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Interview with Mandrake Linux Founder Gael Duval

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the a-bit-of-the-biz dept.

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."

6 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Artical Text by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I suggest modders mod obvious karma whoring up as Funny. That way readers get to see the post, but the whore gets no karma.

  2. Re:Why do you say that. by Dot.Com.CEO · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I second the grandparent's question. urpmi is an excellent packaging tool, up there with apt-get. It actually resolves conflicts and dependancies. You must be thinking of rpm around 97/98. Things have moved on, you know.

    --
    Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
  3. Re:Very interesting... by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 0, Interesting

    There's plenty about RPMs that are good. There's just one, big, bad side: dependency creep.

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
  4. Re:It seems to me that Mandrake is... by HeX86 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Dumb question about base... by Bourbonium · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've used every release of Red Hat from 7.2 through 9 and then installed Mandrake 9 earlier this year. I have to confess that the Mandrake installation was the smoothest and easiest ever, and the rest of the family prefers Mandrake over RH. I haven't tried Fedora. The only "major" difference I noted between RH and Mandrake is that my scrolling mouse does not work in Mandrake, but does work on RedHat. Odd bug there, and probably my own fault.

    Over the Thanksgiving holiday, though, I installed SuSE 9, and that was a real treat. Almost as easy to install as Mandrake and everything appears to work fine, except for the HotSync package with my Handspring Visor. Of course, the PDA connection hasn't worked on any version of Linux I've tried so far.

    I can only see Mandrake improving as their financial condition brightens, and with RedHat exiting the desktop market, things only look better for Gael and his team.

  6. Unique society: Attack contributors by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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".