Mandrakesoft released its Corporate Server 3.0 product in February. It’s a significant upgrade to the older 2.1 edition. With a newer kernel and a competent GUI management utility for its services, Corporate Server 3.0 is a good, inexpensive choice for businesses that need a powerful and secure server operating system with as little overhead as possible.
Mandrake Corporate Server 3.0: Server software made easy
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Eugenia Loli
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So “It just works”?
It’s been a few hours and the comments are trickling in. I sense the same happening on every Mandrake business product posting. Nobody is interested in this product. Nobody will spend a dime on it just like its predecessor 2.1.
I thought it was Mandriva now, or maybe Mandrivasoft?
that nobody comments does not mean that nobody uses. if nobody uses then why release a new version. the comment rate in here is understandable as this is a corporate aimed release, and this is a fanboy site. the corps comment on the product by the amount of money they spend on it.
I don’t see RHEL or SLES posts lacking feedback. The reason they released another version is because they tried to give their previous failed attempt another shot.
Yes, they did change their name. When the review was written, it was Mandrakesoft, and the product was Mandrakelinux Corporate Server. There is some lag time between the writing of the review and its publishing.
Besides, I’m not sure that all of the boxed editions of Mandrakelinux were destroyed in favor of Mandrivalinux — there is probably also some lag time in that switchover.
It’s really not a big deal…
-Jem
This is the third of three articles (Solaris 10 and How Linux Saved Microsoft being the other two) that makes me wonder why people in need of a clue transplant write such trash.
One third of this article is the author complaining about not being able to use DHCP. Hello, who the Hell uses DHCP for a server? And while we are on the subject, who uses DLink NIC’s in a server? At least I don’t, if I want high performance network I/O, I spend the big bucks and get a quality NIC. And what is this nonsense about sound, video, and Serial ATA? I thought this was a review of a server OS, not a desktop OS? Maybe if this guy read the hardware requirements he could have used a system that met them.
If I was a PHB and read this “review” I would not be too interested in buying Mandrake Corporate Server either. My experiences with Mandrake products have been positive so there are some potential problem areas. Find an OS that doesn’t have some problems.
While I concur in your assessment of your article, I’ve had a different experience with Mandrake products – admitedly, only with corporate workstation systems, however.
Non-standard configuration locations, custom configuration programs, GUI most of the way – it makes it quite annoying to remotely administer. Now, I’ll admit, the GUI stuff is great for home desktops. But in the corporate world, when I have to change settings at a remote branch, the X11 lag can be overwhelming.
I’m glad that work started phasing mandrake out before I started there, but there are enough systems in circulation that it’s still an annoyance – if not daily, then at least weekly. We have about 10 systems in the field still that are running 8.1 Vitamin, and as such seem to be incapable of running Firefox/Thunderbird (due to a lack of gtk2 or somesuch jibbahjabbah). I’m really hoping I get to replace them soon. (On Tuesday I get to reduce the number by one – yay!!
Obviously, with 10.0 Official, things are a tad more pleasant thanks to Firefox and Thunderbird. I still don’t like the non-standard configuration tools/locations, but multiple distributions suffer from that issue. And, of course, I’m heavily biased – I prefer FreeBSD. And Windows XP for the desktop (but not in a corporate environment, unless DeepFreeze and/or TerminalServices are involved).
One minor point – dhcpcd isn’t installed by default because we don’t use it to do DHCP, we use dhclient. At least that’s the case on the main distro. Did you check for dhclient?
The network problem is unusual, we can normally cope with standard network hardware. Did you work out what the problem was in the end? That’d make it easier to fix, of course
I’ve emailed Mandrake 3 times asking for more info on their Corporate Gateway and nothing. Guess they don’t want my money.
The gui tools are also available as CLI tools, Try calling drakconf from the cli and see what you get . . . so there goes your need to X.
non-standard config tools? please expand on that, who sets the standard?
non-standard config locations? again, please expand. non-standard compared to what? debian? LSB? what are you comparing it to?
and if its 8.1 your complaining about, its either time to update or move on. its old, very old.
The last version of Mandrake I used toasted my cd drive(9.x).. It was a well known bug at the time but was not listed anyware prominent on the website for new users.
SME server from Contribs.org is free and easy to install and use and it won’t flash your LG CD-Rom.. Even newbie friendly..
MRX
There´s not a single thing you can do with the graphical configuration tools you can´t do by editing a text file. They´re there to make life easier _when appropriate_. Also, almost all the configuration tools will run quite happily without X, falling back on an ncurses interface.
Well said. I stand corrected on my post in the Solaris thread.
I am a big supporter of SME and have been using it for years. It is a bit apples and oranges against Corp Server though, and if you don’t think so, then you’ve probably never had the need for what Corp Server brings.
As far as the LG thing goes, I guess people will ride that into the ground over and over. The issue was with the CD Rom, not Mandrake. It was NOT a known issue until it was discovered (funny how that works). It was NOT only a Mandrake issue, other distribution had the exact same issues as it was a command that was in common use at the time.
actually, the command was used in a UDF packet writing which I think only we and a non-standard Debian kernel used. We didn’t _write_ it though, and as you said no-one actually reported the bug until after the release was released, so it’s hard to know what we could’ve done about it.
add a ‘patch’ after ‘UDF packet writing’ up there.
Mandrake –
$370 for the software plus the standard service plan, $830 for the software with the premium service plan
Solaris –
$120 for basic plan, $360 for premium support.
Actually I believe it was the flush_cache command, and this was a kernel issue, not Mandrakes . . . Mandrake was the first commercial distributor to release the kernel . . . so caught the blame.
. My experiences with Mandrake products have been positive so there are some potential problem areas. Find an OS that doesn’t have some problems.
So you had a good experience, but then tell us to get another OS?