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Days of free free free free free over yet?


condorito
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I stopped using Mandrake when free version users were prevented from getting the 4th CD by regular means, you had to wait, or you get it by using FTP (BT wasn't widely known). I also gave a shot to one of the Mandriva Live CDs after that, but its being stamped free free free free all over was very irritating, kinda made me think you're a free version user, LEECHER! So I moved to Fedora. Where do we stand now? If I try it again, will I be arritated by this compulsing pushing people to upgrade to the paid version? I hate in your face stuff. Flame away if you must.

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No such thing as a free lunch, or ...

 

I stopped club membership over a year ago as I found the club offering me very little value and the distro progressing somewhat but walys with one or two areas that didnt quite work.

 

I was pleasantly surprised that I could download Mandriva 2007 this year in October just after releause using BT and got a functional live CD. Installing to HD and then adding main, contrib (&PLF) gave me a fully functional version (with some gripes; dkms/nvidia failed in yet another way after a kernel upgrade, but one gets used to these things). I downloaded the 'non-free', i.e. version including nvidia/ati (and some other) kernel modules. The 'free' refers to free as in speech not free as in beer...

 

So, where I had expected to look at alternatives (maybe PCLOS given its heritage) I am still on MDV.

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I didn't pay any money to download Mandriva 2007 One, and I installed from there to a full system without the "Free" being too much in my face. I think it was probably written on the default desktop background, but that's easily changed. Apart from that I thought it was surprisingly nag-free.

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Mandriva still marks its distros with "free" or "one" written on the wallpaper. From a functionality point of view, there is not much that is not included in the free versions. When 2007 was released, the "free" and "one" isos were available for download immediately to everyone and some "one" versions even included proprietary drivers.

 

That said, I think they got a lot more friendly to their userbase and things seem to be changing a lot at Mandriva recently. https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=37950&hl=

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It is always a little edgy when we discuss this sort of thing.

 

It is a commercial distribution. They have wages to pay their people, who should expect to be paid for their labors. They make the distro available without charge. That is a good thing to me and I cannot fault them for that.

 

I paid for Mandriva (Mandrake back then) version 7.0 Some issues arose from that business transaction that I won't go into here. Nevertheless, finding the online community, and specifically the pre-previous version of this community, is why I still use Mandriva. I have used many many distors since then, and Mandriva offers some features that make it easy to use and friendly to windows users. Again. I cannot find fault for offering this freely.

 

Pay if you can. If not, download and have fun! My wall papers last about 3 minutes when I install a distro....any distro! :lol2:

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As ixthusdan said, they have a small staff needing to be paid wages to survive. Wouldn't you rightfully expect your employer to pay you working fulltime?

Considering what Mandriva produces with so few people, and considering how little revenue comes in, we can all be grateful they still exist and make Mandriva the way it is. Since most folks get their Mandriva free, they certainly don't run a racket and definitely have very little similarity with you-know-who.

Quite likely M$ might generate more revenue within their canteen in a few days than Mandriva in a year, don't you think?

 

Now, Mandriva has never been a charity, but has rather had to struggle very hard for survival. We should be grateful for what we get, especially if we get a superior product for free! Just think for one moment and compare this to what we can expect from M$... Don't you see a striking difference?

Helmut

Edited by Helmut
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^ I don't use Mandriva. I used Mandrake back in the 9.1 days, for a little while, then I switched to Fedora Core 1, I currently use Fedora Core 6. I was just asking. Honestly, I don't think I'll be leaving Fedora, I once in while feel like revisiting some stuff I used to like, Mandrake for instance.

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