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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.
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.
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. ;)
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.
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.