At the International Supercomputer Conference 2003 today, MandrakeSoft announced its latest entry to the company’s growing portfolio of middle-to-high end server products. MandrakeClustering is a high performance clustering distribution for IA-32 and AMD64 (Opteron) architectures. IA-64 support should come in September, the company reported.
Read about the announcement at OfB.biz and here..
Mandrake Goes For High Performance Clustering
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It seems like Mandrake is really banking on the future, which either shows A) stupidity or B) confidence in their current position (or C) both), depending on how you look at it. I would venture to say that they are vendors of some of the most advanced solutions for tomorrow’s systems out there. That means they’re probably not selling many today, but they’ll be on the second or third generation of software when Opteron ramps up, whereas other vendors will be in the first generation.
I use Mandrake 9.1 full-time (well, everything except CD burning and audio editing), so I would hate to see this company fail, because I really believe in their products (yes, I am a Mandrake Club member).
Chris
Are they spreading out too thinly? Yes risk management involves diversifying the markets you play in, but they are covering quite a bit of ground with their releases…
Just a thought.
Imagine if there were no Mandrake on the Linux scene.. what would it be? I think Mandrake deserves a lot since they changed the way everyone looks at Linux.. and Im not a Mandrake user, besides I think the last time I installed mdk on a box was the 7.1 version.. but we all should agree what mandrake is and what mandrake means today and before this _linux_wannabe_hypeness_.
Anyway, supercomputing ,clustering and HPC is here to stay as it continues growing so Im not suprised if Mandrake drops a suite for clustering innovating with their style..
Kudos and keep the good work!
If they ever released a stable distribution…
My experience with Mandrake is not good. Apart from the installer and hardware detection, I’ve always ended up with an unstable and bloated box when using this distribution.
The initiatilization/system scripts are crap (a pain to customize), most of the packages come from “unstable”/untested versions.
The last thing that gotten in my nerves was when trying to test a 2.5.X kernel. When I did a make install the scripts complaint about the “mandrake style inicitialization scripts”. I didn’t bother to check that, rebooted my machine and,.. BANG! The distribution did not boot even with any of the previous installed kernels.
As a response to Chris I think it’s both. Mandrake seems to be a success but until they get their distribution right their are put their feet in muddy watters.
One thing is sure, for me it would take more 2 years to try this distribution again.
Ummm don’t you think it’s unfair to complain about a 2.5.X kernel toasting Mandrake?
Anytime that you change the kernel of a distro you are taking the risk that it will toast it.
Besides, Mandrake isn’t really a distro for people who try out things like the 2.5.X kernel…better distros for that would be Slackware, Gentoo, and Debian who aren’t nearly as customized.
Mandrake 9.1 actually feels more stable on my machine than RedHat 9 did, though not as good as Slackware 9 or FreeBSD 5. Oh well.
I was under the impression that both RedHat and SuSE had released x86-64 and IA-64 distributions already. Mandrake is hardly in the lead with any of this, and it certainly isn’t going to help their market share fall or financial troubles.
Mandrake isn’t a bad distro, but they’ve clearly lost quite a bit of their advantages. RedHat and SuSE both have extremely good hardware detection and installation, and the final product is extremely polished and stable. Where exactly is Mandrake going to make a name for itself now?
-Erwos
Dont forget TurboLinux was the first company to release a IA64 distro….
It happens that I’ve only complaints about Mandrake. I’ve tried RedHat, Suse, Gentoo and Debian.
For me, as I rarely use a distro configured out of the box, it’s a pain not been hable to customize to the last detail without broken something useful.
I’m not saying that’s Mandrake’s fault. I’m liable for this kind of “damage” that I inflict to myself.
For me RedHat seems to get it as well as Debian.