O'Reilly to resell Mandrake Linux

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 9 Jun 2004 at 17:20

Linux vendor Mandrake has signed a deal with publisher O'Reilly to ship its product in the US and Canada.

The deal is significant for Paris-based Mandrake - well respected both for being one of the easiest to use and one of the quickest to market with the latest Linux technologies - as it gives the distro a leg up to compete with Linux giants Red Hat and Novell on their home turf. (Although Novell's Linux is SUSE, which is based in Germany).

The distribution's ease of use has made it a popular Linux alternative to Windows as a desktop. It has been ranked as the number one distribution on DistroWatch (www.distrowatch.com) for the past year and won the Linux Journal Reader's Choice Award in 2003 for Best Linux Distribution.

HP and Shuttle offer the operating system on their desktop products. But as Red Hat, Novell and Sun turn their attention to the Linux desktop, smaller fish such as Mandrake may struggle lacking the marketing might of their bigger rivals.

But Mandrake has found a friend in O'Reilly - a long time advocate of Open Source software. The book publisher will offer the Mandrakelinux Discovery 10.0 and Mandrakelinux PowerPack 10.0 products in bookstores and online. Initially, the professional PowerPack+ - aimed at a business environment - will not be on offer. O'Reilly will also include a MandrakeMove Live CD - from which it is possible to boot into Mandrake without installing it to disk - in its upcoming book 'Test Driving Linux: A Desktop User's Guide'.

'We're excited to team with O'Reilly, since they are one of the most influential open source supporters,' explains Francois Bancilhon, CEO of Mandrakesoft. 'We could hardly find a more significant partnership to leverage Mandrakesoft products' presence on the US scene.'