Mandrake News

DCowern writes "Mandrake yesterday released their FY2001-2002 earnings and I'm glad to say it's looking real good for them. They've cut operating costs by 42% and increased revenues by 31%. They're still not quite in the black yet but they're expecting to break even month-to-month beginning in February. The full report is here. In other news, Mandrake announced two new programs yesterday. The first is Multi Network Firewall, which looks like an extremely nice package for running small to medium-sized networks. The second program, and my favorite, is their "OS refugee" offer."

Comments

Good For Them

[dirkdidit]

Mandrake is one of the best Linux distro's for new users and I feel it's a vital part in getting more people turned onto Linux. I was worried for a while that Mandrake might not exist a few years down the road but hopefully this turn toward profitability will continue. And remember, if you use Mandrake, it doesn't hurt to donate some money to them. It is, afterall, the season of giving. :-)

Re:Good For Them

[MasterOfMagic]

And remember, if you use Mandrake, it doesn't hurt to donate some money to them.

I'm sorry, but if I've paid for their PowerPack in a store (which, by the way, it decently priced as far as distros go, AND it includes StarOffice 6.0), I don't feel guilty by not donating or joining MandrakeClub. For some reason, after leaving the "other" operating system behind, I don't feel it necessary to pay twice for an operating system.

Re:Good For Them

[Afrosheen]

You should donate to them because all the code they generate is open source. Actually there isn't one piece of software in their Download Edition of 9.0 that isn't opensource and free. They're strong believers where other distros are tending to hide their contributions.

Also, they let you leech all their ISO's free of charge. Try doing that with Xandros, Lindows, or any of the other 'new and improved desktop distros'. All they ask is that you have a heart and give them a few bucks so their developers can eat and they can pay for their bandwidth.

Re:Good For Them

[thelen]

I'm a developer, not a network admin

Same here. I just wanted a desktop that would enable me to do my work, not qualify as a part-time job to use. I've been running MDK 9 for about 8 weeks now, and I've booted into Win2k about twice during that whole time. In contrast, when my Linux partition was RH 7.2 I spent the bulk of my time under Windows b/c the RH desktop was so cluttered with redundant (many non-functional) menus, terrible multimedia capabilities, printing didn't work.

You could say MDK is for newbies, but another way of putting it is that they made some tough choices and cut a lot of bs that end users shouldn't have to deal with. If you want tighter control over your system, use Debian or Gentoo or something. I simply needed a working desktop, and Mandrake did a great job providing it.

I think Mandrake's problem...

[rsilvergun]

...is the same as a lot of linux distros. When linux was first getting usable and instalable (around the time of RH6.2 IMHO) there was a lot of talk about companies giving the OS away and then charging for support. Well there's at least two problems with this:

1. Users have been paying for software and getting free support so long that they can't seem to deal with the idea of paying for support.

2. I think Sun had this problem with staroffice. They couldn't give it away so they started charging for it. People look at RH and Mandrake's personal editions and see a complete OS with tons of usable apps included for $40 bucks and figure there must be something wrong with it. They can't understand the open source movement and the idea that somebody would write a program for no other reason than the joy of writing it, and then happily give it away. To be fair the the average consumer, look at the sort of "free" things they get for their computers. Cuecats, bonzai buddy, gator. Not exactly encouraging. Slashdot readers know that OSS is totaly different than the kind of nonsense companies give away, but do people at large do?

I don't really have a solution for Mandrake (If I did I'd start a company). I think their best bet would be to get cosy with OEMs and charge them for offering the support. At any rate I wish them the best of luck, but alas for me RH's fonts have drawn me away from Mandrake 9.0 :).

Nothing like Enron

[MasterOfMagic]

Ask Enron or anyone else victimized by retarded management how hard it is to make a comeback.

Don't you mean "Ask the shareholders of Enron how victimized they felt when a company they relied on betrayed them"? I'm sorry, I feel bad for the workers and shareholders of Enron, but this is nothing like Enron. First, Enron managment wasn't retarded: they knew full well what they were doing, and did it anyway. Second, Enron had some help at the federal level to get away with some of its corporate misdeeds. Finally, Enron's employees and customers had no idea what was going on.

Contrast that with Mandrake. The managemnt that you call "retarded" had a different direction for the company that didn't work out. They didn't try to steal from the company, screw the shareholders, or cover their own ass. Secondly, Mandrake has always been supported by its users, be it donations or purchases of its boxed set. Finally, the user base of Mandrake saw where it was going and let the company know that wasn't the way they wanted it to go.

Sorry, somehow I don't see how this was ANYTHING like Enron.