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Mandrivia's Gael DuvalDocument ActionsCould you tell us who you are and what you do art Madriva????I'm the initial creator of Mandriva Linux (back in 98) and co-founder of Mandriva (ex Mandrakesoft). I'm currently in charge of communication in the company. What features have been added since the name change and for those who don't know why did Mandrake soft change their name???We're in the process of releasing the first official Mandriva Linux version since the purchase of Conectiva and Lycoris. This lead, for instance, to new features such as the integration of smart along with urpmi, to handle software packages easily, and to a better desktop experience. Regarding the name change, we transformed Mandrakesoft to Mandriva because Conectiva was merging with us. Mandrakesoft + Conectiva = Mandriva. On the other hand, this was a solution for us to escape from the Hearst threat which owns "Mandrake The Magician" trademark and wanted our Mandrake trademarks and domain names. What features does the latest merger add or expand mandrakes distro to what new areas are covered by the new mergers etc???The Conectiva development forces empower the product with new features, and more professionalism than ever. On the other hand, Lycoris brings us great perspectives on the desktop, the achievement is not complete yet though. Will Madriva have more package's now because of the conectiva merger or buy out???I'm not sure there will be much more packages since in 2005 there was already around 12 000 packages in the distro. No many Linux distributions have as many packages as ours actually. How has this changed the coding or has it for Mandriva???Not really coding change. It's a new organization for research & development because in addition to the Paris teams, to north American and other European remote engineers, there is now the Brazilian team. I hope there won't be a soccer worldcup between France and Brazil too soon! :) What issues has the merger brought about in other areas that you feel you could take on that conectiva couldn't???No issues... What has changed at the core of Mandriva???We're now a 130-people company instead of 50 one year ago... This has organisational consequences and opens many new opportunities of development and partnerships. On the product side, the core remains the same, but it will hopefully be better and more comprehensive than ever. Has any bugs popped up that because of the new coding that were taking care of in the old code???Not as far as I know... With The Dell and the HP bundle deal can we expect to see more ???(Mandriva on Dell and HP laptops)As far as we know, this is the first time that Dell offers a consumer laptop with Linux, and they do it with Mandriva Linux, in Europe first. This confirms Mandriva's excellent reputation to offer advanced and consumer-oriented Linux products. As a result, we hope that this will lead to new projects in this area. What would Mandriva like to see your partners add to Linux and Mandriva as a whole???More visibility outside the Linux community would be great. This is certainly the best value they can add to Mandriva and Linux, because major players have massive communication capabilities that we don't have yet. What is happening with the Mandrake-Move Cd's will their be a Mandriva Move CD???The Move has been a good success, and we will continue to offer such nomad products. This will start with a new Globetrotter soon, our nomad hard-drive pre-loaded with Mandriva Linux. Why did Mandrake soft Buy or merge with Conectiva???Since the recovery of Mandrakesoft, we've been examining all oppportunities of development. And purchasing other companies is one of the options to grow.
What did Conectiva have that Mandrake didn't???They have a big and growing local market where we do not compete, they have good technology and expertise that can benefit to Mandriva. What would you like to see happen as far as hardware for Linux in general???What hardware was added by the merger???I'm not aware of any specifical new hardware, but it's clear that doubling our R&D capabilities potentially improves the products in many areas, including the supported hardware. With The Dell and HP deal do you get to have access to drivers and other hardware items to add them to your support list???Partnerships with hardware vendors opens us the door to new hardware, and well fit test centers. As a result it benefits to the product.
There is no such plan for now. What kinds of new software should we be on the look out for from Mandiva???We include all software that is requested by our users in addition to all software that we consider to be useful. But our added-value is rather on the integration of this software. We have to have it run well in the Linux environment, with as few troubles as possible. Can we install a version of Mandriva for I686 with Prelinking now or will that be release at a later date???(I don't know - have to ask) What is your 64bit support like as of now???Excellent. We are working with both AMD and Intel to offer x86-64 versions of Mandriva Linux. The new 2006 release candidate is distributed both in 32 & 64 bits. What issues do you see coming with 64bit software and drivers???There are issues with binary drivers or small parts of code in assembly code for instance. But most often, a basic recompilation is enough for free software. The Gcc compiler generates code which is adapted to 64 bit processors. Have you been in talks with ATI or Nvidia to bring CrossFire or SLI to Linux????We're closely working with ATI and Nvidia, but I don't know the status for CrossFire and SLI. How can a new user get the best features out of Mandriva???He can purchase a Mandriva Powerpack or Powerpack+. These products are well suited to individual users.
The community around Mandriva is more active than ever because they know all the potential of the current Mandriva growth. Why would a new use choose Mandriva over say Xandros,Linspire,Mepis or another distro???I won't run into a comparison chart. But basically: Mandriva always offers and full Free Software version, which is officially supported with security and bugfixes updates, there is a very large community of users and contributors around Mandriva, which means real support for users. Last but not least, we offer one of the most comprehensive Linux product. How do you feel the issue of multi distros all trying to one up each other has hurt or aided the Linux community???It's competition, and it helps Linux to grow and improve quickly. What would you like to see happen with and from the Linux Standards base and board???The LSB is really the only way to go for Linux if we don't want to see what happened to UNIX many years go: many UNIX systems which were incompatible. Does Mandriva use LSB in it's operating system???Yes. Mandriva Linux is LSB-compliant (and LSB certified for several corporate products). Very fortunately, thanks to our efforts and to the LSB, a package designed for a Linux distribution is already likely to install and run on another Linux distribution and in worse cases, it can be easily recompiled for the new target OS. How can your deals with HP and Dell aid the community to get more games ported or was this just a added bonus to your company and not Linux as a whole???Well, to be honnest, we're not really running after game support in Linux. I mean: it's good to have games supported in Linux but this is not our priority for now. Regarding the deals with HP and Dell, this benefits mostly to Mandriva, but I think that each time a Linux player benefits from a partnership with a major player in the hardware industry, this benefits to Linux as a whole. What percentage or your code is contributed under the GPL???100% of Mandriva code is released under the GPL or LGPL. What does Mandriva give back to the Linux world???First of all we permanetly contribute code or fixes to major Free Software projects (this includes Linux, but also GNOME, KDE and others). On the other hand we release a Free Software system called Mandriva Linux without trying to make it proprietary. |
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