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Mandrake Clarifies its Future
fabiolrs writes "Mandrake Linux has an article in response to the message they sent on march 11th. They claim that because of user help they are "cash-flow positive"! That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"
I love Mandrake. It's ease of use, and painless install are the only reasons that I have been able to convert my girlfriend, her roomate, and one of her college suitemates to Linux. It's config tools are nice and easy to understand. And it comes bundled with software that people actually want. It was also my first distro. But now I'm on to Debian. Ahh...memories. Long live Drake!
Great news anyway though, true Linux hackers may never install Mandrake, they'll have their own build. But a friendly install, etc (Mandrake is good on this point) has to cost time and effort from hackers who would perhaps rather be doing something else.
Still, I won't be in Mandrake club :)
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Well every Best Buy has mandrake boxes, plus a few other distros, and they are a nationwide chain.
Please note that this Robert X. Cringely is not this Robert X. Cringely.
The only problem with their club is that you must pay for an entire year at a time. The least you can pay is $60.... Now, I'm not too rich at all, but I really wouldn't mind paying $5 a month even if it was autobilled. I'd even pay $6 a month - the extra buck to cover extra credit card fees that they'd have.
Bottom line: I can afford $5 /mo but not $60 /year
8.2 has been even a bigger pain in the ass for me. The update crashed during package installation forcing me to reinstall. Audio CD playback doesn't work, on a basic ATAPI drive. (Yes, sound does work.) Finally, when I decided to try Tuxracer, it or the dependant packages that came with it hosed X.
Yes, given time I could fix this stuff but I'm not going to. I'm downloading Skipjack ISOs instead and I'll go back to Red Hat if that works out.
(Once again, I gave Debian a try with no luck. I realize _someone_ gets it installed, but we're talking about a pretty vanilla system here - year and a half old Athlon/VIA/NVIDIA. I mean, I have code in that distro -- I should be able to install the damn thing.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think your question makes sense. However the Mandrake Club is about providing privileges to its users. The first "privilege" is to support Mandrake Free-Software developments, which has great consequences (the more you give the Mandrake Club, the more they can put ressources in development/QA/Free Software support such as KOffice, Linux kernel...). The second privilege is about software people use and are interested in, but which aren't available as Free-Software yet. I'm personally against proprietary software, but I've downloaded StarOffice 6.0 final from the Club, as well as Mozilla plugins packaged for Mandrake (Real player 8.0, Flash player...). In this sense, this is a privilege, because I would have passed time to find and download those pieces of software anyway. With the Club, I just downloaded them and now I'm using them. Other privileges include some interesting talks with MandrakeSoft founders and Mandrake developers. But other privileges are yet to come! The Club is very young and is growing depending on users needs/requets... It's a nice interface between us - the Mandrake users - and the Mandrake Linux project.
That is a pure lie. I handle all transactions on the Mandrakestore, and we answer *all* requests.
Before we take the credit card, we log the transaction into an SQL database. Then it's passed to the bank, where they enter their credit card number. The bank keeps the transaction into their database. Then, the bank returns the data to us (without the card number), we log it again, and we send an e-mail to the customer with their receipt number, and a copy to me, stored on an offline server.
We can't possibly lose the information, unless the customer entered a bunch of "asajkd" and "adasdkj" into the fields, didn't print his invoice, and his e-mail bounced, and even then, we can ask the bank to find the info if the customer used a valid credit card number.
I'm e-mailing the guy right now.
Here's my comment on the MandrakeForum board which was consistently modded down to "Score: -1, Troll". You'll be the judge.
- 1& mode=nested&order=0&sid=2018&lang=en
Through my opinions I was made very unwelcome in the "Mandrake community" and subsequently my basic membership in the MandrakeClub was unceremoniouly if by my own wish terminated:
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It is NOT about expecting to get SO6 for free but principle! (Score: -1, Troll)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 25 @ 22:45:13 PST
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?thold=
Why are some people trying to demonize those displeased with MandrakeSoft's moves regarding the Club and paid-for proprietary software??
Whiners! Freeloaders! How bloody disappointing those few troublemakers are, demanding stuff for free...!!
Reality check:
For years I've bought boxes (Mandrake and other distros) without bothering helpdesk staff once, I've helped convert and personally support Linux newcomers (who buy boxes) and I've spent substancial chunk of my free time promoting and arguing for the use of Linux software in various ways. The strongest single argument for Linux use is its being an open platform without anyone capable of having unfair advantage over others.
Now on to why I am personally displeased with MandrakeSoft's handling of this debacle for reasons of principle:
1) MandrakeSoft appealed to people to join the club and pay the membership fee in order to help them _develop_ Free_Software. Nowhere did they state that some of the money might be spent on buying licenses for proprietary software, such as Sun's StarOffice, in bulk.
I don't believe it is a good idea for any Linux platform vendor to start buying proprietary software licenses on behalf of their customers since that decision should be left to the individual. As the experience with Microsoft has shown, pre-paid licenses distort the level playing field. "Since my vendor already bought this license for me why should I even consider alternatives..." The competitors of StarOffice, and later the ISV developers of other software whose competing product has cornered the market by means of pre-paid bundling can't be blamed for deciding against Linux support.
The correct procedure is quite simple though: just negotiate attractive prices for proprietary offerings for your customers and let them decide whether to buy it or not.
Is that principle somehow objectionable to people?
2) The membership subscription page had a special note at the bottom stating that "All members are entitled to the same benefits". Regardless of what MandrakeSoft's _intentions_ might have been, going back on such explicit and profound statement is morally questionable. Moreover, people were already "contributing" according to their personal resources and the quoted one third who paid for higher level memberships did so with no expectation of superior services, let alone pre-paid licenses for proprietary software.
This might be a good time to point out that all I ever expected in return for my membership fee was better access to the discussion areas (with developers participating) and _perhaps_ early access to updated packages. I NEVER EXPECTED ANY PRE-PAID PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE AS PART OF CLUB BENEFITS!
Now kindly explain to me how supporting these two simple principles suddenly makes me an enemy of MandrakeSoft, not to mention a WHINER and FREE-LOADER??
Could someone from MandrakeSoft kindly address my issues with these two principles without labelling me as an unsavoury character in an otherwise pleasant Mandrake community??
Currently it is becoming ever more obvious that people with opinions or principles such as mine aren't even welcome to the Mandrake club community, based on comments by Mandrake staff and other members...
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I really wish someone, if not Red Hat themselves, would address the consumer space with a fully RH/rpm, LSB-compatible and Gnome-centric distro. I want someone to deserve my end-user friendly donations without proprietary corporate tie-ups. I awant commercial software to succeed on Linux, but without pre-paid preloads. It ought to be about users' choice!
Where's the humor in this, oh crack smoking moderators with a +5 funny rating? This is serious. I use mdk8.2 on more than a few servers. From stability to security Mandrake has it down.
Know any other desktop-friendly distros that don't want you to be root in a window manager or don't install telnet server by default because it's a security risk?
Mandrake advantages:
Easy installation on a wide variety of machines, support for alot of newer hardware as well as old machines.
Many filesystems to choose from.
Good desktop integration. Apps span all desktops so if you use Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, Blackbox, or whatever, you always have the same menu synced up so all your apps are a click away.
Nice pentium optimizations for all packages. Redhat is stuck on i386 packages while mandrake has been i586 for years. This results in a 10-50% speed increase depending on the app, including the Advanced Extranet version of Apache, an excellent server that Mandrake ships with.
Mandrake tries to keep newbies from making stupid mistakes. You have to install rpms as root. KDE has a red desktop and almost no icons if you login as root. This discourages newbies from using a root desktop where it's easy to do lots of damage. Telnet server is not installed by default, you have to urpmi telnet to get it to install. That's good for security, and ssh is a default part of the install if you pick the server packages.
Fully customizable install. You can have a system install anywhere from 85 megs all the way to 2+ gigs. It depends on what you want. Also the installer knows what rpms depend on others so if you choose to remove packages from the install list it'll tell you what other packages depend on it so you won't end up with a broken system on your first install.
Up to date libraries and programs. Mandrake has been on the bleeding-edge as far as this goes for years. While some other distros are a pain in the ass to get the newest whatever running on, usually with Mandrake it's easy since all the libs are new.
Easy to update DURING INSTALL or post-install. During the install if you choose a mirror it'll hit the internet and get new packages for you. This was a brilliant move for mandrake because as bugs are found and squashed in 8.2, they can be added to this update list. Showstoppers can be squashed before you even boot into your fresh mandrake install for the first time. Post install updating is even easier, just open rpmdrake and click mandrake update. That's all it takes.
There are tons of more benefits but these are really the ones that shine IMHO.