Hello. I've been using Mandrake and Mandriva for about 8 years, and I used to pay for it. I stopped paying because of the poor quality of Mandriva Store service. Now I have a small web creation business: Fiable.biz . http://Fiable.biz We still use Mandriva 2009 spring in 2 computers, but shifted this year to Ubuntu for 2 others.
My concern is: will Mageia meet the needs of small businesses? 1) Small businesses are not very interested by the famous "pro-choice" policy of Mandriva. I would prefer a system that JUST WORKS rather than the choice between several buggy solutions (KDE/Gnome, Kmail/Thunderbird etc.). And I just don't think a small company or a small community can maintain so many different competitive solutions. Making choice requires a strong management, because any choice will make some users unhappy. But my experience is that any computer system, because of its legacy, becomes heavier and heavier, and is one day replaced by a simpler, completely new one, with no legacy. I've just given up Firefox for Chromium for that. The weakest is the management, the quickest the system become unmanageable. 2) Small businesses need a paid, affordable, reliable SUPPORT. Forums are helpful, but quite often one doesn't find the needed answer that way. The payment should of course be possible by MasterCard or Visa card. 3) Small businesses need an efficient way to FIND INFORMATION QUICKLY. Fragmented information systems like official web pages + mailing list + wiki + forums + bugzilla + support pages, some of these in different languages, make information very difficult to find. Although English is the mother tongue of nobody at Fiable.biz, I would prefer no mailing list, no forum, no support system, but an English wiki with discussion in the wiki's discussion pages, rather than in forums, an English bugzilla for bugs and enhancement wishes, and possibly wikis in other languages with systematic links to the corresponding English page. 4) Some small businesses, like Fiable.biz, would be very interested in MULTISEAT (several seats on one central unit), because it's cheaper than buying one computer per employee. Unfortunately, this is not provided in an easy way by any distribution, as far as I know. If you know a distribution provided this, please let me know. I suggest you make your plans a bit more precise and wish you good luck.
