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So where does the non-free part come in?

Why do you say that? The review says "SUSE Linux is available as a free unsupported download,"

That said, I don't believe Suse has any guarantees about prices of future products - whereas Ubuntu says on their front page:

"Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms."

Red Hat?

I think they should have used ubuntu

They are just linked from the main download page, right under the header "Ubuntu DVD Releases"...

The answer appears be no... and maybe:

If you really want LINUX on your laptop and dont want to hassle of 2 partitions on the tiny weenie laptop HDD, Use a live Distro, yes the speed is not there yet, but it works like a charm, witeless 802.11 b/g, external USB HDD, graphics card. I go with UBUNTU live distro and is just perfect on my thinkpad.

Maybe you are thinking of Ubuntu?

Just a thought. Maybe you didn't realise that Kubuntu is just a spin off of Ubuntu.

Because we are talking about marketing, Cost is not an argument in Linux's favor. If you look at the distros that actually have marketing and support behind them (RedHat, SUSE), Windows is usually cheaper to buy on the desktop.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

He's going to provide support for 50 million computers at 10 cents each? Would be quite tough.

If there is no support involved, I'd like to provide South Korea with Linux for 50 million computers in the form of either CentOS, Fedora or Ubuntu for free and free with "community support".

What's the deal?

Well, I've got mod-points, but I couldn't resist replying to you on this one..

Nowadays, linux is much more likely to just "work" with your hardware than windows. At least, out of the box. When I set up a new machine, I take a look at what its "role" is. Is it worth $150 for a copy of Windows + a pile of time to install? Especially over low-bandwidth, Windows takes a LONG time to install.
Windows XP install - 30 minutes
Tracking down drivers.. This may be easy (brand name) or super-hard (Hewlett-packard)
SP2 install - 130mb (could be overnight, if you're on modem or ISDN)
Assorted security updates (2 or 3 hours over modem, 1 hour over ISDN)
Zonealarm install
AVG install
Firefox install
SpywareBlaster install
Openoffice.org install
Did I miss anything?

A week ago, when I set up a new machine that would be used solely for working at my facility, writing tests in MS Word format.. The machine I found for free to use was a HP Presario machine.. Now, if you've ever messed with HP or Compaq, you know that this is a nightmare under windows. I had Ubuntu installed in 30 minutes, no searching for drivers (I'd like to see you bring up any version of windows on one of these hokey boxen with sound support straight from install), no searching for security updates, no installing virus protection... OpenOffice is pre-installed.
Firewall is kind of optional.. But if you need it, it's as simple as
apt-get update
apt-get install firestarter

Also, thanks to Transgaming and with the use of an Nvidia card, a Linux "gaming platform" is more than possible. Everquest actually runs better on my lower specs linux box than on my windows box.

Oh, you absolutely need MS Office for some reason? I can testify that CrossOver office works beautifully.

I think it's time for you to give Linux another look.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

;-) Couldnt resist! And really Ubuntu is a great alternative to Win, and not just for Africa!! Easy to learn, use...and FREE!

In Africa, free software needs you.

The combined install/live DVD allows you either to install Ubuntu permanently on a computer, or (by entering 'live' at the boot prompt) to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all. There are three editions available:

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Edubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

The combined install/live DVD allows you either to install Ubuntu permanently on a computer, or (by entering 'live' at the boot prompt) to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all. There are three editions available:

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Edubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

The combined install/live DVD allows you either to install Ubuntu permanently on a computer, or (by entering 'live' at the boot prompt) to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all. There are three editions available:

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Edubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

Don't you mean on their homepage?

Yeah you ahead, compare to slack and debian because they are the best representatives of the distros business, first time people etc. are directed to.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it:

http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.mandriva.com/
http://fedora.redhat.com/
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/

Odd, I believe X to be one of the greatest strength of Unix ; yes, its used in other OSes besides Linux - does the presence of X in Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Irix, and so on make them impossible to use? Millions of X users beg to differ.

To fix something, you need to quantify its brokenness first, something you have not done well at:

X is not supposed to look good, nor is it supposed to be ugly, or have any sort of 'look' at all. Perhaps you are thinking of window managers, desktop environments or similar. Many of which are reasonably attractive, caveat emptor.

Nor do I believe X is slow. What are you comparing it to? I get superior OpenGL performance under X in linux compared to the same hardware running windows with the equivalent version video drivers. X must be doing something right, but it could well be the linux kernel doing a lot better than the windows one at managing the hardware, admittedly.

Complaints about compiling code, fighting with drivers, software dependancies, and so on are not really weakness in X, merely a lack of experience in handling code. But not to worry, most *nix distributions are nice enough to ship binary builds of X that are both fast and include all the nice font rendering and antialiasing you might ever care for. Of course, you have the freedom to compile the lot by hand if you really want to, but it is by no means necessary. If your distribution of choice is not being cooperative, then investigate better alternatives.

Granted, nothing is ever 100% easy, but you sound like you are picking the hardest way forward and hence getting unneccessarily frustrated. If X was broken, then like everything else under linux ( driver support, schedulers, scalability, journaled filesystems etc all of which are better now than they have ever been and are still improving ), it _would_ be fixed.

Probably because Ubuntu encourages users to give away CDs (and the liveCD+installCD in one package thing is pure genius, it encourages people to give it a try). Get your own and spread them around.

http://ubuntulinux.org/
http://kubuntu.org/

First, to all you Slashdotters out there - I'm not trying to feed the trolls - this post looks legit to me - I'm just trying to help someone navigate what I'm sure you realize is very confusing - the Open Source world.

I'm posting anonymously because this isn't really the proper place to discuss this (don't ask me what the proper forum is - it probably isn't on Slashdot, although you might try the Ask Slashdot section), so this will very likely get modded down. Also, let me say from the beginning that I am still learning Linux myself, but I know several people who are bona fide experts, and am fairly familiar with the basics of the open source community. A full primer on open source and Linux is far beyond the scope of this post - I suggest spending some time with Google and perhaps Wikipedia for more in-depth information. Your IT consultant may also be a good resource since he or she installed Firefox on your computer.

First, let me say that - in my opinion, others would disagree - Linux is going to be more complicated for a non-technical user than Windows. My experience has been that Linux is more complicated and harder to install and operate. I would venture to say that to run Linux, you will need an expert of some sort - either you must become an expert yourself, or you must get an expert to help you. You can do this by hiring an expert, or by purchasing support for the version of Linux you use. Be sure, however, not to confuse software with support. There is such a thing as software that you don't have to pay for. You will probably always have to pay for support for that software, no matter what operating system you use. Everyone has their own opinion on what operating systems require the most support (my personal opinion is that Linux requires more support than Windows); many people will agree that if you want to minimize the the amount of support that you need, you would be well advised to look at Apple's OS X.

I'm not familiar with Redhat's business plan, but I do know that they cannot (legally) charge for the portion of Linux that is licensed under a legal contract called the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl/, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html). I think (but don't quote me) that what they charge for is their add-ons to the core Linux operating system and for support of the operating system. Novell does a similar thing with SUSE Linux - although I know for a fact that you can download SUSE Linux for free - remember, that's just the actual software you get for free, no support is included (http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ downloads/suse_linux/index.html). The bottom line is that you can get good, stable, production-ready versions of Linux that are totally free, and not maintained by any commercial entity. Some of the best known are Debian (http://www.debian.org/), Ubuntu - a derivitave of Debian (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), and Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/). As for the "source" (or source code) of Linux or any other Open Source software, this is not something that will do you any good unless you are an advanced user. A discussion of what source code is goes far beyond a Slashdot post - suffice it to say that it isn't something you need to worry about at this point, and that you will need to become much more experienced with Linux before it will help you at all. Suffice it to say that source code is helpful because if a programmer has the source code to a piece of software, he or she can modify that software and make whatever changes he or she wishes. This is why open source software can be modified by anyone, whereas with commercial software, the source code is almost always a heavily guarded

I use linux daily and enjoy it, but is it really ready for your standard mom-and-pop windows users anyways?

On and off for five years, I've seen a range of people from grade schoolers to retirees come into the library and use various linux distros without noticing. For a few years now, the distros are set up to detect and mount floppies and flash drives automatically. Unmounting the drives is actually easier than on MS-Windows.

Try it. I recommend Mandriva or Ubuntu for that purpose. Linux distros are there. The only thing lacking is either 1) OEM installations on new machines and/or 2) consumer awareness. And you know the obstacle with those already ...

"It's convenient to be able to try out different options before I license a copy."

Dude, why don't you try Ubuntu?

Different architecture, old architecture, ... No problem at all.

Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet commercial desires?

RHEL?

Why can't there be a Linux distribution that is changed to meet home user desires?

Ubuntu?

I take your point, but it seems to depend on context. The major Linux distros, for example, seem to be seeling pretty well from my local PC store at around 30-40 pounds (I'm in the UK), which is a pretty significant fraction of the asking price for Windows XP Home.

Said distros are sold that price for price of the support and documentation that come with them (support you don't have when you buy WXP Home), and sometimes for price of paid softwares bundled in the package, not for the distro itself.

I guess it's all about convenience. Whereas things like Firefox or OpenOffice.org can usually just be downloaded from the project's web site, it's harder to find a "pre-fab" version of SUSE Linux for example.

Ah yeah, really hard, I mean you have to click on links to Novell from suse.de, really really hard walli walli walli

and everyone clearly knows that one can't find any freely downloadable distro on teh intarweb

"Where else can you get a great desktop environment that just works, along with a built-in Unix-like OS?"

Here: Ubuntu Linux

Don't worry. I found another download site here: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ and, in case that goes down, here: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

Built a Hylafax http://hylafax.org/ system on top of the latest v6.1, LFS http://linuxfromscratch.org./
Details:
3GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 1Gb RAM
11,878.40 BogoMIPS Total, 250Gb Hard Drive
    GCC 3.4.3
    Samba 3.0.14a
    HylaFAX 4.2.1

Gotta say it's way ahead of expectations.
I won't touch another distro now for my mission critical.
Although, Knoppix, http://www.knoppix.org/ and Ubuntoo, http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ are great "insert CD and run" distros, for workstations.
Working with SlackWare seems effortless also, http://www.slackware.org/.

Was fortunate enough to meet the fine gent who started the LFS project: Gerard Beekmans
Highly recommended support for the project, even if it's just $5 for a beer via donations :->, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/contribute.h tml or a much needed "hints" writeup, http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/.

IMHO, i guess the easy thing to do is just give a shot to a livecd.

For new user, i still think the best distribution to start with is Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), especially because they offer you a LiveCD who will behave exactly like an installed system (btw, it will be way slower since it has no access to your hard drive... just memory and cd)

Using this, you can "try before you get it for free", see how your system behaves.

Then, when you feel more comfortable, you can try the real thing...
For this, if you feel a little bit afraid, a good idea can be to google for the nearest Linux User Groups and ask them for help...
There, you should find real people, able to explain some "not like windows" aspect of the installation / usage... for free and with devotion..
eg: Most of people don't have a clue on how the file system works on windows... but the one who knows have usually difficulty to understand the *n*x way... its just another view of thing... Always nice to be introduced to something by someone rather by try-errors thing.

By the way, this is my point of view, I do not say Ubuntu is the best, just it can offer you a nice and introduction to freedom

Hope it helps

"LiveCD still doesn't give them storage ..."

You can write on an HFS+ partition in =>2.6.10 series Linux kernels. An Ubuntu Hoary Live CD/DVD would suit these kids well. Just sudo modprobe hfsplus and you're good to go.

You can also order nicely packed Ubuntu CD's for free. These kids should order these discs and give them to everyone in their school.

I don't think it promotes linux... I think they're actually making fun of it where they say "you have to compile it, patch the kernel, etc". (I'm not being a troll).

If you make an open source OS that is blindingly simple to install and use, you won't get any money from your support contracts.

Supported? As in paid tech support? Ofcource it is.

The job of a linux distributor (such as Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu etc) is primarily that of assembling a large quantity of free and open source software into an easy to use and pre-configured package. While they may write and contribute some of their own software to the mix, and do some customisation and bug fixes of their own, 95%+ of the software you see in a linux distro will be common to other distrabutions.

I don't use Red Hat or Fedora myself, so could be wrong about the below, but... Fedora is developed by the community (Red Hat also helps to develop it) and is kept fairly up-to date with new software releases. Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses snapshot of Fedora as a core, keeps it stable (ie doesn't update it that often, just bug fixes) and adds a few bits of proprietary software and adds in the support contract (most people buy Red Hat for the support). If you want Red Hat without the support, and the RH branding, then maybe CentOS is what you are looking for.

I would personally suggest Ubuntu Linux, which is Debian based, its fairly well polished and most things will work straight out of the box, so you shouldn't need too much in the way of support to get it setup (Though I have had some difficulties with the 64 bit version). Even things like Java, ATI/nVidia drivers and multimedia codexs can be gotten via apt-get (you may need the extras repository for some of these). If you need paid support, Canonical will support Ubuntu for $100 USD per computer per year (I haven't used them myself, so can't say how good they are).

If you want free support, then goggle is your friend, as is reading the documentation, searching goggle groups, asking on mailing lists and visiting IRC channels. The only cost is the time and effort to find the answers for yourself (which doubles as a good education in Linux). You are not guaranteed an answer, but will usually find one, nor a time limit on how long it will take to find or receive an answer. This is the method that most individuals actually use, though it does require that you are willing to learn. In a business where time is money, it is possible that paid support may work out cheaper than your own time in searching google (it depends on how much your time is worth compared to the time saved via a support contract), but in comparison, I will ask you when was the last time you phoned up Microsoft and had them tell you how to fix your problem.

As for the Mozilla Corporation, they are very new and haven't done anything that I could comment on, but I see it as very, very unlikely that its formation will have a detrimental effect to the development of free and open source Firefox. We already have Netscape as a commercial company that takes Firefox, gives a customised setup, adds alot of their own branding to the package and throws in a few proprietary components and calls it Netscape 8. Firefox is not the poor "free starter edition" cousin to Netscape 8. As long as people are intrested in Firefox, then it will continue to be developed and it will always remain free.

For businesses specialising in free and open source software, the "switchero" is fairly uncommon. FLOSS licences actually prevent people from doing a "switchero" on existing software, if its been releases as FLOSS then that version will be free forever. With non copyleft (ie GPL) licences (or when exceptions are made in the licence), then someone can make a proprietary fork of the project and future versions of that fork may not be free, though others are still free to continue to work on the FLOSS version. This can also happen with copyleft or GPL software when only one person, or one group, owns ALL the copyright to the software and can thus change the licence for future versions (such as PHPedit). In many cases, where the software has been developed by the community, there are too many copyright holders for this

The rest of your issues seem distro related. You should try Ubuntu (with Totem-xine, see the Ubuntu guide) or any other friendly distro. Just because something costs money, it doesn't mean its any better.

Who cares about that... Will it run on my Gentoo and Ubuntu systems??? ;)

How many people do you think would like to run Windows or Linux on a cool looking mac?

These already all run on current (ie PPC) Macs:

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
http://debian.org/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.gentoo.org/ ...and probably more, with even more distros likely working once the move to Intel is completed.

I also seem to recall that Apple mentioned that Windows would run on the Intel-based Macs.

Honest question, not trolling, etc.

You sure?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/screenshots/document_vi ew
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_gallery.php?i mage=screenshot
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?re lease=110&slide=107

h, what the heck:
http://shots.osdir.com/

Looks as different to me as you can expect from themes and tweaks

I wrote about this earlier today on bitsofnews.com. I'll save you the click and paste my thoughts here.

I am not sure how MS expects to keep pushing this down people's throats.
Most people don't want to be treated as thieves, and I can see some general backlash coming to MS from this.

I really don't see how this will, in the long run, benefit MS. Most people in the 1st world buy a computer from a major distributer, and use the (usually) legit copy of Windows from that. I'm guessing that that one-third number includes nations like India and China, where people can't afford the 1st world pricing scheme of Windows.

Oh, wait, silly me, why don't these poor people just use XP Starter Edition? Right. That's the ticket.

Do they seriously think this will decrease piracy in the 3rd world? All they've really done is cripple their product. They now have several issues to deal with.

This "Genuine Advantage" program is tantamount to legitimizing "pirated" XP. To many, I suspect it sends the message: "Ok, use pirated XP if you want, we'll just give special benefits to those who pay us." It's almost like a "shareware" model of distribution. Seeing how they are trying to push "XP Starter Edition", I seriously doubt this is their intent -- but it looks like they've emasculated that product entirely.

Simply, Pirated XP Home/Pro is still less crippled than XP SE. So for the 3rd world market, it's a choice between paying for a highly crippled OS, or getting a slightly crippled OS for free. I don't see many people paying for the privilege of less features.

This is also a potential gold mine for alternative OS's, such as the newer GNU/Linux systems pushing ease-of-install; Ubuntu, Mepis, Mandravia, Fedora spring to mind immediately, and there are many others.

Given the choice of a super-crippled SE, a somewhat-crippled XP Home/Pro, or a fully-functional GNU/Linux, GNU/Linux becomes an increasingly "no-brainer" solution.

at least link to ubuntu's site instead of some shitty no-insight copynpaste blog

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

I am running RAID 5 on my desktop server right here. It has a P4 3 year old Gigabyte motherboard. It's not hotswappable because it's not enterprise level (and I don't plan on having to hotswap all of the time, only when shit happens) but it gives me the RAID 5 that I like to use as a backup using software based RAID on Ubuntu Linux. After the install, it it would be just as easy for Grandma to use as if it were not RAIDed and I am certain any /.er could figure out the install for most any Linux distro.

Can I have your money now?

I seem to imagine this

They do.

If you watch the security changelogs - or the regular changelogs - of ubuntu packages, you'll see that nine out of ten get made by debian, adapted to ubuntu and thrown to the ubuntu servers. Some are just renamed to "-ubuntu" and passed on. And a very few are actually maintained by ubuntu themselves.

Or you could just look on Ubuntu's web page on the matter. It's no secret that without Debian, there would be no Ubuntu.

Yellow Dog is the version that I last knew that would run on it. You can also install many linux apps directly within OSX. (No clue how... I am strictly a "PC" user.

Ubuntu (Gnome), and KUbuntu also have Mac versions. Hope this helps. :)

Oh, come on.

In six easy steps, why don't you just:

(1)Write a PHP/Perl/WhatTheFuckEver/etcetera script that sends a specially formatted message to a system log.

(2)Install a real operating system (like, say, Ubuntu).

(3)Create a cron job that regularly accesses said script with Curl/wget/WhatTheFuckEver/Etcetera.

(4)???

(5)Profit!

(6)Send another ultra-simple 30-second software engineering question to Ask Slashdot.

What, did you want a >4MB .NET tray icon app that installs ~5 ad-ware programs? Sorry, I like elegant solutions.

(sorry, I'm in a bad mood because of MGM v. Grokster)

:)

Or how about $0 for a full operating system including a full office suite and software for writing DVDs?

Well, if OSX is an option then how about Linux/PPC? Ubuntu will do very nicely, with a clean easy installation and GUI, there's actually a PPC LiveCD available if you want to just try it out.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

when OO.o 2 is finally available, it'll certainly beat the hell out of neooffice, and on linux it should integrate fairly nicely with all other apps.

Go here and grab the latest version of Ubuntu... you can thank me later.

Ubuntu and Debian are closely related.