Word on the street is that Mandriva is looking for a buyer, due to cash flow problems. This isn’t the first time the company, formerly known as Mandrake, has faced tough times.
In more than 10 years, the company has never seemed on solid footing. While Mandriva has its adherents, the project has never caught on with the mainstream Linux users — much less taken Linux to new users en masse. So here’s a crazy idea: maybe it’s better if the company doesn’t find a buyer.
That doesn’t mean that Mandriva or its community need to cease to exist entirely, but maybe it’s best if the company finally folds.
Instead, what if one of these things happened?
- Community owned: The company folds, and the trademarks and so on are transitioned to the community. The community could join an umbrella organization like the Software Freedom Conservancy or SPI, and work more like Debian or PostgreSQL.
- Return to its Roots: Mandrake was originally a fork of Red Hat with KDE. It’s diverged enormously since then, but what if the Mandriva community joined forces with Fedora as a SIG to work on Fedora KDE and produced a Mandriva spin based on Fedora, but with a bit more polish? It’d be a novel and wonderful thing to have a couple of distros merging rather than this constant diverging.
- Join openSUSE: Another option would be basing Mandriva on openSUSE and using the openSUSE Build Service to create an openSUSE derivative with Mandriva’s bits. openSUSE already has a strong KDE community, and it might be that the two communities could work together in the interest of having a stronger KDE distro. (Not suggesting that either openSUSE or Mandriva are weak on this — just saying that it’d be better to focus on one distro than two with the available bodies…)
This isn’t a topic I’ve given a great deal of thought to lately, but it seems Mandriva (and Mandrake before it) have struggled almost the entire history of the company. Linux distributions are a dime a dozen, and it’s well past time there was more consolidation on the commercial front. The uncertainty of the company can’t be good for the overall Mandriva user base. As a commercial, profit-driven venture, I think it’s time to throw in the towel. I don’t necessarily expect Mandriva’s management to agree, but…
It seems to me that it would be better for the company to be community owned or for the Mandriva community to work with another larger and healthier community than to keep struggling. It might involve some compromises but it would ultimately be better (IMHO) for both communities than to keep struggling and wondering when the lights are going to go out.
As a non-Mandriva user, I don’t really have a stake in whether the company succeeds or fails or whether something called Mandriva continues to exist in any form. As a Linux user, I love the variety that exists and having many choices of Linux distros — but I also see enormous wasted effort. Too much work, too few hands. And, especially and unfortunately, too many folks unwilling to compromise on any features or technical decisions when they can just fork or have their own playground — which ultimately results in tons of duplicate work and a fragmented environment.
Interesting perspective, Joe — especially rolling Mandriva into Fedora or OpenSUSE (he says, while putting on flameproof clothing for those responding from Mandriva
) Also, if I had a few million lying around, I’d be tempted . . .
.-= Larry Cafiero´s last blog ..Adieu, Mandriva? =-.
My best guess is that Linagora absorbs the server business and hand the desktop version over to the community. With some core developers working fulltime on the desktop version. Pretty similar to Novell/OpenSUSE and Red Hat/Fedora setups.
Mandriva’s problem is management and their (lack of a proper) businessmodel – the rest is fairly sound. Linagora would indeed be capable of getting the train back on the track should Linagora be part of the solution.
Mandriva is an important alternative to Opensuse and would clash with the cutting edge philosophy of Fedora Project which recently made some pretty clarifying statements wrt target audience.
If Mandriva sinks (I think not), I suspect that devs/community moves to Debian rather than OpenSUSE/Fedora. Would be good for Debian.
Mandriva excels in translations, KDE implementation (i.e Nepomuk) and is superb for troublesome hardware and laptops. If a installation fails using OpenSUSE, Ubuntu ++, Mandriva tend to be the solution.
I have a better idea: What if the community simply merged with PCLinuxOS and/or the Unity Linux project? PCLinuxOS was a Mandriva spinoff, and Unity Linux is as well. What if they all joined forces and created an RPM based Debian alternative? Then, as the Unity Linux project has it, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS would be more “branches” from the main Unity Linux trunk? All their work could be combined toward one goal and reduce redundancy.
As a non-Mandriva user, let me guess…you’re an Ubuntu user? People that haven’t used Mandriva simply don’t understand what is so special about it. It’s pure simplicity. Suse was once on the same path, but now has complicated themselves too much with their community release. Fedora is simply a bunch of hard-headed geeks that have no apparent idea of how to make Linux easy for the masses. I don’t think Mandriva is a fit for either project. Besides, Suse has YaST, which is a rough equivalent of Mandriva’s control center.
Honestly, I’d like to see someone with direction and capital take it where it needs to be: The most widely used Linux distro there is.
@LinuxLover “As a non-Mandriva user, let me guess…you’re an Ubuntu user?” I use Ubuntu, but not exclusively. I also use Fedora and openSUSE, and others, occasionally. I write about Linux full-time these days. I have quite a few test systems that I run different distros on.
“People that haven’t used Mandriva simply don’t understand what is so special about it. It’s pure simplicity.” Yeah… used it. Been there, done that, had the t-shirt. Unless it’s improved greatly in the past few years, Mandriva didn’t impress me as being any more special than other distros.
“Fedora is simply a bunch of hard-headed geeks that have no apparent idea of how to make Linux easy for the masses.” That’s a bit inaccurate. And, at any rate, there’s no reason a Mandriva SIG within Fedora couldn’t polish things and use Fedora as a base instead of trying to do two separate distros.
If the control center is the “rough equivalent” of YaST then there’s no need for both to exist. Since YaST isn’t going away anytime soon, maybe it would make more sense for them to work with a larger community and stop duplicating effort.
“Unless it’s improved greatly in the past few years, Mandriva didn’t impress me as being any more special than other distros.”
Oh common, you haven’t tried it for _years_ but you do want to make a statement about the current state?
Mandriva gets you of the best out-of-the-box KDE experiences of all the distros and it will be a shame to lose this.
@Nik the last time I used Mandriva it was in decline. Given the ever-decreasing community + resources, I’m not optimistic that it has improved. But you know what? I’ll download the most recent release and give it a shot.
You gotta be kidding me. It would be a major loss if Mandriva disappears, they have a proud history of being the distrowatch.com #1 until they started competing with a certain distro not operating on level market terms cuz of someone’s personal money tank. They innovate and contribute upstream – even more so than a certain much more popular distro.
And they’re the only distro out there besides Ubuntu that gives a crap about the home user market. You of all people should know all too well that Novell and RH are neglecting this market segment completely.
@cb400f “a proud history of being the distrowatch.com #1″ – what, five years ago? Mandriva hasn’t been #1 in ages.
“until they started competing with a certain distro not operating on level market terms cuz of someone’s personal money tank.”
So? Company A has more money / better funding than Company B. And? They’re underfunded and have never been able to break a profit. If “someone” can keep the lights on and pay people to produce a distro, great. Mandriva has failed at this. They had years of runway before “someone” showed up. They failed.
I’ve nothing against Mandriva, but I don’t see it being “a major loss” if Mandriva disappears as a company. If you’ve read the article, you see I propose ways that the distro or what makes the distro unique and suitable for the company could survive.
First off, let me state that opinions are like…well you know. I don’t share yours. So what if at distro isn’t #1? Should it just give up? With that thought, should we just all get on the Ubuntu bandwagon? To be honest with you, I’d rather go buy a Macintosh than to ever do that. Mandriva could easily make the run back to the top where it once was.
Adam Williamson made some interesting points on the Mandriva forum in a thread about this subject. Mandriva, the company, isn’t necessarily tied to Mandriva, the distro. If the company should fold, there could be some arrangement to give the rights over to the community under a foundation to carry it on.
Also, I said YaST is a rough equivelent. It’s not quite as nice, though. And, BTW… I’ve used Ubuntu quite extensively, and I’m not impressed with it at all. I’m not trying to sling mud, but you come across as someone hell bent on Ubuntu that doesn’t care about anything else. So what if you’ve used it? Doesn’t mean you’re not very biased.
If Mandriva would disappear, it would be a major loss. Fedora and Suse are experiments for their commercial offering. Mandriva is quite different. Mandriva is also offered complete with legal codecs and all, for a fee. Not everyone wants to drink Mark Shuttleworth’s Kool-Aid…
@LinuxLover did you actually *read* the post, or just comment on the headline? Your second graf was my first point. Thanks.
Yes. My first response was aimed at it. That response was aimed at your responses on here.
Interesting you didn’t address cb400f’s Novell-RH point
If I’m not mistaken, you work for Novell?
At any rate maybe you’re a bit biased, or I’m reading too much into it
because I can’t see on what grounds Mandriva should joint OpenSuse of all? Why not join Ubuntu? I hope you see my point.
But overall I agree that it may be good for the company to die. It seems to be suffering needlessly for a long time. Best thing, a strong community taking over Madriva. But who knows.
@Illmannered you should do your homework before commenting. The verb is past tense – I *worked* for Novell, left in January. Why not Ubuntu? b/c Mandriva is RPM-based and already being supported in the openSUSE build service, and hails from Red Hat. It’s not about bias, it’s about the engineering. So, no… don’t really see your point.
Joe,
Great article. Also, your comments enhance the article too.
I really like your idea of mentioning that the devs can “join other projects”. I know there is a large KDE-shaped-hole in the Fedora offering. Perhaps their skills can be well placed and rewarded if they just found a different project. I know Red-Hat can “keep the lights on” as you mentioned.
To all the people who mention “ease-of-use”, no distribution is flawless. I believe the addage “Problem -> Google -> Solve” works for any problems on any distro. To me, ease-of-use means one less google search.
Also, I agree with you when you mentioned that Mandriva isn’t “any more special than other distros”. From my POV:
- Red Hat offers “enterpise software”
- Ubuntu offers “advertising”
- Suse offers “patent-protection”
- Debian offers “democracy”
But I don’t know what Mandriva offers that is so special.
Now, what would be interesting would be if we could roll all the above features into one distro: enterprise-ready, advertising, patent-freedom, and democracy.
I’m a firm beleiver that “finished-product” comes first, then “forking” comes later. An analogy I use is: “As a teacher, would you prefer a classroom comprised of a few ‘A+’ students, or a classroom full of ‘F’ students.
I just started using Mandriva a few weeks ago. I found it had a very stylish desktop, a thoughtful and considerate forum with no anti-newbie attitude, and a definite user-friendly documenttion wiki (I even did some translating for it). I had already decided that I would probably move on, however, because it was uncommonly and unaccountably slow on the internet, whether with the pre-loaded Firefox or the newest version of Opera. Downloads from the repos were fast, but websites took forever to load – not a plus for users.
So what does Mandriva do that’s better than Debian/Ubuntu, RedHat/Fedora or Suse/OpenSuse ?
Obviously they use RPMs but what do they actually do better ?
Better control panels ?
Easier to use (specifically what) ?
Could the tools they have written not be re-written for the other distro’s (if they are so much better) ?
mandriva’s control panel is it’s crowning achievment as well as it’s ability to get complex applications working properly for the average or new user without much more than a few mouse clicks and a great, helpful wizard.
things like SMB,NFS Webdav shares, managing system services with the click of a mouse, same with their personal firewall and hardware configuration. rarely do you have to ever go into the console to modify anything if you don’t want to. I have never used another Distro besides PCLinuxOS (uses most of mandriva’s tools was a derivative of mandriva) That makes it so easy to administer for the average user that just wants to get thing done.
What Mandriva does better than anybody, IMHO, is combine a modern type desktop and ease of use with support for old, quirky, or non-mainstream hardware. It’s the only distro that runs with no significant hassles on every computer I have. Everybody’s mileage may differ and probably does, but to me that’s what makes it not just another distro.
bravo, I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Definitely. I built a new rig, complete with a, then, state of the art X58 chipset motherboard and Core i7 920 processor. I had some troubles at that time getting quite a few distros to run happily on it. Not so with Mandriva. Mandriva 2009 Spring installed without a hitch and everything worked. I’ve never thrown a hardware configuration at Mandriva that didn’t work. I’ve been an on and off user of the distro since Mandrake 7 in 2000.
Interesting article. I don’t like the thought, but …
As Joe points out, Mandriva (Mandrake) hasn’t succeeded as a profit-making venture. It is possible it still could but a rationalization of commercial Linux distributions shouldn’t be surprising. It’s hard to see the desktop Linux market being profitable in the near future (Ubuntu One and Ubuntu Music Store notwithstanding) so a business model for a profitable enterprise is going to need some success in the server market, which itself is highly competitive, with, for example, MS, RHEL, Novell, Canonical and some really competitive free non-profit alternatives such as Debian and Centos, or in some other way such as embedded devices.
As to whether the long-term benefits would outweigh the loss-people more knowledgeable or wiser than I may be able to judge whether the loss of Mandriva would be beneficial in the long run. The immediate loss of payments to developers must be offset against the possibility of other companies spending more as they pick up business which formerly went to Mandriva, and whether development and management as a community distro would be an improvement or not, whether there are opportunities in combining distros with different goals as well as … too many things for my tired old brain to try to figure out. My gut reaction is that for Linux users a failure of Mandriva to survive would be a loss.
I would rather have Mandriva become a completely community driven distro rather than be diluted and intergrated into the OpenSUSE or Fedora communities. I personally like URPMI and mandriva’s control center, I found Yast to be quite annoying. as for Fedora, there is something about it that rubs me the wrong way, it never installs properly on most systems that I have tried it on and when it actually does install It feels unfinished and before you know it another version of Fedora is out. I would say Let Texstar become the community head of all the good stuff that is left of Mandriva and intergrate it into PCLinuxOS. Texstar and his team took an already polished well integrated Distro and super-polished it. If mandriva dies, at least PCLinuxOS is still ther to cary on it’s legacy and dedication to the desktop.
“I personally like URPMI and mandriva’s control center, I found Yast to be quite annoying.”
And this is one of the problems Linux has as a whole. Instead of working to improve a single implementation, everybody goes off and does something new – so we have a ridiculous number of package managers, control centers, etc. and are simply too fragmented to succeed on a wide scale. A simple question like “How do I install software?” or “how can I add users?” can’t *be* answered across the board right now, and it’s ridiculous.
With that mentality, everyone would be using Slackware right now. The fact is that someone comes along and does something new…something better. Or, they just take an idea and move it in a new direction. This is called innovation. It’s perfectly fine for their to be two competing sets of control panel application tools.
Sorry, but “Linux” is now “Ubuntu”. I know a lot of geeks will hate me now. But the New York Times and German Spiegel had big articles about the new Ubuntu release. No other distro has ever had that kind of free marketing.
So the question “How things are done in Linux” isn’t valid anymore for people who have no clue. They should be running Ubuntu and hence the answer is easy.
I’m a Debian user so I have no personal stake in Mandriva’s success or failure, but I don’t see where you’re coming from, especially in your responses to some of the comments. You know what makes Mandriva better than Ubuntu? It’s about 10,000 times more stable. I don’t see how anybody can look at the size of the Ubuntu buglist and still defend Ubuntu. Fixed release cycles are stupid… they guarantee you’ll release with too many bugs. Putting beta versions of software in the repos is stupid… it’s a recipe for disaster. Truth is, the only noob-friendly distro that I really like is SimplyMepis, but Mandriva was a close second. If I can crash an OS it’s garbage.
I think there is a problem, common to all the presented solutions, related to “handling” the desktop distro to the community.
For a long time, Mandriva Linux has been running under company umbrellas. I guess that today, most of their developers are part of the company payroll.
I’m sure that there are developers too, among the community, that are not part of the Mandriva company. Anyway, does the quantity of these developers would assure that a community project would gain traction?
Maybe, it would be more viable a fusion of a Mandriva community driven distro, with other distros that are today, more or less, based on it.
I’m an ex-Mandriva user (and an ex-India community rep for MDV), having gone over to openSUSE recently. The distro by itself is very good, infact very very good. However, there seems to be a very large gulf between the community (which is small, strong and very friendly), the developers (some of whom are really good and helpful, rest are condescending to say the least) and finally the company which doesn’t care 2 hoots about its users. Its surprising that in spite of so many negatives going against MDV, it churns out a quality product. The top 3 good points about Mandriva are:-
1. The Mandriva Control Center (MCC), a lot easier than YaST. YaST can be intimidating.
2. URPMI, faster than Zypper or Yum.
3. PLF, the “Packman” of Mandriva.
Top 3 points bad about Mandriva:-
1. Mandriva SA which let go of Gael Duval and finally Adam Williamson (to RH)
2. Mandriva devs (not all)- with their “Cooker fixation” and less of a focus towards the released versions
3. Bad product marketing (comes back to #1) above.
I was a big time booster of Mandriva, but have soured on their decisions and decided to migrate all of my corporate systems to openSUSE which (surprisingly) has a pretty open, some good and helpful devs and the openSUSE Build Service.
Anshul
You may have a point that it would be better when the company would disappear out of a user or community perspective, but what I’m missing in your post is, that all the people working for Mandriva will loose their jobs…
So, if I would work for Mandriva it wouldn’t be fun to read your post.
It isn’t assumed that the people would lose their jobs if it went community owned – they’d simply have to find the funds from donations, etc., to keep the jobs.
If Mandriva sells, there’s no guarantee that people would keep their jobs either. Mandriva continuing to exist didn’t guarantee Gael Duval (founder) his job, either.
Maybe it is time for Mandriva to move from URPM package management to YUM… My observation from Fedora is that YUM developed to very powerful package manager that outperforms URPM; FINALLY!
Not in Fedora 12, so far. Had Fedora 12 loaded some time ago and YUM is definitely better than it used to be, but still slower than others. In my personal opinion, if there is a package management system to center around, it’s Apt/Synaptic. It’s probably the fastest, most universally used system of all, and I haven’t heard of any new users claiming they can’t figure it out. PCLinuxOS has seen the light, and so had Connectiva Linux, which Mandrake Linux bought and merged.
Sorry but smart package manager is what you need
“Putting beta versions of software in the repos is stupid… it’s a recipe for disaster. ”
Hmm….to me it’s seems to be a recipe for success
Do you really think so? Okay, try this. Do clean installs on three different boxes: one with Debian Lenny, one with SimplyMepis, and one with Ubuntu. Load them all up with the same software (whatever versions happen to be in their respective repos) and use each one for an equal amount of time. Do this for a month and keep track of how many glitches, errors, and crashes you get on each platform. I can almost guarantee that Ubuntu is going to lose and lose big. I’ll also give it 99 to 1 that Lenny will give you no problems of any kind. If I can crash it the OS is garbage.
I have problem with music in the last Linux distros; whatever. Mandriva, openSuse, Ubuntu and Fedora, no real difference, audio is broken in all of them; I guess they all inherit the same problem from upstream. My main multimedia desktop still runs Ubuntu 8.04.
This is good about Ubuntu, they have LTS version. 8.04 for desktop is going to be supported for another year; I upgraded my home server to U10.04 but I will keep desktop at U8.04 for several coming months. Some people complain that Ubuntu has very short development cycle (6 months) but they forget about LTS versions… I like idea of LTS versions. Who can offer it? Maybe Debian with their super slow development cycle…
I have been using Mandriva since version 6. Still have the version 6 boxed set on the shelf. It has been up and down for sure, but their final product is always fully polished, easy to use, and loaded with tools and utilities to make life easier. Ive got it running desktops, laptops, servers, stripped down on embedded temp monitors, kids, adults, grandparents. You name it.
Mandriva was the original in trying to make the Linux desktop easier for the average user. And they have succeeded in it. But you see that in allot of open source software companies, those who contribute, drive forward in usability, ect, ect, tend to fail in the business aspect of it. Look at Sun.
Their control panel and utilities for almost every task is a major selling point. You can setup web servers, mail servers, just about anything with a couple clicks of a mouse. The desktop integration and polish is outstanding. Hardware support is better than any other distro I have ran. It has run on almost any hardware I’ve thrown at it, where other distros failed. And unlike many other distros, Mandriva’s tools, utilities, addons and polish work across all desktop environments. It doesn’t matter if you run KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, you get the same great tools and the same great polish. And their forms are great, you get real answers from friendly people, not a bunch of newbs trying to help other newbs.
I have used, and currently use many other distros. None compare to the ease of use and polish Mandriva has. They are one of the long standing distros that have made linux easy for years, and still lead they way. No hype, no crap, just consistent, continuous development and support to the community it serves. Rock solid, easy to use, and great forums. Forums where you get real answers from real users. Mandriva deserves its place.
I agree on just about all of your points except the forum. I really think they need to work on that. It’s a pleasant place to be and everything, but the software that runs it is horrible and not as easily navigatable as others, and you can post a question and not get answers for some time. It’s a ghost town compared to what it used to be. PCLinuxOS, on the other hand, has a vibrant and excellent forum, and the developers actually get involved in the technical questions solving problems.
My first reaction to the “Mandriva is for sale” concept is “maybe Red Hat should buy them.” All of Mandriva’s enterprise customer list has to be worth something… right? Either way, some (if not most) former Mandriva customers will end up moving to an rpm-based community distros. If the openSUSE community puts out a “welcome Mandriva users” sign after this post, that would be a nice gesture.
.-= Beth Lynn Eicher´s last blog ..Video Post: Microsoft using Apple in GandhiCon3 =-.