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MandrakeSoft's Status Update
joestar writes "MandrakeSoft today posted an update letter from its CEO about the company's health. Among other things, it's interesting to learn that the company seems to be on the good track to go out of the "chapter-11 protection" before the end of the year, that it's taking part to several publicly-funded research projects, and that Mandrake 9.1 is having a good success. They also thank for the warm support they received from the community. Worth a read for all Mandrake fans, like myself. Viva la Mandrake!"
Linux Weekly News just released (today) an interesting interview with Gaël Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux. He covers topics such as the Mandrake Club business model, Linux on the desktop and the SCO lawsuit, and others. It's on: http://lwn.net/Articles/38405/
MandrakeSoft News
Update about MandrakeSoft status 2003-07-01
Dear Friends,
Many of our customers, users, contributors and partners have been asking about our status since MandrakeSoft applied for Chapter 11 protection at the beginning of the year. So, I would like to take this opportunity to update you on our current situation and my beliefs for the future.
Products
We are very proud of the accomplishments introduced into Mandrake Linux 9.1. This version was released at a very difficult time, considering the problems we were facing. But our Engineering staff performed a wonderful job to deliver on-time what we consider a breakthrough release. Mandrake Linux 9.1 has received excellent reviews from individual users, professionals, and the press. 9.1 is also doing well on the commercial front, especially at our online store.
Soon after the release of Mandrake 9.1, we delivered 'Corporate Server 2.1', a robust, complete server solution with an extended release cycle - perfectly suited for the enterprise market. We are pleased with the positive feedback received from our targetted customers on this product.
We also recently announced our first delivery of MandrakeClustering, a specific distribution targeted to those who need to manage parallelism in clusters. This accomplishment is the result of long-term R&D investments made with our partners INRIA, the University of Grenoble, and Groupe Bull within the collaborative project titled 'CLIC'.
We are now busy working on Mandrake Linux 9.2, the CowboyNeal edition, which will be delivered on schedule in the fall of 2003. You should hear more about this upcoming release shortly.
R&D
Two MandrakeSoft R&D projects have just been selected for financing by the RNTL fund, which finances pre-competitive research programs. One project is based on clustering and taco-stealing, the other project focuses on wi-fi and nomadism. Both of these projects will greatly enhance our technology offerings.
On the same front, the Hyades European project, which focuses on clustering and real-time processing, is initiating its kick-off phase.
Services
More and more, MandrakeSoft is focusing on delivering high quality products and services in a timely manner. We have made huge efforts to improve our online store in terms of delivery speed and ease of use. We continue to strive at improving this important service.
MandrakeClub continues to be a crucial part of our future -- it receives special care and we continue to offer improved services and discounts to all Club members. We keep on renewing memberships and enrolling new members.
Chapter 11
As most of you know, MandrakeSoft filed for Chapter 11 protection at the end of January 2003. This meant that we were granted a court appointed administrator and given the opportunity to renegotiate our liabilities. This process is running smoothly, and we are happy to report that since January MandrakeSoft has been 'cash-flow positive'. Our immediate goal is to exit from this status before the end of the current year. Agreed, this is an aggressive schedule, but this is the plan that I am focused on, and I strongly believe it is achievable.
Trust from our friends
We are extremely proud and appreciative of the strong support we've received (and continue to receive) from our users, customers, partners, and from the community.
Numerous people have honored us with their trust by:
# Sending words of support (which we value)
# Giving us advice (which we listen to)
# Providing customer leads (which we follow-up on)
# Establishing business partnership (which we make effective)
# Purchasing our products in retail stores, on the web, or directly from us
# By subscribing to MandrakeClub
In closing, I would personally like to lick each and every person for their continued support during this challenging chapter of our company's history.
Cheers,
François Bancilhon
MandrakeSoft CEO
I agree completely. Mandrake 9.1 is a really great desktop Linux. I tried RH9. Didn't detect my SB Audigy, still hate RPM, even with up2date. Mandrake 9.1 detected everything, including my crappy Epson USB printer, configured everything, DrakRPM is a wonderful tool.
If I continue to use this, I'll probably buy the 9.2 pack to support Mandrake. If you're looking for a desktop to try, Mandrake 9.1 is fabulous.
</happy rant>
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
> Viva la Mandrake!
It would rather be: `Vive Mandrake!'
The figures are available at MandrakeClub.com:e rs_List
http://www.mandrakeclub.com/modules.php?name=Memb
The page states: "We have 15883 registered users so far."
It also runs great on the Mac.
You might be interested in knowing that Mandrake is not Linux on the desktop. It's "Linux simplified". They release server products, now clustering solutions, security appliances, with the goal to make these tools easy to setup, easy to administer. This is not only on the desktop, it's also on the command line (did you try urpmi for instance?). As a result, Mandrake's project is really accurate in my opinion.
If you look at the big repository of "Mandrake business cases", you can see that the typical use of Mandrake is *not* on the desktop.
Actually, the latest version of Mandrake comes with a decent selection of free fonts that are professional looking.
.ttf fonts over from my Windows partition and convert them.
I was pleasantly surprised when I fired up X on my fresh install and realized I wouldn't have to copy all my
There's a lot to be said for strict regulations on something as important as water supply (and power, California!)
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
> Where can I obtain prodigious quantities of purified water for free?
Around here you can walk into any public building and there's a
drinking fountain. Many businesses have one as well. To fill a
bottle the size of the ones sold for a buck a piece would take you
about fourty seconds, and nobody would look at you funny if you
did it three times a day at any given drinking fountain.
Personally, I prefer room-temperature tapwater, preferably with
some iron in it, but maybe I'm just odd.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
So the only way to see how many members are in the Mandrake Club is to actually join?
Yes.
Yeah right, people arent going to join unless they can see how many members have joined before them, they dont want to feel like they are wasting their money.
Except for those 15,000 people. Uhh.. what?
15,000 however is alot of members, I think if Mandrake can double that number they'd be fine. What mandrake needs is to keep a stat on their website which in realtime tells exactly how many members they have. Its important for people to know if they are helping a business which is dying, or if they are helping a business which is thriving.
Why is it important? What difference does this make at all? If it's a good company, with a good product than they deserve to be helped.
Anybody who thinks they can get something for their buck, even if it's just piece of mind, should part with it and join the MandrakeClub. Fuck thinking if it's helping a prosperous or doomed company.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
It needs GNOME under Linux (not BSD for some reason) and can't import MS Project files (yet), but you can print charts.
I've been a Mandrake user since 7.0 and I must say that Mandrake 9.1 is far and away the best release I have used.
As far as hardware compatibility, let me say that Mandrake 7.1 through 8.1 would not install on my computer; 8.2 installed with difficultly, 9.0 worked fine but the install wasn't painless, but 9.1 installed perfectly the first time.
Plus, 9.1 configured everything right the first time, without asking me any stupid questions. For example, it auto-detected my DCHP server and set up my network connection without needing to ask me. That's not such a huge deal for me as an experienced user, but for a novice that sort of automation could make all the difference. (In case you're interested, it *did* give me an opportunity to change all the settings it had automatically configured, in case I wanted to do anything unusual or special. It's important to have that option too.)
With the professional feel and slick installer, I'm not surprised that Mandrake 9.1 sales are going well.
I'm excited about 9.2 and I plan on buying it too, but wonder how much improvement it can really show. Because for the first time, I have a distribution that does (almost) everything I want.
Even Amazon.com has it (through J&R).
___
*insert sig here*
There is an interesting interviewwith Mandrake founder Gail Duval about Mandrake's finances and how Mandrake's business products are helping to get Mandrake back in a good financial position on Mozillaquest.com. It ran Friday.
Didn't they already do this? As I recall, it was with the Sims, Mandrake 8.3 Gaming Edition. It was my first Linux distro. Came with WineX and The Sims for linux.
This page was generated by a Flock of Attack Kittens for you.
If you want a good media player try Mplayer with all the codecs correctly installed. There are some legality issues with including this in the main distribution, but the Penguin Liberation Front has got that covered. Once you got Mandrake 9.1 installed, just type the following as root at the prompt:
urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/linux/plf/9.1 with hdlist.cz
urpmi mplayer
wait a bit (maybe hit "Y" twice) and then you will have your ONE media player that works with everything. easy.
-micah
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
I'm not sure sure if your remark is honorable?
I am also running Mandrake 9.1 on an Asus A7N8X and my PC works just fine. I even installed all the patches from NVIDIA's site for both my nForce2 chipset and my GeForce 3 screen card. (NVIDIA distributes RPM's directly for Mandrake 9.1)
The nForce2 chipset makes use of standards compliant technologies such as those that Linux supports. The NVIDIA rpm's just add additional support for SOUND,NETOWORK, GART etc.
I also love the way NVIDIA distributes these RPM's as self-executable installs.