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They didn't disappear, they changed name to Mandriva. Can't talk about other people, but I remember when it went about in popularity people that used linux alre

They didn't disappear, they changed name to Mandriva. Can't talk about other people, but I remember when it went about in popularity people that used linux already mostly deemed it as too windows-like for their taste. Me included. Windows people didn't like lack of applications they used and games. So it was in that weird limbo between two worlds where neither wanted to use it. Probably the greatest mistake was that they marketed it towards home/desktop users. Game somewhat changed with SUSE, at about the same time, that pushed their distro to corporate environments (and was helped by a fact that Linux himself used it quite often). Only a couple of years later (5-7) would we see Ubuntu and a bit larger array of desktop users applications which were around.

deutronium 11y ago
It looks like Mandriva shut down last year alas, according to Wikipedia.
rijoja 11y ago
Hm you're right about that. Also wasn't there a lot of people that thought qt wasn't open source enough. From what I recall there where some opposition against KDE for this reason. Shame really because it was quite neat.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  Some opposition is how I would not describe almost a crusade against it :) QT got quite more liberal later.
matt_morgan 11y ago
The name change came as a result of the acq/merger with Conectiva, which was popular (in relative terms) in Brazil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectiva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectiva
mpol 11y ago
I was a Mandrake user/developer back then too. The blue colors and cartoonlike icons turned off many people, though they didn't bother me. For years they were the most polished desktop distro. Then Ubuntu came, with some more abstract colors and icons, and they were all the craze suddenly (I never understood why, to this day). They always had problems financially. I don't think there was ever a good business-plan that worked. Sometimes Powerpacks, the MandrakeClub, and also donations. They were always on the brink of disaster. I think in the end the investors were tired and pulled the plug. They were quite big in France, in the military and governent departments. But apparently they don't pay as well as the US pays Red Hat. I still don't know any distro that has an installer that is as good as Mandrake's. And definitely no Mandrake Control Center thingie. Up to this day there is no equivalent to that. They had that nailed. (I do pity the almost yearly rewrites of those as management demanded, and the bugs that came from it). They were also the first distro with a list of pci id's and vendor id's, so drivers would be configured and loaded automatically. We now take it for granted, but this was non-existant on other distro's, you always had to meddle with modprobe.conf.

deutronium 11y ago

It looks like Mandriva shut down last year alas, according to Wikipedia.

rijoja 11y ago

Hm you're right about that. Also wasn't there a lot of people that thought qt wasn't open source enough. From what I recall there where some opposition against KDE for this reason. Shame really because it was quite neat.

Keyframe 11y ago
Some opposition is how I would not describe almost a crusade against it :) QT got quite more liberal later.

matt_morgan 11y ago

The name change came as a result of the acq/merger with Conectiva, which was popular (in relative terms) in Brazil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectiva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conectiva

mpol 11y ago

I was a Mandrake user/developer back then too. The blue colors and cartoonlike icons turned off many people, though they didn't bother me. For years they were the most polished desktop distro. Then Ubuntu came, with some more abstract colors and icons, and they were all the craze suddenly (I never understood why, to this day). They always had problems financially. I don't think there was ever a good business-plan that worked. Sometimes Powerpacks, the MandrakeClub, and also donations. They were always on the brink of disaster. I think in the end the investors were tired and pulled the plug. They were quite big in France, in the military and governent departments. But apparently they don't pay as well as the US pays Red Hat. I still don't know any distro that has an installer that is as good as Mandrake's. And definitely no Mandrake Control Center thingie. Up to this day there is no equivalent to that. They had that nailed. (I do pity the almost yearly rewrites of those as management demanded, and the bugs that came from it). They were also the first distro with a list of pci id's and vendor id's, so drivers would be configured and loaded automatically. We now take it for granted, but this was non-existant on other distro's, you always had to meddle with modprobe.conf.