Reiver_Fluffi

Thread title is ambiguous, borderline sensationalist.

I never used those options anyway, I simply did what they suggested naturally and probably most people did that as well, so I can understand why they dropped them.

Ditto that.

Hopefully this means that no one company can dictate the project's future.

If I were you I would get amarok to rip to mp3 in the first place rather than transcode from ogg to mp3. There is the potential for loss of quality when transcoding between two lossy formats.

Well, I don't see it really possible in this "business" that someone would buy MDV for the soul reason of killing the brand.

Who suggested that it would be the sole reason?

I really don't think anyone will be looking to buy the company in order to kill off the brand, anyone in the business with that kind of money to waste (i.e. RH, Novell, Canonical) need not worry about the strength of Mandriva's brand as it isn't that strong relative to theirs.

Anyone looking to buy the company will be more interested in stripping out the technical staff (at least what's left of them) and their skills and absorb them into their own products. They are not likely to keep the existing business going as is as it has been proven that the current business model is seriously flawed.

Cough! cough!

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?/topic/87613-public-statement-of-mandrivauser-de/page__view__findpost__p__622893

I seriously hope that no outsider takes a look at the comments on that and believes it to be indicative of the Linux community as a whole. They come across as a bunch of whiny brats. The organisation has limited resources and decided to focus on the wider user base, a harsh reality of real life. Get over it and grow up.

I always use CentOS (i.e. Redhat Enterprise Linux in all but the name) for servers, it's supported for a much longer time than the 2 years Ubuntu LTS releases are (unless you want to guarantee yourself an upgrade fee every two years ;) , but that wouldn't be my style).

That is factually incorrect, the LTS releases are supported for 3 years for UbuntuDesktop and 5 years for UbuntuServer.

Source: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS

If you have installed all of your software via the package manager then you should be safe to remove old unused kernels through the old package manager for sure.

I can't see how it can be, what have they got access to that OpenOffice cannot do themselves?

It's a Novel sponsored project and there's stuff in it that has not been included in vanilla OpenOffice because Sun/OOo community will not include it.

Static Ip's managed by the router (which of course also acts as an intenet gateway) is by FAR the simplest and cleanest solution.

Another vote for Scarecrow's advice.

Tux, do you have anything credible, other than conjecture, to back up your opinion that the browser is spyware?

For me Chrome/Chromium have been far more stable and far more responsive than Firefox or Oper, be it on Windows or Linux. The builds for Linux are considered unstable yet they run rings around Firefox and Opera, so much so that the Chromium Daily Builds from the Ubuntu PPA is my default browser!

I didn't upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 as they currently have a problem in the kernel with ext4 and large files (>= 512MB), so I'm waiting for now.

Didn't know that. Fortunately it doesn't affect me as all my large files in my /home directory are still on an Ext3 partition.

I have yet to experience a Linux install where Pulseaudio works fine out of the box, yes I know some people are lucky and it works for them, but that seem to be exceptions...

I must be an exception, Pulseaudio worked fine for me on 9.04 and is working fine for me on 9.10

<paranoid mode on>

Sometimes I get the impression Pulseaudio could be a virus planted by M$ to make Linux less newbie friendly

<paranoid mode off>

I dunno, the lead developer is employed by Red Hat.

good to know but "destroy" is the wrong word, it surely didn't destroy the flash physically, it just corrupted the Mandriva installation.

That flash key could be reformatted/partitioned and reused.

I agree.

Or they just wanna get through their "Hey, we're not a monopoly!" message.

Quite possibly, I hadn't considered that. Although, regulators (at least the ones that bother) wouldn't put much weight on the statements in the SEC filing given the strength of the other facts.

I think that the very mention of Linux should strike fear in the very heart of Microsoft. Linux is a formidable force to be reckoned with. C'mon Linux!!!

"Microsoft fears Linux" and so they should. The fact is GNU/Linux has come a very long way in the ease of use department. I hope they also continue to make huge mistakes like 'Vista' that debacle motivated a lot of users to seek out alternatives to Winblows. And there's nothing like the truth being set free to piss people off... Guard this one closely M1cr0$0ft, secrets always somehow get revealed....

 

P-P-P-Penguin Power

Would love to agree, but I don't. As much as I support Linux, I feel that we have to be pragmatic about this. Unless hardware support from key manufacturers and software support from key commercial software developers improves vastly beyond the token gestures we currently see, the threat will always be minimal.

Hmmm, I wouldn't go so far as to say they fear Linux, that statement is stronger than the actual threat IMO. Yes Linux companies are making inroads, and Microsoft is cautious of it, but there's no fear...yet!

Whether or not Google open source it is purely conjecture, although IMO the money would have been better spent helping Xiph.org improve Theora.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is called the United Kingdom or England, etc.

Calling the UK, England, is pretty much a taboo and is exceptionally frowned upon in the other 3 countries in the UK.

Do you have some evidence for what you're saying or it is more like a feeling? Can you give some examples for google acting as a "big brother"?

+1

I do sometimes feel that people overreact when it comes to Google's policies on information gathering and use, especially when some divulge much more damaging information through social networking.

Looks like they have gone some way to get over the first hurdle, getting OEM support.

The search giant said it was working with many firms on Chrome OS hardware including Acer, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8141964.stm

This is something that most Linux distro's have some difficulty with, Google appears to making it look like a walk in the park.

I have a feeling this was the case of people making promises and then their higher-ups not liking them. I really don't think Mandriva did anything wrong here, to be completely honest, things simply didn't work out as planned.

That may be the case, but it shows a real lack of integrity which is a key issue for stakeholders such as stock markets and governments (which is reflected in the way that listing rules, companies legislation and corporate governance codes are set).

But maybe you should apply as CEO at Mandriva then, as you seem to have it all worked out so well...

I did consider reply to your post until I came across this petty taunt, I have no time for debating with people who resort to such immature behaviour.

I have to assume you don't mean this seriously, Mandriva has 80 employees worldwide, I would hardly call that a big ugly organisation!!!

I disagree, haiving 80 staff, sales of EUR 4m and operating globally is far from small.

If anything this issue is a consequence of them being too small, lacking marketing and PR staff as 50 of them are engineers.

(source: http://www.mandriva.com/enterprise/en/company/backgrounder)

That has nothing to do with size and everything to do with balancing the organisation with the oppropriate skills. IIRC they just recently ditched a member of staff that had a vital marketing role. IMO it would be a lot easier to pass off coding/engineer skills to the community than marketing, I do not believe that the Linux community as a whole is endowed with enthusiastic market skills, marketing in this context is certainly not as attractive as coding.

And I wouldn't even call them truly capitalist given that they have never made a profit for their 'ugly' capital owners (the shareholders).

That arguement is very weakl IMO, that's like calling a charity that makes surpluses a profit orientated organisation. In this context the motive to make profits is worth a lot more than actually achieving the goal of making profits.

Mandriva is in difficulties already, they shot themselves in the foot (by not attending LinuxTag at the last minute), so there is no need to continue to stomp on the injured foot.

Sorry, are you saying that we should restrict our criticism just because Mandriva looks to be falling on hard times? By that logic we shouldn't be giving positive criticism in times of success... The fact is that any criticism thus far has been borne out of the actions of the company, none of the criticism thus far has been unjust or without influence from Mandriva. It is on this basis that I believe that your statement is extremely biased.

Mandriva is a faceless, capitalist organisation like any other, it's big enough and ugly enough to not need any mollycoddling!