>
> I now know that various distributions deal with support in different ways.
> Slackware has email and web support. Red Hat has telephone support. However,
> I find Mandrake to be the best distribution for my needs. If Macmillan
> simply did not say they were offering "guaranteed 24-hour turnaround" support,
> there would be no issue. I would purchase it anyway.
Do you realize that you're talking about no more than a couple
"incidents" being covered by this support? Look closely at any of the
agreements and you'll find that there's a time period and there's also a
number of incidents where you can ask for, and receive, information.
You are right that you should have gotten a response from Macmillan. It's
also been stated that there have been enough problems with that support
that Mandrake has taken it back so your experience (or at least the
collective experience of the customer base) has been acknowledged
by the parent company.
> My concern is that someone not familiar or experienced with Linux and the
> open source community process may be frustrated by the lack of response.
Maybe so...but if they're a Windows user they have never gotten any
response.
> Mandrake seems to have set the goal of being the best Linux distribution. I
> think they are doing it. This is one small element in the overall picture.
That would seem to be the case. The RedHat people have just released a
distro that seems to have problems with its "new" compiler (you can't even
compile the kernel being distributed with it. I tried to install it the
other day and could log on as root but couldn't even get a user running
effectively. I decided that it just wasn't worth it. I guess I should
have used my telephone support :-)
Cheers --- Larry
