Everyone,

Just today, I bought my first copy of Mandriva 2008.1 for 78 US Dollars. I'm a tad upset about having to spend so much on it, when I could get a copy of Vista Home Premium for $99 or cheaper if you know what I mean. I know im comparing Apples to Oranges but still, thats crazy, I should have gone with the Thumbdrive but nah, I feel safer having the DVDS. Thats It on the ran't....

Now to the questions.

Will I be able to get Mandriva 2009 for free, or am I just screwed when it comes to Upgrading?

Would that be the best choice?
I'm leaning towards installing the 32 bit version since I don't know how far 64 has come. Would that be the best choice? All I really plan on doing is using my system to convert dvds to smaller avi for back up purposes, surf the net, and office type stuff oh and printing of course with the ocassional game install on Cedega.

I'm also considering either buying a new HD for my laptop or just dual booting Vista and Mandy, do I still have to worry about the SPINDOWN problem that was plauging linux awhile back or has that issue been resolved. Referring to this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=5...hlight=spindown Currently have 2008 Free installed, I don't think I have that issue, but would like to be on the safe side.

I did try the 2008.1 Gnome One Cd, and its really awesome, which is why I decided to buy the PP, maybe my 70 bucks could make difference(or not). But I truly am impressed with Mandy, bluetooth was working Nvidia drivers were working, I just couldn't believe it, its pretty great, I could just imagine the PP will be all that and much much more.

Any suggestions are greatly welcomed.


P.S. To the Devels and the Community that made all this happen. THANK YOU!


[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

In the absence of further explanation, I am assuming that you are asking if you are able to upgrade to the Mandriva 2009 PP for free?

Are you sitting comfortably?

The short answer:

no!

The long answer:

When 2009 is released, you will be able to install 2009 Free, for free. It won't be an upgrade to 2008 PP, you can't do that. Therefore in order to get 2009 you will either have to pay for 2009 PP to upgrade your 2008 PP installation, or for nothing you can wipe your 2008 PP install completely and install 2009 Free in its place.

So what you're telling me is to CANCEL MY ORDER right. Now that is rediculous. I mean cmon, How in the world is that fair? So just install my LIVE DISC or order FREE DVD from osdics.com right. That really bugs me.


Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring

List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $5.95 and eligible for FREE Worldwide Shipping on orders over $20.
You Save: $14.00 (70%)
Availability: Ships the next business day

No, I am stating some of the facts of the sitution. Whether or not you decide to cancel your order is is a decision to be made by you, based on how they facts (not restricted to the statements made in my previous post) fare up against your beliefs!

Well Reiver I appreciate you telling me this. I've asked Mandriva to cancel my order. If I had a dedicated internet connection I would have definately gone with the Power Pack subscription. As much as I would like to help out Mandriva I don't think its right that they do that. I also understand Mandriva is a Company, a Company that must pay bills and what not, and is also in business to make some profit, otherwise there is no point in being a company. If they were to offer a free Power Pack download in addition to the DISCS or a 2009 PP DVD at half the price then it wouldn't be a problem.

Though I would assume if you purchase a mandriva subscription one gets two power packs (in this case 2008.1 and then 2009).

Then again, assumptions are the mother of all f*ck ups...o.O

When you buy PP, you buy 2-3 month worth of support and Mandriva Club membership plus you pay some licensing fees for using nonfree drivers and the nonfree software. It's up to you whether you need that or not. I used to buy powerpacks in the past but then stopped byuing them because the support services did not deliver what was promised. On the other hand, the forums like the MUB and official Mandriva forum, have wealth of information and are just as helpful.

The price tag of $6 is likely for Mandriva Free, not a PP.

My laptop likely suffers from the spindown problem - it often pauses while I am typing something or am moving the mouse pointer.

I totally agree with you 100%.

They sell the Free version at OSDISC, I bought 2008 free from them a few months back.

Actually, if you upgrade a Mandriva 2006 PP to Mandriva 2007 using the repos, it's still badged as Mandriva 2007 PP within KDE, etc. That's what happened to me. Just don't expect any support from Mandriva, since support and the disks is what you pay for.

Mandriva Free and Mandriva Powerpack use the same repos.

So I would say yes, you can upgrade if you use the internet repos, but you would have to pay to get the Mandriva 2009 Powerpack CD/DVD set.

Possible, might result in a borked system though.

However, if you tried to update some of the non free (i.e. paid for) proprietary stuff (possibly LinDVD or Cedega?) would you be voilating the licence as you bought the right to use them with a 2008.x base system, not 2009.x.

If the licence was independent of the base system, generally you would still only be legally entitled to security updates and bug fixes, not new releases of that software. If the new PP features new releases of said software, then you still wouldn't be entitled to update it.

In the event that you would not be able to update proprietary software because of licence resrtictions, surely there's a possibility that you would break dependencies and make that software unusable?

If there is no need for the proprietary software, why bother with PP at all?

I hope this makes sense.

In my case, it was more of a "Helping out Linux/Mandriva" thing, and the "assumption" that I would be able to upgrade to 2009 either by installing a brandnew 2009 or through urpmi. Having Cedega is just a plus since I really don't play games anymore. Also some of the non-free stuff like CODECS and NVIDIA drivers that are included, which could be downloaded anyways.


BTW, does anybody have an 800 number for the mandriva store, I've sent them a message but no ones replied yet. Is there maybe a French holiday or something, or a no work on Friday policy.

Mandriva is a company, not a charity. All you are doing is throwing money into a loss making pit. If anyone is responsible for helping the company it is the management, who still receive their salaries despite the lack of performance (although no longer a phenomenon unique to this little French company). If you feel like a little philanthropy, try donating to one of the real community (and not for profit) projects, these guys really need the money.


Good luck with that one, my remarks about ineptitude above cover customer service and due dilligence.

A bit less sarcasm and a bit more information.



You do get TWO Powerpack copys of Mandriva for your 78 Dollars. You pay for non-free software and non-free codecs. In some countries it is illegal to use some codecs without paying for them. Furthermore, some people are not willing or unable to install multimedia-codecs or buy proprietary software individually. Thus Mandriva offers the Powerpack-edition. With Windows, you only get for the base-system. With Mandriva, you get a fully fledged operating system plus thousands of software packages, too. Thus you cannot compare the price-tag of Mandriva with that of Windows.




Yes. As I said: You bought two copies of Mandriva.

PS: If you do pay for Mandriva, you do of course not only support a company, but also human beings that work there. If you want to pay the bucks or not is up to you.

Arctic, the O/P made no indication that he bought the powerpack subscription. I took it to be that he bought the boxed discs given his lack of a "dedicated internet connection" and the price he paid. While the powerpack subscription entitles you two 2 releases (the term of the subscription is 1 year) as far as I can see the box set does not!

(sorry Dark, I accidentally ignored your point earlier)



That's the company's problem, not the consumer.

No bigge at all...

Though On second thought I did come to wonder if I was in the O/P's position and was to shell out the money for PWP I would go for the subscripion anyway, on grounds IIRC the subscription is only ten dollars more, and could most likely borrow a friends computer or connection to aquire 2008.1 and 2009.0 PWP And by pass the issue if possible.

Also IIRC when pricing PWP for purchase latter on in the year, I did notice that yea, there is the option to buy and covers pwp and a few months of updates, and then there is the subscription for a year including pwp releases.

Artic I bought the SLIM PACK 2 DVD SET, If I had a fast/dedicated Internet connection I would have gone with the Subscription. So, with the SLIM PACK Will i still be able to Upgrade to 2009 or not. Mandriva has not replied to any of my messages yet either.

Reiver, I suppose it's not in your interests to note that our quarterly losses narrowed substantially in the last quarter, or our share price has been rising consistently for the last couple of months, is it? No, thought not.

If you buy a copy of the Powerpack, you get a copy of the Powerpack. That's what we sell, and it's up to you to decide if it's worth the money. I would just note that we're clearly not making out like bandits over here, if you check out our financial results. Notwithstanding Reiver's comments, most of Mandriva's costs are paying staff; employing talented hackers isn't cheap. Employing me is, but then you get what you pay for.

You can upgrade a Powerpack release with the next Free release, and it's unlikely that anything important will break - well, it's exactly as likely as if you were upgrading Free -> Free, or Powerpack -> Powerpack. What will happen is that you will get the new release, but with the commercial applications (which are the only difference between Free and Powerpack) from the previous release. These will usually continue to work anyway, because they tend to be quite independent of the underlying distribution - but even if they don't, it's not as if your system will stop booting.

If you're more worried about value for money than a nice shiny box with a manual, the Powerpack subscription is the obvious choice. You really don't need a dedicated internet connection, you just need access to one that's capable of downloading 4GB one time every six months and writing it to a DVD. That's not too onerous a requirement in most places, most people can borrow such a connection from a friend or their work even if they don't have one at home.

As noted, the copies from third party disc resellers are Free - the same you can download for nothing from our public repositories. In effect they're just selling you the service of doing the download and writing it to a disc.

The slim pack DVD contains the exact same product as the box (and the download editions). The only difference is the packaging. The slim pack is a slim pack case with a DVD in it, and that's all. The box is a proper box with a jewel cased DVD and a product manual and some exciting leaflets and shiny things. Coo.

Wow, excellent attempt at spin, however you would be better off trying that on someone with considerably less business knowledge than I. One quarter is nothing, come back to me when you manage to do that consistently over a year, then I may have to reconsider my opinion. Although, if you want to evaluate the quarter then I could draw a correlation between the appointment of the VC members to the board and your "positive" result. That correlation would indicate that the VC's are the guys with the right business acumen, and not the core Mandriva management!

IIRC, you have been making "significant" losses for several years now, and don't get me started on the issue of writing off the Goodwill on the Connectiva acquisition within 2 years, that's got "bad investment decision" written all over it.

Could you be a bit more polite, please, Reiver? If you have a problem with Mandrivas way of doing things, than that's okay. Blame Monsieur Duval for that but don't attack AdamW. I really don't like the way you talk to him in this thread. He is not responisble for the financial things. He is simply a very helpful guy that deserves a bit more of respect.

JMHO.

I agree with arctic. There is absolutely no reason to blame AdamW for Mandriva's past financial status, especially in this thread. He has been very helpful here (even if you don't use Mandriva), so please show him the respect he deserves.

I do not see how my tone is in anyway different to adamw's opening paragraph (and other statements) which is clearly worded to be sarcastic. I find that to be impolite, but yet neither you nor Greg2 have addressed that! Don't single me out for a behaviour that is not unique to me, otherwise you are just showing favouritism and that is bang out of order!

[Edit - Bad spelling ]

You just demonstrated the fact that you have not read my posts thoroughly. I was having a debate with adamw, I was not blaming him.

You really don't know me, do you! I have every respect for adamw, he does a good job, which I have mentioned many times before. I for one would not like to be in his shoes given the amount of crap I have seen him take from the community for things outside his control, but adam is up for the task and he just keeps going. Just because I criticise his statement, does not mean that I respect him any less!

I believe that I have read your post thoroughly. If I had a problem with a company/organization/etc. that you worked for, I would not saybut something more like; your organization has been...

Sound better?

No, as it was response to a statement about the company. Look at the quote, along with other posts (notice my exact words were "read my posts thoroughly") it is quite clear what the subject was, irrespective of my regional slang/misuse of language.

It seems clear from your comments that you have strong, if not intense disregard for Mandriva, the company. I would not label your caustic remarks regarding adamw's employer as "a debate" with adamw. Any typical reader of this thread will find your tone condescending to adamw, and in fact condescending to anyone that chooses to financially support Mandriva. I have to agree with the sentiment of the other mods here.

I don't know, I may be psychotic, but, well, come to think about it, 'may be' might not be a strong enough description, anyway, you know how when you are reading posts, you get this little voice in your head saying the words as you read them . . . , what . . . , you don't?, well there you go, anyway, my little voice certainly had an aggressive tone while reading Reiver_Fluffi's posts, but you know, psychosis an' all

As you say, you are comparing apples to oranges. You need to look at the value, you get for your money. For example, the Mandriva PowerPack included the licensed LinDVD software, which alone is about 40 EUR worth. And if you choose the PowerPack subscription, you even get two editions for 59 EUR! See the prices in the Mandriva store:

Powerpack Subscription (1 year) 59,00-EUR TTC.
Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Box version 69,00-EUR TTC.
Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Download version 49,00-EUR TTC.
Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2008 Spring Slim Pack 2 DVD version 59,00-EUR TTC.
-> http://store.mandriva.com/index.php?curren...ucts_sort_order

Btw, your comparison is also wrong, because Windows editions have a much longer product lifecycle. I buy every Mandriva edition since Mandriva 9.0. Windows XP was introduced in late 2001. Since then, I have bought 12 PowerPack editions if I have not counted wrong now. So I had much more to pay for Mandriva than for Windows XP which came pre-installed with my notebook, but Mandriva is much more than just an operating system.

If you don't want to pay, you can choose Mandriva 2008 Spring free or other distributions like OpenSUSE, Ubuntu or Feodora, although I personally think that Mandriva is superior to all these distributions. Nevertheless, nothing is for free, and someone has to pay for it so that you can have it for free. And if no-one would pay for it, you could not have it for free. Think about it!

I don't believe my comparison is or was wrong in anyway. Just about anything I can do in Linux I can do on Windows with free alternatives and vice versa. i don't have a problem buying the Distro from Mandriva because like I said in an earlier post, I know its a Company, and a company is in business to make money. I realize that it comes with Codecs and Cedega and thats got to be paid for somehow. Yeah thats fine. Don't sit there and tell me to go with the free version or another distro if I don't want to pay. I'll admit that I am at fault for not reading the Product Listing carefully, but I do feel like I should be given access to the 2009 image when it comes out either by discount or a download.

In most cases, this is true for sure. There is only one difference: Mandriva already comes with a phantastic selection of third-party software for you. While I have always needed over 8 hours to set up a fresh Windows installation with all the additional software which I had to collect myself, I am operational with Mandriva within 45 minutes of installation. I find this extremely comfortable time and time again. Everything has its pros and cons, but so everyone can make his own decision.


If I do not have missed something, you can achieve this by buying the PowerPack this time and upgrade it with the free version in six months, although I believe that this makes only sense with the .0 version and the following .1 version, i.e. 2008 -> 2008 Spring, 2009 -> 2009 Spring.

The point was made earlier in this thread, the O/P bought the slim box set, not the powerpack subscription. The later entitles you to the upgrade, the former does not.

Well, if you don't need all the "close-ware" (most of them "pay-ware"?) - you can go with the free version of Mandriva. Also if you lack of internet connection (ADSL or higher) it might be a good idea to invest so you get most apps/libs on CDs/DVDs.
I'm not into windows cost this and mandriva/X,Y,Z distro cost that, it all depends what you think it's worth it for you. Do you like the product? Is the prize fair for what you get? Do you want to support Mandriva company that make the distro you like? etc. That's the thing you should take into consideration.
As I see things a linux distro is more than just than a product, but that maybe just be me.

At Ubuntu we do it a little diffrent than Mandriva. We don't have things like powerpacks etc. but you can buy proffesional support/help (mostly aimed at companies/goverments/institutions) and donations (if you like the product you donate what you can afford or you think it's worth it for you).

But again, there's no right and wrongs in which model to choose from, it's individuel (sp?) and all depends from what I've descripted above.

Thanks for the heroic defence, guys, but it's fine. My take is that Reiver has basically decided that everything 'Mandriva management' (which I suspect, in his head, is a bunch of guys with monocles and finely manicured moustaches which they twirl regularly) is bad and evil, and therefore he will never mention or acknowledge anything which tends to indicate that this viewpoint may not be the whole, unvarnished truth. This makes him easy to poke fun at, which I enjoy doing. Ah, the joys of having a lightly supervised role in a casual community.

As far as the actual point of this thread goes, I'm in touch with supermario by PM, and he has a fairly unusual situation which does make it difficult for him to usefully use a Powerpack subscription, which is a shame. However, it's still not really workable for us to have what would in effect be a 'physical subscription' - we actually used to have just this offer (pay $XX and get boxed copies of the next two Powerpacks), and not many people bought into it, which is why we stopped doing it. We'll try and work out something that will be satisfactory for him.

I am a PowerPack subscriber myself, however I don't install/use any of the stuff that differentiates the PowerPack version from the Free version, although I did take advantage of the nvidia driver for convenience this time I like Mandriva, out of the different Distribution's I have tried, it is by far my favorite, and I am quite happy to give them a little money for it.


I see Microsoft as a product, and Linux as a state of mind. [hmmm, might have something to do with my psychosis ]



So this is not true

Sorry to disappoint you, but no. Only half of them have monocles, and every time I've met him, Francois' moustache has been *terribly* poorly waxed.

Today I received an email from the Mandriva Store and gave me a refund. I'd like to thank Adam for all his help. I honestly don't think the refund would have happened without his help. With that, I'm off to installing 2008.1 Gnome One.