Mandriva Linux Attracts 2,000 Partners
When it comes to Linux, most U.S. headlines involve Canonical, Novell or Red Hat. But another Linux distribution — from Mandriva S.A. of Paris, France — is making a name for itself in the global IT channel. Consider this: More than 2,000 IT partners have lined up to back Mandriva, up from about 1,200 in 2007, The VAR Guy has learned. Here’s the scoop.
Fact is, The VAR Guy’s readers — rather than our resident blogger — have been crowing about Mandriva for months. Each time The VAR Guy writes about Canonical, Novell or Red Hat, another reader seems to step in and evangelize Mandriva. Loudly.
Founded in 1998, Mandriva (formerly known as Mandrakesoft) focuses on both the corporate and consumer Linux markets, and seems to be enjoying growth on multiple fronts.
According to Mandriva officials, the company:
- will generate roughly 42 percent of sales through channel partners in 2008, up from roughly 39 percent in 2007.
- has expanded to roughly 200 employees this year, up from 120 in 2007.
- has grown to support more than 2,000 partners, up from 1,200 in 2007.
- Gaurav Parakh, VP of Mandriva’s Partnership Network, is driving the company’s channel programs.
Mandriva provided the data points above as part of The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50 survey — which will identify the top open source companies in the IT channel. (The survey closes December 18, with results to be published in January 2009.)
How does Mandriva’s partner momentum compare to the company’s Linux rivals? The VAR Guy will share his complete perspective when he unveils the Open Source 50 in January 2009. In the meantime, our resident blogger found Mandriva far more partner-savvy than he had expected.
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Var Guy it only took you a decade to open your eyes but at least you opened them. Ubuntu gets the hype while Mandriva quietly gains momentum.
It’s good that Mandriva has been gaining partners. It almost looked like Mandriva was going to tank in this economy.
Funny you mention someone always steps in to advocate mandriva, and loudly at that. When I did some work for a local event, I remember contacting the Mandriva community about participating, and they really did create quite a ruckus. I had hoped that we would get a large turnout from them, only to have none of them show.
Also, about 5 people in the Mandriva forums managed to spam our distro poll to make it look like Mandriva is on top. Mandriva is nice, but the community is missing a lot of leadership, and a code of conduct.
Jon: Thr VAR Guy hopes the Mandriva community takes your feedback as constructive criticism and not as an act of war…
I hope they would take it as constructive criticism! 🙂
For me, I want to see Linux succeed and not just some particular distro. In that light, I hope Mandriva (the corporation) would put a little muscle behind it’s community. Mandriva’s a good system, and they could really take it far if the community banded together and put their minds to it.
The last time I messed with Mandrakesoft was around version 9 or something. I actually purchased 2 boxed sets (a version 7 and version 9) as a show of support for an open source project. The product was okay at the time, but I didn’t have any machines available that had enough muscle to run it well. I consequently played around mostly w/DSL, Feather, Puppy, Deli, etc. BUT, lately I’ve been hearing more comments from others of what a nice distro Mandriva has become.
My primary machine is Sidux on a Dell 1501 (for almost a year) and it’s very nice. But I’ve got a few extra machines sitting about (much to the irritation of my wife). So I guess it’s time to try Mandriva again.
So you’ve finally after all the harping from Mandriva community members, like myself, discovered Mandriva. It’d funny, in a sad sort of way, that you’ve finally discovered Mandriva at this time, a time when I and many other Mandriva community members are about to jump ship over the sacking of Adam Williamson and Oden.
Maybe you’d like to do a piece on that.
Tracyanne: The VAR Guy has been sitting around in Starbucks, listening to iTunes, and waiting for you to weigh in on this blog post. Yes, very interesting management changes. But The VAR Guy is pressed with other deadlines… and alleged meetings in New York. He’ll be back with a closer look at Mandriva before the New Year.
I’ve always had problems taking anyone, who refers to themself in the 3rd person, seriously.
The VAR guy should spend fewer column inches crowing about himself– The VAR Guy this, the VAR Guy that, sheesh, please replace it with some content.
I like Linux as a mature OS, now it also has Nvidia restricted drivers that actually pump out sopme decent FPS!
LInux or Apple, these are the choices 🙂
Ben Adamson: Column inches? Um, perhaps you are looking for a magazine? The VAR Guy doesn’t offer one of those…
I suspect The VAR Guy gets paid by the word and has done the math…
jon: don’t you find it so boring when Ubuntu wins all the damn polls? I mean, come on, let’s have some variation!
Occasionally people will highlight a poll in the forums, so of course a lot of forum members go and vote for it. If it’s a small poll and it hadn’t shown up in any other distro’s forum, you might conceivably get an unrealistic skew towards Mandriva in the results. But that happens for other distros too: a poll will get posted in the Ubuntu or Fedora forums, and that distro will win it.
I’m not aware of any occasion where a group of people ‘in the Mandriva forums’ – that is, a group who identify themselves as being from there and co-ordinate there – have intentionally thrown any poll. And if I were, I’d discourage it. All I know of are cases where someone’s mentioned the existence of a poll in the general chat forum and lots of different people have gone to vote for it legitimately, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Two words: Adam Williamson.
I use Mandriva because when I started setting my new system up I had a handful of live cd’s and it was the only one that picked everything up (apart from my sound card – realtek hd). The community side of things sucks, the people are nowhere near as helpful as the Kubuntu Group And nowhere near as chilled out as the PCLinuxOS people which I have used previously. But from a technical point of view the Distro itself is great. It does everything I want it to do and more from day one.
I don’t understand the level of feeling that people are showing re the employees of Mandriva (I haven’t been a Mandriva user for long) but if I had done that while I was a Windows user I would have given up on it way before we got to 95. I do understand the community feeling that Linux has regardless of Distro but Mandriva shows the least, out of the ones that I have used, in their forums.
Captain Tux, Adam Williamson: If The VAR Guy got paid by the word he would have retired by now. And let’s be clear: He welcomes your comments and the debate. That way, readers gain multiple perspectives.
I’m also another “community” member, and although i can conceide there is not enough community visibility for users needing help, this is, from my point of view due tot the fact that there are many channels available and it is not always easy to figure out where to go.
It is becoming more and more clear now that the forum is the main *free* entry point, http://forum.mandriva.com/
Nice to hear that the “enterprise” part is getting more and more visibility, there is a definitive need for others big linux companies besides redhat, novell/suse and canonical/ubuntu, i really hope Mandriva will be this one.
And for those suspecting the numbers are not true, you can see at this page (http://www.mandriva.com/enterprise/en/company/press) the annoucements made by the company, so you can decide by yourself 🙂 The 2008 year was quite a decent one for partnerships apparently.
I’ve used Mandrake/Mandriva on and off for almost ten years now, and will continue to use as distro of choice. Has ALWAYS worked on any piece of hardware thrown at it.
Readers: Is anybody running Mandriva in a business setting across lots of desktops and servers? If so, The VAR Guy would like to hear more. A lot more…
VAR guy: relax, it was just a joke. I’ll see if we can send some people who are using MDV in a business setting your way. Of course, they will be an absolutely representative cross-section of the entire current and former user base, chosen in a highly scientific, disinterested and unbiased fashion. 😉
Adam: No worries. The VAR Guy has been the victim of jokes, insults (and far worse) on this site (and others). But in the end, he appreciates the dialog.
just purchased a HP 2910 laptop with vista and dual boot with Mandriva 2009…had a feeling every piece of hardware would work out of the box and did as it has in the past….the built in wireless, builtin webcam, video, even the remote control works with mythtv without LIRC which surprised me……….
Never been disappointed with Mandriva since 1999.
I have been using Linux since 1999 when i bought for 10$ a Corel distro. But i soon downloaded Mandrake 8.0 as my main distro, I must have tried 30 other distro over the years on a spare partition (triple boot or more). But i always had a version of Mandriva as my main OS, (it just work) 🙂
The Mandi Guy: Do you use Mandriva for business or for pleasure? Seems like lots of personal PC users are joining the conversation, but The VAR Guy isn’t hearing much about business deployments involving Mandriva…
I use Mandriva personally and at work as well. On both desktops, laptops, and servers. The staff and I are very pleased with it.
To the VAR Guy: To answer your question, no i do not use it for business, but i am confident it would perform pretty good if all the proper tools would be installed. I use it to run a LAMP server for a 5 computers network and over the internet with my .com. As a personnel desktop its pretty hard to beat.
But I’ve heard 3 facts about Mandiva, too:
1. Very recently they cut 2000 employees
2. Several years ago, Mandrake was bankrupt.
3. After bankrupt, the company merged Brazil’s Connectiva distribution and switched its’ name, so is it again, as you said, the Paris-based?
Peter: Thank you for the balance. The VAR Guy’s original blog looks a little naive because it didn’t mention the layoffs and management upheaval at the company (item 1 on your list). Not sure about item 2, in terms of whether they went bankrupt. Mandriva does, indeed, list itself as a Paris company.
1. Mandriva has never *had* 2,000 employees, so we’ve certainly never cut that many. Myself and most other external contractors are leaving at the end of this month as a cost-cutting measure, but that’s only about five people. I’m not aware of anyone else leaving at this time.
2. Yes, in 2003, Mandrake (as was) went into ‘cessation de paiement’, which can most closely be compared to Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the States. This ended in 2004.
3. Indeed, Mandrake and Conectiva merged in 2005 (technically Mandrake bought Conectiva but practically speaking it worked out more as a merger). The merged company was renamed actually because of a ridiculous lawsuit (I really don’t have the energy to go into it here) which meant we longer had the right to use the name Mandrake, otherwise it may not have been. Mandriva now has a large office in Brazil (Curitiba), Conectiva’s former base, but all upper management is still based in Paris.
VAR Guy: can you email me so we can pass on some customer contacts in a non-public channel? You don’t appear to have an easily available contact address.
Adam: thevarguy [at] ninelivesmediainc.com, assuming The VAR Guy really exists. Thanks.
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