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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."
here are financial results of mandrake. Recently discussed on slashdot btw.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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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
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.
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.
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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
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.
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.
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!
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
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
Mandrake hasn't been RedHat based since the 7.x series - the only "RedHat based" aspect of 8.x and 9.x is that it uses rpms.
"For instance, I frequently have to Google how to list the files in a package on my hard drive with rpm."
you just screamed "I'm a moron" at the top of your lungs.
rpm -q -l packagename
is that hard? I'll break it down for you...
rpm - this is the program you are calling
-q - stands for query, because that's what are doing
-l - stands for 'list'
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
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.
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's the reason why Mandrake offers URPMI/URPME that makes the job for you.
http://www.linux.org/apps/AppId_2189.html
Yes, urpmi is a beautiful thing. I've been using it for a while to keep our server up to date. "urpmi.update -ac;urpmi --update --auto-select" works fine for this. It automatically updates all of the packages I have installed. It will scan various FTP mirrors I have configured to retrieve all dependancies and install them.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
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...
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.
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.
Bloaty?? The download version is 3 CD's, I looked at the download for Debian... 7 CD's! And I'm sorry, but Debians installer is horrid compared to Mandrakes
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
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".
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 Mandrake is so incompatable why are they LSB certified?
The great advantage of having a reputation for being stupid: People are less suspicious of you.