Mandriva’s CEO got interviewed for the Mandriva club. “Right now, the new ‘in thing’ is Ubuntu. Of course, the situation is a bit different in this case: one person, with a quasi infinite check book is behind the operation. So they can give the system away and spend whatever is needed. Is this the right way for the open source eco-system? I find it hard to believe. One possible worse case scenario is that Ubuntu’s plan is to use money to put all other community-based distros out of business and then start monetizing the installed base. If this were the case, they are doing the easy part: increasing their market share by giving away the product. We have found that the second part is a tad more difficult.”
Francois dosen’t have much to worry about … if he builds a better distro.
If not, he’ll be run over, like everyone else.
Francois dosen’t have much to worry about … if he builds a better distro.
If not, he’ll be run over, like everyone else.
I would hardly call Ubuntu a ‘better distro‘.
Francois Bancilhon has simply got carried away with the hype others have attributed to Ubuntu and become a bit defensive about it. The reality, as usual, doesn’t quite match up on closer scrutiny.
That’s a reasonable opinion. I think Ubuntu is far superior to Mandriva, but that’s just my opinion.
Francois just lost a lot of credibility by bashing Ubuntu’s founder. It looks like he’s trying to make it a world vs rich man scenario, and since he’s poor and hardworking, he should get our sympathies. Dumb approach .
Edited 2006-02-10 23:59
After reading the article, I don’t see what the fuss is about. He was asked a question about Ubuntu and he said what he thought. He did not slag off Mark Shuttleworth, but simply aired out his views about the distro and its funding. Whilst some what he said merely speculation (or reflection), he is right that not many distros can afford to simply give away their distro, i.e. ship the discs for absolutely zilt or have endless deep pockets to get resources to improve their distro.
I guess sometimes peole get sensitive when their distro of choice gets criticised in some way, as shown by the posts on this site by some Ubuntu fans and the amount of votes they have,
>After reading the article, I don’t see what the fuss is about.
After reading the article again, I do see what the fuss is all about. I can think of a dozen of way he could have fairly discussed the Ubuntu issue, but instead, he chose to play the money card. i.e. they have money, but we have strong work and determination. Maybe Ubuntu has that too, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
>I guess sometimes peole get sensitive when their distro of choice gets criticised in some way
He didn’t criticise the distro. Please reread it. If he did, that would be acceptable. Instead, he criticised the money behind it as if that’s an unforgivable sin. That’s what I am calling a dumb move.
>I guess sometimes peole get sensitive when their distro of choice gets criticised in some way
He didn’t criticise the distro. Please reread it. If he did, that would be acceptable. Instead, he criticised the money behind it as if that’s an unforgivable sin. That’s what I am calling a dumb move.
Ok, I think language semantics differ (I am not a native English speaker) and I probably didn’t make myself clear. What I meant was that some people respond rashly when they percieve that anything negative is being said about their distro. I didn’t mean Francois criticised Ubuntu. If you read the first part of my post, you will note that I was actually supporting Francois because I didn’t intepret his comments as flaming Ubuntu.
On an unrelated note. How does one edit their posts. Sometimes I see the option, other times I don’t.
That’s a tad bit cruel … but it’s a fair opinion all the same. I recently upgraded my server machine from Mandrake 9.0 to Ubuntu. That was a about a month ago. I’ve had Mandrake 9.0 running as a server for the last 3 years without need of upgrade. (i was quite impressed by that ).
I think Francois misses what makes Ubuntu different as opposed to just being new. And that’s Ubuntu ( in it’s own mysterious way ) seems to fill that hard to define need in a user computer experience that seems to be lacking in the other major desktop orientated distros.
I am not saying that Ubuntu is the best distro, or that it has solved all Linux’s problems. I am saying though that the need it is fufilling is fuelling it’s adoption rapidly.
Users from other distributions try it and then almost irrationally they change. That’s how strong their first impressions are of the distro. I have been using Linux since 1996 and I changed to Ubuntu from Mandrake 9.0 last year this time and it was just like that I installed it and kept it without thought. There was no 3 week trial period that comes with trying a new distro. It stayed and I have to say that I am happy with it as a “DESKTOP” distro.
As a workstation distro ,i tend to be distro agnostic… that being said though, I strangley prefer Mandrake 9.0 🙂
Please!
I have been using Linux since 1996 and I changed to Ubuntu from Mandrake 9.0 last year this time and it was just like that I installed it and kept it without thought.
That alone says it all.
You were using un 2005 a Mandrake version from 2002.
What were you thinking?
You shuld be using MDK 101 or MDV 2005 instead.
I’s like saying “I used to drive my Ford T, but I switched to a Chevy Impala’06 and I don’t even considere going back to Ford”.
Peace.
I am not sure why Francois had to bag on Ubuntu.
I stopped using Mandrake before it became Mandriva (lame name BTW) and haven’t look back since. That doesn’t mean I want the distro to go away, however.
Why can’t people ever read an article before posting tripe or knee-jerk reactions? Get the context. The second question he was asked dealt with the hype surrounding Ubuntu. Do you expect him to respond by telling everyone that they should stop using Mandriva and move to Ubuntu?
The interview was a decent introduction to Mandriva as a company. It’s sad that due to the part of the article quoted this thread has so quickly become a debate about Ubuntu vs. Mandriva.
I use Gentoo on my main system, but I think Ubuntu is a really great distro. I think it’s more than just the new ‘in thing’, as he puts it. That would indicate that people are jumping on Ubuntu just because it’s new. I don’t think so. I think people are jumping on Ubuntu because it’s simply better than anything else available right now … for the average user.
It’s 1 CD, not 3 or 4 (or 10+). Rather than including 4 web browsers, a half dozen e-mail clients, 18 text editors, 2 major Desktops (KDE and GNOME) plus 2 dozen other window managers, and so on ….. Ubuntu includes a sane set of default programs that are more or less best of breed.
And unlike Mandriva (use to be Mandrake) which includes a totally unique control panel system, Ubuntu by and large uses standard Gnome tools to configure the system. (Though there do seem to be at least a few custom things in Ubuntu.)
I tried Mandrake a few times over the years. I never cared for it at all until about version 9. (And even then, I didn’t really like it that well.) On the other hand, with regards to Ubuntu, I have liked it from day 1. The only reason I don’t run Ubuntu on my main system is because I prefer the level of control I have with Gentoo with regards to the USE flags. I do run Ubuntu on my laptop though because I don’t need/want that same level of control on my laptop.
Blixel,
Re:“I use Gentoo on my main system, but I think Ubuntu is a really great distro. I think it’s more than just the new ‘in thing’, as he puts it. That would indicate that people are jumping on Ubuntu just because it’s new. I don’t think so. I think people are jumping on Ubuntu because it’s simply better than anything else available right now … for the average user.”
The quote above is a good example of an ongoing problem when supposedly new distributions are released. Mandriva’s CEO Francois Bancilhon, attempted to point this out in his article by simply using the term “hype” when it comes to distributions such as Ubuntu. The problem is that some people are bad communicators when it comes to explaining to non-Linux users why they should drop Windows or OSX for their particular distribution. Just saying it’s “great” or “cool” isn’t going to attract users (enterprise and private) who are used to having the OS which is typically Windows preinstalled with their system.
Re: “It’s 1 CD, not 3 or 4 (or 10+). Rather than including 4 web browsers, a half dozen e-mail clients, 18 text editors, 2 major Desktops (KDE and GNOME) plus 2 dozen other window managers, and so on ….. Ubuntu includes a sane set of default programs that are more or less best of breed.”
Distributions that include several CD which is between 3-5 or the entire contents on one DVD (ie: Mandriva Linux, SUSE Linux, etc) is not just for the OS. The main OS and default software is typically on one CD and additional software including the source code on the remaining discs. The advantage here is the consumer or IT Administrator doesn’t need to spend additional time searching and downloading additional software, drivers, etc since there already packaged with the distribution.
Re: “Unlike Mandriva (use to be Mandrake) which includes a totally unique control panel system, Ubuntu by and large uses standard Gnome tools to configure the system. Though there do seem to be at least a few custom things in Ubuntu.”
Unlike Ubuntu, distributions such as Mandriva Linux and SUSE Linux/NLD use a control center that is familiar to the most widely used OS on the desktop for homes, businesses, governments and education institutions. That being Windows, where the tools found in Windows XP Control Center closely resemble what is found in YAST Control Center for SUSE Linux/NLD and that which is found in Mandriva Control Center for Mandriva Linux.
As for your comment regarding standards well distributions such as Mandriva Linux are LSB certified. Gnome used as the default desktop for Ubuntu is more based on OSX which is less used globally than Windows. Even Novell has realized this and is trying to please both markets by making their Gnome default closer resemble KDE and Windows default with the tool bar on the bottom screen and similar start menu. After all Linux distributions that offer a similar look to Windows will find it easier to attract customers as it eases migration for users to Linux.
Re:“I tried Mandrake a few times over the years. I never cared for it at all until about version 9. (And even then, I didn’t really like it that well.) On the other hand, with regards to Ubuntu, I have liked it from day 1. The only reason I don’t run Ubuntu on my main system is because I prefer the level of control I have with Gentoo with regards to the USE flags. I do run Ubuntu on my laptop though because I don’t need/want that same level of control on my laptop.”
This last comment does indicate you’re someone that has at least tried other Linux distributions such as Mandriva Linux but not had a lot of experience with Linux in a LAN. This review http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=5557 of Ubuntu better shows what is still lacking in the distribution once consumers get past all the hype comments from others. Consumers typically want ease of use with their distribution and be able to migrate from one distribution to another with little difficulty. When it comes to administration of Linux whether in a LAN or on one system the same is true, especially for a business where time equats to money either being made or lost. Unfortunately the way Ubuntu is it doesn’t install/configure easily in cross networks where Windows is used. This is not just a problem for Ubuntu but other distributions such from Mandriva and Novell do tend to make the migration easier.
Edited 2006-02-11 17:18
“One possible worse case scenario is that Ubuntu’s plan is to use money to put all other community-based distros out of business”
Uh… how can they put community-based distros out of business?
Am I missing something?
Perhaps he didn’t express what he was trying to say properly, remember, he is French.
Or else maybe he means suck all of the contributors away from other community based distros over to Ubuntu.
But, to be perfectly honest….I have no idea what the hell he was trying to say 😛
The question (which wasn’t quoted) was “In your opinion, is the Ubuntu distribution a threat to Mandriva? Do you think Ubuntu’s special circumstances make competition with it too hard?”
The _full_ answer (which also wasn’t quoted entirely) was:
“We watch very carefully any new comer in the field and any new products. Three years ago I got a lot of calls about Knoppix, two years ago, I got a lot of calls about Gentoo and so no. Right now, the new “in thing” is Ubuntu. Of course, the situation is a bit different in this case: one person, with a quasi infinite check book is behind the operation. So they can give the system away and spend whatever is needed. Is this the right way for the open source eco-system? I find it hard to believe. One possible worse case scenario is that Ubuntu’s plan is to use money to put all other community-based distros out of business and then start monetizing the installed base. If this were the case, they are doing the easy part: increasing their market share by giving away the product. We have found that the second part is a tad more difficult.
Of course, at Mandriva we do not have an infinite check book, so we need to work hard, we pay employee salaries with revenues generated by sales, we have to watch our figures, we have to keep happy our users, the community, our clients, our employees and our shareholders. It’s a harder life, but I believe it is also a healthy way of looking at things. We work very hard, we can’t pay high salaries, we have to make a living out of our revenue. By doing so, we are building a strong and healthy company based on a proven business model.”
I think that’s fairly clear. Francois thinks Ubuntu’s developmental model (funded with almost infinite money by a wealthy philanthropist and not subject to commercial pressure) is hard to compete with but at the same time not the healthiest model. But in the end he thinks Mandriva will be able to cope with that. Seems clear to me.
I think that’s fairly clear. Francois thinks Ubuntu’s developmental model (funded with almost infinite money by a wealthy philanthropist and not subject to commercial pressure) is hard to compete with but at the same time not the healthiest model. But in the end he thinks Mandriva will be able to cope with that. Seems clear to me.
Thats the same conclusion I reached when I read the article, so I can’t understand those that say he is flaming Ubuntu.
exactly, my thoughts, too
Well, they can co-opt the community of volunteer programmers for one. I fear this may already be happenning within the Debian development community where some developers have concentrated on packaging for Ubuntu instead of for Debian at large. This is fine as long as Ubuntu doesn’t break compatibility with the Universal repositories.
Mandriva is an excellent distribution for desktops and it is very popular on Distrowatch (http://distrowatch.com/). It is very similar to Red Hat/Fedora (which is good) and you can have a practical linux desktop with mp3, flash, java, opera, etc only using the official CDs/DVD (and with PLF repositories you can have also libdvdcss, mplayer codecs, etc).
Ubuntu is good but its installer is non-attractive for new users and it has no GUI for administration like draktools. Ubuntu is based on Gnome, wich is less popular than KDE in world. KDE is more intuitive than Gnome for ex-windows users, despite of Gnome’s marketing says.
I think that Suse is the major rival to Mandriva, specially now with OpenSuse. Both were based on Red Hat, both are KDE oriented, both have beatifull and easy installers and both have complete GUIs for administration.
For latin american users Mandriva is better than Ubuntu and Suse because its better internationalization and localization. Conectiva was a great acquisition for these advantage.
Quick correction, Suse was never based on Red Hat.
Not sure but I think he ment “based on red hat package manager” eg. the RPM style distro.
Emmm, it actually was.
Suse was launched in 1994 and was a modified version of RedHat for the german and european markets.
Emmm, it actually was……Suse was launched in 1994 and was a modified version of RedHat for the german and european markets.
SuSE was launched in 1992 before RedHat even existed; although it was initially a UNIX consulting business. They released the first CD version of their Linux distribution, which was based on Softlanding Linux System/Slackware in 1994, under the name S.u.S.E Linux 1.0. It later integrated with the Jurix distribution of Florian La Roche (also based on Slackware), to release the first really unique S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 in 1996. Over time, SUSE Linux incorporated many aspects of Red Hat Linux (e.g., using RPMs and /etc/sysconfig).
Despite RPM’s, I would classify SuSE as a Slackware based distribution since that really was its initial lineage.
Well done. +5 for quoting wikipedia.
“Ubuntu is based on Gnome, wich is less popular than KDE in world.”
If you want KDE there is Kubuntu. I have it installed on my system as a second OS. Windows XP being my main OS.
While I personally find Ubuntu’s lack of a decent installer or configuration tools is damaging many new user’s perception of linux desktop usability, I believe the market will sort this out. Either Ubuntu will improve, which it has steadily done, and become useful or it will eventually fade like any other fad that has come and gone.
The trouble is that in the interim, while the market sorts itself out, Mandrake and other for-profit outfits are going to have to try much harder just to stay afloat.
I think Mandrake took too long to do the right thing, but eventually has gotten a few clues:
*They now do only yearly releases.
*They finally got around to creating a decent web site.
*And their releases are focusing on what matters: maintaniblity, security, quality.
Unfortunately, their Club puts off many people who would otherwise might become Mandrake users.
Ultimately, each distribution brings something to the table and it is high time that distributions and their fans put their differences aside as divisiveness only benefits proprietary software companies.
Okay I preface my comment with this : I don’t use Windows at home. I have not used it since late 90s except for when I’ve had to.
That said I can now talk about the installer. Please correct me if I am wrong. Isn’t the windows installer text based ? Well for the first few stages. You get asked the question of whether you want to (R)epair , Install etc from a text based interface and then it begins the install or repair. It does all the hardware detection at the beginning just as the Ubuntu Installer does.
So I don’t see how the installer is THAT BAD. I can see it’s weakness in comparison to the windows Installer.
for example, you have too many dialogs at the beginning ,where as windows doesn’t ask you about your keyboard, or language etc. Some might argue that is a strength , i don’t know.
My point is that, therre is that great a difference (now) with the windows installer and the text based type installers.
please correct… i know I have made some errors as I am NOT a user of Windows 🙂
Francois leads a company which makes money out of free software. He is criticizing the Ubuntu project because nowadays Ubuntu is by far the most popular linux distribution and getting more and more attention by linux users, including Mandriva users. So, if every day linux users are migrating to Ubuntu and ignoring Mandriva as the “best distro for linux newbies”, then obviously that Francois feels threatened. His user base is getting smaller and smaller, Mandriva’s fame is losing that certain spark, new users aren’t directing their attention to it anymore and therefore it affects Mandriva’s bottom line.
So no wonder he criticizes Ubuntu. He is scared it will eat them away.
The problem is not “this car is better than the other one” the problem is one company is manufacturing and selling cars (paying employees) and the other company is giving cars for free! with a rich man traveling in space for fun. And you are talking about money?
Once all the competitors are gone the rich can sell his cars
> He is criticizing the Ubuntu project because nowadays Ubuntu is by far the most popular linux distribution and getting more and more attention by linux users, including Mandriva users.
Will this myth ever die?! Ubuntu gets the most hits on distrowatch.org. Why people put such credence in that useless statistic, I have never understood. In all fairness, when Mandriva was at the top of that useless metric, it was called the most popular distro, too.
Netcraft is also flawed as a measure of OS popularity. But I’d put more faith in it than I would in distrowatch hits for heaven’s sake.
Have a look at:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/12/05/strong_growth_for_debi…
And no, Ubuntu is not included in the Debian results, as Ubuntu’s config of apache clearly identifies itself as Ubuntu. It simply does not run on enough sites to appear in the results.
I’m more or less neutral on Ubuntu vs Mandriva. My distro of choice is RHEL/CentOS. But I do believe in calling a spade a spade.
I agree about the Distrowatch thing. But the page you link to is not a very useful statistic to gauge Ubuntu’s popularity either. A few people may run servers with Ubuntu, but that’s just about the last use that is suggested for it.
Yeah. That’s why I said that it, too, is flawed. 😉
I don’t think that a metric exists that really gives a reliable picture of Linux desktop use. And I guess that’s what people mean when they say that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro.
Certainly, it gets more publicity than any other… for now, anyway.
I have used Ubuntu, and I must say that I was impressed by it. They have made some really good usability decisions. In fact, it is the *only* Debian based distro that I have ever been happy with.
I do have some concerns about the “Ubuntu phenomenon”, however.
The first being its lack of any visible^Wviable means of long term support. Outside of having a rich benefactor, Canonical has no business model. I have read interviews of employees who say that while Canonical will be a service company, it has no real business model and is not profitable, and furthermore they don’t care.
This does not sound like the best positioning for the future.
A second thing that bothers me about Ubuntu is that while other projects have benevolent dictators, those benevolent dictators hold office due to the respect that they command.
Ubuntu’s benevolent dictator (“for life”, no less) is more or less guaranteed to keep the position because he’s the one with the money. As it stands, Ubuntu would die without his money.
Ubuntu is a good distro. But I’m not sure that I’d want to see it be *the* most popular Linux distro.
“Netcraft is also flawed as a measure of OS popularity. But I’d put more faith in it than I would in distrowatch hits for heaven’s sake.”
Netcraft measures servers, not desktop installations.
As flawed as distrowatch may, or may not, be Netcraft is a much worse metric for this.
Netcraft measures servers, not desktop installations.
As flawed as distrowatch may, or may not, be Netcraft is a much worse metric for this
The distrowatch page hit counter doesn’t measure desktop installations either, it only measures page hits. There are a lot of experienced GNU/Linux users who don’t need to consult Distrowatch daily to decide which distro they should choose for their GNU/Linux servers and desktops.
Still, it seems odd that “The Most Popular Linux Distro”, which is based on Debian, a strong server OS, and which includes Apache, couldn’t garner at least 2% on the Netcraft chart.
Anyway, I find it very unclear what distrowatch is measuring. Page hits from newbies wondering which Linux distro to try? Linux fans checking what all the hype is about? People looking for help in fixing their broken Ubuntu boxes? Who knows? My objection is to the idea that Ubuntu/Mandriva/etc distrowatch hits are somehow proportional to Ubuntu/Mandriva/etc users.
My feeling is that the Distrowatch counter is mainly a hype-o-meter.
Thanks, Thom, for quoting the single part of the interview where Francois talked about anything other than Mandriva (and without even quoting the QUESTION!), and causing all the trolls to leap in and start swinging their clubs without even reading the interview. There’s a bunch of interesting stuff about Mandriva in there, but I’m sure that just wasn’t controversial enough to be excerpted…
Edited 2006-02-11 01:57
… it was not RPM-based, and based on something other than Red Hat, (or Fedora) or Debian. My fondest hope would to see it SlackWare-based, with all the ‘drak’ tools and Mandriva’s “easy” way of doing things. If not Slackware-based at least, based on one of the Slackware offshoots, Like Vector, or somesuch. The only otheer thing I could hope for or like to see is maybe Mandriva become based on a Debian-offshoot like Knannotix (awesome hardware detection), or PC-Linux OS Based.
</opinions>
Mandriva’s no longer based on any other distribution. It was forked from Red Hat so long ago it’s just absurd to say it’s still ‘based on’ it. All the packages in Mandriva are independently maintained.
I don’t think it will be easy for any major distro to swap to a totally different packaging format, so Mandriva will always be rpm based. If they decided to switch, it would cost a lot to change the package build system, retrain packagers and other developers. It will also cause users a lot of hassle, because they would have to learn new tools etc.
HAHAHAHAHA
That was very funny…. if you meant it as a joke,
but it is scary if you didn’t ….
The only otheer thing I could hope for or like to see is maybe Mandriva become based on a Debian-offshoot like Knannotix (awesome hardware detection), or PC-Linux OS Based.
Did you know that PCLinux OS is in fact, a derivative of Mandrake 9 ?
I think if anyone is hurting from ubuntu it is the commercial distros! I mean why pay for a commercial distro when you have such a great free distro that is so popular? Heck, the other free community distros can benefit from Ubuntus work and that is what the community is all about, everyone benefiting from each others work. Whereas the commercial distros will probably shun the work of Ubuntu and continue reinventing the wheel and wonder why they are losing user base. If I had a commercial distro then Ubuntu would be my base and I would build from that…
What exactly is it that people love about Ubuntu so much? I mean the software instilation is just like any Debian based distro. Ubunto has only the default Gnome configuration tools; so what exactly is so great about it. What does it have than any other standard Gnome based distro doesn’t have? What is it that people love about it so much?
I just want to know.
To answer your question.. it’s not as though Ubuntu is the best distro or has the greatest software, the greatest installer or the greatest product overall.
Ubuntu keeps it simple and fixes some key areas that drive full-time linux users crazy. Laptop support is great with Ubuntu. Also, the user community is very friendly and don’t say “RTFM” to every question. The install is simple and gives you a desktop that is _VERY_ usable right away.
SUSE looks pretty, but YAST is a pain. It changes system configuration files that really can’t be hand-edited easily. Yast gets quite unstable when you hand-edit /etc/.
Fedora is just unstable. I know I’m inviting flames but it’s true. I’ve used it for years. It seems them jump from unstable FC3 to unstable FC4. It never seems finished enough without problems.
Ubuntu isn’t the golden trophy but it’s simple.. if you install a DEB file for debian it doesn’t break your system. It works. APT is so easy to use and so easy to fix “dependency hell” (fedora and mandrake) aren’t such an issue.
Mandrake has some great configuration utilities.. but i’ve been put off many times by the laptop support. It can be a nightmare getting a laptop up and running with it. Mandrake make you jump through hoops if you don’t pay. That’s an issue.
Edited 2006-02-11 06:41
rdwtux,
Re: “SUSE looks pretty, but YAST is a pain. It changes system configuration files that really can’t be hand-edited easily. Yast gets quite unstable when you hand-edit /etc/.”
Please don’t bash a distribution with out providing facts. There is little hand editing I have needed to do because of the power YAST does offer while keeping things in a logical and simple GUI. There’s also a lot of documentation written easy to understand for SUSE Linux/NLD that are not typically found in other Linux distributions.
Re: “Fedora is just unstable. I know I’m inviting flames but it’s true. I’ve used it for years. It seems them jump from unstable FC3 to unstable FC4. It never seems finished enough without problems.”
You seem to misunderstand what the Fedora Project is about. Just as with OpenSUSE.org it allows other developers outside the actual company (Fedora being Red Hat and SUSE Linux being Novell) to contribute by developing applications, tools, etc. The end result is that the thoroughly tested parts and best of the breed so to speak are then used in the commercial release. For Fedora Linux this would mean Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Edited 2006-02-11 17:56
You sounded somewhat fine until this:
APT is so easy to use and so easy to fix “dependency hell” (fedora and mandrake) aren’t such an issue.
Have you really ever used and of Fedora or Mandrake/Mandriva distros?
They both have no dependency hell problems, as they use “rpm wrapper” tools to solve the issue.
Just like apt is a wrap around dkpg (the .deb installer).
Fedora uses, by default, yum. And it can be configured to use apt.
Mandriva uses, by default, urpmi. And it can be configured to use apt or smart.
yum, smart, urpmi, apt … they all do the same: solve dependencies and avoid “dependency hell”.
Maybe you were installing packages on Fedora and/or Mandriva using “rpm -ivh …”. If this is the case, you need to read some of the included documentation, were you will learn how to use the tools rpovided with the distro.
And all those “rpm dependency solving” tools have GUI versions, for the terminal-impaired.
Peace.
What exactly is it that people love about Ubuntu so much? I mean the software instilation is just like any Debian based distro. Ubunto has only the default Gnome configuration tools; so what exactly is so great about it. What does it have than any other standard Gnome based distro doesn’t have? What is it that people love about it so much?
I just want to know.
Read the last 30 or 40 Ubuntu stories on OSNews, where this exact same question has been asked every single time, and has been answered about 5 or 6 times on every single article, and then you’ll know what people say. Just a thought.
What exactly is it that people love about Ubuntu so much? I mean the software instilation is just like any Debian based distro. Ubunto has only the default Gnome configuration tools; so what exactly is so great about it. What does it have than any other standard Gnome based distro doesn’t have? What is it that people love about it so much?
I just want to know.
a) 1 CD
b) debian based
c) default GNOME (but other DE are available)
d) brown/human theme
e) sudo
f) ubuntuforums.org
g) wiki.ubuntu.com, help.ubuntu.com, ubuntuguide.org
h) feels right for me and i feel its the best for me n my hardware
BUT, doesn’t mean i think its the best distro for everyone
I remember Mandrake 9.1, and for me it was the last usable version. They become too big, too long to get.
They made a big mistake : mandriva club members can get before the other new releases. And also, Mandriva is using too old KDE / Gnome and so on version.
I prefer ubuntu because :
– lightweight distro.
– no too long to wait to have fresh and working version.
– simple to use.
– up to date Desktop Environment
– Not having to pay for a working version
Mandriva staff is feared now : they’re going to lose a big war : users which are switching from windows to linux…
Nah, I disagree,
Mandrake 9.2 was seen as a bleeding edge distro, however, these days Mandriva are trying to market a totally stable product.
That to you means OLD, but to me it means a machine that will WORK
I have a few machines and Mandriva 2006 is the one that gives me the least amount of hassle.
I have breezy installed on another machine and it bawlked when I tried to upgrade to a K7 kernel, which is never a problem on any Debian based distor I use.
ALSO
I like to have my own choices, I do not like them to be made for me.
I honestly cannot see why Ubuntu has so big a following, there are much better ways, like *ahem* Mepis !
MDK 9.2 was the biggest bag of crap I’ve ever try to use on my PC. Sorry, but for me, it was completely unusable.
I used Fedora Core 3, which was up-to-date when it goes out, and I had no problem with it.
Mandrake 10.0 was not able to use my ADSL modem and for me it was a : “I will never use anymore this distro”.
With Fedora / Ubuntu, I just have to insert CD, install distro, and that’s all.
“I like to have my own choices, I do not like them to be made for me. ”
Oh, there is no package manager on Ubuntu ?
I love debian based distro, far away from mandriva hell dependancies.
…and there’s Francois’s whole point: people say Ubuntu is better than Mandriva because you don’t have to pay for anything. (The only thing you have to pay for with Mandriva is commercial packages and support, but let’s roll with the theory for now). Why does Mandriva offer paid releases? We have to make money somehow to survive. Why can Ubuntu survive despite employing many staff, giving out many expensive freebies, and not charging for anything? Because they have a big pile of free money so they don’t need to charge for anything. So, thanks for proving the point.
So much noise about Ubuntu. It seems there is no other free linux distro. Ubuntu offers nothing of their own, except a pathetic slogan. Mandiva at least has drak tools, which are not so bad by the way.
The morons ship the kernel compiled with GCC 3.4 but the default compiler that gets installed is 4. Look at the number of stupid steps you need to perform just to get Nvidia’s drivers or the OSS drivers installed. Mandrake or Redhat or SuSE or Fedora are very much sane compared to Ubuntu.
You guys talking about Ubuntu making sane choices for apps. how come when it comes to kernel sources I am totally lost as to which kernel to install and where do I find and install the corresponding kernel sources.
Don’t trust me? Google Nvidia and Ubuntu and you’ll come to a page that states 20 steps
On more pet peeve, why can’t I log in as root?. I just want to configure my machine once. THe current method requires me to type in the goddamn root password for each and every admin step I take.
Edited 2006-02-11 09:20
And you are too.
If you look really close to any big open source project, gcc 3.3/3.4 is the one more supported. Gcc 4.0 is too young. Even mozilla foundation tells users from linux (and MacOS-X) to use gcc 3.2+ as gcc 4.0 is not fully supported by default.
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Linux_Build_Prerequisites
“A C++ compiler. GCC 3.2 or higher is recommended, or your platform’s native C/C++ compiler.”
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mac_OS_X_Build_Prerequisites
“Compiler: If you are using Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”) or later on PowerPC, you should change the system default compiler to gcc 3.3, the compiler used to produce official PowerPC builds.”
“Nvidia’s drivers or the OSS drivers installed. Mandrake or Redhat or SuSE or Fedora are very much sane compared to Ubuntu.”
Well, did everybody need to have 3D acceleration installed ?
Ubuntu is like debian in mind : open source only, are you deaf or what ?
Have you ever heard of Easy Ubuntu ?
http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/overview.html
“# Nvidia: install the official driver to enable 3D on Nvidia graphics cards
# ATI: install the official driver to enable 3D on ATI graphics cards”
Try it instead of saying nonsense !
“Don’t trust me? Google Nvidia and Ubuntu and you’ll come to a page that states 20 steps”
Wrong. Easy Ubuntu is your tool to do this in 30 seconds !
20 steps ? You’re lying. For example, first link on google :
http://www.uberdose.com/kbase/ubuntu-and-nvidia-geforce-6600/
11 steps, not 20 !
Sigh, I am tired of people trolling that badly !
“Sigh, I am tired of people trolling that badly !”
Not trolling, just not very knwledgable, and inexperienced and frustrated. 🙂
Ah, yes the “Easy Ubuntu”, something so easy your Granny could use. It’s need the root password, not the users password, but the root password. THe one that’s set randomly, the one that you have to go “System, Administraton, user and groups, put your password in,tick the little box to show all users and groups find root,properties, set password by hand, put in the password, use that to run the icon, (which one? theses about 8?) Found it! Put the password in, tick and untick and:-
“The repository might be no longer available or could not be contacted because of network problems. If available an older version of the failed index will be used. Otherwise the repository will be ignored. Check your network connection and the correct writing of the repository address in the preferences.”
Brilliant. I’m sure given a few more hours I’ll be able to get it to work, still lucky me, imagine if it was a hard unfriendly application that my Silver haired Grandmother COULDN’t Use? I could be here all day!
“On more pet peeve, why can’t I log in as root?. I just want to configure my machine once. THe current method requires me to type in the goddamn root password for each and every admin step I take.”
There is a root account on any Ubuntu install. The password is set to some unknown value that is extremely difficult to crack. The reason for this is to stop morons from running boxes with some simple password that any moron can crack that allows root access. Take a look at the logs on any ssh enabled box, see how often some bot tries to crack well known accounts. Your initial user is set up in the admin group, that way you can use sudo, gksudo to make administration changes. And when you type in your password to sudo or gksudo it remembers it for 5 minutes or so. That way you type in your password once, do your admin work, and then the machine locks itself. It’s actually a pretty good system.
If you’re still unconvinced that you can handle using sudo, then try this. Go to a command line;
#sudo su
Enter password here
#passwd
Enter new password for root account.
Voila you can login as root. By the way you should never login as root.
Who died and made Ubuntu the definition of UNIX?
Again WHY?. WHy should I be inconvenienced if I know UNIX?
I know I shouldn’t feed the troll, but, I got nothing better to do. This is as security feature, requires 30 seconds to learn, and is hardly ubuntu specific. As far as I know (heard can’t confirm), selinux and several other distros (even OS X) do not have accesable root accounts, so this is hardly ubuntu specific concept.
I don’t know what kind of hard on you got against ubuntu buddy, it’s just six random alphabetic characters. I personally think ubuntu has made a lot of good choices in their distro. I think that it’s quite ignorant to hate anything without understanding why it does things the way it does and at the very least respect that the decisions made satisfy some peoples desires. I think the fact that ubuntu is so popular is simply a reflection that the distro fulfills the requirements of many users. That and a bit of hype.
Nonetheless, constructive critism is welcome and even encouraged in the ubuntu community. Rampant trolls are mostly disregarded, but I’m a little bored this afternoon. Stephanem, in the future please try and take a little time and understand what it is you criticize, there’s many people that would be happy to discuss and possibly even address your concerns. But if you continue to be an ass, for the sake of being an ass you’ll very rarely get such a nicely worded response. In fact, it would be better if you and ubuntu just left each other alone, stood on the other side of the room and just pretended each other didn’t exist.
Dear Mr. Troll you don’t have to use ,,the goddamn root password for each and every admin step I take”.
Call a shell.
Type: sudo -s
Pass your password.
Here you go, a # shell.
ps. It’s not for you, Gunderwo. I’m just quoting from your post. 🙂
if my admin utilities are going to be executed from the menu what good does a shell do me?. Do I know what is the name of the application that configures the Login screen?. No I just select that from the menu but alas I have to punch in the root p/w. Next I want to add a user, pullup the add user from the menu but need to punch in root password.
As opposed to this: In Redhat or SuSE, log in as root, do everything, log out and you’re cooking with gas.
Just shout troll or whatever and you think you’re doing a service.
I feel for Mandrake Linux. These guys are actually better engineers than Ubuntu will ever have. I never trust a distro that has a Political agenda.
Edited 2006-02-11 21:07
Would you please read the previous posts? It’s been explained that the root account exists, you just need to set a password for it with the passwd command.
Would you please read the previous posts? It’s been explained that the root account exists, you just need to set a password for it with the passwd command.
Yes I’ve read everything everybody had to say and all I’m saying why the bloody extra step?. Linspire goes one direction where you operate as root and Ubuntu goes the opposite.
My point is that it’s an extra step one needn’t take.
It’s like the steps to install Nvidia or any driver or module that not a part of the kernel.
Yes everything is possible but if you are going to start preaching to the world to convert to Ubuntu, sorry but Mandrake has you guys beat for ease of use.
“If my admin utilities are going to be executed from the menu what good does a shell do me?. Do I know what is the name of the application that configures the Login screen?. No I just select that from the menu but alas I have to punch in the root p/w. Next I want to add a user, pullup the add user from the menu but need to punch in root password.”
I call you a troll because you are blantantly spreading false information. In a default install of Ubuntu (I’ve used every version since hoary) all applications that require root access are automatically run using gksudo. This means that you are prompted to enter “YOUR USER’S” password. The authentication is saved for 5 minutes and you may act as a root user until that times expires. At worst you need to enter a password every 5 minutes.
And once again it is trivial to set a password and login as root. Please do, and run as root all the time. Turn on all your services and remove any firewalls.
I would like to end my post by simply stating, “stephanem” is a moron. He has no idea of what he speaks and should be completely disregarded. I think I’m gonna stop checking this thread, because I suspect it’s making me dumber
On more pet peeve, why can’t I log in as root?. I just want to configure my machine once. THe current method requires me to type in the goddamn root password for each and every admin step I take.
You can. You just need to set a root password. The only difference is that it’s not an option during installation. Still it’s very simple to do it and anyone who actually needs to run as root will know how to make this. The password you type using sudo isn’t the goddamn root password, but your user’s password instead.
Edited 2006-02-11 12:06
One more pet peeve, why can’t I log in as root?. I just want to configure my machine once. THe current method requires me to type in the goddamn root password for each and every admin step I take.”
Try sudo konsole (or gnome equivalent). You can then run all your config stuff from that console without typing in passwords over and over; you’ve created yourself a console wherein you act as root. A little creative thinking can spare you some grief.
ARGGHHHHHHH , must resist writting about mandriva arhhhahhahahahsggf . ha what the heck!
0. Sale Management and Sale Group
1. Chairman
2. Management
3. Marketing ( not talking advertising here )
4. Advertising and Publicity
5. CFO
6. CSO
7. General Counsel ( lawyer )
8. VP HR
9. CEO who is more a COO
10. SVPPG
11. SVPEMEA
12. VPAP/J
13. SVWP
14. CIO
15. ODM Division
16. OEM Division
17. VC Division
18. Service Division
19. Mandriva Club
20. Making Goals and Reaching them.
21. innovations.
22. Synergy
23. Internet provider division
24. Computer type division (Desktop , Laptop , server)
– The best question anyone can ask is how come Mandriva under is guidance is worth 30 million euro
When Red Hat : 4.74 Billion USD
And Novell/Suse : 3.57 Billion USD
– The second best , why does Gaël Duval http://www.indidea.org/gael/en/ need to buy an
incomplete suported Laptop for is wife when he work at Mandriva and he is supposed to be the main shareolders.
– Third , why is it that people can raise more Venture capital for web browser product ( Flock ) then what Mandriva is worth when its a full freaking OS ?
– Fourth , why is Mandriva exploring other country avenues , when 11,173,886 milion people live around Paris metro area ?
– Fifth , why does he have a blog on VNunet when your in charge of a company that ship an OS that can be used as a server and that include Blog package in its box set ?
– Why when asked about KDE GNOME flamewar does he talk religion ? When Mandriva is Known as the only peacemaker distribution that shipped them both without compromise and others ?
– Why does he let HP threat them like a small partner when is company can ship there OS on all there products they make ? Why does it seem like he dont care.
– Why is salary and the salary of all management and sale division is not tied to the number of box set sold ?
I whas not asking questions , I know the answers. Mandriva is the only GNU/Linux company that can beat Microsoft tomorow if its stop being on snooze. Red Hat and Novell and Ubuntu and all the other GNU/Linux distribution are scared out of there mind of what Mandriva can do. Only problem is the Management is scared and dont know what he is doing and dont see that there sitting on top of the best distribution and community.
– Moulinneuf
François Bancilhon : tell all your shareolders I am offering to buy the entire shares of the company for 1$ Canadien , and that in 1 year I will give all the shareolders twice what they currently got in shares and have Mandriva be a 1+ billions USD company.
François Bancilhon : Dites a tout vos actionnaire que j’offre de racheter toutes les actions de la compagnie pour 1$ Canadiens , et que dans 1 ans je leur redonne le double des action qu’il vont m’avoir vendus mais pour une compagnie Mandriva qui vaudras alors 1+ milliard USD.
Plenty of promise, not much delivery really. My main gripe with them was the half baked utilities and the absolute refusal to provide interesting updates to packages between releases. The rational was that you had to pay to be part of the club and have the privilege to download stuff packaged by other clients. Who was kidding who ? Should I mention dubious design choices (the install/uninstall debacle) that Mandriva stuck with despite club members lashing out at it ?
Anyway Ubuntu looks like they’ve listened to people and so does SUSE. They update their distros and try to make every feature work…
And buying an empty shell like Lycoris, seriously ?
But Mandriva is still very popular so not all is lost. But management should be changed.
Most distributions have the same updates policy as Mandriva: a stable release is a STABLE RELEASE, which means you don’t change things in it with official updates just because people scream for Shiny New Version +.1 of something (KDE, Firefox, whatever). If you read the text file in the FTP directory where Novell keep unsupported updates for SUSE, like KDE 3.5 etc, it states this policy explicitly.
The packages in the Club RPMs Farm aren’t only built by other Club members: we have a member of staff (Per Oyvind Karlsen) whose only job is building packages for the RPMs Farm. In addition, the packages built through the RPMs Farm system are actually downloadable by anyone when they’re marked as ‘finished’ – not just Club members. They get put in the public FTP tree.
“Most distributions have the same updates policy as Mandriva:”
When everyone else is doing exactlty the same you have to do more and change the rule , your either a follower a looser or a Leader. Mandriva used to Lead , and not in just some little things in everything.
“a stable release is a STABLE RELEASE”
What are you talking about are you saying that the developper cant make update like they used to do , they even had a name for Update CD , which I dont recal right now. There even whas a daily , not weekly , DAILY update of the entire KDE project.
“just because people scream for Shiny New Version +.1 of something (KDE, Firefox, whatever).”
Those people are your customer base , if you dont meet there demands they go on to other distributions that do and out of 500+ company + 1000 projects they got plenty of choice to choose from.
“where Novell keep unsupported updates for SUSE, like KDE 3.5 etc, it states this policy explicitly. ”
You know who Novell is ? ITS SUSE , Mandriva killed SUSE Totally and now there copying everything that Mandriva add great but stayed without improvment.
– There now PRO GPL
– Open Suse is making Cooker look like a sick dog.
– etc …
“we have a member of staff (Per Oyvind Karlsen) whose only job is building packages for the RPMs Farm.”
WOW ! no really WOW , only ONE developer … Looks like its really important for Mandriva to satisfy its customers.BTW People actually joined the club and paid REAL CASH , for there membership for exactly that , having more then one developper that package software for the STABLE release.
“In addition, … public FTP tree”
Thats why everyone as acces to a list of daily new rpm.
I know one distribution of GNU/Linux fans ( read with zero budget and zero paid developper full time ) who does it daily.
Anyway AdamW , really SHUT THE HELL UP , Mandriva Club suck you whant to know what a club is supposed to do and should offer and look like :
http://www.samsclub.com
http://www.costco.com/
http://www.bjs.com/
http://www.club-3d.com/
Until you reach that point …
just because people scream for Shiny New Version +.1 of something (KDE, Firefox, whatever).
When you have clients or screaming for something, that should be enough for any company to make a move. In that case make supported updates available to club members.
But talking about support, it is very much a sham : Who’s supporting club members after the initial install support period ? Noone is the answer. So stop giving us that rubbish about support or not support.
I am running SUSE with firefox 1.5.0.1 with kde 3.5.1 and plenty of other updated packages and it’s damn stable. Mandriva was (hopefully not anymore) just smug about what their customers wanted. And that’s bad management in any trade.
Support does not mean “technical support” but bugfix / security updates. An unsupported package is one for which the distributor does not pledge to fix any bugs or security problems, a supported package is one for which the distributor does make that pledge.
The problem with saying “oh, when people ask for Shiny New Version X, you should provide it!” is that what people want isn’t that simple. For every person requesting Firefox 1.5 there’s probably ten people who are perfectly happy with Firefox 1.0 and wouldn’t be very happy if we pushed an ‘official’ update to Firefox 1.5 which broke stuff. The way to keep a stable release stable is to do the minimum amount of updating necessary: update the code needed to fix security issues and major bugs, and nothing more.
Why don’t you run a poll among club members and ask if they would rather have a *reasonably* stable KDE 3.5, Firefox 1.5, a new kernel…or would rather see their distro become obsolete by the time the next one is released?
After all the upgrades offered by SUSE, Fedora… are quite stable, in my opinion and in that of many others.
At the moment Mandriva is still doing reasonably well, but wait until your competitors (SUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu) release: I am afraid by then you are going to see a hemorrhage of users as never before.
With other words, Ubuntu is NOT to blame: Mandriva’s wrong policies are.
They even ran a voting system to ask people what they wanted and never ever acted upon the results.
Club members were lured to membership with the promise of upgraded packages for the most voted apps. Then found that they had to do it themselves (great !). And that the company wouldn’t even devote one resource to package the top requested item every month….
Now, it was long ago, and I hope that the company has learnt that the best way to make money is to sell value, rather than asking for charity in exchange of inexistent freebies.
Edited 2006-02-13 09:07
You mean the competition for suggestions? Quite a lot of those were actually implemented, for e.g. e-cards on the Club site and the adopt-a-penguin idea (we adopted a penguin, I get internal emails about it quite often, for some reason I’ve never seen much externally about it, I really should ask if there’s some kind of Penguin News Embargo in force or something).
Why don’t you run a poll among club members and ask if they would rather have a *reasonably* stable KDE 3.5, Firefox 1.5, a new kernel…or would rather see their distro become obsolete by the time the next one is released?
KDE 3.5 is available for Club, the same for Firefox 1.5, OpenOffice 2.0 ( 2.0.1 will come shortly ) and Gnome 2.12.
now you should know that upgrading Firefox to 1.5 means rebuilding many Gnome application ( yelp, beagle and some mono stuff )
> We work very hard, we can’t pay high salaries, we have
> to make a living out of our revenue. By doing so, we
> are building a strong and healthy company based on a
> proven business model.
A proven business model means that *they* can make money with Mandriva. Does this automatically mean that their distro is superior?
Sure, there is lots of money being burnt to keep Ubuntu running. But what’s the problem with that? In the end there’s one more distro which you can use or not, so the overall situation improves (even for Mandriva users, because the competition forces Mandriva to improve as well). You could of course say that Mark Shuttleworth is stupid to throw his money away, but that’s his decision, and only his.
– Morin
The problem is that _any_ large pile of money is going to run out some time, even if it’s really, really large. What will Ubuntu do then?
The problem is that _any_ large pile of money is going to run out some time, even if it’s really, really large. What will Ubuntu do then?
Start selling add-ons or services or whatever….long after Mandriva has closed its doors.
>The problem is that _any_ large pile of money is going to run out some time, even if it’s really, really large. What will Ubuntu do then?
Remember when Microsoft said how Linux was unamerican, viral, antiprofit, and communist? Well, people found ways to make money, and are still finding ways to make money off of it. Keep the code open, and don’t worry; people will make money out of anything, and keep it sustained. If Shuttleworth can’t figure out how to make it work, someone else will.
“Remember when Microsoft said how Linux was unamerican, viral, antiprofit, and communist? Well, people found ways to make money, and are still finding ways to make money off of it. Keep the code open, and don’t worry; people will make money out of anything, and keep it sustained. If Shuttleworth can’t figure out how to make it work, someone else will.”
Yes, like us at Mandriva, who have been doing it for quite a while now. The point is that Ubuntu can’t possibly do what it currently does (distribute the entire distro for free, mail copies to people, employ a lot of staff, attend many trade shows etc) in such a way as to make money. When the money runs out Ubuntu will have to change some of these things somehow, and distros which _don’t_ have a large pile of free money sustaining them just can’t do all those things, which is why it’s not a fair competition. They either have to try and charge for at least some of the product (Mandriva, Xandros, Linspire etc), work entirely with volunteers (Debian, Slackware etc), skip on the expensive freebies (all of the above), or a combination of the above. Only with the large pile of free cash can you do all of those things.
What makes you think Ubuntu isn’t already self-sustaining? It was never meant to just be something that Shuttlesworth dumps alot of money in and never sees a profit from.
Here’s where some money comes from. They already have large contracts from commercial entities.
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/supportoptions/paidsupport
Well, it’s impossible to know for sure, but frankly, I doubt the revenue such projects can provide comes anywhere _near_ covering the fairly massive costs of all the things they do. If you want to believe otherwise, there’s nothing to stop you, since they don’t publish financial information, so we’re all speculating.
I would like to invest a billion dollars in Mandriva.
Will you take the money? Because that would be kind of unfair to your competitors.
There’s no such thing as “free cash”. The Ubuntu founder is investing money and he hopes to make Canonical viable some day; maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But at the end of the day you’re free to take all their work and use it on your own product. Heck, if you want you can make Mandriva 2007 based on Ubuntu, because it’s free software and there’s no thing such as unhealthy competition between free software projects.
You really dont get it , do you ?
Ubuntu is a free project and all they do is GPL , which means that everything they do great you can emulate or compile for Mandriva.
The difference between Mandriva and Ubuntu is more that Ubuntu will go out of there wya to please its user , it snot the cash its the little things that they do.
For example , what is your Budget for Mandriva club ? 3 million ? Hell No ! Why not after all Mandriva Club user paid for that amount in membership.
How many Server does Mandriva bough specifically for Mandriva Club ? Well it snot enough ! I recall one release taking out the entire club in bandwith and usage demand. What happen when the One server that
run Mandriva Club fails ? Out of usage until its replaced.
You whant load of cash ?
– How about the exclusive deals your chairman made for entire America that stopped sales to the amount of 3 – 5 billion
– The entire Poole era that your chairman hired who lost how many million in e-learning and once it whas bought and done , it whas scrtapped never to be fully used or seen from , The office that where rented and paid for but never used.
– The Mandrake IPO , You barely made a sucessfull one , and you where in such a hurry that instead of it being valued at 3+ billion like Red Hat , it whas around 30 million.
– The Paris office , last I looked it cost a fortune to be in Paris , just move it to another location , people dont care how much you pay for rent or where the Headquarters are :
Eve-online :
http://www.ccpgames.com/company/contact.asp
– Mandriva Club is too pricy , Mandriva Club is too pricy , Mandriva Club is too pricy , You got low 5 figure members numbers.
Put the entry level at 5$ and the number of client will be in the high 8 – 9 figures , Thats 100 000 000 users X 5$ = 500 Billion in profit. Instead of what around 500k ?
OUINNNNNNNNNN , SNIFFFF , SNIFFFF , SNIFFF , Ubuntu got money. YES so What ?
VHS VS Betamax , who won ?
IBM VS Microsoft , who won ?
Apple came back from the dead ?
Did they talk about money ?
Shuttleworth is laughing real hard now he as you believeing he spend a fortune on shipping CD , when the CD are shipped when he feels like it , from a CD maker that charge him dirt cheap for cd made by the millions , and he make a profit from services.
Why would the money runs out ? I would not be surprised if his entire operation is not already making him money and dont cost him more then 25 milion to operate.
Le Marois answers for everything is beeing even worst then Scrooge , he take budget from working project ( Mandriva Club ) refuse to pay those who build it , when they need money to ship more it take months for him to take a decision , by then people moved on to other things , when things go bad he cut expanse by slashing the numbers of developpers which means he cant ship on time or properly. He Stop people from making sale by having them ask him , Beg him plea on there knee for him to let them make sales.
In the old days of Mandrake , Novell releasing XGL and compwiz the SAME DAY package for it would be availaible for the stable version and in Cooker…
In the old days The guy behind MandrakeForum would Make the package asked by its community and say , its there …
In the old days the guy behind Mandrake Club , would say Ubuntu offer one cd we offer 6 products with 4 cd each for free …
Yes , thats right you cant make firefox 1.5 rpm because you need money , you cant post them on the Club server because you need money and you cant advertise them on the linux news site who are waiting to hear whats happening at Mandriva because you need money. …
Really SHUT THE HELL UP , get back to work , ask for a raise based on Mandriva Club Subscription 1$ per new subscriber and if you dont get it , shoot the idiot who said no.
“Ubuntu is a free project and all they do is GPL , which means that everything they do great you can emulate or compile for Mandriva.”
Oh, so I can call up Ubuntu HQ and ask them to mail Mandriva CDs around the world for free, show up at international trade shows with large booths full of Mandriva freebies, etc etc? The _code_ is not everything.
“so I can call up Ubuntu HQ and ask them to mail Mandriva CDs around the world for free”
You do know that AOL whas another company that people mocked because they where shipping free CD with free internet time. Judging from the size of AOL today compared to all those who mocked them ( Conglomerate vs Extinct ), I gather AOL whas right.
“show up at international trade shows with large booths full of Mandriva freebies, etc etc?”
Mandriva Managemnent ( Le Marois ) choosed not to show up , in cost cutting time to shows where other gathered press and review and presence.
http://www.desktopsummit.com/index.php
Who’s missing above ?
You really dont get it the problem is not funds , the problem is Mandriva management interest in doing what make the company look good or could bring it more direct income and more visibility. They much prefered spending a fortune defending the name Mandrake instead of just switching to another name and save that money for development and hiring sales team and hiring new developper.
Reality is , Shipping free CD is not that big an expanse for the return in income and visibility it buys its even cheaper then making real advertising ( Online publicity , Press , radio , TV. ) . But Your real Boss is not interested in making a cheap affordable CD line for those country where they make 75$ per month or shipping free CD or lowering the Mandriva Club subscription so that everyone can get in for cheap.
The real financial that should interest you is how much of the subscriber money go back into advertising and making the club better. Care to divulgate exactly how much money the Mandriva Club bring in both Consumer and Corporate ? How much does get back for Club ? You know http://www.discmakers.com/request/ ask for a pamphlet and see how low it cost to have CD shipped compared to nomal publicity.
Hey , here is a novel idea instead of buying another distribution for an overly high price that dont bring you that much , why dont you tell you boss to buy a Dismaker company , let it make CD for other too and make a small profit use that profit and company to make cheap cd and use the profit of that company to ship your CD/DVD globally for free.
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/faq#head-7eef2db63e0a75424cdd663ee6f7…
Like I said put this in Bancilhon Email box , include my other message too :
François Bancilhon : tell all your shareolders I am offering to buy the entire shares of the company for 1$ Canadien , and that in 1 year I will give all the shareolders twice what they currently got in shares and have Mandriva be a 1+ billions USD company.
François Bancilhon : Dites a tout vos actionnaire que j’offre de racheter toutes les actions de la compagnie pour 1$ Canadiens , et que dans 1 ans je leur redonne le double des action qu’il vont m’avoir vendus mais pour une compagnie Mandriva qui vaudras alors 1+ milliard USD.
If you where really interested in how to do it on budget you would see how Mandriva used to show up at shows its all in the mailing list and forums archives.
When the money runs out Ubuntu will have to change some of these things somehow, and distros which _don’t_ have a large pile of free money sustaining them just can’t do all those things, which is why it’s not a fair competition.
Woh there, was that a whine I just heard there? Should someone make Ubuntu charge for their CDs?
They either have to try and charge for at least some of the product (Mandriva, Xandros, Linspire etc), work entirely with volunteers (Debian, Slackware etc), skip on the expensive freebies (all of the above), or a combination of the above. Only with the large pile of free cash can you do all of those things.
And Shuttleworth has a large pile of cash. What was the point you were trying to make?
From the comments that your CEO made, and your comments (you work for Mandriva right?), it seems that Mandriva is feeling the pinch from Ubuntu.
Welcome to selling open source
The point I was trying to make was that it is not unreasonable or outlandish to suggest that Ubuntu is ‘unfair competition’.
AdamW, you mean like free software developers that are unfair competition to proprietary software developers? Because so many of them don’t make a profit with their work on free software …
Or am I missing the point?
“you mean like free software developers that are unfair competition to proprietary software developers?”
Almost all proprietary software developper dont offer there software for GNU/Linux , there is also the fact that since they dont provide it Free Software have to meet the demand hence creating a better and much more cheaper solution that compete directly with there products.
“Because so many of them don’t make a profit with their work on free software … ”
Actually thats a lie you tell yourself , most real free software developper that do it on a regular basis do it on a paid basis. Read Red Hat employee , Mandriva employee , Novell employee , almost all Debian developper are paid developper by one company or another who see value in having fee software. The only difference is that with free software the guy with the coding talent can participate if he whant to improve the code and dont have to ask anyone.
“Or am I missing the point?”
Yes , Mandriva Bancilhon whas saying that every year there is a new hype and new best of the best , but in recent years no one as come up with better solution overall and more complete in reality then what Mandriva offer , of the top 3 Only Mandriva as not spined off its customer based desktop into a so called unsuported project. He also said he dont think that Ubunutu is a vianle system long term if its only one billionaire philantropist paying the Bill. Thats last one is the problem , Ubuntu is a top shape organization that as a top manager at its head. Will Mandriva as Bancilhon , but we all know who the real problem is : Le Marois.
Francois makes a comment about how Ubuntu is funded by a millionaire, and how that is in the long run not healthy (Ubuntu is not self sustaining), then it sets off the usual flame war, mostly from Ubuntu fans bagging on Francois and Mandriva.
Both are very, very good distros, with various strengths and weaknesses. I like both quite a lot.
But for me, Mandriva/Mandrake has been vastly superior to Ubuntu, and most other distros, in features, speed, usuablity, stability, look and feel, and many other things.
But that’s just my experience, and my opinion. For others Ubuntu is better. So, all the anti-Mandriva comments are just plain stupid.
Bag on the BIG guy … oh wait that strategy only works for MS and NOT for a fellow Linux distribution company. What was Mandriva’s CEO thinking? rolf what was he thinking changing the name from Mandrake to Mandriva … like it wasn’t bad enough.
Anyway I don’t hold much respect for Ubuntu especially since they are so much like Debian yet try to present themselves as being unique but bagging on another thing entirelly. Hey DUDE linux is about freedom and no one is being forced to use Ubuntu. Get Mandriva ( or whatever it’s called this week ) to a higher level of quality and usability and people will come. Oh yeah and you can’t bag on Ubuntu for giving away free CDs. That’s like the cheapest trick in the bag and it never gets you anything good.
I recently had the opportunity to install the latest version of Mandriva on my machine. And to my consternation, it suffered from the same geometry bug that is there in FreeBSD. I wonder why it is like that.
It did not recognize my partitions at all.
I like Ubuntu. I really do.
But the comments from the Ubuntu zealots on this thread make me want to ditch Ubuntu entirely.
Really, Francois was only saying that Ubuntu might not be self sustaining in the long run if it’s currently depending on the philanthropic checks from Mark Shuttleworth. Meanwhile Mandriva has set itself up a profitable, growing business plan, which might be healthier in the long run. Those are very valid points. Francois did not flame in any way, shape or form.
Really, Mandriva should be congratulated for maintaining a profitable, growning Linux distribution business. That is something Canonical has yet to do. Anyone with deep pockets can send out free CDs. It’s much harder to set up a profitable business.
But what do the Ubuntu zealots do, they get all up in arms and perceive Francois’s comments as flaming and proceed to flame Francois and Mandriva to pieces, as well as Adam W, who has tried to be rational and defend Francois and Mandriva.
The Ubuntu zealots really need to chill out. It’s just a distro, one among many. Ubuntu is a very good distro, but so is Mandriva, and so are many others. Ubuntu is not the be all to end all of Linux distros, and it’s not perfect or above criticism. The Ubuntu zealots just need to deal with that fact.
got nothing to do if they got free money or not.
I don’t use RH, SuSE, or Mandriva because they are bloated and their package manager sucks big time.
I don’t use Ubuntu because to me, it’s bloated and slow.
I can’t waste days compiling my apps in Gentoo.
Nor do i have time to configure Slack and fish for dependencies.
I use Debian Sarge with a minimal installation and IceWM; now, to me, that’s a lean, fast box.
So, what does money has to do with it? It’s the distro, and your needs in terms of hardware, time, and degree of tech-savvy that dictates what you use.