Is linux free 5042

HalcyonWild I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that you are Flatfish. In my defense, I had my suspicions even before Aragorn brought it up. Your posts fit Flatfish's pattern, if not precisely. The differences were small enough to suspect you, if you were he, had changed his tactics a bit to throw us off. Your subsequent posts are enough to now make me doubt that position. I am now on the fence as far as this is concerned.

The folks here take swift umbrage at what they perceive to be attacks on their favorite OS. Those attacks have been almost constant in recent months, and they have become very gunshy. If you have not been on the attack, please forgive them. If you *have* been on the attack, then they were justified, don't you think?

I have used Mandrake-Mandriva since 2002, with a brief turn at Fedora about a year ago. As far as monetary cost is concerned, I haven't paid a cent for either. The cost I paid has been in the time spent learning what I needed to to get things working correctly. Sometimes those lessons have been painful. Life isn't always easy.

IMHO, Fedora is a developer's distro, good for those who want to be on the bleeding edge and who want to delve deep into the OS and tweak it into maximum performance. That wasn't for me. I now use Mandriva 2005 Limited Edition(Limited meaning it was only to be available for a limited time). For those who don't want to have to do so much tweaking, it's the better choice of the two. Mandriva 2006 will be freely availabe to the public in a couple of weeks or so. Try it out - it's free!

BTW, the free Mandriva version does not include the proprietary Java software, because Mandriva must pay for a license to distribute it. However, Java for Linux is freely available to individuals from Sun.

TJ