LWN: Comments on "Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available"

Mandriva's future

remmy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 05:31:51 +0000

Mandriva is a publicly traded company and aims to make a profit. However, one might wonder how long they will be around for. Despite (or thanks to) having laid off key persons during the past years, they are still strugling financially.

With a market capitalisation of less than EUR 2.5 million, they are a real pennystock now. What is perhaps even more worrying is that they haven't published any financials on their website since late 2008. And the financials which are available show losses year after year.

While I applaud them for keeping on releasing new releases of this easy to use distribution, I worry for their future. It seems like there is little hope left for them. It would be sad to see them go, but something isn't right when they can't turn a profit while RedHat rakes in money by the loads.

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available

sitaram — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 06:45:09 +0000

I've been using Mandriva (Mandrake) since 1999 or so.

Only once did I switch, very briefly, to Kubuntu, but was burned on an upgrade. Kubuntu has always seemed a second class citizen, and even if I personally use LXDE now I always install KDE for my "dependents" (loose term for the small set of non-tech friends and relations for whom I'm the goto guy).

Two of them got Ubuntu because I installed for them at the height of my flirtation with it; they will be coming back into the Mandriva fold when I next upgrade them.

Oh and the default CD-based install on Mandriva does not force-feed mono, AFAICT. Probably my biggest long term not solvable or compromisable reason.

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available

tonyblackwell — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 11:18:36 +0000

Mandriva tends to just work, even in beta. 2010.0 x86_64 supports pretty much all my hardware: i7 desktop, Acer Extensa 5620 laptop, Logitec Quickcam Pro 9000 camera and its usb mic, a generic little presenter tool and its usb dongle. Only thing flagged in red on my hardware list is a D-Link bluetooth dongle DBT-120 but it uses it anyway without problem. They have really nice integration of desktop themes, KDE and gnome stuff seem just to work. Many things I've not heard of but see here or elsewhere have a good chance of being in the mandriva repositories; 'urpmi productx' may very well quietly install productx and its package dependencies.

Looking forward to the updated packages.

The copious stuff I've read online about a certain distribution which previously somewhat locked in users to shades of brown and I hear now favors purple seems like a world apart...

Ah well, my penny's worth. Hasn't stopped me reporting a few bugs over time.

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available

briangmaddox — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:31:15 +0000

Eh, Mandriva didn't rearrange buttons so there weren't a bajillion people
screaming about it ;)

Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1 available

xav — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:32:03 +0000

Story about next Ubuntu version: >50 comments. Story about next Mandriva: no comment until mine.
That was my unreliable quick popularity survey :)