[Mageia-discuss] Will Mageia meet small businesses' needs?

[Margot]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:53:05 -0700 (PDT)
Henri de Solages <mongolie2006-com at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> I've been using Mandrake and Mandriva for about 8 years, and I
> used to pay for it. I stopped paying because of the poor quality
> of Mandriva Store service. Now I have a small web creation
> business: Fiable.biz . http://Fiable.biz We still use Mandriva
> 2009 spring in 2 computers, but shifted this year to Ubuntu for 2
> others.
> 
> My concern is: will Mageia meet the needs of small businesses?
> 

Define 'small business'! I am a small business - very small, just
me. In fact, I am two small businesses - freelance IT Consultant,
and also a Sales Leader with Avon. In the USA, a 'small business'
can have up to 750 employees, depending on which state it is based
in and the type of business. A business with 750 employees will
have very different needs from a one-person business.

> 1) Small businesses are not very interested by the famous
> "pro-choice" policy of Mandriva. I would prefer a system that
> JUST WORKS rather than the choice between several buggy solutions
> (KDE/Gnome, Kmail/Thunderbird etc.). And I just don't think a
> small company or a small community can maintain so many different
> competitive solutions. Making choice requires a strong
> management, because any choice will make some users unhappy. But
> my experience is that any computer system, because of its legacy,
> becomes heavier and heavier, and is one day replaced by a
> simpler, completely new one, with no legacy. I've just given up
> Firefox for Chromium for that. The weakest is the management, the
> quickest the system become unmanageable.
> 
> 2) Small businesses need a paid, affordable, reliable SUPPORT.
> Forums are helpful, but quite often one doesn't find the needed
> answer that way. The payment should of course be possible by
> MasterCard or Visa card.
> 
> 3) Small businesses need an efficient way to FIND INFORMATION
> QUICKLY. Fragmented information systems like official web pages +
> mailing list + wiki + forums + bugzilla + support pages, some of
> these in different languages, make information very difficult to
> find. Although English is the mother tongue of nobody at
> Fiable.biz, I would prefer no mailing list, no forum, no support
> system, but an English wiki with discussion in the wiki's
> discussion pages, rather than in forums, an English bugzilla for
> bugs and enhancement wishes, and possibly wikis in other
> languages with systematic links to the corresponding English page.
> 
> 4) Some small businesses, like Fiable.biz, would be very
> interested in MULTISEAT (several seats on one central unit),
> because it's cheaper than buying one computer per employee.
> Unfortunately, this is not provided in an easy way by any
> distribution, as far as I know. If you know a distribution
> provided this, please let me know.
> 

You are talking about the needs of your own small business.
Other small businesses (from 1 to 750 staff) will have quite
different needs. It is very unlikely that Mageia will satisfy
the needs of ALL types of small business. It is also very
unlikely that Mageia will suit the needs of all individuals,
or of all LARGE businesses. However, if you participate in
the project in some way, it is likely that you will be able to
have some influence over the shaping of the distro to meet the
needs of your own business - much more likely than if you were
to volunteer for, say, Microsoft!    



-- 
Margot
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**Otford Ducks Computers**
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