cheaper Mandrake upgrade

[markw at mohawksoft.com]

Well, why bother paying for it? Get 10.1 community. I have 10.0 on my
laptop, a couple desktops, and a few servers. Unlike Fedora, Mandrake
supports MP3 in community. DCESS is supported with libdvdcss (You'll have
to find it, just remember "PLF" )

In Linux, IMHO, the distribution is merely and install vehical, much like
any OS.

Mandrake, however, is a tough road. Many app projects do not make
"official" RPM versions. KDE, for instance, doesn't provide a mandrake
RPM, so you're stuck with the version you have or an all night compile.

Anyway, you can download 10.1 community for free in ISO format. I even saw
it glued on the fron of a Linux mag last week.

As for "wireless" stuff, that is hard. A lot of vendors are basing the g
stuff on broadcom, and last I recall, they were against releasing source.
In the case that your wireless card does not have a native driver, look to
the ndiswrapper project. It aims to emulate the NDIS API in the linux
kernel. (NDIS is a subset of WDM which is a normalized subset of the NT
kernel interface)


>
> A year or so ago, when my wife bought a new Dell laptop and wanted it
> defenestrated, I bought a copy of Mandrake Linux 9.2.  I don't feel like
> I got a terribly good "value add" for the money--in particular, the
> fancy friendly auto-configurator didn't recognize our wireless Ethernet
> card--but maybe time has blurred my memory of all the headaches I had
> installing Debian on my own laptop.
>
> Anyway, my last attempt to upgrade or install RPMs didn't work and
> actually led to some of the menus in the Gnome application launcher
> being corrupted.  I assume this is because the latest official version
> is 10.1, and even the unofficial mirrors have stopped tracking 9.2.
>
> An official copy of "Mandrakelinux 10.1 Powerpack" costs $85, and a
> subscription to their update service is $20 per year.  If I get the CDs
> from CheapBytes for $9, am I going to miss anything important?
>
> --
> "If John Kerry was the last best hope for the Republic ... then maybe
>   it wasn't worth saving in the first place.  I don't believe that,
>   though. And neither do you." --Dan Layman-Kennedy
> // seth gordon // sethg at ropine.com // http://dynamic.ropine.com/yo/ //
>