MandrakeSoft SA announced Tuesday that a French court has approved the Paris-based Linux distributors plan to exit bankruptcy protection.
Under the plan, MandrakeSoft will pay back its creditors over a nine-year period.
MandrakeSoft, which filed for bankruptcy protection a little more than a year ago, recently posted its first profitable quarter since 1999. For the period ended Dec. 2003, the company reported a profit of about $328,000 ($270,000 euros) on revenue of $1.7 million ($1.4 million euros).
MandrakeSoft will release its next operating system, Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official, in May, and will announce in coming months several new products for the corporate and individual markets, according to a statement from the company.
The Linux distributor suffered a blow earlier this month when Hewlett-Packard Co. adopted Novell Inc.s SuSE Linux as its standard Linux distribution for business desktop and notebook PCs. HP says, however, that it will maintain support for products already bundled with MandrakeSoft.