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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!"
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
So, I wonder what they will do to make sure that they are 'cash-flow positive' from now on? Or will the always be relying on 'user contributions'?
Personally, I'd rather give money to RedHat (or maybe SuSe). They seem to be working hard to get Linux accepted in business. Mandrake is very desktop focused, and that is probably the weakest area to forge a business model.. (IMHO)
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I am glad for mandrake, and quite amazed at the amount of kindness shown by people online... (i.e. sending in money)
However, it is somewhat disheartening that their software has to be supported by donations. Sympathetic users just don't make a good substitute for a sound business plan.
Anyways, I hope they keep up the good work. (and maybe develop a better way to make $$) They're not my distro of choice, but they are quite good.
I see Mandrake/MandrakeSoft as today's real innovators in the Free Sofware world. First they totally changed the approach of Linux distributions makers by giving more importance to ease of use for instance. Secondly, they have a business approach which is *very* innovative. I can feel something about Mandrake, I don't know exactly what, which looks like the best approach around here to conciliate business and Free Software while always keeping 100% compatibility with Free Software.
:-)
The Mandrake Club is a great way to monetize a user base as large as Mandrake users. It provides many advantages such as StarOffice 6.0 (final version!) which has not even been released just because Sun seemed to believe in this club and wanted to give it a boost... The Club is also a great "tool" for users to ensure that MandrakeSoft will keep on delivering great products such as the excellent Mandrake 8.2 (which I use mostly on servers, but which is so nice as well to replease Windows on my laptop!).
Great project, great company - you've got my support guys!!
"That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"
I agree that the Mandrake installer is nice, but I think when you compare installed systems instead of installers, you just can't get any easier or better than Debian.
Keeping your system current takes only two commands (apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade). If you need a graphical apt tool, then I would suggest Synaptic.
Although this is good news, does this not curb the "free" aspect? i.e look at this wonderful free OS, but we cant keep it going unless the users pay for it.. I know, at least the payments are done out of "love" for the OS and not simply forced upon a user, but still, I find it kind of funny and ironic. For all the hate that goes towards marketing people etc etc, I think they are needed to sell Linux to the main stream, no matter how good a coder you are, or how good the product is, Geeks dont make good sales people. No matter if it costs money or not, you still have to sell the idea of Linux.
Laptop Reviews
Well every Best Buy has mandrake boxes, plus a few other distros, and they are a nationwide chain.
Here's a quote from a prior post:
If Mandrake doesn't make it, another user-friendly GNU/Linux distro will take up the slack.
No offense to anyone, but is this the type of attitude we're supposed to have in the opensource community? Is this the best we can do? Just to have a revolving door, of when they don't make it, someone else will do it, until they fall too... repeat.
Are you that cheap?
The Open Source community should be about sharing code, sharing to make better, sharing to contribute, sharing to learn from... But not sharing to mooch off of.
I say go ahead and mooch at first. Learn about the product, etc... but if you like it, then support it. I know most MDK users are fanatics. I am one. I also know redhat users are fanatics, I am also one.
I support both buy purchasing future releases off of the web sites. I know the iso's are there... But I choose to support the distro's so they'll be there in the future with a BETTER product.
MDK needed help so they had to ask for money, yet people mock them for it.
MDK is not making star office 6.0 free since sun is not making it free, and people mock them.
Are you a linux user or not?
Are you going to support the cause? Or just talk about it?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
I'm a Red Hat user since 5.1. Red Hat was my first, and for the most part only, experience I've have with Linux.
At the risk of being labeled a troll, I have a genuine question: If I were to try out a new distro with my next build, what are my advantages in switching to Mandrake? How many people feel Mandrake is an upgrade? I'm interested in desktop use for the most part. I want maximum compatability, and Mardrake has a Red Hat legacy.
I also am aware that Mandrake is regarded by many as a "newbie" distro, and I am interested in progressing in my knowledge. What is a good "power distro" that features the advantages of Red Hat or Mandrake's distros?
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...
Personally, I'd rather give money to RedHat (or maybe SuSe). They seem to be working hard to get Linux accepted in business. Mandrake is very desktop focused, and that is probably the weakest area to forge a business model.. (IMHO)
I think it's EXTREMELY import for the future of desktop computing to have a strong desktop/workstation Linux distro. If for nothing else, this should provide the average desktop user with an actual choice over Windows. I haven't tried SuSE, but Mandrake seems to be the most user-friendly Linux distro that actually has a chance of gaining converts from Windows who are just normal desktop users. Without Mandrake, I think the rate of new Linux Windows converts would drop by almost a half.
Also, there are many businesses that need a good client-side development platform. For instance, Microcell, a Montreal-based cellular service provider, has Mandrake installed on all its development machines, especially for its Java developers. Any business that wants to develop software in a cross-platform environment would find such a distro to be extremely useful.
I, for one, prefer to develop in Linux, because of the rich command-line tools and environment, as well as the greater control over configuration files and settings. Windows is a poor platform for doing any command-line processing, even with cygwin. However, I also need a rich, user-friendly desktop environment with GUI configuration tools, should I require them. Mandrake, despite being somewhat bloated, comes with all these tools pre-configured and ready-to-use right out of the box. AFAIK, RedHat and other distros require quite a bit of initial configuration to get everything running just right.
I actually use Slackware at home, but that's because I can afford to play around with it. When I'm developing at work, I need something that will pretty much run out of the box, without being Windows. Mandrake is the distro I would use at work, were I not in a M$ environment (SourceSafe, Exchange Email Server, MCSE Network Admin) like I am now.
This space left intentionally blank.
While experts can find their way around existing distros, mere mortals will rightly conclude that XP or OS X is a better choice for them simply because it doesn't put up barriers at every stage. Even little things as more task orientation, hiding advanced settings in secondary dialogs and removal of needlessly jargon filled alerts can do much to simplify a UI.
I'm puzzled... Mandrake are saying that it's an innovative idea to offer more stuff in return for more money.
Before you get the troll stick out, go and read their statement. That's exactly what they say. That people were buying the box set (instead of downloading) just to give them funds, and this is a better method than that "charity purchase" because it gives more benefits to the purchaser.
You ever see that Dilbert strip where Dogbert is explaining the basics of economics to a .com startup?
Sounds to me like Mandrake has just discovered the basics. Sell stuff. Offer more stuff the more money you pay. Tell your customers that they're partners, because that way they're more inclined to pay (in this case, it's actually true, but the point it that it's still standard marketing spin, and business types are comforted by familiar mantras).
Hurrah for Mandrake. I've been thinking for a while now that we could do with fewer commercial Linux distros, and better concentration of funds. I'm a SuSE user (and purchaser), but really, I don't mind who gets the money, as long as we get a few sustainable businesses out of it that we can all donate to/buy from - and get our employers to buy from - with a degree of confidence that they'll still be there next year to offer support.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Let's see here:
1. I still can't play Shockwave files with Mandrake installed "out of the box"
- Nor can anyone else on any linux distribution. Get the crossover plugin and you might have luck. Flash is the only native plugin available to linux from Macromedia.
2. I still have to resort to the command line when installing apps like OpenOffice
- Since when is this Mandrake's problem? Talk to the openoffice people.
3. I still have to resort to using LinNeighbourhood as Mandrake won't see my user account exported from a Linux box via Samba
- Again this seems like a KDE problem and not Mandrake's
4. CTRL+C and CTRL+V still doesn't work flawlessly between applications from different Desktop Environments (i.e. KDE and Gnome)
- yet another "talk to the actual application developer
5. I still have to manually configure mime types in Evolution to make it use Galeon instead of Mozilla
- So you decided to use Galeon over Mozilla which Mandrake happily preconfigured as the handler for those file types? Sounds like a you problem. I personally don't WANT galeon to overwrite my mime settings. Isn't that one of the pains in the ass under windows is that every app under god's nutsack want's to be your default handler?
6. I still have to manually configure Mozilla setup a minimum font size so that I don't get those stupid fonts that are so small that they are unreadable
- I'll give you this one. Why can't distro providers preinstall mozilla-fonts and set those as the default. Then again, maybe you like your fonts bigger than most.
7. I still have to re-configure mime types so that when I click an m3u (MP3 playlist) in Galeon, it uses xmms
- Sounds like another case of you just wanting to be a little different. Not a problem mind you but Mandrake (and any other distro for that matter) have to make a stand somewhere. This is our default config. We can help you with some stuff but not others. Hence the support subscriptions.
8. And of course I still can't edit Microsoft Word documents with 100% accuracy, despite all the crowing that goes on about OpenOffice, StarOffice, KDE Office and the others
- So this isn't a mandrake problem either. It sounds like an OpenOffice,StarOffice,KDE Office and the others problem.
Having said all that, I still fail to see what your problem with mandrake is? I don't personally use it but everything you've listed is not related to mandrake by any stretch.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
This is a very powerful idea, and really gets to the root of the gratis/libre distinction. People are often initially attracted to free software because they don't have to pay for it. But the real prize, the one your grandkids will thank you for, is the intellectual commons and the long-term effect it can have on the world.
It's easy to forget this stuff when everybody is out of work . When everybody got regular paychecks it was no big deal to drop some bucks on somebody doing something interesting. But the screwed-up economy is just a circumstance, and a transient one at that. It doesn't really deserve the deciding vote about which human activities are most worthwhile.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
I beg to differ. Briefly. I have to go back to coding a Linux-based app that we sell for a price with a quite a few digits.
Linux is actually a business success that is destined to advance. Amazon.com turned a loss into a profit by migrating to Linux, thus dodging license costs. Google runs on Linux. Various governments are looking into migrating onto Linux (their National Security advisors don't like to run software run by a company that got a settlement offer in such a weak case. Maybe there are paragraphs we don't know about?). IBM is embracing linux. Sun is recognizing Linux. Compaq & HP are dealing with Linux. Why? Because it is cost effective, and destined to become even more cost effective in the future.
A lot of really bright college graduates have used Linux extensively, and prefer working with Linux. Academia loves Linux, providing us with an ever expanding brainshare. This vastly increases Linux marketplace muscle. Would you like to develop your application on Linux, using free everything and readily available brainpower, or would you like to retrain your developers to use costly Microsoft solutions?
The hype was "pump and dump". However, some of those that followed the hype in trying out Linux got pleasantly surprised. It is a vibrant community, far outshining the dull, grey, business-oriented Microsoft-world. Microsoft once had that advantage over its competitors at the time (being developer-friendly), but it appears they have lost their shine.
On the long term, expect Microsoft to do several dramatic turns to re-attract the developer community - or die.
Stop the brainwash