Hi, I'm quite a gnu enthusiast but I just haven't really had the time for it ever since I discovered it :-/. My first distro was redhat 7.2, then later mandrake 9.2 for alittle bit. Unfortunately with lots of uni work snapping at my heels I gave up with liunx installed windows and just kept uptodate with news and events. I decided I still wanted to use linux but without messing abit with dependcy issues etc. I noticed Lindows were offering a lifetime membership to their click and run warehouse at the time so I snapped it up. So started my journey into the world of a wholey commercial linux distro.

I've had alot of good experiences with Lindows, they have a nice little community but something is definately missing. It also strikes me as abit of a difficult move on their part, surely a click and run client is something that a distribution like mandrake is working towards and sooner or later will have? As this is a wholey GNU/Linux distro such a solution is likely to be far supier and wide ranging to a techniology like click and run? IS mandrake working towards the same sort of thing? Or are their hands tied this is so opensource that it's difficult to develop something like that without money? It's just it strikes me that Mandrake's philosophy is geared towards newbies to linux, surely such a thing is preferred to attract windows users to linux? To me it just seems such a shame that it's Lindows that is getting these new LInux users from Windows and not mandrake, afterall mandrake is the most wellknown linux distro geared to newbies is it not? imo Michael Robertson should have given all his money to you and left the job to you guys.

Click and Run on Mandrake is called urpmi, or for gui fans rpmdrake.
Read my site (see link below), use Mandrake, read this forum, it is all there. Easy installation has been in Mandrake since before RH or SUSE had it (when SUSE was still SuSE) and way before Lindows.com existed...
Mandrake was the first with urpmi to implement an rpm dependency resolution system; before that, software installation was easier/easiest on debian, with apt-get install...

And for your info, Mandrake is loads bigger (in terms of users) than Lindows/Linspire - and I don't see Lindows getting as big anytime soon...
It's just that they are quite crappy on marketing, customer relations etcetc..
Things that Michael Robertson is very very good at...


By the way, make no mistake: this forum is independent from Mandrake..

Oh and lastly, welcome here. You don't have to be a mandrake user to hang out here, some of the moderators and gurus use something else...
Enjoy Linux!

Would you say it's reached the ease of use of click and run? Click and run has become quite robust but to me Lindows just isn't linux, it's missing alot, it's ashame but it's to be expected I suppose.

With regards to Mandrake marketing, if mandrake is truely just as viable an alternative as a desktop solution to windows users then that's fair enough, but there are loads of small things which will sway the windows user. OkI appreciate this isn't the official mandrake forum, but does mandrake try to market their product toward the majority of windows users ie- those who really don't care about the inner workings of the system and just want to use something that works?

If so I'd love to know why mandrakes marketing is so poor, is it just down to money? Is there any other way mandrake can attract investment other than shares and donations etc?



That's precisey why you have my backing, mandrake seems to have an amazingly strong and big community. Your support is well developed and I commend people on their efforts here. Lindows could learn alot from mandrake on the support side imo. Mandrake doesn't appear ont he face of it to market towards windows users who don't really care about how their system works. This would make sense as FOSS isn't about getting rid of microsoft and that's great, but it would be nice to see mandrake steal microsofts crown.

and lol it won't load but could you explain this one to me.

http://timedoctor.org/boycott_winex.php

LOL!

Right now, I don't believe they have the resources. Mandrake still is a small company, which happens to have just recovered from bankruptcy, which was the result of bad (previous) management. Their efforts have been focused on OEM products/services and their "official" pay-for-membership club. This has been their short-term "money tree." Quite a few of us here would like to see a more long-term marketing / business plan too.

PS: welcome to the forum

Thanks for the welcome, I really like this forum already not just down to you two but the forum software is really quite good!

II just posted this on the lindows forum, my take on what Lindows have done, my thoughts, cue boredom! First here is a user impression of click and run, after I made a silly comparison with a proprietory WM.


My ramblings



Now my main point is surely mandrake needs to look for extra sources of funding? maybe some Mandrake people start innovative business in other areas. Now Micheal has a TRUMP CARD in this respect, he's just developed L>Tunes the truth is if that takes off, he'll have the only viable alternative to i>tunes on the linux desktop, if he then gets alot of users he's going to make a packet even though judging from his experience with mp3.com his service will be quite different from iTunes and really quite cool. I might be wrong tho as i heard on the grapevine that he's not intending to make any money out of it as such.

I'd say that urpmi is every bit as good as ClickNRun, except that I have never seen ClickNRun in action.

I have shown a windows using colleague Mandrake with properly set up urpmi, and he agreed that after the setup (which you can do easily with easyurpmi, but which is not very understandable for newbies), the installation of software is as easy as it can possibly get. Including browsing etcetc.

I have no idea how urpmi/rpmdrake could be altered to make software installation even easier.

The real edge it has over CNR is that it is free to use and GPL code, and the repositories are chosen by the user, so you can point it to any repository you want, and you can create your own repository etcetc. And there is much more software available.


As for the financial problems of Mandrake, I hope they will cash in a bit more with Mandrake 10.0 Official.
Then they can spend more money on developers (still plenty of bugs to fix and things to develop) and marketing...
I'm still hoping for preinstalled preconfigured Mandrake machines in the shops... (if I ever find the time, I will do it myself... note the 'if' ....)


For me, it is fine if M.Robertson makes an honest buck, even with LTunes, ... the thing that is not good is if people leave windows for the Free world of Linux and they end up with the lock-in into Lindows....
But ultimately, I don't care, and in the mid term, anyone moving from win to lin is putting their weight on the right end of the statistical scale.

The one thing that plays a role: if people pay for something, they put in more effort to get something out of it.
If people on linux today would all have paid 1500$, they'd pay more attention, read more manpages and documentation etcetc....


Lastly, that boycott winex link is to a page that explains why winex is really not that beneficial to the linux gaming community.
To anyone who likes both games and linux, the best you can do is to buy linux native games.

Click n run works far far better than urpmi. (for beginers wanting to set up something technical)
If the click n run exists .... and if you dont mind paying for some of it.

The BIG difference is everything is setup and working with click n run, urpmi often leaves them unconfigured.

If you install apache or a mail server in click n run it will be working, no further config necassary. Of course its lots of defaults etc. but its WORKING and running

urpmi often has extra steps to follow, especially for server stuff.

When you install something with click n run it can install an icon on the desktop and if you click it it WILL WORK. URPMI is great but its not even in the same league as click n run....

If you ONLY use click n run everything works faultlessly. I never found ANYTHING that didnt ... from wifi setup to php stuff.



Thats the best part.
Of course nothing is to stop you setting up apt-get under Lindows and pointing it Debian mirrors. Thne you have far more software than Mandrake.
Good luck sorting the wood from the trees though

Also you might start breaking things in Lindows if you do this.....

This is where Mandrake comes into its own.
Its not so many packages as Debian but its enough and most of the best stuff.
Its simpler than Deb to install and holds yuour hand on simple stuff like setting up your Internet connection. (for most people)

but its not really there compared to Debian oin server tools and installation.
Half of it is Mandrake often have a pecualiar way of doing stuff or put files not where they are meant to be .... this means if its your only distro fine but if you change its a pain.

Ok, icons on the desktop, sure...
But very good that it comes well configured, that's nice.

About installing apt-get
1) if you get xine and libdvdcss, it will still pester you every time you play a dvd that you can get the appropriate thing in CNR... (hearsay I have to admit, but I believe it)
2) are you sure you can have so much more software with apt-get? Doubt it, last thing I heard is that Mandrake comes very very close to Debian in availability, and frankly, any program that you cannot urpmi is very likely not worthwhile (or too new, therefor also too untested and unreliable...).

Btw on peculiar file placement, you've never had intimate experience with SUSE I guess...

Anyway, the point is that there is no lock-in in Mandrake, and there is in Linspire/Lindows.com which is IMHO therefore to be avoided.

btw, what baffles me is if mandrake is marketing linux towards the desktop user (Windows) why doesn't ijust concentrate its efforts into making a robust gpled version of click and run? Forgetting the problems with not being able tomarket it properly it would still make alot of sense if mandrake are indeed serious about attracting users. This changes of course if mandrake actually want people to have the dependcy + configeration nightmare, but I don't think that's what mandrake is about. So why not someone develop a more robust front end for this urpmi? to rival click and run.

also have you guys heard of or tried onebase? www.ibiblio.org/onebase

I am a bit cautious about "click n' run". It is too close to the windex debacle where every virus can "click n' run" as well as the user. I believe that the user should be the only person running anything on a computer. That may mean that some set up must be done, but it is worth it in the long run. So, for me, it is a philosophical issue. I prefer not to have "click n' run".

Now, if one wrote a script that would ask some questions and then set up an install after enterinf root permissions, I would be interested. But I would still need to understand how to answer the questions, wouldn't I?

CNR only works as well as it does because it only works in lindows. In a closed system with everything setup pretty much the same way for everyone. IE-partitions, files, libraries, and a single source. It makes it much simpler for the developers.
As for Debian having more apps. Most are old and not updated as often as Mandrake.
Mandrake was started as an offshoot of RH because RH was not compiling anything for i586 or i686. Everything was still only for i386 and its stability. Most things in RH still are only for i386. They are stable but not "cutting edge" or optimised for the new CPU's. Mandrake is one of the first distros running a 64bit system.
Mandrake is geared more to the cutting edge and apps are updated often. Debian is geared for stability and apps are really only updated on an as needed basis. And then only if stability is reached.

That's precisely what I'm saying, an opensource cnr client is likely to be far more complex than cnr etc because of what you say about Lindows being static. But do people see that as a challenge or an impossibility?

Making every computer the same is neither a challenge nor an impossibility. It is simply the way windex does it.

1) if you get xine and libdvdcss, it will still pester you every time you play a dvd that you can get the appropriate thing in CNR... (hearsay I have to admit, but I believe it)

Dunno, I got it anyway cos its $5 for LIFE.

2a) http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages (8710 packages)
2b) Some are old but the majority are valid alternatives. You could argue a single mail client is enough .... ??? To be honest I'd prefer less and knowing what I wanted ... half the time I know what I want becuase of the RPM from Mandy....

3) Btw on peculiar file placement, you've never had intimate experience with SUSE I guess...
Not a chance..... its worse than Mandrake. This is the MAIN reason why NOT....
this goes into the next part.....

Mandrake does have lockin and its getting worse. Every new drak wizard etc. is building towards users not knowing how to do this themselves.
I have yet to see a single documented drakwizard ... one that says heres what Im doing and if you wanna edit by hand do x,y,z....etc.

File placement makes this worse. Since the original documentation doesnt work anymore...

J++ - have a look at the knoppix version. Its cool but totally in user land, in other words it installs into your /home/ dir and runs limited permissions.

Its cool and it works becuase knoppix runs from the bootable CD and is therefore predicatable.


Ixthusdan ... apart from needing to be root apt-get actually does ask the questions, and yep you need to know the answers in advance more or less....

Pzatch : Deb testing is every bit as bleeding edge as Mandrake cooker.... stable lags behind of course... Mandrake 10 for AMD64 is still waiting...is it not.

To me they are two different but complimentary philosophies....
Im glad both exist.... becuase I dont like the lock in Suse etc. +
In some places debian can publish things which mandrake cannot because its not commerical. This is good becuase it keeps em alive and then PLF etc. can convert em to RPMs .... Without debian many of these might have died .... before adoption.

Gowator, having no docs is different from lock-in.
That's just lack of manpower, and besides, a wizard should just do its thing without reading any docs, that's the way everyone does it on Windows anyway.

If you use Mandrake, and you learn the cli and commands, there is no more lockin than in Debian. Compare that to MSWin. And in a lesser way, Lindows.

Sorry, if you call Mandrakes lack of docs a lock-in you're off by a long shot.
That is just not what lock-in is.

Mandrake has the 8 golden rules, and as such is the only commercial distro maker that has those. Instead of accusing them of lock-in creation, read that and ponder a bit.

I agree that their marketing sucks, but their strategy and behaviour are best in class in any commercial company in the open and closed source world. Name one other corporation that doesn't write a single line of closed source code.

They do really deserve better than to get called 'a distro that has / goes for lock-in'.
So please drop it. Or come up with real arguments, not some remarks on bad docs, which most projects, even very good ones, have.

Aight, I haven't read all these posts...first half or so...but I full agree with what J++ is saying. I had a friend using mandrake once...he went back to windows in under a week. It's not nearly as point-and-click as windows. The entire thing my friend said that made him switch was the fact that, with windows, you double-click an install file, and it runs. In Linux, you can't just double-click...and that's why he went back to windows...he's too lazy to type a few things into the terminal...
Now, he didn't have urpmi, because I didn't know about it then. If I had tried now though, he still wouldn't have it. I am not totally sure on what it is, but I tried to get it once, and couldn't figure it out...lol...I just stick with the console...I mean, RPM drake is cool for the stuff on the discs, but for everything else, console is easy enough. People are just too lazy IMHO....and that's gonna get worse, not better. I've never used Lindows, but it seems to be a good starting point for ppl to try out Linux in a more lazy-friendly environment