normally never..
I have not seen new lindows though, apparently it has user accounts (not all root) and fixit alot of stuff that people didn't like..
my main question is mdk's future.. I don't care really how they rate to mags.. I care about if there is gonna be a mandrake 10
I wouldn't worry. Even if Mandrake goes bust, the code is all GPLed, so I'm sure another company or group of volunteers will take it up and make a new distro called, I dunno, Ginseng Linux, maybe.
Actually, I'm not sure if the limited company model is the best way to go for distributions. It usually means getting venture capitalists involved, and as we've seen in the case of Mandrake, they often don't have a good idea of the realities of the Free Software world (maybe in America there are more geek-savvy investors). A foundation seems like a better way to run a Free software project, as the FSF, GNU and Debian have done (I admit this also has its problems, since such foundations can become isolated from end-users - I didn't go down the Debian route because when I first chose a distro, I downloaded the Debian installation guide and couldn't make head nor tail of it, so went for Redhat - and in those days, Redhat wasn't what you'd call user-friendly either).
Anyway, the important point is that Mandrake isn't the company, it's the software and the community that supports it. I hope the company lives long and prospers, but if it doesn't, the software will live on. You can't keep a good idea down.
Sir Robin
-- "The raisins may be the best part of a cake, but that doesn't mean that a bag of raisins is better than a cake." - Wittgenstein
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
