdrak, diskdrak, wow... all easy to use and they do the same thing as any comparable configuration method.

        Don't knock Mandrake simply because it can be easy to use. It's also just as powerful as anything else, provided you have the experience to use the power-user features. There's nothing that says "just because this system is more obtuse and harder to use must mean it's more powerful!" That's a misconception that a lot of people need to get out of their heads.

        • Re:Mandrake is awesome (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Malor ( 3658 )
          I use Mandrake on my desktops and Debian on my servers. I run quite a number of servers, so I speak with some experience here.

          Debian excels at remote management. Everything is tuned that way. Everything (EVERYTHING) is administered from the command prompt. (There may be graphical tools as well, but I never install those...I just configure in text.) Want to upgrade packages on a server 5000 miles away? Debian makes that trivial. And you never have to reinstall the OS (barring major catastrophe), so y
          • It is fairly easy to upgrade a mandrake system without taking it offline. I have a system that went from mandrake 8.2 to mandrake 9.2 without going offline. If you point urpmi to the newest distro and do an urpmi --auto-select, it will upgrade all the packages that have changed since the last disto.
      • I've tried Debian and, while I like apt,
        Can anyone relate their exepriences with installing software on Mandrake these days? Do they offer anything better than the standard RPM hell? Didn't they start offering some kind of subscription service or something?

        I switched from Mandrake to FreeBSD a while back, and I really like FreeBSD's ports system.

      • I used to be a Mandrake user in the 7 and 8 release period. My experience with it was not good. Supermount and flaky end user tools made me feel like I was running Windows 98 again. Perhaps they have improved things since then but going to Debian was like a breath of fresh air.

        Yes, I had to learn more to make things work. Thing is, once I had them working they stayed working. My other complaint was that the Mandrake system of mirrors wasn't terribly reliable. I had no idea where next week's updates w
      • Disclaimer: I haven't used Mandrake seriously since Mandrake 8.0 (and my memory is a little fuzzy about the versions and dates), so the following complaints may no longer be applicable.

        I'd tried to use Mandrake seriously a while back, and found it virtually unusable for many of the same reasons I find Windows unusable. I grew up in (semi-) elder days, and learned to configure my Linux system the old fashioned way: I'd go to my /etc directory, find the config file, and edit it.

        Why did I have to hand-edi

        • Hmm, I agree that it is a bit hard to edit the files by hand, but Mandrake comes with extensive online documentation and if you had looked, you would have found how to change the settings manually.

          As far as applying the patch to the kernel, well mandrake adds some features like supermount to the kernel they ship which sometimes means that you can't apply the patches but, one mandrake does give you linus kernel in their urpmi repository and secondly, it is equally easy to download a stock kernel and then ap
        • That about sums my experience, too. I'm used to compiling my own kernels, but when I wanted to upgrade a kernel on Mandrake, I found that they usually had included extra patches, like automounters that removed the need for mount/umount on CD drives. So, I wasn't able to get the kernel working exactly the way it was supposed to and the system never "felt right" afterwards.

          Don't get me wrong--Mandrake is a beautiful distribution, very easy to configure and use, and I'd recommend it for anyone who wants an
      • Interestingly, Debian seems to be the first distro I haven't managed to break yet.

        I'm not a Linux specialist, but I use it for my server (mail, http/https, ftp) and NAT needs.
        I have tried using Linux on my desktop many times, but there's always some game, utility or application I miss from any distro. Be it filesharing, MMORPG or (relatively) easy to use 3D modelling program. I don't want to boot all the time from OS to another to get what I need, so I just have one box for "my work" (Win2k) and another fo

  • wow, linux is powerful! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tibor the Hun ( 143056 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:11PM (#7726405)
    i never knew chmod 755 could do THAT for a company!

  • Okay. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by /dev/trash ( 182850 )
    http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove
    But doesn't Knoppix already do this?

  • Quality impact? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by infolib ( 618234 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:54PM (#7726846)
    The last Mandrake release had a bunch of bugfix updates right after the ISOs went golden requiring the users to download many megabytes of updates. Could this be a result of firing developers? Has anyone seen the lay-offs impacting quality?

    I'm quite curious since I use Mdk myself.
    • Actually this is better to fix the bugs and release updated packages instead of ignoring them, which is what happens with many other Linux distributions.
    • I've been using MDK since 7.2, and it seems the same every release. There's always updates, that's just how it is with open source. Hell, I've always found it a pain that MS doesn't release updates more often. Also, with MDK, it seems every time they make a release, a bunch of whiners complain about a bunch of bugs, but everything seems just fine to me. Then a couple weeks later, the whiners calm down and everybody realizes the release was pretty good. I've always been happy w/ their products. (There

    • Re:Quality impact? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ninjaz ( 1202 )
      My guess is the errata for this release were mostly due to closing off the community a bit. Last time I recall getting a release, MandrakeForum was still open to the public for discussion (now consolidated into members-only MandrakeClub), and had announcements, download links and discussions of bugs in the release candidate ISOs.

      Mandrake also seems to have a strong "get it out the door" drive. For what it's worth, I'd rather have it ship with a few bugs (I didn't even notice any of the scary bugs on th

  • Mandrake is great - and not only for x86 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pow.R Toc.H ( 12470 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:55PM (#7726854) Journal
    I think that I moved to Mandrake at release 7.2 - RedHat was starting to look too much proprietary to me, something that recent news have confirmed.

    Mandrake does include bleeding edge software, but normally it's mostly optional - you can run a real stable server system if you want to with it. I have used Mandrake as both my standard desktop (both in my computer and my wife's notebook). never got any HW detection problems. Recently I bought an USB Ethernet adapter. Just plugged it into wife's notebook USB port, it started to work. No hassles at all. Period.

    Also, Mandrake is my Firewall Solution for years now, as Mandrake was the only distribution that allowed me to use my old Performa 6360 as a firewall.

    If this is not important to you, or if you suggest me to use NetBSD for PPC instead, forget it. The 6360 has no video/kdb console accessible and so I had to use the serial console directly - which had instability problems and became completed frozen up from hour to hour.

    "But you can connect from the network!"

    Nope. The network driver couldn't contact my little ethernet network, and locked up the entire machine. And I don't use RealCrap cards in this server, but an ANA-6922TX card.

    So, I,ve tried Mandrake as Yellow Dog didn't install; LinuxPPC was fine but had a pretty outdated selection of packages. I'm glad I've done this.

    Now, if I just could find one or two 32 MB memory DIMMs for the Performa to replace my two 16 MB DIMMs...
  • I downloaded mandrake, and use it on my desktop and laptop, but I have never paied a dime to any linux or open source project. I'm just a student I can't afford to pay. I am wondering if I am helping or hurting by just grabbing my ISOs and running? It allows the to become noticed by providing free software, but look at music downloads, would you download a song and then go pay for the album just to support the artist?
    • I have a couple of reactions to this.

      1) C'mon - if you really wanted to, you could find a way to pay - $80 is equivalent to 2 or 3 nights out - 2 or 3 dinner & a movies, or a couple of nights of bar hopping will run just as much.

      OR,

      2) On the other hand, there is the Microsoft business model to consider. You are using an unpaid for copy of Mandrake. You use it for a few years - you get proficient at it, knowledgeable about it, and come to like it and rely on it. A few years down the road, when you are

  • That name... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I said it before, and I say it again:

    They might see more subscriptions if they would consider a name change or at least give an alternative, more business-like name to their products.

    I, for one, do not like to have an entry for 'Mandrake Club Services', paid to a French company, in my books.
    Imagine the astonishment of the taxman when I try to deduct this as a professional expense.
    • "Imagine the astonishment of the taxman when I try to deduct this as a professional expense." ...and when he realises that you've wasted so much time worrying about the implications of $60, which is probably what you spend per month in fluffy pillows for your tired little head.

  • Consider Mandrake for the community support (Score:4, Insightful)

    by meanfriend ( 704312 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:15PM (#7727065)
    I took my first serious foray into Linux about a year age with MDK9.0 on it's reputation as a 'newbie' distro. It has a LARGE and friendly user base and that (IMHO) must be taken into consideration when you are getting into Linux

    Let's face it. People who are trying to learn Linux are going to run into difficulty at some point, period. Sometimes people need to ask simple questions that would get scornful "RTFM n00b!" replies on any other group, but someone in an MDK forum will at least point you in the right direction without ripping your head off.

    Linux requires you to know stuff about your OS, and part of the learning curve is learning *how* to help yourself. Snooty attitudes from ubergurus are about as counterproductive as can be.

    alt.os.linux.mandrake is an AMAZING resource. Some issues are distro specific and because the MDK user base is so large, chances are someone else had already had that problem and someone else has offered a solution. As a resource for troubleshooting, having access to a large friendly newsgroup (which is fully archived by groups.google.com to boot) that uses your specific distro cannot be understimated.

    Now that MDK is the only commercial distro that 1) targets ease of use for the consumer desktop 2) has a significant sized friendly community and 3) allows full ISO downloads for free*, it's a no brainer for anyone wanting to get into linux

    *it obviously costs them money to develop or distribute it. Feel free to download the ISOs to try it out, but consider supporting them by buying a retail pack or syearly subscription if you continue to use it.

  • Up to the EU Competition commissioner now. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by openmtl ( 586918 ) <polarbear@btintern e t . com> on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:18PM (#7727090) Journal
    Mandrake always has been a desktop distro. Wider adoption requires two things to happen; financial stability for Mandrake and an equal playing field for Linux.

    Red Hat have handed Mandrake the desktop baton. The failure of US Justice department to get anywhere near solving the antitrust issues with current desktops pretty well spoiled the opportunity for Linux desktops in the US. Maybe Lindows will fight the defence on behalf of the US consumer.

    Mandrake is delivering on the financials. Now lets see what the EU Commission on competition [eu.int] does on helping to create a level playing field. Will the rights of consumers prevail ? Munich [euobserver.com] is an important proving ground but expect some serious payola [reference.com] to flow to stop other cities. Whats 40 Billion USD work out to be in Euros [oanda.com] now ?.

    • I disagree with your assesment. I doubt any committee or any government regulators will do anything to 'level the playing field.'

      Any time a company needs the government to rule a certain way to profit, that company doesn't have a sound business model.

      Software is something between customers and consumers. governments may lend a hand in this case, but why does one company, like Mandrakesoft, deserve a government's help, and another company, say, microsoft, deserve a government's crippling legal action?

      The
  • I hope this will improve quality of their releases. Quality was the reason why we switched to Mandrake four years ago.

  • Company-made reports look pretty but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:47PM (#7727352)
    Not to rain on the parade but please notice that this is a Mandrake company web page with some pretty graphs and just a handfull of numbers. Dunno about you, but I prefer to see official financial filings with an auditor's stamp of approval. Even just a regular cash flow statement and a balance sheet would be nice.
  • I've been using MDK for almost 2 years now and think that it is a great distro with the exception of its updating mechanism. Generally, I haven't had very much luck with its update (either requiring a fresh install or the update breaks things that worked before)

    Separate /, /usr, and /home partitions though make this at least somewhat workable. And at least the install is pretty easy (and does a nice job with autodetecting most things so I don't have to do things like set my monitor scane rates manually)
    • Chooks-sama,
      urpmi is your mdk friend.
      Your very best mdk friend.

      Spend an hour with this, and if you have the hard-drive to do so, create a folder in rootspace, say /mandrake/9.2/
      blow all the RPMS from the disks into it

      Then
      urpmi.addmedia -f mrpms file://mandrake/9.2

      Then you can use the GUI to look through your media sources, and all the installs can come from that media source.

      Be sure to add an "update source" using the GUI interface because that's not very friendly yet, but after that a quick trip to

      man
      • ARGH!
        After re-reading the parent to this parent I _finally_ understood the issue.
        (therin I post, guilty of reading, yet not understanding, gad...)

        So there I was, handing out "How to upgrade/install packages from a HD repository" when the original issue deals with the borked/broken "UPGRADE MANDRAKE LINUX" problem. (application of palm to forehead...completed)

        Yes, upgrading the entire distro is a broken mess using the Mandrake "upgrade" option from the install menus during boot/install to upgrade Mandrake
  • Based upon the discussions in this thread, I went to the website. And saw that the "Powerpack Edition" has the following:

    1) VmWare (workstation edition)
    2) VariCAD
    3) Win4Lin

    The whole thing is $69 USD, seems like a helluva deal.
    .
    Am I missing something? Are these just "evaluation version"?

  • Diversity = long term health and freedom (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nv5 ( 697631 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @03:33PM (#7727824) Homepage Journal
    I'm very hopeful that Mandrake will survive. In addition to being a really nice distro for many years, we need diversity, so I want SuSE (Novell), RH, Mandrake, Debian, the *BSD's, Apple and many more to thrive. At the risk of being modded (is that a word?) to hell, I even want MS to survive long term, since MS's misbehaviours are a big driver for the tons of good work being done in the open source and free software arena, as well as some of the better attitudes in traditional companies like IBM, Sun and Apple.

    Only a wide open and long term competition of approaches, value systems and individual people ensures positive progress and yes: freedom!

  • Ironically, this news makes me feel more like paying up for Mandrake Club membership - at the point when they needed it most, it seemed least worthwhile since who knew when they might be going out of business? God, what a shitty way to think. I'm glad they've managed to pull through in spite of people like me.

  • Um... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cjpez ( 148000 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @04:23PM (#7728304) Homepage Journal
    it shows that an appropriate business model can help Linux companies greatly
    I wasn't aware that periodically begging for financial help from your users could be considered an "appropriate business model."
  • Mandrake's financial troubles actually have little to do with their current business model.

    See their explanation here:

    www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3

    Briefly, after a profitable first year in 1999 as a small distro maker, they let venture capitalists into the capital.

    Those investors brought in a new management team which multiplied the workforce by ten almost overnight and steered the company towards e-learning.

    The results of this strategy were catastrophic - Mandrake's burn rate reached 1.5M USD/m
  • It's the only "large" commercial distro left in Europe, since SuSE now belongs to Novell. I don't mean to flame the US, but I sort of feel it's good for distros to be seperated in different countries, as crazy as that may sound.

  • Improving financial health? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Combuchan ( 123208 ) <seanNO@SPAMemvis.net> on Monday December 15, 2003 @06:05PM (#7729367) Homepage
    I'm looking at Mandrake's two-page year-end "Newsletter to Investors" and I can qualtitatively say that there's no way one could definitively say their financial health is improving.

    I'm not sure if it's just rigorous US accounting standards have kept me from the harsh realities of international investing, but I have no idea about Mandrake's debt position, their return on investment, where exactly they're generating cash flow (operating, investing, or financing activities--they're very different) and about fifty other such ratios and line-items and on average fifteen pages of notes that are given for you or very easy to figure out on companies that follow U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

    Compare the annual report of any publically traded U.S. company (here's Intel's annual 2002 report [intel.com]--the PDF is 102 pages) and you'll notice that a lot more information is given to investors and shareholders. We have, off the top of my head, the usual letter to shareholders from the CEO, some "PR fluff", the balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, notes to consolidated financial statements, a signed auditors report indicating you can actually trust the data, segmental data, and thorough management discussion and analysis (MD&A) in which the company's head honchos actually talk about their company's financial health.

    I'm not dissing MandrakeSoft in any way, I think their software is top-notch and with the disappearance of Red Hat from the consumer line I think Mandrake has a critical role.

    I think it's important for /. readers to know that accounting and investing or disgustingly complex topics, and most shareholders don't read the annual reports or know enough to make sense of the number and subsequently get caught up in the bandwagon without a further analysis. It's very easy to lose your money in this market simply by not looking at the books.

    Mandrake, for example, could be earning all their money from external financing and losing money from operations. That looks good on your income statement but if you don't check the statement of cash flows, you wouldn't know about that and you'd bee royally screwed when those external lenders come to collect. Plus, all I know about their debt situation is that they're in chapter 11--how much debt do they really have? I could think of a hundred other questions not answered by their newsletter.

    Mandrake's "newsletter" does not give me the numbers I need to make that sound analysis.

    Oh, and before some of you wiseguys respond to this, realise that Enron, et al. are the EXCEPTIONS, not the rules.

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