dexter11 Posted April 24, 2006 Report Share Posted April 24, 2006 Well you're not the first ones who tell me that you like stable over new. Other guys tried to explain me that I don't need really the new KDE etc. Well guys I'm glad that you're happy and everything works as you wish BUT I don't want to be explained that I don't need something. If I try it and it's not working then it's my problem. Linux is about the freedom of choice and Mandriva currently limits my freedom of choice. So give me. Not from 3rd party fan repos which in some case are more bleeding edge than cooker, or ones that maybe don't even follow Mandriva packaging rules thoroughly (btw the best repo IMO is SOS). No. Make it official. Many successful distros that are stable do not have the latest kde or gnome in them. And many successful distros that are stable have the latest kde or gnome in them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 24, 2006 Report Share Posted April 24, 2006 Linux is about the freedom of choice and Mandriva currently limits my freedom of choice. If you want to get technical, every distro limits choice to some extent - by only having certain packages, or only supporting certain versions. Mandriva isn't special in any way - if you want a more bleeding edge distro, then find one. Mandriva can't be everything to everyone all at the same time - it just doesn't work that way. Mandriva only has so much man power, and so much money, and so they need to focus on creating a stable, usable product that satisfies the largest majority of users. The largest majority of users does not need the latest and greatest, they don't want bleeding edge, they want something that just works. These people are the ones Mandriva is targetting. Whether or not they hit their aim I don't know! You may want official bleeding-edge but you aren't necessarily going to get it because, believe it or not, you're part of a small percentage of Mandriva users. Most users who want bleeding edge have found a different distribution, preferrably one with a rolling release cycle instead of the point release cycle that Mandriva uses. IMHO, it's impossible to be truly "bleeding edge" while using a point release cycle, that's just one of the downfalls of that choice. If you want something else, use a different distribution, after all, you said it yourself: Linux is about the freedom of choice So choose something that better fits your needs ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted April 24, 2006 Report Share Posted April 24, 2006 :lol: I think you misunderstand. I am running kde via mde. But I am not chastising Mandriva because I have to go to mde. I really don't! It was working before. Afrosheen, before his involvement with pclinuxos, was the best kde repo producer ever. I miss his stuff alot. But, that's life. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 You won´t get more freedom then with mandriva :) It´s one of the distro´s with the most availlable software package. More then 10000 available programs. There are nbot many other distro´s that can match that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexter11 Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 If you want something else, use a different distribution, after all, you said it yourself:Linux is about the freedom of choice So choose something that better fits your needs ;) I'm already on PCLinuxOS for a while now. And yes it has a rolling release cycle. The largest majority of users does not need the latest and greatest How do you know they are the majority? And if they are how do you know they remain the majority? How major they are? Mandriva only has so much man power, and so much money, and so they need to focus on creating a stable, usable product that satisfies the largest majority of users. Strange to hear that because Mandriva is Mandrake + Conectiva. So they have a doubled engeneering team now and they will make half of the releases they used to. Still 2006 has the two worst ever application which no sane developer would have put in a stable product. If you want to get technical, every distro limits choice to some extent - by only having certain packages, or only supporting certain versions. The less the distro limits your choices the better it will be. How does Fedora + RedHat limits these choices? If you want something fresh then you can use the latest Fedora. If you want a more stable one you can use RedHat. The same with Novell\SUSE. As arctic stated somewhere in these forums there are two kinds of users those who like the greatest and latest and those who like stability over new functions. If you want to make a succesful distro you have to satisfy both kind of users IMO. And Mandriva wants to be succesful hopefully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 The largest majority of users does not need the latest and greatest How do you know they are the majority? And if they are how do you know they remain the majority? How major they are? Because almost noone *needs* the latest - indeed really only developers *need* it. Many choose to use the latest but that is choice... they don't need it. If we allow strongly like in need then their are a few things like IM clients and P2P SW that *need* late versions because of the protocols on a network. however in this few people really *need* MSN they just don't want to change ... however this is a differnece in mandriva and say Debian where backports are made available to a stable release. Mandriva only has so much man power, and so much money, and so they need to focus on creating a stable, usable product that satisfies the largest majority of users. Strange to hear that because Mandriva is Mandrake + Conectiva. So they have a doubled engeneering team now and they will make half of the releases they used to. Still 2006 has the two worst ever application which no sane developer would have put in a stable product. Kanotix has one main developer ... they still manage to be up to date because they keep compatible with Debian. Mandrake chose a fork and has to do it themselves. If you want to get technical, every distro limits choice to some extent - by only having certain packages, or only supporting certain versions. The less the distro limits your choices the better it will be. How does Fedora + RedHat limits these choices? If you want something fresh then you can use the latest Fedora. If you want a more stable one you can use RedHat. The same with Novell\SUSE. As arctic stated somewhere in these forums there are two kinds of users those who like the greatest and latest and those who like stability over new functions. If you want to make a succesful distro you have to satisfy both kind of users IMO. And Mandriva wants to be succesful hopefully. Mandriva has long tried to do both and I don't think it can. It has lost most of its developers and it in a mess it created for itself. What Mandrake has never quite accepted is the different users ... They have concentrated on making half working config tools for noobies while putting in unstable packages to satisfy the second half... this is because they can't decide what or who they are. On one hand you have the club revenue and on the other box-sets. They have tried milking the cow from 2 points at once and can't realise they are getting a bucket of hot yellow liquid from one of the places! They have no game plan and seem to run from one extreme to the other and as they add more unstable stuff they realise they loose noobies and switch then add bleeding edge packages into the core and break it... Their developers proably spend more time switching between the two than anything productive. More developers just means more directions at the same time? What they constantly hit is the bleeding edge users leave for somethng less restrictive and will continue to do so .. very few of the experienced here use Mandriva daily... For years the upgrade function in install merely wrecked the system ...and hence it became a reinstall from scratch distro .. the wizards were not extensively tested and when they failed they left users in a mess... and the kicker.... instead of fixing them they merely switch to a different method or package and start again ... Mandrake needs to accept it can't with its resources keep both types of user happy. They need focus and get a stable distro OR a leading edge distro and they have not had either since 7.x ... They also need to stabilise... if you look at debian they have a stable almost unused version outside of servers but they have hundreds of thousands of developers and many unofficial ones. With the exception of PLF they have no external packagers while Debian has hundreds of thousands who package and submit and the core team backport these to stable and other distro's from Mephis through knoppix and kanotix use. Redhat doesn't aim to make money off FC ... Suse concentrates on a corporate market but Madriva just can't decide. It offers a corporate set of distro's and a personal set and a live Cd and tries to make money off the club and .... Redhat relinquished control over FC and left it to opensource devels but mandrake will not do this its still trying to milk the cow anywhere it can.... hence it needs to either relinquish control and income from the club and leave it open or stop wasting dev time on corporate products ... whatever it needs to define itself and the phrase "leading edge noobie distro" is an oxymoron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 Packages submitted by external packagers end up in contrib. Or if external packagers choose so they can start their own repo like MDE or mcnl did. There are more pacakges available for Mandriva then for almost any other distro. I agree with you that Mandriva doesn´t know how to make money. However that is not a bad thing. Most businesses only rip you off an i prefer a componay that doesn´t have a clue how to make money from me. As long as they make enough to survive I don´t care. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 I'm already on PCLinuxOS for a while now. And yes it has a rolling release cycle. Not quite. 0.94 which is expected that summer will finally switch to the current glibc and gcc versions, and will have to be installed from scratch. Maybe it will try to keep rolling AFTER that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 Packages submitted by external packagers end up in contrib. Or if external packagers choose so they can start their own repo like MDE or mcnl did. There are more pacakges available for Mandriva then for almost any other distro. Yes but it doesn't seem to work in the same way? back on the silly example of the KDE start star they seem to be forcing packagers to adopt a non-standard ? I'm not really sure how/why this doesn't work the same way but I guess it is a lot to do wirth mandriva trying to control the development through the club. I regularly eMail deb packagers and get a response 100% of the time. This week it was wacom driver packers and last week it was Christian Marillat of "all hings DVD related" amd they reply... every suggestion I have made in kanotix has been answered by kano.. they haven't all been acted upon but he has at least acknowledged them. 100% of the Emails I sent mandriva in the past have not been acknowledged or have just illicted a standard "you need to join the club" response. So lets say I am writing a package called drakEasyUrpmi and Mandriva package it wrong and as the developer I write to them and tell them and they say "screw you you freeloading idiot we will use your package however we see fit and will not fix it in our distro unless you pay us money. We will continue to screw up your program you have developed and don't care if you get 500 emails a day because unless you join the club you don't exist. and even though you have actually packaged the program for us we will not even look at it unless you join the club because you are just a freeloader!!! OK that's a bit OTT but this is how I would feel if for instance mandriva used my packages as they did with shorewall and screwed them up and REFUSED to use the fixes made by shorewall. Sure they have that right under the GPL ... but they were more concerned trying to put shorewall out of business than trying to provide a decent package for their users. And in the end who are the freeloaders? Mandriva seem to have one definition of those using dload editions of Mandriva and another for themselves! But I think the overall problem is simply that Mandriva have problems letting go of things.. They don't want the developers outside the club ... which kinda amounts to charging people to do development and testing and then give away this to everyone after a short delay... surely anyone can see the fundamental flaw here? Its the same with this site its only given semi-support to use the logo etc. or PLF... and the lack of any mention of easyurmpi etc. Its all done in such as way as to say "well do it if you like but don't expect our support" If you compare it to FC this is the big difference. I agree with you that Mandriva doesn´t know how to make money. However that is not a bad thing. Most businesses only rip you off an i prefer a company that doesn´t have a clue how to make money from me. As long as they make enough to survive I don´t care. Hmm the problem is RH for instance got rid of the profit side of FC .. because its probably trivial and not worth the effort and by letting go they get far more community support... They benefit by adding the FC stuff into RH and the developers and packagers feel happy to be part of a community. However the club is a fee-paying club. That is a big negative for developing community. I feel fundamentally opposed to paying even 1c to be a developer or tester. The money aspect dirties the whole community aspect for me. but hey this is what gave us PClinuxOS is it not? Mandrake lost a volunteer contributer and gained a rival distro... I guess im not the first to join the club and give up on it . When I was a Mandriva user I used to buy the powerpacks ... I was not a freeloader but Mandriva managed to make me feel like one. but again the problem seeems to be mandriva has 2 hands and is juggling 5 balls and it can't stop juggling ... it has to realise that someone else outside their direct control can hold some of the balls. It takes a very rare developer to put up with this in the long term and mandriva seem unable to handover parts of the process to unpaid volunteers yet Gentoo, Debian and FC all survive on this ... If they could open the club for free and have people with no money contributing by developing they might build a community but they need to let go of the reigns. I simply don't beleive they can expect to charge people for the privilidge. People will only contribute long term because of altuistic reasons if they are made part of a community and to an extent do thier own thing... In the end their are thousands of linux projects contributing source but I find far more are willing to package for Debian than Mandriva .. Suse is somewhat seperate because they have a different model. People package for suse because it is controlled and at least develops in a linear fashion not the backwards forwards of mandriva. Mandriva just seems lost in the middle like watching a inproficient surfer unable to get out past the breakers. I have to say it doggedly tries to get out and gets knocked back to the beach and gets up again but it seems constantly being buffeted back and forth... From a corporate aspect this is worrying hence the dominance of RH and Suse and from the individuals POV it misses the community... RH is free of bugs in FC... since this is not officially RH... so it doesn't reflect on them... Same wirth suse community but mandriva keeps control and cops it for the errors and I think the corporate world is probably right that the corproate products are as patchy ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexter11 Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 (edited) I'm already on PCLinuxOS for a while now. And yes it has a rolling release cycle. Not quite. 0.94 which is expected that summer will finally switch to the current glibc and gcc versions, and will have to be installed from scratch. Maybe it will try to keep rolling AFTER that. Oh yes it has. Don't tell me I'm using it. Yes at 0.94 it will be recommended to do a clean install but it already has a rolling release cycle and it will have after that. Gowator there is free Mandriva club membership. It's called Alumni level. Of course almost noone knows about it but that's the usual Mandriva way isn't it. Edited April 25, 2006 by dexter11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted April 25, 2006 Report Share Posted April 25, 2006 ere is free Mandriva club membership. It's called Alumni level. Of course almost noone knows about it but that's the usual Mandriva way isn't it. LOL absolutely, its like most of the best parts of mandriva like urpmi... ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted April 26, 2006 Report Share Posted April 26, 2006 As fas as I know the only viable businnesmodel for a Linux distro is to sell ´services´ to businesses ie. making sure the software you sold your customer does what it is suppose to be doing. Mandriva is trying to do the same for home users, selling a club membership to people who want there software to do what was promised in the shiny brochures. However this is a stupid idea. Mandriva for the desktop is competing with free support from the internet, mailinglists, forums etcetc. The only way they can compete is by making their support more accisible and better. To do that they need resources far larger then they have and the costs would be more then what they earn from the memberships. Mandriva should just copy the businessmodels of RH and Suse, selling services to companies (French companies like to business with other French companies so they have a big market right there) and give out free versions of their desktop software. Mandriva is good at making simple to use configuration tools (yes I know, you disagree :) ). They should use that knowledge to distinguish themselves from their competitors. I´ve no doubt Mandriva sometimes does things with programs that their developers don´t like but I can´t see that as a problem. This is the way opensource works and the best piece of software survives. Mandriva is not perfect but compared to other distro´s it looks pretty good. If they get their business act together, keep on making the best distro and don´t piss off their users they have a bright future.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted April 26, 2006 Report Share Posted April 26, 2006 As fas as I know the only viable businnesmodel for a Linux distro is to sell ´services´ to businesses ie. making sure the software you sold your customer does what it is suppose to be doing. Yes I agree, Its not the only working model but .. I think the club/subscription model is doomed to failure. Linus actually said this along time ago.... Mandriva is trying to do the same for home users, selling a club membership to people who want there software to do what was promised in the shiny brochures. However this is a stupid idea. Mandriva for the desktop is competing with free support from the internet, mailinglists, forums etcetc. The only way they can compete is by making their support more accisible and better. To do that they need resources far larger then they have and the costs would be more then what they earn from the memberships. Again agreed probably even stronger than you say. Fundamentally home users who download are unlikely to want to pay a subscription. You have freeloaders who just want everything free regardless, You have people quite happy to pay for a box set and try linux out but these then get disenchanted with the pay-subscription club. You have those who want to contribute .... Even if its 1/3 each then the latter group will end up paying to support the other 2/3rds... Mandriva should just copy the businessmodels of RH and Suse, selling services to companies (French companies like to business with other French companies so they have a big market right there) and give out free versions of their desktop software. Mandriva is good at making simple to use configuration tools (yes I know, you disagree :) ). They should use that knowledge to distinguish themselves from their competitors. No I agree, I think that is a valid model. I think there are several valid models but Mandrake just can't decide on one. MBA wisdom (for what its worth) seperates companies into 2 distinct types... There is the BA/KLM model where they aim top provide quality and consistency and the EasyJet/RyanAir model where they compete on price ... (Im using airlines because they are at least international) Most companies can be divided into one of the two types and the reason (we are told) is very few companies sucessfully span both. The classic cases are often car companies such as why Honda rebrands Accura in the US and Toyota rebrands Lexus. This is because you can't have a budget luxury car and sell it. The whole idea of a luxury car is largely its image because that is why people will pay more. Software wise this means serious server products and a 'testing/bleeding edge' image are incompatible. Not every company has to make the most money possible, some companies are happier to have a nice working environment or stability. For instance many companies might prefer to deal in ethical products and others might be employee owned, both of which are perfectly valid. Many companies in the UK specialise in adressing small enterprise needs because they prefer working in a small company environment which they find more friendly and flexible. However what makes you more correct is the fact Mandriva sold out its right to do anything but make the most money. As a public company they have only one duty which is maximisig profits for the shareholders and this can probably be done best as you say by addressing French industry. I´ve no doubt Mandriva sometimes does things with programs that their developers don´t like but I can´t see that as a problem. This is the way opensource works and the best piece of software survives.It became a problem when devels started leaving. When you replace one devel you can bring them up to speed and the knowledge of the team is almost intact. when you loose many devels you loose the knowledge of all the undocumeted stuff. I very much doubt Mandriva started off fastidiously documenting everything, Devels retain knowledge of these events, past fixes etc. far more efficiently than a CVS system. They are also able to make connections machines cannot between one fix they did 10 yrs ago and a new probelm today in a different area. Having been a project manager in development I saw this all the time but the value is very hard to calculate until one programmer stands up at a meeting and says, hey I changed x,y,z a long time ago with a quick fix but I can see how that would affect this. Mandriva is not perfect but compared to other distro´s it looks pretty good. If they get their business act together, keep on making the best distro and don´t piss off their users they have a bright future.. Im not sure we are talking about the same thing here. (bear with me) I think Debian is a very good distro but it makes exactly zero$ per year. Mandriva is technically quite good but I don't see that as the problem. What I see as the problem is the lack of any defined business model in terms of a clear statement on their front page or product brochures. If Mandriva is going to do your suggestion, which I think is perfectly valid they need to advertise this as their "reason to exist" and set free the Club etc. If on the other hand they choose to be an end-user distro then this should be made clear, I think either can work as a business model but not both and that the people choosing the distro AND paying will do so based one one criteria or the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gannin Posted April 26, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 26, 2006 As fas as I know the only viable businnesmodel for a Linux distro is to sell ´services´ to businesses ie. making sure the software you sold your customer does what it is suppose to be doing. Mandriva is trying to do the same for home users, selling a club membership to people who want there software to do what was promised in the shiny brochures. I know there are some exceptions to this, but basically, the majority of Linux users are one of two types of people. Either they are tech people like us, where if they have a problem they either figure it out themselves, or ask about it on a message board, or find the answer on the Internet, or they're someone that knows a regular Linux user, and that regular Linux user convinced them to give Linux a try. In that case, if they have any questions, they'll just ask the person that convinced them to try Linux. Either way, offering paid support to home users for Linux is not really a viable solution. The only viable solution, as has already been mentioned, is to give paid support to businesses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted April 26, 2006 Report Share Posted April 26, 2006 I'm pretty sure mandriva provides paid support to Businesses. Also, the club membership gives you more than just support - you get new releases sooner, and based on your subscription level, you might also get a better version (i.e. PowerPack) as part of the subscription (instead of buying it seperately). There are lot of things that come with a Club Membership aside from just support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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