Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
I can offer my help for Atlantic Canada Ingo On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Anne Wilson wrote: On Tuesday 24 Dec 2002 2:50 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:15, Poogle wrote: I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. Poogle, I have a solution/suggestion. One or more persons could take the responsibility to burn and mail out new releases to the 75 or more crashtesters. I would be willing to try to help, if I didn't have to buy the CD's. You figure 75 people, with a three CD distro, that's 225 CD's burned per release. This responsibility could be divided up between two or more peeps with broadband access (like me.) I've got the equivalent of a T1 here, so I can download ISO's in short order. The Burners could each be assigned mailing lists with peeps that are close to their area of residence. In my case, crashtesters on the eastern seaboard of the United States would be my customers. A Burner could be assigned to a sector of Europe, or Australia. You get the idea. A FedEx or UPS account that's owned by Mandrakesoft could take care of the mailing charges. When the CD mailer goes out, it's just assigned to the Mandrake UPS or Fedex account. This would resolve the problem of getting corrected test distros out to the crashtesters in a minimum amount of time. --LX I have broadband and would be willing to help (UK). I haven't downloaded and installed a distro as such, but would have thought it no problem. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Put me in coachUS Florida Lee On Tuesday 24 December 2002 06:51 am, you wrote: I can offer my help for Atlantic Canada Ingo On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, Anne Wilson wrote: On Tuesday 24 Dec 2002 2:50 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:15, Poogle wrote: I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. Poogle, I have a solution/suggestion. One or more persons could take the responsibility to burn and mail out new releases to the 75 or more crashtesters. I would be willing to try to help, if I didn't have to buy the CD's. You figure 75 people, with a three CD distro, that's 225 CD's burned per release. This responsibility could be divided up between two or more peeps with broadband access (like me.) I've got the equivalent of a T1 here, so I can download ISO's in short order. The Burners could each be assigned mailing lists with peeps that are close to their area of residence. In my case, crashtesters on the eastern seaboard of the United States would be my customers. A Burner could be assigned to a sector of Europe, or Australia. You get the idea. A FedEx or UPS account that's owned by Mandrakesoft could take care of the mailing charges. When the CD mailer goes out, it's just assigned to the Mandrake UPS or Fedex account. This would resolve the problem of getting corrected test distros out to the crashtesters in a minimum amount of time. --LX I have broadband and would be willing to help (UK). I haven't downloaded and installed a distro as such, but would have thought it no problem. Anne -- Registered Linux user #223705 Give me ambiguity or give me something else. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Tuesday 24 Dec 2002 H:50 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:15, Poogle wrote: I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. Poogle, I have a solution/suggestion. One or more persons could take the responsibility to burn and mail out new releases to the 75 or more crashtesters. I would be willing to try to help, if I didn't have to buy the CD's. You figure 75 people, with a three CD distro, that's 225 CD's burned per release. This responsibility could be divided up between two or more peeps with broadband access (like me.) I've got the equivalent of a T1 here, so I can download ISO's in short order. The Burners could each be assigned mailing lists with peeps that are close to their area of residence. In my case, crashtesters on the eastern seaboard of the United States would be my customers. A Burner could be assigned to a sector of Europe, or Australia. You get the idea. A FedEx or UPS account that's owned by Mandrakesoft could take care of the mailing charges. When the CD mailer goes out, it's just assigned to the Mandrake UPS or Fedex account. This would resolve the problem of getting corrected test distros out to the crashtesters in a minimum amount of time. --LX Hmmm, I'll think about this one a little. My first reaction is that it could work, a fellow crashtester burnt CDs for me until I got a fast connection, my only reservation at the moment is the time factor involved. Given the speed of beta releases I often found myself a little behind in the process even though my benefactor was only based 15 miles away, by the time he had got home from work d/l, burnt and mailed the CDs 2-3 days had passed since release - with ver 8.x releases this was in some cases half a beta lag. -- http://www.poogle.co.uk Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Franki wrote: I think if mandrake had any sense.. they would have a staff member or two lurk on this list to get a sense of what their users are feeling... (since they are the ones being begged to join the club.) but they fact that they don't is a sad example of companies today.. simple matter of the fact is they don't really care what newbies think anyway.. the thing is, alot of the people on this list are NOT newbies.. I don't know everything, but i started with linux back with redhat 4 ... and tried every distro in between... and there are others here that know far more then me Its a shame that our voice is totally ignored except by other users.. This list (and expert) is the single biggest selling point of mandrake... yet they ignore it.. and don't advertise it... which is a shame.. I bet more problems get solved here then in any of their support sites. rgds Frannki him meant the list did not (AFAIK) survive. No one picked up the ball IIRC. So the list died the testers went back to the normal lists like this one. I left due to time constraints I was in over my head a bit Not quit dead, the mail service still works and there are a handful of us trying to accomplish something on our own. Without direction though it is pretty hit or miss. Deno checks on us now and then so some of the testing was picked up on the last 7 go arounds. That was the longest and best beta and rc run yet so I am suprised some folks are still having problems. Never the less Mr. Brinkman's add on YMMV is oh so true. : ) -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 If this is a true reflection , I think it is an underestimation, this list works, it may of lost it's Resident Expert , we sometimes go off at a tangent, occassionally run out of Ideas, but an awful lot of people find solutions to problems that would remain unsolved, or unsolved for a long time.Without it I for one would remain lost most of the time. John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
When mandrake sacked Civileme I wrote to Jaques le Maroir to tell him I was disappointed, as C. had been an enormous help to me and many others. In reply I got a rather aggressive email telling me if I knew a better way to run the company let him know. I,m the first to admit that I don;t know a viable commercial strategy for mandrake, but I think its sad when a company is so contemptuous of a customers opinions. Pete ArdnamurchanScotland Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
12/23/02 7:16:49 AM, Peter Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When mandrake sacked Civileme I wrote to Jaques le Maroir to tell him I was disappointed, as C. had been an enormous help to me and many others. In reply I got a rather aggressive email telling me if I knew a better way to run the company let him know. I,m the first to admit that I don;t know a viable commercial strategy for mandrake, but I think its sad when a company is so contemptuous of a customers opinions. Pete ArdnamurchanScotland I must agree wit you about most of what you have to say Civileme was a big loss to the Mandrake community.I shure miss him. It was GREAT to have a true linux guru around to help out and he also had a good personality and skills for organising. On the flip side think of it from Jaques point of view, hundreds of great skilled people and about half of them have to go. Just not enough money in the check book to pay them all. That must of left him with a lot of hard decisions to make in a no win situation. He was forced to let good people go or else not have the money to continue on at all. Talk about having a bad week!! And then getting hundreds of emails from all over telling him he was making the wrong decision. Was there really a right decision that could have been made? I must admit that after a week like that I may have gotten a bit rough around the edges myself. Civileme did ask the folks on this list not to contact Mandrake to push the issue. Perhaps he had a deeper understanding of what was going on at Mandrake than most of us. I wonder what ever happened to Cvileme. I hope he is doing allright. I am shure he is 1 mandrake employee that will be missed by all of us. Darn good computer skills and a very nice person in general. Has anyone heard from him? I hope one of these days he drops a line to the list just to say hi if nothing else. Marc Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- Marc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I must agree wit you about most of what you have to say Civileme was a big loss to the Mandrake community.I shure miss him. It was GREAT to have a true linux guru around to help out and he also had a good personality and skills for organising. On the flip side think of it from Jaques point of view, hundreds of great skilled people and about half of them have to go. Just not enough money in the check book to pay %0j s = Ta __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- Marc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I must agree wit you about most of what you have to say Civileme was a big loss to the Mandrake community.I shure miss him. It was GREAT to have a true linux guru around to help out and he also had a good personality and skills for organising. On the flip side think of it from Jaques point of view, hundreds of great skilled people and about half of them have to go. Just not enough money in the check book to pay them all. That must of left him with a lot of hard decisions to make in a no win situation. He was forced to let good people go or else not have the money to continue on at all. Talk about having a bad week!! And then getting hundreds of emails from all over telling him he was making the wrong decision. Was there really a right decision that could have been made? I must admit that after a week like that I may have gotten a bit rough around the edges myself. Civileme did ask the folks on this list not to contact Mandrake to push the issue. Perhaps he had a deeper understanding of what was going on at Mandrake than most of us. I wonder what ever happened to Cvileme. I hope he is doing allright. I am shure he is 1 mandrake employee that will be missed by all of us. Darn good computer skills and a very nice person in general. Has anyone heard from him? I hope one of these days he drops a line to the list just to say hi if nothing else. Marc Marc, I hope I'm not taking too many liberties with this, but maybe it will turn into a job opportunity for Civileme. The last time I spoke with him was on Dec 17, he's still looking for work. He stated that he might be willing to return to Mandrake software development in order to finish testing the update software and the install any program with a click software. From what I've heard, the LM90 rpmdrake could really benefit from his expertise. He says he's got a connection now that won't handle list level traffic. --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:15, Poogle wrote: I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. Poogle, I have a solution/suggestion. One or more persons could take the responsibility to burn and mail out new releases to the 75 or more crashtesters. I would be willing to try to help, if I didn't have to buy the CD's. You figure 75 people, with a three CD distro, that's 225 CD's burned per release. This responsibility could be divided up between two or more peeps with broadband access (like me.) I've got the equivalent of a T1 here, so I can download ISO's in short order. The Burners could each be assigned mailing lists with peeps that are close to their area of residence. In my case, crashtesters on the eastern seaboard of the United States would be my customers. A Burner could be assigned to a sector of Europe, or Australia. You get the idea. A FedEx or UPS account that's owned by Mandrakesoft could take care of the mailing charges. When the CD mailer goes out, it's just assigned to the Mandrake UPS or Fedex account. This would resolve the problem of getting corrected test distros out to the crashtesters in a minimum amount of time. --LX -- °°° Kernel 2.4.18-6mdk Mandrake Linux 8.2 Enlightenment 0.16.5-11mdkEvolution 1.0.2-5mdk Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ °°° Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Monday 23 December 2002 08:50 pm, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 06:15, Poogle wrote: I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. Poogle, I have a solution/suggestion. One or more persons could take the responsibility to burn and mail out new releases to the 75 or more crashtesters. I would be willing to try to help, if I didn't have to buy the CD's. You figure 75 people, with a three CD distro, that's 225 CD's burned per release. This responsibility could be divided up between two or more peeps with broadband access (like me.) I've got the equivalent of a T1 here, so I can download ISO's in short order. The Burners could each be assigned mailing lists with peeps that are close to their area of residence. In my case, crashtesters on the eastern seaboard of the United States would be my customers. A Burner could be assigned to a sector of Europe, or Australia. You get the idea. A FedEx or UPS account that's owned by Mandrakesoft could take care of the mailing charges. When the CD mailer goes out, it's just assigned to the Mandrake UPS or Fedex account. This would resolve the problem of getting corrected test distros out to the crashtesters in a minimum amount of time. --LX I have a cable connection and could handle some of the midwest (west of the Mississippi). Could work -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Joseph Braddock wrote: I have to say I'm middle-of-the-road here. I bought my distros and was happy with 8.2. However, I'm NOT happy with 9.0. If 9.0 is all they can do with the money I paid spent, then no, I'm not going to continue investing money in a company who seems to be following in the footsteps of microsoft when it comes to releasing something whether it's ready or not, and IMHO, 9.0 was not ready to be released. In fact, my 2nd machine which I've been fighting with using 9.0 will be downgrading back to 8.2 some time this weekend. Another thing is for sure, when future versions are released I'm definitely going to wait and watch the forums/lists before shelling out 70 bucks again. I was so happy with 8.2 that I bought 9.0 as soon as it was on the shelf thinking it would be even better but that does not seem to be the case, unfortunately. I'm just waiting for the day when Debian steps up to a 2.4 kernel. I'm getting comfortable enough with gnu/linux that I'm ready to make a switch from a distro that's easy to use to one that emphasizes stability. IMO having apps freeze and crash doesn't seem very easy to use. If I want that, I'll go back to M$. Now if Mandrake were to turn around with 9.1 and go back to the quality of 8.2, I'd sing its praises once again. Whilst I support the thesis of your argument, may I point out it is extreme;y difficult for the likes of myself to actually complete a download and then submit an experience to mandrake, a) because there is never enough time to do it before the next release, b) Us mortals dont' have access to report problems without going to a lot of trouble joining the cooker brigade, whose technical expertise is far in excess of ours. As a matter of note, it takes 3 times 5days to download one 3cd mandrake set. So if this is to change more time and some easy way of reporting problems is needed. John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 12:35 am, Joseph Braddock wrote: Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. This is by no means an effort to slam you, it's simply that if we want the distro to work flawlessly and support all kinds of hardware combinations, then the more who join the testing effort the better. This would certainly help cover more possible combinations of hardware. At the same time, I agree with John that for those with slow connections, early download is not feasible. If these beta versions are available from cheapbytes it may help, but of course it will never be the latest, since they change so frequently to reflect new fixes. I have a faster connection, so this is not my problem, but as John pointed out I would feel a fish out of water in the cooker community. I just don't have that much expertise. At the same time, the problems we find are just as relevant, so an easy way of reporting them would help. I would like to help this way, and I'm sure many others would too, but can't see how it is possible for me to do that. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 6:05 am, Lee wrote: Curious as a businessman of some experience. Can you say what these bad business decisions were? I don't mind shovelling a bit more down the tube, but I would be interested in why it's necessary. As I understand it, the venture capitalists liked what they saw a couple of years ago, and invested heavily to make a quick buck - you know what IT was like in those heady days. Then the bubble burst, they had not made the quick buck so they pulled out their support, leaving Mandrake with obligations that they had entered into, but no funds to support it. Meanwhile, true to form, they had put in their own 'experienced' manager, who added to their obligations and gave them little or nothing in return, practically bankrupting them. Personally, one of the things I like about Mandrake is their apparent integrity. They appear to be honest and open, which is ethical, but not always acceptable to financiers. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
At the time of development of 9.0 I did not have an extra computer to test with, which i now do. If/when 9.1 rc ISO's come out, I plan on testing now that I have a macine to do it on. I would have with 9.0, had I the 2nd machine. (and i don't see what you said as a slam, just expressing your opinion as i did mine) :-) just as a quick update on my situation with that machine. dumped 9.0 and put 8.2 on it, viola! everything works, including the sound card i could not get working under 9.0. I guess mandrake's moving away from supporting old hardware? (another grumble) Gave my 9.0 away to someone else who's gonna try it. Hopefully she has more luck with it than I did. Jerry - Original Message - From: Joseph Braddock [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 4:35 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. This is by no means an effort to slam you, it's simply that if we want the distro to work flawlessly and support all kinds of hardware combinations, then the more who join the testing effort the better. Joeb On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 08:55:44 -0800 jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Lyvim Xaphir [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 9:17 PM Subject: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX I have to say I'm middle-of-the-road here. I bought my distros and was happy with 8.2. However, I'm NOT happy with 9.0. If 9.0 is all they can do with the money I paid spent, then no, I'm not going to continue investing money in a company who seems to be following in the footsteps of microsoft when it comes to releasing something whether it's ready or not, and IMHO, 9.0 was not ready to be released. In fact, my 2nd machine which I've been fighting with using 9.0 will be downgrading back to 8.2 some time this weekend. Another thing is for sure, when future versions are released I'm definitely going to wait and watch the forums/lists before shelling out 70 bucks again. I was so happy with 8.2 that I bought 9.0 as soon as it was on the shelf thinking it would be even better but that does not seem to be the case, unfortunately. I'm just waiting for the day when Debian steps up to a 2.4 kernel. I'm getting comfortable enough with gnu/linux that I'm ready to make a switch from a distro that's easy to use to one that emphasizes stability. IMO having apps freeze and crash doesn't seem very easy to use. If I want that, I'll go back to M$. Now if Mandrake were to turn around with 9.1 and go back to the quality of 8.2, I'd sing its praises once again. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 H:35 am, Joseph Braddock wrote: Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. This is by no means an effort to slam you, it's simply that if we want the distro to work flawlessly and support all kinds of hardware combinations, then the more who join the testing effort the better. Joeb Apologies for jumping in here and snipping the thread but to comment (ramble ?)on the above I believe that one of the major contributions to the stability of 8.0 to 8.2 was Civileme's Crashtesting team. For those not aware of this, Civileme recruited a group of around 75 volunteers who tested all the betas and rc's on their own hardware which, while not encompassing every possible hardware configuration, did embrace a wide variety of hardware . Some Crashtesters were experts, some were newbies and this gave a mix of feedback from the point of view of user friendliness of features (thinking of such issues as software installer here). This was a co-ordinated effort targetted specifically at quality testing of new releases, indeed the principle aim was to take something such as a beta release and try to break it and then report back to one Mandrake employee who then reported to the developers where appropriate - in some cases it was not appropriate, merely a case of error between chair keyboard . I believe the key here is that it was solely focused on testing new releases and reporting back to Mandrake in a concise and relevant way. While all feedback is important I see a problem in an individual obtaining a beta or rc and reporting issues directly. In some cases it is reported on this or other lists that my scanner/camera/cd rom/package/whatever doesn't work followed by a number of posts which resolve the issue with mine does, you need to do this in these cases the limited time available to Mandrake developers would be misdirected and if the issue was raised without resolution on these lists and then submitted to Mandrake it is possible that the next beta would be out and Mandrake developers would be tempted to ignore it as it referred to a previous release. My solution - I don't have one. Crashtesters was IMHO a valuable effort but in these financially difficult times Mandrake are damned if they spend money on this sort of exercise and damned if they don't. -- http://www.poogle.co.uk Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 1:17 pm, jerry wrote: just as a quick update on my situation with that machine. dumped 9.0 and put 8.2 on it, viola! everything works, including the sound card i could not get working under 9.0. I guess mandrake's moving away from supporting old hardware? (another grumble) Gave my 9.0 away to someone else who's gonna try it. Hopefully she has more luck with it than I did. Or could it be that the people who *are* on the testing list are ones with later hardware, so that older hardware doesn't have adequate testing/feedback? Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Comments in-line On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 12:09 pm, Franki wrote: Well, I guess its my turn to have a say... I am off the opinion that the club is a shortterm earner at best.. eventually people will pull out and if there are not new replacements it will dry up.. there is alot more benefit to mandrake in the club then there currently is to the users I think. having said that, if the make it more worth the while then I will force all my client that use mandrake pay it for a year.. just like I insist all of those using dyndns pay them a 20 dollar donation at signup... but right now, what am I gonna tell them?? you'll get a bunch of demo software, some nvidia drivers and a few other bits and bobs.. not enough to convince someone thats going on second hand loyalty (mine). They need to think long and hard about what they can offer.. perhaps online realtime tutorials/training with chatrooms and stuff.. I don't know, but do some more value adding.. Corporate users, if that's what we're talking about, would be hard to convince at the moment, I agree. But I like the idea that training might be offered. As for mandrake going under.. I'll be very sad if they do.. I have bought powerpacks off them before.. and I was planning on buying 9.1, but if they go down.. it would take me a week or two to get to the same level using redhat.. (or gentoo ).. I love mandrake for the most part.. and would hate to see them go... but if they do, I'll probably try to standardise on one of the not-for-profit distro's like debian... it'd be a pain for a while, but at least its unlikely to go under.. Why? Not questioning your knowledge - on the contrary, asking why you believe them to be sound. In the email to customers,, Mandrake should have made more reference to what they owe.. when its likely to be over and a more detailed report of future profitability.. they could have made it sound alot less like begging for donations. It must be difficult to write an email like that - particularly when it must be in several languages. Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
I plan on supporting Mandrake in every way that I can. I love this distro. I have tried others, including debian and have always come back to this one. Someone on another forum said they wouldn't use mandrake because it looked too much like windows for him. I personally think that if they want to get people to use linux, looking like windows is the way to go. People tend to use what looks familiar to them. I really hope that the Mandrake team gets it together to continue putting out a quality product. Walt Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
I love the idea of training.. if Mandrake put an expert in an irc channel 24/7 or even for specific times each day.. and his job was to answer club members questions.. and perhaps train them on stuff when the questions quiet down... (common ones could be refered to a mandrake page with the common answers...)... Training is what would make mandrake club longterm profitable.. but why would they listen to this suggestion... Hell, they could do an online course..and offer a printable certificate at the end.. it probably won't mean alot real world.. but I bet they'd get swarms of signups if they did it. (I'd sign up too... just so I could lurk'n learn.. As for debian and its long term viability Debian is one of the oldest distro's.. its alot older then mandrake.. Also, the guys that do it do it for one reason.. they love it.. There is no money to be concerned about.. also, every ISP I have delt with.. and thats alot over the years, not just as a customer, but as a consultant.. for my clients and others have used Debian.. Truth be told,, I think that if it were possible to check,,, debian would probably be ahead of Redhat as far as installed base goes... Just not on the desktop.. most of the mail admins I'm sharing mailing lists are using Debian (the linux users that is.) Debian is probably the purest open source project of them all... at least thats my impression. If mandrake goes.. I'll use Debian or Gentoo for servers and redhat for desktop.. currently I use Mandrake for both.. which is why I don't want to change. but having said that.. there is no free lunch... if they want my money.. they give me something I want.. thats all there is to it.. I am not interested in games much.. I don't want software I can get free elsewhere.. I want training.. in various areas.. I am a sucker for learning.. I've taught myself 4 programming languages in the last 2 years.. just because I could... The chance to learn stuff.. anything of interest.. is worth my dollars. I know mandrake has alot of online docs.. but the way they have gone about it is so haphazzard that most people have no idea its there or what its for hmmm.. what else could they do??? I know.. hold off longer on the final releases of mandrake... instead of rushing them out.. take more snapshots.. offer them to only the club or cooker members as ISO's they could give something to the club members and get something in return as well.. more bug testing.. I like aspects of 8.2 and 9.0.. but nothing is better then 7.2 so far... (I still have lots of servers running it.) One last thing they should do off the top of my head... They should copy M$ and release a searchable knowledgebase.. not 10 docs spread all over the place.. but a searchable database of issues and their solitions.. with unique id's and all.. make it available to clubmembers... (in my opinion, the M$ knowledgebase is the only worthwhile thing they have done in years.) Thats the stuff that will have people signing up... rgds Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Anne Wilson Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2002 9:30 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Comments in-line On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 12:09 pm, Franki wrote: Well, I guess its my turn to have a say... I am off the opinion that the club is a shortterm earner at best.. eventually people will pull out and if there are not new replacements it will dry up.. there is alot more benefit to mandrake in the club then there currently is to the users I think. having said that, if the make it more worth the while then I will force all my client that use mandrake pay it for a year.. just like I insist all of those using dyndns pay them a 20 dollar donation at signup... but right now, what am I gonna tell them?? you'll get a bunch of demo software, some nvidia drivers and a few other bits and bobs.. not enough to convince someone thats going on second hand loyalty (mine). They need to think long and hard about what they can offer.. perhaps online realtime tutorials/training with chatrooms and stuff.. I don't know, but do some more value adding.. Corporate users, if that's what we're talking about, would be hard to convince at the moment, I agree. But I like the idea that training might be offered. As for mandrake going under.. I'll be very sad if they do.. I have bought powerpacks off them before.. and I was planning on buying 9.1, but if they go down.. it would take me a week or two to get to the same level using redhat.. (or gentoo ).. I love mandrake for the most part.. and would hate to see them go... but if they do, I'll probably try to standardise on one of the not-for-profit distro's like debian... it'd be a pain for a while, but at least its unlikely to go under.. Why? Not questioning your knowledge - on the contrary, asking why you believe them to be sound. In the email
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Well, After seeing the plea for people to join the club, I thought what the hell, why not! Then I went to the web site, saw that the cost was $60, thought OK, for a home user that is quite a lot, but at least it is supporting the company to produce further versions of what seems to be a pretty good product. Filled in the order form, and suddenly the cost is over $70. Why? I have to pay FRENCH tax of 19%. No chance! - I live in the UK. I can order stuff - and this is not even a physical package - from many US software companies and not pay tax. Why should I contribute to another country's tax revenue? So, there is one customer lost! -- Regards, Davidmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Saturday, December 21, 2002, 5:17:40 AM, you wrote: LX Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an LX email from the Mandrake team. LX http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 LX I also read LX http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 LX After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to LX mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how LX many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade LX their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. LX ?? LX --LX LX __ LX Do you Yahoo!? LX Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. LX http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Franki wrote: I love the idea of training.. if Mandrake put an expert in an irc channel 24/7 or even for specific times each day.. and his job was to answer club members questions.. and perhaps train them on stuff when the questions quiet down... (common ones could be refered to a mandrake page with the common answers...)... Training is what would make mandrake club longterm profitable.. but why would they listen to this suggestion... Hell, they could do an online course..and offer a printable certificate at the end.. it probably won't mean alot real world.. but I bet they'd get swarms of signups if they did it. (I'd sign up too... just so I could lurk'n learn.. As for debian and its long term viability Debian is one of the oldest distro's.. its alot older then mandrake.. Also, the guys that do it do it for one reason.. they love it.. There is no money to be concerned about.. also, every ISP I have delt with.. and thats alot over the years, not just as a customer, but as a consultant.. for my clients and others have used Debian.. Truth be told,, I think that if it were possible to check,,, debian would probably be ahead of Redhat as far as installed base goes... Just not on the desktop.. most of the mail admins I'm sharing mailing lists are using Debian (the linux users that is.) Debian is probably the purest open source project of them all... at least thats my impression. If mandrake goes.. I'll use Debian or Gentoo for servers and redhat for desktop.. currently I use Mandrake for both.. which is why I don't want to change. but having said that.. there is no free lunch... if they want my money.. they give me something I want.. thats all there is to it.. I am not interested in games much.. I don't want software I can get free elsewhere.. I want training.. in various areas.. I am a sucker for learning.. I've taught myself 4 programming languages in the last 2 years.. just because I could... The chance to learn stuff.. anything of interest.. is worth my dollars. I know mandrake has alot of online docs.. but the way they have gone about it is so haphazzard that most people have no idea its there or what its for hmmm.. what else could they do??? I know.. hold off longer on the final releases of mandrake... instead of rushing them out.. take more snapshots.. offer them to only the club or cooker members as ISO's they could give something to the club members and get something in return as well.. more bug testing.. I like aspects of 8.2 and 9.0.. but nothing is better then 7.2 so far... (I still have lots of servers running it.) One last thing they should do off the top of my head... They should copy M$ and release a searchable knowledgebase.. not 10 docs spread all over the place.. but a searchable database of issues and their solitions.. with unique id's and all.. make it available to clubmembers... (in my opinion, the M$ knowledgebase is the only worthwhile thing they have done in years.) Thats the stuff that will have people signing up... rgds Frank Training is what got Mandrake in the ruts that it is in now. The previous management wanted to offer E-Training, set up a campus, etc. That all costs money. Of course it didn't work, since Linux users seem to want everything free, so they lost a ton of money that they are still paying back. Once mandrake gets to a point where it is financially secured, I would loved to see them endorse an existing Linux certification and offer Boot Camps to get the certification. By endorsing an existing one, they won't flood the system with yet another BS certification. Perhaps they could endorse the SAIR one. It should provide them with steady cash. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Well, After seeing the plea for people to join the club, I thought what the hell, why not! Then I went to the web site, saw that the cost was $60, thought OK, for a home user that is quite a lot, but at least it is supporting the company to produce further versions of what seems to be a pretty good product. Filled in the order form, and suddenly the cost is over $70. Why? I have to pay FRENCH tax of 19%. No chance! - I live in the UK. I can order stuff - and this is not even a physical package - from many US software companies and not pay tax. Why should I contribute to another country's tax revenue? So, there is one customer lost! -- Regards, Davidmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Saturday, December 21, 2002, 5:17:40 AM, you wrote: LX Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an LX email from the Mandrake team. LX http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 LX I also read LX http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 LX After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to LX mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how LX many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade LX their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. LX ?? LX --LX LX __ LX Do you Yahoo!? LX Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. LX http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 03:09, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Saturday 21 December 2002 12:17 am, you wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX Well, I'm already a club member, and just renewed. I don't know about upgrading... I'm in a similar position: just renewed my silver membership and already payed for the boxed sets up to 9.1. That would only leave the stockmarket shares as an option. That'll take some thinking through though, in my case. As about the begging; Considering the bad economic climate and the prognoses for the coming year, Mandrake's strict embracement of the free software community's ideals (including the way they do business) and the upcoming expected 'downshake' in the Linux world they are quite right at 'grabbing the moment' (carpe diem). Where else should they be asking for support, but in the community from which they came and have never turned their back on. I don't about the rest of the folks but I'm certainly keeping a tighter hold on my wallet than I did a year ago. Coming 2003 I'm expecting to have to set my priorities who (there's more than just Mandrake out there!) I support and who I don't anymore. Believe me Mandrake is no.1 on that list as thé distro that can compete with the M$-desktop without losing integrity. Distribs like Debian and newcomer Gentoo are good but not for converting desktop-users. Redhat could do that but my fears are that if only Redhat survived the shakedown, they would only grow at the cost of Sun/unix market-share and thus kill off a lot of open-source software like Open-officeOrg and Mozilla in the long run. The same goes for United Linux IMHO. So actually IMHO we don't have much of a choice but to keep Mandrake alive and kicking if we want to keep diversity on our desktops and nibble at M$'s market-share. Just my 0,02€ worth, HarM Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 12:09, Franki wrote: They need to think long and hard about what they can offer.. perhaps online realtime tutorials/training with chatrooms and stuff.. I don't know, but do some more value adding.. Isn't the way to commercialise GPL software to sell services? To give it all away, but sell convenience and extras on top? They could have separate faster servers for club member downloads and updates, they could put a new distro in the shops _before_ they offer it for free download, and they could communicate a bit better with their customers. These aren't original ideas, but they look good to me. Suse have a closed install/config tool and no downloadable ISOs, but I hope Mandrake don't have to go as far as that. Richard Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 06:15 am, you wrote: On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 H:35 am, Joseph Braddock wrote: Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. I was part of that team (8.0) Still got the really nice Crashtesters shirt! :-) -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 22 December 2002 10:41 am, Franki wrote: I love the idea of training.. if Mandrake put an expert in an irc channel 24/7 or even for specific times each day.. and his job was to answer club members questions.. and perhaps train them on stuff when the questions quiet down... (common ones could be refered to a mandrake page with the common answers...)... Training is what would make mandrake club longterm profitable.. but why would they listen to this suggestion... Hell, they could do an online course..and offer a printable certificate at the end.. it probably won't mean alot real world.. but I bet they'd get swarms of signups if they did it. (I'd sign up too... just so I could lurk'n learn.. That is basically what got Mandrake into the bad position they are in right now, e-learning. (And no - they didn't get swarms of signups) As for debian and its long term viability Debian is one of the oldest distro's.. its alot older then mandrake.. Also, the guys that do it do it for one reason.. they love it.. There is no money to be concerned about.. also, every ISP I have delt with.. and thats alot over the years, not just as a customer, but as a consultant.. for my clients and others have used Debian.. Truth be told,, I think that if it were possible to check,,, debian would probably be ahead of Redhat as far as installed base goes... Just not on the desktop.. most of the mail admins I'm sharing mailing lists are using Debian (the linux users that is.) Debian is probably the purest open source project of them all... at least thats my impression. If mandrake goes.. I'll use Debian or Gentoo for servers and redhat for desktop.. currently I use Mandrake for both.. which is why I don't want to change. but having said that.. there is no free lunch... if they want my money.. they give me something I want.. thats all there is to it.. I am not interested in games much.. I don't want software I can get free elsewhere.. Mandrake's core focus is on delivering a Linux distro that has broad hardware support, is easy to set up and administer, and is committed to free software. The idea of the club is to support Mandrake in this goal. Quite a few people today have broadband and a cd writer (heck - you don't actually even need a cd writer), and therefore have no need for boxed sets, besides the additional software that is in it. The club is a way for Mandrake users to support them directly, without diluting the money with costs for packaging and delivery. Everything else on Mandrakeclub is an _incentive_ to join, and not the core reason. If you honestly feel that you are giving Mandrake a free lunch by joining the club - then so be it. I want training.. in various areas.. I am a sucker for learning.. I've taught myself 4 programming languages in the last 2 years.. just because I could... The chance to learn stuff.. anything of interest.. is worth my dollars. I know mandrake has alot of online docs.. but the way they have gone about it is so haphazzard that most people have no idea its there or what its for hmmm.. what else could they do??? I know.. hold off longer on the final releases of mandrake... instead of rushing them out.. take more snapshots.. offer them to only the club or cooker members as ISO's they could give something to the club members and get something in return as well.. more bug testing.. I like aspects of 8.2 and 9.0.. but nothing is better then 7.2 so far... (I still have lots of servers running it.) One last thing they should do off the top of my head... They should copy M$ and release a searchable knowledgebase.. not 10 docs spread all over the place.. but a searchable database of issues and their solitions.. with unique id's and all.. make it available to clubmembers... (in my opinion, the M$ knowledgebase is the only worthwhile thing they have done in years.) Thats the stuff that will have people signing up... rgds Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Anne Wilson Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2002 9:30 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Comments in-line On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 12:09 pm, Franki wrote: Well, I guess its my turn to have a say... I am off the opinion that the club is a shortterm earner at best.. eventually people will pull out and if there are not new replacements it will dry up.. there is alot more benefit to mandrake in the club then there currently is to the users I think. having said that, if the make it more worth the while then I will force all my client that use mandrake pay it for a year.. just like I insist all of those using dyndns pay them a 20 dollar donation at signup... but right now, what am I gonna tell them?? you'll get a bunch of demo software, some nvidia drivers
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 22 December 2002 05:59 am, Anne Wilson wrote: On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 12:35 am, Joseph Braddock wrote: Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. This is by no means an effort to slam you, it's simply that if we want the distro to work flawlessly and support all kinds of hardware combinations, then the more who join the testing effort the better. This would certainly help cover more possible combinations of hardware. At the same time, I agree with John that for those with slow connections, early download is not feasible. If these beta versions are available from cheapbytes it may help, but of course it will never be the latest, since they change so frequently to reflect new fixes. I have a faster connection, so this is not my problem, but as John pointed out I would feel a fish out of water in the cooker community. I just don't have that much expertise. At the same time, the problems we find are just as relevant, so an easy way of reporting them would help. I would like to help this way, and I'm sure many others would too, but can't see how it is possible for me to do that. Anne Mandrake have made a huge step forward with bugzilla in the last week or two. I would suggest to everyone who has an interest in the stability/excellence of 9.1 to make an account at https://qa.mandrakesoft.com. The feature that would be most useful to newbies is voting for bugs. If you are too intimidated in posting a new bug or comment on an exitant bug (which you shouldn't be), you can simply search for all unconfirmed bugs, and if you are experiencing them as well, you can vote for them. After two votes, a bug is marked new, and the more votes a bug receives, the more attention it will get (and face it that is what you need for 'your' bug in the beta process). The process to see unconfirmed bugs is to click Query existing bug reports, and then change the status field to unconfirmed and just do a search without any other parameters. Good luck, Sascha Noyes - -- Please encrypt all correspondence. PGP key available from: http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Ba1xgzJdfX+cTW8RAq2jAJ9qOjnsrh0NBRRO5VXWWGytVL0ukACbBxTw sXTA9PwgESg7KxEDAg4RhzU= =Zjzz -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 11:11 am, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Sunday 22 December 2002 06:15 am, you wrote: On Sunday 22 Dec 2002 H:35 am, Joseph Braddock wrote: Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. I was part of that team (8.0) Still got the really nice Crashtesters shirt! :-) Yer lucky Ron, I never did get the shirt, so I went out and bought the boxed set just to get the logo. : ) -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 23:05, Sascha Noyes wrote: Mandrake's core focus is on delivering a Linux distro that has broad hardware support, is easy to set up and administer, and is committed to free software. The idea of the club is to support Mandrake in this goal. Quite a few people today have broadband and a cd writer (heck - you don't actually even need a cd writer), and therefore have no need for boxed sets, besides the additional software that is in it. The club is a way for Mandrake users to support them directly, without diluting the money with costs for packaging and delivery. Everything else on Mandrakeclub is an _incentive_ to join, and not the core reason. If you honestly feel that you are giving Mandrake a free lunch by joining the club - then so be it. Ah - now see - here is one bit of eloquence that so rightly points out a companies narrow mindedness - they treat everyone as though they're an American consumer. I no longer live in America. $5 US is $10AUD. Therefore $40US is $80AUD. I don't have broadband, I have dialup. Now maybe if the marketing dickheads would THINK that other people from OTHER countries would want to join at a Country Level Price, I'd join the Mandrakeclub. Otherwise, they can piss off. I'd be willing to spend $5AUD per month on a membership, but not $10. I'd be willing to buy the packages if they were leveled to an Aussie dollar. I bought my RH for $29.95AUD. Same package I bought sells for $29.95US. THAT'S proper international marketing. -- Mon Dec 23 05:45:00 EST 2002 5:45am up 7:59, 2 users, load average: 0.50, 0.38, 0.50 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
get a grip people, I'm not talking about an e-learning center.. I'm talking about adding some value to club members by putting one of their guys on an IRC server or whatever and allowing access to the clubmembers for an hour or two a day.. not that expensive to setup... stuff like that.. .talk daily with a mandrake programmer sheesh.. I wasn't suggesting they rethink their business.. but there are alot of potential club members who are on the verge of signing up.. and something like that would tip the scales in mdk's favour... Think about it, don't you think it would be cool to have a real person at mandrake to voice off at or ask for help...?? from what I have seen/heard, mandrake leaves alot to be desired when it comes to newbies asking for help.. rgds Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Sascha Noyes Sent: Sunday, 22 December 2002 8:06 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 22 December 2002 10:41 am, Franki wrote: I love the idea of training.. if Mandrake put an expert in an irc channel 24/7 or even for specific times each day.. and his job was to answer club members questions.. and perhaps train them on stuff when the questions quiet down... (common ones could be refered to a mandrake page with the common answers...)... Training is what would make mandrake club longterm profitable.. but why would they listen to this suggestion... Hell, they could do an online course..and offer a printable certificate at the end.. it probably won't mean alot real world.. but I bet they'd get swarms of signups if they did it. (I'd sign up too... just so I could lurk'n learn.. That is basically what got Mandrake into the bad position they are in right now, e-learning. (And no - they didn't get swarms of signups) As for debian and its long term viability Debian is one of the oldest distro's.. its alot older then mandrake.. Also, the guys that do it do it for one reason.. they love it.. There is no money to be concerned about.. also, every ISP I have delt with.. and thats alot over the years, not just as a customer, but as a consultant.. for my clients and others have used Debian.. Truth be told,, I think that if it were possible to check,,, debian would probably be ahead of Redhat as far as installed base goes... Just not on the desktop.. most of the mail admins I'm sharing mailing lists are using Debian (the linux users that is.) Debian is probably the purest open source project of them all... at least thats my impression. If mandrake goes.. I'll use Debian or Gentoo for servers and redhat for desktop.. currently I use Mandrake for both.. which is why I don't want to change. but having said that.. there is no free lunch... if they want my money.. they give me something I want.. thats all there is to it.. I am not interested in games much.. I don't want software I can get free elsewhere.. Mandrake's core focus is on delivering a Linux distro that has broad hardware support, is easy to set up and administer, and is committed to free software. The idea of the club is to support Mandrake in this goal. Quite a few people today have broadband and a cd writer (heck - you don't actually even need a cd writer), and therefore have no need for boxed sets, besides the additional software that is in it. The club is a way for Mandrake users to support them directly, without diluting the money with costs for packaging and delivery. Everything else on Mandrakeclub is an _incentive_ to join, and not the core reason. If you honestly feel that you are giving Mandrake a free lunch by joining the club - then so be it. I want training.. in various areas.. I am a sucker for learning.. I've taught myself 4 programming languages in the last 2 years.. just because I could... The chance to learn stuff.. anything of interest.. is worth my dollars. I know mandrake has alot of online docs.. but the way they have gone about it is so haphazzard that most people have no idea its there or what its for hmmm.. what else could they do??? I know.. hold off longer on the final releases of mandrake... instead of rushing them out.. take more snapshots.. offer them to only the club or cooker members as ISO's they could give something to the club members and get something in return as well.. more bug testing.. I like aspects of 8.2 and 9.0.. but nothing is better then 7.2 so far... (I still have lots of servers running it.) One last thing they should do off the top of my head... They should copy M$ and release a searchable knowledgebase.. not 10 docs spread all over the place.. but a searchable database of issues and their solitions.. with unique id's and all.. make it available to clubmembers... (in my opinion, the M$ knowledgebase is the only worthwhile thing they have done in years.) Thats the stuff
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Here here,, I live in Australia too, and just because our ecommony bites the bag is no reason for us to have to pay what is essentially twice the price the yanks do... They pay 5 USD but the earn USD... we earn AUD.. which is a worthless piece of plastic paper mostly, but we also pay USD... As a result of that, and the fact that there isn't anything much in the club thus far to encourage me to join... is why thus far why I haven't. rgds Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Stephen Kuhn Sent: Monday, 23 December 2002 2:55 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital On Sun, 2002-12-22 at 23:05, Sascha Noyes wrote: Mandrake's core focus is on delivering a Linux distro that has broad hardware support, is easy to set up and administer, and is committed to free software. The idea of the club is to support Mandrake in this goal. Quite a few people today have broadband and a cd writer (heck - you don't actually even need a cd writer), and therefore have no need for boxed sets, besides the additional software that is in it. The club is a way for Mandrake users to support them directly, without diluting the money with costs for packaging and delivery. Everything else on Mandrakeclub is an _incentive_ to join, and not the core reason. If you honestly feel that you are giving Mandrake a free lunch by joining the club - then so be it. Ah - now see - here is one bit of eloquence that so rightly points out a companies narrow mindedness - they treat everyone as though they're an American consumer. I no longer live in America. $5 US is $10AUD. Therefore $40US is $80AUD. I don't have broadband, I have dialup. Now maybe if the marketing dickheads would THINK that other people from OTHER countries would want to join at a Country Level Price, I'd join the Mandrakeclub. Otherwise, they can piss off. I'd be willing to spend $5AUD per month on a membership, but not $10. I'd be willing to buy the packages if they were leveled to an Aussie dollar. I bought my RH for $29.95AUD. Same package I bought sells for $29.95US. THAT'S proper international marketing. -- Mon Dec 23 05:45:00 EST 2002 5:45am up 7:59, 2 users, load average: 0.50, 0.38, 0.50 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Mon, 2002-12-23 at 04:11, Ronald J. Hall wrote: I was part of that team (8.0) Still got the really nice Crashtesters shirt! :-) -- /\ Dark Lord \/ __ Let's see - somethings becoming evident here, Ron... 1.) Lives in Kentucky 2.) Likes to crash things Hmmm... (g) -- Mon Dec 23 06:10:01 EST 2002 6:10am up 8:24, 3 users, load average: 0.28, 0.19, 0.24 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Franki wrote: Here here,, I live in Australia too, and just because our ecommony bites the bag is no reason for us to have to pay what is essentially twice the price the yanks do... They pay 5 USD but the earn USD... we earn AUD.. which is a worthless piece of plastic paper mostly, but we also pay USD... As a result of that, and the fact that there isn't anything much in the club thus far to encourage me to join... is why thus far why I haven't. Hey, if you think Australian dollars give you a bum deal, try seeing how far Turkish lira go! Last time I looked 1 USD was around 1,600,000 TL. Sir Robin -- Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. And have fun doing it. - Linus Torvalds Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent University Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
At 11:15 AM 12/22/2002 +, you wrote: My solution - I don't have one. Crashtesters was IMHO a valuable effort but in these financially difficult times Mandrake are damned if they spend money on this sort of exercise and damned if they don't. To add an addendum to this: I had been invited to join that list. I lasted 4 weeks, and it was just as Civilme was leaving. The vacuum left by him meant the list did not (AFAIK) survive. No one picked up the ball IIRC. So the list died the testers went back to the normal lists like this one. I left due to time constraints I was in over my head a bit b/c I had not been able to follow the list over a period of time to see what they were doing. Just an FYI as I understand that situation. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
At 03:06 AM 12/23/2002 +0800, you wrote: get a grip people, I'm not talking about an e-learning center.. I'm talking about adding some value to club members by putting one of their guys on an IRC server or whatever and allowing access to the clubmembers for an hour or two a day.. not that expensive to setup... stuff like that.. .talk daily with a mandrake programmer sheesh.. I wasn't suggesting they rethink their business.. but there are alot of potential club members who are on the verge of signing up.. and something like that would tip the scales in mdk's favour... Think about it, don't you think it would be cool to have a real person at mandrake to voice off at or ask for help...?? from what I have seen/heard, mandrake leaves alot to be desired when it comes to newbies asking for help.. rgds Frank In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
At 08:43 PM 12/22/2002 +0200, you wrote: Franki wrote: Here here,, I live in Australia too, and just because our ecommony bites the bag is no reason for us to have to pay what is essentially twice the price the yanks do... They pay 5 USD but the earn USD... we earn AUD.. which is a worthless piece of plastic paper mostly, but we also pay USD... As a result of that, and the fact that there isn't anything much in the club thus far to encourage me to join... is why thus far why I haven't. Hey, if you think Australian dollars give you a bum deal, try seeing how far Turkish lira go! Last time I looked 1 USD was around 1,600,000 TL. Sir Robin -- Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. And have fun doing it. - Linus Torvalds OUCH... Tho Canadian dollars aren't much better to USD. I have to concur with you all :( - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 04:39 pm, FemmeFatale wrote: At 11:15 AM 12/22/2002 +, you wrote: My solution - I don't have one. Crashtesters was IMHO a valuable effort but in these financially difficult times Mandrake are damned if they spend money on this sort of exercise and damned if they don't. To add an addendum to this: I had been invited to join that list. I lasted 4 weeks, and it was just as Civilme was leaving. The vacuum left by him meant the list did not (AFAIK) survive. No one picked up the ball IIRC. So the list died the testers went back to the normal lists like this one. I left due to time constraints I was in over my head a bit b/c I had not been able to follow the list over a period of time to see what they were doing. Just an FYI as I understand that situation. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Not quit dead, the mail service still works and there are a handful of us trying to accomplish something on our own. Without direction though it is pretty hit or miss. Deno checks on us now and then so some of the testing was picked up on the last 7 go arounds. That was the longest and best beta and rc run yet so I am suprised some folks are still having problems. Never the less Mr. Brinkman's add on YMMV is oh so true. : ) -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Mandrake have made a huge step forward with bugzilla in the last week or two. I would suggest to everyone who has an interest in the stability/excellence of 9.1 to make an account at https://qa.mandrakesoft.com. The feature that would be most useful to newbies is voting for bugs. If you are too intimidated in posting a new bug or comment on an exitant bug (which you shouldn't be), you can simply search for all unconfirmed bugs, and if you are experiencing them as well, you can vote for them. After two votes, a bug is marked new, and the more votes a bug receives, the more attention it will get (and face it that is what you need for 'your' bug in the beta process). The process to see unconfirmed bugs is to click Query existing bug reports, and then change the status field to unconfirmed and just do a search without any other parameters. Good luck, Sascha Noyes Ok I did as you specified and it returned this message : Zarro Boogs Found. So I'm guessing that's a good thing. Atleast better than Tree Boogs Found. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
- Original Message - From: FemmeFatale [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2002 3:00 PM Subject: RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. Doesn't exactly make it a newbie channel then does it? Sounds more like an exclusive club than a place newbies can go to ask questions. Michael Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- FemmeFatale [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale Femme, Jeezus, that is so outdated. I thought in the early 90's that that kind of behavior would die out. Is it an integral part of human nature to put others down in order to increase the perception that your status is getting better, or is it learned behavior? I certainly hope it's the latter. In any case, it's this personality type that helps to advance the cause of M$. I've heard of users encountering creeps like this on IRC b4, and then getting discouraged and going back to Winblows. This is exactly the reason why distro's like BSD are not at the top of the list like Mandrake is. They make an inner sanctum with a cadre of the initiated few and then attempt to maintain the illusion of an elite society by denigrating (innocent) others that ask open frank questions. It's quite repelling. IMO, mostly the result of either immaturity or a social skill lobotomy (sometimes self applied). Because of the attitude and spirit of the Linux community, they now have more apps than any other non-Linux distro. In fact the non-Linux distros have been leeching application source code (and cross compiling) from the Linux world for a long time now in order to get glimpses of the nirvana that Linux distro's provide. Mandrake more so than any others! And it's no wonder; look at these lists here and the community atmosphere therein. There is a huge cost for elitism and bigotry. --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
yeah.. thats what I mean... except one that is for club members only.. has staff working there who do it under orders and not volenteers.. and no question is too dumb... :-) if they volenteer, they usually only answer stuff they consider advanced enough.. if mandrake puts them there to answer questions.. they will.. And mdk club should have some communication method of ideas.. when you have 50,000 users, and you ignore thier opinions.. then you are wasting money.. with that many people, there are very likely a good many awesom ideas that just get ignored.. its a shame.. I write web apps for a company over here, and most of my work is adapted from suggestions by my clients... In short, if you treat people as stupid with nothing valid to add (bar money) then thats exactly what you'll end up with. stupid users.. that was the big M$ mistake... now windows users are generally to dumbed down to understand linux quickly... (which may have been their plan all along.) rgds Frank -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of FemmeFatale Sent: Monday, 23 December 2002 7:00 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital At 03:06 AM 12/23/2002 +0800, you wrote: get a grip people, I'm not talking about an e-learning center.. I'm talking about adding some value to club members by putting one of their guys on an IRC server or whatever and allowing access to the clubmembers for an hour or two a day.. not that expensive to setup... stuff like that.. .talk daily with a mandrake programmer sheesh.. I wasn't suggesting they rethink their business.. but there are alot of potential club members who are on the verge of signing up.. and something like that would tip the scales in mdk's favour... Think about it, don't you think it would be cool to have a real person at mandrake to voice off at or ask for help...?? from what I have seen/heard, mandrake leaves alot to be desired when it comes to newbies asking for help.. rgds Frank In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
I think if mandrake had any sense.. they would have a staff member or two lurk on this list to get a sense of what their users are feeling... (since they are the ones being begged to join the club.) but they fact that they don't is a sad example of companies today.. simple matter of the fact is they don't really care what newbies think anyway.. the thing is, alot of the people on this list are NOT newbies.. I don't know everything, but i started with linux back with redhat 4 ... and tried every distro in between... and there are others here that know far more then me Its a shame that our voice is totally ignored except by other users.. This list (and expert) is the single biggest selling point of mandrake... yet they ignore it.. and don't advertise it... which is a shame.. I bet more problems get solved here then in any of their support sites. rgds Frannki -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dennis Myers Sent: Monday, 23 December 2002 7:08 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital On Sunday 22 December 2002 04:39 pm, FemmeFatale wrote: At 11:15 AM 12/22/2002 +, you wrote: My solution - I don't have one. Crashtesters was IMHO a valuable effort but in these financially difficult times Mandrake are damned if they spend money on this sort of exercise and damned if they don't. To add an addendum to this: I had been invited to join that list. I lasted 4 weeks, and it was just as Civilme was leaving. The vacuum left by him meant the list did not (AFAIK) survive. No one picked up the ball IIRC. So the list died the testers went back to the normal lists like this one. I left due to time constraints I was in over my head a bit b/c I had not been able to follow the list over a period of time to see what they were doing. Just an FYI as I understand that situation. - FemmeFatale Good Decisions You boss Made: We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts. - Source: Dilbert Not quit dead, the mail service still works and there are a handful of us trying to accomplish something on our own. Without direction though it is pretty hit or miss. Deno checks on us now and then so some of the testing was picked up on the last 7 go arounds. That was the longest and best beta and rc run yet so I am suprised some folks are still having problems. Never the less Mr. Brinkman's add on YMMV is oh so true. : ) -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Lyvim Xaphir wrote: --- FemmeFatale [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale Femme, Jeezus, that is so outdated. I thought in the early 90's that that kind of behavior would die out. Is it an integral part of human nature to put others down in order to increase the perception that your status is getting better, or is it learned behavior? I certainly hope it's the latter. In any case, it's this personality type that helps to advance the cause of M$. I've heard of users encountering creeps like this on IRC b4, and then getting discouraged and going back to Winblows. This is exactly the reason why distro's like BSD are not at the top of the list like Mandrake is. They make an inner sanctum with a cadre of the initiated few and then attempt to maintain the illusion of an elite society by denigrating (innocent) others that ask open frank questions. It's quite repelling. IMO, mostly the result of either immaturity or a social skill lobotomy (sometimes self applied). Because of the attitude and spirit of the Linux community, they now have more apps than any other non-Linux distro. In fact the non-Linux distros have been leeching application source code (and cross compiling) from the Linux world for a long time now in order to get glimpses of the nirvana that Linux distro's provide. Mandrake more so than any others! And it's no wonder; look at these lists here and the community atmosphere therein. There is a huge cost for elitism and bigotry. I normally cut posts I answer (good netiquette) but in this case I'll leave it intact, just in case anyone didn't read it the first time. This is the most intelligent thing I've read on the various lists I'm subscribed to for a long time. Remember the Japanese proverb: Zen mind is beginner's mind. I became an expert in linguistics when I got my MA many years ago, and haven't learnt much since. I'm a beginner in Perl, and am still learning useful things. There is no such thing as a dumb newbie question. If you're a newbie, it is acceptable - nay, necessary - to ask questions that would be dumb coming from a Perl-monk, kernel-hacker, TeXpert, sysadmin or whoever. I have answered questions with Click on 'Help', then select 'User Guide', then go to section 6.2. If you know your stuff, it doesn't take that much longer than typing RTFM, and it wins friends. Quick test: If you think vim is a cleaning agent, you're a newbie and shouldn't be ashamed of it. If you think vim is an attempt to dumb down the crystalline purity of vi, then you should think very carefully before responding to newbie questions with RTFM or the like. Remember, there are hearts to be broken out there, and every dissed linux-newbie is a potential XP customer. Sir Robin the Humble -- Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. And have fun doing it. - Linus Torvalds Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent University Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Mon, 2002-12-23 at 11:51, Robin Turner wrote: If you think vim is a cleaning agent, you're a newbie and shouldn't be ashamed of it. If you think vim is an attempt to dumb down the crystalline purity of vi, then you should think very carefully before responding to newbie questions with RTFM or the like. Remember, there are hearts to be broken out there, and every dissed linux-newbie is a potential XP customer. Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent University Ankara 06533 Turkey Yeeha! Awesome awesome awesome! -- Mon Dec 23 13:15:00 EST 2002 1:15pm up 15:29, 5 users, load average: 1.13, 0.30, 0.15 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. -- Wm. Shakespeare, Richard II Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Mon, 2002-12-23 at 12:11, Franki wrote: I write web apps for a company over here, and most of my work is adapted from suggestions by my clients... Kangaroos use webapps? Wombats surf? Australia has computers? (g) -- Mon Dec 23 13:20:00 EST 2002 1:20pm up 15:34, 5 users, load average: 0.60, 0.27, 0.16 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn Forced to support NT servers; sysadmins quit. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- Robin Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I normally cut posts I answer (good netiquette) but in this case I'll leave it intact, just in case anyone didn't read it the first time. This is the most intelligent thing I've read on the various lists I'm subscribed to for a long time. Sir Robin: Geez! Thanks! Very sacred praise, considering the source. :) Remember the Japanese proverb: Zen mind is beginner's mind. I became an expert in linguistics when I got my MA many years ago, and haven't learnt much since. I'm a beginner in Perl, and am still learning useful things. There is no such thing as a dumb newbie question. If you're a newbie, it is acceptable - nay, necessary - to ask questions that would be dumb coming from a Perl-monk, kernel-hacker, TeXpert, sysadmin or whoever. I have answered questions with Click on 'Help', then select 'User Guide', then go to section 6.2. If you know your stuff, it doesn't take that much longer than typing RTFM, and it wins friends. My favorite teacher in high school was my physics teacher, and his most valued quote was, The only stupid question is no question. He drilled into us that we should always ask questions, no matter how awkward they might seem. He also used to say, There's the right way, the wrong way, and then there's MY way. Guess which way we do things in my class? But that's neither here nor there... ;) Quick test: If you think vim is a cleaning agent, you're a newbie and shouldn't be ashamed of it. If you think vim is an attempt to dumb down the crystalline purity of vi, then you should think very carefully before responding to newbie questions with RTFM or the like. Remember, there are hearts to be broken out there, and every dissed linux-newbie is a potential XP customer. Sir Robin the Humble Amen, brother. Sir Robin, would you now please lead us in prayer :) -- Do unto others what you would like others to do unto you. And have fun doing it. - Linus Torvalds Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent University Ankara 06533 Turkey --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 06:00 pm, FemmeFatale wrote: In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale I wonder how many of those folks signed up for the Mandrake Club at the Silver level. Probably not too many, huh? -- cmg Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- Carroll Grigsby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 22 December 2002 06:00 pm, FemmeFatale wrote: In my search for knowledge and some tidbits support I found and IRC channel as you describe. I know at least one MDK employee hangs out there. The problem? They are not very newbie friendly far too ready to kick ban ppl for Stupid questions. I left when one of the ops got really pissy anal retentive. He muted the channel de-voiced everyone who was in it b/c ppl like me were asking too many dumb questions. The channel? #MDK-Newbie or something similar. It was made strictly for MDK newbs to come ask for support/questions. - FemmeFatale I wonder how many of those folks signed up for the Mandrake Club at the Silver level. Probably not too many, huh? -- cmg Wow, Carroll. Good point...that hadn't even occurred to me. That's a direct correlation between the attitudes on an MDK channel and Mandrake revenues. Yikers... LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 01:58 pm, you wrote: Yer lucky Ron, I never did get the shirt, so I went out and bought the boxed set just to get the logo. : ) You were a crashtester too? Why didn't you get the shirt and the other surprise gift? (a complete boxed set/Power Pack). You should have let Civileme know - he would have straightened it out. Too bad too - its a nice shirt! -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 10:11 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote: On Sunday 22 December 2002 01:58 pm, you wrote: Yer lucky Ron, I never did get the shirt, so I went out and bought the boxed set just to get the logo. : ) You were a crashtester too? Why didn't you get the shirt and the other surprise gift? (a complete boxed set/Power Pack). You should have let Civileme know - he would have straightened it out. Too bad too - its a nice shirt! I did let him know, but still never got either item, he is the one who lost my address from his data base and then when he moved back he left it in someone elses hands and like many things that seem to happen with people who support MandrakeSoft, nothing happened. I was a crash tester for the fun and to help a company with a good distro. Seems like they have a attitude of nonchallance to those who support them except when they need money. That is not important though, what is important is this list and Mandrake-Linux because it is the best there is for the average user. I gave away three sets of the 9.0 download to people who were total windows users and one RH user. One of the windows people is in Computer Support where I work and a network guru, He said that ML 9.0 was as good as or better than any windows program and he just tried RH 8.0? I think and said it can't stand up to ML 9.0. One user at a time, progress is made. -- Dennis M. linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 11:41 pm, you wrote: I did let him know, but still never got either item, he is the one who lost my address from his data base and then when he moved back he left it in someone elses hands and like many things that seem to happen with people who support MandrakeSoft, nothing happened. I was a crash tester for the fun and to help a company with a good distro. Seems like they have a attitude of nonchallance to those who support them except when they need money. That is not important though, what is important is this list and Mandrake-Linux because it is the best there is for the average user. I gave away three sets of the 9.0 download to people who were total windows users and one RH user. One of the windows people is in Computer Support where I work and a network guru, He said that ML 9.0 was as good as or better than any windows program and he just tried RH 8.0? I think and said it can't stand up to ML 9.0. One user at a time, progress is made. Sorry to hear that. Even with my problems with 9.0 on my main computer - I still would enthusiastically recommend Mandrake over anything else out there! :-) -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 11:51, Sascha Noyes wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I'm considering upgrading to silver membership. Not sure yet though. Sascha I wish I could say that I was being optimistic about Mandrake right now, but I think that there's going to be a bit of a shake up internally with Mandrake, and in the linux community overall. For those of us that have to pay USD for things, well, I'll hold onto my money right now and wait until the second quarter of the US financial year before spending it on services or products. -- Sat Dec 21 20:35:00 EST 2002 8:35pm up 1:32, 4 users, load average: 0.49, 0.26, 0.41 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. -- Groucho Marx, from The Book of Insults Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 H:51 am, Sascha Noyes wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I'm considering upgrading to silver membership. Not sure yet though. Sascha On Saturday 21 December 2002 12:17 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX Just my hand showing here, I was a donator but just upgraded to silver -- http://www.poogle.co.uk Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 5:17 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? Although I feel their pain, I don't feel that I can do more. I have silver membership and can't really afford to upgrade, have bought shares, and buy boxed sets. What else can I do? Anne Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 21:43, Anne Wilson wrote: On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 5:17 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? Although I feel their pain, I don't feel that I can do more. I have silver membership and can't really afford to upgrade, have bought shares, and buy boxed sets. What else can I do? Anne I just wonder how someone that hasn't received their MDK 9 is going to react to receiving an email like this... -- Sat Dec 21 22:25:00 EST 2002 10:25pm up 3:22, 5 users, load average: 0.11, 0.16, 0.36 .o0 linux user:267497 0o. |____ | kühn media australia | / \ /| |'-. | http://kma.0catch.com | .\__/ || | | | | _ / `._ \|_|_.-' | stephen kühn | | / \__.`=._) (_ | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |/ ._/ || | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |'. `\ | | |icq: 5483808 | ;/ / | | | | smk ) /_/| |.---.| | mobile: 0410-728-389 | ' `-`' | Berkeley, New South Wales, AU Coralament*Best Grötens*Liebe Grüße*Best Regards*Elkorajn Salutojn In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 11:22 am, you wrote: On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 21:45, Anne Wilson wrote: On Saturday 21 Dec 2002 9:38 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 11:51, Sascha Noyes wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I'm considering upgrading to silver membership. Not sure yet though. Sascha I wish I could say that I was being optimistic about Mandrake right now, but I think that there's going to be a bit of a shake up internally with Mandrake, and in the linux community overall. 'Fraid so, and I don't want to see Mandrake go. For those of us that have to pay USD for things, well, I'll hold onto my money right now and wait until the second quarter of the US financial year before spending it on services or products. Sorry, Stephen - I don't understand. Could you please explain more to an ignorant limey/pommie? Anne Ok...well, first and foremost, all of this is based on pure marketing. Marketing doesn't care if a product is viable, or foolproof, or even complete. The people that do the marketing go by demand, public opinion, and market analysis. Look at Mactintosh and Microsoft. Both are best known for throwing software to the public because it's expected. None of it is ever complete or fixed. As per the past 10 years, Microsoft is expected to release a new OS or version thereof every year. They've literally kept to exactly that. Whether or not it's viable or complete or really working doesn't matter at all. Redhat, Suse and Slackware literally hold their own - but in the past six months time, there has been a great demand by the public and by marketing analysts that a sleeker, more user friendly version of DESKTOP linux be released - immediately. So, Redhat, Xandros and Mandrake vied for the top slot. Mandrake did quite well with the initial installation and the user friendly configuration tools, but the engine behind was not complete - but it was released no matter what. Ditto with Redhat and version 8 of their distro. Too many unhappy campers have been made by both Redhat and Mandrake right now. And Mandrake really pushed things to the limits and now they're feeling the crunch from making too many sales and having to reorganize internally to be able to handle the load - which is costing them even more (bad planning). Redhat, on the other hand, have the cash to sit back and wait it out til the next release - besides, they're partnered with IBM - what better partner to have right now? Aside from that, Mandrake's marketing was aimed at the end user. NOT where the money is at. Selling to a few schmoe's here and there doesn't quite equal selling 10,000 copies to a large corporate entity. As things are moving faster than they have in the past four years, the changes in the linux community are moving swiftly - very swiftly. There are going to be some tough falls coming - and quite a bit of money lost - but overall, this is going to end up strengthening the linux community even moreso with stricter guidelines and more structured standards. Just as an example - you have two blokes - both pay $40USD for a linux distro. Bloke 1 installs and configures his distro and is able to quickly configure that distro to be a high-end server, a workstation, a network monitoring tool, a mail server, a firewall - all in a very short amount of time. Bloke 2 has to go back through his installation several times to get his OS to be used for development, or a server. Bloke 1 gets his up and running in less than 2 hours time. Bloke 2 spends more than four hours getting his distro right and trying to update drivers for devices. Which is going to win? That is merely rhetorical, mind you. I'm not trying to put one above the other - just looking at things from an outsiders perspective - like an IT manager would if he had to deal with having a tech installing an OS. The quicker of the two wins. Less time paid to the tech, less time troubleshooting or fixing. That's the economics of it. In the next two to six months, things are going to move very fast, and I just have this niggling suspicion that Mandrake's quiet internal re-org is going to become more than just that - and that they're going to be making some rash decisions that are going to plonk them outta the market - or knock them back far enough to where they're going to have to fight to get up again. Just my humble opinion based on observation. ...not bad for an ex-yank, ya reckon? Yeah - I understand what you are saying, Stephen, and you could well be right, I just hope that it isn't as bad as it looks. Marketing to the gullible is, as you say, the way to survive, and one of the attractions of linux is getting out of that trap. Yet the company has to survive, and if business partners are not forthcoming, what can they do, no matter how good the product is. On the bad side there is the tendency to rush distros out to meet
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Lyvim Xaphir wrote: snip After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX At the risk of offending some, I will give my thoughts, which will probably be unpopular (dons flame-retardant suit). 1. This whole situation leaves me with an unsettled feeling. I am not comfortable with begging as a business strategy and this is the second time this year. From other comments I have seen, this is already starting to get old for many. 2. Mandrake is one of the most popular distros. See http://www.distrowatch.com/ Of all the distros listed, why does Mandrake keep begging for cash? It looks to me like they are still suffering from some _very bad_ business decisions, mostly unrelated to Linux (the repositioning as an e-learning company fiasco). Are current Mandrake users supposed to bail out the company for the sins of the previous managment? Perhapsif Mandrake is to prosper (which is different from survival). 3. It appears that current management is under tremendous pressure from their venture capital investors to become profitable so their investments will pay off. I am not sure that it is my responsibility to contribute to this. 4. I use Mandrake, like it, and have purchased boxed sets. I wish them well and hope they develop a viable business plan, but frankly, begging is an embarrassment to the entire community. M$ must laughing its ass off. 5. If Mandrake dies the torch will be picked up by others and the Linux community will survive. Those who support Mandrake now will move to another distro and help it become stronger. The future of Linux is bright, but there will be shakeouts along the way. Remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Will Mandrake still be standing at the end of the day? I don't know, but the Linux community will be stronger. Just my honest opinion.flame away. Mike -- --- Mike Larson Registered Linux User # 246593 http://counter.li.org/ Linux Mandrake 9.0 KDE 3.0.3 Mozilla 1.2.1-xft --- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
- Original Message - From: Lyvim Xaphir [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 9:17 PM Subject: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX I have to say I'm middle-of-the-road here. I bought my distros and was happy with 8.2. However, I'm NOT happy with 9.0. If 9.0 is all they can do with the money I paid spent, then no, I'm not going to continue investing money in a company who seems to be following in the footsteps of microsoft when it comes to releasing something whether it's ready or not, and IMHO, 9.0 was not ready to be released. In fact, my 2nd machine which I've been fighting with using 9.0 will be downgrading back to 8.2 some time this weekend. Another thing is for sure, when future versions are released I'm definitely going to wait and watch the forums/lists before shelling out 70 bucks again. I was so happy with 8.2 that I bought 9.0 as soon as it was on the shelf thinking it would be even better but that does not seem to be the case, unfortunately. I'm just waiting for the day when Debian steps up to a 2.4 kernel. I'm getting comfortable enough with gnu/linux that I'm ready to make a switch from a distro that's easy to use to one that emphasizes stability. IMO having apps freeze and crash doesn't seem very easy to use. If I want that, I'll go back to M$. Now if Mandrake were to turn around with 9.1 and go back to the quality of 8.2, I'd sing its praises once again. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
At the risk of offending some, I will give my thoughts, which will probably be unpopular (dons flame-retardant suit). Yes what you had to say will probably offend some, but honestly a free-flow of ideas, expressed in a thoughtful manner such as you presented your ideas, should never offend. 1. This whole situation leaves me with an unsettled feeling. I am not comfortable with begging as a business strategy and this is the second time this year. From other comments I have seen, this is already starting to get old for many. I don't necessarily like begging either, but what makes me even more uneasy is the though that Mandrake might fold in the not too distant future, or than Mandrake 9.1 might be held up for lack of money. That is to say that a release should never go gold for purely monetary reasons, but rather when it's genuinely ready. I was strictly a Redhat user until a few months ago, when I converted to Mandrake. I absolutely hated Mandrake 8.2, but really liked 9. And now because I didn't like the path Redhat was taking I have converted my laptop and two servers to Mandrake linux and would seriously hate to see their services impacted in any way! 2. Mandrake is one of the most popular distros. See http://www.distrowatch.com/ Of all the distros listed, why does Mandrake keep begging for cash? It looks to me like they are still suffering from some _very bad_ business decisions, mostly unrelated to Linux (the repositioning as an e-learning company fiasco). Are current Mandrake users supposed to bail out the company for the sins of the previous managment? Perhapsif Mandrake is to prosper (which is different from survival). Well unfortunately we all don't seem to have much of a choice. They are in the position and it's either sink or swim, and philosophy has nothing to do with it truly. 3. It appears that current management is under tremendous pressure from their venture capital investors to become profitable so their investments will pay off. I am not sure that it is my responsibility to contribute to this. It would probably help us all to understand this a bit better to know exactly what is drawing down revenue still. Contracts? Would just be nice to know. 4. I use Mandrake, like it, and have purchased boxed sets. I wish them well and hope they develop a viable business plan, but frankly, begging is an embarrassment to the entire community. M$ must laughing its ass off. Well I also purchased, or rather ordered a boxed set of Mandrake 9 months ago, but never received it and despite many contacts, both by phone and via email I never found out what happened to my order, until I received an email from one of their marketing people. I vented on her and my email quickly got passed to someone up their marketing chain who promised to cancel my order and refund my credit card... which still hasn't been done after quite some time. Recent emails to the person who personally promised me they would refund my credit card have gone unanswered and I finally wrote a letter to my credit card issuer refuting the charges. They're now looking into it and can handle this for me. Despite Mandrake's money problems, they blew this whole roll out in a major fashion. I think too few people are talking about their problems getting the software they purchased and it's that experience, in my mind which causes me to now be a little more careful about how I give them my money. I'll wait from now on until the boxed sets are on store shelves before I purchase. At least that way I can guarantee I get what I paid for! 5. If Mandrake dies the torch will be picked up by others and the Linux community will survive. Those who support Mandrake now will move to another distro and help it become stronger. The future of Linux is bright, but there will be shakeouts along the way. Remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Will Mandrake still be standing at the end of the day? I don't know, but the Linux community will be stronger. Honestly I think that's terrible, and reeks too much of scavenging. Mandrake has produced a great product but got itself in a bind by bad business decisions, unrelated to their product. For them to fail based on unrelated business matters would be a terrible waste of time and effort. The object should be to make this thrive and succeed. We should help where we can, but we should also insist that Mandrake divest itself of whatever is holding it down. Anthony Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
Jerry, Maybe you would be willing to contribute some of your time to improve Mandrake's stability. There were numerous beta and release candidates for Mandrake 9.0. If you are having stability issues, the time to have them fixed is prior to the release being official. When Mandrake 9.1 is in beta and release candidate status, maybe you can download a copy (or buy one from cheapbytes) and submit the problems you've been experiencing to the development team. This is by no means an effort to slam you, it's simply that if we want the distro to work flawlessly and support all kinds of hardware combinations, then the more who join the testing effort the better. Joeb On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 08:55:44 -0800 jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Lyvim Xaphir [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 9:17 PM Subject: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX I have to say I'm middle-of-the-road here. I bought my distros and was happy with 8.2. However, I'm NOT happy with 9.0. If 9.0 is all they can do with the money I paid spent, then no, I'm not going to continue investing money in a company who seems to be following in the footsteps of microsoft when it comes to releasing something whether it's ready or not, and IMHO, 9.0 was not ready to be released. In fact, my 2nd machine which I've been fighting with using 9.0 will be downgrading back to 8.2 some time this weekend. Another thing is for sure, when future versions are released I'm definitely going to wait and watch the forums/lists before shelling out 70 bucks again. I was so happy with 8.2 that I bought 9.0 as soon as it was on the shelf thinking it would be even better but that does not seem to be the case, unfortunately. I'm just waiting for the day when Debian steps up to a 2.4 kernel. I'm getting comfortable enough with gnu/linux that I'm ready to make a switch from a distro that's easy to use to one that emphasizes stability. IMO having apps freeze and crash doesn't seem very easy to use. If I want that, I'll go back to M$. Now if Mandrake were to turn around with 9.1 and go back to the quality of 8.2, I'd sing its praises once again. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 December 2002 12:17 am, you wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX Well, I'm already a club member, and just renewed. I don't know about upgrading... -- /\ Dark Lord \/ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 00:17, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com I just signed up for the silver membership and probably will buy the power pack at the store. I just hope they can hang in there. I really enjoy Mandrake and do not look forward to time when they are not around. -- Pat Koch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Saturday 21 December 2002 11:19 am, you wrote: At the risk of offending some, I will give my thoughts, which will probably be unpopular (dons flame-retardant suit). Yes what you had to say will probably offend some, but honestly a free-flow of ideas, expressed in a thoughtful manner such as you presented your ideas, should never offend. 1. This whole situation leaves me with an unsettled feeling. I am not comfortable with begging as a business strategy and this is the second time this year. From other comments I have seen, this is already starting to get old for many. I don't necessarily like begging either, but what makes me even more uneasy is the though that Mandrake might fold in the not too distant future, or than Mandrake 9.1 might be held up for lack of money. That is to say that a release should never go gold for purely monetary reasons, but rather when it's genuinely ready. I was strictly a Redhat user until a few months ago, when I converted to Mandrake. I absolutely hated Mandrake 8.2, but really liked 9. And now because I didn't like the path Redhat was taking I have converted my laptop and two servers to Mandrake linux and would seriously hate to see their services impacted in any way! 2. Mandrake is one of the most popular distros. See http://www.distrowatch.com/ Of all the distros listed, why does Mandrake keep begging for cash? It looks to me like they are still suffering from some _very bad_ business decisions, mostly unrelated to Linux (the repositioning as an e-learning company fiasco). Are current Mandrake users supposed to bail out the company for the sins of the previous managment? Perhapsif Mandrake is to prosper (which is different from survival). Well unfortunately we all don't seem to have much of a choice. They are in the position and it's either sink or swim, and philosophy has nothing to do with it truly. 3. It appears that current management is under tremendous pressure from their venture capital investors to become profitable so their investments will pay off. I am not sure that it is my responsibility to contribute to this. It would probably help us all to understand this a bit better to know exactly what is drawing down revenue still. Contracts? Would just be nice to know. 4. I use Mandrake, like it, and have purchased boxed sets. I wish them well and hope they develop a viable business plan, but frankly, begging is an embarrassment to the entire community. M$ must laughing its ass off. Well I also purchased, or rather ordered a boxed set of Mandrake 9 months ago, but never received it and despite many contacts, both by phone and via email I never found out what happened to my order, until I received an email from one of their marketing people. I vented on her and my email quickly got passed to someone up their marketing chain who promised to cancel my order and refund my credit card... which still hasn't been done after quite some time. Recent emails to the person who personally promised me they would refund my credit card have gone unanswered and I finally wrote a letter to my credit card issuer refuting the charges. They're now looking into it and can handle this for me. Despite Mandrake's money problems, they blew this whole roll out in a major fashion. I think too few people are talking about their problems getting the software they purchased and it's that experience, in my mind which causes me to now be a little more careful about how I give them my money. I'll wait from now on until the boxed sets are on store shelves before I purchase. At least that way I can guarantee I get what I paid for! 5. If Mandrake dies the torch will be picked up by others and the Linux community will survive. Those who support Mandrake now will move to another distro and help it become stronger. The future of Linux is bright, but there will be shakeouts along the way. Remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Will Mandrake still be standing at the end of the day? I don't know, but the Linux community will be stronger. Honestly I think that's terrible, and reeks too much of scavenging. Mandrake has produced a great product but got itself in a bind by bad business decisions, unrelated to their product. For them to fail based on unrelated business matters would be a terrible waste of time and effort. The object should be to make this thrive and succeed. We should help where we can, but we should also insist that Mandrake divest itself of whatever is holding it down. Anthony Curious as a businessman of some experience. Can you say what these bad business decisions were? I don't mind shovelling a bit more down the tube, but I would be interested in why it's necessary. And I can't stand the grovelling. Lee -- Registered Linux user #223705 Give me ambiguity or give me something else. Want to buy your Pack or Services from
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
--- Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Curious as a businessman of some experience. Can you say what these bad business decisions were? I don't mind shovelling a bit more down the tube, but I would be interested in why it's necessary. And I can't stand the grovelling. Lee I find it disagreeable to call this grovelling. I think it's more along the lines of honesty, and having integrity enough to be honest with both their customers and their employees. Nobody is under some kind of illusion of being in a rosegarden right now, tiptoeing through the tulips. But just for the sake of argument, let's call it grovelling for a moment. If you want to look at it that way, then I feel sure that the employees of Enron, Golden Crossing, Worldcom, or various and sundry other enterprises in recent months probably feel very strongly that the business executives of said corporations could have benefitted in the extreme from some grovelling instead of making consious adult choices to be a bunch of self interested, arrogant greedy dirtbags. Those bastards could benefit from a dumptruck load of grovelling. Whatever you want to call it, a decided lack of arrogance and a decided bonus of honesty at the top is genuinely a diamond in the business world these days. I commend the Mandrake people for doing it. --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
On Sunday 22 December 2002 01:41 am, you wrote: --- Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Curious as a businessman of some experience. Can you say what these bad business decisions were? I don't mind shovelling a bit more down the tube, but I would be interested in why it's necessary. And I can't stand the grovelling. Lee I find it disagreeable to call this grovelling. I think it's more along the lines of honesty, and having integrity enough to be honest with both their customers and their employees. Nobody is under some kind of illusion of being in a rosegarden right now, tiptoeing through the tulips. But just for the sake of argument, let's call it grovelling for a moment. If you want to look at it that way, then I feel sure that the employees of Enron, Golden Crossing, Worldcom, or various and sundry other enterprises in recent months probably feel very strongly that the business executives of said corporations could have benefitted in the extreme from some grovelling instead of making consious adult choices to be a bunch of self interested, arrogant greedy dirtbags. Those bastards could benefit from a dumptruck load of grovelling. Whatever you want to call it, a decided lack of arrogance and a decided bonus of honesty at the top is genuinely a diamond in the business world these days. I commend the Mandrake people for doing it. --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Hmmm..Okay -- Registered Linux user #223705 Give me ambiguity or give me something else. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mandrake Raising More Capital
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I'm considering upgrading to silver membership. Not sure yet though. Sascha On Saturday 21 December 2002 12:17 am, Lyvim Xaphir wrote: Mandrake got slashdotted today, I just saw the article, then I saw an email from the Mandrake team. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/12/20/1815214.shtml?tid=147 I also read http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/future.php3 After reading that, and considering how much Mandrake linux has come to mean to me, I've decided to upgrade my membership. I was wondering, how many peeps here are going to either join the Mandrake club or upgrade their membership? I'm just curious, and was looking for a show of hands. ?? --LX __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - -- Please encrypt all correspondence. PGP key available from: http://individual.utoronto.ca/noyes/snoyes.asc - -- -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+A7r7gzJdfX+cTW8RAhwqAJ9zga7KMTK3U3ATEK11SW5QAnhDkACeNo7S c/QU3dRqispu5/dH136DJeI= =VlA1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
