Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval
mcleodnine writes "In this interview
Gael Duval comments on MandrakeSoft's just released financials. He also
comments on his decision to base Mandrake on Red Hat (over Slackware), the
timeline for getting out of Chapter 11, the recent UserLinux manifesto and
barriers to acceptance for Linux on the desktop."
here are financial results of mandrake. Recently discussed on slashdot btw.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread .php?threadid=126031
;)
"jeremy
root"
You shouldn't post to forums as root, it's a sure sign you're a newbie
Fortress of Insanity
I suggest modders mod obvious karma whoring up as Funny. That way readers get to see the post, but the whore gets no karma.
You can't start off as a purist. If not for Mandrake and the confidence its foolproof GUI tools gave me, I never would've tried Linux. I can't just go out and break my computer; I need my computer. The reason to install a new OS is to make the machine do more, not stop working altogether. Mandrake lets you start using Linux and get comfortable before moving up in the world.
Mandrake is a good distro, but unfortunatly in its developmental process it was following the wake of Red Hat.
Visit Phrite's Tech News/Security Tools
And what problems do you have with RPM?
I don't know all that much about the practical (ie: deployed) differences between Fedora and RHE, and I haven't used Mandrake in a while, but with the recent split of offerings by Red Hat I was wondering about some repercussions.
Does anybody know if Mandrake is going to continue to use Red Hat as its base? Will they be using Fedora? Do people who've used Fedora, 'classic' Red Hat and Mandrake have an opinion on what's going to end up happening to the quality of Mandrake's product as a result?
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Do you have anything to backup that statement? I've been using RPM for many years and it has been a great packaging system for me.
in many ways a representation of a user gone bad.
Just like Anonymous Coward, it does not represent purist Slashdot and therefore impedes the growth of Slashdot in many ways.
Just a thought.
Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval ( post #1)
:-)
Gael Duval, the founder of Mandrake Linux and co-founder of MandrakeSoft, agreed to an LQ interview. Here is what he had to say. Thanks Gael.
###
LQ) Tell us a little about yourself, how you got into Linux and why you started Mandrake Linux?
GD) Actually I firstly discovered UNIX at University where I learned computer sciences. It was mostly on Sun with Solaris or SunOS, and I really was impressed by UNIX. In 1995 I had a 386-based PC at home with MS-DOS/Windows 3.1 runnning on it and of course it was... extremely frustrating. In particular when you are a student with absolutely no money, it was impossible to purchase all the development software for programming in C/C++/Common Lisp and others, or you had to copy it illegally. And of course it was without the documentation. So I spent more and more time at Uni working with UNIX. It was the early WWW times, and I remember I searched for "free Unix" on the Net. If I remember well, I used Yahoo! which started less than one year before, and the browser was... Mosaic
The search results showed several Linux pages. That is how I discovered Linux. A few days later, I was at home with my Slackware on 50-diskettes, still not believing that I could run a Unix-like with X11, Emacs, GCC, Lex, Yacc, Clisp and... all the documentation on my 386. A few hours later, the miracle was here: Linux was running on the PC, with OpenLook on the screen. The next great experience was when I performed the first Internet connexion by modem, through a University access.
Two years later, it was clear for me that Linux had the potential to be an excellent alternative to Windows, or maybe even a full replacement, and at the time I thought that it would be good to provide a Linux distribution that would be as easy to use as Windows. So I started to "play" with Slackware, and later with a Red Hat. It was also the time of the first versions of KDE. After a few months of work, I released the first Mandrake, in July '98, and was the first distro to ship with KDE 1.0 as default graphical environment.
LQ) Before releasing the first Mandrake version (which was based on Red Hat) you were working on a Slackware-based OS. Any regrets on that distro switch? Do you think things would be different had you not made that change?
GD) No regret at all, for a simple reason: it was not serious anymore to release a Linux distribution without a good package management like RPM. I seriously considered to switch to Debian as a base because at the time, Red Hat's reaction was very unclear (as far as I know, forking from a commercial Linux distribution never happened before Mandrake). But back in 1998, Debian's installation procedure was really not friendly at all. As a result, a key success of Mandrake was also that all packages made for Red Hat were compatible with Mandrake, including commercial packages. So the choice of RPM was the good one.
LQ) During a mid-year status update, Francois Bancilhon noted that "Our immediate goal is to exit from this status before the en of the current year" (speaking about the Chapter 11 filing). Does it look as if you will meet this deadline? How does MandrakeSoft's financial future look?
GD) Yes, our goal is now to exit from the Chapter 11 filing soon, but there is no emergency - actually it just limits the level of business we do. We will provide an exit plan on early January and it should make us leave two to three months later. It needs a court approval.
Anyway, we've just released first financial results and they are very positive. There will be a benefit for the current quarter.
LQ) What major changes and updates can we expect to see in the next Mandrake release?
GD) In addition to many improvements, there will be more and more focus on applications that are needed in daily business in small and medium corporations (office, groupware...).
LQ) What are your thoughts on the recent End of Life
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
There's plenty about RPMs that are good. There's just one, big, bad side: dependency creep.
Finding God in a Dog
That pales in comparison to a potential answer...
Q"What distro would you use without Mandrake?"
A"Caldera"
</joke>
Although I agree that a purist distro is a good thing, the main reason why people don't use linux is because they don't want to mess around with command line.
That's one large thing preventing linux from completely destroying microsoft, it's not as easy to use. Although I agree for many people it's good to compile your own software, I do it, it's simply not logical to force everyone to do it because it can be a painful process.
Your response falls into the "who is the target audience?" question. For many of us who started with Linux 8 or 9 years ago, Mandrake and similar distros are a blight on the promise of Linux. Distributions that are so bloated, over-done, and frankly tacky are in direct conflict with what Linux was, at least when I started using it, and what it still is with distributions like Slackware and Gentoo. My target audience for Linux is different than Mandrakesofts. Both can get along, as long as we realize there is a need for both, and no one road, concept is ultimately correct, just correct for the ones that see fit to use it.
Or how about "Karma whore" points?
Too many, and you get a "Karma STD" and you can't post for 9 hours.
Pure Flamebait. Why is this modded up?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
What exactly is 'purist Linux'? Do you mean a good distro should require lots of knowledge to setup/install?
I like Slackware and Debian personally, but Madrake was one of the first distros that a relatively ordinary user could install without help.
It's your kind of attitude that helps keep Linux away from the masses.
LQ) If you couldn't use Mandrake what Linux distribution would you use?
GD) This is the most difficult question I ever had to answer in an interview! :-) That's a frightening question actually because I can't see any alternative that could fit my requirements: friendly, full-featured, powerful, stable, fully open-sourced...
So, if there were no Mandrake it would be neccessary to create one!
How does Red Hat imped the growth of Linux?
Please tell.
LQ) If you couldn't use Mandrake what Linux distribution would you use?
:-) That's a frightening question actually because I can't see any alternative that could fit my requirements: friendly, full-featured, powerful, stable, fully open-sourced...
GD) This is the most difficult question I ever had to answer in an interview!
*cough*
I would hope that the owner of such a large Linux distro wouln't need a "friendly" alternative. And I would also hope he knows that Mandrake is in no way more full featured, powerful, stable, or fully open-sourced than Slackware or a variety of other more pure Linux distros.
clifgriffin > blog
I agree. I almost wish that their was a way to X out the names in these posts altogether. The good people post articles as AC so we never get to know who the good people are and the karma whores just get more recognition. It makes me sick.
Probably a troll feeding, but -
/usr that do not belong to a package. /usr -exec rpm -Vf {} \; | grep owned
Mandrake's urpmi system and rpmdrake take most of the dependancy horror out of a basic system setup (especially for new users), while allowing system a audit of system files that is near imposible on other systems.
The contributions of the Mandrake club packagers and community support have made it a joy for me.
try this with an rpm based system -
# find files in
find
#look for '5' in second column for files which are different than installed.
rpm -Va
there's no replacement for displacement
"What about one of the freely distributed and supported rehashes of redhate?"
You might as well have added "M$ sucks!" to your post. When you try to make your point with childish misspellings you only end you hurting your credibility and adding yourself to that group which often times makes opensource users look like immature fools.
Maybe Mandrake does not represent purist Linux, but its existence brought Linux near lot of people; and, most important thing, made developers aware they need to implement simple interfaces.
nirvanis
whoops, typed too fast.
/usr -exec rpm -qf {} \; | grep owned
should be
find
with some clever use of prune, you can hunt down anything that does not belong on your box.
there's no replacement for displacement
As long as Linux has hardcore gurus, there will be hardcore distros. It's just that you can't get as many potential hardcore gurus that are willing to dive right in as you would if you offer a gradual approach.
Why do you think we're losing - badly - the fight against bacterial infections? Simple.
I'm a GP (General Practitioner for those of you who don't know the term) and I don't think a day goes by without a concerned by undereducated mom or dad, who just won't take a "no" as an answer when they ask for a course of antibiotics for their little brat with a viral infection. The result: viral infections come and go, but all bacteria that survives the unnecessary antibiotic treatment emerges stronger. Hence, we've got more and more drug-resistant cultures around.
The antibacterial soaps are doing exactly the same in your kitchen sink. Yes, they will kill all the weak bacteria in your sink, but whatever survives is much much harder to deal with in the future.
The owls are not what they seem
"by Anonymous Coward"
You might as well not have posted at all, since posting as an AC removes any possible trace of credibility from your post.
I despise redhat. I claim the right to express this fact every time I mention it by calling it redhate. I also have great derision for Microsoft, which I often express by calling it Micro$oft or MICROS~1. If you don't like, it log in, set me as an enemy and score me down below your threshold.
I wasn't actually trying to make any point; I did it by reflex. Your lack of reading comprehension skills have betrayed you. Don't most of us get some sort of training in such things in grammar school?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Mandrake was the company that made RPM work, via urpmi . Obviously they recognized its weaknesses and made the improvements they believed necessary. That's how open source works and is a fine reason to maintain that respect you mentioned.
Quack, quack.
Only terrorists would suggest removing our nation's supply of antibiotic agents - in order to cause mass disease and death.
Antibacterial agents have saved many millions from death and sickness. Suggesting that they should be taken away is akin to saying that bandaids or bypass surgeouries should be banned.
You sir are a quack and a disgrace to our profession.
In my experience, it seems Mandrake has gotten a reputation as being "all graphical like Windows", and I find a lot of "geeks" look down upon it for just that reason.
/boot partition.
I've been using Linux since Slackware 3.4 (1998/99?), I've installed and used almost every distro under the sun for both servers and desktops (haven't tried Gentoo yet though) and I must say Mandrake is by far the easiest _and_ most configurable distro I've ever used. The last part is especially important for the "geeks".
For example, without spending a lot of time, or downloading obscure "boot images", what other distro is there that supports ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, LVM, and a super easy way (graphical) to setup software RAID with all the above partitions straight from the boot CD. Mandrake has supported all of this since at least v8.0. It took me longer to find a Debian boot image that uses the 2.4 kernel just to support my very common hardware raid card then it did to install Mandrake with ReiserFS on the
I can hear the Debian fans screaming already... "But Debian has APT". Yes, it does, and APT is great. RedHat has APT now too, but Mandrake has had URPMI for years, which essentially does exactly what APT does, only its easier to use, both from the command line and graphically! Since about Mandrake 9.0 it has also supported installing packages on multiple machines at the same time.
To top it all off, Mandrake's setup utilities, such as PrinterDrake, HardDrake (for configuring hardware) are top notch. I was blown away when I loaded up PrinterDrake... said "Search for printers on your network" and it came back with all 6 of our (different) printers setup and ready to use. I don't think it was more then TWO clicks! Thats something even WindowsXP can't claim.
In short, Mandrake isn't just for newbies, its an excellent distro for even veterans of Linux who would rather spend time coding, or tweeking important performance settings instead of mucking about setting up printers or searching for "boot images" just to support year old hardware or file systems other then EXT2/3.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
With more distro's sliding towards pay-only and the others hard on the newbies, Mandrake is more or less the ONLY distro adding new users to the pool. I have a (Windows-)job and two kids, and without Mandrake there would be no time for me to try Linux.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
That commandline is ugly, slow and it doesn't work on all UNIX systems. Try this instead:
/usr | xargs rpm -qf | grep owned
/usr -print0 | xargs -0 rpm -qf | grep owned
find
Or, if you think some files might include spaces inside the filename:
find
That's the reason why Mandrake offers URPMI/URPME that makes the job for you.
http://www.linux.org/apps/AppId_2189.html
This is certainly one of the most interesting part of this interview, and I think too few people aren't aware of these facts... And I would add URPMI:
LQ) What would you consider Mandrake's largest innovation or contribution to Linux?
MD) Proof that Linux is not only for geeks (focus on ease of use), first graphical installer, first remote update utility (including graphical front-end), security levels, transparent access to devices, first Linux releases as an ISO image...
"purist Linux"
i.e. elitist Linux? Because I can't think of any practical use of the term (you only use the kernel?). I am convinced there are many users who want Linux to remain their little domain and keep great open source software from normal people - All so they can claim themselves purists.
I would have liked to have seen one asking him about the Common conception among some Linux users I know that Mandrake is very bloaty. You can see form my sig I run lean and mean Gentoo.
A psychopath can't tell the difference between right and wrong. A sociopath knows the difference - he just doesn't care.
on the bottom of this page you can see in some nice tables what versions Mandrake currently uses. (e.g. koffice in 9.2 is 1.3beta3)
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
No, our immune systems can fight off most things. We should only introduce anti-[bacterial|viral] agents when the body can't take care of the infection. Trust me, I work in the biomedical field.
So you are suggesting that someone with an infection stay bed-ridden for several weeks while their body fights off infection?
Fucking quack.
So you wish to challenge AMA?
The owls are not what they seem
Nowhere was that said. Simply put: using anti-anything without thinking kills off the weaker microbes while stronger ones survive and pass on the immunity or resilience to the anti-whatever product you're using.
Sheesh, this is not news, overuse of antibiotics and the resilient strains caused by this have been known for years. Use google before you make yourself look any dumber
the Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX banner ads that are liberally sprinkled through the /. site. The ads should have an amputee starting blankly at a Rubik's Cube.
Some studies show it is better, others that it is worse, and others seem to show no difference. Taken together, these studies indicate that antibacterial soaps are more effective at reducing infections by some organisms (especially staph and strep); they are worse at preventing some types of infections (especially by some of the organisms called gram negative bacteria, since the antibacterial soaps kill much of the beneficial bacteria that normally live on our skin and protect us from some of these gram negative organisms); and they make no difference for some types of infections (such as cytomegalovirus [CMV], or Clostridia -- the bacteria that cause gangrene).
Here's a reccomendation from a doctor that is far more respected than you and certianly more believeable... C Everett Coop....
"For children who are prone to impetigo, boils, or pimples, I would recommend using an antibacterial soap. I would also recommend it for people who are exposed to a great many infectious diseases (I use it in my office)."
First off, Antibacterial DIAL does significantly reduce ZITS in children that are prine to acne. many adults that also get body acne would benifit greatly from washing with a antibacterial soap.
The most important thing is to fricking wash and wash your hands. Americans, and most of the world are disgusting slobs that do not wash their hands. In my microbiology classes we detected e-coli in every classroom where students sit.
Anyways, using disinfectants heavily in the home coupled with anti-bacterial soap will significantly reduce the number of illnesses and cross contaminiation from sick family members and only a quack or a doctor that has forgotten EVERYTHING they learned in microbiology would suggest otherwise..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sublime Directory is LINUX FRIENDLY!! YES
god damn lameness filter.
Antibiotic overuse links for the lazy, inept or embarassed.
Absolutely.
The question was whether it should be banned from general public who would wash themselves and their kitchen sink daily in it just because they've got a friggin' viral infection.
reduce ZITS in children that are prine to acne.
If you knew anything about medicine, you'd know that there are far better alternatives than run-of-the-mill antibacterial soap. Furthermore, average acne is a social not a medical problem. Most people grow over it completely without medication. Mentally scarred? Talk to a psychologist.
cross contaminiation from sick family members
If a member of the family has a viral infection, the chances are that everybody's going to get it. If it's a bacterial infection, the chances are still that everybody's going to get it even if you shower in anti-bacterial soap. The difference is that not showering in the soap does not produce bugs that are immune.
I guess my bottom line is this: it's natural to get sick once in a while. Stop fighting it! You're only making it worse by employing anti-bacterial soaps at home - leave some ammo for us healthcare professionals!
The owls are not what they seem
When I was new to Linux, Mandrake 7.0 was about the first distro I used (if you don't count the week I spent wrestling with Corel Linux).
At first, it was great - most things I wanted to do were prepackaged and I spent days booting it up, marvelling at how different to Windows it was, writing myself sticky notes and then rebooting into Windows to play games.
However, as I began to take Linux more seriously, the problems of Linux began to become apparent for me.
Firstly, it always felt really "non-standard" to me. I'd jump on irc groups for help and nobody could really give me advice that applied for Mandrake. One thing in particular that I remember was an issue with runlevels - they were entirely different to even distros that were cousins of it, ie. Redhat - why would anybody deliberately change runlevels? I just can't see a good reason for this.
Secondly, with every tweak they made (some for functionality, some for ease of use, some for ...well..just being different) something else seemed to break, and these functionalities often caused off the shelf RPM packages, and even source code, that really should have been expected to function, to fail miserably - not such a big deal for me now, but back then, I didn't have the first idea how to resolve the problems.
Thirdly, as I moved from version to version, I was finding many small bugs and percquliarities. Certain things didn't work in certain places, video card drivers wouldn't compile, odd messages appeared here and there. On their own, not major issues, but the sum of all these minor headaches was irritating to say the least. With every distro, I had a wishlist of things I wanted to work, not complicated but simple things. With every release, I was able to cross many items off of these lists, but then instantly replaced them with more. Once again, you have to wonder how much of a hand the "Mandrake tweaking" had in this.
For me, the final straw was the Mandrake 8 series. After installing, I experienced an unprecedented number of bugs. The technologies behind the distro were improving, but at an equal rate, Mandrake was appearing less polished and reliable with every release. What I found even worse was the fact that it seemed incredibly biased towards KDE. In fact, the new setup wizards actively steered you towards choosing KDE as a default environment. IMO KDE has been vastly inferior to Gnome since Gnome 1.4, in terms of bloat, speed and appearance (KDE did - and still does - look too much like a geeky windows rip-off for hobbyists), and I objected to having to work really hard *against* the wizard just to get my desktop the way I wanted it.
At that point, I made the switch there and then to RedHat, and have not been happier since. Mandrake *is* a really nice distro to install, and does try hard to accomodate those with less Linux experience. However, I really don't see it as a "heavyweight" distro. It'd be nice for my parents to use to check their email and write a letter or two, but I really can't imagine the power users lining up to use it.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
I absolutely agree with your point about the overuse of antibiotics, but I have to say I question whether somebody who refers to his/her patients as "little brats" should be practicing medicine. (Of course, what this all has to do with Mandrake is beyond me.)
If you aren't into obscure syntax, Linux (or Unix) may not be for you... :)
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Ummm why is he a troll? He made a really valid point - Mandrake took redhat and tweaked it so much that it lost a lot of it's compatibility and contributed further to the current Linux fragmentation situation.
He's not trolling - he's making a very valid point.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
True, that giving out antibiotics like candy to those with a viral infection is a bad idea, it's not even the tip of the iceberg. How many people are aware that there are millions , if not billions of cattle, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and sheep that are fed antibiotics on a daily basis? This is because factory farming methods keep them in such unsanitary, cramped, inhumane conditions, that if any one of them gets sick, it threatens to wipe the whole herd/flock out.
Heck, they even mentioned on ABC that Cypro(sp?), the drug of last resort for Anthrax, is getting less and less effective because of all the poultry on a drug very similar to it. BTW, a friend of mine is dead because a strain of bacteria that's common in cattle developed resistance to antibiotics and she got it.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Slashdot is the only society I've ever known in which, when someone does something that everyone in the community likes, they are attacked and called a "whore".
Do you think doctors are any better in this respect than the geeks manning helpdesks?
The owls are not what they seem
I agree totally. Having used Red Hat, then Mandrake, then SuSE, now Fedora I have the same take on Mandrake. I'd love to use it if it wasn't so flipping buggy. If they didn't push Cooker out the door with like 2 days testing I'd probably consider buying it since they do distribute ISOs, involve their users, etc. but I just can't see paying for something that requires a half GB of patches after the first couple weeks. And that's just the patches, doesn't take into account problems with Supermount, etc.
why mandrake?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Some of their GUI tools are annoying, though. Like the network GUI forces you to use a wizard to setup your network settings. Fine if you use DHCP. A pain in the butt if you use static IP and want to just go back and make a change. It's silly crap like that that prevents me from really giving Mandrake a shot. That and the bugs.
Unlike other distributions, Mandrake doesn't use proprietary setup tools (SuSe's SAX is proprietary for example as is some of Red Hat's stuff I believe). IMHO, rolling your good tools and releasing them open-source and making a 100% OSS distro is as purist to OSS as you can get.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If it weren't for non-purist distros like Mandrake, the washed masses wouldn't be using Linux.
But what if I need perl 5.6x and not perl 5.8x as well as apache 1.3x instead of 2.0x due to compatiblities? How would I do this on an rpm based system?
Yes I could download untar and compile it myself but what if my apps require perl 5.8? See the problem?
Even Debian has this problem. Only FreeBSD, Solaris, Slackware and Gentoo can solve it.
I will stay away from any rpm system thank you.
http://saveie6.com/
Or those who like bunk science.
Thanks for coming out of the woodwork to defend your argument! It was hilarious pretending to be someone whom I was not fighting for my posistion on antibacterials/antibiotics seeing folks going NO! NO! YOUR WRONG! then having other idiots come out and say WTF ARE YOU SMOKING?
Slashdot Trolling: The Best Enteratainment Ever.
hmm.
[croddy@debianbox ~]$ gcc (tab)(tab)
gcc gcc-3.0 gccbug gccbug-3.3
gcc-2.95 gcc-3.3 gccbug-3.0 gccmakedep
[croddy@debianbox ~]$ python (tab)(tab)
python python2.1 python2.3
[croddy@debianbox ~]$ automake (tab)(tab)
automake automake-1.7
[croddy@debianbox ~]$ autoconf (tab)(tab)
autoconf autoconf-wrapper autoconf2.13 autoconf2.50
You can't start off as a purist.
I think you mean you can't. Obviously someone could, or we wouldn't have Linux at all.
Have you read that cnn article ? It says that the WHO is worried about the use of anti-bacterial agents in general cosmetic products but that the AMA ( whatever that is ) is stopping short of discouraging people from using them due to pressure from the cosmetic industry.
I think this is really agreeing with the parent post but illustrating that the AMA is subject to pressure from industry lobbying groups.
You're a fucking karma-whoring faggot.
By outsourcing, Mandrake saved a fortune and prevented the company from going belly up.
What exactly did Mandrake outsource?
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
I use Mandrake since Mandrake 5.3 until now in version 9.2, and I'm happy use it for works and learns.
Hey! I still manage couples of Slackware server!
-- There is four mistake in this sentences.
For instance Caldera had a graphical installer before Mandrake
Hee hee, very good. I might use that. (I assume it's under the GNU Free Documentation License?) A small correction BTW: I think you mean pitying rather than pityful.
Merriam-Webster. Purist: one who adheres strictly and often excessively to a tradition.
Me. Purist linux: something to uselessly lose your time doing something that doesn't need to be done, just for the sake of it.
Very interesting. I see your point.
The moderation system is largely disfunctional. It would be great to think of a better way.
hmmmm.. 5000 dollars in Psychologist Bills, or
50 bucks worth of Anti-bacterial Soap.
But, other than that, I agree. No antibacterial in public bathrooms. Only the scented stuff.