Slashdot Mirror

You can find MandrakeFreq at Cheapbytes for $4.99.

There is also supposed to be a list of other resellers at this page (according to the news at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/ ) - http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/range/mandrak efreq (As I write, that page is currently down, though (looks like they moved their webservers to a system on a faster network, which broke mandrakesoft.com)

Has anyone found cheap CDs from another reliable source?

I could go download RedHat Linux, and sell it for one million dollars a copy if I really wanted to.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't understand this simple point. How do you think Linux Mall, Cheap Bytes and others can sell RedHat, Suse, etc. for $1.50, even though they did not create it? Like he says, they could just as easily charge a million, there's nothing illegal there, yet people can't make the connection.

It's Free, not free software. You can do (almost) whatever you want with it. You can sell it, change it, give it to friends, you just can't keep it to yourself if you distribute anything based on it.

i'm moving everything to debian this week.

check cheapbytes' debian 2.2 binary cd (intel, 3 cd's).

My .02,

IMHO, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols should open his eyes.
Only two distributions left?
Not even a mention of my favorite desktop distribution.

What about special distributions?
Heck, there's so many niche markets that even Redhat has almost a dozen different versions. and that list doesn't include the Cheapbytes , or Embedded versions.

Don't get me wrong, Redhat makes a great distribution, but do you really expect them to fit every market niche?

No company whose business strategy has been based on the sale of GPLed software has ever been profitable.

I don't know why people keep saying this. Cheapbytes, one of the few companies "based on the sale of GPL software," is obviously a successful and modestly profitable company, and has been for five years now. Go on now, add some more qualifiers to that claim.

Well, welcome to Linuxland, fasten yr seatbelt and invest in some patience, since you have been using Windows all this time, there are some adjustments you have to make. And a lot of re-installing and tweaking. Don't get me wrong, I've been using Linux for over a year, I started on Slackware and thats where I still am (I've tried most of the major distros), and I absolutely love it. But, I am not such a militant anti-M$ Linux user. I still hate the company, but Win2k is actually decent (Course, its very UNIX-like), and I understand your position. Just a warning, as Tux's beauty isn't so easy to see at first. So, I encourage you to take your time, buy O'Reilly's "Running Linux" and, since you're a programmer, I suggest "Beginning Linux Programming" from Wrox Press. (Don't let the "Beginning" part scare you off. Linux is a very different beast, and you need to become familiar with the philosophy to program effectively. A good portion of Linux's speed comes from the frequent usage of shared libraries.) As for a distro, take your pick, check out the distro's sites to learn what each flavor is about, and head over to Cheapbytes and pick up your choice distro for pretty much the cost of shipping (or if you have a CD-Burner, download it). I wish you luck, and let us know if you have any questions.

C Pungent

You don't use LT's gas. He open sourced a good formula for gas. Those people who wish to build the mini gas proccessing plant in their back yard can use this formula and get superior quality gas and miliage.

However, 90% of the people don't want to, or can't build their own plant.

They can still use his gas. RedHat will sell it to them, or they can get it at their local book store, or they can mail-order it from CheapBytes for $2 for a lifetime supply.

-

Maybe I'm more of an optimist about human nature than you are. Maybe I'm naive for believing that voluntary payments can support a lot of people who 'only' provide a service. Maybe I am a fool for these beliefs.

But I'm a happy fool :P

Prepare for the worst, hope and pray for the best, and expect something between the two. Is that an unreasonable approach to life?

-----
IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
-----

There's a difference. If you get food from somebody then they don't have the food anymore - you *should* pay them. But if you get sofware from somebody, then they still have it, don't they? You shouldn't pay for the software, you should pay for the effort it took to give it to you.

You have two choices: Go to the grocery store (Microsoft), or plant a garden (Linux, BSD, etc.)

Well, actually writing your own operating system would be like planting a garden. Fortunately for us, Linus Torvalds and friends have already done that for us. Now we can just pick the fruit from the tree :-)

I am not sure why it's such a bad thing for Microsoft to lock their software to a single computer. Of course, customers should be told this *up front* and they can decide.

Oh yes, entirely agree. This will make it much easier for them to decide to install Linux. :-)
--

I bet there are 100s - maybe even 1000s - of Linux hackers that would buy a Linus action figure!

LinuxMall, Linux Central, Cheap Bytes or some other Linux retailer could get them made & sell them. They all sell stuffed Tux dolls already.

Or maybe a co-op buy like the Webplayer Co-op could work.

I don't pay for Linux, I dnld it and use it for free.

In some parts of the world (including most of Europe AFAIK), an Internet connection is still billed by the minute. Even then, a connection fast enough to download a multi-CD distro in less than a day (shipping time) may cost more than the distro costs at cheapbytes.com.

Given the proliferation of cheap (ala CheapBytes) and free (from zedz, for example) ISO images of OpenBSD CDs, and the far more "available" nature of your *BSD and Linux competition, do you believe that your copyright (and through it, the official OpenBSD policies you've created) on the layout of the OpenBSD CD still warranted? Why?

I'm afraid I just don't see why there is such a flurry of discussion to the effect that OS-X will somehow "vitalize" the usage and understanding of the BSDs. From what I hear, MacOS-X represents a "pretty light" variation on BSD, combined with a horde of MacOS-oriented graphical tools.

As such, it decidedly won't come with the hordes of CLI and console tools you'd expect to see in the typical NetBSD / FreeBSD / OpenBSD installation.

I would think it a whole lot more economical, and likely more of a "Unix-oriented" learning experience, to head to CheapBytes and order CD sets for all three of the "free" BSD variations for IA-32, perhaps along with some of the O'Reilly BSD documentation. That'll cost a whole lot less than a G3 PowerMac, nay, that, including a wall-full of documentation, might well cost less than merely getting the MacOS-X license.

Well at least you can get the ISO for free (or fairly free, i.e. the cost of a CD-R) and try it yourself :>

Unlike M$, that IS a possibility.

PS: If you haven't got a CD-R, that's why they invented Cheapbytes
--

Apt-get is a neat thing, but that & the much vaunted Debian "stability" are the only reasons to try Deb (bar the "political" aspects), if you already have Caldera. If you want great new features & an easy install, get the Mandrake 7.1 CD's from Cheapbytes

--

Fortunately, though, Debian (which is the only true Linux out there) still costs $0 to install/use from the 'net. And the CDs, from www.cheapbytes.com for instance, are little more than what blanks would cost ($7 US for two CDs).

Since Debian has its roots in the GNU project, and is the only GNU distribution of Linux (and therefore entirely open-source/free), it would lead me to consider it the best choice out of all the Linux distros.

Sarge

Okay, I'm really tired of rehashed stories about linux making it to the front page. ESPECIALLY this one.

Linux is free, right? Pick your definition of free, since different distributions are a little different in their T&C than others. Still, in any case, you can get linux without paying for it. This is really handy if you want to evaluate it. Considering that you can get linux for nothing (Or, if you have a slow link, for a buck or two from cheapbytes, anyone who relies on reviews is a unix poser anyway and I can't bring myself to care if they end up with a lame distribution. Run it yourself! Read /.! Get over it!

To recap: This is how it's done. It's how the record industry works, it's how the windows software market works (which is why Microsoft has its finger on so many publications) and it should come as no surprise that it's how linux is handled. It's called marketing. Move on.

Just try Linux System Labs or Cheap*Bytes. Both have low-price CDs (a lot cheaper than you'd find on big-name sites like LinuxMall or FreeBSDMall). I have experience with both of them and can highly reccomend either.

...I don't see RedHat releasing a "Unofficial RedHat CD" for $5 to help Linux reach more people.

--

Red Hat and a whole other bunch of companies are not aiming at getting paid for the software (which is open source, and thus free), but they do want to get paid for the support and consulting. This model is being adapted at a lot of companies nowadays...
IBM for example, has decided to drop their own webserver development in favor of Apache, because it is far more worthwile selling consultancy and support services and putting resources in that, than it is to invest a lot of money in developing their own webserver, while there is something as apache as the alternative.

Services will become the next cash cow, not software.
--
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

That's not very open, not to mention Open.

I think someone ought to put together a disk of their own and make the ISO image freely available. There's not a thing Theo could do to stop that.

There's already somebody else doing so cheaply, so free isn't much of a step beyond that.

As far as supporting the project; it's supposed to be open source. Linux and FreeBSD manage to exist without doing anything that asinine; is OpenBSD so unwanted that it can't work the same way?

Perhaps BSDi will bankroll a more complete security audit for FreeBSD, and make the whole question moot.
--

1. Release Commerical version (aka "What pays the bills")
2. Release Iso version, nicknamed the "evaluation " - not as in beta, as in you evaluating the distro itself
3. Dump all packages on ftp.

Nope. Go read the GPL. RMS specifically distinguishes between free as in "free beer", and free as in "freedom of speech". The GPL enforces the latter but not the former.

Nope to what? I have most certainly read the GPL. Have you? Where does the license grant you the right to sell a derivative work? It does not. It does grant that you can charge a fee for the costs of distribution - that does not give you the right to sell the program or a derivative work, just the media that it's distributed on (see cheapbytes.)

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

...

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above...

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

...

5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License.

Chances are CheapBytes will be all over it. I'd keep my eyes out for 3.5 CDs from them.

OK, so we all agree that the old way of distributing music (and movies and software and anything else that can be easily duplicated for that matter) is just not working. Telling people that it is illeagal to give their friend a copy of the CD they just purchased for ~$15 only serves to inspire disrespect for the law in general.
While some things (like operating systems) should be open source and freely modifiable (is that a word?), this doesn't apply to everything under the sun. The creators of software and music and other such ethereal entities deserve compensation for their work.
So, let's say we smart free software advocates put our heads together and come up with a free music license that says artists will distribute their music through any media they wish, only charging for the cost of the disc or nothing at all in the case of MP3 downloads. (Sort of like buying Linux distros from places like CheapBytes). They can have advertisers and all that usual jazz on their web site to offset that cost.
Now, here's where we make this interesting...
When a particular artist's music is gaining in popularity, a distribution company can purchase the rights to the music and distribute it online for free and on CDs (or whatever medium you like) for only the cost of the media. This distribution company will pay the artist directly a certain percentage based on sales and download volume. They will be able to do this because advertisers will be flocking to them! People love music, and advertisers love people.
Does this sound familiar yet? It should. It's more or less the way network television shows are distributed today.
Naturally, this won't make as much money as the screwed up system we have now, but it will put more of the profits into the hands of the actual artists and not some record company. You may be asking, "What's to stop these 'distribution companies' from becoming as corrupt as the record comapanies we have now?" Well, for one thing, competition. It will be much easier to enter this market than it currently is. Also, these distribution companies won't be like record labels in that a single artist could sell distribution rights to any number of different companies (certain restrictions to this might have to be worked into the license).
The most important part of this distribution model is that you and I, as individual consumers, can download or purchase on CD an album of music and then give it to as many of our friends as we like (for free, of course). The only people that would have to buy distribution rights would be those that profited from distributing the music (or perhaps place a community-enforced cap on the number of people to which you can distribute before requiring that you purchase the rights).
I believe this model can be applied to software and movies (once they are out on video) as well with equally beneficial results.
What do you guys think?
PS - Sorry for the length...

Buy several boxes ($400 worth) of your favorite Linux distro and give them to unconverted friends.

Good idea! Does CheapBytes have one of these stupid rebate deals?

• LinuxOne's GPL violation status:
• • They acknowledge the requirement to provide a written offer in the README on the CDROM
  • They acknowledge the problem when contacted by phone
  • They have failed to follow through on providing the source code on their FTP site
• Caldera has distributed OpenLinux Demo CDs without source code or a written offer of source code.
• • The CDROM README file does no discuss the availablity of the source code at all
  • Caldera refuses to respond to email on the subject
  • Caldera refuses to address the problem when contacted by phone stating a policy of requiring software authors to contact the Caldera contact assigned to them at the time Caldera choose to redistribute their software (however, Caldera has not assigned contacts to GPL authors, only to companies authoring commerical licensed software). They have refused to acknowledge that there is any problem.
• Linux Systems Labs in their product titles implies that entire CDs are covered by the GPL when in actuality the CD conatins several packages that are not covered by the GPL (this act is described as a GPL violation by the Free Software Foundation)
• Linux Central when a binary only CD is ordered does not supply any written offer of source code availablity
• Cheap Bytes when a binary only CD is ordered does not supply any written offer of source code availablity
• IBM has been in violation of the LGPL for over 400 days since the time they have distributed unsupported ADSM for Linux. To date, they still have not made the object files for ADSM available for accomplishing relinking against modified versions of the LGPL material. There is every reason to believe that IBM will remain in violation of the LGPL throughout the entire 1999 year.

As stated in this previous /. article, all the binaries will eventually be available for download. Of course, you'll have to be willing to wait a few weeks till they're up. I'd encourage people to wait the couple weeks and buy the linux version. Q3 runs like crap on my p166 w/ voodoo2, and if it wasn't for the linux version, I probably wouldn't even buy it.

BTW, I think including SUSE is a good idea, too. I'm currently running Red Hat, but I'm interested in seeing what SUSE's like. Maybe I'll just slap it onto another partition. I realize that you can go to Cheap Bytes and get a cheap distro cd, but this way I don't have to.

Have you tried CheapBytes? I'm not sure they have the *exact* image, but I was going to buy 2.5 from them.. for under $5 (plus shipping and handling).
I know there are 2 actual CD's from OpenBSD's shipment, but with Cheapbytes, you get one... I don't know what they're cutting out - but if you want it cheap, they're the way to go. BTW: I've bought RH 5.2 from them before, and it's great.
Now I'm waiting for the 2.6 CD's to show up...

--

That's 80$ if you buy the boxed set man. Have a look at www.cheapbytes.com. I for one bought the Suse 6.2 set for 65 Swiss Francs (=41$), and it was worth every "centime"...
For god's sake, they have to make a living, too ;)

I decided some time back that it would be fun to experiment with OpenBSD. I was drawn primarily by it's crypto software. I was installing it on a machine that I tend to use more as a server than anything else. So desktop friendliness was not a major issue.

So first came the install. I ordered my $2- Cheapbytes CD, which came with an installation walk-through. This walk through made it pretty easy. I had a hiccup with my large disk drive ( due to bad bios configuration ) but a post to comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc fixed that pretty quickly. The partitioning procedure using the cryptic disklabel tool would have been hell without the walkthrough. However, i just did ( more or less ) what the walk through said, and it went OK.

Which raises another point -- I was surprised to find that the help on Usenet for OpenBSD is on par with usenet linux support. Far from being a bunch of obnoxious RTFM'ers, the OpenBSD crowd are by and large very helpful. I felt honoured that Theo De Raadt himself responded to one of my posts. Regarding support, the "OpenBSD FAQ" is also excellent. It is really more like a users manual than an FAQ. I highly recommend that anyone planning on installing openBSD get a copy of this prior to installation.

Once I had finished the install, I had my openBSD system up and running. I discovered a few things:

First, I was somewhat surprised that the inetd services don't go via TCP wrappers by default. I had to edit inetd.conf to make them do this. I was awfully confused for a little while regarding the fact that my hosts.deny settings ( ALL:ALL ) were not honoured. So I fixed inetd.

What is nice about the default setup is that software such as sudo, skey and kerberos is installed by default. They will be shipping ssh with it in the near future ( 2.6 ), see http://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html#ssh. Until recently, they've had obstructions to shipping this, such as patents. They are actively hacking ssh to remove these obstacles. Crypto is "integrated" into the system. For example, crypt() has built in blowfish encryption ( which is used to encrypt passwords ) See http://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html for more info.

The system also uses shadow passwords out of the box. The ports collection makes it easy to install any other secure software you might want, such as cops, ssh, rsaref, among other things. Just CD to the right directory and type "make install" and openBSD automatically installs the package, *and* looks after any dependencies -- so "make install" always works, even if you don't have some of the required packages to begin with. The ports collection is lean in terms of desktop applications, but contains a good collection of server apps.

However, it's not ideal as a desktop system. The file system is slow ( though very stable ), and the ports collection is somewhat limited compared to FreeBSD and NetBSD. It also trails FreeBSD in hardware support.

Overall, I'd highly recommend it for a user familiar with linux ( in particular, someone not scared of command lines ) who wants to set up a secure server on low end hardware.

I'm happily playing CivCTP right now. It's a pretty recent and interesting game. Also I can't wait to get Railroad Tycoon. Addtionally, when i first got CivCTP it crashed regularly after 1 hour of play. I emailed loki and they sent me a beta patch the next day. The finished patch came out a few days later. Never have I received such attention when I've had difficulty with a game for the windows/Mac/Console platform.

The beauty of linux is that due to the community standards/practices companies really need to embrace us (the community) or be ignored.

If you are against Linux, why read slashdot? This is not meant as an insult, but rather as an eye-opener. You are obviously here for a reason, I'd suggest picking up a cheap Linux cd from cheap bytes and see what you're missing.

I just wrote to cheapbytes and asked about their dvd plans.

Basically, they said "not yet." The price-per-disk is coming down nicely, but the hefty set-up cost makes them wary of titles that won't sell well. They're waiting for better market penetration of the drives.

Don't be foolish. The $70 RedHat CD is a $1.99 CD from cheapbytes.

You wouldn't seriously pay the $70, would you? They will only give you "paid support" for one of those 200 machines at that price.

If you're complaining that your favorite Free Software offers freedom (thus the name!) but is simply too expensive to get , try a distributor like CheapBytes.

Personally, I'm complaining that people producing software that's not Free (and I don't care what it costs!) are interfering with about the only process that can fix the software industry, and we're better off without them.

Nope on *BSD for your first time, unless you like it really *rough*. :)

I'd recommend RedHat, Mandrake or Caldera for your first open source OS. Multi-boot with these are much easier to setup than the *BSD releases.

But why not try em all? Check out Cheapbytes and order the CDs. Probably about $30 for the ones I mentioned.

Oh. Backup your data. Win98 doesn't like to share partition tables with other operating systems.

Or you can just go to Cheap Bytes for a CD. You can preorder RH 6.1 now for $1.99.

cheapbytes.com usually takes about 4-6 weeks to come up with their version. I've had very good experience with them.

...But don't take my word for it..try it out. I plan on ordering a CD from CheapBytes as soon as it's available.

--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org

Actually, it's sold for closer to $4. Check out the auction in question, or this one. Now, I get my copies of RedHat from LSL so I have no problems with reselling Red Hat. If I need a copy of Red Hat, I know where to get it, and it's pretty clear what I'm getting.

However, is it clear to the bidder's on these actions as to what they are getting? The title of one says "$129" value. Is what I get from LSL a $129 value? No. How about the Boxed set from Best Buy? Yes. The title of the other says "Not Copys". What does that infer?

When you open the auction, what do you see? Ah, a picture of the boxed set. But then when you read the fine print you see "I do not sell the 'Official Boxed Set' in this ad." and "Artwork to represent familiar content." Isn't this bait and switch?

Suppose Red Hat sold their product like that? Would that be legal? Notwithstanding the use of Red Hat's trademark, how about just some ethical business practices.

To sum it up, I can imagine that a lot of people who bid on these are not Linux "experts". They've probably seen Red Hat at their local Best Buy and are interested in seeing what it's all about. Now they find that they can get it for an 1/8 of the price on eBay. For one, it's marketed as being "just like the boxed set at Best Buy". Except for the phony "disclaimer" which basically is no different then a a car salesman selling you a car with a V8 and then after you've purchased it and found out it only has a 4cyl saying "Oh, you didn't read the fine print, that only comes in a "special order" model. And second, I can't imagine a newbie understanding that there are 2 different ways to get "Red Hat". That auction certainly doesn't make an effort to distinguish to unknowledgedge users the difference. The difference between LSL, Cheapbytes, and the others, and these auctions, are, as Bob said, the companies see to it that there is a distinguishable difference.

I have been buying CDs from Cheapbytes for a couple of years. I do not need support, I like to have CD burn on hand so I can install on several machines, I do not want to wait for a d/l... etc. Looks to me like Amazon is just trying to cover there butt in the event of a problem, and people are just not educating themselves enough to be responsible consumers. If they are going to send money to someone on an auction site, they better have some idea as to what they are bidding on...

While they went to great lengths to say that one of the differences was how code was added to the base, they didn't really say why that matters that much.

Before, when I did a lot of custom drivers for Linux, I was continually annoyed with kernel interfaces changing, and code that was 'current' a week ago, suddenly becoming legacy.

With FreeBSD, I've had amazing longevity with my code. Not because they're slow to change, but because, in my opinion, (flame proof clothes ready) it was designed 'right' the first time.

The works of people like Kirk McKusick and David Greenman are quite possibly some of the best designs I've ever seen. Even if you don't plan on using FreeBSD, I think all developers should at least take a look at how it works, and I promise you'll learn a thing or two.

I also hold 'good design' as the reasons for why I've had systems with 400+ day uptimes, that were sometimes under nearly constant attack and/or intrusion attempts.

Finally, the BSD license. My 'day job' is designing an embedded product, which is using FreeBSD for it's OS. Why? The license. Many companies are hesitant, or even contractually prohibited, from giving out changes made to the system, which the GPL rather insists on. The BSD license is very open, which I think may become more important in the near future.

Go download a boot floppy, or buy a CD from Walnut Creek or even Cheap Bytes and give it a try. Even if you don't end up keeping it, if you're a hacker, you'll learn something. :)

Hey why not? You can get redhat for $1.99 (plus shipping, but it's not much relatively speaking if you buy like 20 CDs at once) from cheapbytes

Not everything that is delivered via the United States Postal Service is junk mail and spam. I personally get 2 different magazine subscriptions, one of which is the Linux Journal(Which speaking of, I should finish reading it any minute now). What about resumes sent to companies, letters sent telling someone they were excepted to a college, or report cards for the school kids. All of these things maninly aren't online yet, and all of them are important to the people they deal with. These are just some reasons why the USPS won't become obsolete, at least not in the next 25+ years.

And speaking of shipping, I believe @ CheapBytes, there is only one way to ship, and that is via USPS, costing you 5 bucks in most cases. Pretty cheap to me.

--
Scott Miga

$80 for free software -- with a complete user's manual and some amount of technical support. You still have the option of downloading it for free or ordering it from someplace like CheapBytes for less than $10 including shipping.

Several of my clients opted for the $80 "off-the-shelf" version rather than either of the other two.

Red Hat is a Good Thing[tm].

.c.

Typo, the last paragraph of my post got mangled. It should say:

I've seen this sort of thing tried by a few people, mostly selling CD-ROMs like irtc.org or cdrom.com, I've never actually bought one though, so perhaps this model doesn't work so well. For me, the issue is often price. I'm usually not willing to pay US$25 for what's on the CD, even with the donation. OTOH, I often check the 'give $5 to debian' box
when ordering from cheapbytes.