Is linux free 5040

HalcyonWild

the one *you* like. Obviously there are enough people that like RH to keep them in business. I don't see a problem with that.

Uh, that's two usecases that has proven to work flawlessly for me on Fedora ... but that's probably just me.

One thing that *is* a problem is running multimedia stuff on the entirely free linux distros that choose not to take any chances regarding multimedia codec licenses. Having Fedora play common formats like mp3 isn't exactly rocket science, but it doesn't do that out of the box. Because those functions aren't free, plain and simple. One distro just can't be entirely free and include commercial software at the same time.

Why don't you just stick with Windows? My favourite distro comes with all the software I need, including mysql (which I most certainly do not need, by the way, I prefer other alternatives). I see your point, though. When a software distribution that isn't so mainstream is to be distributed, the vendor has to support various distros and package-formats, and the user has to pick the correct download supporting his-her distro, if such a binary distribution exist. This is inherently how the free linux community works. To minimize the problem, just stick with either some common commercial version, like RHEL (which is equivalent to using commercial Windows), or a derivative like CentOS.

It *is* cumbersome and frustrating to narrow down and settle for the distribution that suits you best. But that's how it works. It's much like the best-of-breed-world you have to cope with if you're a Java J2EE developer. It's just how it is not being a Microsoft customer, I suppose ....

Maybe, but Unix is still around, you know... FreeBSD is a viable alternative to Linux, it's free, and comes in one flavour only. OR you could go for a BSD-derivative, in which case you would have to settle for OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Firefly, DesktopBSD ... :-)

-- jon martin solaas