[cumbria_lug] Mandrake 9.2

[Michael Saunders]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Trevor Pearson wrote:

> I would recommend Suse, RedHat or Mandrake with very little worry,

Recommending SUSE to a newcomer is rarely an option -- if he/she is
not sure about Linux, you can't ask them to spend £30 or so on the
boxed set (no freely distributable ISOs to download and burn).

Similarly, after the recent problems I wouldn't recommend Mandrake to
a first-timer; if he/she sees a bug-ridden desktop with bizarre
behaviour and all manner of weird glitches, he/she may be put off
Linux for life. Some folk have hassle-free Mandrake experiences, which
is good, but there are too many reports of nasty bugs and weirdness.

As for Red Hat, as said, there is no more Red Hat Linux with all the
testing, QA and support that goes with it. Fedora is unproven, and
does not appear to be appropriate for newbies.

What we need is a distro that's:

A) Free to download and distribute
B) Built with recent (not bleeding-edge) software
C) Easy to use and carefully supported
C) Well tested and reliable

And right now, Fedora, Mandrake and SUSE don't fulfil all those 
criteria. Some cover some, but not one of them all (if you follow!).

Is there anything else?

Mike

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk