Hi All,

I am going to buy mandrake but I'm not sure which would suit me best, from the website there is three versions of the OS to choose from:

1. Discovery - Your first linux desktop (Beginners)
2. Power Pack - The ultimate Linux Power Pack (Advanced)
3. Power Pack + - Solution for Destops and Servers (Experts).

I'm quite sure I should go for either 1 or 2. As I am a complete beginner, Discovery seems the obvious choice, however I will not be a beginner forever and would quite like to get involved with the development side of things.

The power pack offers these development tools that I am interested in (Compile source code with GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection etc) but of course this is for advanced users, which I am not.

Rock-> Me <-Hard place.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

it seems like discovery and powerpack are about the same difficulty, just that powerpack has a lot more software included. if you want a lot of stuff, go with powerpack. powerpack+ is probably overkill unless you plan on running a server.

keep in mind you can go for the cheapest and just download and install software to suit your needs. but i think discovery's got plenty of software out of the box anyway.

Yeah, I agree with above. Are you really sure you want to PAY for LINUX?

Maybe better take 'linspire'...
( or serious...goto www.LQiso.org and pick what you want.... )

egag

There is nothing wrong with buying Linux, it supports all the developers who work on the distro to actually make it available. Most don't only work on the distro but all the open source free projects that are free to download.

I vote download it, try the basic version and if you like it, then buy it. It helps support the distro so they can continue to make great products. Just think of it this way, at least if you buy Mandrake, you can install on as many systems as you want, burn and give it away to friends to use and so on. You can't do that with Windows or most proprietary OS's.

If I'd alway's used "paid for" version's, then I'd have probably ended up not having quite the struggle that I experienced.

I had a download of 8.2 followed by standard of 9.0, then powerpack 9.1 (disk only as the install is usually pretty straight forward and for everything else, the doc's are on the disk) and I didn't bother with 9.2, but I'm now onto 10 official dvd powerpack (again, disk only).


I have no qualms whatsoever in paying for my mandrake. "They" have done more than most to make a nice, easy, straight forward, desktop oriented distro. It's been worth every penny of my money.

You'd have the option of getting most of the app's you're ever gonna want on the disk - reasonably up to date. If there's something you end up using a lot, and they (whatever app it may be) release a newer version that you want to get yer hand's on, then you end up getting into installing from either non-specific rpm's or source - which would be a good learner!. though as I say, you've still got relatively UTD version's on the disk.

Also if you stick to mandrake specific rpm's (from the disc and when you learn how to modify your sources - see easy urpmi you'd probably not experience any problem's (probably, not definitely).

It'd give you an excellent first proper linux experience. If you have success with linux in the early stages, you're more likely to stick with it.

Plus if you dual boot for a while, you've got the option to compare.

just my

regards

John

p.s. I did say that mandrake have done more than most, that's not to negate the excellent efforts of redhat, SuSE, etc etc etc. I just feel that mandrake is arguably the best place to start.

I say buy the powerpack. It has an awsome amount of software that comes with it, including flash, java, nvidia drivers, opera web browser, realplayer and a heap of other stuff that you would normally have to go search for and not necessarily get in an rpm.

The point is for a newbie it will make life a lot easier and as bigjohn said your more likely to stick with linux if you have a good first experience.

And i too think that it is a good thing to support the people who put so much time and effort into bringing us this great distro by paying for it. Let`s face it, for the amount of software and the quality of the distro it`s as cheap as dirt. JMO

Cheers

I would pay for linux in a second if i was to use it on servers... for home use... it's better to have the free version and just improve it myself...