MandrakeSoft now profitable, says CEO Bancilhon

[Counterspy]

Think about this as walking into a store. Your impressions of the store start at the entrance. Then as you move through the store you look around. Do they have what you came for? Can't find it? Look for a "sales associate". Ask where to look. The associate says follow me. You get what you came for and the associate says "Come back soon". Contrast that with this store. Dirt on the floor at the entrance. And it's been a week since it snowed. Every aisle is numbered. There is a sign about what's in the aisle you can see only after you enter it. You look down six or seven aisles. No luck. Find an associate. None in site. Wander around. Two associates found. One on top of a loading platform, the other on the floor restocking the top shelf. You ask the associate on the floor. He doesn't know. He yells at the associate on the loading platform. He says section 13, aisle 58. You are in section 67, aisle 3. Decision time. Do you go way down there or do you take the exit at section 15, aisle 1. Which store is Mandrakesoft?

 

Counterspy

[aRTee]

Mandrake is the store where you get to take the product home, use it, and then decide if you want to part with some cash to make sure that in the future, you may do the same again.

 

For 9.1 there were no special isos, but about as much updates after as much time. As with 9.0, 8.2 etc. Please, also look at other distros. They all show a similar pattern.

 

The point is, those who didn't join the club, get to use only the standard public update and upgrade path.

 

The club here has extra value. Even above the powerpacks. The club means most money to Mandrake for every dollar the customer spends.

 

I like this idea. I like it that clubmembers wanted extra isos with the updates, and they got them. I downloaded those. I'm not sure if I'll use them (have updated already), but if people ask, I can give that to them, saving the hassle of lots of downloads.

 

 

In short: mandrake starts listening to their paying customers. Something that I think is good. You don't like it? Tough luck. If you're a paying member, and you want something else, you can get other members to vote in, voice your wishes, and if enough people want it, they will do it.

Sounds like a respectable strategy: give the customer what they want.

 

I do agree that the current customer does not necessarily have the profile of the average computer user that is ready / open to linux.

Maybe they should have some voting part where non-members could voice their opinion and say: if you do this or that, I'll become a member.

 

But until then, listening to paying customers is better than not listening to them. Thanks Mandrake, and to come back to the start post: congrats on getting out of the red. Good luck, you have my support.

[Gowator]

"I do agree that the current customer does not necessarily have the profile of the average computer user that is ready / open to linux.

Maybe they should have some voting part where non-members could voice their opinion and say: if you do this or that, I'll become a member.

"

Ohh me too.

The point is they released the ISO's to club members.... fine.. BUT what about other paying customers...

 

For the first time ever In known history I didn't buy a powerpack boxset.

The reasons were numerous....

1) Not trusting MandrakeOnline to deliver....on tiome or at all

2) No DVD edition in the shops i looked in

3) Bad experience with 9.1 Cd's

4) Because after buying I got no credit, specifically no Mandrake Club membership.

5) Removal of Linuxconf

6) Lack of ANY documentation on Mandrake wizards

 

Many people without broadband or even access to broadband BUY mandrake but I guess they will be excluded from the ISO's because they are not Mandrake Club members. Mostly Mandrake seem unable to fathom that people without broadband or even internet access buy box-sets. Mandrake seems quite happy to leave these people stranded with buggy software.

Most importantly, what the heck is beta testing....

It appears the boxsets are beta products.... RC ??? then if you wanna upgrade to the full product you have to PAY again to join the club....

 

(This seems strangly reminicent of Mac OS-X-3 "Panther" where Mac basically are charging again for the upgrades... and bug patches.

 

 

And its worth repeating "I paid Mandrake a while back to get the distro. When I asked for the service that was promised in the literature in the box, I did not receive it. If my story were an exception, then I would be whining. ( Maybe I am anyway ) But I have heard too many other people from all over the world who have had similar experiences. The "club" will not solve this problem. We, here at this board, have done more to solve this than Mandrake. Mandrake needs to solve this, and they don't even think it is a problem, because they view the donations of a well-meaning user community as support for the absence of customer service! Now, there is no one that I know who is a club member who really thinks that, but Mandrake does! "

Wouldn't change a word of that!!!!

 

Mandrake are sinking down a hole......

The loss of the texstar repoositories is a serious set-back as are many of the more skilled developers who left.

 

Mandrake have survived due to the loyalty of folks like me and you while driving off the genius's like texstar .... I drew the line this time.... 9.2 just refused (download edition) to run with my mobo and HW....

Now perhaps the fixed iso's will and Im missing out.... who knows :D

The point is that they have cumulatively pissed me off through thoughtless actions and squeezing this financial years profits out of their customers.

 

 

RedHat made a particular decision with Fedora, fine at least its clear but its really hard to guess exactly what Mandrake is aiming at.....

The profusion of half cocked wiozards makes it increasingly harder to recommend it to noobies... becuase its becoming XPified .... just click a wizard instead of learning.

For those who wish to use UNIX and not understand they are not even in the ballpark of Apple. My old mum (indeed my friends old dad is) using Lindows...

 

I don't personally like Lindows becuase it hides everythng behind wizards etc.//// thats not for me and its not for someone who wants to learn but they do it a heck of a lot better than Mandrake.

Similarly, Debian remains purer and Mandrake also comprimses on that....

 

Neither of these are BAD .... they just need to work out their market position.....

but they haven't, they are casting about hoping for bites....

Lindows, thats easy, they went for the masses....

Debian... they went for the purists

Mandrake tried to please all of the people all of the time....

 

Also

Other commercial distro's like Lycoris/Xandros have built easy wizards into the control Centre. This to me is much more preferable to putting them into the seperate control centre which seems to be aiming to be a poor mans YAST.

 

The best thing MDK did was URPMI......

But unlike Debian who added full apt-support into say KPackage MDK keep it proprietry hence you need to use the MDK tools .....

 

Its quite simple for me ... configuration wise proprietry is BAD.

Anything that screws with the standard tools is BAD... becuase thats all linux really is....a collection of standard tools..... a distro is just a collection of these tools packaged together. The more non-standard and the less these tools are reused the less linux becomes.

And this seems to be the direction of Mandrake......

[spinynorman]

Mandrake have survived due to the loyalty of folks like me and you while driving off the genius's like texstar ....

Other commercial distro's like Lycoris/Xandros have built easy wizards into the control Centre.  This to me is much more preferable to putting them into the seperate control centre which seems to be aiming to be a poor mans YAST. 

Just as an aside, Texstar has recently written a rave review of Xandros.

I'm really pleased with Xandros 2.0, I've tweaked it to my liking (...) and it's going to replace my previous favorite (Libranet) and stay on my desktop.  Xandros is smooth, clean and polished and is the only version of Linux that I've tried so far that I feel is a complete Linux desktop solution, it just works!  It's a mature Linux and ready for the masses.

[Ixthusdan]

The club means most money to Mandrake for every dollar the customer spends.

 

In short: mandrake starts listening to their paying customers. Something that I think is good. You don't like it? Tough luck.

Yes, as soon as Mandrake develps their own distribution channel, owns their own trucks, ships, and planes, owns their own cd production facility, owns their own printer, and has their own employees back, they won't have to rely on the methods of business has have proven successful for the reast of the planet! :lol: There is a touch of insanity to reinventing the wheel, but hey, if you have the time and the money, go for it!

 

As far as "tough luck", we are in agreement. I tell Mandrake "tough luck" until they keep their word. My Dad taught me (in his words!) Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me.

[aRTee]

Gowator, sure, loads of bad points to Mandrake.

Still, reread the first message in this thread: they are out of the red.

Meaning: for the few unsatisfied customers, there are plenty of satisfied ones.

 

I know already I will renew my membership. Like 9.2 more than any other linux (or windows) I ever touched, and that's quite a few.

 

The point of serving clubmembers instead of powerpack buyers is that they can. Ok, I would think that powerpack buyers should be allowed to download the new clubmember version. But other than that, no problem there.

BTW I don't recommend to buy a pack anyway.

The future is on preinstalled systems, not shelved packs.

Mandrake knows this. Some people here don't see it, or don't agree. That's fine.

So they just want people to become clubmembers, and not buy packs, of which they get less and which just creates headaches.

Get the mandrake that comes with the magazines (there are plenty now that have the full download set and then some), download, get a friend to download, get the set from cheap online services, etcetc.

 

To quickly delve into your 7 points:

1) Not trusting MandrakeOnline to deliver....on tiome or at all

Ok, true, but as I wrote, we live in the internet age. There are always tons of updates after a final, remember why Linus released 2.6.0 final: because then people would really start pushing it.

 

2) No DVD edition in the shops i looked in

Big deal. If you have a dvd, you likely have a large hd, so follow the instructions on my site and install with urpmi from the iso images mounted on the system. You're gonna have those iso's on your system anyway, to make copies for friends.

 

 

3) Bad experience with 9.1 Cd's

Ok.

 

4) Because after buying I got no credit, specifically no Mandrake Club membership.

This I agree, they could toss in a membership. On the other hand, why buy??

It's not like the paperwork is worth a lot, contrary to the SUSE book you get with that...

 

5) Removal of Linuxconf

Well, if people use that, they don't get enough feedback on their drake gui's, so disagree there. I think that was not bad.

 

6) Lack of ANY documentation on Mandrake wizards

Not a problem, as long as the tools work. If they don't, file a bugreport.

 

 

You talk about many other people having all these problems, and I sure don't think you're inventing anything there, but 2 things:

1- no one I have passed Mandrake to has had any problems. I myself had the LG deaddrive syndrome, which was no fun but fixed after some fiddling. All my friends and colleagues had no problems. The LG thing was the only problem I had.

2- again, Mandrake is out of the red. Meaning: enough people didn't have these problems.

 

 

 

"But unlike Debian who added full apt-support into say KPackage MDK keep it proprietry hence you need to use the MDK tools ."

Sorry, Steve, stop the fud. URPMI and the DRAKE tools are NOT PROPRIETARY. Excuse me for shouting, but it is plain FALSE!

Don't let me catch you repeat that!!! Bad boy! :lol:

 

Talk about standard tools: have you seen the kde-integrated version of mcc yet? I saw a screenshot, and it's really cool. Mdk10 will rock.

 

Texstar repositories loss means nothing to me. Sure, he made the effort of putting out new kde for mandrake before mandrake did. Some people really rave about that. But what if that would break things?

And why would people want to download a couple of 100 megs to have a new kde, but bitch about a couple of 10s of megs of updates?

 

So things are not easy, and mandrake must put the effort where it should go: improving the software and tools; Tex 'just' adds to that. He is nothing without Mandrake, and on the other hand, my Mandrake is fine without Tex. All that he would do, can also be done through the club: request new kde release etc.

 

Lindows: you know what I think, I explained in another thread. I was about to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the threat ended otherwise.

 

As I put on my websites front page, I believe Mandrake has the right points to earn my support. No other linux distro has this, and I would like a linux distro that has this, become big.

 

 

Ix,

"Yes, as soon as Mandrake develps their own distribution channel, owns their own trucks, ships, and planes, owns their own cd production facility, owns their own printer, and has their own employees back, they won't have to rely on the methods of business has have proven successful for the reast of the planet! There is a touch of insanity to reinventing the wheel, but hey, if you have the time and the money, go for it!"

 

No, the distribution channel is the internet. Welcome to the 21st century.

As for their employees back, well, they need to pay them, so more money is welcome and will lead to the employees getting payed, and who knows, maybe even getting more employees.

The wheel is not reinvented, not for nothing did Mandrake base on RH. The things that were sorely needed were a package management system for RPM based systems. Guess who made that first, and made it GPL? So why didn't the others use urpmi, and why did they reinvent the wheel?

The draketools have been around about as long as linuxconf, and are much better integrated -- no point in throwing those out and keeping linuxconf. Besides that, there was/is a good point in throwing out linuxconf -- for config, only one interface should be necessary. (Plus the direct conf file editing option -- they throw that out, and I'm gone.)

 

"As far as "tough luck", we are in agreement. I tell Mandrake "tough luck" until they keep their word."

Ok, fair enough.

[Darkelve]

Lindows: you know what I think, I explained in another thread. I was about to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the threat ended otherwise.

hell I know... I have to get back on that thread someday ;)

I have a few more experiences to elaborate upon.

Edited January 26, 2004 by Darkelve

[Pzatch]

Its good that Mandrake is finally out of the red. No that they have finally cut the wheat from the chaff corporate wise maybe they can start consentraiting on the last things they need to to make a better distro.

 

In my opinion the desktop is the route they should go. The people need one and Mandrake is really the closest thing out there.

 

How they handled this release leaves a lot to be desired. Really the final should have been released to the public first and then the new repacked ISO's should have gone to the club members. They deserve the better final release and they should get it in the best packages as possible. The rest of us can keep doing the update thing just like we are.I just wish it didn't take them so long to get it out. Wasn't there a site giving out a fresh ISO someplace else a few weeks ago?

 

As for the Mandrake live ISO. Now thats something that should have been given the ability to be transfered to the harddrive. One ISO and if you like it you get to keep using it. What a nice idea for grabbing a widespread user base that might start paying for the latest stable releases.

 

Oh well just a few thoughts on this subject.

[Gowator]

aRTee,

My worry is that the out of the red is a short term thing.

From what I hear from rumour (and a few people here know better than me) texstar parted company and didn't take up offers of employment for very good reasons.

 

URPMI is great.... what I worry about is the technical people who brought us that are now the chaff and we are left with the marketers and the PR.

 

There are a lot of people in the world without broadband etc. and these people buying powerpacks should be entitled to the working product.

Also the default urpmi is clean so when people download the updates they automatically loose them. Im not talking me or you here Im talking noobies.....when they need to reinstall they don't have the updates.

 

Also noobies are likely to walk into a store. Much as I agree that preinstalled systems are likely to be the biggest in the future. The bottom line is they should either STOP selling boxsets in stores OR support them.

 

Mandrake really irritated me when I got fault Cd's and emailed them and got told to join the club....

I had no internet at the time and what is the club going to do except tell me to download the ISO's anyway.

 

I find selling the powerpack but not supporting it is misleading or dishonest. Sure MS do it but that doesn't make it right. Apple is being taken to task for this right now and has agreed on settlements.

 

If they sell the powerpack then come up with 400MB of updates they could at least give the CD to the people who bought the faulty system.

 

There are some differences between linux and Mandrake vis a vis "Ok, true, but as I wrote, we live in the internet age. There are always tons of updates after a final, remember why Linus released 2.6.0 final: because then people would really start pushing it."

That is linus didn't chage for the kernel.....

 

Point 2) The DVD is important becuase I want my reference disk and be able to use the same one in different PC's.... The 7 cd thing is way to much work....

It was honestly the thing that made me put the powerpack back on the shelf. (I had it in my hands)

 

Point 4) I buy (or bought) becuase I want to see Linux in the shops for the mainstream.

I want someone even if Mandrake comes pre-installed to be able to ditch it and buy Suse or whatever from the shelves.

I haven't even opened the books past flicking through the pages... but I like to support buying Linux in the shops.... (also I had no internet for some time)

 

Point 5)

I really don't like the loss of linuxconf..... webmin will be next!!!!

Distro packagers should try and be working towards their tools working compatibly with the standards.

As for the actual tools....

They don't all work in some cases and the problem is Mandrake thinks that's OK.

My personal experience is the way Mandrake sets up networking on virtual interfaces. When this works it works well..... however it doesn't work well when you have deliberately put in 2 NIC's

Ive lost count of the number of people with shorewall problems using Mandrake's config.... etc.

 

I don't like the wizards becuase they leave you in mess when they fail..... becuase they have done something non-standard.

 

Take the 9.1 and 9.0 drakconnect

This gave me nightmares.... I started off simple becuae I just wanted an internet connection with pppoe .... single NIC and it worked perfectly.

 

Then I added a second NIC for routing and firewalling.

The whole thing refused to deinstall. Nowhere in the wizard can (could) you change your connection type. And there's a vaguely MS ring to this too.

Everytime you configure it wants to reinstall pppoe..... Insert disk 1 .....

 

So I searched for the documentation and couldn't find it....what I found was the documentation for shorewall.

However it carries a big fat warning for mandrake users....

The instructions are unintelligable with the mandrake config.....

 

So I overwrote the mandrake shorewall configs with the shorewall shorewall configs et viola..... it worked immediately .

 

Same for the NIC's, I deleted them from linuxconf first then recreated them and it worked..... after being trapped in a endless loop for a weekend with the drak wizard,

 

Back to urpmi....

What I meant is if you use Debian then kpackage is fully apt-aware it allows you to update/upgrade/fixup etc.

It resolves all the deps... etc.

URMPI works great from the CLI too. but you can't make it work from kpackage or the gnome equivalant or webmin (and expect it to osrt out deps). You need to use the MCC to do it.

 

I believe people should always have a choice in linux.... especially when it comes to common unix tools like webmin or kpackage.

 

I don't know who submitted the kpackage debain bit, Im presuming debian did...

Its their responsibility ....

This is what Mandrake should have done too. They should have made urpmi work with kpackage like apt does.

 

 

Talk about standard tools: have you seen the kde-integrated version of mcc yet? I saw a screenshot, and it's really cool. Mdk10 will rock.

No but if that the case then i think Ill take back a bit of what I said :D

 

Mandrake is a fine distro and I still recommend it to beginers....

However, with beginers who you are supporting its great to be able to tell them how to fix something from the CLI or webmin or linuxconf. If they don't wanna do/learn this then they honestly are probably better off with lycoris or Lindows.

 

Mandrake has traditionally supported a midway system with bleeding edge desktop and some good server products....

Server products like apache, NFS etc. SHOULD be standard and be capble of being admin'd from webmin.... (which is the choice of UNIX pro's worldwide)

 

I wouldn't dream of using Lindows or ycoris for server tasks becuase they are Desktop systems... sure you can but its easier to start off with a distro like Mandrake.....

 

Like the issue of selling powerpacks.... Mandrake needs to decide.

Its fence sitting between being a serious distro (in terms of server apps) and a home distro in terms of desktop only. What i see at the momnet is a drift TOWARDS lindows/lycoris where the desktop part works great but the 'real linux' stuff is made harder or impossible to do.

 

By real linux what I mean is everyone can have a mail server, web server etc.

In the winblows world these are expensive (very) specialised server applications wheras in Linux everyone can do it.

 

Linux contains a wealth of connectivity that can only be bolted onto Windows, like real networking.

Many linux noobies ask for antivirus, disk defragmenter, norton commander and a firewall etc...

(heck theres a thread going on this right now)

How about go-to-my PC or PC anywhere ???

 

No because ALL of this is standard with any distro.....with the exception of diskdefrag which isn't needed.

 

Bah, what Im trying to say is the 'server apps' are important too. WinBlows converts don't even appreciate the fact that they have a full mutliuser system or that they can set DISPLAY anywhere they want....etc...

 

However these server apps MUST be standardised in terms of configuration....

 

So things are not easy, and mandrake must put the effort where it should go: improving the software and tools; Tex 'just' adds to that. He is nothing without Mandrake, and on the other hand, my Mandrake is fine without Tex. All that he would do, can also be done through the club: request new kde release etc.

Well, if you loose PLF as well then you end up with a not very usable system for noobies..... just at random, no DVD playback.

 

The whole point of your arguament is that the Internet is the distribution channel of the 21C .....(If I over summarise it)

However it all comes back to the marketing....

Personally, I feel that there are plenty of places in the 3rd world without broadband. The angolan government homepage is in Washington for instance...the two ISP's actually operate out of Portugal. (Even the pro-nationalist one ebony or something)

The balkpapan ISP has a 600ms satellite delay and serious bandwidth restrictions.... even getting dial-up here is beyond the reach of most.

 

I lived without a phone and internet for a long time in Paris....

Long story but my company pay the rent and France telecom needed them to authorise the phone connection.... no problem, they will even pay for it but only in their name..... which meant it would be impossible to get broadband. (since they don't provide this and won't write a letter of authorisation, even of you want....to pay yourself )

 

What I learned in this time is HOW DIFFICULT it is to get Mandrake (9.0 at the time) to work (as advertised) without Internet access. I could download floppy diskable rpm's at work and go home to dep hell.

 

I was at the point of chucking my longstanding relationship with mandrake away until I got internet access then URPMI changed my life....

In a couple of hours I had the whole thing working....

 

So Im over-sympathetic maybee to those without Internet (most of the world) ...

BUT : if mandrake continue to market the boxsets I can't recommend them to people without internet connections....IMHO Mandrake without Internet is a crippled beast.

 

Once again this is marketing/decision time for Mandrake.

Lindows is useless without Internet....for instance ..

Mandrake has to decide .... and quickly on their market/distribution etc.

At the moment they are straddling to many fences and I fear their move into the back may be all to temporary once the people who bought it this last year get disillusioned.

Club membership is for me and you..... and Ix once they sort out the methods...

 

It shouldn't be necassary for a pure consumer. Its pointed out many times that this site provides better and faster support than the club.... if thats why a noobie joins they will quickly loose hope....I forget my password after finding this place :D and when renewal came up I figured why bother, what have they done for me. (yea Im a selfish human too), I don't even run it anymore....

 

Im not going to join a club that lets me make suggestions on the offchance someone listens and then puts something back which makes me start using it again.....

 

Back to the wizards.....

It shouldn't be neccassary for a linux guru to know a distro to fix someones system. Those you have converted and helped are able to get support here or from you but for those who can't or didn't find this place then the guy from the bar or work who runs Debian or suse or whatever should be able to help them out, preferably over the phone or remotely.

The 'peculiar' mandrake way of doing certain things doesn't help this.

 

Lets say Im running deb and Im trying to help people who have screwed up drakconnect....

Its a pain in the butt. Backing out all the stuff that the wiz tried to do but failed.

I sould just be able to mess about in /etc/ and get everything working in no time without having to backout the mandrake peculiarites.

 

I don't mind the wizards but if Im going to help someone i need to see what they (the wizards) are doing....presently the source is the only way Ive found.

linuxconf/webmin do this fundamentally the same way they always did whereas Mandrake has changed considerably .... so much so you can no longer use linuxconf to setup networking without screwing the wizard.

 

The problem is I have the knowledge and skills built over time to fix the wizards when they go wrong but a noobie is unlikely to be able to do it becuase the documentation for the standards doesn't apply becuase Mandrake did it another way.

 

The whole internet connection thing is one example but I se this getting more common as the wizards get more prolific....

 

My particular situation is I wanted the dual NIC card as a router but also as a normal desktop. The wizard is or was unable to do this but worse still, once run it made a mess to the point where I had to recreate the devices, links etc. and reconfigure the firewall before moving on. Sure perhaps 1:20 people might want this setup so its doesn't need to be supported by the wizard BUT

it should be documented it doesn't work and it should be reversible.