Mandriva Accelerates Linux Desktop Push with Lycoris Buy

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial Linux distributor Mandriva knows, just as its Linux rivals do and some in the IT industry did not believe for years, that Linux is not only viable on the desktop, but a necessary alternative to the ubiquitous Windows platform if for no other reason than to keep Microsoft on its toes. Getting Linux into the data center was relatively easy compared to getting it on the desktop, and that is probably why aspiring Linux desktop vendor Lycoris decided last week to be acquired by Mandriva.

Lycoris was founded in 2000 by Joseph Cheek, a former employee of Linuxcare (senior Linux consultant) and Microsoft (network and systems tester), to provide a desktop version of Linux that would be more familiar to Windows shops. Cheek, true to his name, actually put his company in Redmond, Washington, the headquarters of Microsoft, and named his initial product Redmond Linux. In January 2002, Cheek changed the name of his company to Lycoris, the name of the product to Desktop/LX, and its address to Maple Valley, Washington. (Lycoris is the Latin name for the Spider Lily, in case you are wondering.) In addition to its core desktop Linux, Lycoris was also a pioneer in the use of Linux on tablet PCs and pocket PCs. Since the initial product launch, Lycoris has put out four updates, the last one being Desktop/LX 1.4, which shipped later than planned in September 2004 after what Cheek publicly called some "serious bugs" were found at the last minute and took some time to be fixed. (You never hear founders and chief technology officers talk like this, and it is as refreshing as it is jarring.)

A few weeks later, Lycoris took over the SME Server project, which was administered at contribs.org, and probably hoped to create a Linux server that had the look and feel of Windows Server 2003, much as Desktop/LX has the feel of Windows XP (to the extent that is possible with Linux interfaces). SME Server was created several years ago by semiconductor and communications equipment maker Mitel Networks, and was based on an early release of Red Hat's Linux. The product was then handed off to a private company, called Resource Strategies, in 2001 and then released as an open source project under the GNU General Public License in late 2003. Lycoris said at the time that it will begin hosting the contribs.org site immediately and roll out a version of SME Server with bug fixes and a commercial version of the product (meaning it has a price for support as well as distinguishing features such as automatic updates), as well as the GPL version, which was of course free.

Mandriva did not say how much it paid to acquire the assets of Lycoris in the statement that the company put out last week, but it did go into detail about what the acquisition would mean. It also said Cheek would be joining Mandriva and helping it to create a better desktop Linux implementation. While the details were a little thin, Mandriva said the development teams at Mandriva and Lycoris were already at work on a converged desktop product that would merge Mandriva Discovery with Desktop/LX. Mandriva also said it would add some of the features of the existing Iris Software Gallery--the collection of the hundreds of open source programs that Lycoris shipped with Desktop/LX that can be installed with one mouse click--to its Mandriva Club tech support offering. Cheek will be in charge of the desktop convergence and the Iris integration, according to the statement. How the SME Server product will affect the Mandriva server lines--if at all--is unclear.

According to Mandriva, Lycoris had nearly 20,000 individuals who paid for support for Desktop/LX, and the company further estimated that several hundred thousand users were currently using one or another version of Lycoris' software.

The acquisition of the assets of Lycoris--Mandriva did not specify who owned them or what they were--follows a few months after the creation of Mandriva itself from the acquisition of Brazilian commercial Linux distributor Conectiva SA by Mandrakesoft, a French commercial Linux distributor with a toehold in North America. Mandrakesoft did that acquisition in late February for 1.79 million euros (about $2.3 million at the time), which was roughly equivalent to one year of Conectiva's revenue; soon thereafter, the company changed its name to Mandriva. Mandrakesoft was founded in 1998 and only emerged from the French equivalent of bankruptcy in early 2004. Once it did that, it set itself on the road to profitability and has been growing since then.

How the Lycoris deal will affect the already converging Mandrakesoft and Conectiva product lines is unclear. But luckily, Linux is pretty much Linux, and any conflicts with value adds or supported packages can be sorted out fairly easily.