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Mandriva Businesses Linux Business

Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval 160

Posted by CmdrTaco from the a-bit-of-the-biz dept.
mcleodnine writes "In this interview Gael Duval comments on MandrakeSoft's just released financials. He also comments on his decision to base Mandrake on Red Hat (over Slackware), the timeline for getting out of Chapter 11, the recent UserLinux manifesto and barriers to acceptance for Linux on the desktop."
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Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval More

Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval

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  • financials here: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:28PM (#7736183) Journal
    here [mandrakesoft.com] are financial results of mandrake. Recently [slashdot.org]discussed on slashdot btw.

  • Uh-oh (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?threadid=126031 [linuxquestions.org]
    "jeremy
    root"

    You shouldn't post to forums as root, it's a sure sign you're a newbie ;)

    Fortress of Insanity [homeunix.org]

  • Mandrake (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Phrite ( 728691 )
    Mandrake is a good distro, but unfortunatly in its developmental process it was following the wake of Red Hat.

    • Re:Mandrake (Score:1, Informative)

      by bigredradio ( 631970 )
      They have been ahead of Red Hat for a couple of years. To my knowledge they have been one of the most "bleeding edge" distros out there. This sometimes makes them seem very innovative, but also separates them from the masses. Examples are:

      devfs by default
      lvm in the installer
      reseiserfs support
      easy to use installer (back at version 7.0)
      kernel modules are gziped.
      Greater implementation of loadable kernel modules
      ifplugd

      I am not saying that this is necessarily better. But that they seem to have left RH far behi
  • I don't know all that much about the practical (ie: deployed) differences between Fedora and RHE, and I haven't used Mandrake in a while, but with the recent split of offerings by Red Hat I was wondering about some repercussions.

    Does anybody know if Mandrake is going to continue to use Red Hat as its base? Will they be using Fedora? Do people who've used Fedora, 'classic' Red Hat and Mandrake have an opinion on what's going to end up happening to the quality of Mandrake's product as a result?

    • Re:Dumb question about base... (Score:5, Informative)

      by AllUsernamesAreGone ( 688381 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:49PM (#7736428)
      Mandrake hasn't been RedHat based since the 7.x series - the only "RedHat based" aspect of 8.x and 9.x is that it uses rpms.

    • Mandrake is not based on Red Hat, and hasn't been for sometime (apart from the occasional patch from RawHide being merged into a package in Cooker).

    • on the bottom of this [distrowatch.com] page you can see in some nice tables what versions Mandrake currently uses. (e.g. koffice in 9.2 is 1.3beta3)
    • I've used every release of Red Hat from 7.2 through 9 and then installed Mandrake 9 earlier this year. I have to confess that the Mandrake installation was the smoothest and easiest ever, and the rest of the family prefers Mandrake over RH. I haven't tried Fedora. The only "major" difference I noted between RH and Mandrake is that my scrolling mouse does not work in Mandrake, but does work on RedHat. Odd bug there, and probably my own fault.

      Over the Thanksgiving holiday, though, I installed SuSE 9, and

      • The only "major" difference I noted between RH and Mandrake is that my scrolling mouse does not work in Mandrake, but does work on RedHat.

        During the installation, if you select a scrolling mouse, there is an instruction to use the scroll wheel (the message should probably be much larger than it is). If you don't use the wheel at that point, the mouse won't work correctly. I've used three different scrolling meese (IBM, Logitech, and Compaq) on two very different machines using the last two versions of

      • Add this line to /etc/X11/XF86Config (or whatever)

        Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

        it goes in the

        Section "InputDevice"

        area.

  • Non Karma H-to-tha-Izzo text (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:35PM (#7736273)
    Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval ( post #1)

    Gael Duval, the founder of Mandrake Linux and co-founder of MandrakeSoft, agreed to an LQ interview. Here is what he had to say. Thanks Gael.

    ###

    LQ) Tell us a little about yourself, how you got into Linux and why you started Mandrake Linux?

    GD) Actually I firstly discovered UNIX at University where I learned computer sciences. It was mostly on Sun with Solaris or SunOS, and I really was impressed by UNIX. In 1995 I had a 386-based PC at home with MS-DOS/Windows 3.1 runnning on it and of course it was... extremely frustrating. In particular when you are a student with absolutely no money, it was impossible to purchase all the development software for programming in C/C++/Common Lisp and others, or you had to copy it illegally. And of course it was without the documentation. So I spent more and more time at Uni working with UNIX. It was the early WWW times, and I remember I searched for "free Unix" on the Net. If I remember well, I used Yahoo! which started less than one year before, and the browser was... Mosaic :-)

    The search results showed several Linux pages. That is how I discovered Linux. A few days later, I was at home with my Slackware on 50-diskettes, still not believing that I could run a Unix-like with X11, Emacs, GCC, Lex, Yacc, Clisp and... all the documentation on my 386. A few hours later, the miracle was here: Linux was running on the PC, with OpenLook on the screen. The next great experience was when I performed the first Internet connexion by modem, through a University access.

    Two years later, it was clear for me that Linux had the potential to be an excellent alternative to Windows, or maybe even a full replacement, and at the time I thought that it would be good to provide a Linux distribution that would be as easy to use as Windows. So I started to "play" with Slackware, and later with a Red Hat. It was also the time of the first versions of KDE. After a few months of work, I released the first Mandrake, in July '98, and was the first distro to ship with KDE 1.0 as default graphical environment.

    LQ) Before releasing the first Mandrake version (which was based on Red Hat) you were working on a Slackware-based OS. Any regrets on that distro switch? Do you think things would be different had you not made that change?

    GD) No regret at all, for a simple reason: it was not serious anymore to release a Linux distribution without a good package management like RPM. I seriously considered to switch to Debian as a base because at the time, Red Hat's reaction was very unclear (as far as I know, forking from a commercial Linux distribution never happened before Mandrake). But back in 1998, Debian's installation procedure was really not friendly at all. As a result, a key success of Mandrake was also that all packages made for Red Hat were compatible with Mandrake, including commercial packages. So the choice of RPM was the good one.

    LQ) During a mid-year status update, Francois Bancilhon noted that "Our immediate goal is to exit from this status before the en of the current year" (speaking about the Chapter 11 filing). Does it look as if you will meet this deadline? How does MandrakeSoft's financial future look?

    GD) Yes, our goal is now to exit from the Chapter 11 filing soon, but there is no emergency - actually it just limits the level of business we do. We will provide an exit plan on early January and it should make us leave two to three months later. It needs a court approval.

    Anyway, we've just released first financial results and they are very positive. There will be a benefit for the current quarter.

    LQ) What major changes and updates can we expect to see in the next Mandrake release?

    GD) In addition to many improvements, there will be more and more focus on applications that are needed in daily business in small and medium corporations (office, groupware...).

    LQ) What are your thoughts on the recent End of Life

  • I know your watching Bruce! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @12:36PM (#7736281)
    So how do you respond to his thoughts on UserLinux. Obviously it is nice that he recognises it's a bit early to be very decisive but otherwise his comments are negative. How will you counter his arguments that
    1) it's a Debian thing, isn't it? 2) it's better to follow standardization processes such as Linux Standard Base because all major Linux distributions agree with it, and it's important to avoid the "Unix balkanisation syndrom" if we want to see Linux succeed in the long term.
    Excuse me blatently calling you out like this, but you have been known to post on /. just once or twice and while I think I really like where UserLinux is going, these are the sort of issues that make me wonder if it is actually achievable in the current environment.
    • Hey! That's a bit unfair to cite him witout his disclaimer:
      It's a bit early to comment it because nobody knows where it goes. But my own feeling (not MandrakeSoft's official position)...

    • Re:I know your watching Bruce! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No problem at all for calling out.

      However, I don't understand what these UserLinux, Debian or "/." mean, could you lay it out in simpler words ?

      --
      Bruce Springsteen.

  • LQ) If you couldn't use Mandrake what Linux distribution would you use?

    GD) This is the most difficult question I ever had to answer in an interview! :-) That's a frightening question actually because I can't see any alternative that could fit my requirements: friendly, full-featured, powerful, stable, fully open-sourced...

    So, if there were no Mandrake it would be neccessary to create one!

    • So, if there were no Mandrake it would be neccessary to create one!

      Or if it went under, we'd just need to find someone else to pick it up and maintain it? After all, their Linux business has always been solid. They are still paying for the crack-induced visions of a previous (and short-lived) *world-class* management (corporate raiders).

  • Mandrake, not just for newbies... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IpSo_ ( 21711 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:05PM (#7736579) Homepage Journal
    In my experience, it seems Mandrake has gotten a reputation as being "all graphical like Windows", and I find a lot of "geeks" look down upon it for just that reason.

    I've been using Linux since Slackware 3.4 (1998/99?), I've installed and used almost every distro under the sun for both servers and desktops (haven't tried Gentoo yet though) and I must say Mandrake is by far the easiest _and_ most configurable distro I've ever used. The last part is especially important for the "geeks".

    For example, without spending a lot of time, or downloading obscure "boot images", what other distro is there that supports ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, LVM, and a super easy way (graphical) to setup software RAID with all the above partitions straight from the boot CD. Mandrake has supported all of this since at least v8.0. It took me longer to find a Debian boot image that uses the 2.4 kernel just to support my very common hardware raid card then it did to install Mandrake with ReiserFS on the /boot partition.

    I can hear the Debian fans screaming already... "But Debian has APT". Yes, it does, and APT is great. RedHat has APT now too, but Mandrake has had URPMI for years, which essentially does exactly what APT does, only its easier to use, both from the command line and graphically! Since about Mandrake 9.0 it has also supported installing packages on multiple machines at the same time.

    To top it all off, Mandrake's setup utilities, such as PrinterDrake, HardDrake (for configuring hardware) are top notch. I was blown away when I loaded up PrinterDrake... said "Search for printers on your network" and it came back with all 6 of our (different) printers setup and ready to use. I don't think it was more then TWO clicks! Thats something even WindowsXP can't claim.

    In short, Mandrake isn't just for newbies, its an excellent distro for even veterans of Linux who would rather spend time coding, or tweeking important performance settings instead of mucking about setting up printers or searching for "boot images" just to support year old hardware or file systems other then EXT2/3.

    • Do you really want to use apt-get?

      [root@mdkserver root]# urpmi --test apt
      To satisfy dependencies, the following packages are going to be installed (2 MB):
      apt-0.5.5cnc6-2mdk.i586
      libapt-pkg0-0.5.5cn c6-2mdk.i586
      Is this OK? (Y/n)
      [root@mdkserver root]# cat /etc/mandrake-release
      Mandrake Linux release 9.2 (FiveStar) for i586

      So you also can have apt-get.

      Happy holidays
    • its an excellent distro for even veterans of Linux who would rather spend time coding, or tweeking important performance settings instead of mucking about setting up printers or searching for "boot images" just to support year old hardware or file systems other then EXT2/3.

      Excuse me my good man/woman. But I use Slackware and I love tweaking and coding around in it and I don't worry about setting up printers or searching for boot images. Just like who MDK uses graphical installs and flashy colors to help
    • I can hear the Debian fans screaming already... "But Debian has APT". Yes, it does, and APT is great. RedHat has APT now too, but Mandrake has had URPMI for years, which essentially does exactly what APT does, only its easier to use, both from the command line and graphically!

      Well, OK, I am a Debian user - but I also have a Mandrake install to keep tabs on how it's progressing. While I do agree that Mandrake's urpmi is very nice, I think your statement is missing one of the most important aspects of apt.

  • Mandrake & Linux history... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:14PM (#7736715) Homepage
    This is certainly one of the most interesting part of this interview, and I think too few people aren't aware of these facts... And I would add URPMI:

    LQ) What would you consider Mandrake's largest innovation or contribution to Linux?

    MD) Proof that Linux is not only for geeks (focus on ease of use), first graphical installer, first remote update utility (including graphical front-end), security levels, transparent access to devices, first Linux releases as an ISO image...
  • I would have liked to have seen one asking him about the Common conception among some Linux users I know that Mandrake is very bloaty. You can see form my sig I run lean and mean Gentoo.

  • Gotta love... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gregarican ( 694358 ) on Tuesday December 16, 2003 @01:33PM (#7736965) Homepage
    the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX banner ads that are liberally sprinkled through the /. site. The ads should have an amputee starting blankly at a Rubik's Cube.
    • Very funny ;)

      Got a demo disk of this with a magazine, I think Microsoft's aim is to push people away from UNIX! What a pile it is, barly usable (gcc wouldn't compile anything even remotly complex) There are much better uses for $99.

      Keep your money and install cygwin [cygwin.com] you'll be 100 times happier, and a little bit "richer"

    • starting blankly at a Rubik's Cube.

      Dude, where's my car?

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