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MandrakeSoft Roundup
uninet writes "MandrakeSoft, the French GNU/Linux distributor who filed for bankruptcy protection one year ago last week, announced today that its first fiscal quarter of 2004 resulted in a positive operating result of 280,000. The company also announced Beta 1 of Mandrake Linux 10.0 today." Additionally, tkittel writes that "Mandrake has just announced on their club pages that they will release an updated version of their 9.2 ISO's (but just for club members). This is due to popular request after the numerous updates after the initial release." OSDN's own Robin Miller had a chance to talk with MandrakeSoft's CEO and learn more about the company's future plans.
This seems like a sucky time to bring out 10.0.
Mandrake has generally placed more emphasis on KDE than other distros, so why would it bring out a distribution either before or only just after the release of KDE 3.2? It would make more sense to wait a month and pick up some bugfixes.
Kernel 2.6 has only just come out, also. Again, in a month or so we should have quite a bit more stability in that department. I don't know whether or not Mandrake are planning for 10.0 to be 2.6-based but it would seem appropriate for a new major version.
I realise that there's no "perfect time" to release a distribution and that it has to ship at some time, but given that 9.2 wasn't exactly the most rock-solid distribution around it would (in my view) make a lot more sense to issue their 9.2+bugfixes release as 9.3, or 9-stable or something, and wait for the new kernel and the new KDE to settle down enough that they can form the basis of a modern distribution worthy of a major version increment.
But that way, of course, they wouldn't be able to sell yet another copy of all those ISOs.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
I'll debate that Lindows hasn't really succeeded in that regard. Mandrake, I think, is more complete. I tried a download version of Lindows and was quite disappointed. I don't recall configuration being any easier than any other distro I've tried.
Mandrake, on the other hand, has a friendly-looking, consistent, and easy-to-use configuration toolset. Given the GUI tools in Mandrake, you could forget the CLI forever, probably. Drake has been around longer to hone that, and I'd wager Lindows has a long way yet to go. If I were going to show someone "Linux" I would probably do it with Mandrake. Lindows or Lycoris would look like cheap Windows knockoffs to the uninitiated.
Are they puting back the Kernel source? It wasn't on the ISOs I downloaded for 9.2
I had to go back for that RPM when I needed to use it (and thus discoverd it's absence).
Sure the 3 ISOs were a virtualy maximum size anyway but you can prioritise. I.e. Mandrak's target audience (Desktop users) are more likely to need the Kernel Source (WinModem setup forinstance) than Emacs.
PS: Good of them to put the end user text editors in the instalation. Joe, and Jed come to mind.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Club membership is a more permanent version of
shareware concept, where you pay dues to keep
getting support. It makes sense. When I was using
Mandrake for a brief time, I considered becoming a
club member but their page asks for personal info
so I went away and soon switched distros for this
and other reasons.
The biggest problem I currently have with Mandrake is that I don't dare install it. I have a laptop with an LG CDROM drive, hence one that is potentially susceptible to the drive-killing issue that emerged with Mandrake 9.2
Mandrake do have a list of tested drives on their site, but mine (CRN-8241B) isn't there, and the closest match, the CRD-8241B, is listed as "unknown status". It seems like a few drives have been tested, some passed, some failed, and then the whole issue quietly swept under the rug.
LG tech support in the UK were totally unhelpful, first giving me the standard crap about how their drives weren't "designed for Linux" and then, when I educated them about the problem being due not to any particular OS, but to the drives' firmware, they said they'd "get back to me". I'm still waiting. They released some patches on their website, but nothing for my drive.
Meanwhile, the kernel was supposed to be updated so that it didn't send out the potentially damaging flush commands. But did this happen? I didn't hear about it anywhere prominent. Certainly not on Mandrake's site. I don't even know if the delayed public release of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs had this fix. If so, why bother with the list of drives - if the kernel's been amended, then the issue ceases to be for all LG drives, right?
So now I'm in the situation where I don't dare install Mandrake 9.2, or any subsequent version, or even any other recent variant of Linux, for fear that it will destroy my CDROM drive. New features are all very well, but I value my hardware.
If Mandrake wants me to not stick with 9.1 forever, then they need to display a prominent notice on their website stating that CDROM-killing problem has been fixed.
For 9.2, there was one ad in the installer (DrWeb anti-virus).
After install, if you look very carefully, you'll see a link to Safari Online (computer books) in your bookmarks and startup browser page.
Definitely non-intrusive, and it helps a bit to pay the developers.
Mandrake and LG both worked toward fixing the problem. The info is on the Mandrake website in the errata section. http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/lgerrata.php3 Not only did Mandrake produce a fix, but LG released upgraded firmware for many drives and provided a procedure for resusitating the "dead" drives.
Do you know how they do it, both technically and legally?
Quicktime can run under wine, but not all versions, and it's not that stable.
On the legal side, you can't redistribute Quicktime on a download side, you can only put it on CD, if you agree to put the Windows executable in untouched binary form, and have a distribution agreement.
Even with Mplayer, you can't view most Quicktime videos without the win32 codecs, and they can't be splitted legally from the windows executable.
Maybe they have found another way. If true, I'd like to know, otherwise, I'd have some concerns over the legality of their distro...
But how much of their income last quarter was due to donations, and do they expect to be able to keep that up? I really don't know, and I'd like to hear from soemone in the know.
Well, I don't know what you consider "donations", but as a Mandrake Club member, I will continue to recompense them 60 dollars per year in support of an excellent, easy to install, OS as opposed to the exorbitant fees charged by MS for their, er, product.
You need to have a Windows license for every computer.
You can install Mandrake Linux on as many computers you need without being a MandrakeClub member. Only one membership is needed if you feel like joining.