I'm afraid you're not aware of what Open Source Software/Free Software is. Please read the definition of Open Source software: "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code."
It's very easy: Red Hat has dropped support for it's Free Software Linux distribution, and wants Fedora to be the replacement for Red Hat Linux as you know it. SuSE is not an OSS Linux distribution. Slack is dying:-( Now your choice for major Linux distribs is: Debian or Mandrake. And maybe Knoppix in the future.
Despite financial problems earlier this year, Mandrake Linux has gained big popularity with their latest Linux distributions, and it seems to go quicker now (see distro ranking at distrowatch). They also have been pionneers of "what Red Hat should have done earlier" (release of ISO images, Cooker community...) and are inventing new interesting business models that seem work now (Mandrake Club).
Compared to Red Hat, MandrakeSoft has very small financial capabilities, very low press coverage, but is still growing and attracting a large user and contributor community. Additionally, they now have a full range of products, from the pure desktop product to the clustering solution. They generally have excellent new technologies (URPMI/RPMDrake/dynamic desktop...), excellent support policy (see http://www.mandrakesecure.net) and again with very low ressources. Why? Maybe MandrakeSoft understood something about the Linux community, a way to listen to it carefully (maybe too much sometimes).
Why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake and let them deal with that? Red Hat could certainly buy MandrakeSoft easily, and the "Mandrake" brandname could become the community Red Hat brandname, by merging with Fedora. The "Mandrake" brandname is already very well known and this would be better for Red Hat than trying to impose the new "Fedora" brandname (this could take years).
Mandrake has always been a kind of little brother of Red Hat. They know how to do things Red Hat don't know how to deal with or don't want to do - and now they are profitable with this model. It could turn into a great thing for Red Hat and would help to catch a new big part of Linux users, in particular newcomers, individuals and small corporates, from the Windows world. At the same time this would avoid to frustrate millions of Red Hat users that are now considering a switch to another Linux distribution.
So why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake for the community side of Linux?
> mandrake just doesn't seem like a reasonable > option to use for work/server environment on > stable production servers.
"doesn't seem", but did you really try it in a production environment? I was very surprised to see how Mandrake is good for a server. The main issue with Mandrake is often all these fashionable multimedia/office apps that tend to eat a bit of memory and CPU. Just install your Mandrake with only tre console tools (and maybe webmin and console draketools) and you'll have an impressive server-oriented system, with all the softs you'll need with the networked URPMI (which now comes with parallelized capabilities: you can update 1000 server at once with a single command).
Additionally, MandrakeSoft this year released a "rock solid" server version of Mandrake, which has older features than the appealing Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2, but is really something reliable and affordable. It's the "Corporate Server 2.1" which starts at $749 with good support options, available for x86 & Opteron.
Stay away from... Red Hat! Tried to install it on three different machines: 1) installed (mostly) OK 2) X freezed randomely once every minute... 3) the install was not possible (rebooted). I never had such annoying issue with recent Mandrake releases that are excellent for me (in my opinion) for heavy server use and corporate desktop as well. In addition, Mandrake provides excellent and professional updates through http://www.mandrakesecure.net. For free.
And regarding the LG-Cdrom issue, it's a... LG bug (not ATAPI compliant) and other Linux users were affected as well.
I had the opportunity to play with the Yopy, and it's really a great machine. It's very exciting to have its own web & sql server in the pocket actually, and the hand-writing recognition is very good. By the way, the distributor in Europe for Yopy is "TuxMedia":
> For the majority of the public you're talking a > release in 1-2 weeks.
As mentionned in the post, the entire tree, including binary and sources is available publicly on a number of mirrors... (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3)
September 24th, 2003 - Mandrake 9.2 Beta1 for AMD64 - The first beta of Mandrake 9.2 for AMD64 (Athlon64 and Opteron) is now available. Release informations and places to download are available here.
It's a very interesting approach: Mandrake Club & contributors (developers, translators...) are thanked, while business (retail sales) is boosted!
Here is the full message posted on their website: ____ Mandrake 9.2 ISOs available for Club and contributors in advance!
Next ISOs of Mandrake 9.2 Download Edition will be available for Club Members and all people who have contributed to the new version (including developers and translators), prior to retail packs and public download release.
This new policy was strongly suggested by Club Members for a long time. It is now possible to offer this opportunity with the new BitTorrent technology.
Mandrake 9.2 ISO images will be released in advance to Mandrake Club users, hopefully before October 15th, when all last tests will have been achieved.
Thanks to all people who made possible this new promising release of Mandrake Linux.
"Following up on a story appearing this morning at DesktopLinux.com about MandrakeSoft selling ads in their free download version of Mandrake Linux, I contacted Gael Duval at MandrakeSoft for more detail on the new advertising/revenue source.
Duval pointed out that advertising in Mandrake Linux is not really a new thing. There have been ads for Mandrake Linux, MandrakeSoft products, and for free software projects in the installation all along. They introduced paid advertising in the Safari Service in Mandrake Linux 9.l. Duval says that in version 9.2 they are just advancing that concept a little further.
Duval said the boxed versions of Mandrake 9.2 will not include any paid ads, but that the free download edition (the choice of 90% of Mandrake users) "will now include several additional ads, in the bookmarks and in the screensavers." He noted there will be no annoying pop-up ads.
He added that most Mandrake users want to see them continue to operate in the spirit of free software while at the same time being successful as a business. These new ads, Duval said, are one way that MandrakeSoft tries "to solve this equation."
More details on the advertising, including pricing, is available on the MandrakeSoft web site.
I can tell you I'll never use SuSE because they don't play the Free Software/Open Source game rules. They lock their product by putting proprietary stuff inside, including Yast.
And whatever open source or not it is, I find Mandrake to be really better than SuSE, in particular for hardware detection, configuration and desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Well. I started with Slack and FVWM so nothing against that. I wouldn't use them anymore though (and TWM is enough for a 100MB install of Mandrake).
I'm afraid you're not aware of what Open Source Software/Free Software is. Please read the definition of Open Source software: "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code."
;-)
And of course Free Software.
Never flamed about Qt license in the past?
Let's talk about *major* Linux distributions:
:-(
> or Fedora
Make your proof.
> or Gentoo
Not a major distro, and Mandrake recently outperformed it in a comparative.
> or Debian
OK.
> or SuSE (ftp install)
Major, but proprietary-spirit distro.
> or Slackware
Currently dying
> or Vector
Never heard from it.
> or Knoppix
Maybe a future big one, but still not a major one.
> or one of the thousands of others
Agreed (for distrowatch.com).
It's very easy: Red Hat has dropped support for it's Free Software Linux distribution, and wants Fedora to be the replacement for Red Hat Linux as you know it. SuSE is not an OSS Linux distribution. Slack is dying :-( Now your choice for major Linux distribs is: Debian or Mandrake. And maybe Knoppix in the future.
Despite financial problems earlier this year, Mandrake Linux has gained big popularity with their latest Linux distributions, and it seems to go quicker now (see distro ranking at distrowatch). They also have been pionneers of "what Red Hat should have done earlier" (release of ISO images, Cooker community...) and are inventing new interesting business models that seem work now (Mandrake Club).
Compared to Red Hat, MandrakeSoft has very small financial capabilities, very low press coverage, but is still growing and attracting a large user and contributor community. Additionally, they now have a full range of products, from the pure desktop product to the clustering solution. They generally have excellent new technologies (URPMI/RPMDrake/dynamic desktop...), excellent support policy (see http://www.mandrakesecure.net) and again with very low ressources. Why? Maybe MandrakeSoft understood something about the Linux community, a way to listen to it carefully (maybe too much sometimes).
Why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake and let them deal with that? Red Hat could certainly buy MandrakeSoft easily, and the "Mandrake" brandname could become the community Red Hat brandname, by merging with Fedora. The "Mandrake" brandname is already very well known and this would be better for Red Hat than trying to impose the new "Fedora" brandname (this could take years).
Mandrake has always been a kind of little brother of Red Hat. They know how to do things Red Hat don't know how to deal with or don't want to do - and now they are profitable with this model. It could turn into a great thing for Red Hat and would help to catch a new big part of Linux users, in particular newcomers, individuals and small corporates, from the Windows world. At the same time this would avoid to frustrate millions of Red Hat users that are now considering a switch to another Linux distribution.
So why wouldn't Red Hat trust Mandrake for the community side of Linux?
> mandrake just doesn't seem like a reasonable
> option to use for work/server environment on
> stable production servers.
"doesn't seem", but did you really try it in a production environment? I was very surprised to see how Mandrake is good for a server. The main issue with Mandrake is often all these fashionable multimedia/office apps that tend to eat a bit of memory and CPU. Just install your Mandrake with only tre console tools (and maybe webmin and console draketools) and you'll have an impressive server-oriented system, with all the softs you'll need with the networked URPMI (which now comes with parallelized capabilities: you can update 1000 server at once with a single command).
Additionally, MandrakeSoft this year released a "rock solid" server version of Mandrake, which has older features than the appealing Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2, but is really something reliable and affordable. It's the "Corporate Server 2.1" which starts at $749 with good support options, available for x86 & Opteron.
> They made it from the red to black by selling out
> per-CPU licenses for their enterprise edition.
Next step is per-user license.
Oh sorry - yes it will still exist for 5 months :)
Stay away from... Red Hat! Tried to install it on three different machines: 1) installed (mostly) OK 2) X freezed randomely once every minute... 3) the install was not possible (rebooted). I never had such annoying issue with recent Mandrake releases that are excellent for me (in my opinion) for heavy server use and corporate desktop as well. In addition, Mandrake provides excellent and professional updates through http://www.mandrakesecure.net. For free.
And regarding the LG-Cdrom issue, it's a... LG bug (not ATAPI compliant) and other Linux users were affected as well.
> Mandrake is based on Red Hat Linux
Nope (not the case anymore for... 4 years!).
I'm using Mandrake ;)
I guess you never watch TV nor listen to the radio. You a winner.
Afaik accents are supported (at least in French). TuxMedia is not only a distributor, they do localization for the Yopy.
There was an interesting interview with Matthias Ettrich, done in 1998, and available here.
:-)
Amazing to see how KDE grew since then, and a good reminder of all these (past) issues with Qt, and the QtMozilla huge hack...
And by the way, is this "KEmacs" thing a reality somewhere?
I had the opportunity to play with the Yopy, and it's really a great machine. It's very exciting to have its own web & sql server in the pocket actually, and the hand-writing recognition is very good. By the way, the distributor in Europe for Yopy is "TuxMedia":
http://www.tuxmedia.com/
It happened to me as well just after installation. But it didn't happen anymore after I rebooted the system once...
> Has Mandrake's stability improved in the 9.x series?
I never had problems with Mandrake's stability. At least since version 8.2.
> For the majority of the public you're talking a
> release in 1-2 weeks.
As mentionned in the post, the entire tree, including binary and sources is available publicly on a number of mirrors... (http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3)
Did you have a look at Mandrake's website?
September 24th, 2003 - Mandrake 9.2 Beta1 for AMD64 - The first beta of Mandrake 9.2 for AMD64 (Athlon64 and Opteron) is now available. Release informations and places to download are available here.
It's a very interesting approach: Mandrake Club & contributors (developers, translators...) are thanked, while business (retail sales) is boosted!
Here is the full message posted on their website:
____
Mandrake 9.2 ISOs available for Club and contributors in advance!
Next ISOs of Mandrake 9.2 Download Edition will be available for Club Members and all people who have contributed to the new version (including developers and translators), prior to retail packs and public download release.
This new policy was strongly suggested by Club Members for a long time. It is now possible to offer this opportunity with the new BitTorrent technology.
Mandrake 9.2 ISO images will be released in advance to Mandrake Club users, hopefully before October 15th, when all last tests will have been achieved.
Thanks to all people who made possible this new promising release of Mandrake Linux.
MandrakeSoft Team.
____
"Following up on a story appearing this morning at DesktopLinux.com about MandrakeSoft selling ads in their free download version of Mandrake Linux, I contacted Gael Duval at MandrakeSoft for more detail on the new advertising/revenue source.
Duval pointed out that advertising in Mandrake Linux is not really a new thing. There have been ads for Mandrake Linux, MandrakeSoft products, and for free software projects in the installation all along. They introduced paid advertising in the Safari Service in Mandrake Linux 9.l. Duval says that in version 9.2 they are just advancing that concept a little further.
Duval said the boxed versions of Mandrake 9.2 will not include any paid ads, but that the free download edition (the choice of 90% of Mandrake users) "will now include several additional ads, in the bookmarks and in the screensavers." He noted there will be no annoying pop-up ads.
He added that most Mandrake users want to see them continue to operate in the spirit of free software while at the same time being successful as a business. These new ads, Duval said, are one way that MandrakeSoft tries "to solve this equation."
More details on the advertising, including pricing, is available on the MandrakeSoft web site.
See Joe Barr's article.
I can tell you I'll never use SuSE because they don't play the Free Software/Open Source game rules. They lock their product by putting proprietary stuff inside, including Yast.
And whatever open source or not it is, I find Mandrake to be really better than SuSE, in particular for hardware detection, configuration and desktop.
Do you mean they shouldn't accept all Microsoft ads like we see on Slashdot and Linux Today?
Or use URPMI...
your friend's "reactor" : I just want to make clear that I just don't know him - as a result he isn't my friend at all.