Mandriva looking for a buyer

I was working in a school that was being forced to "approve" it, basically, because the head wanted to show off, spend some money, replicate a project he'd done elsewhere (badly), remove our IT department from the salaries etc. The product they were selling was a Linux-based thin-client which ran off a server in their "datacentre" and ran the whole school. Every desktop would network-boot and then connect to their X-Session running in a datacentre off-site. It was a stupid idea and even poorer execution. God knows what would have happened the first time the Internet went down.

Lightapp's salesmen will tell you *anything*, very adamantly, including that Ranger Suite will run on WINE (cough, cough, splutter, splutter, choke, die...). And we're not talking a dismissive "Oh, that'll work" but an assurance that they would get it working perfectly. For those that don't know, it's an group-policy-deployed Windows network management tool with Windows server utilities to create and manage users, groups and policies, a client program to stop kids changing their desktop etc., force them to use certain printers, silently provide remote access to the machines, monitor what websites they go on, etc. - there is no way on this earth it'll ever run under WINE until WINE is capable of acting as a full AD server and client in all respects (i.e. respecting every element of Windows group policy etc.).

We got the salesman to storm out of our office yelling things like "You obviously don't want this" (correct) and "You're just creating obstacles" (like being able to run the software we had 8 years investment and a perpetual license in, or at least replicating its functionality cheaply and easily, and being able to do anything like management on the machines). The fact that that's all they could suggest shows you that they are a company where someone knew how to build a Linux thin-client, did a demo and then someone else formed a company off the back of that.

Didn't stop them pushing Lightapp, lying about its capabilities and saying it would "just work" with any and all Windows software. Their demos even included OpenOffice with a Microsoft Word icon hacked onto the desktop... a lot of people didn't notice, apparently, but we spotted it and queried the legal status of doing such a thing. I wouldn't mind if they weren't supposed to be a Linux company, because salesmen rarely know what they are selling, but hell - make your salesmen do a little training before you send them out there.

We also witnessed a lot of things that were wrong with their systems - basic security stuff - and on their "live demo" I was able to find 10-15 security holes within about 5 minutes (things like being able to execute any and all programs on their remote thin-client server, bypass all their security restrictions etc.). This wasn't "hacking" so much as just knowing the shortcut key to bring up a terminal which then had stupid levels of access in order to make their ancient version of WINE run properly. I found at least 5 ways to run arbitrary executables with enough access to render all the desktop security control worthless. You do *not* want your kids having root on a desktop...

It might only be a demo but when I can see that many holes in a *PUBLIC* demo running on the same servers as they would have hosted our thin-client setup, there's no way I'm going to sign up. At one point, it would have been a cinch to execute "shutdown -r now" on their main terminal server running the demo and have it execute properly. I wrote for three hours about the problems we would have with their simple "Office apps + a calculator" remote terminal setup, including everything from sudo access for unprivileged users to Office font files used in contravention of their license.

Despite amazing pressure on us to just approve it, we never heard from them again but they did use the kids from that school as a demo at the next years BETT exhibition (an annual IT in education show in London). The kids had never used it before but were demoing on their main stand, they all hated it and said it was slow, quirky, crashed a lot and was unresponsive.

Who'd have thought it would be so hard to provide a remote Linux desktop, with user logins, that runs OpenOffice? I don't know if they've moved on since, but we're only talking 3 years ago. Unfortunately, their products put me off their company for life.

linagora + mandriva = linagorandriva?

almost sounds upscale! ^_^