Once again, Mandrake listened to its community of users and developpers, and I think that this is a great move for Mandrake to offer an excellent level of feature and innovation in its new releases, as well as an excellent level of polishment in a second time... And another good news is that both versions will be officially supported!
I think it's a very smart understanding of a community project, and I think Mandrake can be thanked for its continued sense of innovation since 1998...
After the recent and excellent financial from MandrakeSoft, this is all good news!
Additionally, there are two important facts in their financial results: 1) revenue has increased of +8.4% compared to the same quarter for year 2002/03 2) the gross margin increased of +28.9% during the same time. More importantly: their gross margin has reached 82% of revenue. This is excellent and shows that their business model has improved much and potentially makes MandrakeSoft a very profitable company.
>For now I will be working the stabilisation of > kernel 2.6 and in a month or two I expect Fedora > (the core of Red Hat Linux) to have a release with > 2.6 so I expect to get more bug reports.
For your information, Cooker provides Linux 2.6 as kernel default since december. ISO snapshots are available here for download, with also a preview of the new KDE.
Anyway, it's certainly not a surprise: my feeling is that Mandrake is the Linux distribution the most close to Debian in its spirit. It's more friendly and offers more new features though.
My aunts , uncles and many friends spend more and more time to fix issues in their system, find anti-viruses, repair damaged files, and even sometimes reinstall the whole system. They run Windows XP.
Well, in my opinion both Mandrake 9.1 & Mandrake 9.2 were really better in term of quality. I compared them to the latest Red Hat, on five (different) machines, and I got two install failure with RH (the installation just... crashed), and on 2 other machines I got random X freezes... These things never happened to me with Mandrake...
> Why they didn't provide the link to the table I > have no idea, but after several minutes (way to > damn long) of searching here it is: (...)
Did you read the statement?
"Additional information is located at:
# The home of the Mandrake Linux project.
# The home of the "Cooker" community.
# Mandrake Linux's Wiki for Cooker
# MandrakeSoft products
# Official MandrakeSoft product lifetime table http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/productlifetime.p hp"
This lets you directly jump to the conclusion without having to read the 3-pages:
Conclusion:
The coming months (weeks?) should be interesting in that Mandrake is set to release the AMD64 version any time now, as they are taking pre orders for it in the Mandrake store. Recall, it was one of the best (if not the best) in my first review, and I blame the drive problems on the Asus BIOS update. Gentoo is nearing (from what I read) a really stable working system, and I have read repeatedly that others have it working fully (as a workstation with X windows) on other motherboards, so I again blame the Asus for my troubles with Gentoo. Red Hat is another story, having dropped the desktop edition, the "workstation" edition is well beyond my financial reach. A corporation may consider purchasing a copy for evaluation, but I would be tempted to wait on Mandrake or Suse.
FYI: costs as of 12-16-2003 for AMD64 Linux distributions:
Mandrake pre order $100 Mandrake corporate server $750 (standard support) $1500 (unlimited support) Red Hat AMD64 workstation $792 Red Hat Advanced Server $1992 Suse Professional 9.0 $120 (distribution on DVDs, no CDs) Suse Enterprise Server $767 (2 cpu) $1450 (4 cpu)
Looking at the above cost matrix and my experience, it is almost tempting to purchase SuSe just to have the DVDs (no CDs, strange). The enterprise/server editions seem to all be priced about the same, with no definitive mention of CPU capability from RedHat or Mandrake on the server editions. (I assume at least 2 CPU capability built into the kernel)
This is certainly one of the most interesting part of this interview, and I think too few people aren't aware of these facts... And I would add URPMI:
LQ) What would you consider Mandrake's largest innovation or contribution to Linux?
MD) Proof that Linux is not only for geeks (focus on ease of use), first graphical installer, first remote update utility (including graphical front-end), security levels, transparent access to devices, first Linux releases as an ISO image...
> They filed for chapter 11 this year. That means > they have been asking for donations through the > club for two years before they started having real > financial troubles.
But the Mandrake Club is not a donation service... It's a full-featured service...
Actually this is better to fix the bugs and release updated packages instead of ignoring them, which is what happens with many other Linux distributions.
Well... MandrakeMove's concept is to offer a liveCD with a USB key that automatically stores configuration data and personal data (email...). That's slightly different... Additionally, MandrakeMove is... a Mandrake:-)
I can recommend the Definitive Guide...
on
Linux Power Tools
·
· Score: 1
...to running Mandrake Linux, 3rd Edition.
For five reasons:
1) It's an excellent book and well written. 2) A big spolight is onto multimedia and office tasks, which is not common in books related to Linux. 3) It gets into Mandrake Linux in depth. 4) It doesn't gets only into Mandrake Linux, because it teaches you how to use a Linux system in general, how to use the command-line, recompile a kernel and so on, so even users of other distributions will enjoy this book. 5) It's just been released so it provides very up-to-date content (600 pages).
There is also MandrakeSoft's Multi Network Firewall which is a very nice firewall + network infrastructure management software that provides many features, including a multi-VPN support. And it's very easy to use.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Both Mandrake Linux Community and Mandrake Linux Official versions will be publicly released and supported.
2) Fedora is in fact the same as the Mandrake Cooker project, which started... 5 years ago.
So I'm afraid that *Mandrake* is innovating with this new scheme. Red Hat is just leaving its users alone...
Once again, Mandrake listened to its community of users and developpers, and I think that this is a great move for Mandrake to offer an excellent level of feature and innovation in its new releases, as well as an excellent level of polishment in a second time... And another good news is that both versions will be officially supported!
I think it's a very smart understanding of a community project, and I think Mandrake can be thanked for its continued sense of innovation since 1998...
After the recent and excellent financial from MandrakeSoft, this is all good news!
There aren't donations and it's October to December 2003 results. Not January to March results.
... 280,000 Euro, which is around $358,000.
Additionally, there are two important facts in their financial results: 1) revenue has increased of +8.4% compared to the same quarter for year 2002/03 2) the gross margin increased of +28.9% during the same time. More importantly: their gross margin has reached 82% of revenue. This is excellent and shows that their business model has improved much and potentially makes MandrakeSoft a very profitable company.
Nice shot for a pure Open Source company.
>For now I will be working the stabilisation of
> kernel 2.6 and in a month or two I expect Fedora
> (the core of Red Hat Linux) to have a release with
> 2.6 so I expect to get more bug reports.
For your information, Cooker provides Linux 2.6 as kernel default since december. ISO snapshots are available here for download, with also a preview of the new KDE.
It's a pity that I lose my moderator status yesterday because I would have scored you "Funny" - many thanx for the laugh! :-)
It seems that people are moving to another Linux distribution if you can read between lines in the following statement:r /corporate/2446
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/pr?n=/p
Anyway, it's certainly not a surprise: my feeling is that Mandrake is the Linux distribution the most close to Debian in its spirit. It's more friendly and offers more new features though.
Mandrake is really about choice.
Neither do I. Neither does my two brothers.
My aunts , uncles and many friends spend more and more time to fix issues in their system, find anti-viruses, repair damaged files, and even sometimes reinstall the whole system. They run Windows XP.
We run Mandrake and have no such issues.
> but I still have to fiddle with it to get Flash or
> Real work with Mozilla and so on.
Buy a Mandrake pack, it installs by default with a multimedia install.
Because of course you tested everything... :-> Happy new year with fedora (and good luck for updates).
Well, in my opinion both Mandrake 9.1 & Mandrake 9.2 were really better in term of quality. I compared them to the latest Red Hat, on five (different) machines, and I got two install failure with RH (the installation just... crashed), and on 2 other machines I got random X freezes... These things never happened to me with Mandrake...
> "9. Compatibility: run Windows and Mandrake Linux on the same computer."
I guess it's about LILO/GRUB... Anyway, as far as I know they provide an evaluation version of VMWare with the PowerPack.
> Why they didn't provide the link to the table I
p hp"
> have no idea, but after several minutes (way to
> damn long) of searching here it is: (...)
Did you read the statement?
"Additional information is located at:
# The home of the Mandrake Linux project.
# The home of the "Cooker" community.
# Mandrake Linux's Wiki for Cooker
# MandrakeSoft products
# Official MandrakeSoft product lifetime table
http://www.mandrakesecure.net/en/productlifetime.
This lets you directly jump to the conclusion without having to read the 3-pages:
Conclusion:
The coming months (weeks?) should be interesting in that Mandrake is set to release the AMD64 version any time now, as they are taking pre orders for it in the Mandrake store. Recall, it was one of the best (if not the best) in my first review, and I blame the drive problems on the Asus BIOS update. Gentoo is nearing (from what I read) a really stable working system, and I have read repeatedly that others have it working fully (as a workstation with X windows) on other motherboards, so I again blame the Asus for my troubles with Gentoo. Red Hat is another story, having dropped the desktop edition, the "workstation" edition is well beyond my financial reach. A corporation may consider purchasing a copy for evaluation, but I would be tempted to wait on Mandrake or Suse.
FYI: costs as of 12-16-2003 for AMD64 Linux distributions:
Mandrake pre order $100
Mandrake corporate server $750 (standard support) $1500 (unlimited support)
Red Hat AMD64 workstation $792
Red Hat Advanced Server $1992
Suse Professional 9.0 $120 (distribution on DVDs, no CDs)
Suse Enterprise Server $767 (2 cpu) $1450 (4 cpu)
Looking at the above cost matrix and my experience, it is almost tempting to purchase SuSe just to have the DVDs (no CDs, strange). The enterprise/server editions seem to all be priced about the same, with no definitive mention of CPU capability from RedHat or Mandrake on the server editions. (I assume at least 2 CPU capability built into the kernel)
Side note: the Mandrake pre-order in question is Mandrake 9.2 (pre-order is at http://www.mandrakestore.com)
This is certainly one of the most interesting part of this interview, and I think too few people aren't aware of these facts... And I would add URPMI:
LQ) What would you consider Mandrake's largest innovation or contribution to Linux?
MD) Proof that Linux is not only for geeks (focus on ease of use), first graphical installer, first remote update utility (including graphical front-end), security levels, transparent access to devices, first Linux releases as an ISO image...
That's the reason why Mandrake offers URPMI/URPME that makes the job for you.
http://www.linux.org/apps/AppId_2189.html
> They filed for chapter 11 this year. That means
> they have been asking for donations through the
> club for two years before they started having real > financial troubles.
But the Mandrake Club is not a donation service... It's a full-featured service...
> Am I missing something? Are these just "evaluation
> version"?
Of course yes.
Actually this is better to fix the bugs and release updated packages instead of ignoring them, which is what happens with many other Linux distributions.
Well... MandrakeMove's concept is to offer a liveCD with a USB key that automatically stores configuration data and personal data (email...). That's slightly different... Additionally, MandrakeMove is... a Mandrake :-)
is certainly one of the ultimate Geek gifts available, and it has the potential to transform masses into geeks! :-)
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove
...to running Mandrake Linux, 3rd Edition.
n =/mandrakesoft/products/2441
i nitiveguide/summary92.pdf
For five reasons:
1) It's an excellent book and well written.
2) A big spolight is onto multimedia and office tasks, which is not common in books related to Linux.
3) It gets into Mandrake Linux in depth.
4) It doesn't gets only into Mandrake Linux, because it teaches you how to use a Linux system in general, how to use the command-line, recompile a kernel and so on, so even users of other distributions will enjoy this book.
5) It's just been released so it provides very up-to-date content (600 pages).
The book is described online at:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/briefs?
And the complete table of contents can also be downloaded (PDF):
http://images.mandrakesoft.com/mdkv2/products/def
There is also MandrakeSoft's Multi Network Firewall which is a very nice firewall + network infrastructure management software that provides many features, including a multi-VPN support. And it's very easy to use.
Not anymore since LG fixed their buggy and so-called ATAPI drives.