On Wednesday 13 March 2002 03:47, Tom Brinkman wrote: [snippet] > Last, and probly the least contribution (Mandrake doesn't make > much, the middle men do) is to buy Mandrake in a store like > Wal*Mart or Best Buy, or other retail outlet.
The one thing to be said in favour of this is that buying Mandrake (or whatever) encourages retail stores to keep stocking it, thus improving the visibility of the product, and of Linux in general. Here in Ankara, you don't see Linux distros in shops, though it's started making an appearance on the street (literally) next to all the pirated games and Windows CDs. Actually, the fact that you can pick up Windows 98/Me/2000 on the street for about $2 is probably one reason why Linux is still a rarity in Turkey - when Windows costs the same as two beers, the free speech vs. free beer distinction becomes academic. Paradoxically, pirating helps proprietary software by making sure the alternatives are ignored. In case anyone's interested, here's how I obtained my various distros: Office box: all FTP downloads from our university mirror, currently running 8.1. Home box: RH 6.0 - Cheapbytes Mandrake 7.0 - CD free with a computer magazine. Mandrake 7.2 - Cheapbytes Mandrake 8.0 - off the street I may get a boxed set for 8.2 - the download edition may well work out cheaper than Cheapbytes, when shipping is taken into consideration. I'd take a lot of persuading to buy the powerpack, though. Robin -- "Give me the views, and I'll give you the arguments." - Chrysippus Robin Turner IDMYO, Bilkent Universitesi Ankara 06533 Turkey http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
