I have asked before whether Mandrakesoft will provide nice-looking jewel case inserts (as Postscript or PDF or something like that) for their GPL CDs. I really think this is important, as it allows one to put some text which the user is guaranteed to read.
This issue is coming up again now, since I have just been asked by someone who is starting a linux distribution network here in south africe to write a 3-CD set of Mandrake, which will get places in the public libraries in the entire province. There are very few places that have sufficient bandwidth for even considering downloading something large, and the universities are some of them. So this distibutino network will get those with bandwidth or mirrors (we have an unofficial Mandrake mirror that carries ISOs, latest release and updates, and also has mirrors of other projects like KDE) to make CDs to be placed at all the libraries. Now, how do we expect the users of these CDs to find all the excellent resources (mailing lists, usenet group, mandrake web sites) if they have trouble getting through the installer? If noone from Mandrakesoft is prepared to reply to this, I will go ahead and make something myself (which has mandrakeexpert.com, mandrakeuser.org, alt.os.linux.mandrake, linux-mandrake.com, mandrakebizcases.com etc listed), but I really think Mandrake should release their own. Of course, a big "GPL Version, freely distributeable" or something to that effect will be prominent. Regards, Buchan
