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Mandriva Businesses Linux Business

MandrakeSoft Exits Bankruptcy 233

Posted by michael from the free-as-a-bird dept.
joestar writes "It's official now: the Court has approved Mandrakesoft's exit plan from the Chapter 11-like protection status. This seems to be the result of the recently announced profitability of the company, and means that Mandrakesoft is now fully back to normal activities. Great news for the Open Source community and Mandrake Linux users! All details are available in an online PR."
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MandrakeSoft Exits Bankruptcy More

MandrakeSoft Exits Bankruptcy

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  • Just more proof... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:05PM (#8717864)
    that open source software truly is a profitable industry!

    • Re:Just more proof... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#8717914) Journal
      Zing! This is so very true though. The software might be free... but you can bet your sweet wallet the support is not! (But since when is that news for the software world?)

    • Re:Just more proof... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by globalar ( 669767 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:57PM (#8718476) Homepage
      You don't have to maintain a business model around open source software to take Mandrakesoft as an example. Mandrake has taken time to develope a community of loyal users, who have good reason to be loyal. Their distribution is nice and improves Linix for the enduser (IMO). Businesses should learn the power of user-based community.

      The fact that this community can get as involved as they can (this being open source software), is critical of course.

    • Re:Just more proof... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:20PM (#8718712) Homepage Journal
      More proof that people will pay to sustain the things that they believe in. They will pay to keep it alive, even if they can have it for free. Any daily user of a good Linux distribution can see the value in sustaining its maintainers.

      Open source is a still a pretty new concept to many. I think that it was just a matter of time before traditional "brick and mortar" rules stopped applying. It took some time, but the system is starting to catch on. You don't need to go to the store to support your favorite Linux distro. Mandrake club and online payment systems have proven that.

  • Who cares if they're Frencch? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wardomon ( 213812 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:07PM (#8717881)
    They put together a better distro than you complainers do...

  • Good news but not enough.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by tktk ( 540564 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:07PM (#8717890)
    I'm waiting to hear that SCO has entered bankruptcy.

    • Im not (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't want SCO to be protected by chapter eleven. I want to see them down, see their stock price below the 2 digits (I'm talking about cents here), see them being bought by somebody else who will take all their assets and sell them to the best bidder. Then I want to see Darl being sued by former SCO stockholders and thrown in Jail.

      I don't want to see being protected by Chapter 11. I want to see it burn.

      • I am (Score:3, Informative)

        by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 )
        Not chapter 11, but chapter 7 (dissolution of the corporation.)

  • Significant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:07PM (#8717894) Homepage Journal
    This is quite significant. Its difficult for some major companies to dig themselves out of bankruptcy (see KMart), but for an open source/linux company to do it... it really proves that open source can survive in a capitalist economy.

    • Re:Significant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by emtboy9 ( 99534 ) <jeff@jeff l a n e .org> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:17PM (#8718024) Homepage
      Not sure I would look at it that way... although I do very readily admit it is difficult to get out of bankruptcy without A: folding, or B: being bought out/liquidated.

      I tend to view OSS companies more like the farmer's market. In small towns and country settings you have the farmer's market. All the farmers come there to sell their produce, eggs, honey, etc. they all pretty much have the same things (tomatoes, beets, lettuce, eggs, etc) and so all are basically in competetion with each other. HOWEVER, listen in when the farmers are talking to each other, and you will find that they very readily help each other out with tips, advice, and even labor. Even though they are technically competing with each other, they share what they know amongst themselves to assist their neighbors.

      Open Source is a lot like that. Red Hat may be in direct competition with Mandrake and SuSE/now Novell, but at the same time, work done on Red Hat linux ends up in each of the others to some degree, and vice versa.

      The proprietary world is more like a pack of wild dogs... they run in packs together until they find prey, then its every dog for himself, and the weakest is killed/devoured by the pack, or left behind to die alone and be picked apart by scavengers.

      Now the true test is when the Farmer competes against the wild dogs. Farmer usually wins in the end, because the farmers all band together, track the pack of wild dogs, and remove them from the equation. Thus ALL the farmers livestock is safe.

      Not a big fan of Mandrake, personally, but cheers to them for getting back on their feet. The more OSS companies there are at the farmers market, the more endangered the pack of dogs becomes.

      • Re:Significant (Score:3, Funny)

        by Obyron ( 615547 )
        Now the true test is when the Farmer competes against the wild dogs. Farmer usually wins in the end, because the farmers all band together, track the pack of wild dogs, and remove them from the equation.

        Does this give anyone else the mental image of Linus and RMS hunting Darl & Co. through the woods with automatic weaponry?

        • Re:Significant (Score:3, Funny)

          by emtboy9 ( 99534 )
          Actually, that image did come to mind when I wrote that... although I am not sure if the image of Linus in over-alls, sitting on a hay bale in the back of a 65 Ford 4x4, with a shotgun in one hand, and a 6-pack in the other screamin' "Yee Haw!" is funny, or scary... ;-)

      • Re:Significant (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 0racle ( 667029 )
        Simply being capitalist does not preclude being open and sharing to solve common problems, it just often works out that way when the capitalist becomes short sighted and greedy. If being capitalist was exclusive of being helpful to the community or industry in which they compete, companies would not fund research in public institutions, and they would aggressively fight all published standards, and before you say Microsoft, they do not fight all open standards.

        On the other hand, being open does not mean sh

        • Re:Significant (Score:3, Insightful)

          by emtboy9 ( 99534 )
          On the other hand, being open does not mean sharing everything. There are portions of RHEL that can not be freely and openly exchanged, and until recently YAST was also closed.

          I never said anything like that...I said the Farmers shared SOME things. Of course the farmer with the prize winning 200 pound head of lettuce is NOT going to give away his secret, but he WILL at least help others out who cant get anything to grow at all... That was the analogy.

          Your analogy, while appropriate in some regards, b

          • I never said anything like that...

            I never said you did ;) that was there more as I felt that it needed to be added to what I said.

            While were having fun with the dictionary though, one definition of an analogy is: A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. Therefore using your tuna example, He smelled like a tuna, therefore he must be a tuna. Isn't english fun, and yes I know

      • Re:Significant (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Tribbin ( 565963 )
        Open software will probably beat propritary software but it is not comparable with the relation wild dogs and farmers have.

        Wild dogs chase animals to eat. Farmers make food to sell. Why would the dogs and the farmers fight? They are on a completely different market.

      • All the farmers come there to sell their produce, eggs, honey, etc. they all pretty much have the same things (tomatoes, beets, lettuce, eggs, etc) and so all are basically in competetion with each other. HOWEVER, listen in when the farmers are talking to each other, and you will find that they very readily help each other out with tips, advice, and even labor.

        It's an interesting analogy, but I'm not convinced that it describes things perfectly. Farmers who sell produce are in a different type of ma

    • Don't forget to thank HP!
    • speaking of kmart and sco...
      kmart's price checkers use embedded sco unix,
      wonder how long until sco sues them

      but yeah, it's good to see mandrake getting out of the pits, as much as people hate them, they're the gateway to linux for the average user. redhat's the gateway for the server admin, etc.

  • the drake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by maxbang ( 598632 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:08PM (#8717901) Journal

    Mandrake was my first taste of Linux and I'm glad to have learned much from them and their community. I hope these guys stick around - while Slack/Debian/Gentoo/etc. are great, it's always important to have distros like this available to those interested in making the switch. I haven't paid them anything since 2002 - maybe I need to throw them some bucks in gratitude. Seems a far better option than the windows tax (pirates be exempt from this doubloon taxation, me knows. arrr!)

    • Re:the drake (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:15PM (#8718007)
      ...it's always important to have distros like this available to those interested in making the switch.

      I'm making a new computer for my Dad, and I explained that he would have to buy an OS. He can use a computer, but he won't be using a command line. I offered to install Mandrake as a free test before buying windows. It was really nice to have the option for someone like my Dad, who might enjoy Linux, but not on a power-user level.

    • Re:the drake (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RaymondR ( 723881 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:21PM (#8718066)
      They were my first distro, too. I started with 8.0, and then got more serious with 8.1 (I purchased the software from a store). Since then I have moved on to a different distro, but if it wasn't for Mandrake, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. It's always nice to see a company that works with Linux become profitable.

      • Do we see a pattern here? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by David Hume ( 200499 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:29PM (#8718156) Homepage

        They were my first distro, too.


        I wonder, do we see a pattern here? Could this be why Mandrake wound up in "Chapter 11-like protection status?" Could it be an indication that it might again wind up in said status?

        It appears that Mandrake is a great distro for newbies (I know, I started with it myself) who then do not stick around (yep, me again). The result is a relatively high cost of sales, and a relatively small continuing income stream. Can a distro survive if it is everybody's first distro, and nobody's second?

        • Do we see a Linux Desktop here? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) <cx.thefurryone@net> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:41PM (#8718278) Journal
          Can a distro survive if it is everybody's first distro, and nobody's second?

          Yes, absolutely. Because it will never be "nobody's second"-- people naturally resist change. If enough people are convinced to switch from Windows and wind up using Mandrake as their desktop-- and it's my opinion that Mandrake is well suited to that task-- then the lower-tier users (ie people who just plain want to use the computer for email, web, etc.) will stay with Mandrake. Hell, we've got people who're resisting the change from Windows 95. When something works, Random User will not risk it by upgrading unless there's a damn good reason. Random Geeks (like us) will always progress to the Next Big Distro, and in the case of Mandrake, it won't be that.

          If you want to make a Linux Desktop a reality, make it simple to use and get into. Mandrake gets that pretty close to right. It was my first distro, and I trashed my hard drive twice before I finally got it right; Mandrake's installers made things pretty easy, but not infallible. And besides, how many Random Users are going to worry about installing it more than once?

          (Wow, my first Linux-zealot post. How'd I do? ^_^)

          • Random Geeks (like us) will always progress to the Next Big Distro, and in the case of Mandrake, it won't be that.

            Actually, at this point I don't anticipate ever getting off Mandrake. It's too easy. ;) Just because I *can* spend my time wondering around config files and crap and making my system do exactly what I want doesn't mean that I *want* to spend my time doing that. Mandrake gets it 90% of the way there, and the remaining 10% I think hard about how badly I want it, or if I can just settle with w

        • I wonder, do we see a pattern here?

          Possibly, but there are other patterns. For instance, I started off with Mandrake, strayed to redhat and SUSE for a while, but ended up as a paying customer for Mandrake. (Silver club member) I want a distro that's easy to use and just works. Mandrake provides that.

        • Re:Do we see a pattern here? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Stinking Pig ( 45860 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:06PM (#8718566) Homepage
          A handful of samples != overwhelming evidence. You'd see a very different picture if you were on a Mandrake-specific list, where loyalty is high and the majority of people seem to be coming from Red Hat and SuSE rather than Windows.

          • Re:Do we see a pattern here? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:59PM (#8719169)
            I agree, I am myself an experienced GNU/Linux/*nix user and I choose Mandrake. I guess the point is, some people think that because Mandrake is easy to use for newbies, it is not appropriate for experienced users. This is not necessarilly true in general, and certainly not true in what respects to Mandrake.

            As a power user, Mandrake gives me:

            • An extremely easy to administer distro. Adding/installing services is a breeze.
            • Most hardware is autodetected.
            • Sweet software management (urpmi et al). I never reinstall from scratch, just upgrade from CDs or network.
            • Standards compliance (LSB certified)
            • A huge software selection. Add Mandrake/contrib to your urpmi media and you are golden.

            My Unix path has been: Solaris & Slack -> Redhat -> Mandrake. I will change again if I find something more suitable for my needs, this is a not a religion. But getting back to the point, Mandrake is a fabulous general purpose distro for general audience. Not just a migration toy for home users/newbies.

            • I might do something similar. Though I've installed Slackware on my last 3 machines, I'm having serious trouble getting it working on my latest, and I'm planning to try a distro with better hardware detection. Suse's my first choice, but I haven't ruled out Mandrake.

        • >It appears that Mandrake is a great distro for newbies (I know, I started with it myself) who then do not stick around (yep, me again).

          This got me thinking in the context of the current article on migration to Linux and the Ask Slashdot on installing packages vs. compiling source. While many of us love to tweak and play with the OS, most computer users are just that: users. They want to boot the sucker, load a program or two and use it to do work, communicate, and/or play games.

          To say that Mandr

        • Don't know that I would call it a pattern. My first (succesfully installed) distro was RH 5.2. Debian was the first I tried, and I went back to it very briefly after I'd learned my way around this linux thing a bit. 7.0 was my first Mandrake and I've stuck with it since.

          It's not a matter of not liking the command line (although I've only got four terminals open as I'm typing this, and only one instance of vim - it's an admin day), or not liking to tweak things. Linux is my primary workstation. I depend on

        • This could be true. I'd argue that the platform you start out on will definitely shape your upgrade path, but at the same time, as you engage in computing you gradually develop dependencies on the system you work with. For example, it was hard for me to go from UNIX to Windows, but now I am running Windows completely, and I'm having a hell of a time going back to UNIX - even going back to Slackware is hard for me, and I can't afford to consider the Mac as an option.

          I have found that I don't like these ne

  • That was close... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:08PM (#8717905) Journal
    I still have my distro preferences more towards the RH side of things (though it is drifting towards SuSE more and mroe), and the Franco-American antipathy over Iraq may cloud the political arena darkly...

    However, Mandrake is one of the absolute best newbie/intro distros of all time, IMHO, and it's damned good to see them come back from the dead.
    No matter what US folks may think of French things, and no matter how disdainful one may be, when it comes to Linux at least, we're all family.

    Cheers,

    • Re:That was close... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rick Zeman ( 15628 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:27PM (#8718135)
      However, Mandrake is one of the absolute best newbie/intro distros of all time, IMHO, and it's damned good to see them come back from the dead.

      I'm curious--what makes something a newbie distro vs. anything else? By virtue of the fact that things Just Work? You don't need to fire up an xterm and remember 311k arcane commands to do common administrative tasks, that there are GUI front ends? That you don't have to build it from scratch (hello, Gentoo)?
      If that's the case, call me a newbie.

      • Re:That was close... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pr0c ( 604875 ) * on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:36PM (#8718228)
        I don't know what his definition is... My definition is a distro suitable for newbies to install and maintain. Mandrake is, xandros is, gentoo isn't, slack isn't. Newbie distro means that a newbie is the minimum target.

        Now of course someone will come along and say well gentoo is easy to install, slackware is easy to install... and that is of course their opinion. The more instructions a product needs the worst it is for a newbie.
        • My definition is a distro suitable for newbies to install and maintain

          That sounds like a good definition to me. I would add that this does not mean it's unsuitable for non-newbies. I started off on Slackware, and had good guru friends around to teach me how to write bash scripts and hack at config files in vi, but now that I'm comfortable with that stuff, I just want a Linux that I can work with with a minimum of fuss. That's why I use Mandrake, and if I click some drop-down boxes, and hit Apply, and
      • Nah, it's mostly presentation. For example, some distros list every app by name in huge menus. Instead of seeing a link to Konq/Mozilla/Opera/Lynx (heh) in the menu, a Mandrake user will see "Use The Web" or something similar. Likewise, a call to OOo Writer is "Make a text document", etc.

        Plus it uses a Fisher Price style that makes XP look professional... but eye candy is popular.

        • Re:That was close... (Score:3, Informative)

          by haeger ( 85819 )
          I don't agree (surprise surprise).
          Mandrake is not "mostly presentation". Mandrake is true to the GPL and all work that they do are licensed under the GPL in a true OpenSource manner. They also focus on usability.
          Most people that _use_ computers want something that "just works".

          I wouldn't call myself a newbie and MDK is still my flavour of choice when it comes to my work-machine. Easy upgrades, nice interface, everything just works. It's just what I want it on one machine.

          This is not to say that others don
          • Eh, anyone who prefers the simplified "Use the Web" is unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Not everyone takes it as holy writ.

            • Eh, anyone who prefers the simplified "Use the Web" is unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Not everyone takes it as holy writ.

              Eh? Not so. Just because you don't want to have to make a decision over which browser you're going to use every time you go surf the web does *not* mean you're unlikely to give a rats ass about the GPL. Lots of people want their computer to "just work", and don't want some evil monopolistic company to dictate what they can and can't do with their computers.

              I desire simpl

      • Actually, el-spectre covered one aspect, that being presentation. OTOH, there is also the goodies that help a newbie along, like HardDrake.

        For example, mdk had one of the earliest setups that let you change monitor resolution without having to shut X off, go digging around in XF86Config, then crossing your fingers and hoping the modelines were put in correctly.

        Yep, SuSE has YaST (and Sax before that), but it wasn't anywhere near as easy or as intuitive (IMHO) for a newbie who was too used to Windows an

    • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lakedemon ( 761375 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:33PM (#8718204)
      Americans, french, israeli, palestinian are all human people...
      We all eat, drink, sleep
      We all like children
      We all love Women (men/dogs/cats/sheeps...)

      Having the same tastes, we could all be friends (Bah...).

      Well, there are these that bad bad things called "Hate" and "Politics" that make/made people do awfull things this century and the last one...

      Personnaly, I'm french and I love americans (the american girls).
      So, you see... The antagonism between france-us isn't so bad.... ^_^
      Lakedemon
      ps : go go go Mandrake !

      • Personnaly, I'm french

        Is that why you have that crazy accent? ;)

        I'm thinking that the antagonism between France and the US is mostly made up, or exists solely in the government. I have not met a single American who really thought France was evil, they just disagreed with you guys' politics. Nor have I met anyone that really acts/feels antagonistic towards the French.

        For the most part, we've all agreed to disagree, because that's what it takes to keep our own disparate cultures in the US from killing e

  • Great news! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Steve Ballmer's Fat ( 641246 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:08PM (#8717910)
    This is great. As a complete noob to Linux (GUI only person), Mandrake is/was the easiest to set up and use... and it works flawlessly. Keep up the good work Mandrake!
    • Off topic I know, but hear me out..

      Just your nickname alone "Steve Ballmer`s Fat" is enough to make me cringe, but your comment:

      As a complete noob to Linux (GUI only person), Mandrake is/was the easiest to set up and use...

      Sure is true to it's name. /LAUGH!

      (note to mods, I'm poking fun at the relation to his name and comment. be careful how you mod)

  • Mandrakesoft (Score:5, Funny)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#8717916)
    Mandrakesoft just hired old accountants from Arthur Andersen.
  • Glad to see that these guys are still going to be around for some time. Now if they can just deal with that infernal copyright problem....

  • French Administrations? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xarak ( 458209 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#8717923)

    This is most excellent news. I think that with French administrations (esp education, research and military) moving towards Linux, Mandrake might be able to secure a few core customers on their home ground.

    Most of all, it's encouraging and a releif for all the contributors - Mandrake has a great record of quality tools given back to the community.

  • They may be out of bankruptcy, BUT (Score:5, Informative)

    by ModernGeek ( 601932 ) * on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:09PM (#8717924)
    they have debt to pay off for the next 9 YEARS. That is almost as long as Linux has been around. Who knows what it will be like in 9 years since it is so far away in computer time. The french chapter 11 is a lot differnet than filing bankruptcy in America when you just don't have to pay your bills after you are done with it.
    • It looks like a vendor is starting to sell blade servers like IBM's with Mandrake Linux installed exclusivly. http://www.mandrakesoft.com Looks like mandrake is really starting to broaden their horizon too.

    • Re:They may be out of bankruptcy, BUT (Score:5, Informative)

      by Joe5678 ( 135227 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:32PM (#8718183)
      Chapter 11 in the US is reorganization; essentially protection from the debtors until you can get your act together, you still have to pay them though.

      Chapter 7 is liquidation, pretty much a free for all of your assets by the debtors.
    • Bankruptcy is a legal phase.
      They are out of this phase where they didnt have to pay their debts. The judge found them worth of continuing to exist (first phase), and now he ruled that they don't need this protection (not paying debts) anymore because they are profitable. (around 7% of those who go bankrupt reach that stage, at most).
      But on the other he must also protects those with whom mandrakein in debts, without putting this process of revival at risk (which would also goes against everybody's interests)
    • they have debt to pay off for the next 9 YEARS.


      What, they just graduated college?

  • Why do I get the feeling that, somewhere in some corner of the wolrd, Darl has a very very evil grin on his face.

  • Congrats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Welsh Dwarf ( 743630 ) <<d.mills-slashdot> <at> <guesny.net>> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:12PM (#8717966) Homepage
    Great news from Paris, and to celebrate, I'll continue doing what I've been doing for quite a while:

    Recommending Mandrake to all my friends (who usually download it) and to all the companies I consult for (who usually get powerpacks).

  • Thank you Mandrake Club members, Deno (Score:5, Informative)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:17PM (#8718023)
    A key to keep Mandrake afloat in the real hard times was the club [mandrakeclub.com], an initiative by former Mandrake employee Deno, and followed up by thousands of enthusiasts who decided to support their favorite distro. Great work to all.

    I hope to see more and more features and advantages for club members in the future, to encourage not only nice people who want to say "thank you", but also many other people to join ...

    • When I was first learning to use Linux (back in the Mandrake 7.2 days) the club was indispensible to me; even though I no longer use Linux as my main platform (OS X), I still keep my Mandrake box around and updated regularly. The club is still the best place to get support for Linux-related issues IMO. Plus, their club-only FTP and package directories are great ways for using urpmi to manage the packages on a system.

  • Back In Black? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:18PM (#8718037) Homepage
    Couldn't resist the AC/DC reference, sorry.

    Mandrakesoft seems to have plugged its way back up to profitability and that's extremely commendable. There have been a lot of people who wish for that "One Distro To Rule Them All" and a great deal of those people were going to crown RedHat king. I was one of them.

    However, I've changed my tune in the last few days or so. Mandrake was one of those distros that focused on desktop linux very early on. When folks at RedHat were reluctant to jump on the other side of the server, Mandrake went in, both feet. At the very least, that's commendable.

    The sad part of the story is that Mandrake isn't as big as RedHat nor does it have the backing of a Novell the way SuSe does. One can only hope that Mandrake's survival (and profitability) ensures end-users a great desktop distro from all the competition.

  • It's now official (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MukiMuki ( 692124 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:20PM (#8718053)
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Mandrake is not dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell failed to hit the beleaguered Mandrake community when recently The Court confirmed that Mandrake accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all exit plans. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey, which plainly states that Mandrake has gained more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mandrake isn?t collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by not failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Mandrake's future. The handwriting is on the wall: Mandrake faces a promising future. In fact, there won't be any failure at all for Mandrake because Mandrake is not dying. Things are looking very good for Mandrake. As many of us are already aware, Mandrake continues to gain market share. Gold ink flows like a river of honey. Mandrake PPC is the most successful of them all, having regained 93% of its core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    SUSE leader Seibt states that there are a whole lot of users of Mandrake. How many users of Mandarke PPC are there? Let's see. The number of Mandrake versus Mandrake PPC posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about a whole lot/5 = a lot of Mandrake PPC users. Debian/Gentoo posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Mandrake posts. Therefore there are about a few users of Debian/Gentoo. A recent article put Mandrake PPC at about a chunk of the Mandrake market. Therefore there are [beyond here lie dragons / 4i] = [woah, Nelly] Mandrake PPC users.

    This is consistent with the number of Mandrake PPC Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Mandrake PPC didn?t go out of business and wasn?t taken over by Red Hat who sell another fledging OS. Now Red Hat is also prospering, its profits turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that Mandrake has steadily inclined in market share. Mandrake is very healthy and its long-term survival prospects are very bright. If Mandrake is to prosper well it will be among large enterprises. Mandrake continues to grow. Nothing short of a miracle could stop it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mandrake is alive.

    Fact: Mandrake is alive

    (note : I originally forgot the bloody plain old text option. crap.)

  • Mandrake is my favorite OS. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I haven't put any money into Mandrake though. I'm feeling guilty. I've used and abused it extensively. I'll buy a t-shirt and join the club for awhile.

  • Sweet! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @03:36PM (#8718230) Journal
    This post is brought to you by Fire($current_name) and Mandrake 10.0! Just got it installed on this box today, actually. Busy building stuff right now.

    In fact I'm having a bit of trouble with GTK+, it's yelling about lib/cpp failing sanity check. As far as I know it shouldn't even be using that instead of GCC, but whatever...

    I've always loved Mandrake. Anyone can complain that Linux isn't user-friendly, but it takes very brilliant people to actually get up and DO something about it. And that's exactly what the Mandrake distro is: Linux as user-friendly as it gets. From the install to the first time you start X, anyone who has even used a computer will feel right at home.

    Granted, to get the most out of any Linux distro, it helps to be a propeller-head, but it's great to know that, once installed, you could teach a granny how to use Mandrake for Web/email/office apps.

    I'd just like to sum up my thoughts about why you should give Mandrake money in a quote I saw years ago: "Support those that enrich the world, not those that use the world to get rich."

  • Bankruptcy 101 (Score:2, Informative)

    by chicagothad ( 227885 )
    Ok,

    Just as an FYI, most companies are profitable *under* Chapter 11. During 11, the company has all of it's debt (aside from secured) debt stayed and does not pay interest. So, it would be make all the top line $$$$ and not having to pay what drove you into barkruptcy in the first place!

    I am rooting for these guys...but let's see what the profitability looks like over the next 2 quarters...

  • Bright Future for Mandrake and Linux (Score:5, Informative)

    by stealth.c ( 724419 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @04:17PM (#8718672)
    With even more positive press, I hope more people decide Mandrake is worth a subscription or two. I used to be a SUSE guy, but Mandrake was my first taste of Linux, and I've at last returned to Mandrake, for a few very important reasons.

    It's a great distro because you can get your hands as dirty as you could with Debian, and yet its glossy and friendly enough for a newbie. And that's good for me, because I don't ALWAYS want to pretend I'm running Gentoo. That, and Mandrake doesn't seem to lean so heavily on one desktop environment that they ignore the other. I can use GNOME or KDE (or install XFCE4) and not feel like I'm running in some secondary mode. SUSE was like this with GNOME and RedHat & Debian seems to treat KDE that way.

    Mandrake has always been concentrating on desktop use, and has been doing it for years, so I think it's a lot more mature than Lindows (can't speak on Xandros). As soon as I can afford it, I'm purchasing 10.0 Final on DVD. God knows I've been using their distro for long enough.

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