h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When one buys a copy of Mandrake Linux, is it a license for just one PC or can it be installed on as many PCs as you like? If the former, do you know if MandrakeSoft provides academic institution licenses and so on?

I have had no luck in finding that information from the Mandrake site and they haven't replied to the e-mail I sent them; and I know that Red Hat and SuSE have licensing plans for different institutions.

Can anybody enlighten me?

Well, the short answer is that you can almost definitely *install* it on as many computers as you like. Most Linux distributions are available free-of-charge anyway, and what you pay for is not so much a licence as a handling fee for them to package it for you (etc.).

That said, there are two reasons you *do* get licenced Linux versions: some distributors have an "Enterprise Edition" (or somesuch) which includes proprietrary tools not available to users of the free system. I'm not sure if Mandrake does such a thing, or if its what you've bought. The other kind of licence is for official support - generally for a certain length of time, and quite possibly limited by number of copies installed as well.

So, if you've just got a basic box-set in your pocket, you can probably install it on whatever you like. But if you've got something more than that, then, well, I don't know.

[IMSoP]

I use Mandrake and I've never paid for it. The usual pay-for option is, like Increase Mathers has said, for business and pays for support. They'll send techs around and configure it all.

Free - download edition (contains 3 CDs of open source software and you can install on as many machines as you like)

There are pay for editions which contain free software that is not open source such as the flash browser plugin which is free but owned by macromedia and closed source.

Thank you very much.

And on the move over, btw

Do you use Linux? I think it's brilliant.

I'm an Apple Mac man personally - though Mac OS X is Unix based but I've installed Linux for and converted many people

Well done. Tell me, what tactics did you use to persuade people, or is it a trade secret?

Here's a good bit of persuasion for people to switch... A couple of weeks ago (gosh I wish I could find the exact quote) Bill Gates something to the effect that systems running windows and Win IE were safer BECAUSE they are attacked more often than the others!!?!?

Oh, I THINK I know what he was trying to say... maybe he meant to say that they had more security patches...or... You know what... I DON'T know what he was trying to say.

Anyway, I heard this on a TechTV show last week. Gates was in Switzerland when he said this, but I don't think he said it during one of his official speaking engagements. If anyone can find this quote, I'd appreciate it because I have several people I'd like to forward it to.


CZ

Been thinking about linux for a bit. Any idea if it's feasible to shrink a linux distro small enough that it'll run and boot from a 64Mb USB memory vault? The idea of being able to carry around my OS on my key ring appeals to me for some sort of weird and unexplainable reason.

There are several versions of Linux and *BSD which will fit onto floppies so getting a 64MB usb thing would have loads of room to put stuff on.

You're in luck Croz. The Linux companies think of everything. There's a product called Mandrake Move, which is Mandrake Linux 9.2 that boots and runs entirely from a CD and it comes with a 128MB USB Key to store all of your user-defined configuration settings on it!

It's not exactly what you said, but I think it's the nearest to it. It costs about £47 (70 euros, $90). And it even has a feature that allows you to eject the CD and put in a music or data CD temporarily without losing the OS.

I haven't heard of the floppy disk versions though. Where can they be found?

You could try http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/index.html
Its 50Mb so you'd have 14 meg left for stuff

For floppies the classic is Toms root/boot http://www.toms.net/rb/
a single floppy distribution (great to have around if you need to fettle a screwed up server). PicoBSD is a single floppy version of FreeBSD 3.0

There are others. I'm sure I once read about something that had the X window system on three floppies as well.

OK. Thanks.

By the way, don't you agree that the open source community quite likes making unusual acronyms for its software?

GNU - GNU's Not Unix
WINE - WINE Is Not an Emulator
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program
KDE - K Desktop Environment (Why K?)

Does anybody know any other interesting ones?

Funnily enough, there was a discussion about Linux on USB keys on Slashdot just the other day. It may or may not contain the kind of information you're after, but in the interest of weaving the Web: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/06/2252202&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=185&tid=190&tid=198