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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 isn't meant as a flame, I wish Mandrake well.
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.
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Pennies
Boring version numbering. Apple decided to go X... what's up with that? There's Mac OS 9, then Mac OS X 10.0. Latest is Mac OS X 10.3 - using both X and 10 seems repetitive. RedHat went from 9 to changing their name to Fedora Core 1, effectively starting over. It seems to sound better with version numbers 10 (or 1-digit).
The link provides this:
Anounced today that its first fiscal quarter of 2004 resulted in a positive operating result of [EURO] 280,000
Somehow I think some browswers do not like Euro symbol.
I think Mandrake is a good way to get a lot of people using Linux. It's polished GUI is good for proving what Linux can be when you don't need command line control. Glad to see they're still going.
What with RedHat Standard moving to Fedora and Mandrake looking shaky, things were looking bad. Fedora has turned out to be quite good and Madrake are surviving. Just SCO to go bankrupt and the world will be right again.
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 ordered Mandrake 9.2 when it came out and cancelled the order 2 weeks later when they didn't deliver it. After 2 months of numerous emails back and forth of emails of "Refund process can take up to ten business days. We have recontacted our financial department about your order." I still have not received a refund.
My favorite distro yet has probably been Mandrake 9.1. It was the easiest to compile DVD playing for, ran my Windows games well with WineX, and didn't jack around with my sound like most other distros (I have some rare BA speakers notorious for Linux incompatibilities. Only Drake9.1/SUSE/Lycoris seem to recognize them). At the moment I'm running the barely tolerable Win98 because frankly, that's the only way I can play Homeworld or Halo. ;)
It's good to hear Mandrake is doing well, it's been my preffered distribution since version 7.0 or so. A lot of people are still under the impression that Mandrake is just a Red Hat clone with KDE as the default WM but the distribution has come a long way since then. It has a nice installer and a lot of nice tools, good hardware detection and unlike most desktop oriented distro's, it isn't crippled in any way.
... 280,000 Euro, which is around $358,000.
Additionally, there are two important facts in their financial results: 1) revenue has increased of +8.4% compared to the same quarter for year 2002/03 2) the gross margin increased of +28.9% during the same time. More importantly: their gross margin has reached 82% of revenue. This is excellent and shows that their business model has improved much and potentially makes MandrakeSoft a very profitable company.
Nice shot for a pure Open Source company.
Things are really boding well for the linux desktop. I believe one main obstacle is for people to just know about what all can be done with a standard linux distro since there are so many nifty applications (my experience was with KDE and all little utils such as kdirstat).
Here is one example related to the need for evangelism: I have used latex very much, but only now, after killing some time on the net looking at related stuff, did I find information about "texdoc", a sort of a "browser for tex/latex". When I tried to look at texdoc, I found the shell showing texdoc and texdoctk, texdoctk has a GUI and a sort of a comprehensive reference. If it took me so much time to come across such a useful tidbit, imagine how much time it would take for someone that does not even have much interest in exploring. He/she would be stuck with cryptic menus
BTW, Mandrake's 10.0 beta looks impressive (KDE 3.2Pre Linux 2.6.1 (+2.4.25)), and the bittorrent link is at here
S
if you guys read the second link to newsforge you would see there is a community and official version. My guess is that the community version is going to be for bleeding edge while in 3 months the official one is more stable, but then again thats my guess. My hopes is that both versions are free. Also Mandrake is not like lindows. Mandrake can be used both for command line and non commandline things. Makes a good replacement to Red Hat 9 in my opinion
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.
Get in from here.
There's more information on the beta in the Mandrake Linux Wiki
Either that or buy the PowerPack, that's what I recommend all the time. + Like that you save time since you already have the NVidia drivers and such...
Just my 0.02 EUR
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
SUSE and Mandrake are fighting for the same market. If it comes down to the survival of one I don't see that Mandrake's resources can match those of SUSE.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
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 ?
I thought that was what Lindows was for.
You have the cli if you want it, you just don't need it, and it's a very welcome change when setting up complex systems (like application servers with vpns over the web etc...). You gain days on the installation.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
As far as Live CDs go, Knoppix is still superior for the development tools, and setting up persistant storage that plays well with FAT32. But this last release is starting to close that gap. And it looks stunning.
I use Mandrake 9.2, but PCLOS is so much better... My wife likes to watch Starting Over, but she can't see any of the previews on the website because they are in Quicktime. Naturally, there's no QuickTime for Linux plugin available. With PCLOS, it just works.
I've managed to muck something up on my Mandrake desktop, because I have to wait an additional minute after the desktop is installed while it's doing something - I can't figure what, probably trying to get the soundcard to work - and reinstalling Mandrake hasn't taken care of it. CUPS doesn't want to talk to my laser printer, but it works just fine under lpr... It's a complete mess.
I'm not quite ready to dump Mandrake (PCLOS is still beta), but some of Texstar's RPMs will be installed on my machine Real Soon Now.
People donate to AOL all the time even though AIM is free, Winamp is free, Mozilla is free. Whats your point? Their model is based on subscription revenue not donations. I see nothing wrong with this model if they make money. If Howard Dean can make millions of dollars just by hosting a blog, I don't see why an important Linux company cant stay afloat in non profit fashion.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
EUR 280,000 = USD 356,140 = UKP 193,144 = JPY 37,835,034.
In case you were wondering.
I said it before, and I say it again:
No way I'm going to enter bills for Mandrake Club Services from a French company into my books.
I do not want to explain to the accountant and the taxman that Mandrake Club is not a parisian brothel.
For gods sake, choose a professional, if boring, name.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
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.
I agree that things are heating up. Novell is in a very interesting position. Mandrake still has a couple of advantages, mainly they have probably got one of the most active (for a commercial distro) communities surrounding them. Package resources like THAC and PLF keep a steady stream of great easy to install (newbie friendly) software available (like the whole MythTV package WITH all dependencies). Their entire approach to business will keep some users very dedicated (all MandrakeSoft created software is released under the GPL).
That said, as I mentioned in an earlier post, they are slightly falling behind in total integration, but maybe now that they are in the black they can afford to be a little more aggressive in the R&D department.
Quack, quack.
I have been an avid Mandrake supporter for years, but the following quote from Roblimo's article has me concerned:
"The "community" version is expected to be the first major Linux distribution that includes the 2.6 kernel. Two or three months later, the "official" version will also incorporate the new kernel.
Bancilhon expects to see updated versions of the "community version" every six months, while the "official" version will be on an 18 month release cycle."
Basically, I take this to be that they will use the community version as a way to beta-test their real distribution. The paying customers get the good stuff, the rest of us deal with the bugs and have to be on a constant upgrade treadmill because security updates will no longer be provided after six months.
Very disturbing, IF this is indeed the case. If this is not the case, I apologize in advance for jumping to conclusions. It also makes you wonder as to whether Mandrake's repositories will now be fragmented between community and official, which will require much more man power to maintain and thus reducing the number of packages available.
Finally, six months is not nearly enough time for an operating system to stop being supported. This is just plain ridiculous and IT is exactly the same thing that Red Hat did with Fedora, which at the time I found appalling. Only difference is that Fedora actually has a fedora-legacy project in place that seeks to have longer-maintenance cycles.
What do you folks think? As much as I hate to say this, even 18 months is too short a time for an official distro, which is what you would use on a server.
Servers are only upgraded every 3 to 5 years. I am having a hard time understanding what it is that Mandrake is thinking. In fact, this is looking ever more so like forced upgrades to me.
While some of you may dismiss my comments, Mandrake has been my primary distro for over four years, so I say this with a lot of regret and I hope it spurs enough debate that Mandrake will have to respond to our concerns.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
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.
According to Mandrake's website, LG released firmware updates to their drives back in November. So you should be safe if you download those.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Mandrake is selling a bootable-CDROM based distro called Mandrake Move. Your ~/ is stored on a USB Flash drive -- so, you boot the CD w/ the Flash installed and whatever PC your on is your own.... the way you 'left-it'.
Very cool idea. Now, if they could get the whole distro onto one of those card-sized cdroms we'd be set.
I had troubles with Mandrake as well. The first install of 9.2 found my modem and worked fairly well
It would not open a terminal in a user account though.
Then a few weeks passed and I thought I would try it again. This time it refused to use my modem. All the other problems seemed to be resolved though.All I have heard was how easy Mandrake was to use the distro for newbies that still had power. Man I still dont know how people got that impression unless the version 8x releases where better.
Oh well I am sticking to Fedora for my main box and Slackware for my backup box.
I am glad the drake is doing good though.
http://66.90.75.92/torrents/1005/MandrakeLinux-10. 0-beta1.torrent
Enjoy
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
Xine can play Quicktime, but if you need support for the new trailers, you need the Qdesign sound codec, and that requires the win32 quicktime codecs.
But thanks for the link, I'll try that, since it looks very nice. There's a Mandrake RPM for it in the contribs.
The article says that a big difference between the "community" release and Fedora is that whilst Fedora is entirely separate from Red Hat, Red Hat makes no promises etc., the Mandrake "community" release will still be done under the Mandrake banner, by Mandrake employees and the article says *supported* by Mandrake employees as part of their jobs. I presume that support will be the same as what the current download version gets. I get the impression that the community release is just a new name for the current download version. It is still an 'official' Mandrake product (unlike Fedora). Mandrake releases every 6 months now anyway.
". The "community" version of Mandrake will still be produced by company developers and supported by MandrakeSoft employees as part of their job, unlike the Fedora project which is produced outside of Red Hat's formal development structure and supported by volunteers."
It seems more like they are adding a new product called the "official" version which will have a longer release cycle.
An essential difference between Mandrake and Redhat is that whilst Redhat is abandoning the (home) desktop (which is part of the reason for the move to spin off the free version as an unsupported volunteer product), the home desktop is probably one of Mandrake's biggest areas.
Definitely...when I put Linux on some curious friend's spare machine for them, it's always Mandrake. It is easy to configure most things, but it is still a very standard GNU/Linux stack.
I'm hopefull, though, that with this new catalyst build process, Gentoo 2004 (stage3/grp style of course) might be able to overtake it. I run Gentoo/Mandrake/FreeBSD mostly, but Gentoo is by far the most fun. And it's certainly safe from the "windows knockoff" stigma you mention.
That's not to say anything against Mandrake, of course...it's just that Gentoo is so much closer to the source, to the part that separates us from them.
Not to put it in such polar terms...
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Simple, its the best SRPM eater and fastest RPM producer around. Just look e.g. on www.rpmfind.net and search for that favorate package. Mandrake and/or Mandrake Cooker editions always show up.
:
:
o ad &name=Splatt_Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=16806&foru m=9
They have a development engine which rockz
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3.1 (Mandrake Linux 9.2 3.3.1-2mdk)
Basicly IMHO Mandrake 9.2 is just latest redhat _without_ corporate intervenance...
I tried Mandrake 9.2RC1 AMD64 on a ASUS K8V board with that AMD Athlon AMD64 3200+ CPU , which is running 2200MHz/1024kb cache. And also their x86_64 development platform rockz. All i386 based SRPMS it just compiled with warp-12 speed into *.x86_64.rpm's.
read e.g.
http://www.mandrakeclub.com/modules.php?op=modl
Robert
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.
tehanu is correct; "support period" != "release schedule"
In fact, there was a slashdot story about a month ago detailing Mandrakesoft's support policy, which is lots longer than the release schedule.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
No, that's my point - there isn't a full fix on the Mandrake site. What there is, is a small list of tested drives, but by no means all LG drives. (And even some of those present are listed as "unknown status".)
Equally, LG released upgraded firmware for some, but not all drives.
And the procedure for resurrecting dead drives is only applicable to desktop drives - it relies on fiddling with jumpers, something that's not practical (or even possible?) with a notebook.
In short, if your drive isn't on the very small list that has been both tested and either approved, or had a patch released for it, then the issue isn't fixed at all.
280,000 busted cd-rom drives, care of mandrake 9.2
Go ahead, mod me as a troll, but I don't see your cd-burner lying in a shit heap...
I had a very prompt delivery, but it was strange. I got the 9.2 DVD like TWO DAYS after submitting the order, although I didn't specify any fast delivery. The package had been sent from some wacky-named small company a few miles away from me. When I first saw the parcel I was sure it was some goofy sales pitch from new-age transendantal hippy organization. (I forgot the company's name on the return address, but it was really spacey.)
A week after I got my package the Mandrake ordering system notified me that the package had "just been shipped". Obviously they have some interesting way of outsourcing their delivery process. I just happened to be a "lucky one" I guess.
Sidenote: DAMN but it's nice to get a distro on a DVD! With the most recent versions of RedHat I was swapping CD's constantly for installs. It reminded me of the last days of floppy installations. Anyone remember circa 1995 getting softward that came on 10+ floppy disks?
Last miscellaneous comment: I love my Mandrake! It fascinates me that there are comments about 9.2 being buggy. I moved after the RedHat decision and my 9.2 installation on two computers has been the most stable and pain free of the last many many years. I guess you can never know when you are going to get hit with an installation bug.
Murray Todd Williams