Open Suse, whither Mandriva?

[steppenwolf1984]

In my somewhat limited experience, Mandrake is one of the best distros Ive tried. I know that because its what I reinstall after trying the latest, greatest new thing and it turns out the latest greatest etc. aint all that. Mandrake has the speed, the compatibility (you wouldnt believe the non mdk , obscure rpms Ive installed ) a decent gui, and mandrake always sounded kinda cool. Then it became Mandriva. Sounds too close to drivel so I wont say it. Who thought that was the best we could come up with anyway? Does that mean we can use driva config tools now? To me, its always gonna be Mandrake.

 

 

With all these pros, its dissapointing to hear that mega corporate, professional enterprising SUSE will go open source, to the point of changing their name to opensuse. And comparing themselves with the fedora project....a lovely idea by the way but a dreadful distro.

 

Can someone convince the powers that be in France that all this club talk, this buy this buy that, subscribe, pay x dollars a year, hard sell is just depressing as hell? Its not like they dont offer significant freebies (theyre open source ain t they) but do they have to make it feel close to freeloading? Many of us live in what is known as the third world and there aint a linux retailer and mail order (email or otherwise) is a nightmare. Still waiting for those Ubuntu cds..... Credit card? Sure, dream on ....

 

So its a matter of approach, of not letting the JOIN THE CLUB telethon feel get worse than it already is. Take a hint from SUSE guys. They just shattered one of the biggest attitude problems people had with SUSE...too corporate, too pricy, somehow not open source enough....wheres Mandrake Core? Bring it on....

 

Maybe im just ranting (maybe?) but face it, half of linux is attitude...(like it or not) and I dont wanna just go all reactionary and become a Deb user. HELP!

 

There. I feel much better now.....thanks

 

[moved from Talk-Talk by spinynorman - is that wither or whither? :) ]

[Guest Adriano]

a) SuSE WAS open source software It's always been open source. Just because you don't like to pay for it doesn't mean it isn't.

 

B) as for the tools, I don't see them changing, but anything can happen. I can't begin to count everything that sounds weird if I take it from my language into English or viceversa, and it's a childish attitude to me anyway. The name is Mandriva, and it's there to stay. It's just a name, no more but definitely no less. If you choose a distro based on its name, I guess the problem is not in the distro itself.

 

c) The problems of the third world are not something mandriva can be blamed for. They have always and (as far as I can tell) will always provide a free downloadable version. You won't die if you don't enter the club. It's just a nice gesture towards Mandriva, if you can do it.

 

Again: you are completely mistaken in thinking "opensource == freebies". Since I'm studying to be a software engineer, and would very much like to both develop open source software and make a living out of it, your attitude does much more damage to me than Mandriva's or SuSE's.

 

Edited to avoid sounding so harsh...

Edited August 7, 2005 by Adriano

[arctic]

as an ex-suse user, i can tell you that suse had to go this way sooner or later. one thing that made me and others turn our back on suse was that you 1. had to buy the boxed set and would get the manuals again and again and again even if you have already three copies of them (oh.. an old administration book? burn baby, burn!) and 2. that were are no free downloads available even if they claimed they were 100% opensource and freely available. yes, you could do a ftp-download but that was a pain in the ass with dial-up and extremely expensive. (especially if your system collapsed). and another bad point with suse is/was that the whole development took place in some obscure laboratories and no one knew what direction suse would take until they released their new distro. this was not the best situation for users and developers. and i didn't even rant around about their strange system-layout and yast problems... :D

 

with the opensuse project, they will make things more transparent and this is a good thing. the community will be able to participate in the project more than they ever could in the past. and making it to something similar to fedora is not bad at all (even if this decision comes a bit late imho). after all, fedora was once an unstable and very problematic testbed for the rock-stable RHEL, but now it is (imho) a very stable distro that is much more than a simple testbed. it is mature and a partly independed distro, even if RHEL will always be based on fedora, just like mandriva-servers will be based on mandriva ce/oe.

 

i do not understand exactly why you say mandriva should drop the club-stuff. sure, it costs you money but after all, no one forces you to join the club and some people see a real benefit in joining the club. mandriva always made their distros available for download for free. and they have the cooker project where you can participate in the development of the distro to certain degrees. mandy has always been enough opensource imho. but after all, this is only my very peronal opinion.

[scarecrow]

I don't think the initial poster has properly understood what's going on here.

Take this as a random shot:

Can someone convince the powers that be in France that all this club talk, this buy this buy that, subscribe, pay x dollars a year, hard sell is just depressing as hell?

He is obviously living in a world where the software developers have better things to do than eating and making a few pennies for living. More than that, in this very world the software development might be made by miraculous robots, which don't even have the need of consuming any electrical power at all...

BTW I have been using Mandy for years and never entered the Club- that was a personal choice. It simply made things a bit more difficult at the start, when I had no real clue about the fundamentals of Linux, but the policy was so clear that I never felt being forced to buy from the company.

Edited August 7, 2005 by scarecrow

[fangbite]

Personally I think the club idea is brilliant. Free products can ony go so far with supporting the people who make it. As scarecrow said programmers need to eat, and that money comes from somewhere. With the club you have an option for someone who isn't exactly technical to be able to download a lot of software without hassle, drivers without a hassle (the thing which drove me away from mandrake really) and even get some support. However, there is still that free version which if you know what you're doing you can get everything for free. It's all a tradeoff. Do you pay money to make it easy to use or do you save money making it a little harder? Some people go one way, others another.

[steppenwolf1984]

Personally I think the club idea is brilliant.  Free products can ony go so far with supporting the people who make it.  As scarecrow said programmers need to eat, and that money comes from somewhere.  With the club you have an option for someone who isn't exactly technical to be able to download a lot of software without hassle, drivers without a hassle (the thing which drove me away from mandrake really) and even get some support.  However, there is still that free version which if you know what you're doing you can get everything for free.  It's all a tradeoff.  Do you pay money to make it easy to use or do you save money making it a little harder?  Some people go one way, others another.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Let me clarify...the club and what it does probably is brilliant. But when the level of advertising exceeds something like RH, my first distro, it grates. Linux users, often more than many others , know we all have to eat for a living. Part of unconventional choices (like going the Linux route) is expecting the rug pulled out from under you once in a while and learning self sufficiency and landing on your feet. For that reason, I purchase what I can get my hands on here linux wise, which isnt all that much. When DSL is a novelty where you live the download is the harder route. Given the amount of piracy though in much of this part of the world, I wouldnt expect a Linux Emporium on every corner....theyd be drummed out of business by bootlegs (if that is possible according to GPL)...it isnt that feasible. My "problem" with Mandrake is one of subtlely and since a press release or interview with one of the founders pointed out that they dont have the marketing touch that say - Suse - has ...i dont think Im far off the mark. If anyone , though could read what is self described as a rant and lump together that Im not crazy about the name, I demand freebees, I chose a distro by its name, etc, it sounds like that person has a bigger problem than I do and they just wait for someone to look at them wrong to set off a raging bile duct syndrome. Im using Mandy cause it is good, but everything can be improved. If I were looking for a freebee, I wouldnt be testing Open Office and Mozilla, and studying coding on my own. I have linux to thank for the doors it opens. Miss the point? Some people need to engage and understand what the issue is before passing their lofty and precious decrees, or they risk missing more than the point....like most of the other posters I agree, its choices, one way or the other. And its a main reason for going the Nix root in the first place (pun semi intended.) I'm glad I brought the subject up, so I have a chance at seeing the issue through other peoples eyes.

 

Bottom line? Programmers gotta eat. True, but they aint the only ones. We all do. Open sourcing your work is your choice. Try teaching for a living and getting paid less than a plumber. Teachers gotta eat, too or all the programmers wouldnt have the basic skills to read a man page or code in the first place. But do you see the editors, translators and graphic artists throwing a hissy fit when someone says a distro comes across as mercenary? Not often.

 

Getting into flame wars over emacs vs vi, kde vs gnome etc, redhat vs suse...usually means somebody's taking stuff way too personally. Something that no distro can fix....

 

Peace, for dem dat wannit.....

[steppenwolf1984]

btw, thanks for the take on Suse, Arctic, thats how I saw their open source methodology.....the new one is a welcome change.....

[Lowe]

I have no idea what you just said.

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/ is a great site. ;)

 

Oh and suse was worth the money, because it was and still is better than windows. Why don't you go bitch at microsoft for they're horrendously over priced software, just because linux is open source doesn't mean that everyone offers it for free. Quit your moaning.

[arctic]

to all members: please do not start a flame war. keep your tone nice and respectable, even if you do not agree with some things.

[Lowe]

If the person who posted this topic was "nice and respectable" we wouldn't have this problem.

[arctic]

If the person who posted this topic was "nice and respectable" we wouldn't have this problem.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

if one person jumps from a building, does it mean that you have to jump from a building, too? ;)

[arctic]

Let me clarify...the club and what it does probably is brilliant. But when the level of advertising exceeds something like RH, my first distro, it grates.

why? i do not really get the point... :unsure:

 

Bottom line? Programmers gotta eat. True, but they aint the only ones. We all do. Open sourcing your work is your choice.

yes, programer gotta earn for a living. but then we have to divide them. there are some programers who want/can do their work only for free (maybe because they only hack in their spare time or lack the qualifications for being 100% pro-programers) and some who do it because that is their job. while boths groups may end up submitting their stuff as open source, others won't for different reasons.

 

if mandriva wants to earn money, they are allowed to do so, just like suse or redhat or <enter any name>. nobody should think that you can expect a company that always claimed that it is commercial in nature to ship stuff for free. if they do so, they do it not because of "goodwill" but because there is a policy behind it. just as there is a policy behind it if a company keeps its stuff "secret".

 

the marketing thing you mentioned is one part of the deal (watch e.g. ubuntu, what they managed with an organized marketing campaign in a short time), but it is only one part. and if mandriva says that they lack marketing than they are absolutely right from a certain point of view. they lack marketing as much as redhat, suse or ubuntu, compared to apple or microsoft who are constantly seen in magazines, on tv or elsewhere.

[Ixthusdan]

Open standards is not about free lunches. With the generosity of the open source community and those who contribute to it, one may be led to believe that open source is about free lunches. But, it is infinitely more than that. Open source is about freedom.

 

There is nothing in open source that advocates developers should take vows of poverty and wear dirty robes. It does advocate that software is best developed in the community and that software is better as a result of a greater community. The business model featured by MS and many others, the one that advocates only publishers actually "own"' the software and that the software is "secret" is not the only business model that exists. Open source says that the software is "open" If you want to sell it, more power to you. Just keep the source open. If you want to get paid to work with the software, more power to you. Nothing in this model advocates everything is free. It simply advocates

'freedom". There is nothing wrong with SuSE or Mandriva or anybody else selling software.

 

Marketing requires capital. Capital is another word for money. Now, my complaint with Mandriva has always been their lack of planning in marketing. But I have never objected to their drive for capital, although I did poke fun at them when they were begging for money from their users. That was just not in good taste!

[linux_learner]

for the record, suse has always been open source. suse has not always been free download. but even then you could say its free. suse provided the live cd "suse eval", and the ftp installs. both of which are free. suse also made 9.1 pro freely available on its mirrors and 9.3 pro is on the mirrors now. YaST has gone open source (its like the mandrake control center). so other than flash and adobe, very little is closed source. most of the closed source are from demos. perhaps mainactor.

[tyme]

Ok, I've read all the posts in this thread, and I still don't understand:

 

What exactly is it that you're upset about steppenwolf? I'm not trying to be obtuse, I just can't figure out exactly what you're issue is, or rather the purpose of your post.

 

Are you complaining about Mandriva's advertising?