Publishers Version Red Hat 8.0

[ozdream]

G’day all,

A friend of mine just gave me a Red Hat installation book with two “Publisher versions” of Red Hat in the back this is version 8.

Question: Does anyone know what a “Publishers Version” is?

Also on the back of this book it says to keep costs down of the Red Hat Distro included in with this book if you want the source code please send in $12 US to the publisher.

I thought the source code was “Free” for linux or am I misunderstanding something?

Book details:

Red Hat Linux 8 : Your Visual Blueprint to an Open Source Operating System
Paul Whitehead
ISBN: 0-7645-1793-7
Paperback
334 pages
December 2002
£22.50 / €37.20

[mrBen]

1. Publishers version is likely to be a cut down version of the full distro. Usually similar to a 'download' version, whereby they take out some of the proprietary software that they might include in the boxed set.

2. Linux is free as in speech, not necessarily as in beer. In this case, it looks like they are charging for post and the cost of burning a CD, but you can grab the source from the Red Hat website if you want. Or, for that matter, a number of other places.

[ozdream]

Originally posted by mrBen
1. Publishers version is likely to be a cut down version of the full distro. Usually similar to a 'download' version, whereby they take out some of the proprietary software that they might include in the boxed set.

2. Linux is free as in speech, not necessarily as in beer. In this case, it looks like they are charging for post and the cost of burning a CD, but you can grab the source from the Red Hat website if you want. Or, for that matter, a number of other places.

1: Yes, thank you I should have thought before I typed!! :-0

I quess IMHO it would be a better idea to get a "boxed set of CD's" from Red Hat to get the best "First time experience" from this version of Linux.

2: Yes no more ID10T questions time for some reasearch and reading.

(Just board sitting here at work at 0540 watching computer networks)

Thanks

[scott_R]

Nah, IMHO, the pub versions (the same as downloads, for the most part), are good ways to go. They let you play with less monetary risk, meaning that you aren't as ticked off if one distro doesn't work the way you wanted it to. Also, they are pretty close to the commercial versions, as the commercial ones mostly include other commercial software like staroffice and so on.

That said, if you find one you like, you should definitely pay for a full version or donate (depending on the distro), so you help produce the next version. Even the "free/volunteer" distros like debian and so on should get something to support them, even if it's just a little towards keeping the servers going.