Mandriva Linux開發核心人員訪談(轉)

Mandriva Linux開發核心人員訪談(轉)[@more@]　　作者：Jem Matzan　來自：thejemreport.com

　　Mandriva Linux，這個曾經最流行的桌面版本的GNU Linux作業系統發行版，現在同樣還有一批非常執著的fans，就想當初Mandriva Linux 在99創立的時候一樣。他們當時的理念就是製作一份易於安裝、配置、容易使用的、技術上現在的Linux發行版。在經過去年的合併風波後，先後兼併了Conectiva和Lycoris。使得自身規模數倍擴大，且獲得了大量的有經驗的Linux開放人員。這樣使得他們有更好的能力去挑戰目前桌面Linux市場的兩家商業運作的霸主：Redhat和Novell SuSE。

　　下面是對Mandriva Linux公司的三位核心技術人員的採訪。

　　Who are you? What is your role in the company or project, and what are you responsible for?

　　Adam Williamson: I'm Adam Williamson. I have two official jobs, one as the editor of the community newsletter and general proofreader, and one as the Mandriva Club Chief Monkey. In that role my main task is to represent the company in the Club forums, helping people wherever I can and providing information on the company and our products. I'm also often involved in testing and developing new products and services, as my job gives me an understanding both of what customers want and what is technically possible for developers.

　　What drew you to Mandriva?

　　AW: I started using Mandriva long before I joined the company. I decided to try Linux for the usual 'geeky' reasons - the annoyances of Windows combined with technical interest in another way of doing things. My father (who's a software engineer) bought Mandrake Linux 8.1 on the strength of a recommendation in one of the magazines he reads. We had trouble using it with our ADSL connection at home, but when I went to university, I installed 8.2 on my new computer, and I've stuck with Mandriva ever since. I became involved with Cooker, the development distribution, and saw a post on the list advertising the writing/proofreading job. It seemed a perfect match with my Linux interest and my English language skills, so I applied, and was hired a few months later. I was offered the Club job and since I spent so much time on the forums anyway it made sense to get paid for it!

　　What's the best part about Mandriva's GNU/Linux distributions?

　　AW: The openness and the broad scope. More than any other distribution except Debian, Mandriva is a distribution you can use to do anything, from running a normal desktop to running on a laptop, a server farm or a thin client network. When I come across an interesting application there's usually a package right in the distribution. As for openness, Mandriva has always been developed in the open and with the help of contributors who have a lot of input into the products we eventually create. Before I joined the company, it was good to feel that my input as a member of the Cooker testing / developing community was important and appreciated. I try to preserve and extend that spirit of openness wherever I can in my work with the company.

　　What other open source projects have you worked on in the past?

　　AW: I haven't worked directly on any other projects; I'm not an engineer or packager, and most projects don't request proofreading. If anyone who reads this is involved with some kind of open source project and feels it could benefit from my skills, do feel free to get in touch! I do try and work 'upstream' wherever I can, though. This weekend, for instance, I submitted some patches for HAL to provide support for the phone I'm currently using, and to recognize the correct paths for audio files on a couple of other devices.

　　What is the most overlooked fact or most commonly misunderstood idea about Mandriva? What should people know that they don't know from other interviews and reviews of Mandriva Linux?

　　The two most common misconceptions about Mandriva are that it's less free and open than it really is, and that it's a 'newbie' distribution. I often come across the misconception -- I don't know where it started -- that you have to pay for updates for Mandriva Linux, or that you can't get a 'proper' version for free, or something along those lines. We provide updates for free like the other major end-user distributions, and we've always provided the three-disc Free release -- which is a full, working Linux distribution -- at no charge. In fact, as a starving student, before I joined the company I always used the Free edition! As for being a 'newbie' distribution, Mandriva does try and take new and inexperienced users into account and make the Linux experience as easy and enjoyable as possible for them, but that's not the whole story. We provide graphical configuration tools for more advanced functions like web, mail and file serving, many of the packages we provide are things that would only be of use or interest to power users, and we take the experience of power users as seriously as the experience of new users.

　　Warly

　　Who are you? What is your role in the company or project, and what are you responsible for?

　　Warly: I am Warly, I have been working for Mandriva since 1999. I am the chief of the consumer products department, where the Mandriva Linux Free, One, Discovery, Powerpack and Powerpack+ distributions are developed. I am also the maintainer of the bugzilla Web site and the community Wiki. I also administrate and architect the Mandriva build environment, compilation cluster, recompilation bot, upload system...

　　What drew you to Mandriva?

　　Warly: Gael Duval; he asked me in 1999 if I wanted to work for Mandriva. I accepted, mainly because I wanted to work with a Linux company, and because I thought that working for a distribution would be the best.

　　What's the best part about Mandriva's GNU/Linux distributions?

　　Warly: The best part is the spirit. The technical points, ease of use, hardware compatibility, quantity of software included, are less important than the free spirit we try to keep focused on. Of course sometimes we have to do some 'bad' things when the money guys start to yell at us, but we can also revert some choices. For example with Mandriva 2007 all the versions, commercial and free, are available for everyone at the same time.

　　What other open source projects have you worked on in the past?

　　Warly: I have been very involved with Mandriva for 7 years, before that I did some pre-blog thing around Linux, but I only really get busy with free software with Mandriva. I also maintain some minor free software things, such as the cdrecord DVD patch, or software nobody else uses, such as xbuffy, but my main accomplishments are the Mandriva build system, the Mandriva bugzilla version, the CD creation tool, and the recompilation system. I have been the release manager of Mandriva distributions since 7.0, so 2007 is my 14th release. I have worked also on Mandriva Corporate products up to version 3.0.

　　What is the most overlooked fact or most commonly misunderstood idea about Mandriva? What should people know that they don't know from other interviews and reviews of Mandriva Linux?

　　Warly: I would say that the three most wrong things about Mandriva are:

　　1. We are a distribution for newbies; this is not true, or at least not complete -- all the needed software for advanced user is included. And we are not messing up the configuration files or creating extra obscure alternative configuration mechanisms. The references are the default system files.

　　2. We are not a KDE based distribution, GNOME is as well integrated and polished as KDE, and for example the Mandriva One 2007 comes in two flavors, on KDE 3.5.4-based and one GNOME 2.16-based.

　　3. We are not Red Hat-based. We were when we forked 7 years ago, but the package base has evolved quite differently since then. That does not mean we are incompatible with Red Hat or Fedora, but likely you'd be better off using a Mandriva package on a Mandriva version, and a Fedora package on a Fedora version.

　　Helio Chissini de Castro

　　Who are you? What is your role in the company or project, and what are you responsible for?

　　Helio Chissini de Castro: My name is Helio Chissini de Castro. I'm a developer for the KDE project and developer / system analyst for Mandriva, based in the South America Brazil labs. For the KDE project, I act as a primary contact in South America and Brazil.

　　What drew you to Mandriva?

　　HCdC: The "Mandriva Brazilian labs" actually is a result of the acquisition of the Conectiva Linux distribution, where I started in 2000, so i became a Mandriva employee as I already was a Conectiva employee.

　　What's the best part about Mandriva's GNU/Linux distributions?

　　HCdC: Contributors -- they play a fairly big role in making distributions constantly improve. In a situation where you don't have a massive enterprise resource environment, contributors are a important cog in the whole engine called Mandriva Linux.

　　What other open source projects have you worked on in the past?

　　HCdC: KDE is the main one, in some parts, mostly kmix and ark, and recently some default config handler changes for kcontrol modules in stable code. As an employee working on a Linux distribution, usually you end up sending patches, translations, fixes and some other improvements to several projects.

　　What is the most overlooked fact or most commonly misunderstood idea about Mandriva? What should people know that they don't know from other interviews and reviews of Mandriva Linux?

　　HCdC: Despite the obvious quote about GTD (Get This Done), the not so usual thing that people don't know is the services provided by the Mandriva engineering team. People imagine Linux distribution employees (the developers) as having distro-specific goals, and this is not entirely true. The fact is there a lot of services provided for major companies who request Mandriva and its engineers to use knowledge acquired in distro development to solve a problem. This provides an upgrade of engineering skills which are afterward mirrored in the distribution. At the Brazilian labs we develop custom distributions for large computer resellers and mobile and embedded software companies -- that's just a small sample of our range of projects. So if you expect only "Linux packagers" here, I assure that you will instead find some of the best software engineers hidden among them