Bye Bye Mandriva, She's Being Liquidated

[saulo]

It was a very nice distro when it was called Mandrake way ahead of its times . In linux server world redhat buys its way like microsoft does on desktop so there no really much space to make money and survive. Curious how long it will take before redhat has monopoly and debian based distros dissapear.

Why redhat? What about SUSE?

[jsa1983]

Really a sad story (even though it was expected). Mandrake was my first distro back in 2001.

[belal1]

Yes it is a sad day. But regarding "she's being liquidated", when did Mandriva become a transsexual? I mean, originally, Mandrake, was a male! Unless you (Michael) are insinuating Mandriva to be a hermaphrodite!

[schmidtbag]

IIRC, Mandrake is what the first Sims game was made to be compatible for. It may be a bit sad to see such an old distro go away but in all honestly, there are too many distros right now and more need to be wiped out. I personally feel we need to focus more on meta packages rather than creating slight variants of the same thing.

[Pecisk]

My hat goes off to this distribution. It was first on so many levels - first that tried to do actual internationalization and localization for distribution at serious level and actually drove i18n/l10n efforts trough all open source and free software community. It was my first one after RedHat screwed up badly with RedHat 9 and then dropping towel and going enterprise only. Debian was still in inception, and don't get me started on 'you should only use Slackware/Gentoo for everything' crowd. It had it's own share problems - their vertical integrity didn't work out as they hoped for, with tools not working reliably. But boy, they tried. I am ready to bet that for many Linux desktop users Mandriva/Mandrake was proof that Linux desktop is attainable goal and quite real one.

So thanks to all involved. Maybe last 8 years haven't been exactly nice to distribution, but overall I can only commend their effort.

[Pecisk]

Unlike Linux server OSes with paid tech support, there is hardly any money selling desktop Linux distributions, which is why others like Linspire and Xandros probably failed too. Consumers who want to buy a desktop OS will just choose Windows and even Windows is becoming essentially free for at least for a year with Windows 10.

Please stop spreading this nonsense. Windows 10 is not free for people who don't have license from previous Windows 7 or 8/8.1. Also OEM and Microsoft relationship is a bit difficult and complex than you explained here.

[Dr_ST]

Worked there, sadly left when offered a permanent position because I knew the governance was not good enough :-( Or maybe the market? GNU/Linux distributions will probably never reach the public although GNU/Linux is everywhere, but with the cloud turn in the corner, which will survive?

[droidhacker]

I just login in to tell that your post is a joke! To give a momey to OS with shitty process manager, shitty hard drive manager, shitty RAM manager, you cannot tell one advantage Windows over Linux.

He wasn't actually saying that there was anything GOOD about wondoze. He was just stating an opinion about consumer behavior.

YOU need to keep in mind that most consumers have the intellectual capacity of a spider.

[droidhacker]

I remember around 2001-2 i've write to some of their mailing list that RPM is cancer and they have to trow it away right in the moment and start using DEB, they didn't listen to me, now they are dead. Ubuntu become what Mandrake has to be. My first linux was Linux Mandrake 8 Traktopel

RPM and DEB are two competing formats that describe PRECISELY THE SAME THING IN EVERY DETAIL.

They are technically equivalent.
You can even convert back and forth between them.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Please stop spreading this nonsense. Windows 10 is not free for people who don't have license from previous Windows 7 or 8/8.1. Also OEM and Microsoft relationship is a bit difficult and complex than you explained here.

Correct. I've read that if you've downloaded the Windows 10 Preview for beta testing, you might get the final RTM version for free too but it's not fully known if its a full license--could very well be.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/29210...m-version.html

My point isn't that Windows is better for a desktop (although some people might be willing to debate that), it's just there is almost no market to sell consumer desktop Linux distros, not when pre-builts come with Windows. People just don't buy a pre-built computer that comes with Windows at no extra charge included then erase Windows and seperately BUY a desktop Linux OS. Okay... perhaps a tiny number of people might, but it's not a sustainable business model without adding other services, such as enterprise tech support and server licenses.