Vista the best thing to happen to the PC Industry.
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| Author | Content |
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| pogson Feb 20, 2008 4:57 PM EDT |
Amen! One survey found that 44% of businesses considered a non-M$ OS in light of Vista. There goes the monopoly... see http://rcpmag.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=9548 This is getting serious when the M$-lovers and partners are openly discussing that the emperor has no clothes. All we need is more retail shelf space and GNU/Linux will ascend to its rightful place on the desktop. |
| tuxtom Feb 20, 2008 5:31 PM EDT |
Quoting:There goes the monopoly... Here comes the oligopoly... |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 20, 2008 9:42 PM EDT |
Quoting:Here comes the oligopoly... Only if just one or two distros survive. I'd hardly call 20-30 different distros an oligopoly :-) |
| tuxtom Feb 20, 2008 10:32 PM EDT |
Yes, but only two or three at the most will be commercially available on consumer hardware on any significant scale. Wal-Mart shoppers will never even know about the other 27. Shuttleworth will be raking in the support bucks while Volkerding starves. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 20, 2008 10:40 PM EDT |
I can't help it that Shuttleworth is a better businessman than Volkerding. Perhaps Volkerding should hire someone who can do the same for Slackware. Someone who's primary skill isn't Linux development. Dare I say, a Suit. |
| gus3 Feb 20, 2008 11:00 PM EDT |
Quoting:Dare I say, a Suit.I had to do a double-take. I thought you said "slut." Not that I'd mind. Honest. ;-) (I'm all giddy that one of my bugfixes just made it into Slackware...) |
| tuxtom Feb 20, 2008 11:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:I can't help it that Shuttleworth is a better businessman than Volkerding. Well, I wasn't holding you to task for it! ;-) A more pertinent question there for me is who builds a better distro? But I already know the answer to that. The businessman will win out in Wal-Mart, though. As much as I love it, Grandma ain't gonna do Slack. As disturbing as it may sound, it would not surprise me in the least if Microsoft released their own Linux distro in the not-so-distant future. Nope, wouldn't surprise me one bit. |
| jezuch Feb 21, 2008 2:21 AM EDT |
Quoting:A more pertinent question there for me is who builds a better distro? For most of those "grandmas" even a crappy-made Linux is light years better (stability-wise et al) than Windows. So, in Wal-Mart it doesn't really matter; Shuttleworth is a lucky man ;) |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 21, 2008 5:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:I had to do a double-take. I thought you said "slut." There are so many things I could respond with, but they're probably all TOS violations :-) |
| jdixon Feb 21, 2008 5:43 AM EDT |
> Shuttleworth will be raking in the support bucks while Volkerding starves. Unlikely. Slackware has a dedicated following. It may not make the money Red Hat does, but it's always paid it's way. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 8:58 AM EDT |
jdixon: That was a rhetorical statement. Prior to that I said "only two or three at the most will be commercially available on consumer hardware on any significant scale." I took this discussion to encompass the end of the monopoly on the DESKTOP. The end of Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop effectively ends Microsoft's monopoly, period. But on the consumer level (where the current monopoly is being perceived), there will not suddenly appear 20 or 30 different distributions of Linux, even though we know they're there and use them ourselves. Those few that get out there are going to make support profits like you wouldn't believe and leave the smaller distros in the dust financially and in popularity, with the exception of a handful of enthusiasts. I'm looking a little ahead to the future here when I say this. Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. Linux as we know it will change dramatically if it becomes a prominent player on the consumer desktop. It won't be all feel-good open-source utopian dreams of a superior, free desktop OS. People are going to want to make a lot of money on it and the landscape is going to change a lot, no matter how open the source remains. The free-market economy isn't going to go away just because WE love FOSS. The smaller distros will still be there and the new enemy will be the big ones that are making insane profits. I can envision those threads already. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 21, 2008 8:59 AM EDT |
> I thought you said "slut." He did. It's all just prostitution, the only difference is what personal service is being sold or bought. > but only two or three at the most will be commercially available on consumer hardware on any significant scale. That's all that's ever been available. Really, standardization is normal in a commodity environment. That's why cars all have their turn signals on the left of the steering column. But seriously, as soon as someone gets a Linux machine, and looks up "Linux", and finds Distrowatch or LXer, or whatever, they'll know there's more to F/OSS than SuSE or RedHat or 'Buntu. It doesn't take long for people to accept that the product is being packaged by different people and groups, with different emphasis and benefits. It's a small leap of imagination because we're already used to having many different gasoline providers when gas is pretty much identical, different grocery stores offering exactly the same products. Commoditization. It's normal. Monopoly is the abberation. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 9:20 AM EDT |
Are you saying gasoline and grocery stores aren't oligopolies? Not even regionally? A strong majority of the people buying a Linux machine and having trouble are going to call and pay for support. They are not going to download Slackware or Debian and re-partition their drive and install a different OS because they saw it in a Google search. Yes, some will, but not enough to alter the market. |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 21, 2008 9:47 AM EDT |
Let's try not to use the word slut please, I am not trying to be a curmudgeon, I just find that word extremely distasteful. There are many other words to choose from besides that one. If you have ever had to deal with people calling a family member, someone you love more than anyone else in the whole world that name, then you will understand where I am coming from. This has very little to do with any TOS violation and more to do with me. I am sorry. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 9:53 AM EDT |
concubine |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 21, 2008 10:02 AM EDT |
contractor temp |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 21, 2008 10:10 AM EDT |
Much better! See, you guys know all kinds of words... :-) |
| tuxchick Feb 21, 2008 10:38 AM EDT |
MCSE |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 21, 2008 10:41 AM EDT |
LOL! |
| tracyanne Feb 21, 2008 12:28 PM EDT |
Never never call me a LOL! |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 21, 2008 2:22 PM EDT |
Quoting:Are you saying gasoline and grocery stores aren't oligopolies? Not even regionally? Don't know about the US, but within a few miles of my home I can find at least 8 different chains of gas stations (both multinationals as small privately owned pumps) and at least a dozen different chains of supermarkets. And don't go complaining that all the oil for those 8 chains comes from the same oil company. All the kernels for the 400+ different Linux distributions come from kernel.org |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 2:46 PM EDT |
Quoting: All the kernels for the 400+ different Linux distributions come from kernel.org But Sander, it is not a technical oligopoly I'm referring to, it is a market oligopoly. Those 400 distros will not be able to compete for the support dollars...they can try, just like you and I can try to produce and market our own gasoline. There will only be a small handful of companies controlling the consumer OS market. Yes there will remain technological alternatives, but not market alternatives. Isn't that the whole argument, that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop market? I swear they are going to come out with MSLinux. I'll bet every last one of you a week's pay we see it in the next few years. BTW: Are you in the EU? Things are much different there. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 21, 2008 3:07 PM EDT |
tuxtom: I'm in The Netherlands :-) Out here gasoline and groceries aren't (market) oligopolies at all. Like I said, I can go to many different chains and resellers here for gas and groceries. All within a 3 mile radius from my home.Quoting:just like you and I can try to produce and market our own gasoline Not produce. Just market. There are at least a dozen major chains of gasoline stations in the Netherlands, plus a lot of independant stations. They all sell the same gasoline from maybe two or three oil companies, but they are all different, with different prices, different service or even a different business model. There is an oligopoly in producing oil (technical oligopoly) but not in selling it to consumers (market oligopoly). It's the same for Linux. There are a lot of different distros that pack a lot of different software in different configurations and with different service and support. No market oligopoly. But all these distro's ship a Linux kernel which ultimately comes from kernel.org. A technical monopoly. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 3:55 PM EDT |
Quoting:But all these distro's ship a Linux kernel which ultimately comes from kernel.org. A technical monopoly. kernel.org is not a monopoly. There are BSD Kernels, OS X kernels, Windows kernels, Solaris kernels, etc. They are also not selling products or support in conjunction with retail computers sold in the free market, so they are not even a player in the discussion. I think my language "technical oligopoly" was not really proper, but nonetheless attempted to illustrate the point I was trying to make to differentiate the many technical players from those that control the market. This is a good read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly In Linux, I think it will be Suse/Novell and Ubuntu and possibly RedHat (who I predict may partner with PCLinux for the Desktop) that would be the big players competing against each other and against Microsoft and Apple for the consumer Desktop. That would surely be more than 40% of the market: an oligopoly. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 21, 2008 4:19 PM EDT |
Which leaves open the question, why doesn't everyone use RedHat, SuSE or the other commercially supported systems _now_? What is going to be so different going forward? Will the motivations behind the use of Debian, Gentoo and Slackware vanish? As far as I know, there are profit-seeking entities all using those in their businesses. I don't know where the assumption that profit-seeking entities only use the services of other profit-seeking entities comes from. |
| jdixon Feb 21, 2008 5:18 PM EDT |
> ...why doesn't everyone use RedHat, SuSE or the other commercially supported systems _now_? When I started using Linux, Red Hat wasn't available yet, and SuSE was a European centric distribution. I used Slackware, and while I've tried a number of other distributions over the years (Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, etc.) none of them have offered me any real advantages over Slackware. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 5:39 PM EDT |
I feel like I have been misunderstood. All the Linux distributions aren't going away. We have them all now, and they are free to compete with Windows for the desktop, but Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop now. If Microsoft loses it's monopoly, who will fill the gap IN THE CONSUMER MARKET SPACE? Apple will get a chunk of the previous monopoly's business. Linux will get a chunk of the previous Monopoly's business...but that is oversimplified, because all 400 Linux distributions aren't going to evenly split the Linux chunk. I have been arguing that only 2 or maybe three distros will get the chunk that Microsoft lost, for all practical retail purposes. Those very few distributions that get in the widespread consumer space (e.g. New PC's at Wal-Mart, Office Depot and Dell) will profit enormously. When Joe User goes to Circuit City, he won't have a choice to buy a new computer with a selection of 400 variants of Linux. There will only be two or three variants available to him pre-installed on his retail purchase. Those two or three Linux vendors will profit from support, etc., as will Apple and Microsoft will continue to do so even if they are losing market share. That small selection of OS vendors with pre-installed systems will be an oligopoly. All the other distros will exist very much as they do today, but they won't be in widespread consumer use through retail chains, and therefore will continue to be a small minority in comparison to the oligopoly I just described, just as they are today. I'd like to further add that, using the logic of many of the responses above, Microsoft has a 0% monopoly...and indeed a 0% share altogether...in the "Linux" market space because they don't even have a Linux distribution. Using that train of thought, why would Microsoft be a concern to any of you for any reason? They are statistically insignificant. |
| jdixon Feb 21, 2008 5:53 PM EDT |
> ...why would Microsoft be a concern to any of you for any reason? Microsoft continually does things which interfere with my ability to use the hardware I've purchased with the software I choose. This is countered somewhat by the fact that the software they produce requires so much maintenance that it provides me with an income. Other than that, they are only of concern to the extent that any convicted lawbreaker is of concern. |
| tuxtom Feb 21, 2008 6:15 PM EDT |
Quoting:Microsoft continually does things which interfere with my ability to use the hardware I've purchased with the software I choose.What does Microsoft do to interfere with your use of your purchased hardware or the software of your choice? Quoting:Other than that, they are only of concern to the extent that any convicted lawbreaker is of concern.Unconvicted lawbreakers committing Crimes Against Humanity as we speak are of far greater concern to me than convicted software giants. |
| jdixon Feb 21, 2008 7:06 PM EDT |
> What does Microsoft do to interfere with your use of your purchased hardware or the software of your choice? Just review Microsoft's long list of deliberately breaking compatibility with other manufacturers, making undocumented changes to their software, dropping support for specific hardware, colluding with hardware providers to prevent non-Microsoft support, colluding with media providers to install unwanted DRM, etc., etc., etc. Any of those could have affected me, and a number have at various times. The list is far to long to provide detailed and documented examples without a lot of research and time which I don't have right now. > Unconvicted lawbreakers committing Crimes Against Humanity as we speak are of far greater concern to me... Lots of things are of greater concern to me than Microsoft. It's just that discussing most of them results in a TOS violation fairly quickly. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 21, 2008 10:54 PM EDT |
Quoting:all 400 Linux distributions aren't going to evenly split the Linux chunk. I have been arguing that only 2 or maybe three distros will get the chunk that Microsoft lost, for all practical retail purposes. And I argue against it. I think that at least a dozen distros will all be major players in the Desktop market. I see no reason why only two or three would remain. It's not like the Linux desktop is currently dominated by two or three distros. Sure, you hear a lot of stuff about Ubuntu but their market share is a lot lower than the PR machine would have you believe. And that's simply because Ubuntu *has* a PR machine and the rest (in desktop space anyway) don't. If MS and Windows suddenly plummeted in market share a lot of distributions and companies would jump into the gap and try to grab market share. All of a sudden there's a big market and that means money to be made. A lot of distributions would start attracting marketing folk and other suits in the hope of cashing in on the new and large market. New companies with similar business models to Red Hat and Canonical would spring up around a lot of distributions, all competing with eachother. That's my prediction. |
| jdixon Feb 22, 2008 8:06 AM EDT |
> And I argue against it. I think that at least a dozen distros will all be major players in the Desktop market. If it follows the trend of most consumer products there will be 2-3 major distributions, 1-2 regional distributions for each area, and as many as a dozen or more minor distributions vying for the market. Think coffee/tea, milk, cereal, sodas, etc. You usually wind up with 2-3 national brands everywhere, a couple of local regional brands, and a whole bunch of minor brands that can be gotten at various places. There will probably also be an equivalent to "organic" products and specialty distributions for specific purposes (the specialty distributions already exist, but expect a number of changes in that area). |
| tuxtom Feb 22, 2008 9:45 AM EDT |
Quoting: I see no reason why only two or three would remain.If you read my comments more carefully you would see that I in no way indicated that any distros would go away. I said most would remain status quo. Only two or three would have significant enough market penetration to displace Windows and be commercially successful on pre-installed consumer desktops, which has been my point throughout this thread. Quoting:If MS and Windows suddenly plummeted in market shareIt won't happen that way. It would be gradual and OEM's would start replacing Windows using two or three distros. Dell is already doing it, it has already started. I know because my 71 year old father bought an Ubuntu Laptop from them on his own volition due to his dissatisfaction with Apple and refusal to go with Microsoft. (Imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when he brought it up.) The other distros would still try to compete for part of that desktop market, but their aggregate share will be insignificant on a retail level compared to the oligopoly. It will not be evenly spread. All you need to do is look at the market penetration today. I'm not talking distrowatch...that's not market penetration, that's popularity amongst Linux users. I'm talking commercial desktop Linux. How many publically-traded (or even private) companies sell commercial Desktop Linux and have market penetration against other OS vendors? Finally, I'm not arguing that this is a bad thing. It is merely an economic prediction. Empirically , that's how free enterprise works. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 22, 2008 3:18 PM EDT |
Quoting:If you read my comments more carefully you would see that I in no way indicated that any distros would go away. I didn't mean that either. I meant "remain as major players". |
| tuxtom Feb 22, 2008 5:27 PM EDT |
Well, I think our perspectives are quite different due to the cultures and economies we live in. Southern California is certainly not The Netherlands (I wish it were sometimes, except for the weather). We do have diversity in products and retail distributors, but a disproportionately large percentage of most markets is dominated by a small handful of very large companies, and that percentage grows with each passing year, it seems. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 23, 2008 4:03 AM EDT |
There are vendors now that will put on SLES or RHE for the purchase price, or Debian for nothing, that sort of thing. With shelf price as cut-throat as it is, I see that sort of attempt to differentiate themselves happening _more_ with OEMs, rather than less. |
| tuxtom Feb 23, 2008 3:49 PM EDT |
Suse, Ubuntu and posssibly RedHat are the three I see most like to succeed in the consumer/SOHO market. They would be able to support those sales. OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix (who would NEVER provide widespread driver support due to the licensing, anyway). |
| tracyanne Feb 23, 2008 11:33 PM EDT |
Quoting:OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix But not Mandriva. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 24, 2008 5:25 AM EDT |
Quoting:OEM vendors aren't going to put a distro out there that doesn't have a well-established support offering, which effectively puts Debian out of the mix I bet that if MS marketshare plummitted and made room for Linux, that there would spring up a lot of new companies that support Debian. It's just so stable that it's hard to break. Support is relatively (to ther distros) easy. |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 24, 2008 6:07 AM EDT |
> which effectively puts Debian out of the mix (who would NEVER provide widespread driver support due to the licensing, anyway). With a decrease in Microsoft power, hardware makers would find the meaning behind making their hardware work with mainline kernel drivers, or providing the specs for mainline kernel drivers to be created for their hardware. The assumption that they will try to continue the very practices that are making Microsoft fail is ... short sighted. Keep in mind that up until now, Microsoft has been bullying the hardware makers into writing and supporting their own drivers. The hardware makers are going to learn that all that money does not need to be spent, with resulting better profits or higher sales. And those who don't, will follow Microsoft. |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 10:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:Microsoft has been bullying the hardware makers into writing and supporting their own drivers.Supply and Demand. If you can be profitable only supporting Vista drivers then why even mess with anything else? A lot of new hardware doesn't even have XP support, much less Linux. Vista is ubiquitous in new PC sales. Makes the most business sense, and is best for the shareholders. Conversely, it wouldn't necessarily hurt hardware companies to open up their specs and API's, but they aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them and jeopardize their shareholders' investment. Quoting:there would spring up a lot of new companies that support DebianAs much as I like Debian, it will not be pre-installed on consumer equipment. A derivative will, though. Ubuntu already is. Debian (proper) widespread on new PC's is a pipe dream. Sorry, but that is the truth. They won't support enough drivers to get enough market penetration to compete. By the time the hardware is all open other distros will have the market captured. Quoting:But not Mandriva.I used to use Mandrake almost exclusively for many years. However, it will not be a major player in the U.S. market. They could have been, perhaps, but they made way too many mistakes. They may have success in the EU, though. I miss the name Mandrake...it reminded me of Quaaludes. ------ There could be other players that will spring up and grow as fast as Ubuntu. I hate to sound morbid, but the most likely player to get in the mix with a widespread Linux distribution very well may be Microsoft. It is their prerogative to do just that. Plus, they can afford to buy whoever they want: Novell? RedHat?, to get instant market penetration (imagine Suse or RedHat running a full, Microsoft .NET application server). They are publicly traded...and cash talks a lot louder than philosophy (except on LXer). I'm not saying I WANT this to happen, I'm only saying it is a real possibility to consider. Corporations and OEM's (Windows shops) would be much more likely to integrate and migrate to a product with the Microsoft brand. |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 24, 2008 10:46 AM EDT |
Quoting:...and cash talks a lot louder than philosophy (except on LXer) Thank You for the compliment. You are right about Microsoft possibly buying or creating their own distro but the cross patent agreement they have with Novell showed them that they still have to be really careful not to let any of their IP touch the GPL, it would destrory them because the GPL is a sink with no drain for Microsoft. They cannot afford to accidentally open source a bunch of their code and even with the advantage of a ton of cash to buy market penetration in the Open Source world, it still doesn't make it easy for them to succeed at it. Besides, who here would take them at their word that something of theirs is really Open Source unless they GPL'd it? |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 11:07 AM EDT |
What we in the Linux community often fail to take into consideration is that corporations are ultimately responsible to their shareholders (which could be you or I). Make them unhappy and heads start rolling. We may villanize them as greedy and uncooperative, but they are responsible to their investors, not our community.Quoting: they still have to be really careful not to let any of their IP touch the GPLObviously Microsoft doesn't have to open source their own .NET stack or other apps just because they run on a GPL'd operating system. They could write a GPL/LGPL MFC/.NET engine, for example, that would still allow the easy migration of proprietary apps without the apps' code touching GPL/LGPL code. In this scenario they would be providing the same API as they currently do to developers. I agree they would need to be very careful and would be heavily scrutinized. Quoting:Besides, who here would take them at their word that something of theirs is really Open Source unless they GPL'd it?It can remain closed source (the applications) and still be wildly successful in the GPL OS market. |
| jdixon Feb 24, 2008 11:29 AM EDT |
> Plus, they can afford to buy whoever they want: Novell? RedHat?, Novell is a distinct possibility. I expect too many shares of Red Hat are controlled by insiders that would never sell to Microsoft (well, I know that 15 of them are, at least :)). |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 11:36 AM EDT |
Quoting:I expect too many shares of Red Hat are controlled by insiders that would never sell to Microsoft...Good point. I was just providing hypothetical examples. |
| tracyanne Feb 24, 2008 11:54 AM EDT |
Quoting:I used to use Mandrake almost exclusively for many years. However, it will not be a major player in the U.S. market. Spoken like a true yank. Of course I assumed your analysis was US centric in the first place. Thankfully the US market is not the sum of the computer market, and given the way Mandriva is quietly expanding into the the rest of the world, I suspect they've made the better choice. |
| hkwint Feb 24, 2008 1:00 PM EDT |
First, agree to TA above. And now here's why:Quoting:Suse, Ubuntu and posssibly RedHat are the three I see most like to succeed in the consumer/SOHO market. That was outdated before you typed it. First of all, a _lot_ of French desktops run Mandriva. Dell sold Linux-laptops with Mandriva to French students even _before_ it sold laptops with Ubuntu, and pre-installed Mandriva desktops are sold at Carrefour (but I agree Southern California is far away, I doubt if you know Carrefour). The Eee uses heavily customized Xandros. The municipality of Munich chose 'Debian' for its desktops, though that's not the consumer market, but anyway, they didn't go for SuSE. The X/O laptop isn't the consumer market neither, but it uses something Fedora-like. Interesting to note is the Fedora end Xandros sold the most today are customized by the vendors. The Zonbu-boxes that ship today, run on (you probably wouldn't have guessed it:)... Gentoo (customized). gOS - sold widely - indeed is based on Ubuntu, but again is heavily customized. Now let's look at about five years ago. Mandriva didn't exist, it was Mandrake back then. Ubuntu didn't exist either. The Eee version of Xandros didn't exist. Munix didn't exist. The Zonbu-version of Gentoo didn't exist. gOS didn't exist. Also, OpenSolaris and Asianux didn't exist five years ago. Asianux is sold a lot in Asia as far as I can tell: Today Haansoft / Miracle and Red Flag Linux are based on it. As far as I understood (but the signs were in Chinese) Linux pre-installed 'consumer' Lenovo laptops were sold in China before business-only Lenovo-Linux came to 'our' continents - with Red Flag pre-installed. What's the conclusion? ALL distro's which are at this moment successful at the consumer markets (and that's definitely not RedHat and Suse) didn't exist five years ago. So now you want to make predictions about who will have a big market share once Windows loses its monopoly? I do support the opinion life will be different after the Windows monopoly is gone, looking at the pace of changes in distro-development. I'd say chaos theory applies to it. |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 2:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:Spoken like a true yank.Born and raised. It's sad to see so little true yank spirit left. Plenty of xenophobia, but very little character of the type that built this country. A cursory study of George Washington would make that readily apparent. Quoting:...given the way Mandriva is quietly expanding into the the rest of the world, I suspect they've made the better choice.I'm not sure who you mean by they. The rest of the world? Well, Mandriva is a major player, but I suspect they won't make huge inroads in the US or even recapture what Mandrake had. EU/AUS might be a different story. I'd still place my bets on Ubuntu for the "world", though. Like I said, Mandrake was my OS of choice for many years, and were the corporate Linux production servers at the company I was at during the DotCom boom, per my recommendation (and never let us down). I certainly didn't mean to slam it. They did go thorough quite some turmoil during the transition to Mandriva (I still hate that name) and I was making the switch to Debian-based systems around the same time. Such is life. |
| tracyanne Feb 24, 2008 5:36 PM EDT |
Quoting:They did go thorough quite some turmoil during the transition to Mandriva (I still hate that name) and I was making the switch to Debian-based systems around the same time. Such is life. Actually they went very quiet pror to Mandriva. Mandrake filed for Bankruptcy protection, due to really stupid decisions by management when they became a public company. Mandriva is part of what the Reborn Mandrake became, as when they were in a position to reinvest they purchased Connectiva, and Lycoris, the name change was in part because King Comics had a stupid claim that Mandrake is theirs and that having a computer company called Mandrake was confusing to the King Comics readership - in the end it was cheaper to rename the company. |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 6:19 PM EDT |
Quoting:...in the end it was cheaper to rename the company.I was around LXer when we were all thinking of a new name for the merger. Not everyone was pleased with the final decision. 8^) |
| tuxtom Feb 24, 2008 6:27 PM EDT |
Quoting:I do support the opinion life will be different after the Windows monopoly is gone, looking at the pace of changes in distro-development. I'd say chaos theory applies to it.That has precisely been my entire point this entire thread. Things are going to be much different than they are today, and there are going to growing pains and bumps in the road and market forces that will render each of our current perspectives obsolete. |
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