On Thursday, December 6, 2001, at 11:32 AM, David T Darnell wrote:

> OK, I'll state that what I ordered was the latest 3-CD Mandrake set,
> "Full" release that supposedly includes the Mandrake-specific extras,
> and the documentation. StarOffice and such as well, I believe.
>
> I suppose it is possible that IF Mandrake has the same distribution
> policies as RedHat, the freelinuxCD people might not be in violation.
>
> Actually, now that I have my PC with CD burner working again (install
> of Win/98 SR2 has _never_ worked on this box, even from scratch -
> loaded NT this time) I can download and burn my own, I suppose. I will
> try it both ways.
>
> If I order a full, "official" distribution, I'm leaning toward Debian
> at this time.
>
well you picked the only one that you can't really order - As far as I
know there isn't a debian based distro left, the Progeny installer is
crap and I don't know if they are still shipping it.  I put Debian on my
Apple laptop and it took a week of painful work, but now that it's
running it is so much better than an RPM based distro.

> Thanks, Gavin, for (as usual) a highly informative and helpful reply.
>
> -dtd
>
>
>
>
> [log in to unmask] on 12/06/2001 12:19:00 PM
> To:     [log in to unmask]@Internet
> cc:      (bcc: David T Darnell/CO/KAIPERM)
> Subject:        Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Free Linux CDs
>
> Dave wonders:
>> So, I ordered a set of [vendor name omitted] Linux discs from a
>> "Free Linux CD" site.  You know, they make a little on their
>> "shiping" charges and claim the CD is free.  I have ordered other
>> software this way in the past, and received original CDs without
>> any documentation or certificate. The CDs were a little out of
>> date, but I did not care.
>>
>> The "free" Linux CDs, set of three for $5.95, arrived yesterday
>> from Hong Kong - on retail CD-R media. Copies, not original from
>> manufacturer M.......
>
> Whadda ya want for nothing? :-)
>
> AFAIK, none of the cheap/free Linux distributors are going to give you
> media
> manufacture red by the author of the distribution, and it would not
> surprise
> me if some of them send out CD-Rs (though pressed/screen printed CDs
> ought
> to be cheaper than CD-Rs at some quantity these days).
>
> But if they're cutting them on CD-Rs, I would certainly expect to get
> the
> latest available version.
>
> RedHat allows you to sell your own copies of RedHat Linux, but they have
> very specific restrictions as regards the use of their *trademarks*, so
> you
> can't just print up a bunch of copies of the RedHat discs with the same
> screen printed graphics that RedHat uses.  You actually have to call
> your
> distribution something like Darnell Linux 1.0 but you can say something
> like
> "based on RedHat Linux 7.2" in small print.  All the details are on
> RedHat's
> web site.
>
>> Linux is free, so there shouldn't be any copyright infringement
>> right?
>
> Most Linux distributions include software under a variety of licenses,
> though often they all allow free distribution of all of the material on
> at
> least the core operating system disks.  Often when you pay for a
> commercial
> distribution you also get other disks of software which may have a more
> restricted license.
>
> With RedHat for example, the 7.2 distribution consists of two CDs
> comprising
> RedHat 7.2, plus two CDs of the source code for the first two CDs.
> These
> are the fully re-distributable part of what you get in the box.  They
> also
> include a Star Office CD, some Loki games demos, and other stuff which
> may
> be more restricted as far as copying goes.
>
> But generally all you get from the "free Linux" people is just the core
> CDs
> which are often covered by the GPL or other licenses which allow full
> redistribution.
>
> The gory details vary from distribution to distribution though.
>
> A good place to look is:
>
>    http://www.linuxiso.org/
>
> where you can generally find out which disks from each distribution are
> freely redistributable (because they are downloadable) and you can also
> find
> out the MD5 checksum of the disk image, which can be used to verify
> that the
> contents of the CDs you got are identical to the official distribution
> (you
> might have to make an ISO image from the CD and then run MD5SUM against
> that).
>
> G.
>
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