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It seems that a great Linux distribution has now been laid to rest. Mandrivia closed its doors today. It is a sad day for me personally as it was one of the first proper user friendly distributions, taking Red Hat's RPM's and building upon them for desktop use there was nothing close at the time. Their Graphical installer was stuff of legends when poor Windows and other Linux distributions were still on console installs, Their Partitioning application had no peers, the Windows equivalent was Partition Magic and it wasn't fit to lick Diskdrake' boots. Okay that's just a personal opinion.
Anyway with great sadness here is the TFA
http://uk.businessinsider.com/mandriva-goes-out-of-business-2015-5?r=US
For decades, Mandriva has been trying to take on Microsoft Windows with a Linux version of a desktop PC. Its claim to fame was a deal in 2007 with the Nigerian government in which it beat out Microsoft to put its flavor of Linux on 17,000 PCs used by Nigerian schoolchildren. It also had some success in Malaysia. But by 2012, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, a situation that had happened several times since its early days, in 1998.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Celestial on Wednesday May 27 2015, @06:31PM
R.I.P. Mandriva, long live Mageia. Mandriva has essentially been dead for the past few years. Most of the Mandrake/Mandriva developers forked their own distro Mageia [mageia.org] a couple of years ago, and it's been steadily improving since. The fifth version is expected "soon."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:58PM
I don't follow RH-based stuff too closely, so correct me if my memory is off.
After the corporation bought up Mandrake, they diverted a not-insignificant portion of the earnings to "educational" pursuits--and away from the core business.
The Linux efforts and the brand suffered because of that.
...and here we are with another defunct distro.
...or am I simplifying too much?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:15PM
From what i remember, they started giving the finger to the community, releasing bad releases, screwing it all up basically.
When the community turned away, they wondered why...
...i still miss Corel linux, lol. First distro i tried that i thought was amazing.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:03PM
Interesting, thanks. Mandrake was one of only two distros (the other being Puppy) that I've liked well enough to keep for very long. I'll have to give Magaia a try.... do they have screenshots anywhere? I don't see any on their site.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.