Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter – Issue #19

This Week’s Summary: Mandrake Linux Gamer’s Edition — An Ideal
Christmas Gift!; Mandrake OEM Program Details; Financial Corner;
Mandrake in the News; What’s Cooking at MandrakeSoft?; Business Case of the
Week; Headlines from MandrakeForum.

Gamer's Edition of Mandrake Linux -- An Ideal Christmas Gift!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Christmas is coming... have you already written your letter to Santa? If not, 
it's time to take a look at the brand new "Gaming Edition" of Mandrake Linux 
8.1, which comes bundled with Transgaming's "WineX" (enhanced version of 
Wine, optimized for DirectX support) and the legendary "Sims"!

The "Gaming Edition" is now available for pre-order at MandrakeStore,
and will be available in selected stores in USA, Canada, GB, and
Australia too. In the meantime, you can read an exclusive review of the 
product at MandrakeForum written by our usual labor mouse (Deno) with a 
little help from his family:

1) Product description at MandrakeSoft.com:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/81/gaming-edition
2) Online sales at MandrakeStore:
http://www.mandrakestore.com/en/storemdksa-81gaming.php
3) Review and discussion on MandrakeForum:
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1397


Mandrake OEM program details.
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MandrakeSoft's OEM program has been newly positioned and is now much 
friendlier towards 'small' OEM partners than ever before. Even more 
importantly, the process of becoming a MandrakeSoft OEM partner has been 
greatly simplified, and a web page has been set up to explain "everything you 
need to know in order to become a Mandrakesoft OEM partner":

1) OEM program description on Mandrakesoft.com:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/partners/oem/program
2) Some insider's info and discussion on MandrakeForum
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1387


Financial Corner.
----------------------------------------
A history of the company's stock price is now available online at:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/trade

After a decline in the stock price during September and October, MandrakeSoft 
stock has come back strong with a significant increase since the begining of 
the month. Regarding the market valuation, it's interesting to note that it 
is currently valued at less than 2% of Red Hat and under 0.00005% of 
Microsoft.

For those who want to trade MandrakeSoft stock outside of Europe, the best 
online broker seems to be Keytrade.com. If you find a better solution please 
let us know at jmiller@mandrakesoft.com.


Mandrake in the News
----------------------------------------
The "Distribution Watch" website has been very active lately with the 
introduction of their "The Linux Distribution Game". In addition to
introductory text which invites you to try living without Microsoft Windows 
for one month, the article contains descriptions of the main Linux 
distributions, and several lesser known ones.

Although fairly simplistic, the comparisons offered on "Distribution
Watch" is much more accurate than any other distribution comparison we
have seen this year. If nothing else, at least the author realizes that "one 
size doesn't fit all', and the fact that Slackware Linux doesn't exist as a 
commercial entity anymore doesn't mean that this distribution is dead. 
Insisting on the fact that Mandrake Linux provides very stable servers, while 
being very much on a 'bleeding edge' as far as GUI programs are concerned 
would be nitpicking...
http://distrowatch.com/game.htm

Just a few days later, DistroWatch introduced a novel way of measuring
distribution popularity: they are analyzing their Web-logs, and
estimating the popularity of a distribution based on number of visitors using 
a distribution. Of course, there are limits to the accuracy of this method, 
but the same can be said about any other way of estimating numbers of Linux 
users. Distribution rankings based on the results of this measurement are 
available in a table on the main DistroWatch
page. At the moment I am writing this article, Mandrake Linux ranks
second.
http://www.distrowatch.com

While we are at "estimating number of Linux users" theme, it is worth
noting that LinuxCounter has recently cleaned up old accounts, and at the 
same time received a lot of additional publicity. For a long time considered 
"obsolete" by the same folks who considered GNU organization obsolete, 
LinuxCounter still stands as the only place on the web which offers free 
statistics about the growth of Linux usage. At this moment, 17% of registered 
machines in LinuxUser database are running Mandrake
Linux (up from 10% 6 months ago), which puts Mandrake Linux in third
place behind Red Hat and Debian.
http://linuxcounter.org

Even better are results of online polls. We haven't seen a single online
poll which doesn't show Mandrake in front of all other distributions in
last few months. Here are some examples:

- PC Magazine: Windows killer...
http://www.pcmag.com/poll_archive/0,3044,p%253D1055%2526bn%253D1,00.asp
- PC Magazine:  Favorite distro...

- Linux.com: Best distribution for beginners
http://www.linux.com/polls/index.phtml?pid=128
- Linux.about.com: Which Linux distros are you running?
http://linux.about.com/library/polls/bl_poll_distros.htm

History class: results of Slashdot poll 2 years ago.
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?section=&qid=562&aid=-1


What's Cooking at Mandrakesoft?
----------------------------------------
Exclusively for newsletter readers: Our printing specialist has found
out a way to seamlessly integrate commercial applications such as Star
Office with our printing system. Expect to see changes in printing subsystem 
being submitted to Cooker these days, and full explanation of the changes on 
MandrakeForum once we are sure everything works perfectly.


Business Case of the Week;
----------------------------------------
Picking a 'Business Case of the Week' has been difficult this time.
Our choice went to "Bartram Enterprises", a company which specializes in
"network security".
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=165&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Bartram Enterprises uses MandrakeSoft products in a variety of ways,
including the use of Single Network Firewall as a base of a
"stand-alone, pre-configured solution for small business", and provides 
security services to Complete Computer Solutions - ISP 
(http://www.ccsisp.com/), and their customers. From CCS-ISP
home-page:

Bartram Enterprises will be handling a significant portion of the
design, implementation, security and support functions of the core CCS-ISP 
network. Bartram Enterprises is the only registered VAR, consultant and 
integrator of Linux-Mandrake in the greater Buffalo region of New York State.

Every "bizcase" counts: please share your story with others by
submitting it to MandrakeBizcases.com 
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/submit.php


Top Stories of the Week from MandrakeForum
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Migrating from Linux to Windows (Yeah sure)

Microsoft Germany recently started a new round of anti-Linux campaign,
and offers attractive prizes for best testimonies of the "Migrating from
Linux..." type. Guess this gives a new importance to testimonies of the 
opposite type on MandrakeBizcases.com
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1389


Viewing DVD movies under Mandrake Linux 8.1

'Canek' explains how to view DVDs under Mandrake Linux. This inevitably
caused discussion about "best DVD viewer under Linux"...
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1369


Day after at Linux counter

A month ago, LinuxCounter announced that it will drop all accounts which
have not been accessed for two years or more. On one hand, this resulted
in loss of many users who registered years ago; but on the other hand, it 
gave LinuxCounter more visibility, resulting in a large number of new 
registrations.
See a summary of "Great cleaning" results on MandrakeForum.
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1360


Netscape 6.2 - A Review

Tom tested the latest (6.2) version of Netscape for you. Apparently,
Netscape developers have finally managed to put together a really good
product. Time to finally bury and forget the aging Netscape 4.x browsers?
http://mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1388