Developers Fork Mandriva Linux, Creating Mageia

Anssi55 writes "As most of the Mandriva employees working on the Linux distribution were laid off due to the liquidation of Edge-IT (a subsidiary of Mandriva SA) and trust in the company has diminished, the development community (including the core developers) has decided to fork the project. The new Linux distribution, named Mageia, will be managed by a not-for-profit organization that will be set up in the coming days. There are already many people that have decided to follow the fork, but the people behind it are still welcoming any help offered in the various tasks related to establishing the new distribution."

Comments

Name

[future assassin]

Why do OS developers and other free software creators always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about free software/linuix asks me what free alternatives they could use I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbird, Firefox, Ubuntu, Amarok, Gimp and etc...

Re:Name

[MBGMorden]

Yes because Excel, Powerpoint, Quicken, Maya, and Twitter are so much better . . .

Re:Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do OS developers and other free software creators always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about free software/linuix asks me what free alternatives they could use I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbird, Firefox, Ubuntu, Amarok, Gimp and etc...

Why do car companies and other automobile manufactueres always pick user unfriendly names. When ever someone who knows nothing about motor vehicles asks me what their local car dealers have for sale I get a weird look from them when I tell them about Thunderbirds, Sophias, Imprezas, Miatas, Ram 350s and etc...

Re:Name

[nurb432]

One Word: Trademark.

its really hard these days to come up with useful names these days without infringing on another companies trademark. ESPECIALLY if you want to go international.

Re:Name

[Kjella]

Excel and Powerpoint aren't great, but their main brand was Microsoft Office until they got brand recognition on their own. So:

Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice: 1/2-1/2
MSIE vs Firefox: Internet Explorer, hello? 1-0
Outlook vs Thunderbird: As a hint to the calendaring functionality. 1-0
Windows vs Ubuntu: Not great but what makes windows pop up on your machine. 1-0
Windows Media Player vs Amarok: Media player? 1-0
Photoshop vs Gimp? P-h-o-t-o-shop! 1-0
Quicken vs GnuCash - Agreed, 0-1 to free software here

Total score: 5.5-1.5

Maya is more what I'd consider a professional application at $3500 MSRP, names matter little and doesn't really belong.
Twitter is not so much software as it is a service, not sure exactly what open source to compare against either. What's the OSS variety of Twitter?

Re:Name

[omidaladini]

Because all user friendly .com's are taken. (Well, .org's as well.)

Re:Name

[HiThere]

Interesting, I took Mageia as a back-reference to the magician theme that Mandrake used. Mageia, then, would be (freely adapted) the arts & skills of the Magus.

Sorry it didn't mean anything to you.

The problem, though, isn't when it doesn't mean anything, as much as when it means something you really don't want it to mean, the the Chevy Nova in Spanish speaking countries.
    (No va == "Doesn't go")

Go Mageia!

[12357bd]

Mandrake/Mandriva has been by far, the best KDE oriented linux distro, amd one the most user friendly. I hope Mageia keeps the good things on! Go Mageia!

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

openSUSE is as bloated as Windows XP, but I love that lizard logo. Best linux logo ever.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that a standard openSUSE install is just as small or bloated as a standard Ubuntu install, both increase significantly in size if you want all your favorite applications installed. However, you can create really slim distributions using SUSE Studio, - which is very nice for replacing default OSes on netbooks.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Xtravar]

A common misconception. Mandriva has always supported both KDE and Gnome. And it's always been better than every other distro at providing choice, ease of use, and development packages.

Hopefully if this Mageia thing takes off I can easily switch RPM repositories. Otherwise I suppose my installation is in jeopardy if Mandriva doesn't spring back up to its former glory.

Re:Why not just merge with Fedora or Ubuntu

[Urza9814]

As a former Mandriva user (now on Arch) - there is very much a need for Mandriva to continue. It's the distro I always recommend to newbies, and as far as I know it's the only distro that is both extremely user-friendly and has excellent hardware support. I've seen far too many people give up on Linux because Ubuntu didn't like some piece of hardware. For a newbie's first Linux distro, you need to have at least basic support for _all_ hardware straight from the install. I've never seen Mandriva fail at that...and I've also never seen Ubuntu succeed.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be stupid to try work with Ubuntu as they are not upstream friendly, they do not develope software and they do not care about the community. Mandriva was totally different when compared to Canonical.
Mandriva even is more user friendly at 2010.1 than Ubuntu is with 10.10 (beta). When it comes to handling a hardware, networks or multimedia, Mandriva wins. Only thing where Ubuntu goes around is the amount of packages and that goes in rare ones. Mandriva package repos had almost all what was needed, when just enabled the PLF repos.

Ubuntu is nothing. If ex-Mandriva employees would like to join forces with other distribution using DPKG, then it should be Debian. That is the force what actually keeps Ubuntu alive. Not the Ubuntu community or Canonical itself.

Re:Don't do it... join forces to Ubuntu.

[Bungie]

Mandrake was a very easy to use and user friendly release of RedHat Linux, similar to how Ubuntu is an easier and more friendly version of Debian. Mandrake had a good following back in the day and I remember it being very easy to use.

I think that it would be best if they do their own thing and see what they come up with, not only because their base distros are completely different but because they could bring in new ideas. I'm hoping Mageia will be able to come up with a fresh user friendly Linux that can be offered as an alternative to Ubuntu, for the people who don't like Ubuntu (for whatever the reason). For example, non-techie people sometimes get word about sound and wireless problems with Ubuntu, well hey now you can offer Mageia.