[Mageia-discuss] Mageia logo proposals and selection

Thu Oct 14 11:10:33 CEST 2010

On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 15:37:29 +1300, Graham Lauder <yorick_ at openoffice.org> wrote:
+
+> On Thursday 14 Oct 2010 14:18:02 Tux99 wrote:
+> > I'm with wobo and Margot here, I fear this 'targeting' will simply result
+> > in restricting our potential user-base (i.e. rather than attracting more
+> > users it will turn off many users).
+> 
+> It is a well known fact, that you cannot be all things to all people, to try 
+> to do that would end up being everything to noone.  I would prefer to be the 
+> best we can be to those who grow to love the brand.  
+> 
+
+Wrong, from my POV.
+Its Linux. Linux has it all. You just have to choose what you want in
+your install, desktop software, server software or both.
+
+An example. Our admins at the university choose CentOS as their distro
+for labs and servers. CentOS is marketed as a RHEL derivative, focused
+on server and stability. Why CentOS ? Its RHEL but with free
+support. What about desktop software ? Its generally outated. What
+about HW support ? Same. CentOS people patches their soft, but what
+do you prefer, a home patched ancient kernel or an updated one with the real
+official and tested fixes ? If they wanted the best of both worlds
+they could choose Mandriva for labs desktops and CentOS for servers,
+if they are so fond of CentOS as server. But noooone wants to admin two
+linux distros.
+
+But me, I have always intalled Mandriva both for desktops and for servers.
+Reasons:
+- I had the best hw support
+- I had updated software
+- It is stable
+- I could use the SAME distro (even the same CD) to install a desktop
+  box for development, for office work, or a server with samba and ldap
+  and apache, or a HPC cluster with openmpi.
+
+Why ? I know Mandriva, I know it has all the soft that I need for all
+fields, and yes, ONE SIZE FITS ALL my meeds. But that is because I
+know Mandriva. Why Mandriva has no fame in the big picture of
+servers ? Because someone marketed it time ago as a desktop distro.
+But as a server is much better than any CentOS or Ubuntu out there.
+But nobody knows...
+
+Lets suppose the marketing decissions focus Mageia on desktop, and there
+is no effort in packaging things like MPI, the latest version of gcc,
+or no cluster filesystem. I don't want to use two distros. I don't like
+to go to external repos (like one has to do in CentOS) to get some
+common software, or a decently updated version of common things.
+I would have to look for another option. Now I like Mandriva because
+it has _all_ the _latest_ things I need.
+
+> That's the difference.  In these days of online build services there is 
+> arguably no reason that we could not create different package sets on 
+> different media for different markets and completely different branding for 
+> each set.
+> 
+
+I would not do the branding part. That's like using Ubuntu for desktops
+and RHEL for servers. It becomes using two different distros in the end.
+And usually people don't like that.
+
+> How many users does Mandriva have worldwide, compare that to the number of 
+> computer users and you will see that the "one size fits all" does not equal 
+> significant market share.   
+
+Two examples (from what I have seen, I know its not the general rule...):
+- Fedora/Ubuntu users: I want a modern desktop. I don't mind 'bout my
+  samba being modern and hit some recent obscure undisclosed bug.
+- RHEL/CentOS: I want a 3 years old samba, tested and debugged.
+  I don't mind about firefox being still 3.0.
+
+Why can't we have a distro that says 'Here you have the latest stable server
+software, with the latest hardware kernel support, all packed under the
+best looking desktop ever!!!'. Is it hard to do ? Mandriva community was doing.
+
+No focus, state clearly you have all and user just have to choose.
+For each interest group, just say 'what do you want, what do you need...
+here it is!'.
+
+Just my POV...
+
+-- 
+J.A. Magallon <jamagallon()ono!com>     \               Software is like sex:
+                                         \         It's better when it's free
+