"user friendliest" Linux distro

[aacton-B71PBEe7S7Y at public.gmane.org]

No desire to start a holy war here, but some of this shall not pass...

> The problems with Mandrake are:
> * finding online repositories (urpmi) for Mandrake
> -- http://urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php really is not that nice

Umm, is there a problem with the giant list on the Mandrake homepage?

> * non-"members" do not have access to "core" computing
> technologies such as Macro. Flash plugin for browser

You most certainly do "have access" to them.  Flash, Java, Acrobat, and Real
Player are all available from their respective companies websites for free.

The download edition of Mandrake Linux consists of free software only.  This is
done for reasons of accountability and ethics.  If all distros were this way,
free implementations of flash/java/pdf/real (like kaffe, libswf) would be way
ahead of where they are now, out of necessity.

The club is not a product.  It's a way to donate money to MandrakeSoft to say
"thanks for the distro".  There are a few perks to being a member, like some
non-free software, but that's not its purpose.

BTW, major bug hunters, translators, and volunteers get a free club membership.

> * Mandrake loss / losing / frustrating some of the best independent
>   pkg makers .  For example, Chipster and Texstar.

They were all free to join the development team, if not invited!  I assume they
don't want to play by the rules (read: follow standards).
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/wiki

Austin
--
                                  Austin Acton
        Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
               Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
        MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca
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