Mandriva Not Shuttering Its Doors, Yet 97
An anonymous reader writes, quoting OS News: "In his usual man-of-a-few-words manner today, Jean-Manuel Croset, Mandriva COO, announced that enough funds have been secured to allow Mandriva to keep its doors open and continue development."
From the announcement: "The strategy review started two weeks ago will now actively be finalized and the corresponding decisions taken mid of May."
Re:The early switcher newbie distro (Score:2, Interesting)
Amen. I learned on Mandrake 7 and used it all the way through the initial Connectiva acquisition. I was in high school at the time, so $100 seemed like a lot, but I was still a member of their "club" which granted access to the Powerpack downloads. Oh, and we should never forget the legendary Adam Williamson, who now works for a piece of clothing :). The thing I really liked about it was the installer: it gave tons of options, but was still easy to use. Mandrake was at the top of distrowatch in 2005/6. Now it pains me to not see it on there.
Re:Shouldn't that be shutting the doors (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few things wrong with that statement. One, it doesn't matter to me how popular Linux is, as long as they keep developing it. Why is lack of popularity a problem? It's not like Linux is a money-making enterprise. As long as my computer works I don't care how many others are using the same OS. Two, Linux isn't popular for quite a few reasons, foremost that every non-Apple PC comes with Windows preinstalled. Few have ever even heard of Linux, let alone know how superior to Windows it is. Hell, slashdot comments show you that a whole lot of folks here haven't ever tried it or they'd realize how crappy Windows really is (Windows is improving, but is still nowhere near Linux in useability, customability, and features).
And its diversity of distros is one of many reasons it's hard to write Linux malware (that, and repositories of course... not to mention MS's inherent flaws that make virus writing easy for that platform).
Personally, the more distros there are, the more I like Linux. If all there were was Gnome-Ubuntu and Red Hat, I'd probably be using Windows.