On Sat, 8 Apr 2000, Brian T. Schellenberger wrote:
>
>
> Besides, Mandrake can only make money from CDs and they *do* need to
> stay in business. So, yes, make free downloads available; be true to
> the spirit of open source. But they ought to optimize for what will
> keep them in business, not what will put them out of it!
Actually i thought the money was in the support and service contracts, NOT
the cd's. A company of a few hundred couldn't possibly live off the sales
of a lowcost cd/book set. Especially with cd's being burned for 1.00 at
most places.
I personally would like to see someone make a KDE distro. KDE 2.0 would be
great, especially with ORB, Kparts and an Office Application. The
Kdevelop offers ease of programming and well, i could go on.. my point
though is build a distro that is easy for the user, straight into a
powerfull gui, and work out a sales deal with E-Machines or something.
Everyone keeps on saying linux is making it into the desktop market, yet i
can't get a PC at the store with it loaded.. hell, its hard to find
Mandrake at the store. I know staples has a few copies of the older
versions, but its hard to get any recent version at the store.
I would also recommend that Mandrake work with Corel and get the libsmb
and other additions they have. Corel linux, while a bit buggy, is the
*only* version i could possibly recommend to the naive.
Until we have unified print services that are easily configurable, even
for laser printers, specifying trays, and sending off to NT and especially
Laserjet print servers is necessary. I dont see linux getting in.
BUT, its not that far off.
Keep up the cooking mandrake! looking good.
-byron
