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The Linux operating system was born in 1991 and was created by one man, a
Finnish student coincidentally named Linux Torvalds. Since these humble
beginnings, a multi-million dollar
industry has sprung up to exploit the commercial potential of Linux, but
until recently Linux has eluded mainstream acceptance. However, due to the
recent economic downturn together with uncertainty over changes to Microsoft's pricing policy, Linux is
now being touted as a serious contender to Microsoft Windows. While there
are many other alternatives to Windows, including BSD which is based on SUN's (Stanford University Network - correction by bc) server-grade Solaris operating system,
none have commanded the same level of media attention as Linux.

Linux Mandrake is just the
latest in a long line of quirkily christened versions of Linux. Previous
versions of Linux have been named Red Hat, Slack Ware,
Storm and Coral. In stark contrast to the mundane names such
as 98, ME or NT preferred by Microsoft, the crazy
names of each Linux release hint at its renegade nature.

My foray into the world of Linux began by downloading a "CD image" from
the Linux web site. But don't worry, this isn't software piracy, it's
perfectly legal! Linux is shareware, meaning that it can be freely
redistributed without fear of a visit by the Business Software Alliance. The free
availability of Linux is a major reason for its popularity among
cash-strapped students and self-styled anti-capitalist hackers.

Before installing new software, it is always advisable to read the
documentation. Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise was in store for me
in the "required configuration" section of the manual.
I was shocked to learn that Linux Mandrake only runs on Pentium
processors, meaning that my hopes of testing the water with my old Gateway 486 were dashed. Furthermore, a
whopping 32 megabytes of memory are required to run Linux! Although the advocates of Linux self-righteously
boast the efficiency of their chosen operating system and deride the
"bloatware" produced by Microsoft, it appears that their claims are
blatantly incorrect. Although my humble 486 will happily run Windows 95,
it seems that Linux requires far more powerful, and more expensive,
computer hardware. Is this really the sign of a lean, mean operating system?
Of course not.

Sadly, not even being able to install Linux is just the first of my many
complaints. A brief perusal of the
features of Linux Mandrake reveals that Linux is sorely lacking many
crucial productivity applications. For example, why isn't the industry
standard web browser, Internet Explorer, included with Linux? Despite the
best efforts of the experts at the Internet
Engineering Task Force to encourage adoption of the Internet Explorer
standard, the creators of Linux seem to think that they know better. By
refusing to adhere to recognised standards, Linux is simply undermining
its own credibility.

Similarly, almost all of the world's most popular and widely used software
is completely incompatible with Linux! It may surprise you to learn that
your copy of Microsoft Office, Outlook Express, or Lotus Notes will not
work under Linux. Those who wish to use their computer for recreational
purposes are also out of luck, for almost all of the most popular games
are unavailable for Linux. Although a wide range of software is freely
available for Linux, these pitiful offerings are mostly unfinished, unreliable and do not
bear comparison to their commercial counterparts.

Computer security is also an area that seems to have been overlooked by
the developers of Linux. In these times when hacking and viruses are
commonplace, it defies belief to learn that no anti-virus software is available for
Linux. To add insult to injury, there is no Linux version of the popular
ZoneAlarm firewall. By using Linux,
you are issuing an open invitation to the hordes of ne'er-do-wells on the
Internet.

The shortcomings of Linux are obvious. Without even installing Linux
Mandrake, I have exposed several fundamental flaws. Surely it is not too
much to expect that, after ten years of development, the creators of Linux
would have addressed these problems? The real question that the
prospective Linux user must ask himself is, "Why bother?" After all,
Microsoft Windows comes free with most PCs and there simply isn't a need
to replace it, particularly not with a product of inferior quality.

Although it is always tempting to support the underdog, Windows XP will
be the deserved victor in the battle ahead. I recommend that those
Adequacy readers who are hoping to upgrade their operating system
patiently wait for the release of Windows XP, rather than foolishly
wasting their time, effort and money on Linux.

Personally I would use FreeBSD for a server for the sheer fact that I can never crash it. For desktop uses I would definantelly use linux.

But both of them being free in the same world will always complement each other. The only thing holding FreeBSD back from the desktop is a pretty installer ... though this _might_ count as a desktop varient of FreeBSD ...

The latest releases of mandrake and redhat are full of wonderful packages and resources that make linux more than a prime candidate for the desktop.

But Linux and FreeBSD will ALWAYS complement each other ...

SuperDuG

More information about the very new Mandrake Gaming Edition with The Sims seems to be available here and pre-orders seem to be opened at MandrakeStore. Just wanted to let you know because I find this stuff extremely _cool_ :-)

Linux Mandrake is just the latest in a long line of quirkily christened versions of Linux. Previous versions of Linux have been named Red Hat, Slack Ware, Storm and Coral. In stark contrast to the mundane names such as 98, ME or NT preferred by Microsoft, the crazy names of each Linux release hint at its renegade nature.

My foray into the world of Linux began by downloading a "CD image" from the Linux web site. But don't worry, this isn't software piracy, it's perfectly legal! Linux is shareware, meaning that it can be freely redistributed without fear of a visit by the Business Software Alliance. The free availability of Linux is a major reason for its popularity among cash-strapped students and self-styled anti-capitalist hackers.

Before installing new software, it is always advisable to read the documentation. Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise was in store for me in the "required configuration" section of the manual. I was shocked to learn that Linux Mandrake only runs on Pentium processors, meaning that my hopes of testing the water with my old Gateway 486 were dashed. Furthermore, a whopping 32 megabytes of memory are required to run Linux! Although the advocates of Linux self-righteously boast the efficiency of their chosen operating system and deride the "bloatware" produced by Microsoft, it appears that their claims are blatantly incorrect. Although my humble 486 will happily run Windows 95, it seems that Linux requires far more powerful, and more expensive, computer hardware. Is this really the sign of a lean, mean operating system? Of course not.

Sadly, not even being able to install Linux is just the first of my many complaints. A brief perusal of the features of Linux Mandrake reveals that Linux is sorely lacking many crucial productivity applications. For example, why isn't the industry standard web browser, Internet Explorer, included with Linux? Despite the best efforts of the experts at the Internet Engineering Task Force to encourage adoption of the Internet Explorer standard, the creators of Linux seem to think that they know better. By refusing to adhere to recognised standards, Linux is simply undermining its own credibility.

Similarly, almost all of the world's most popular and widely used software is completely incompatible with Linux! It may surprise you to learn that your copy of Microsoft Office, Outlook Express, or Lotus Notes will not work under Linux. Those who wish to use their computer for recreational purposes are also out of luck, for almost all of the most popular games are unavailable for Linux. Although a wide range of software is freely available for Linux, these pitiful offerings are mostly unfinished, unreliable and do not bear comparison to their commercial counterparts.

Computer security is also an area that seems to have been overlooked by the developers of Linux. In these times when hacking and viruses are commonplace, it defies belief to learn that no anti-virus software is available for Linux. To add insult to injury, there is no Linux version of the popular ZoneAlarm firewall. By using Linux, you are issuing an open invitation to the hordes of ne'er-do-wells on the Internet.

The shortcomings of Linux are obvious. Without even installing Linux Mandrake, I have exposed several fundamental flaws. Surely it is not too much to expect that, after ten years of development, the creators of Linux would have addressed these problems? The real question that the prospective Linux user must ask himself is, "Why bother?" After all, Microsoft Windows comes free with most PCs and there simply isn't a need to replace it, particularly not with a product of inferior quality.

Although it is always tempting to support the underdog, Windows XP will be the deserved victor in the battle ahead. I recommend that those Adequacy readers who are hoping to upgrade their operating system patiently wait for the release of Windows XP, rather than foolishly wasting their time, effort and money on Linux.

If someone setup a high priced licensing & support system for Linux and gave it a different name, businesses might sign on. Sad but true.

http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/trad e

The total value of mandrake has fallen to $8 Million. The company will be bankrupt in a few months no matter what (their revenues are only a million or two a year... expenses: 100 employees x $100,000 = $10,000,000+ per year. BTW, by comparison Redhat is worth $678.5 Million.

This is just their last stab.

It was a great distribution while it lasted... and I was their greatest fan...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Ships Alpha of Third Generation of the Leading Linux Desktop for Developers

October 5, 2001 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KDE 3.0alpha1, the third generation of KDE's free, powerful and easy-to-use free Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.0 is scheduled for its first beta release this December and for final release in late February 2001.

This inaugural release of the KDE 3, which follows two weeks after the stable release of KDE 2.2.1 series, is based on TrollTech's Qt 3.0.0beta6. It ships with the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, and over 100 applications from the other base KDE packages (administration, multimedia, network, PIM, utilities, etc.).

The primary goal of the 3.0alpha1 release is to provide a framework for developers to start porting their KDE 2 applications to KDE 3 and to solicit developer feature contributions and feature requests before the KDE 3 API is frozen for binary compatibility. In addition, experimental KDE users who would like to try this release can set up a KDE 3 system side-by-site with a KDE 2 system. Instructions for doing so are available here.

Additional information about KDE 3 is available at the KDE website, including a tentative release plan, a KDE 3 info page, and a list of planned features.

For both developers and users, KDE 3 offers substantial improvements and additions compared to KDE 2 (the great bulk of which are, at this juncture, due to the switch to Qt 3):

For the developer:

For everyone:

Most of these improvements result directly from the switch to Qt 3, which has been the focus of KDE 3 code development so far. Improvements to the KDE libraries and applications themselves are planned for the successive beta releases leading to the first stable KDE 3. A list of these planned features is available here.

Since KDE 3 is mostly source compatible with KDE 2, porting applications from KDE 2 to KDE 3 can usually be done surprisingly quickly. The process is substantially easier than it was for porting from KDE 1 to KDE 2, and even very complicated applications can be ported in a matter of a few hours.

Instructions for porting KDE 2 applications to KDE 3 are available separately for the KDE libraries and the Qt libraries. Most of the changes required for the port applications pertain to changes in the Qt API. Although neither the KDE 3 nor the Qt 3 APIs are frozen, few changes are anticipated for the final releases of KDE 3.0 and Qt 3.0.0, respectively.

KDE and all its components (including KDevelop and KOffice) are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE ftp server and its mirrors and can also be obtained on CD-ROM.

Library Requirements. KDE 3.0alpha1 requires qt-3.0.0beta6, which is available in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-3.0.0-beta6.tar.gz, as well as libxml2 >= 2.3.13, available here.

Compiler Requirements. Please note that some components of KDE 3.0alpha1 will not compile with older versions of gcc/egcs, such as egcs-1.1.2 or gcc-2.7.2. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required. In addition, some components of KDE 3.0alpha1 (such as the multimedia backbone of KDE, aRts) will not compile with gcc 3.0 or 3.0.1, though the forthcoming gcc 3.0.2 release will most likely work.

Source Code. The complete source code for KDE 3.0alpha1 is available for free download at http://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.0-alpha1 /src/ http://master.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.0-alp ha1/src/ or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors.

Further Information. For further instructions on compiling and installing KDE 3.0alpha1, please consult the installation instructions and, if you should encounter problems, the compilation FAQ.

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide working over the Internet to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, an office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking and administration tools, and an efficient and intuitive development environment, including an excellent IDE (KDevelop). KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model to create first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the KDE FAQ, screenshots, KOffice information and developer information. Much more information about KDE is available from KDE's family of web sites.

Besides the valuable and excellent efforts by the KDE developers themselves, significant support for KDE development has been provided by MandrakeSoft and SuSE. Thanks!

I'm suprised nobody's mentioned this product yet. Has anyone had experience with it? (I've installed it but haven't got it working due to unrecognzed-but-allegedly-tulip.o NIC.) Look at Mandrake SNF. They have ISO dnlds on their site. -ed

between SuSE and Mandrakesoft! In a similar situation, Mandrakesoft has been bought (20%) by its community of users and is now traded on a European market. SuSE is more and more locked by rather proprietary companies. I wish them good luck!!!

From what I've seen, there is a much smaller "core" group in GNOME development. Probably not more than 25. However, there are many more people, like with KDE, who contribute patches.

Here's a PDF describing the market.

Here is Mandrakes information page on the IPO.

Finally, this a price-per-share page.

Here's a PDF describing the market.

Here is Mandrakes information page on the IPO.

Finally, this a price-per-share page.

If you want to do it by hand (it's pretty easy) che the man pages for ttmkfdir and mkfontdir. Here's an step by step instruction.

If you are lazy check out this link. It's for Linux Mandrake with rpms and all.

You may still have problems with some original fonts which may override the new fonts (helvetica IIRC). There are known bad fonts that come with X which don't scale properly and it's ok to ditch them as you discover them and you know you have ttf replacements. mv them to a spare directory before you kill them.

Good luck.. :)
--
$HOME is where the .*shrc is

The above is not correct, and in fact, no one has been able to cite an example of a profitable open source software company. Cygnus was privately held and so it's hard to figure out if it was proftable or not, but it was definitely not "greatly profitable." However, it's easy to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on its $20M in annual revenues and 180 employees at the time of its acquisition. The cost of maintaining 180 employees in a technology company in the SF Bay Area is more than $18M annually, and there are other costs of doing business, so if the company was profitable at all, it was just squeaking through. (And $20M in annual revenues after ten years of existence is no one's idea of "greatly profitable.")

Red Hat has yet to turn a profit, though it keeps promising one real soon now.

Mandrake is losing money. According to its financial disclosure, as translated by BabelFish:

Since its creation in November 1998 the company recorded losses. The cumulated amount of the overdrawn turnover of the group accounts between September 30, 1999 and 31 March 2001 amounted to 13,7 MEuros is approximately three times the amount of the turnover over the period. In spite of a strong progression envisaged of its turnover, MANDRAKESOFT considers a benefit only at the end of the exercise closed at June 30 2003;

That is, it doesn't expect to become profitable for two years.

IBM is sinking a billion dollars into open source this year. That doesn't mean it will realize any profit from this investment. It certainly hasn't earned it back yet, and whether it ever will is purely speculative.

CollabNet is privately held, so it's hard to say how much money it's made back on that $35M investment. It's announced a few deals, but refuses to comment on their size: "It's our first true enterprise development network..." It's a significant deal for CollabNet, so much so that Mills refused to comment on the size of the contract or even whether it's the company's biggest win so far. (CollabNet is still privately held.) Mills did say that there are other deals now in the pilot stage with the potential to be as big as this one. I think it's a safe bet that the company is not yet profitable.

Many consultancy companies have done well. In fact, the consultancy companies do what can't be done in the Microsoft world - they can be profitable, equal players.

Consultancies are homesteading businesses, not software companies. As already pointed out, consultancies only scale linearly, not exponentially. In any case, they aren't doing so well either. I'm not going to mention the name of one company we're partnered with, but they make a great open source product, but they're in dire straits and they're going to have to start charging for it. I imagine there are probably a few small-business open source consultancies which are bringing in six-figure salaries for their principals, but that's not enough to sustain development efforts, and it's not enough to go public.

Tim

By the way there is not any information about which market they plan to go. I guess a European market. Does anybody know about the best European markets to go public for a tech company?

I'd agree with you if that were true but it isn't. See here.

They're not as good as VA or Red Hat at creating the image of Contributor To The Community, nor do they have a huge pile of IPO money but they do contribute a fair amount. To put it into context, David Faure just singlehandedly ran an $11 million (or 13, depending who you listen to) company into the ground as it tried to keep pace with him. I'd say that's a substantive contribution.

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

2/ They pay all the taxes, so it's not legally a donation and they have the right to do it (there was an article about that on linuxtoday but I can't retrieve the URL because it's currently down).

3/ They give a large choice to everybody, from giving nothing and downloading the distro to giving money without getting anything back.

4/ They regularly give the community. The latest action was a check to FSF Europe in last january. Also employing people to work on open-source projects, like KDE, Linux kernel or... Mandrake-Linux! helps.

5/ I think the best option is to go public for them!!! Go Mandrake, go public you'll have all the community behind you and they can take a part of Mandrakesoft. I love this idea. I've heard because they have put this page lately on their website: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/ipo/

Over the past few years I've used numerous Linux distributions. Each time I've only bothered to download the CDs online (actually, before I had a fast connection, I had others do it for me). However, I have recently been considering donating to two of my favorite distributions - Mandrake and Red Hat.

Unfortunately, like many people, I'm mostly broke. When I do feel charitable, I donate elsewhere than a for-profit software company. I considered buying a boxed set of one of these distributions, but I figured that it wouldn't exactly be the best donation. I already have the OS, I don't need the manuals. Why should I bother to buy what costs these companies a fair amount to manufacture?

Then I found this page at Mandrake's web page. Below the spot where you purchase the latest "Powerpack" version for $70, you can purchase the two-CD set for $10 plus $10 shipping. These CDs are cheap to manufacture and cheap to ship, so I'm sure Mandrake makes a bundle of a profit margin on this $20 purchase. This seems like an affordable way to give back to a company that really seems to try to give Linux users a desktop that works well and looks nice, with all the very latest features. If I didn't just exhaust my checking account yesterday I would probably have purchased this today (even though I downloaded and burnt the CDs awhile back), but I hope to in the near future (next check).

So, here's the hypocrite in me to ask supporters of Mandrake to save the mirrors and order this two-CD set, maybe when 8.1 comes out or something. I didn't even know it was available until today, but I'm happy I found it.

Free software does not mean we shouldn't support it with both our time and our money. Let's give back in monetary form to the companies whose products we take for granted.

For the standard Mandrake 8 distro, its $5 a cd, plus $10 shipping. I assume they are selling the single disk for $15, and the 2 disk set for $20.

The "PowerPack" is $69 + $20 shipping for 7 cds. You can see what's in that here.

You can buy GPL'd cd's.

You can make a donation to the development area of your choice.

You can find MandrakeFreq at Cheapbytes for $4.99.

There is also supposed to be a list of other resellers at this page (according to the news at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ ) - http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/range/mandrak efreq (As I write, that page is currently down, though (looks like they moved their webservers to a system on a faster network, which broke mandrakesoft.com)

"
This second major release of the KDE 2 series is a real improvement in terms of stability, performance and features," said David Faure, release manager for KDE 2.1 and KDE Representative at Mandrakesoft. "KDE 2 has now matured into a solid, intuitive and complete desktop for daily use. Konqueror is a full-featured and robust web browser and important applications like the mail client (KMail) have greatly improved. The multimedia architecture has made great strides and this release inaugurates the new media player noatun, which has a modular, plugin design for playing the latest audio and video formats. For development, KDE 2.1 for the first time is bundled with KDevelop, an outstanding IDE/RAD which will be comfortably familiar to developers with Windows development backgrounds. In short, KDE 2.1 is a state-of-the-art desktop and development environment, and positions Linux/Unix to make significant inroads in the home and enterprise."

"KDE 2.1 opens the door to widespread adoption of the Linux desktop and will help provide the success on the desktop that Linux already enjoys in the server space," added Dirk Hohndel, CTO of Suse AG. "With its intuitive interface, code maturity and excellent development tools and environment, I am confident that enterprises and third party developers will realize the enormous potential KDE offers and will migrate their workstations and applications to Linux/KDE."

"KDE boasts an outstanding graphical design and robust functionality," said Sheila Harnett, Senior Technical Staff Member for IBM's Linux Technology Center. "KDE 2.1 significantly raises the bar for Linux desktop functionality, usability and quality in virtually every aspect of the desktop."

This is one of the things that I feel we should be doing.

Chmouel, you didn't package the latest 2.4.0 yet? https://kenobi.mandrakesoft.com/~chmou/kernel24/

I did submit a bug report. It's bug 962. I've been very impressed by how smoothly php/mysql has been working (apart from this little hickup) for most of the time leading up to 7.2 itself. Installing the different php modules separately is very nice indeed.

The way teh config files are set up is very intuitive, as is the vhosts setup for apache.

Recommended, of course, is to download the latest Mandrake release candidate from www.linux-mandrake.com; then report bugs to their bugzilla.

A quick query on that site shows that there aren't too many release-critical bugs, but if you find any, PLEASE REPORT THEM.

Close enough to Redhat, recompiled for the Pentium chip. Once I replaced RedHat with this beauty, I never bothered to look back.

(my karma whoring for the day)
for the copy-paste disabled:
ftp://ftp.nebsllc.com/kde2
ftp://mandrakesoft.com/pub/molnarc
http://www.htw-dresden.de/~s2697
http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html

I really think that the concept of having a pentium optimied distro really cheats most of the people in the computer world who either don't own a pentium level x86 machine and or don't own an intel machine.

Linux-Mandrake supports: i486, i586, k6 (unreleased), alpha, ultrasparc, and ppc.

Jeff (a.k.a. jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com)

I don't quite see this "unanimous standardization" that you are referring to. Redhat and TurboLinux both offer Gnome as the default desktop. Mandrake, OpenLinux, and Corel Linux offer KDE as the default. Most distributions offer both as desktop choices.

Like it or not, while the Linux community is doing the parallel development thing, in the Linux industry, the race is pretty much over.

Far from it. I can name 3 companies devoting many manhours and cash to Gnome development: RHAD Labs, Eazel, and Helix Code. Companies such as MandrakeSoft and Corel are funding KDE development. The race, if anything, is just beginning to get interesting...

Yeah, I know about Eazel. Judging by the amount of hype they've generated, all I can say about them is: show me the code.

okay:

here is some of it.
----