I was at Barned & Noble yesterday and saw a book about MandrakeLinux Powerpack 10.1 and I should have studied it a bit closer.

My question is this? This book has a DVD in the back. Does that DVD have a full intallation of a actual Mandrake 10.1 version? Here is a link to one site at Linux: http://www.linuxcentral.com/catalog/...=C1C0LdDRPwOCK

You can get it at Amazon.com for $37.77 and free shipping over 20.00. So, figuring that you don't pay sales tax and expense for driving, it is really a pretty good deal. However, I am not clear on the powerpack 10.1 if it's just an add on to an exisiting Mandrake distribution or if there is a full version on the DVD that is included with the book.

Linux is becomming more and more NOT free it seems. You want support you have to buy a distribution that has support staff. With some distros costing around 70.00 in the store, one wonders....

The book says it includes all of the powerpack edition. The powerpack edition has more packages than the download version but they come from the same codebase. Historically commercial Linux distributions have always supplied a free version as well as a paid for version. This is how they make money to pay developers, so I don't see anything wrong in creating a premium product for sale. some people prefer to have the support and extras so they would rather buy the premium versions than download free ones.

Thanks that was helpful
So I can buy the book and install the Mandrake 10.1 version. Right now I have the 3 cd set of Mandrake 10.0 that I downloaded. I also have a SuSE version 9.2 that come in a magazine on DVD. I have installed it on my comptuer, but I do belive I like the Mandrake a wee bit better. Now you can get the SuSE 9.3 in a book also at Barnes & Nobel and probably get it a little cheaper at Amazon. Funny how Amazon is so much cheaper than B&N.