Hi, I think I will waid in on this one, and simply state a couple of observations from the other side of the discussion. First, there is alot of rpms for Suse, Red Hat, and Mandrake because the average user such as myself really doesn't care how or why the computer does what it does as long as we can get OpenOffice going, working speech, get on the web, etc we are happy with what we have. I don't care to configure and custumize every detail of the os, or figure out how everything works. Another reason for rpms is that it is truly a powerful packaging system, and by far is perhaps the most popular. An example, I am rebuilding rpms of mplayer, and all I needed do was install the devel dependancies, get the source rpms, install them, edit the changes in the spec I want, and run rpm to build a new installation package for Mandrake 9.2 which had all the features I wanted. From now on I do not need to recompile, but only need install the package on other computers. Simple enough? Last, the main reason Mandrake, Red Hat, and Suse have become so popular is that they have a larger commercial base than Slackware or Debian. Mandrake Soft Inc. have become popular precisely because they have taken Linux, and made it resemble MS Windows as far as installation, picking Windows like apps, and there Powerpack cd's often include such popular apps as realplayer, macromedia, acrobat reader, movie editing software, commercial games, etc. While I may not be able to get much out of the commercial apps myself my wife can use it which makes purchasing a Mandrake cd worth the price, and saves me money from having to buy the similar MS Windows products. As far as installation goes my wife knows very little about computers, and was successful installing Mandrake 9.2 as the drakx installer is alot like a MS Windows install. Which if it was Debian she would have had a much worse time with it, and I think it is foolish to spend three or four hours trying to install a Linux when with Mandrake one can just spend 10 minutes clicking through the Windows-like install, wait about 30 minutes for the install to run, and Mandrake restarts directly in to x and drops you on the Gnome or KDE desktop depending on which desktop you chose to be the default. You can even set Drake up to automatically login to your user account which is also somewhat nice if you are use to Windows booting directly in to your desktop. Well, if you don't like the fact some Linux distributions are windows-like that is kind of tuff. As they say different strokes for different folks. If you love Debian or Slackware and it makes you happy stay with it, but don't complain that others like a more comercially driven Linux.
