Microsoft vs Linux vs vendor lock-in

[spinynorman]

Mandrake has great installation and admin tools -- some people think they're superior to SUSE's YaST -- and a huge user base. Although Mandrake hasn't gotten as much press lately as it did a few years ago, it's still one of the most popular Linux downloads there is.

 

This popularity means there are plenty of Linux users familiar with Mandrake, many of whom work for companies that might consider migrating some or all of their operations to Linux. This gives Mandrake a huge grassroots marketing force. Add to that the fact that Mandrake is generally attractive on the desktop, and is user-friendly enough that a non-technical manager can figure out how to use it without a great deal of help, and Mandrake may end up coming from behind and surprising its larger competitors.

 

Besides the mindshare Mandrake has as a result of all those free downloads, it has another advantage over most distributions when it comes to corporate marketability: RPM binaries designed to work with Red Hat or SUSE work with Mandrake either out of the box or with only minor configuration changes.

Read more at NewsForge. B)

[Gowator]

My views are I think well known by regualrs but

Most competent Linux sysadmins and consultants can dance between distros like Gene Kelly dancing between lamp posts in Paris. Despite all the "Oy! Linux is doomed to fragment like a dropped porcelain bowl!" wailing that crops up from time to time, the various distributions all have the same basic characteristics, and a high-end enterprise sysadmin will want to install software from source instead of from packaged binaries anyway. So even if Mandrake and the others never make as much headway in the corporate marketplace as Red Hat and Novell, there will still continue to be plenty of choice available for Linux users.

I think this guy has an almost dangerous amount of knowledge.

He's enthusiastic but missing the fact that it is possible to make linux unmangeable without vendor tools...

 

For instance most serious sysads dont install from source because they want the tried tested and tracked RPM, even more so else they would all be using Gentoo.

 

He's right up to a point but suse is now drifting dangerously close to changing the config files out of all recognition and Mandrake is following suit.

 

That this will benefit anyone except the vendors is I believe not even debateable if instead of spending time and effort on YAST or mandrake wizards it was spent on vendor independent tools.