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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."
asked him why they can't create an easy to use distro without requiring developers to release a "Mandrake" version of their software.
OH YEAH!
SHIZ
irc.perfectping.com
#finite
Some excellent discussion.
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 announcement by Red Hat? Do you feel that it will have an impact on Mandr
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
in many ways a representation of a distro gone bad.
Just like Red Hat, it does not represent purist Linux and therefore impedes the growth of Linux in many ways.
Just a thought.
clifgriffin > blog
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
Aegisthus
Found in Italy in 250 with goats.
This is from De Bello Gothico, bk II, ch XVII, quoted by Tylor in Anthropological Review. The picture of Germany after the French invasion forms an apt parallel to the picture of Italy during the invasion of the Goths, in which the historian Procopius tells, as a startling instance of the horrors of the war, a story which belongs to the category before us, and is very likely true as a matter of fact. An infant, left by its mother, was found by a she-goat which suckled and took care of it. When the survivors came back to their deserted homes they found the child living with its adopted mother, and called it Aegisthus. Procopius says that he was there and saw the child himself.
Andes boy
Found in the Peruvian Andes in 1990 after spending 8 years with goats.
A boy was found in the Andes, Peru, in 1990, and was said to have been raised by goats for eight years. He is supposed to have survived by drinking their milk, and eating roots and berries. After being found, he was investigted by a team from Kansas University (presumably, The University of Kansas rather than Kansas State University).
Annonymous Coward
Raised by dirty Linux hippies
As far as we can deterimine his sad story, Annonymous Coward was kicked out of the house by his father when he could no longer feed him after his job was shipped to India. Coward was found by a Unix sysadmin while dumpster-diving for old pizza crusts. The sysadmin took little Coward back to his nest, where they lived in abject squalor and the other linux hippies of the pack subjected him to severe anal abuse. Annonymous Coward was found and rescued after eight years, when he was caught stealing defective sex toys from the dumpster behind Big Als Gaytorium. Coward was covered in lice-ridden filthy hair and did not posses even the most rudimentary social graces. Specialists at Bethesda naval hospital are using advanced deprogramming techniques developed for the MK-l337 program with some minor success. It is hoped that he can at least be socialized enough to use a Mac.
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
a good package management like RPM.
I seriously just lost respect for this guy's opinion. There is nothing about RPMs that are good.
clifgriffin > blog
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
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
Am I the only one who thinks that giving technological infrastructure (Operating system, compiler and particularly cryptographic source code) to our enemies (ie: muslims, asians, arabs, africans and other terrorist nationalities) is a Very Bad Idea?
Nice marketing answer. What about one of the freely distributed and supported rehashes of redhate? What about SuSE? What about tipping your hat to one of your competitors doing good work, instead of giving one of the typically evasive answers that we expect from fud-spreaders like gates, and proving you're a big man(tm)? Whatever happened to CEOs who respected the entreprenurial spirit? Now they're all marketdroids.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just look at yourself! Where's your pride? Where's your dignity? What would your mother think if she could see you now? Begging for karma in the streets like a common whore!!! You need to respect yourself, my friend. Saddam Hussein looked more dignified when they pulled him kicking and screaming out of his hole.
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 announcement by Red Hat? Do you feel that it will have an impact on Mandr
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.
It's confirmed.. geeks actually think they are cool. brought to you by a Squadron of Elite Kittens.
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
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
#
If we don't face the ugly FACTS and take action NOW, these terrible, terrible GOATMEN will rise up and suplant Home Sapiens Sapiens! Haven't you seen the television show "Prey"?!!!! The put it right out in the open, and people treated it like bad fiction!!!
WAKE UP before it's too late!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
Now THATS dedication!
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.
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
Very interesting. I see your point.
The moderation system is largely disfunctional. It would be great to think of a better way.
Sir Suxalottacock was whoring, few liked it. FOAD cumvacuum.