Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, photo by jimgris

Summary: Mandriva is up for sale; Brockmeier seemingly hopes that Mandriva won't find a buyer

THE old S.u.S.E.-Mandriva rivalry in Europe might not be the cause for this bizarre piece from Novell's former booster (he no longer works for Novell [1, 2], which is also up for sale), but either way, here he is commenting about Mandriva's fate, not wishing them what they want.

Maybe it's better if Mandriva doesn't find a buyer

[...]

As a non-Mandriva user, I don't really have a stake in whether the company succeeds or fails or whether something called Mandriva continues to exist in any form. As a Linux user, I love the variety that exists and having many choices of Linux distros -- but I also see enormous wasted effort. Too much work, too few hands. And, especially and unfortunately, too many folks unwilling to compromise on any features or technical decisions when they can just fork or have their own playground -- which ultimately results in tons of duplicate work and a fragmented environment.

There are other posts that are jokes about Mandriva, which is one of my favourite distributions of GNU/Linux.

Mandbuntu will initially ship with only one desktop environment/windows manager, the newly reconfigured (just for Mandbuntu) DuXfce. Rumor again informs us that a KDuxE version will be available soon. More rumors from lower level custodial crew claim that the French duck dish theme will continue. The next version will probably be Mandbuntu 12.0 – Peking Duck.

For those who believe that this is bad for Mandriva customers, well... in the worst case scenario it is easy to move from one distribution to another, which actually makes GNU/Linux a much safer choice for businesses. There are more contingencies and control of code, which proprietary operating systems cannot ever offer.

To give one example of a contingency, there is PCLinuxOS (rooted in Mandrake/riva), whose latest version Susan Linton has just reviewed, concluding:

Perhaps trumping all the technical aspects of this distro is a sense of ownership for its users. PCLinuxOS is one of the best examples of the "community distro." The small band of developers take suggestions and cues from their users very much to heart and even solicit opinions, artwork, and software requests. This is perhaps the key to PCLOS' success. It allows the community to feel not only involved, but important to development. They all can feel as though they contributed at least in some small way.

Our daily links contain many more reviews of PCLinuxOS 2010 and articles about Mandriva's situation (it is not the focus of this Web site). I ran PCLinuxOS 2010 on my computer 2 weeks ago and it was splendid. Mandriva users have nothing to worry about, no matter what happens next. ⬆