“For a Linux distribution, the soul is the Linux kernel, the brains are the GNU system services, and the look is a function of the desktop manager. So what differentiates one distribution from another? It’s about “feel” and that’s no mean matter. For Mandrake the feel is overwhelmingly one of high security for business.” Read the article at Open Mag.
HP Taps Mandrake for Desktops
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
ALL 81 comments (good and bad) have been deleted on this forum. You either get on topic and stop the politics and speak of the topic at hand on each story, or I will keep deleting whole conversations.
And no, I am not going to go through hundrends of messages each day to selectively mod-down, as I am on the hurry today as I am going for holidays. I am not gonna spend time with that stuff. Talk well or get deleted.
And remember, speaking about forum moderation is ALSO off topic (except this message of course which is here to explain to you what happened to your comment), so make sure you do NOT comment on this. If you do wanna comment on this, EMAIL US. Do NOT reply here.
This space is ONLY available for commenting for the news story that is discussed and nothing else.
The forum admin
did we get reset?
That’s all I will say! 🙂
“…More importantly, Dell lacks any semblance of “street cred” when it comes to a coherent Linux story.”
Guess again, OpenMag…
http://www.cray.com/news/0202/craydell.html
The author starts talking about HP installing mandrake on desktops, and then goes on to download mandrake to install it on a HP laptop that came with windows. This really reads more like a review of mandrake than anything
i am glad to see that Mandrake has nailed down
a large corporation that will install Linux on
business desktops. what else could we ask for ?
Linux is taking off maybe slowly but taking off
on the desktop.
I installed Mandrake 9.1 on an old PII, 266 MHz laptop, with 192 MB. It’s been on there for months.
I was initially quite impressed, but it turned to disappointment. The more I use it, the more disappointed I become. The system runs dog slow under gnome2 or kde 3.1, and Mandrake’s configuration tools are dog slow and flaky, especially the network configuration. You can’t even change the routing through the UI, and this is important if you want to share a broadband connection between multiple Linux machines with one of them acting as a router. It’s at least broken if you’re using a pcmcia ethernet card.
The configuration utilities DO NOT HAVE TO BE THAT SLOW. No way… Somebody made some bad decisions on how to do things, IMHO. The configuration GUI is one quite an important part of the package….
Sorry, but I’m not impressed. HP should have tested more…
I dont know, I think any 266 would have a hard time running Gnome2 or kde 3.1. Have your tried WM or something else that might be more suitable?
Or maybe even in your case even try another distro that might be a bit more..erm…light weight? MDK isn’t know, or even designed to run on your system.
My point is, dont blame MDK and expect it to run all snappy like on 266, aint going to happen, and dont bitch about it not happening. Try another distro, see how it behaves.
And BTW, how is this at all related to HP? Why is your slow 266 laptop related to their Desktop package? Care to explain? I’m pretty sure HP isn’t going to be selling anything below 2ghz now, let alone a 266.
P.S. Thank you ELQ for toasting the other thread =D
If you had actually quoted that correctly you would have seen in there they were talking about Desktop OS. The heading of the article is:
“CRAY WILL MARKET HIGH-PERFORMANCE CLUSTER SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES WORLDWIDE USING DELL POWEREDGE SERVERS”
Keyword that are different here: Server…and Desktop…see the difference? So where’s your point in posting this article I ask?
As far as I can gather HP isn’t offering a server version of Linux/MDK, at least not yet anyways.
Wow, this is a pretty big deal. I just went to the HP website and in fact they listed mandrake for their business PCs.
Perhaps yellowtab can land a similar deal with someone.
>>quote
My point is, dont blame MDK and expect it to run all snappy like on 266, aint going to happen, and dont bitch about it not happening. Try another distro, see how it behaves.
>>
I’m quite aware that Gnome2 and KDE3.1 are not designed for this hardware.
That is not the fault of Mandrake. I’m pretty much a veteran with Linux. I run redhat, suse, mandrake… I’ve tried yoper, corel, slackware, etc….. On this particular machine I had redhat 8 and yoper before installing mdk 9.1. I know it won’t be snappy.
However, the Mandrake Control Center is not slow due to using GTK2 for the GUI.
I would say it’s slow due to the back end. It’s quite annoying to wait half a minute for the MDK Control Center to pop up and then wait another 15 sec after selecting one
of the options. There is something wrong here…
What does a configuration tool do…. it reads a “database” on startup, displays fields to a user, reads fields from the user, updates its database and writes the configuration files. this is not rocket science. For local system configuration, these things should run well even on a PII, 266 MHz laptop. Local system configuration should not use up all your resources.
Aside from this, there are things that are clearly broken in the user interface and system management, and they don’t have updates which fixes these things. For example, the configuration tool for network sharing and routing simply doesn’t work. Now they shipped a product with a piece of software that “they wrote” which doesn’t work, and there is no fix for it. I’m not talking about free software which they downloaded. I’m talking about something that was created by them, in house.
So, my statement is one of disappointment, and I can’t understand how HP could find the system good enough to be used on there PC’s.
However, IMHO, it is a little pre-emptive of HP to suddenly start selling Mandrake loaded machines and simply play lip-service to the Linux community. Linux has been “supported” by IBM for how many years? and yet, we so NO desktop applications being ported to Linux. Where is Lotus Notes? Lotus Smart Suite? support for mono?
It maybe all very well HP installing Mandrake, but if Joe Corporate doesn’t see the large software vendors line up behind Linux he will really question whether or not the whole exercise can be justified especially with the economic conditions they way they are.
If HP and IBM want to spur on the adoption of Linux as a desktop, their best bet is to approach companies and pay for the porting of the applications. Sure, these companies, IBM and HP, may not see an immedicate return on their investment, however, if it means that in 4 years time 40-60% of their desktop sales are for machines pre-loaded with Linux, that has to be a “good thing”(tm)
“Server…and Desktop…see the difference? So where’s your point in posting this article I ask?”
Dell DOES have a coherent Linux strategy. Open Mag lies. Dell is employing Linux in the ONLY places where it will do them any good and make them money, just like EVERYTHING ELSE Dell does. If desktop Linux was a viable reality, Dell would be doing it – they aren’t because it isn’t and they aren’t interested in the alt.OS hobbyist “market”.
This is actually a great review of Mandrake although they should have reviewed the hp system with Mandrake preinstalled instead of the download edition. I appreciated that they actually took the time to figure out why things are the way they are in MDK and not just bitch when things sre not as they expect. MDK has some room to grow before they are perfect but they are pretty good
Dell DOES have a coherent Linux strategy. Open Mag lies. Dell is employing Linux in the ONLY places where it will do them any good and make them money, just like EVERYTHING ELSE Dell does. If desktop Linux was a viable reality, Dell would be doing it – they aren’t because it isn’t and they aren’t interested in the alt.OS hobbyist “market”.
Then again, it depends on the type of customer who goes for Dell. Most people I know still prefer going to HP/IBM servers and workstations.
The problem with Dell is that they have 0 innovation, hence, apart from price, they have nothing that sets themselves apart from the other server and workstation vendors.
Btw, I am not sure what it is like the US but the sales and support in the Asia-Pacific region is terrible. You ring up and get a person who knows no English and you hear that they have a fake American accent (I mean, heck, it sounds so obvious!), and yet, when I tried to equire regarding a workstation, they had problems understanding. It is almost as bad as the last time I ordered off them when I tried to explain that Whirinaki is a real street and Heretaunga is a real suburb in New Zealand.
Well, Cray thinks Dell has enough back-end innovation and experience to partner with them. Why isn’t Cray partnering with IBM or HP instead for the clustered supercomputing work I linked to above? If anyone would be picky about a PC vendor, one would think it would be Cray. Dell has come a long, long way in recent years in their server offerings and those PowerEdge boxes have a good reputation, IIRC.
I believe that I read in The Economist that about 20% of Dell servers are shipping with Linux on them, and I don’t think those sales are going to home users. Also, isn’t Mandrake a “Linux for dummies” distro, to put it crudely, intended for (newbie) home users on lower-end hardware and not at all for high-end engineering workstations anyway?
BTW, I noticed that IBM is back on top in the TPC-C wars again 😉
I am sure with enough tuning, I could get my BBC Micro to beat all of them 😉
You are talking about clusters and quite frankly, when you talk about clusters the most important thing isn’t the hardware but the software used. If we were talking about a 64way NUMAmachine, I think the *LAST* company a person who talk to is Dell.
In terms of their PowerEdge servers, I haven’t used them, however, I have heard both great and terrible stories, I assume it depends on the operating system/hardware combination, however, with that being said, my comment still stands about their terrible customer service.
Gil, the problem wasn’t with the fact that Dell doesn’t have a coherent strategy, but you are/were stripping the quote out of its context. OpenMag has a point that dell does not have any coherent Desktop plan. The same could be said for HP and the Linux on the server side.
All I was saying is don’t take things out of their context when quoting from articles.
And Openmag has a point, “Installing Red Hat v9 on a server for an additional $169 is hardly the pinnacle of a Linux strategy.”, this isn’t the best way to get linux going. Way would someone have to pay MORE for a system with linux then one with windows? I think it is a good thing that dell is even offering linux, dont get me wrong.
First, have you tested the control center on a newer computer? On both my laptop and desktop it takes all of 2-3 secs to pop up. As I mentioned before, the machines HP will be offering these on, the speed isn’t an issue. Have you taken a look at the code that makes the control center work? Are you SURE its childs play and no big deal to write something like that? If so, why not provide the fixes for things that you find wrong and help speed things up. I haven’t looked at the code but I’m pretty sure there is more then the simply, read from here write to there logic that you say is all it takes.
I will agree though that some of the stuff in it is not entirely ‘polished’ and should have been fixed by now, but thats not saying its completly useless and broken. I think HP sees great potential with MDK and I agree with them. The fact that they, mdk, have taken them to write such a tool themselves should say something.
It should also be mentioned that mdk is one of the few distro’s that even offers such a tool so there isn’t a lot to compare it too. Haven’t used SuSe but heard there Yast tool is comparable but have heard some not so good things about that as well.
All I was saying is don’t take things out of their context when quoting from articles.
And Openmag has a point, “Installing Red Hat v9 on a server for an additional $169 is hardly the pinnacle of a Linux strategy.”, this isn’t the best way to get linux going. Way would someone have to pay MORE for a system with linux then one with windows? I think it is a good thing that dell is even offering linux, dont get me wrong.
I agree. What people want to see is an end to end solution as a drop in replacement for Windows at no extra cost.
If all Dell is going to promot is a server, of what use is it to an organisation who is wanting to integrate the services of the server into their client?
I see this review of Mandrake did actually spot a weak point in Mandrake’s otherwise pretty good installer – there is no “Media Check” at the start of the installation process (i.e. put in your 2 or 3 install CDs and have the installer make sure they are checksum-OK before proceeding with the installation).
It’s one of the very few things Red Hat’s installer has that Mandrake doesn’t and I’ve been “burned” by this with Mandrake on several occasions. You’d be surprised how many Linux distros “break” your master boot record early in the install process – even Red Hat is guilty of this ! – and a power cycle half way through the install because of bad media can leave you with an unbootable system…
If anyone writing a distro installer is reading this – do *not* touch the boot sequence of the machine you are installing until the very, very end of the installation process (i.e. just before you eject the final install CD and reboot the machine).
CooCooCaChoo’s analysis as to why Linux isn’t being taken as seriously as a desktop OS as it could be is spot-on I think. More commercial quality apps like Lotus SmartSuite, for example, must be ported to Linux to give it the momentum it needs there. IBM, as has been pointed out, seems to have no interest in doing any of this, but Sun is going in this direction full-on with their madhatter project and their commitment to StarOffice/OpenOffice.
It is beginning to look to me like Sun is going to be the only vendor out there who will be able to offer a fully integrated, end-to-end solution for both servers and desktops (both hardware and software), as far as Linux is concerned, for corporate customers.
Some may hate me for saying it, but Sun could end up being Linux’ saviour in establishing it in the corporate desktop market. Sun is an established vendor that corporations already trust and that will help give their efforts real credibility. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works out.
My (I am CooCooCaChoo but posting from a internet cafe) beef with IBM is this. $1billion was pledged and what have we seen? nothing of any substaintial value to the desktop.
We hear the pro-Linux chant of IBM but where is the result? none of their client applications have been ported, they have done nothing to improve third part software development through financial grant schemes or other possible ventures. IMHO, IBM is all talk and no action. Atleast with SUN we see then *INVEST* (take note IBM and fanboys) in GNOME via the documentation and HIG areas, oh and OpenOffice.org, without SUN’s willingness to open it up, it would still be stagnent and not moving forward.
If there is *ANY* company who can bring this Linux Desktop into reality, the only company *I* see being capable is SUN.
But my MDK 9.1 desktop rocks ! With URPMI and people like TexStar helping in the way they are well…..I can only see Mandrake ( along with other Linux distro’s ) gaining ground in the desktop wars. When you start at the bottom you have nowhere else to go but up IMHO.
P.S Notice the little drop shadow on my kpanel to left of the big K.
http://dsfh24.hypermart.net/TStar-Enhanced-MDK9.1.png
Checking all disks before installation would piss off most home users (and unexperienced admins). But i totally agree with the sentiment that OS install should not break the system and needing more than one disk looks like an invitation for trouble. The solution seems easy, just need one CD to build a running system. If it’s broken, you know it from the start (check md5), else install the basics (include X if you must). Then, expand. Debian is using this approach and it works nicely.
More on topic, i am glad to hear that Mandrake struck a deal with HP. I am not using Mandrake, nor is my company. But having another big IT vendor endorsing GNU/Linux is a good thing on any account. Maybe i can convince my boss now that a GNU/Linux would be just as well on our next upgrade.