Mandrakesoft just released Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop. They come from a specific development effort to make them “enterprise-ready”. The two products feature longer development cycles and a 5-year maintenance span. Read the press release.
If only you would be sure that mandrakesoft will survive next 5 years…
Why wouldn’t they? They’re out of bankruptcy, and have actually started turning out a profit IIRC.
I know what your saying but thats a tad harsh..
surely if this product range takes off then Mandrake could be sitting a bit like RedHat or Suse…
or be prime target to be purchased…
Mandrake 10.x has been very good relase….
1) Mandrakesoft reported a *profit* for the latest fiscal year, which means that they don’t lose money anymore
2) They just announced that they have raised 3,05 millions euro (which is more than 4 millions USD)
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/briefs?n=/mandrakesoft/ac…
It should be ok for the next 5 years, isn’t it? In the meantime please keep in mind that most other Linux companies are still losing (much) money (this includes Lindows, Xandros and even… Suse). Red Hat makes a profit as well.
I really hope Mandrake can pull this off.
They are now doing a nice profitable business with their MandrakeLinux desktop distribution and their MandrakeClub. And, IMHO, they produce an excellent all-around distro with great features, speed, stability, ease of installation and use, very attractive look-n-feel, and good documentation and support. And they keep adding new products and services, like MandrakeMove, LaCie, books, support, consulting, and goodies.
And I see no reason that Mandrake can’t be a success in the enterprise. They’ll start off making an impact in small businesses. Then to get into the middle to large business market, they will need to get certified with large business apps like Oracle, WebSphere, SAP, etc.
Mandrake just really seems to have their act together, and I wish them all the best.
Mandrake has been the Number 1 distro listed at distrowatch for white a long time, it is about the easiest to install & configure Linux there is which is perfect for first time Linux users and newbies and people that just want to install and use a Linux distro with the least amount of configuring and fuss…
personally i prefer Slackware first and Debian Sarge if Debian ever goes stable (soon i hope) as far as people prefering the 2.6 kernel i have tryed 2.6 and it runs plenty good but it seems like the 2.4 series kernels seem just a tad bit better (maybe just my slightly older hardware) i plan to build a new computer sometime this year as i am saving my extra change for it now, (looking to build a AMD Athlon box with LOTS of dual channel RAM & SATA drives) RAID is not necessary but would be not ruled out)
even though i prefer the more traditional distros like Slackware as my #1 and keeping a close eye on Sarge i still wish Mandrake lots of good luck with their venture on this corporate distro :^)
Rankings on Distrowatch are there only to show how many people clicked on the page that describes a distribution. In short, it shows a public interest, not anything to do with the quality or actual USE of the operating system.
It’s my understanding that Mandrake is the most widly used Commercial Linux Distribution, That includes both downloads and sales. Sorry, I don’t have a link at hand, but IMHO it’s not a stretch to believe the statement.
Garret
Also, they are one of the few Linux Distribution companies that can show profit that is actually derived from a product, as opposed to investments.
Why would Mandrakesoft relesase anything? I hate relesasing…
i see you noticed that typo or mis-spelled word too…
mandrake distro’s aren’t released. they escape!
seriously – mandrake may sell/download more … but its not primarily to corporations. they all go for redhat or suse. it may be nothing technical – its just the image that redhat and suse have cultivated – and thats a business distribution. its not important why or how or whether it is deserved. the fact is – that all the many companies i have come across use redhat or to a lesser extent suse if they use linux at the backend or closer to the user frontend.
one exampel of this is hosting companies – not many will offer you hosted mandrake – but will offer redhat/fedora/suse.
that’s what mandrake need to think about. they have (again maybe not deserved now) a reupation for half baked releases … even if they do cutting edge cool stuff… companies also feel safer with a corporsate company liek redhat/suse that a bunch of informal enthusiasts at mandrake – again maybe not the truth – but its the image out there. yes, i know france awarded it a huge contract which make its figures look good – but france has a record of bailing out its own private enterprises. airlines is a good example.
would i use mandrake in a corrporate context – despite its helpful multimedia tricks and useful server gui wizards? no. servers shouldn’t have guis. generally servers don’t need mukltimedia. if i needed corporate support i’d use redhat/fedora. if i was happy with community support, i’d use slackware, fedora or debian depening on features required.
and don’t forget – the BSDs are very much used in business – althogh not so advertised/hyped. and they have diametrically opposite aims to mandrake – n fancy installers – no fancy mulimedia kernels – no fancy “plug-it-in and watch an icon appear via your kernel” …
i’d be interested to see if mandrake have changed their child-friendly but unprofessional desktop themes…
1. Mandrakes numbers looked good before the France contracts.
2. Mandrake is as gui based as both Redhat and SuSE.
3. In fact their Corporate are even less so defaulting to Icewm.
4. My company runs about 50 servers in our data-center, better than half are Mandrake, the rest Debian and BSD’s.
and
5. Although you may call Mandrakes desktop themes “child-friendly but unprofessional” it’s those themes, menus and tools that Mandrake popular.
I completly agree that Mandrake has a lot of catch-up to do in the corporate market place, for years they have been the darling of the download crowd and the desktop. It would seem to me that the best way to attack the corporate market would be to create a corporate product . . . I think they are on the right track.
Me too, but their website is not very informative – as for now.
I have been moving away from RH throughout my small business, and installed MDK10.1 on a couple of PC’s including a laptop, however, some essential business tools are missing. An example is PPTP and VPN, though MDK has the drakvpn (discussed in this forum in a Xandros review) it’s far from sufficient.
I hope MDK adress all aspects of small businesses.
compare their websites…
http://www.redhat.com/
http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/index.html
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/
which is the only one that doesn’t look like a company you can trust your business systems to?
this isn’t a pointless rant – its a serious point. mandrake’s image isn’t and hes never been “business/professional”. this doesn’t mean i wish them ill – but they won’t get anywhere unless they realise there is in fact an issue.
image is important. sadly. but if the company puts in half-attempts and unskilled resources at their website and “desktop themes” then that is the impression that is given with the rest of their software.
Errr,
The point would be well taken IF you were on the company’s main website, as is your are not. Try again with
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
and see if you still feel the same.
Good luck to Mandrakesoft – personally found their desktop distros to be amongst the most well-rounded/acomplished out there – looking forward to 10.2 – the first beta should be out in the next week or so
Most used distro? I think Red Hat Linux/Fedora (same family) is still the most widely used. The enterprise is adopting RHEL on servers like mad… Now with the desktop it may be a different story but come on, linux’s marketshare in the desktop is hardly anything compared to the server share.
Downloads and sales, that would include desktop, server firewall and everything in between.
Fedora is not Redhat, Redhat itself has gone to great pains to make sure we all know that. Also, Fedora is NOT a commercial product, nor a company. If we are going to start clumping distros together we should add CentOS, White Box and the dozen other Red Hat clones.
So to what I did say . . .
“It’s my understanding that Mandrake is the most widly used Commercial Linux Distribution, That includes both downloads and sales.”
I believe that statement to be true.
LQ’s got a newish download service for anyone interested – Mandrake currently the most popular of course….
http://iso.linuxquestions.org/
are there room in enterprise market for MDK?
Why not http://www.mandrakesoft.com/ ? That’s their more corporate-oriented page.
what ever the use, personal or corporate, mandrake is the best distro. sure there are niche distros that are better in one way or another, but overall mandrake is the best most friendly distro out there. redhat has lost it’s way a bit, and suse has too many quirks. and anywhere where they monitor downloads, like distrowatch.com, mandrake is always #1.