> No kidding. Free is important. We now have many other good stuff -- and I
> know what I'm talking about, as a long-run xv user..
Just one (general) remark. Maybe you don't care, but I think Mandrake
might loose some of its users going this way. I use Mandrake for some
computers I administrate as it is easy to install and has a lot of things
we need (such as journalized fs, etc.) out-of-the-box.
However, I'm becoming more and more woried (ok, I'm french, still some
work to do with my english) about some choices in Mandrake. xv is a
standard. Removing it would do more harm that anything else. Some default
Mandrake configurations are also against standards. It took some time to
understand why the scrollbar was enabled by default whereas xterm man was
saying the opposite (/etc/X11/Xresources). Then I was quite surprised by
the choice of "unset wrap" in default vimrc. Maybe it's better for
newbies (but are there vim-using newbies ?), but it is something unusable
for anybody not used to.
These choices will make me think twice before installing a Mandrake. Of
course, it's nice to have Mandrake becoming more than just a "better
configured RedHat". But if it's becoming explicitly a "newbie configured
Linux", I won't use it anymore. I guess something in-between is needed.
My advice would be: "leave old things alone", meaning don't modify things
that newbie won't use. Put kterm and eterm entries, but not generic Xterm
entries which contradict the man. Don't put strange default behaviour for
things such as vi that no newbie will ever use (a newbie using vi should
know about line length). Don't remove standards that are still used on
all other unices.
Then, for all the extra-stuff, ok, let's go for blinking purple and pink
Eterms! ;)
And maybe it could be nice to have differents iso images for different
users. I installed M7.1 with only the first CD (didn't want to burn the
second one), and I was quite surprised libstdc++-devel was not on it.
Maybe a good reflexion upon the 1000? packages and a more subtle
organisation would be usefull. Is it necessary to install 3 different CD
burners softwares ? And so on...
Just my 0.02$
