Mandriva Linux Names New CEO

From the ‘Revolving Door’ files:

Mandriva Linux announced a new CEO today. Arnaud Laprevote succeeds Stanislas Bois in the top spot at the European Linux vendor.

Laprevote will also act as the Chief Technical Officer and Director of Research and Development at Mandriva. While I wish Laprevote the best of success in his new role, he’s got a tough job as previous CEOs (and a few CTOs) might be able to confirm.

In my opinion, Mandriva hasn’t had the same sort of public face since a previous CEO unceremoniously fired Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake/Mandriva in 2006. Mandriva continues to put out high quality releases – most recently Mandriva 2010 – but they just don’t get the interest (in North America at least) that they once had.

I remember well when Mandrake was available on store shelves and could be seen on many notebooks at open source conferences — that’s not case anymore.

Recapturing mindshare in an era where Ubuntu’s fearless leader makes bold predictions and Red Hat’s enterprise Linux generates over a half billion dollars a year in revenue is no easy task.