Mandriva: A Linux company that spent 17 years competing with Windows officially over

jeremy · 05-26-2015, 12:43 PM

Quote:

In a "sad" event for people who love Linux, French tech company Mandriva is being liquidated, according to a notice posted by the company.

Although Mandriva generated 553,000 in revenue in 2013, that wasn't enough to make it thrive in 2015.

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.

It was saved for a few more years by Jean-Manuel Croset, who joined as COO in 2011 and soon after became CEO.

But Croset's LinkedIn profile notes that his gig as Mandriva CEO came to an end in May, 2015. (He's focusing again on his company SimplyWorks, an IT consultant in Switzerland.)

LWN said: "It is a sad end for a company that has been pursuing the desktop Linux dream since 1998."

More at Business Insider...

Were any LQ members Mandriva users?

--jeremy

fatmac · 05-26-2015, 01:49 PM

I tried it for a bit when it first started, but when they wanted to charge, I moved on.

MDKDIO · 05-26-2015, 02:02 PM

Used Mandrake for a couple of years, before it became Mandriva (hence my nickname MDK = Mandrake).

Been a slacker ever since (even if I tried it before)

P.S. Thanks for the heads-up!!

dugan · 05-26-2015, 02:05 PM

I bought the first version of Mandrake. In a box.

Steve R. · 06-03-2015, 06:02 PM

So what will happen to the Mandriva sub-forum on LQ?
What is the policy when a distribution goes belly-up?

jeremy · 06-04-2015, 09:40 AM

We eventually archive distro forums for distributions that have gone inactive (which means all URL's are directly accessible, but the forum is not listed on the LQ forumhome).

--jeremy