Ixthusdan Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 This is excellent. Finally, someone will market linux, someone who has an established name-brand identity. This will also work for Mandrake. Mandrake can ride the coat-tail of the Novell-Suse linux wave. Linux sales will increase for everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 But with RedHat pulling their desktop product off the market, what does that do to Mandrake? Isn't Mandrake based on RedHat? Banj(_)=='=~ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 But with RedHat pulling their desktop product offthe market, what does that do to Mandrake? Isn't Mandrake based on RedHat? Banj(_)=='=~ Started off that way, but it doesn't relly on RH at all anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 I think any distro "based on" another distro is only acknowledging where some of the ideas originated. I believe any "rpm" based distro is based on Red Hat, simply because they began that packaging method of delivering software. I see no relationship to Mandrake and Red Hat other than this. Red Hat clearly sees a better market in the enterprise, and they always focused on that. Mandrake has been a better "desk top" distro, but has only programmers and computer type folk working for them. They have no business managers or marketers. That is why they have a great product that no one can buy! With Novell -Suse marketing, Mandrake can become another choice in the soon to be marketing plan of business people at Novell-Suse. Mandrake would sell more with their own plan, but someone else's will also draw attention to all distros. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjo Posted November 5, 2003 Report Share Posted November 5, 2003 I feel better already. Mandrake rocks! Banjo (_)=='=~ :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jwb Posted November 6, 2003 Report Share Posted November 6, 2003 With Novell -Suse marketing, Mandrake can become another choice in the soon to be marketing plan of business people at Novell-Suse. Mandrake would sell more with their own plan, but someone else's will also draw attention to all distros. It has surprised me, after the RH announcement, how many people were posting to various boards bemoaning the fact that they couldn't get a "free" distro anymore and wondering where they could find a replacement. The name that came up almost every time was Debian. Mandrake could really take advantage of this situation. They have a very good, stable distro, with great update tools- far better than up2date IMO. And though I've heard criticism of Mandrake being a "toy" distro, I just can't see it. I've used Mandrake in a production environment for *everything* Internet related at my company, and it's been great. (Although some changes made in Postfix with 9.2 caused some headaches until we figured them out.) Of course, the very thing that lead to RH dropping the downloadable version may end up forcing Mandrake into the same decision for $$$ purposes. For my part- I'm going to start buying my versions, instead of using the download version. I believe in free software- but I need to support it to. I certainly WANT Mandrake to stay afloat and be able to offer the free version with support. I may as well support it, since it's not really a problem financially. Not only personally, but at my company as well. I urge all mandrake users to consider this if you have the means. And when you see people saying "What else besides RHL?", show them Mandrake! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 I agree that with RH the way they are going, Mandrake has a nice opportunity; especially when the RH CEO says that RHLinux is not ready for the home desktop. Granted, he didn't say RHLinux, he said linux, but I can only imagine he speaks for RH and none other. I mean, plenty of others are aimed at the home user, so he sure wasn't speaking for them, so I translate that to RHLinux is not for the home user. Now with Novel buying SuSE, things are changing there too; don't know how that will come out, but the sure thing is that Mandrake is still here, as it always was, with a strong commitment to the FLOSS community. SuSE, no one knows where they'll be going. Will they finally make YAST2 more limited? Will it soon not be allowed anymore to make copies for friends etc? As for financially supporting Mandrake, it is one way of many. I won't buy their packs since they hardly show up in the stores where I live, and when they do I have long installed the download edition (same if I would order and have it sent to me). But I am a clubmember, and I have spent more on Mandrake than I have on any other software company. If you can, spend money on Mandrake (clubmembership, pack, whatever). If you don't have the means, or are not satisfied yet there are other ways. Other ways to support: help people out IRL and on forums (here for instance). Pass discs around. Write bugreports, help with translations, write code, etcetc. Make a mandrake related website (hey, don't forget to link to mine). Guide people away from Windows and to Mandrake. (To those who don't want to recommend Mandrake, 1- why are you reading this here? 2- recommend some other respectable linux ;) ) Hmm, sorry to go o/t so much.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 Great, I'm sure they'll do to that what they did to Novell. Bugger it up nicely. Erm Lets be fair here. Novel didn't bugger up Novel, any more than WordPerfect or Corel screwed up WordPerfect ... or Lotus or .... Well whilst we are at it DR-DOS .. Netscape, BeOS ... hell I could fill a page with the casualty list. Now we are left with a decision, did ALL of these great companies just screw up in a big way or were they pushed?? Most of these have been superior products .. at least technically but somehow the marketing of MS has reduced them to has-been's or hangers on. Its very simple I think, MS has a black/white attitide. You are either for them or against them. Lets see who survived .... Dell (despite trying to support Linux they were forced to do a 180) , CISCO - Ohh such nice Windows based config tools .... Oracle .. who ported Oracle to windows and cripled their product in doing so... Before people start pointing out detail.... I don't think detail is important .. I think a senior board member of one of the above companies dropping his pants and bending over bill's desk is what is required (figuratively at least) ... in other words you agree to be a subservient business partner and accept the titbits bill throws from his ivory tower OR you go under! (Perhaps with a little help from MS) So what of Novel ..... Well, what did they do wrong, except not bend over the desk...????? They were always years ahead of MS in networking, even when 'networking' to MS meant NETBUI ... uggh ... NE2000 was a reference standard interface ... Pierre may have an insiders view but I doubt its any worse than any multinational. Is it good or bad ... remains to be seen but regarding RH and specifically the dependance of Mandrake.... Well their is historical dependence. Most of all the directory structure which is peculiar to redhat. Now RH had good reasons for doing this... basically at least they set a standard but it was equally balanced by negative aspects as well. Im not a Suse user but as I understand Suse follows the programmers default locations for config files and libraries etc.. This can be a bit messier in one way but at least it means the packages upgrade reliably. What this means is that if you take say WEBMIN (one of my favourite tools as everyone knows) you have to configure it specially as a REDHAT specific webmin so it knows where things are. This might not sound like a big deal at home or SOHO but it is in the enterprise. Why?? Well, lets say an app programmer makes a webmin front end to their program ... lets say its a server deamon with config files etc. Redhat (and hence mandrake) will put the config files where it thinks they should go, not where the programmer thought. If the programmer is very good this won't cause any problems but we all know Linux software takes quite a while to get out of Beta and reach a 1.0. (Think XCDROAST ??)) Meanwhile becuase the Linux (*nix) model is modular other programmers might use part or all of this other tool. However they are likely to respect the ioriginal programmers scheme and use the 'standard' install.... they are programmers .. lets face it they won't be doing a package install they will be installing from source and reading the source so they can integrate their bit into it. This wonderful thing is the blood of OpenSource. Its also the very life of linux. So unfortunately RH cleaning up the directories and config files and stuff just ends up by breaking something else further down the line.... back to the original programmer who decides to add a webmin module... WHO does he write it for... RedHat/Mandrake OR the rest of the nix community. Lets say he's programming on Solaris OR BSD or AIX or .... the chance is he'll write it generalist and it therefore comes down to someone else to make it work for RedHat. NOW THIS BIT IS CONJECTURE ON MY PART If you know anything about the hostility of RedHat vs KDE then you will no doubt have opinions as to why they hate each other so much... All sorts of reasons are bandied about BUT ... IMHO I think this is how it started, not disagreement of the Qt licensing or anything else BUT because KDE refused point blank to change KDE to suite RedHat..... the rest of the story ... well I figure the Qt bit etc. just grew out from there. END OF PINCH OF SALT "And though I've heard criticism of Mandrake being a "toy" distro, I just can't see it. I've used Mandrake in a production environment for *everything* Internet related at my company, and it's been great. (Although some changes made in Postfix with 9.2 caused some headaches until we figured them out.)" I wouldn't use the word TOY but I wouldn't consider Mandrake an Enterprise class distro. Its just far to quirky ... Also the amount of work trying to get it as an enterprise desktop is just too much since many of the crap tools are not deselectable at install you would have to hack the installer or install and then get rid of the extraneous stuff. Its not that you can't do it its just a pain in the butt doing it. This is fine for the home/SOHO market but not really Enterprise ready as a desktop. NEXT IBM buying out Novel.... It just isn't IBM.. Unlike MS IBM are a real technology company... they research and build there own stuff. When they do buy out a company it's usually to prevent them going under (like Lotus) ... The research coming out of IBM is world class technology research... NOONE can build processors as good as IBM ... or disks or about 1001 other things. IBM are innovators not (usually) emulators... Business-wise they can be a bit slow to respond but technology wise they are one of the best companies worldwide... IBM don't copy...people copy IBM... (This is just a fact... IBM have been the first in so many areas its incredible) Unfortunately for IBM any of its technicians would probably score well over 90% on the geek test!!! I say unfortunate because who in their right mind would put IBM hardware in their living room (except another geek) IBM Styling is an oxmoron revialing military intellegence. It seems summed up by...make it boxy, make it functional and make it grey. UGGGHHHHGGHHHH Now take Apple... who use the latest IBM processor, made and designed by IBM for apple... probably with an IBM disk inside and a whole load of IBM kit.... Steve Jobs has an easy job. He turns round to his designers and says ... Make it cool..make it beautiful and FOR HECKS SAKE make sure it looks nothing like an IBM. So, WHY would IBM buy Novel.....???? They aleady have linux (lets forget the ridiculous SCO CR%P) they have AIX... they have more geeks than you find at a star-treck convention... No.... The only reason IBM would buy Novel is if they do screw up real bad and need bailing out. WILL SUSE STILL BE FREE????? Well, why not.... OK i just said that IBM buying out Novel for linux is as likely as finding a snowman in hell but lets look at StarOffice.... IBM bought them out and it was still free.... Idiot companies like mine refused to use it because it was FREE... its obvious isn't it... if it doesn't cost money its CR%P So IBM (wishing to put a big dent in the office package market) made a free version and a non-free version. the differences are .... Well prety small and many relate to third party software etc. Also .. anyone who uses staroffice or open office knows its major failing.... YAWN However try using it on Solaris.... Its like a rocket.... its actually so fast its disturbing.... (honestly it opens so fast its an assault on the eyes... ) WHY.... Well IBM Java.... is made for Solaris. Java on linux is a bit of a mixed bag.... You end up with different java's accrding to the application... like Oracle wants the (can't remember blackbourne??) version and something else wants the IBM and .... Of course these are getitng much better as the technology matures...and lets gface it if MS hadn't deliberately muddied the market with its completely incompatible version we would probably have already seen it. But MS can just throw spanners in the works of IBM.... Its like throwing stones at an advancing tank. Ooops thats drifted off topic So IBM have found a solution.... A home user isn't going to find too many problems with OpenOffice .. certainly not enough to fork out $400 or whatever for MS office. If they really want they can fork out $99 for StarOffice and if you really want it to run well then clean up your java installs. BUT for the corporate market... StarOffice works fine... For a technical company who use different architectures etc. its heaven... No comparison at all with MS Office. DOH .. so MS office intergrates with your email... Yeah so long as its outlook.... etc etc. What technical company would use outlook andan exchange server???? (Answer one with no future) So I see a bright future for Suse under Novel.... But more importantly I see a bright future for LINUX with Suse under NOVEL. Will novel and IBM work together, I think so. Will it influence Suse... Yes i think so ... BUT I think Novel will keep a free version... ONE SIDENOTE.... I use Mitel SME server at home... This is a cutdown server/gateway based on a modified Redhat. Its basically designed as an appliance and was software called E-Smith which was bought out by MITEL. MITEL continued the Opensource Free version .... BUT I now have to change my server. I practically PUKED a month ago going to the MITEL SME site. 'Best viewed with Internet Explorer' WHAT ..... You use an opensource project... you buy it out and you provide lots of nice tools and stuff that can support a windows network AND then you have the cheek to put 'Best viewed....' This is a example of an opensource free product buyout gone badly wrong... If one day I got to the suse or Novel site and see 'Best ...' then that is IT. That really is the end of the line for me and SME.... and IF I ever see a MS IE advert on any Suse related site then I will NEVER use it again through choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 Gowator, two things to add/correct (unless I'm mistaken ;) ) 1) it was Sun who bought StarOffice and made it open source. 2) with Mandrake, you can surely install only what you need, just unselect all groups and go to individual package selection. There you can even copy your list to a floppy, so you can redo the same install, and if you forget to do that at that point, there is the option to do it at the end of the install (check my site for screenshots and pointers, on the install page I mention that). Something more, Sun is the enemy of MS, IBM much less so. I recently heard that IBM rewrites about 40 to 50% of the MSWindows code before using it. That's right, what they use internally on their machines is not regular MSWindows. Somehow this shows how little trust IBM have in MS, and on the other hand it shows how much IBM can get done from MS, windows is almost like open source to them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 The bottom line is that real marketers are needed to push linux to the desktop. Of course it is "ready". I remember looking at that funky windows 2.0 and thinking that it was a nice idea but looks really ugly. This notion that "xyz is or is not ready for the desktop" is a marketing fabrication from Redmond. Linux is ready. I just wish more marketers were envolved with the various distros. Marketing = money. Mandrake does not understand this! ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 Will success for SUSe damage other distros? Surely even if one distro does well on the desktop we can all still use another one - unless that distro uses it's monopoly to drive standards like RPMS that a lot of other distros don't use... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 Ix, completely agree. I like to turn it around, some users aren't ready for linux. But then, most aren't really ready for windows either, just look at all viruses etc.... phunni, I think more push for SuSE will be good for linux in general. More users (even just corporate) means more effort to have hardware work nicely with linux. Momentum is being gained! This is a good thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JaseP Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 As a SuSE user (8.2 Professional Edition), I'm just a little leary of this deal. While it will undoubtedly be good for Linux overall (IBM behind Novell, bankrolling the thing after all), I'm a bit anxious as to whether future desktop releases of SuSE will be avialable at retail. Retail is my prefered method of getting a distro. After release of the 2.6 kernel stable, I might migrate back to Mandrake, if it looks like Mandrake will take up SuSE's slack in terms of retail distribution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 I think ibm is always looking for action that is wide open. The retail desktop is a wide open market. That'a why windex is so fabulously wealthy because they have successfully created a monopoly there, skirting the law. In fact, only someone like ibm can accomplish this task. ibm is business. They wish they had created what windex did. So they are looking for a way to take a piece of it. Linux is the answer. I don't see anyone abandoning retail. I think we will begin to see current releases at retail! With the right publicity, people will learn linux, just like they have to learn every release of windex. None of it is easy, it's just that some of it is marketed!! B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted November 7, 2003 Report Share Posted November 7, 2003 (edited) Of course this is good for Linux; this brings more substantial investments (money, but also other less tangible resources) to Linux and giving it more credibility. Novell now has a whoop-ass combination of technologies that show all signs of being able to interact nicely with each other. Plus they have more of an ethical reputation than M$, probably also better then IBM. The only real concern is the way they are going to make use of these technologies in their business strategy. Many large businesses looking to cut on IT costs, improving performance, etc. would benefit greatly from an integrated server/network/desktop provider; if they do it right they will respect the spirit of open source. This is also beneficial for them: despite what the monopolie$ might think, the result of a job/project should be to enable the client *not* to rely on them too much; that's basic project management knowledge. Clients won't feel ripped-off, do business with you again and recommend you to other people in the field. (I just went through such a project redesigning our current website, which was a very positive experience; we were lucky :) ) These concerns have been voiced here in a few posts quite clearly. I think it is our duty as Linux-abiding citizens to bring this to the attention of Novell (not only on this board, I mean *substantial* 'evidence'). Maybe they already know (from their employees/partners at SuSe, ...), maybe they do not. It makes sense for them, from a business perspective, to take account of these opinions under their 'risks' tab. Only thing I'm worried about is that IBM will buy them: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33867.html, but if it sees money can be made using OSS the right way, Linux will still gain a boost from that. just my 2 cents Darkelve Edited November 7, 2003 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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