Shareholder Fight Threatens Mandriva SA

LinuxScribe writes "A shareholder fight (French [Google translation]) has put one of the oldest commercial Linux vendors at risk of shuttering on January 16. If Mandriva can't raise 4 million euro in capital by then, it will have no choice but to cease operations."

Comments

Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a good business model, when you can simply download the software for free.

Re:Linux vendor?

[jbonomi]

You're a gay.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a waste of otherwise perfectly good protoplasm. (Both of you knotheads.)

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? Infinity!

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

And you just hit the nail on the head on why there aren't any Linux desktops that can compete with the polish and intuitiveness of OSX and Windows. to bring Linux up to that level would cost tens if not hundreds of millions of dollar because the only way to herd developers is by paying them, otherwise you get what you have now with everyone scratching their own personal itches and then none of the "busted shitters" as i call them get fixed. When folks are doing work for free they are gonna do what they consider fun, nobody wants to be the guy that goes and fixes the busted shitters. just look at how many bugs on canonical is over two years, over three, i think the oldest ones are going on six years now because nobody wants the shitty jobs so they just don't get done.

Well when you are building a consumer OS guess what? there are literally THOUSANDS of truly shitty thankless lousy jobs that need doing. there is bug fixing and QA and regression testing and making sure all the UIs match the OS standard and maintaining your own kernel because God knows when Torvalds will get an itch and break all your drivers and writing all the help files and documentation and I'm sure if i sat here a couple of minutes i could easily name a dozen or two more truly lousy, boring, shitty, thankless jobs that HAVE to be done if you want a world class highly polished OS where everything "Just works" and is so simple and intuitive that Suzy the checkout girl can work it. This is why Apple and MSFT pay a metric shitload of money to developers, because they won't do those shitty jobs for free.

And THAT, that right there, is the problem. Consumers won't buy support contracts so the Red Hat method of making money is right out and why should the OEMs pay you shit when they can just "pull a CentOS" and have the thing for free? Gotta look out for the shareholders you know. i'm sure dell threw a few bucks Canonical's way but I seriously doubt it was even 1/10th what they were spending to build Ubuntu. Has Canonical even made a dime in profit yet? and the much vaunted community won't back you up, just look at how ATI bent over backwards to open up their code, even hiring driver developers to work for the free driver group out of their own pocket only to have every forum covered with posts that read "LOL use Nvidia" or the simple fact that more than a THIRD of the webservers on the entire planet are not using RHEL but, survey says....CentOS, an OS created by a bunch of cheapskates that used to sell an appliance that required RHEL who said "Fuck 'em, we'll just cut out the copyrights and then we won't have to pay shit!" and now of course they don't pay shit, not when compared to the RHEL licenses they used to buy.

How many here have cut a check to canonical? How many have sent money to their favorite distro? despite the BS I'm sure this post will get i bet if you looked at the numbers you are talking maybe 1 in 10,000 if you are lucky. So don't complain when Linux on the desktop goes exactly nowhere, just look at how canonical is now gonna be selling some tablet starting at CES and is spending an increasing amount of their limited resources on the server. its simply because with the FOSS model there isn't any money to be made on consumers and if anyone was to sink the hundreds of millions required to make a world class rock solid picture perfect Linux desktop it wouldn't be five minutes before just like Mint you had a knockoff stealing all the users thanks to being 'free as in beer" but without the work and money required to bring it up to OSX and Win 7 its 'free as in worthless" and despite the modbombing i'm sure to get for pointing out the truth THAT is why Linux isn't gaining shit on the desktop. I mean when MSFT puts out a flaming turd like Vista and the OS with a $1000 barrier to entry gains like mad and the "free as in beer" OS don't gain shit, how big of a cluebat do you have to be hit by to see the FOSS model don't work in this case? Home users don't care about freedom or CLI or DIY they care about "its just works and keeps working and is easy to use" and I'm sorry but Linux is still a long way from that friends and I don't see it getting any better, if anything all the itch scratching by the DE devs has made it worse.

Re:Linux vendor?

[hcs_$reboot]

Come on - how this post can be modded down "troll"? This is a constructive opinion on the Linux business model.
Should be at least "interesting". In other words, where are my mod points :-(

Re:Linux vendor?

[Lisias]

Pleade MOD parent up. ABUSIVE MODERATION detected.

Re:Linux vendor?

[msobkow]

And you just hit the nail on the head on why there aren't any Linux desktops that can compete with the polish and intuitiveness of OSX and Windows.

And that's the fundamental flaw of your whole argument. Gnome 2 and KDE 3 are DIFFERENT, but they are DEFINITELY "polished" and very usable, even if you don't PERSONALLY like them. To claim otherwise is such biased claptrap it's sickening.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Pieroxy]

Of course, but we're not talking about Gnome or KDE here, but about Linux. AFAIK, Gnome is not yet an OS.

Ah, and try to launch ghostview in a KDE or Gnome envionment and watch everyone struggle to understand how you're supposed to scroll. Or an xterm. That's where Linux falls short. All this shit shouldn't even be in the repos. But then the whole platform would be worthless becauss there would be so many apps missing.

Do you see the catch 22 there?

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Windows is not polished. Not even a tiny bit. Have you ever seen an iPad or any Android cellphone? After looking at these and comparing them to Windows, one cannot but think M$ alternatives are generations behind.

I work with Vista/W7 and it's a huge pain in my two jewels. It simply does not work. I had to install an utility to make file copies (teracopy), because the default mechanism was so braindamaged that even Suzy complained it took ages to copy a jpeg.

Another Suzy had a computer at home and told me she told she simply didn't use it at home because it was somewhat broken and she just wanted to chill off (a computer at home is supposed to be very fun, but not when it run like molasses). After some months, she arranged for a friend to fix "the computer" by reinstalling the software. How on earth one can call "this just works"?

Compare that to my Linux experience where hardware (like a disk or memory) has really to be flawed to mess things up. Every time I mention that, someone says Linux has complex commands to type at xterm; well, what about the many Windows articles teaching how to regedit accumulated trash or kill some system process to be able to rename a file?

Second, nobody in his/her sound mind would install Windows. It's way too complicated -- for a techie!!! Linux installs much more easily. If PCs came with Linux from factory and some suggested installing Windows, it would be met either with mockery or rage... No, Windows simply is neither polished nor easy.

The problem lies not in Linux, but in distros: some, like Mandriva, have an impressively high technical level coupled with a very moronic view of management. Compare that to M$, which is very bad technically, but is so good at management it can influence and control external entities like PC makers, standard organizations and even governments.

If Mandriva (or any other distro) wants success they need to play by the M$ book (at least enough well to thrive or even go further and become evil, too) or redefine success -- for instance doing like Libreoffice or Mageia, which are not after the money for the money. Sometimes, a good compromise is attained, ass in the Mozilla case.

A last point, OS can and do make money when you find some way to stick them to the hardware (like Apple does with its own hardware and making sure no one else can make it, or M$ with its PC maker tight control via hardware compatibility list).

Mandriva, and any other distro, if they want to survive need to learn how to serve all users, including those which just want the computer as a tool; they need to unite to fight common enemies (M$ or Apple); they need to be better managed (4 million euros for a distro? wtf? this is so crazy it almost works as an epitaph!)

I must say I'm very impressed with Mandriva since many years ago (about 10, I suppose). Not only for the technical prowess, but also for the attention to detail, balance in providing a thoroughly complete desktop environment (I like to think they rounded some KDE corners with their drak* tools) and even security aspects.

It's the distro I'd recommend to anyone.

But then I myself posted lots and lots of business suggestions and ideas to them thru the years. Their management must be smarter and work less. One's not going to cross a wall by beating one's head into it, no matter how hard one tries.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what? I've been a rabid Debian fan for (holy crap, I'm old) 10 years now. In fact, I own and administer several hundred Debian servers, and I frequently use a Gnome desktop. I also use a Macbook. After reading the GP's entire post, I have to say he's actually mostly right. Why are you so narrow-minded that you didn't bother to read and address the entire post?

Re:Linux vendor?

[Registered Coward v2]

And you just hit the nail on the head on why there aren't any Linux desktops that can compete with the polish and intuitiveness of OSX and Windows.

And that's the fundamental flaw of your whole argument. Gnome 2 and KDE 3 are DIFFERENT, but they are DEFINITELY "polished" and very usable, even if you don't PERSONALLY like them. To claim otherwise is such biased claptrap it's sickening.

I think you missed his point - successful desktop OS are successful because they just work - Linux is not there yet; and there is very little interest in fixing things that keep that from happening. Linux is very much a hobbyist OS for people who ilk ego tinker - but most computer users don't ant to tinker, or as the OP put it:

Home users don't care about freedom or CLI or DIY they care about "its just works and keeps working and is easy to use"

Ad to that there is no money in making it just work - why should a Dell, for example, turn it into a viable alternative when any competitor can take their work for free? And so Linux languishes on the desktop; and finds its niche in areas where companies can make money.

I'd add to his argument that there is no "killer app" for Linux that makes switching from WIN/OSX necessary. Much of the effort goes to building free "me too" apps to replicate apps on those platforms., and in many cases those same me too apps are available for them, so why bother switching?

Re:Linux vendor?

[unixisc]

The only way any Linux distro would be successful is if a computer manufacturer took it, built a set of hardware just for it, and then sold that entire solution as a system, w/ whatever software the customer wanted. Price everything appropriately - don't charge $500 or $800 or $250 per software, but don't charge $0 either. Offering package suites, where one can get the OS for, say, $50, or Libre Office for $40, and so on. That way, every bit of software is paid for, but is known to work, since it comes pre-installed on the computer w/ all known features enabled.

That way, a customer of something can be guaranteed that something works - something that none of the licenses would ever assure one. Truly speaking, one of the major reasons that all the Linuxes & BSDs are a bust is that they are all competing w/ Windows on the same platform. It would be different if someone like Sun was selling it on their SparcStations. Really, their window of opporunity existed in the 90s, when MS was struggling to get Windows 95 out,, and had the Linuxes or BSDs been as usable as today, they'd have captured a large portion of the market. But by the time they (and Apple) got their act together, Microsoft had captured a huge portion of the market. But anyone who builds PCs based on things like ARM, or Loongson can still make a credible case for the unixes, provided they do what's been suggested above and in the parent post.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

And Linux itself does not provide *any* UI. Polished and intuitive or not. So you, Sir, are obviously talking about something that does not even exist. Catch 22, indeed.

Re:Linux vendor?

[gomiam]

I think you missed his point - successful desktop OS are successful because they just work - Linux is not there yet

Funnily enough, I think he didn't miss the point. The "Linux is not there yet" poster compares later in the thread the whole Windows software package with just the Linux kernel (because Gnome 2/3 aren't OSes by themselves). Never mind that thousands of public administration and education computers in Spain run just a modified Debian (Linex -which is possibly going to disappear-, Guadalinex, Molinux) with no real problems.

And the OEM argument is flawed too: Dell offers laptops with Linux (not all over the world, mind you) and so do many other OEMs. Is that enough "it just works" for you?

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my laptop when i click on a .ps file, some application called "okular" opens. It has a UI similar to the Adobe Reader. It has a working scrollbar on the right. The mouse wheel also works.

About xterms: last time I used one was like ten years ago. Since then I have used Konsole, which seems acceptable to me.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

for people who ilk ego tinker

Well that sure sounds smart! To smart for me. Anyone else have a clue what this buttbrain is talking about?

Re:Linux vendor?

[jbengt]

I assume he seriously mis-typed "like to tinker" and maybe let an ignorant automatic spelling correction turn his typos into random words.

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

Sorry you and the other poster got modded down friend, but I intended and expected to be modbombed as i call it like I see it and truth rarely follows groupthink. The simple fact that so many here refuse to accept (Notice how many said "Windows and OSX isn't polished" which if that isn't koolaid chugging I don't know what is) is that the level of integration you are talking with Windows and OSX, where EVERYTHING follows strict conventions, like scrollbar goes here and icons must be like so and keyboards shortcuts should be thus, all of that COSTS MONEY because without it? You get what you have now which is rampant itch scratching. Just look at your average "consumer friendly" Linux like Mint or PCLOS. You have apps that follow the Mac way, some follow the Windows way, some go for the old school UNIX methods of doing things. There is NO consistency there AT ALL. Why is that? Its because the devs are working for free and frankly don't give a fuck about jumping through some hoop if they don't want to and because they aren't getting paid you can take it or leave it friend, because they are just scratching an itch, not like they can be fired for not following the rules.

Then you have the horrible bugs and driver breaking. Just look at the Canonical bugtracker where many bugs are measured in YEARS without being fixed. Some have thousands of complaints yet they sit, why? no payments to devs mean they don't want to do shit works for free, its simple human nature. if i'm gonna give up my own free time I'm gonna be doing something FUN and coding is fun, bug fixing? Not fun, not even a little fun, in fact it sucks ass. I mean when Dell, one of the biggest OEMs on the entire planet, has to run their own repos because if they don't the whole thing shits itself and dies? You got serious problems friend. Why does it do that? Why would the bog standard boring ass hardware that Dell uses, the same Realtek and Intel and ATI and Nvidia chips that are in more than 85% of the computers on the planet still break, even though these are well known hardware? Its simple because the rampant itch scratching of the devs from Torvalds on down simply are worried about scratching their own little itches instead of worrying about the big picture and what their changes do to the ecosystem. Go to ANY forum after a release and see how many "Update foo broke my drivers!" posts you'll find. Just for the hell of it i tried counting on the Ubuntu forum after the last release and I quit at over 700 and there were literally page after page I didn't bother counting. Now realize for every ONE complaint you probably have a couple of hundred that just got frustrated and either went somewhere else or gave up completely and went to Windows or OSX. One of the long time posters on LinuxInsider has been a Linux server admin for over a decade and she recently gave up and is looking at either BSD or Mac, why? because the latest apt-dist-upgrade wiped out her email and left her with a broken machine. Data loss in this stage of the game is unacceptable people!

What I'm trying to get at folks is the FOSS model works in SOME cases but not ALL cases and trying to fit the FOSS model into all cases is a giant FAIL and consumers are one of those fail cases. like I said consumers won't buy support contracts, so how do you make the hundreds of millions required to pay the devs to get the busted shitters fixed? you don't which is why we have the mess we have. mark my words in less than 5 years Canonical will be OUT of the desktops biz because they can't keep losing money and Shuttleworth made it clear there won't be any more checks. that's why at CES there is gonna be an UbuntuTablet and you see more and more spent on Ubuntu Server and by extension less on Ubuntu desktop. Everyone is gonna have to face the fact that the tin cup model simply doesn't provide the millions in steady income required to build a world class desktop and if you want to compete with Apple and MSFT

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

Funny you should mention dell because they are actually a poster child for how broken Linux is a consumer platform is because Dell have to run their own repos just to keep there teeny tiny subset of hardware from being shat on when the devs scratch their itches. I will bet my very last dollar if Dell will publish their numbers (which they won't BTW, I even asked them out of curiosity and they won't give you the numbers) that Dell is LOSING money on Ubuntu because the costs of keeping a dev team to do nothing but maintain their own repo is costing more than they are making on the machines. Do you propose that ALL the OEMs lose money hand over fist to support you? Did you know that ASUS, the ones that started the whole Linux on tiny machines aka netbook craze has given up on Linux and no longer sells any Linux machines? or that a decade old Windows stomped Linux on netbooks or that even canonical admitted that returns were FOUR TIMES higher than Windows? do you think ALL of these people are lying? That they "just don't git it"?

Its really simple friend, to get the level of polish required to make Linux work on the desktop, where suzy the checkout girl won't have to learn bash or how to navigate a CLI when things break, where frankly things WON'T break in the first place, is gonna cost north of a hundred million easy and the FOSS model simply won't allow you to make that amount in the consumer market. Look at canonical, they haven't made a single cent, not one penny, on the desktop. if you figure in how much shuttleworth sunk in they have lost millions without a single dime of ROI, you think that is sustainable? in fact I'd bet my last buck that canonical will be out of desktops in less than 5 years, probably less than 3, simply because they won't be able to generate the operating capital. RMS may think you can have a utopia where everyone works for free towards the common good but that is a fallacy because we human like doing fun jobs and HATE doing shitty jobs and in the FOSS model the busted shitters don't get fixed. The FOSS model works in business because business is used to buying support contracts and they make money off their machines so spending money to make money is fine by them. the consumer market simply doesn't work like that and without the steady income you can't herd the devs and if you don't herd the devs you get what you have now, with bugs measured in years, updates that fix one thing and break three, hell I have Windows units out in the field that have been running since 2002 on a single install. can you imagine trying to update a Linux desktop from 2002 to current and still have it functional on the other end? it won't happen friend, hell take a distro disc from just 3 years ago and apt-dist-upgrade to current and watch things fall apart.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Rick17JJ]

I have both a Linux computer and a Windows XP computer at home and, for me, they both seem quite polished and easy to use. I have been using both for many years, so by now I am equally comfortable using either Linux or Windows. I see advantages and disadvantages to using either operating system.

Some past versions of Linux did have a few noticeable bugs or other problems. But, Kubuntu 10.04 seems to be working quite well on this computer.

Kubuntu uses KDE instead of Gnome, IceWM, Enlightenment, or one of the other free desktop environments available for Linux.

Like most Linux users, I have never needed to use a virus scanner. I do not know how a new computer user would think Linux and Windows compare. But, I do know of several older people seem to have trouble keeping their Windows computers working properly.

In some ways, installing, upgrading, and installing security updates is now easier with Linux than Windows. After downloading and installing the Synaptic package manager, I had a simple point-and-click tool to install, uninstall, and upgrade all of the software. That is unlike my Windows XP computer, where Windows updates itself automatically, but it is a constant struggle to keep everything else updated. I also like how it is safe and easy to download whatever free software I want from the official Kubuntu repositories.

Synaptic is a GUI front end for the APT, which is a command line tool. The Synaptic Package manager and official repositories are used on some versions of Linux such as Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu and PCLinuxOS. Other versions of Linux do it differently.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Registered Coward v2]

I assume he seriously mis-typed "like to tinker" and maybe let an ignorant automatic spelling correction turn his typos into random words.

Hell yeah. I get paid for random words so why not?

Re:Linux vendor?

[gomiam]

Its really simple friend, to get the level of polish required to make Linux work on the desktop, where suzy the checkout girl won't have to learn bash or how to navigate a CLI when things break, where frankly things WON'T break in the first place, is gonna cost north of a hundred million easy

It's even simpler. Kids from 6 years old up, hospital workers, administration workers are using Linux in Spain by the thousands and they have no problems. Your Suzy checkout girl doesn't _want_ to change from what she knows. I can understand that, even if I find it annoying.

And if you need over a hundred million (I'll assume dollars) to get that "polish" I hope you don't work as a programmer. It's being done once and again for much less.

Re:Linux vendor?

[arisvega]

Gnome 2 and KDE 3 are DIFFERENT, but they are DEFINITELY "polished" and very usable, even if you don't PERSONALLY like them.

You are wasting your breath- just take a look at his other posts.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, and try to launch Ghostview in a KDE or Gnome envionment and watch everyone struggle to understand how you're supposed to scroll.

Uh... what?

Okay, my turn: Try and start CDisplay in a Windows 2008 environment and watch people struggle to find the ribbon bar! Noooo!

Or hand Windows to an OSX user and see them struggle with how they have program icons rather than programs... they'll obviously never manage to uninstall anything! Noooo!

Or perhaps a better analogy: Take Windows 2k8, lock the desktop and start menu and explorer down so they cannot be used or altered, and force people to use only cmd and Total Commander! Because this is a setup about equally prevalent as having ghostview as the only or even just as the default PDF/PS viewer for KDE or GNOME...

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't make sense to me.

1) Linux *is* successful, look at Redhat
2) Linux users are typically not put off by spending 30 minutes to install Ubuntu.
3) Get a PC kit from newegg for $250, Linux will work on it, always does.
4) Linux users tend to be fussy about what version of Linux, which DE, and how their HDD is partitioned, and stuff like that. A standardized pre-installed Linux would not be welcome by most Linux users.
5) PC vendors do not see a big enough market.
6) MS would go ballistic, and force PC to not sell Linux, with pricing and the like.
7) Lots of companies have already tried to do this.

All JMHO, of course.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Kjella]

Why would the bog standard boring ass hardware that Dell uses, the same Realtek and Intel and ATI and Nvidia chips that are in more than 85% of the computers on the planet still break, even though these are well known hardware? Its simple because the rampant itch scratching of the devs from Torvalds on down simply are worried about scratching their own little itches instead of worrying about the big picture and what their changes do to the ecosystem. Go to ANY forum after a release and see how many "Update foo broke my drivers!" posts you'll find.

If you mean "Torvalds on down" as the people working on the kernel, you're barking up the wrong tree. It is very rare that any serious regression slips by on that level. Most of the problems Ubuntu have had are because of the poorly tested software stack they put on top, like for example PulseAudio or NetworkManager, that broken Bluetooth stack and so on. Of course it makes little difference to the end user, but there's nothing the kernel can do if it never actually sends the audio to the hardware or goes in an infinite loop, UI settings are ignored or set wrong or it's a user space driver that is borked. In fact, the problem is that they don't have a Torvalds who give them the hairdryer treatment when they generate crap and break things that used to be working, because they don't report to him at all. I do agree that the integration tests are lacking, there's not nearly enough testing all the way from UI to hardware doing what it should. But the lowest part of that stack that Linus manages is the one that gives the least grounds for concern.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a Windows Vista disk and upgrade to Win7... and holy hell things will fall apart if you choose the right hardware suite. Alternatively, I run >300 linux boxes at work and 8 at home. My wife has been a happy linux user since 2002... It's not as bad as you make it seem, nor are the others as good as you would believe... A buddy just had a Mac crap and die on an upgrade over the harddisk. He took it to the Genius bar and they imaged his drive charged him for a new one (with some sort of discount) and move his data over. The laptop is not more than 3 yrs old, as I have only known him for 2.5yrs.

captcha: superior... nix has it.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Yuioup]

Excellent rant! You sir have articulated exactly why I think that Linux on the desktop will never succeed. This deserves to be posted on Reddit, Hacker News, etc...

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

I mentioned Linus not because i think the man is doing a bad job, although I do disagree on the subject of an ABI because the rest of the OSes have had them for nearly a decade and their drivers don't break nearly as often, no why I mention Torvalds is if I had put in that many years and had MY name attached to something they keep royally fucking up? Man I would be PISSED with a capital P!

Lets face it if Linus was to have a royal shitfit, put his foot down and say "Look, I'm REALLY tired of you taking my hard work and pissing on it, okay? So here is how its gonna be" and made it damned clear that there were gonna be standards that everyone could agree on and get behind and all those that don't follow the standards don't get diddly shit from the community? People WOULD rally behind the man. RMS comes off as too much of a religious zealot, what with his refusing interviews unless you speak "GNUSpeak" and all, but Torvalds is well respected, he's damned smart, he's got clout.

I truly believe that many of the Linux community are tired of the endless bullshit just as I am. I figured when i first started trying Linux in 04 we'd have penguins on boxes and little Tux stickers on desktops and laptops in the Wally World by now, but instead if anything things have gone backward thanks to shit like PulseAudio and lousy testing and a myriad of dick waving by devs and everyone just acting like 4 year olds. I bet if Torvalds would just put his foot down, get together with some of those superbrains that work with him, and announce some solid steps to take things forward and fix a lot of the shit? the community would be more than happy to support the man, that's all I'm saying.

In the end the buck has to stop somewhere and whether he likes it or not Torvalds is the one that started the whole ecosystem. If he would stand up like Jobs did at Apple and not be afraid to kick some butts i bet things would get a LOT better a LOT quicker, the community just needs someone they can rally behind with some good solid ideas and I bet Linus could be that man, what do you think?

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

Thanks. Notice how many insults and attacks on me personally i got? One pretty much accuses me of being some paid astroturfer which if so i'm getting screwed because I haven't seen a single check yet, others actually have the nerve to say Windows isn't polished and neither is OSX (which if that ain't some SERIOUS koolaid chugging i don't know what is) and then others try to use what i call the "move the goalposts and I win!" argument by bringing up things that don't have shit to do with the subject, like Red Hat which i had already covered and which is a SERVER not DESKTOP company, or how Spain is MANDATING Linux which if you tell someone "Use this or enjoy your pink slip" I don't really consider that a fair assessment, do you?

But anyone who has read my past postings know I speak for ONE person and ONE person alone, and that is the CONSUMER. It is the consumer who I work for 6 days a week, its the consumer that I constantly strive to make things easier and better for, its the consumer in the end that puts bread in my children's mouths and a roof over our heads and its the consumer whom the Linux community as a whole gives a Goatse to just as the posts above (or even worse, last critical of Linux posting I did i was modbombed for two weeks and had a psycho follow me around all over the net just so he could post "Die you fat fucker die" over and over) but in the end truth is truth.

Let me end with this final example of how the community just "doesn't get it" when it comes to consumers. I use a test to see if a distro has finally made a usable version called "is it safe?" and it goes like this: Take whatever distro you want to test, get a version from THREE years ago (this is key, you'll see why in a minute) and then if you need CLI to set it up go ahead since you are the BUILDER not the USER at this point. Now to simulate what my customer would go through let the OS update through whatever GUI mechanism it uses. Try it, see what happened? OS fall down and go BOOM! Real hard. Now before someone says "You can't do that with Windows!" I point out that that is like comparing apples to Apple pie as windows has a MINIMUM of 7 years of support, usually longer. Windows 7 will be supported until July 2020, show me ANY Linux that will continue to get updates for THAT long. you can't so there you go why you have to upgrade. Now the last one i tried this with took a big shit on the wireless, so I did what they tell you to do and went to the forums. What i got was a page and a half mess of CLI bullshit that ME the consumer was supposed to "tweak" because its made for rev A firmware g and I had Rev d firmware F. So I said "Humor me for a minute, you guys are like linux gurus right? pretend i'm Suzy the checkout girl, hold my hand and walk me through the GUI to fix this problem" and you know what happened? They tried one twist after another before someone finally came on and said "Uhhhh..you can't do that with the GUI".

and THAT, that right there, is the problem with Linux in a nutshell. without long term support you HAVE to upgrade, upgrade shits on drivers, and no GUI exists to find driver or rollback drivers when things go wrong. Windows has had those two features for a decade, WTF? I was actually told by one snooty community member "Stop thinking like Windows, Linux can run forever without any updates so just disable them"? Seriously if THAT level of koolaid drinking is considered acceptable, because not a single person said "running old unpatched OSes and software is probably not a good idea" that just proves the level of disconnect there is in the community. One even told me I swear to God i just wished i'd have bookmarked it, that I should "teach my users to embrace the POWER of CLI" like it was the God damned force. I don't know why i still bother, maybe because i am old enough to remember when there was GEM and Amiga and DOS and having competition was good. But here it is 2012 already, the off lease XP boxes are starting to pile up, and here I am having to scramble for extra RAM sticks and hoping

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not know how a new computer user would think Linux and Windows compare. But, I do know of several older people seem to have trouble keeping their Windows computers working properly.

I'd like to add to that.

I got my mother and my sister to change over from Windows on their computers to using Linux. At first, I think they were just giving in to what they saw as my Linux "fan"-ness, but now, after some time with Linux, they have both said to me on several occasions how they now love their computers that "just work" for them and are so glad that they need to ask me for help to fix problems so much less often (like almost never now, versus very frequently with Windows). They've gone from frustrated computer users to people who enjoy using their machines to do what they need to do.

So much for the "polish" and "just works" qualities of Windows and the lack of it in Linux that other posters have spoken of! It seems to me that despite all the seemingly reasonable explanations as to why Windows succeeds and Linux fails in this department, things actually turn out the other way around. What's the seemingly reasonable explanation for that?

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes - and both Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were recently thrown out the window in favor of crappy alpha/beta quality replacements such as Gnome 3 and KDE 4.

Re:Linux vendor?

[unixisc]

Its really simple friend, to get the level of polish required to make Linux work on the desktop, where suzy the checkout girl won't have to learn bash or how to navigate a CLI when things break, where frankly things WON'T break in the first place, is gonna cost north of a hundred million easy and the FOSS model simply won't allow you to make that amount in the consumer market. Look at canonical, they haven't made a single cent, not one penny, on the desktop. if you figure in how much shuttleworth sunk in they have lost millions without a single dime of ROI, you think that is sustainable? in fact I'd bet my last buck that canonical will be out of desktops in less than 5 years, probably less than 3, simply because they won't be able to generate the operating capital. RMS may think you can have a utopia where everyone works for free towards the common good but that is a fallacy because we human like doing fun jobs and HATE doing shitty jobs and in the FOSS model the busted shitters don't get fixed. The FOSS model works in business because business is used to buying support contracts and they make money off their machines so spending money to make money is fine by them. the consumer market simply doesn't work like that and without the steady income you can't herd the devs and if you don't herd the devs you get what you have now, with bugs measured in years, updates that fix one thing and break three, hell I have Windows units out in the field that have been running since 2002 on a single install. can you imagine trying to update a Linux desktop from 2002 to current and still have it functional on the other end? it won't happen friend, hell take a distro disc from just 3 years ago and apt-dist-upgrade to current and watch things fall apart.

I don't doubt you, but if Canonical decides to go into either servers or tablets, it's over. In tablets, how many are going to prefer them even to Microsoft, let alone Google or Apple? And if they are going into servers, who in their right mind is going to prefer them to Debian (which is the same and where CLI is more commonly understood than GUI) if they're on Linux? And that's not even counting those who'd either use RHEL/Centos if they are non-Debian Linux, or either OpenBSD or FreeBSD.

On your other point, one can still type 'cmd' in the search box just above the Start button, which will kick up a CLI. In other words, the search box is like a Run box when it comes to kicking up a CLI session (I'm not sure whether it works that way if I were to type Wordpad in the box - whether it would kick up a Wordpad session). But your point is well taken.

Incidentally, did you get a chance to test PC-BSD or FreeBSD on whether it passes the regression testing that you described above? PC-BSD in particular - since both FreeBSD and OpenBSD are geared towards servers.

Re:Linux vendor?

[unixisc]

Polish doesn't mean glossy. It means that if something worked w/ previous versions of a distro, it should work w/ the current one as well, unless there has been some major changes in the OS, like the move from Windows ME to XP, or from win32 to win64.

With Linux, here are a bunch of problems which is what's being alluded to when one talks of polish:

• No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A sets up networking using these utilities, outputting certain settings residing in certain file system locations, distro B sets up everything differently. This drives most users mad.
• No unified installer across all distros. Consider RPM, deb, portage, tar.gz, sources, etc. It adds a cost for software development.
• Many distros' repositories do not contain all available open source software. User should never be bothered with using ./configure && make && make installer. It should be possible to install any software by downloading a package and double clicking it (yes, like in Windows, but probably prompting for user/administrator password).
• Applications development is a major PITA. Different distros can use a) different libraries versions b) different compiler flags c) different compilers. This leads to an exponential escalation of number of problems.
• Linux is a hell for ISP/ISV support personnel. Within an organization you can force a single distro on anyone, that cannot be accomplished when your clients have freedom to choose.

And that's not even taking into account the minimal settings Gnome & KDE can configure, sending people to the /etc directory. And like the first bullet above pointed out, even this is not consistent b/w different Linux distros. In this aspect, BSD is better.

This is only a part of what needs to be done to ensure that something like Linux (or BSD) has enough polish that anyone can use it. Apple has proven that it can be done w/ BSD.

Re:Linux vendor?

[gomiam]

No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A sets up networking using these utilities, outputting certain settings residing in certain file system locations, distro B sets up everything differently. This drives most users mad.

Do most users use several distributions at the same time? Because it is the same problem as dealing with Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7, or MacOS 9 and X, mind you. It is a problem we technical users have to deal with, not your standard user who, by the way, ends up doing the same thing everybody does: ask about their particular version of Windows and get particular answers about that version. Well, I'm fibbing a bit: the standard user often doesn't even know what Windows version is installed. I have lost count of the times I have read at a forum or heard/asked in real life: "what Windows version do you have" only to get a randomish answer like Windows 2003 (because they have Office 2003 installed) or Office 7 (because they have Windows 7 installed).

No unified installer across all distros. Consider RPM, deb, portage, tar.gz, sources, etc. It adds a cost for software development.

Does it? And having to install extra microsoft packages that don't come bundled with the software doesn't? (I'm looking at you, MSXML 6 and you too, .NET version X). No, Windows does have similar problems, and developers have to make do the same way. The main difference is you will probably only need to set up a compile chain for the formats you want to support, which is mostly a one time cost (and a cheap one at that).

Many distros' repositories do not contain all available open source software. User should never be bothered with using ./configure && make && make installer. It should be possible to install any software by downloading a package and double clicking it (yes, like in Windows, but probably prompting for user/administrator password).

First of all: don't use them then. I'm not going to use Dyne:bolic for my everyday needs because it is a multimedia production oriented distribution. And most distributions have a way to ask for those packages to be included. No, you probably won't have it available today, but you still have a chance. Good luck with Agfa (no, we don't even have the communication protocol documents for that scanner any more), ATI/AMD (no, we don't have that card in our generic driver because it is a laptop one and the OEM didn't want us to put it in) and many others.

Applications development is a major PITA. Different distros can use a) different libraries versions b) different compiler flags c) different compilers. This leads to an exponential escalation of number of problems.

So do different versions of Windows. Remember the "compatibility modes"? Windows 7 has even a "Vista compatibility mode". Now how is that for ease of application development? Besides, at Linux you can at least usually have different library versions side by side. Good luck with that in Linux.

Linux is a hell for ISP/ISV support personnel. Within an organization you can force a single distro on anyone, that cannot be accomplished when your clients have freedom to choose.

Ha! Come back when you have spent some time supporting five Windows versions at the same time. See if you can "force" your users to use just one version unless you live in the most tightly controlled organization.

You can't have different versions of the same system and have polish. It is a chimera, an utopic ideal that doesn't hold up to the harsh light of reality. You can have polish on a version (e.g., Windows 7 or Ubuntu 11.10) but you just _can't_ have it all over the place. You don't have it with Windows, you don't have it with Linux, you don't have it with MacOS and I highly doubt you can have it with BSDs eithe

Re:Linux vendor?

[hairyfeet]

Not had a chance on the BSD yet, I went nuts on the Steam sale and blew through 100Gb+ and for some reason the ISP didn't ding me so i'm trying to be nice and not suck bandwidth like a drunk at a free bar for a little while. as soon as i get this load of off lease out of here my supplier is supposed to bring in a nice selection of lappys and desktops so i'll probably grab one of each to just give it a more fair shake. As for Ubuntu, you don't know? look up "Ubuntu One" and "Ubuntu CES" to see for yourself. Ubuntu One is a rebadged Amazon cloud with Ubuntu server as a frontend and at CES they are gonna show their Ubuntu tablet which i'm sure is just some CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crapola) with again Ubuntu frontend. I also agree that why anybody would actually WANT this is beyond me, Ubuntu is for noobs and noobs don't run cloud servers and on tablets Android has the low locked up and Apple the high and NOBODY likes Unity so that has the stench of fail on it.

As for typing CMD in the search box, who does that? The justification MSFT is using for getting rid of the start menu in win 8 (Which i think smells like fail, but i heard there is a simple reg trick that turns it into Win 7 with a square start button so that might save it) is thanks to their default help MSFT make Windows better button being checked since Vista they have a huge DB of what people actually do with their systems and both CMD and start>run didn't even end up in the top 20 use cases. They found that as far as windows explorer and the rest of windows goes you could serve more than 90% of the users with just a handful of basics like copy/paste/move/delete. that's it, that's what they do, they just use those commands along with drag and drop. And while I agree that having it is useful for a geek I would argue that it really isn't for the average user who simply won't know the commands and in Linux it has become a crutch. As i posted in another reply when I asked for the forum guys to pretend i'm just Suzy the new user and hand hold me through the GUI they simply couldn't do it because there wasn't a GUI that would let me fix the problem.

In the end I'd say Linux is around 70%-80% there but the problem is to get it the last 20%-30% is gonna be nothing but shitwork and without pay the shitwork just don't get done. You have bugs measured in years on the canonical bug tracker and that is with Canonical losing millions just to get to where they are. they are using this Ubuntu One and UbuntuTab as a Hail Mary to try to get enough ROI to stay afloat and my guess is it'll fail and they'll go tits up. Ultimately the FOSS model works in some cases but not ALL cases and i'd argue from what we've seen consumer desktop is one of the fails. You simply have to have millions spent on polish but without a way to recoup that investment the money won't get spent and without cash incentives trying to herd devs is like herding cats.

Re:Linux vendor?

[KermitJunior]

I think Steve Jobs beat you to that idea... it's called OS X.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Applications development is a major PITA. Different distros can use a) different libraries versions b) different compiler flags c) different compilers. This leads to an exponential escalation of number of problems.

So do different versions of Windows. Remember the "compatibility modes"? Windows 7 has even a "Vista compatibility mode". Now how is that for ease of application development? Besides, at Linux you can at least usually have different library versions side by side. Good luck with that in Linux.

Generally, if you've been following MS application development guidelines, your applications will run unmodified on newer Windows operating systems. There are cases where an API function has been deprecated or where the argument semantics have changed, but that is rare. The usual problem is that some developers have persisted in doing very stupid things (like writing to configuration files in the application's own directory), and then bitch and moan when their app fails on Win7, even though MS has discouraged the practice since at least Win2000. I've built apps for Win2000 that still run on Win7; it's not that hard.

As for different libraries, that's not often a problem on Windows. DLL Hell was usually caused by somebody's bad installer screwing up system DLLs back before WFP appeared. Less often, an MS patch would cause such problems, even on more recent Windows systems (and SxS hasn't been without problems).

MS compilers are not really tied to an OS version. MSVC compiler flags matter only in the context of your application and/or third-party libraries - the OS version generally has nothing to do with it.

Ideally, your applications shouldn't need different versions of system libraries and common MS redistributables than what's on the system, and most applications don't. But Win2000 allowed it (as a sort of kludge) and SxS provides an obscure yet fairly robust solution to that problem.

Ha! Come back when you have spent some time supporting five Windows versions at the same time. See if you can "force" your users to use just one version unless you live in the most tightly controlled organization.

Around here, that's just about every larger small business through mid-sized business. Most of them still have WinXP systems and Win7 systems, along with the occasional WinVista and even Win2000 system, plus typically two versions of Windows Server.

- T

Re:Linux vendor?

[__aasdno7518]

In the end the buck has to stop somewhere and whether he likes it or not Torvalds is the one that started the whole ecosystem. If he would stand up like Jobs did at Apple and not be afraid to kick some butts i bet things would get a LOT better a LOT quicker, the community just needs someone they can rally behind with some good solid ideas and I bet Linus could be that man, what do you think?

I agree. I'd really be pleased if you would send him this rant. I've used Linux for years and the things you have noticed have been harped about in forums for years. I've complained about this stuff for years..As have others..But you are right,it's never going to be fixed in my way of thinking. And that infernal itch scratching and reinventing the wheel over and over and over drives me bloody whack o! And some of the "improvements" make things worse..I have one bug that has followed me from Feisty Fawn to Maverick Meerkat.. The change in the lasso in the Gimp is an example of an itch that did not need to be scratched. And DE looking like cell phones..Holy moley,don't get me started....

Re:Linux vendor?

[__aasdno7518]

r because even after all these years the community STILL tries to jam consumers into the geek mold and simply won't accept that grandma isn't gonna learn C programming and Suzy isn't gonna be reading Man Pages in the bathtub. Its fricking nuts!

I agree. On a Linux forum this chap helps me out from time to time...He is determined I'm going to learn the command line,do everything (including playing music and surfing the net) from the command line and not use a mouse. For months I've told him it ain't goanna happen...Yet he keeps trying to wear me down. People need to understand not everyone want to be a geek..And yeah, xyz method may be peachy keen for you,but for the love of Pete,stop trying to ram your way of doing things down everyone's throat.

Re:Linux vendor?

[Lisias]

Again! :-)

Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

An existing investor wants to make sure that his investment isn't marginalized through accepting additional investment at unfavorable terms, in turn reducing their effective ownership over Mandriva.
 
  can you blame them?

Re:Dilution sucks!

[postmortem]

Something is better than nothing. Ask old GM shareholders.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

And now he can own 100% of nothing, all to himself. Ain't he proud!

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps he could put his money into something worthwhile.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[noh8rz2]

Something is better than nothing.

False choice, mon frere. Investors are hoping for a negotiated solution that will be better than both "something" and "nothing". More power to them. to be fair, this isn't exactly high stakes. Some business drama over a third tier Linux distro that most people have never heard of. If the company goes under then somebody else will just run with the source code, just like Mandriva was born from mandrake code.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[msobkow]

Show me the law in any nation that states you have the Freedom to Unlimited Profit.

One investor's greedy dog-in-a-manger attitude is KILLING A COMPANY and you DEFEND that behaviour?

Apparently Americans aren't the only ones who've let greed overcome sanity.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[msobkow]

Typo: Right to Unlimited Profit.

Show me where any nation's laws mandate that corporations seek profit before compliance with their version of a Constitution, Charter of Rights, and existing law.

Show me where a nation's laws guarantee shareholders be "compensated" before basic operational and growth funding are covered.

Explain to me the rational for hiring executives who extort MILLIONS in compensation before they even start working for the company. This is someone you think has the company's best interests at heart? Are you SERIOUS?

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the logical plan :
Linlux, old investor, block the whole nagociation ( because he is 40% of something like that ).
New investor ( russian guy ), has no choice but to buy the shares so Linlux is no longer blocking, or the company die.

Old investor get out of Mandriva, because he doesn't belive in it ( especially after putting several millions in it ). New investor who did a real great deal ( since he didn't have to pay for debt, and so got everything really cheaply ) will have to finally pay more for the company.

The real question is "why do russian still pay for mandriva SA" since there is like 10 to 15 people in France. The whole product is free and can be forked without much problem ( see what Mageia did, and they add less ressources than a company of the size of Rosalab ), the russian company have been hiring lots of people ( and some several high profiles, like Per Oyvind Karlsten, Jeff Johnson, trying to recruit during Linuxcon in CZ this year ).

The only thing that would be worth from Mandriva is the trademark, but I seriously that 4 000 000 would be the right price for that.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Lisias]

Show me the law in any nation that states you have the Right to Unlimited Profit.

Such a Law is not needed. You have all the rights you think you have, EXCEPT the ones explicitly (or implicitly) denied to you by the Law.

On the other hand, nobody have the DUTY to grant you Unlimited Profit, so good luck pursuing this right. :-)

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Richard_at_work]

There is no law, but thats not the point - if the original investor paid $X for Y% ownership of the company through share issuances, and now the company is diluting that Y% ownership to Y/2% ownership, then the company is effectively stealing from the original investor and he has a right to challenge that.

There is no right to profit, but there is a right to not be stolen from - if it takes a threat to the existence to the company to stop it, then that sounds fair.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Registered Coward v2]

There is no law, but thats not the point - if the original investor paid $X for Y% ownership of the company through share issuances, and now the company is diluting that Y% ownership to Y/2% ownership, then the company is effectively stealing from the original investor and he has a right to challenge that.

There is no right to profit, but there is a right to not be stolen from - if it takes a threat to the existence to the company to stop it, then that sounds fair.

An influx of cash does not dilute an investment. For example, if you own 50% of a company that is worth a dollar, you have an investment worth 50 cents. If I invest a dollar in the company, it is now worth $2 and you still have a 50 cent investment. No dilution has ooccurred, your original investment value is the same even if it's a smaller fraction of the total. No one is stealing anything from anybody, since their original investment is still there. Now, they certainly have the right to decide if they want to give up some control in exchange for cash and a more valuable company; but that is a different argument than the dilution one.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Coeurderoy]

No, the manager of an existing investment fund fears that dilution will make him redundant, he repeatedly blocked any "way out" for Mandriva, his only interest is to keep being paid a yearly percentage of the "nominal value" of the investment for doing absolutely nothing useful.

It is a general problem of our current brand of financial capitalism that the investor have in practice no direct contact nor real interest in the companies they invest in.
The decision makers ware the investment fund manager, who manage "other peoples money", and their interest is either to maximise the number of transaction at a more or less "stable or growing price" (slicing out some management "fees") or holding "values" if they happen to plummet (since then the "holding fees" are higher than the "transaction fees")..
The "invisible hand of the market" is holding our b*s and squeezing...
 

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Coeurderoy]

If you ask the shareholders, yes, but if you ask the "fund manager" no, s/he prefers you to keep junk papers, as long as you have somehow the illusion that it just might potentially have some value sometimes, so that you keep paying the manager to "handle" these funds...

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Richard_at_work]

Your point is wrong, because my original 50% ownership entitles me to 50% of the company, regardless of worth - so if you invest $1 to make the companies worth $2, then my share becomes $1.

Devaluing my ownership is what is in question here - and the ownership stands completely apart from company worth. Just because the company suddenly becomes twice as rich doesn't mean my ownership devalues of its own accord.

There are two ways for the investment to be made - as a fixed return, or by taking an ownership in the company for a potential return later on.

If the return is fixed, then its a monetary cost to the company, not a cost to the shareholders.

If the return is an ownership of the company, then that ownership needs to come from somewhere - it should come from an unissued pool retained by the company for this opportunity, or it can come from existing share holders. If it comes from an unissued pool, then that counts against the 50% of the company I do not own and thus does not affect my share holding so long as the new issuing does not cause all issued shares to exceed 100% at the original percentage value (so if they issue 25% to the new investor, and I already hold 50%, but there are two other investors which hold 15% each, then we have an issue as now we have 110% of the company issued - since it cannot be more than 100% of the company, that means there is a 10% devaluation of everyones issued shares...)

So yes, someone is stealing here because the issue is not that of original investment, its one of ownership of the company. You gave me 50% of the company in return for whatever my original investment was - that doesn't limit my entitlement to 50c of the company, it limits my entitlement to 50% of the company whatever that may be. If you cause my entitlement to drop below 50% without recompense, then you have stolen some of the company from me.

So yes, dilution is happening.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Registered Coward v2]

Your point is wrong, because my original 50% ownership entitles me to 50% of the company, regardless of worth - so if you invest $1 to make the companies worth $2, then my share becomes $1.

No - your ownership entitles you to 50 cents of the dollar - not 50%. It just happens to be 50% because of the total is $1; but if you decide to change tehat value by a cash influx your % changes but your value doesn't. Only if you grow without cash influxes does your value grow proportionally.

So yes, dilution is happening.

No it hasn't; but yours is a common misconception.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[ultranova]

Your point is wrong, because my original 50% ownership entitles me to 50% of the company, regardless of worth - so if you invest $1 to make the companies worth $2, then my share becomes $1.

No, because your original 50 cents investment entitled you to 50% of the company at the time it was made. If the rest of the shareholders hold sufficient power to override your will and accept more investment, your percentage of ownership will drop (and your investment stays valued at 50 cents). To do it otherwise would make it impossible for companies to rise more capital after the initial forming, because what would the new shares be backed by?

So yes, someone is stealing here because the issue is not that of original investment, its one of ownership of the company. You gave me 50% of the company in return for whatever my original investment was - that doesn't limit my entitlement to 50c of the company, it limits my entitlement to 50% of the company whatever that may be. If you cause my entitlement to drop below 50% without recompense, then you have stolen some of the company from me.

No. Your entitlement is limited to the shares you hold. These may represent 50%, 25% or even 1% ownership of the company at various times. This dilution of ownership is no more stealing than other companies taking market share from yours is, but rather a normal part of how the stock system works. Calling it stealing means that either you didn't bother making sufficient research before investing, and have no one but yourself to blame, or did, invested anyway, and are now whining because you didn't think the rules would really apply to you.

So yes, dilution is happening.

What's happening is that partial ownership of the company is being sold to a new investor in exchange for capital through a majority decision, which might not suite all old shareholders; however, that's the price they pay for being mere partial rather than sole owners.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Hognoxious]

No - your ownership entitles you to 50 cents of the dollar - not 50%.

This is rubbish. Do you think Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and all the rest got rich by selling their stakes for the same amount they paid for them initially? Bullshit, they owned a certain percentage of the startups that became more valuable as the company valuations rose.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Greed is a part of human nature and exists everywhere. There are also far more greedy poor people who think they're entitled to the work rich people do than there are greedy rich people.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's happening is that partial ownership of the company is being sold to a new investor in exchange for capital through a majority decision, which might not suite all old shareholders; however, that's the price they pay for being mere partial rather than sole owners.

But it's still dilution. If it wasn't, the new investor wouldn't be interested in buying in.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Registered Coward v2]

No - your ownership entitles you to 50 cents of the dollar - not 50%.

This is rubbish. Do you think Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and all the rest got rich by selling their stakes for the same amount they paid for them initially? Bullshit, they owned a certain percentage of the startups that became more valuable as the company valuations rose.

That's nice, except your comment has nothing to do with the discussion.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[rtb61]

It does reduce if you want to leverage your percentage by forcing the company to go belly up and then greedily acquiring the remaining bits on the cheap and relaunching. So what if a bunch if people get fired in the interim, screw em, they didn't make you enough money so they deserve it. As for the other investors mwahaha.

The shenanigans and manipulations that go on with corporations can be mind blowing. Often those executives and investors claim one thing when their intent is something different all together. When did the name change from Occam Capital (the minority share holder blocking the capital injection) to Linlux SARL occur, why did it occur, how do they intend to leverage the new obvious focus on 'Linux'.

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Idiot!!!

Mandriva wasn't born at all from Mandrake code!

Mandrake Software changed their name to Mandriva after acquiring a couple of companies, among which Connectiva in Brezil. It was also a way to settle a long-standing legal dispute regarding the Mandrake brand (think Mandrake the magician).

[Disclaimer: I used to have 200€ worth of shares, now they are worth around maybe 10% of that. No big deal financially for me.]

If the negotiations fail, all share owners will lose all their money as will most of the company's creditors. The staff will be laid off. Their current customers with support contracts will be left out in the cold. Their partner in EU projects that they are involved in (as per their press release from a year ago) will have to take over the work or find a new partner.

As for the new company that would take over Mandriva's activities, there are a few challenges:
- Building teams who know the code and can put the distribution together again. Do you think that none of the current employees is looking for a job elsewhere?
- There are no support contracts (from Mandriva's current customers) to provide any income, so you need to find resources until you release something that can be sold or that you can sell support for. And you have no existing customers, so it is a lot of work...
- It is going to take a couple of good releases before end users start to trust you, and many more before companies start to trust you. Especially if you claim the spiritual heritage of a company that went under without fulfilling the support contracts of most of your potential customers.

It is really sad to see what several changes of directions have caused to the company. Every time they targeted end users, they were creative and more or less profitable. Then they got a new "more professional" management, people who dreamed of the fortune of RedHat and neglected the end users to target the enterprise market (or split the offering between stuff that we end users were worthy of having and things that we were not), and then things got worse. Kick out the new management, get back the founders, go back to the roots of the company and put it back on track. Things get better, get a "more professional" management again. Here we go...

Stephane

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting about Conectiva, Mandriva's subsidiary in Brazil which actually doesn't do bad at all and is pretty well-establish in the latin-speaking part of the world..

Also the "remaining staff" at Mandriva is pretty invaluable to the Russians due to their experience, competence and all related to the development of Mandriva Linux (by simply just forking without this resource, it'll take a lot of time and efforts before being able to run the show properly)..

And Mandriva does actually have a pretty big (unfulfilled) potential, despite having suffered a lot throughout the years, it's pretty well-established, by throwing away Mandriva a lot of interest and good-will from a lot of people etc. would go away with it..

Re:Dilution sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

What Mageia did, they did with people from existing community, ie. they had the experience and necessary knowledge available to them in order to do it already, something which ROSA does not, relying heavily on Mandriva's employees and community.

Also Mageia doesn't really do much R&D at all..
With majority of R&D historically being done by people at Mandriva, employed to work on it, it's not very likely that you'll see very much innovation in Mageia, most work is pretty much just package maintenance and updating to newer versions, which again to some degree also explains why ie. Mageia 1 was by many considered more stable than Mandriva 2011 (which had tons of major changes since the 2010.1 release)...

Re:Dilution sucks!

[jbolden]

Mandriva is not 3rd tier. That is Mandrake which goes 98 and connectiva to 95. Connectiva was part of the whole Open Linux initiative which history had turned out differently could have been the 1st tier distribution.

Mandriva wasn't born from Mandrake code, Mandrake acquired other distribution companies like Lycos and added their stuff.

It's a damn shame

[sconeu]

I was a Mandrake/Mandriva guy for years. Before Ubuntu, it was THE "newbie" distro. It's still very user-friendly.

Once all this uncertainty started about a year ago, I switched to Mageia, which is a community fork of Mandrake.

Re:It's a damn shame

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Same here. In addition to being user friendly, it was, in my opinion, rock solid stable. Mandrake is what got me using Linux not just playing with it. It was never right at the cutting edge; always one back from the latest release of KDE or Gnome or what have you. I stuck with it through the change to Mandriva and still use it on a couple of machines. I'll miss it if it folds.

Re:It's a damn shame

[formfeed]

Mandrake has a tradition of problems, basically since they were Mandrake. Back then, they used to be the more desktop friendly redhat. Being French, they had good i18n support before redhat did, switched to utf early one, provided international packages, and also multimedia. But at that time their community was registered users only, if you didn't have the current version purchased: no soup for you.

Mandrake was always reluctant to share documentation. As a result, they cut themselves off from the larger community. Good innovations like a metapackager, that got users out of rpm-dependency hell long before redhat moved in that direction, or also mandrakes system of setting security level never made it back to a wider audience.

Re:It's a damn shame

[hduff]

Mandrake has a tradition of problems, basically since they were Mandrake. Back then, they used to be the more desktop friendly redhat. Being French, they had good i18n support before redhat did, switched to utf early one, provided international packages, and also multimedia. But at that time their community was registered users only, if you didn't have the current version purchased: no soup for you.

Mandrake was always reluctant to share documentation. As a result, they cut themselves off from the larger community. Good innovations like a metapackager, that got users out of rpm-dependency hell long before redhat moved in that direction, or also mandrakes system of setting security level never made it back to a wider audience.

I worked on the docs until the 8.x releases, IIRC. They wanted everything done in DocBook or your could not participate.

The problems with wider adoption of urpmi, mcc and msec and other Mandriva utilities (including their installer) were that they were written in perl and the RedHat world used python. They would also get great ideas for some things and then never maintain them.

And they had a leader who was more interested in computer aided "learning centers" and squandered a good deal of their cash.

I still use Mandriva (stopped at 2010.2). I don't care for some of the folks at Mageia, so I'll be sad to see Mandriva go if it does (used it since 5.2).

Re:It's a damn shame

[hduff]

Oh, and their artwork was always (and continues to be) childish and amateurish looking. Their user icons look like they belong in children's software.

Re:It's a damn shame

[mpol]

Yes, technically Mandrake/Mandriva was always innovative. I especially liked the installer and the DrakX tools. System-config-whatever doesn't even come close, and it's been 10 years.

Financially they were always in terrible shape. First there was the investment or loan they had from I think an Americain investor. They controlled management, and decided to head into the directionm of education. The management didn't want that, they wanted to stay in de Linux distro business. That caused the loan/investment to terminate, and there had to be paid millions back in a short timeframe.
Later on they had raised money through shares. Still they always needed money from the users, with subscriptions through the Club.
There was always the continuous hiring of people, and then the next reorganisation where people had to be let go. It seemed to happen every year.
And always there was the promise of becoming profitable next year. I even read in it this news.
For me the straw broke when they decided to let all their French developers go, and refocus of Brazilian and Russian developers.

I've used Fedora, but the upgrades every half year were a bit terrible (a whole evening of fiddling). I'm now on Debian. That's one distro that I feel will always be around, and gives lots of freedom.

Re:It's a damn shame

[sgunhouse]

Started with 7.0 myself in 2000. There were a couple of times when they left my old equipment behind (during one such time I used OpenSUSE), but once I had equipment that was more up-to-date I went back to Mandriva.

(For those asking about the name, Mandrake merged with the Brazilian distro Connectiva and combined the names to get Mandriva.)

Mind you, the latest version again doesn't work on my equipment, but Mageia does, so you know where I am.

Re:It's a damn shame

[xtracto]

(For those asking about the name, Mandrake merged with the Brazilian distro Connectiva and combined the names to get Mandriva.)

Please do not tell me you just explained where the Mandriva name comes from here in /.

Man times have changed in here.

Re:It's a damn shame

[xtracto]

Once all this uncertainty started about a year ago, I switched to Mageia [mageia.org], which is a community fork of Mandrake.

So... let's see what this Mageia is about...

NEWS:
Dec 19 2011Server outage

Ahmmm, no thanks.

Re:It's a damn shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I was around here back when Mandrake was "on".
By the time it merged I doubt many people cared about it anymore.
I remember stumbling across "Mandriva" and researching just enough to confirm it indeed was Distro(FKA Mandrake).

Re:It's a damn shame

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that this is bad to communicate and be transparent ? If you look further, you would see the breakage was 1) fixed 2) due to hardware.

Those pesky freetard, always trying to communicate instead of saying "everything go fine". Crap, why didn't they learned from Tchernobyl and Fukushima that people do prefer lies and do not like being alarmed ?

Re:It's a damn shame

[justthinkit]

Yeah well you are telling us where the Ubuntu word comes from!1!

Re:It's a damn shame

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more. Mandrake worked on my late nineties laptop without a hiccup. Very stable and the included apps were great.

Re:It's a damn shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Started with 7.0 myself in 2000.

I started with Red Hat in 2000, but by the end of that year I was using Mandrake 7. Absolutely loved it. Moved up to 8 when it was available, and kept my desktop and laptop computers up-to-date through 2004. At that point my life kind of fell apart for a few years, and I was without a computer to call my own until 2008. Tried Ubuntu last year (eww), moved to Xubuntu. Got an up-to-date laptop in autumn 2011 and installed Mint Debian; it reminds me of Mandrake in that it is also very user-friendly. Much more so than Red Hat or Ubuntu. I'll miss Mandriva but now I have Mint Debian.

Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[mfearby]

Since the Ubuntu desktop wreckage of late I've switched to Debian. couldn't be happer. cut out Shuttleworth's meddling and go straight to the source :-)

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS. I've been an AC here since before Caldera Linux existed. I believe, Debian is bar-none the most stable usable distro.It's what pulled me from BSD to Linux.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that as awesome as Debian is, it's initial release was in 1996, whereas Red Hat's was in 1993, right?. Considering Mandrake was originally based off of it, I'd say that if anything's the grand-daddy - it's Red Hat.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Debian was first released in late 1995, please check here: http://timeline.debian.net/

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[geminidomino]

I'd say that if anything's the grand-daddy - it's Red Hat.

Bitch, please! ;)

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[jrumney]

I remember using Slackware when the current Linux kernel was 0.96. It's what pulled me from BSD to Linux.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[mrclisdue]

+1

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

> Since the Ubuntu desktop wreckage of late I've switched to Debian.

Why not just stay on Ubuntu but change the desktop?

I doubt you'd change to Debian because Ubuntu installed something like Abiword by default.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[spiderbitendeath]

Slackware is the oldest distro still around. First release in July 1993. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware Debian was first released in August 1993 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian Redhat's distro was first released October 1994 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[wmac1]

Exactly! slackware was released at 1993 (but almost the same time as RedHat). But it was more geeky.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why not just stay on Ubuntu but change the desktop?

I doubt you'd change to Debian because Ubuntu installed something like Abiword by default.

Which desktop would you say that Ubuntu has implemented well?

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS. I've been an AC here since before Caldera Linux existed. I believe, Debian is bar-none the most stable usable distro.It's what pulled me from BSD to Linux.

Um you realise Debian is also KFreeBSD right?

The only problem with Debian is the current influx of Ewebuntards (not saying you're one of them) flooding the lists and forums with stupidity and "demands". Suddenly it's a right to swear and be downright offensive while demanding that Unstable Gnome/XFCE or whatever DE they want - stay exactly as it was. Gnome3/KDE4/PulseAudio is evil, it's too hard - but we DEMAND it run on our phone/fondle slab/SandyBridge so we can update our bling on a daily basis - but IT MUST STAY THE SAME (and support their proprietary hardware, and Flash). After all - Free Open Source Software is all about the "user" right? (sigh).

It was bad enough weeding out all the #!/Mint/Sidux/Ubuntu users pretending to run Debian and demanding developer drop everything now and get their week old multifunction printer/scanner/fax machine talking to Facebook - but now the fuckers *are* actually using Debian. Last month - they used KDE, then dumped it like lemming because all the old documentation they love for KDE3.5 is wrong, then the same thing with Gnome, now its XFCE.

The thing they don't get about Debian is that "it" doesn't have plans to dominate the desktop - just be a reliable source of packages that can be assembled by non-lazy people to build whatever they want.

Glad you're liking Debian - hope you stick around and hope you're one of those people who understand that we give our time because we like what we create - not to please brats.

And you AC (#38619508) are mistaken - there's difference between "initial (formal. finished) release" (floppy disk release with 4 times the number of packages Red Hat had at the time), and "founded" - it was available since it's inception, 16 August 1993 (I first installed it Xmas 94,
Slackware was the only other workable distro around that time).

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

You just triggered a memory... Does anyone else recall Yggrasill? I remember buying the whole package... it came with a videotape explaining how to install it and a massive 10-lb phonebook of a manual called "The Gnu Testament". This must've been around 1995 or so. Good times. Debian is along with Slackware indeed the granddaddy of 'em all. I use OpenSUSE now but sometimes wish I was on Debian every time another bug comes up. It may be a generation or two behind the curve, but it's tested and stable (no pun intended).

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Khyber]

"/PulseAudio is evil"

Fuck yes it IS. That's one of the worst tangled messes I've ever seen, and I've had the (dis)pleasure of working with the kX SBLive drivers.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[astro]

I would mod this up if my points hadn't expired yesterday. Mod parent up!

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Nimey]

Slack gives you a nice command line environment, but it's not worth my time anymore until its package manager can resolve dependencies.

I understand it's basically just Patrick running his own distro (and it's pretty good for that), but still.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Knuckles]

The only problem with Debian is the current influx of Ewebuntards (not saying you're one of them) flooding the lists and forums with stupidity and "demands". Suddenly it's a right to swear and be downright offensive while demanding (...)

Funny. I think this is the result of Ubuntu's Code of Conduct preventing education of the more obnoxious people on the Ubuntu users mailing list. While requiring contributers to be friendly to newbs was a good idea originally and probably contributed to a generally good atmosphere on the users list, when I left there had developed a subset of people who were endlessly demanding, annoying, stupid, and offensive, with no way left to reign them in. Every time you told them that it's enough now, some well-meaning guy showed up and scolded you for violating the CoC or for perceived elitism. I saw many knowledgeable people leave the list because of this. It made me think back to my own newb days on Debian, and how instructive it was long-term to occasionally be treated harshly when I had not thought things through, in stead of being endlessly pampered.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[bmo]

Oh look, it's an off-topic flame of Ubuntu with nothing to justify it.

It's like I'm really on /g/

--
BMO

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[unixisc]

Is KFreeBSD even ready? Where is it in comparison w/ FreeBSD? One thing I like about Debian is them doing different OSs - not just Linux, but also KFreeBSD and HURD. Wish they'd take up Minix as well @ some point.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Coeurderoy]

Yep, and it was probably the first CD bootable "live" distribution that you could try before installing!
Although we used slakware mostly at the time (to be able to make "small installs" on servers I loved it.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Good times, yes indeed. The split between RHEL and Fedora was weird, but it seems to finally be working. Test in Fedora, get it stabilized for RHEL. Mandriva never had that model, and it shows in instability for their main codelines. But the real "Adam and Eve" of the Linux distros, as opposed to merely grandfather, was HURD. It never had a good kernel, and it had a stupid name, which is why you now have "Linux" distributions named after the kernel, not after the actual codebase for the rest of the OS.

I already get job offers from various European countries, including help with work visas, to integrate or migrate SuSE companies to RHEL because my resume includes experience with both. I'm expecting more calls on Mandriva because I hand't even botheed to list my experience, but now I'll trot out those credentials as well. Getting a chance to talk *early* to the planners and managers and let them know where the technical migration problems are is invaluable, and I make good money doing it.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Hognoxious]

I suspect this might be a trick question, but I presume they haven't managed to fuck up bash.

Not yet, anyway.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Most will be unchanged from Debian. So if you think it works on Debian, it will on Ubuntu as well.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... I was a Slackware nut, but I did some installs of Yggdrasil just because the name was cool... and I wanted to see what they were up to.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

desktop thread

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

but now the fuckers *are* actually using Debian.

<Nelson> Ha Ha! </Nelson>

Glad you're liking Debian - hope you stick around and hope you're one of those people who understand that we give our time because we like what we create - not to please brats.

Great way to represent the Debian community there buddy. Sure makes me want to try out Debian.. NOT!

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[el_chicano]

Slack gives you a nice command line environment, but it's not worth my time anymore until its package manager can resolve dependencies.

I first started using Slackware Linux when you had to download multiple floppies to install it. I really liked Slack because it was a great way to learn Linux. I stopped using it because it was pretty difficult to upgrade versions.

I switched to Red Hat because you could get books containing an installation CD-ROM. Afterward I switched to Mandrake because it was RPM-based and had a bigger set of userland tools than Red Hat. I stuck with Mandrake until about version 10.

Afterward I started using CentOS due to the availability of third-party repos like RPMForge and EPEL. I recently switched to Scientific Linux due to them bringing out the latest version months before CentOS did. Half of my boxes now run Scientific Linux 6.

My other Linux boxes are now running Arch Linux, which reminds me a lot of Slack. Arch uses a rolling release model and it has pacman, an excellent package manager that handles dependencies really well. If you like Slack but are frustrated by a lack of a package manager that handles dependencies you should really give Arch a try...

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect this might be a trick question, but I presume they haven't managed to fuck up bash.

Not yet, anyway.

On Kubuntu Oneiric dolphin crashes your desktop session due to bash crashing within an embedded konsole session. Does this count?

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be great if you were on /g/ instead. we'd all love it. fuck off.

Re:Just install the big grand-daddy of them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Arch Linux is better if you know what you are doing.

If they were profitable...

[phantomfive]

If they were profitable, or even revenue neutral, this wouldn't be a problem.

I'm not saying anything bad about Mandriva, rather the summary who seems to blame the inability to get loans, whereas the inability to get loans is the natural way of the world. Eventually it happens to everyone.

Re:If they were profitable...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Beyond the strong possibility that Europe is heading into another liquidity crunch in which loans won't be forthcoming even to profitable companies, it is not sensible to continue pouring money into a company that's already been restructured and still isn't performing. Remember, this is a company, not the entire Linux community or even the entire *nix business ecosystem: what's failed is the leadership and business model. The technology won't evaporate, and other companies with better leadership have already filled Mandriva's shoes. Let evolution weed out bad business and foster better leadership in new companies; intervention is inappropriate here.

Re:If they were profitable...

[Kral_Blbec]

Unless they are too big to fail.

Re:If they were profitable...

[AHuxley]

Maybe they can get the paper work in to be too French to fail?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_video_game_policy
A French re imagineering of Tux Racer using advanced ray tracing - then they can get into super computing tax breaks and be the next Bull.

Re:If they were profitable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Majority (> 50%) shareholder says it needs Mandriva for a long-term project and offers to cover all the needed expenses by issuing addiional Mandriva shares and buying them. Minority shareholder agreed neither to that nor to the split proportional to current share counts (at least not by the time TFA appeared).

Re:If they were profitable...

[Lisias]

What makes me think if there're not obscure interests from that same minority shareholders.

Who do you know interested on a linux distro's demise, and with cash enough to buy that shareholders?

Re:If they were profitable...

[bbn]

In that case, "majority" can buy the bankruptcy and own 100%. Minority loses.

Based on my experience with Mandriva

[MrEricSir]

I'd say the real threat to Mandriva is Mandriva itself.

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[bogaboga]

I'd say the real threat to Mandriva is Mandriva itself.

Your comment would be more useful if you elaborated, otherwise one might conclude you're just trolling.

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[AuMatar]

The name doesn't help. "Man driva" sounds like a gay porn.

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[SJHillman]

Well, it is French

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[haruchai]

That much I agree with; I was using it from the 1st release and it's Mandrake to me, nothing else.

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[Anonymous Coward]

The name doesn't help. "Man driva" sounds like a gay porn.

Still, a lot better then: Windows, MacOS, BSD (also), Ubuntu, Red Hat and Feodora

Re:Based on my experience with Mandriva

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Ma-Gay-a sounds worse. It's a shame this is happening. I fondly remember using Mandrake 8.1 and really liking it back in the day.

A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrasing in that letter is kind of torturous and very flowery, and Google translate misses in a few spots.. (But does shockingly well over all.)

Here's a slightly cleaner translation (my own):

To the associates and directors of Bryan Garnier:
Mr. Olivier Garnier De Falletans,
In this letter, we wish to bring to your attention the extreme gravity of the situation which we believe ourselves, as employees of Mandriva, to be the victims.
We are determined to no longer sit back and endure this situation passively.
In less than four weeks, our company could be effectively forced to file for bankruptcy and cease all activities because its indispensable recapitilization has been two times prevented by Linlux SARL, and this even though Townarea Trading & Investment Ltd, our other majority shareholder, was inclined to support entirely the cost, an amount of 4,000,000 euro.
Now, Linux SARL, an organization which seems to be under your control and that of Mr. Marc Goldberg, your employee and manager, had itself no financial obligation and therefore could not be but a beneficiary of this salvage operation.
The refusal which was offered by Linlux SARL to all the propositions made during the general assemblies of September 30th and December 5th 2011 is and remains for us absolutely incomprehensible and absolutely unjustifiable.
There are no less and no more than 45 direct jobs between Paris, Brasil, our external personnel, and all the indirect jobs at our subcontractors and suppliers.
In addition, following a reorganization already in progress, the operations in Brasil are almost breaking even, and a new business plan lays out the reorientation of the business with solid prospects for growth for next year.
Very worried for the future of our company, we ask you please to immediately reconsider a decision, which will turn out not only extremely negative for our and your future, but also for that of the world of free software in Europe.
While waiting for your prompt decision, we hope you will accept, Ms, Mr., our sincere regards.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[martin-boundary]

(But does shockingly well over all.)

French is one of the easier (easiest?) languages to translate into English. After the colonization of England by the French, the language was left with many words which haven't changed substantially in meaning from the original French, enough to form a fairly complete vocabulary. In fact, one can get by quite well in English without using too many anglo-saxon words. Moreover, the logical structure of the French grammar is a bonus for machine translation algorithms. It's harder to translate English into French, actually.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[aurizon]

It will be interesting to see how the fall into bankruptcy is managed. With the connivance of the right judge to set the right trustee, who relays to one side what the Russian partners bid is, so it can be slightly beaten, then the Greenberg faction will own it all. Even if they pay a high bid, since Greenberg will win they will get most of the money back after paying creditors, and they will have control of whatever is paid and they can quickly divert the kitty to themselves by well known legal methods.

The key is to avoid a trustee who is overly friendly to the Goldberg faction, although I suspect that such a trustee might already be positioned to be so, since it only takes a friendly judge to make it so.

What is needed is a motion in court to look into this and make a ruling. As for Greenberg dilution, let him pay his portion of the 4,000,000 euro, and their relative positions will be unchanged. He knows this and hopes to steal away the Russian portion in the bankruptcy and own the whole thing, but I think now the Russian buyer will bring pressure to bear..

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. sounds French. almost unintelligible and could be reduced to about 20 words.

That was the problem with Mandriva's documentation.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it written "S.à r.l."? "Société à responsibilité limitée"? That's how I learned it.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

When did the French colonise us? They certainly invaded us, but we're still speaking English, as indeed you are in the actual colonies. Stupid American doesn't know history and confuses opinion with fact

Re:A translation of the letter.

[notjim]

I think this is what Samuel Beckett meant when he explained he wrote in French rather than his native (Hiberno-)English because in French "it is easier to write without style".

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Nimey]

1066 and all that. You're not speaking Old English with only Anglo-Saxon words anymore, idiot.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Hognoxious]

After the colonization of England by the French, the language was left with many words which haven't changed substantially in meaning from the original French

This, frankly, is garbage.

One, the Normans were of Viking origin and spoke a peculiar dialect of French. Two, even if they'd spoken the standard French of the time[1], it and modern French have had a thousand years to diverge.

In fact, the most common words - family members, body parts, domestic animals, prepositions - are overwhelmingly of Germanic origin.

[1] And there was no such thing until relatively recent times.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

An invasion is not a colonisation idiot. Two different words, two different meanings, I know that's a little complicated for you.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should, however abbreviation are written in all capital letters (-> S.À.R.L.), and due to lack of accented capital letters on AZERTY keyboards, they are not used (-> S.A.R.L.) Finaly, concerning the dots between the letters, they are most of the time skipped (or only the last dot remains), even if they are part of the abreviation (hence the "Linlux SARL")

Re:A translation of the letter.

[unixisc]

Languages like Flemish, Dutch and German are certainly closer to English than French is.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

a quick history lesson. There were thousands of french who moved in, took roles in government, took over large areas of lands, built a load of cathedrals and churches, commissioned the doomsday book, and generally did the kind of things you do when you're colonizing a country. There's a reason why English names such as "Adalmund", "Cylferth" or "Eadraed" are virtually unheard of when compared to French names such as "Robert", "Michael", or "William". Naming children in honour of your master certainly played a part, however the tradition of naming children after their parents or grandparents is another reason you can't overlook.....

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Cow Jones]

... the logical structure of the French grammar...

Euh? What is this that this is that that?
(I've got four-twenty-ten-nine problems but my French ain't one)

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Its all on wikipedia laddie, look it up. Where do you think Great Britain got its name, from being great? Its Grand Bretagne, as in Bretagne, the northern French province. Most of the common words, for example anything ending in -ion is of French origin. England is indeed an upstart colony of France.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Intrepid imaginaut]

English words of French origin, look it up.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

four-twenty-ten-nine
.

Love it. Nothing more needs to be said.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thousands of Normans, not French, they mostly did NOT speak French, to put this into perspective in 1890 only 20% of the French nation spoke French at all, and 15% or less natively, the largest language in France in 1890 was Occitian, the forced conversion to French is a 20th century event. The occupiers spoke Norse, which explains why Anglo Saxon was mongrelised by Norse when there were so few Viking invaders

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make English any less Germanic. The closest linguistic relative to English is West Frisian, spoken in northern Netherlands (Friesland), and Scots (in the lowlands of Scotland).

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Nimey]

Wrong. William the Bastard and his men spoke Norman French.

I should quit bothering; you must be trolling with all those "facts" you pull out of your ass.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[martin-boundary]

One, the Normans were of Viking origin and spoke a peculiar dialect of French. Two, even if they'd spoken the standard French of the time[1], it and modern French have had a thousand years to diverge.

Of course they did not speak modern French, but your criticism doesn't follow. You might have a point if both French and English had evolved completely independently of the Old French spoken during the Middle Ages (and of each other), but this isn't true even approximately.

While the peasant vocabulary you mention - family members, body parts, domestic animals - are indeed Germanic, the vocabulary used for legal matters and abstract thought is overwhelmingly of French and Latin origin. This is not surprising since the English ruling classes have had strong connections with France for most of the intervening period, and for at least half that period, Latin was the Lingua Franca of abstract thought in Europe. This explains why both French and English haven't diverged radically along their common French vocabulary.

Finally, the modern world is industrial: the Germanic agricultural vocabulary is not as relevant as it once was, whereas the implanted French words haven't lost their comparative importance.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[CAIMLAS]

In fact, one can get by quite well in English without using too many anglo-saxon words.

Not if you want anyone to understand you, you can't. Most English speakers (at least in California) have only the most guttural of English understanding. Words like "venison" or "grandeur" are outside their realm of "comprehension".

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vocabulary is stupid easy for a machine translator, divorced from grammar it's just a database lookup. Wouldn't the other Germanic languages be easier to translate due to their similar structure?

Although, I can see them being more difficult since you can't get them into an "intermediate" form as easily because of their confusing ambiguity and reliance on context over consistent grammar rules (see: English).

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

1690 was a Dutch invasion but not a Dutch colonisation of england and Scotland.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[martin-boundary]

Vocabulary lookup alone isn't enough in general. There's no 1-1 correspondence between word meanings in different languages, but the correspondence is strong when the same word occurs in both, which is my point.

If you think about a thesaurus, you immediately see the problem with pure dictionary lookup in general. You can map a word to a general idea, but which word do you output (in the other language) for that general idea? Also, there are ideas which exist in one language and not in another, so that's a problem too.

Re:A translation of the letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine teaches English to dyslexics.
A fact from that is the modern English is 80% Anglo Saxon.
However, the 20% that is not is a mix of French (Old French since the to and fro between the Anglo-French nobility was far more extensive than the Normans alone) but also Latin, Greek, Indian and other loanwords.
We have dropped gender, and our choices of word order have increased a little from our closer languages.
The closest language to English is either Scots (if it still exists, which is debated) or North Frisian.
French was the international diplomatic language for many centuries, and as such it had a significant influence on English especially since the English, unlike many countries are not precious about the language, we have no 'official' repository of English. (The Oxford English Dictionary is a record of usage, not a prescriptive document.).
Anyway, to get to a point, well 2.
1: The French and English intertwined in terms of who rule or didn't rule who over 2-300 years, just like many other European regions and neighbours. Colonization is a strong word and not wholly appropriate.. whereas one can defintely speak of Norse colonies in the North of England, which eventually become assimilated.
2: Due to it's heterogenous parentage, relaxed approach to loanwords, and open structure, it is possible to speak agreeable English with largely Germanic words or Romance/French words.. and indeed I often do exactly this when speaking to French or Italians, I choose words with a more Latin root than when speaking to my German colleagues.

Grab The Source

[Grindalf]

That's a good one too! Grab the source! Quickly!

Suse is in on the carnage

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linuxpr.com/releases/2749.html is an indication that the people pulling the strings through Linux SARL are actually Suse...Read Novell...read......... the only so called financially successful OSS venture that only saved itself by swallowing the coolaid from Redmond ...read http://www.microsoft.com .. who is slowly hacking its way into the OSS world with money. By bribing, cajoling, threatening, and exerting political influence to eliminate any chance of a real company ever succeeding in getting into their kitchen in the world of enterprise software. Novell has just become another OSS trojan horse for Steve Ballmer. SCO was no different. But this time it will work, and they will get away with it. Good by Mandrake my old friend.

Shit they put a trojan horse dictator into Nokia and got away with it in the EU. Who will be next to swallow the coolaid... and turn against GNU .... Patrick Volkerding, Or maybe to be really scary Richard Stallman. Hell maybe even Slashdot will turn against Google and rail against open source by restricting projects on Sourceforge under orders from Washington DC and State (read Redmond) because there is software there that can be used to circumvent copy protection of other software. Who knows the whole thing might just BOOMERANG on everybody though if the truth of what is really happening ever becomes common public knowledge. http://boomerang.sourceforge.net/

Re:Suse is in on the carnage

[Zontar The Mindless]

http://linuxpr.com/releases/2749.html is an indication that the people pulling the strings through Linux SARL are actually Suse......

No shit, Sherlock.

Y2K called and would like its press release back, please.

Re:Suse is in on the carnage

[shentino]

I think Y2K's own overhype was its own downfall.

Putting everyone on high alert neutralized a lot of the potential for damage because date-stamps were being watched like clocks and everyone KNEW things might go wrong.

To be more blunt, the tech gremlins came with slavering jaws ready to eat us alive, but chickened out when they saw an army of geeks on the lookout for them, turned tail, and slinked back home.

Re:Suse is in on the carnage

[Zontar The Mindless]

I think you've managed to miss my point pretty completely, which can be summed up as, "AC breathlessly posts 12-years-old press release as if it were hot off the wire".

Mandrake to Mandriva was such a loss

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time Mandrake Linux had RPMs which Redhat did not. Most today would not understand what Redhat 6.1 was like. Most are moaning over GNOME or KDE. Loosing Mandriva would perhaps not cause much pain to many, but turning it to dust and just forget what it brought to the current 'plug n play' scene would be a shame.

I'm Debian's bitch for life!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one reason why DEBIAN will always be my favorite and go-to choice. (i just love that kangaroo! - stupid commercial!) Instead of turning a buck, they turn out freedom. And we all know how yummy freedom is!

Ubuntu 11.10 sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, the default desktop is dumb, the retractable bar on the left is stupid, the way you search for files is dumb, the errors in dmesg and ~/.xsession-errors are dumb, it's a worthless install! I've had apps as simple as the gnome log viewer crash when loading a log, multiple times, try it yourself, start gnome log viewer and load up several logs, watch it crash! I was even using it after installing gnome 2.x by gnome-fallback or gnome-session I don't recall what it was I installed to get the default monster out of my sight.

Don't get me started on alternate desktops (Xubuntu, Kubuntu) they have their problems, too! I loaded up one alternate DM and the command line said no users were logged in! Regular Ubuntu gave conflicting information, I'd sign on tty1 and it would show correct # of users online, then go back to tty7/gnome and it would say no one was logged in or 2 users logged in, one being me and the other not shown! Now unless I was rooted, that's just too weird.

Instead, I recommend using Debian and installing XFCE or a lightweight WM.

Re:Ubuntu 11.10 sucks!

[salesgeek]

Please stop confusing the GUI for the OS. Thank you.

Silly Comment

[FairAndHateful]

one of the oldest commercial Linux vendors at risk of shuttering on January 16

That's exactly one year to the day after I first arrived in Texas... Look out! Bad things come in threes! (Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Please forgive me.)

Re:Silly Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly one year to the day after I first arrived in Texas... Look out! Bad things come in threes!

Pray tell, exactly why was you coming to Texas bad for Texas?

Sorry, I couldn't resist either! :->

Balance

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here is that so many distributions are high-quality and free that these days, you need to offer something extra in order to either excite people into using and coding to support your distro and creating hype and popularity or giving them enough in support to encouraged a paid-for environment that works. With Ubuntu, it's been usability...it's such a far-reaching and diverse distro with several major window managers offered that it covers a lot of ground -- and handing out disks for free way back in the day (are they still? -- I'm personally not sure...) certainly helped a lot. My first installation of Ubuntu was from a free disk I got from them. The user base and support system is also MASSIVE. I mean, I've used many, many distros over the years from Fedora to Mint to Ubuntu and many more but usually whenever I'd search for the fix to some problem it would inevitably be posted in some Ubuntu forum or blog. That not only gets the name out there but helps users to easily get accustomed to the different environment if they're switching from another OS.

I never even tried Mandriva. Why? It didn't seem like it had anything special to offer. Now keep in mind that I've tried over 20 or so distros over the years. The fact that wasn't one of them says something. If they want to stick around, they need to take a lead from other Open Source software like Ubuntu, Slackware, or even non-Linux distributions...just desktop software that's become popular like various media players or Firefox itself.

Bottom line? Offer something unique/special/above the competition and you'll succeed...if you're not going to do that...then the question really becomes: why would anyone move to your distro anyway, let alone stick with it?

Re:Balance

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Balance

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you are but what am I?

Freetards want money

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahahahaha

inb4

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandriva != Linux Kernel

Yes... I am visiting Slashdot for more than 10 years now and I know what I am doing.

hahahahahahah

[decora]

shuttleworth's meddling is the only reason people dont have to spend 20 hours fucking with /etc/X11.conf just to get X running.

debian has had to up its game to match ubuntu. people who dont understand this are just living in fantasy land, and do not remember the 1990s.

if you want to know what its like without ubuntu, go install NetBSD and see if you can get gnome working in under 10 hours, with 200KBPS internet link and an old computer. good luck. that's what debian used to be like.

Re:hahahahahahah

[icebraining]

Correlation, causation, etc. When exactly did the Ubuntu project contribute to X.org?

The reason you don't have to spend 20 hours fucking with X configuration files is because the X project improved, not because of Ubuntu.

Re:hahahahahahah

[Anonymous Coward]

canonical did employ some X developers around the XFree -> xorg and monolithic X -> modular X time.

ewbuntards

[decora]

very mature.

thats not how capitalism works.

[decora]

there are a large number of profitable, and/or revenue neutral businesses that are closed all the time. why?

because profit and revenue are not the only things that matter. sometimes politics matters more. and sometimes someone thinks they can make 'more profit' for themselves by closing down a profitable company than by keeping it open.

the article explains all this very simply.

mod this up. only post in this thread making sense

[decora]

all of the threads complaining about how it was not a profitable company, etc, are wrong. this guy has hit the nail on the head. capitalism doesnt care if you are profitable, it only cares if you could be sold off for MORE profit than you are making.

the personal profit of a very powerful group is often behind these things. its the whole point of corporate raiding. 'mergers and acquisitions'. private equity firms.

the 'linux companies' are not competing on quality, they are competing on who can survive the monopoly in Redmond without getting sued for patent infringement. its not about building products for customers. its about raw, naked, animal aggression, as microsoft has always been, ever since the days of Dr Dos and before.

blah blah blah, read articles much?

[decora]

look guy, this is not what happened. just take a few minutes and read the article. its not about products, its not about business models. its about one gangster mowing down a bunch of innocent people, robbing them, taking their money, and selling their clothes for a profit.

this child like fairyland view of how high-stakes capitalism works: "build a good product, people will buy it, therefore if you go bankrupt, your product must have been bad", is just absolutely hilarious, and sad.

Re:blah blah blah, read articles much?

[countertrolling]

...its not about business models. its about one gangster mowing down a bunch of innocent people, robbing them, taking their money, and selling their clothes for a profit.

That exactly what the preeminent business model is, and always has been. It's why war is such good business

Re:blah blah blah, read articles much?

[Anonymous Coward]

you miss that Mandriva/Mandrake Soft has been close to insolvency for most of the last 10 years - while management and owners changed multiple times.

Revolting Mandriva revolt

[Wowsers]

I have been with Mandriva since version 9, it was the distro I picked which got me into Linux, so have been with the distro for a lot of years now. However since the beta of Mageia 1 came out, I jumped ship - I didn't want to deal with Mandriva's new menu system for a start.

The problem I see with a shareholder revolt is, the company should have found a way to not fire their main developers in the first place. Now they are working on the community Mageia Linux version, and who is left at Mandriva?

IMO if they wanted a better distro, you should get more people to bother to report bugs so they can be investigated, not think someone else has found it. This should be made easy for non technical users so that others with more experience may try re-creating the bug. The various distro webpages to report a bug are way over the top for a new person to understand and report a bug.

I myself among now lots of others reported various Nouveau free nVidia driver issues where there are problems if you want to switch to the real nVidia driver to get 3D. Stuff like Compiz, Google Earth, or BZFlag won't work with the Nouveau driver.... but 2D stuff works fine with Nouveau.

Re:Revolting Mandriva revolt

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not Mandriva's fault. That's NVidia's fault for insisting on keeping their driver information proprietary, especially the necesssary "Mesa" libraries. And it applies across the board to all Linux distributions: reverse engineering this mess and keeping it stable is very painful.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There are too many Linux distros, even among those that use RPM packaging such as Mandriva, Red Hat, and PLD. The only thing I'll miss if Mandriva dies is the "Penguin Liberation Front" packaging of software that has patents or ridiculous licensing interfere with normal publication in main distributions. (PLF is where I grab DVD burners and MPEG tools when I'm in countries without ridiculous patent laws.)

Re:Good

[GRW]

Mageia has the "tainted" repository that replaces PLF.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

And Mageia is also where most of the PLF people decided to go, up to the point of hosting the website in the beggining, as well as the mailling list.

Yep...

[countertrolling]

Another perfectly good human endeavor ruined by... business, just like the arts and science.

Why were you modded down?

Re:Yep...

[BrokenHalo]

My last contact with Mandriva was when it was still Mandrake, back in the very early noughties. It was OK, but not much more, and definitely (IMO) didn't have the polish of (say) Slackware, or even RedHat.

Not the first time

[Dcnjoe60]

This has been the history of Mandriva, originally Mandrake. And, it isn't because of being a desktop distro, but because management decisions at critical points of its life (or would that be mis-management decisions). Anyway, it does appear that this time, the large beast is in its final death throws.

Re:Not the first time

[luther349]

well mandriva has fallen down the ladder after ubuntu kinda took over the number 1 spot now surpassed by mint. so they do not have the user base or sales to upport the bad desions there ceos make.

Another MS supporting Linux vendor?

[walterbyrd]

Isn't Mandriva another MS partner? Like SuSE, Xandros, and Linspire?

I think all the MS supporting Linuxes are going to die out. And it can't happen fast enough for me. Plenty of non-scam Linux distros out there.

WTF? I thought Redhat was doing very well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Redhat's profits seem to just keep going up. I just read that Redhat is hiring another 1000 people.

Okay, Redhat is not nearly the size of Microsoft, but how many companies are? When you consider that there are probably over ten thousand software companies, Redhat is probably in the top 1%. How can you say their business model does not work?

Time to test & update your biases...

[Sosarian Avatar]

Believing outdated nonsense like that nearly drove me away from Linux when I was having horrible stability/speed problems with Ubuntu for the second half of 2009 as a semi-newbie. Luckily I gave the others a try instead of going back to Windows, because it turned out that they're just as user-friendly, if not moreso -- in fact, the last time I did have to touch X.org was back in Ubuntu.

You really should test your own hypothesis by trying the distros you're maligning, so other users that share our interest in Linux don't feel forced into using Windows if they're not thrilled with Ubuntu or Canonical. There's plenty of legit strengths & weaknesses to point out in every distro out there, after all -- and since you're somewhat representing your fellow Ubuntu fans, not sounding like you're an unhinged clueless fanboy would be a good idea.

Pronouncing "Mageia"

[Sosarian Avatar]

Ma-Gay-a sounds worse.

Last I saw, there was a note posted on the Mageia website that says there's no set pronunciation since accents vary so wildly by region/language... I've always 'read' it as rhyming with mage, magic, magenta, or similar.

Despite M$'s control, or rather b'cos of it...

[unixisc]

Sorry you and the other poster got modded down friend, but I intended and expected to be modbombed as i call it like I see it and truth rarely follows groupthink. The simple fact that so many here refuse to accept (Notice how many said "Windows and OSX isn't polished" which if that isn't koolaid chugging I don't know what is) is that the level of integration you are talking with Windows and OSX, where EVERYTHING follows strict conventions, like scrollbar goes here and icons must be like so and keyboards shortcuts should be thus, all of that COSTS MONEY because without it? You get what you have now which is rampant itch scratching. Just look at your average "consumer friendly" Linux like Mint or PCLOS. You have apps that follow the Mac way, some follow the Windows way, some go for the old school UNIX methods of doing things. There is NO consistency there AT ALL. Why is that? Its because the devs are working for free and frankly don't give a fuck about jumping through some hoop if they don't want to and because they aren't getting paid you can take it or leave it friend, because they are just scratching an itch, not like they can be fired for not following the rules.

Problem is that despite that cathedral model, things ain't consistent even b/w 2 similar OSs like Windows XP and 7. I had bought a copy of Adobe Acrobat 6 (the complete package, not the free Reader that one can simply download from their website). Guess what? I can run it in XP, but not under 7. And we're talking both win32 OSs here - I'm not talking about a 32-bit XP to a 64-bit 7. And unlike in Linux, where an app which one didn't pay for that doesn't work in a subsequent version, I paid for this app and would expect it to work when I'm not doing a major OS overhaul. I could understand it if I were migrating from Windows 98 to XP, or if the Monopoly game that I was running under Window 95 didn't work under XP. But this sort of breakage b/w just 2 (actually 1) generations of an OS change? And no, hypervisor is not available under 7 HP, only in the server 2008 and above models.

Even aside from that, there are so many things that have changed that it's not even funny. MS Office 1993 was fine, but in 1997, they introduced new formats, had all those ribbons and totally reset everybody's learning curve. One can't even revert to the old interface if one wants to. And at the OS level, just look @ the Control Panel - what it was under XP, and how it's changed in Vista/7. Some of them are improvements, like the Network Sharing & Neighborhood, but just finding things now is a royal mess. If one tries to change desktop colors, one is forced into the classic version, or one has to go w/ readymade themes. Only major improvement to 7 is 64-bit support, (if I had 4GB or above of RAM, that's what I'd do) and IPv6 support. I know you think the latter is a clusterfuck, but the IETF had determined pretty early on that it wasn't possible to have an IPv4 compatible addressing scheme that didn't require overhauling all routers, which is why, since they had to do something this major anyway, they came up w/ a whole suite of enhancements to the protocol to give us what IPv6 now is.

And in Windows 8, I certainly hope that they leave the Windows 7 default interface as an option, instead of forcing people to the Metro UI and disabling the 'Windows' key on the keyboard. I happen to be an adventurous person who is more than happy to check out a new look OS, but having to change things like a keyboard is unacceptable. Let them use Metro in that Nokia Lumia or any Windows tablet that Nokia or anyone else comes out w/, but leave the laptops alone.

Re:Despite M$'s control, or rather b'cos of it...

[hairyfeet]

MSFT changes driver models once a decade so you got 10 years and THREE OSes out of Acrobat, 2K/XP/2K3 which is actually not bad and if you bought win 7 pro which since you are using Acrobat I'd assume you're a pro that means you could STILL run Acrobat under XP Mode, which is a 100% free copy of XP in a VM provided to you for buying XP. As for your monopoly the Win9X memory management frankly didn't exist and made coders lazy as they could trample on other processes without trouble and 2K/XP finally killed that. Now show me where I can get a Linux distro updated NOT upgraded for 10 years? because as I've found upgrade equals "LOL I made a stinky!" all over your drivers. hell in just testing with my "is it safe?" upgrade a distro from 3 years old to current to simulate what my customers would go through you have a DE shift, you have a complete audio stack replacement (and frankly the replacement is shit) and good luck keeping your drivers running through that without firing up CLI. I had one forum member actually tell me i should get my users to wipe and reinstall every 6 months on release, anybody believe they want to deal with that shit?

One final thing you are completely wrong about win 7 and themes, you can pick any preset and go "advanced' and tweak the RGB values to your hearts content to make it any color you desire. I have a nice two tone black thing going on my netbook as i didn't like Aero using battery power but didn't want Win98 grey. Took me about 6 minutes to get it just the right shade to make me happy and it was as simple as sliding some sliders and unchecking "make Windows transparant" in the advanced tab. Easy peasy.

usage scenarios

[unixisc]

I guess I'm an oddball - I rarely save either files or programs on the desktop - when prompted during installation, I uncheck both Desktop & QuickLaunch options and just just put it under Start> My reason is that if I have another app running full screen, or covering the required icons on the desktop, I'd have to first shrink it, and then get around. Which is why I normally use the start menu to either invoke a new program or open an existing document. I have My Documents, Favorites and My Recent Documents show in menu mode - in other words, I can drill down from there using either mouse or keyboard, and just open what I need. If it goes away in Windows 8, I guess that's an upgrade I'll just not do, or just stay w/ 7.

Incidentally, in Windows 8, will they have multiple clipboards, like they have in I think Word? I've found Klipper - the clipboard on KDE really useful, since it saves me from opening new tabs or sessions or Windows - I can copy something, then go to another document, then if I copy something else, when I get to paste, I get the option of choosing which clipboard I want to paste. The only 'rough edge' about it in KDE for me was that 'middle click' (or click both buttons of the mouse @ the same time - in old unix implementations like Ultrix and SunOS, where you had 3-mouse buttons, if you highlighted something and @ the target spot middle-clicked, the highlighted text would get pasted to the location i.e. it worked just like a highlight & paste, w/o even 'copy') to paste the clipboard no longer worked, since there are multiple clipboards, but I quickly got around that. Incidentally, I use XP on my desktop and used Linux on my Laptop, until my system got corrupted. While I could re-install Linux (and my data is backed up), I've decided to try out PC-BSD to see whether I could this time also get WiFi to work as well (it doesn't w/ Linux) and also get the chance to tinker w/ IPv6.

Re:usage scenarios

[hairyfeet]

You think YOU'RE weird, I've been using this little program called popsel for years and years and just use it on any machine I use. I made three folders in my tool folder called "Popsel Games' and "Popsel AV" and "Popsel Utilities" and then cooked up three little icons, a red AV on black, a green G for games on white, and a yellow Util on blue and then I just have shortcuts to popsel pinned to the start menu. That way there is never more than 3 clicks to get to ANY app I use, click start>click correct popsel>click name of app. This makes the desktop nice and uncluttered and neat while giving me quick access to everything and of course in Win 7 explorer has a jumplist and that takes care of the folders i use most, makes it all easy peasy.

As for the clipboard I'd recommend you just use Hamsin clipboard as it only take a couple of Kb, you can throw it on a stick and run it from there, and gives you as many clipboard slots as you want. I have mine set to 10 which i think is the default, make it all easy and simple as each clipboard has a key, like Winkey+1, Winkey+2, etc. really makes copy paste fast fast fast. The final tool that is a "must have" for me is simple disc cataloger which if you burn discs is a must. again it'll run from a stick, only take a few Mb depending on how big your Db is ((I have about NINE 100 count spindles on it going back to 2000 and the whole thing is only 33Mb) and it supports wildcards, makes it beyond simple to find where you put something. Now whenever I burn a disc i just fire it up and I label my discs using joilet as (month-date-year) using the excellent IMGBurn and now its trivial to find anything I want when i want it, no matter how far back I need to go.

anyway i hope you enjoy, been using these tool for years and they are rock solid and malware free. i learned years ago there ain't no point in waiting for MSFT to add a feature to Windows because they'll probably half ass it anyway, better to use simple tools designed for simple jobs. All of the above BTW will run on anything from Win2K- Win 7 X64 so it doesn't matter what you are on it all "just works". Enjoy and if you have some weird task you need a tool for just shoot me an email and I can probably point you in the right direction, with my customers constantly wanting software for this job or that I've become pretty good at finding little tools for little jobs.