[cooker-amd64] Re: Any hdlist-ifiied amd64 cooker contrib mirrors? Where is Mdk for amd64 headed?

[Duncan]

Pierre-Olivier Gaillard posted <4005C3DB.3060306@free.fr>, excerpted
below,  on Wed, 14 Jan 2004 23:34:03 +0100:

> I faced the same questions. I decided to purchase a Silver Club
> Membership. At the moment I am quite disappointed :
>   1) AMD64 is not an option in the package voting system. I really want
> to vote for a few AMD64 packages.
>   2) I did not find an appropriate contrib directory for AMD64 in the
> club section.
>   3) I have not found a working cooker directory for AMD64 yet[]
> 
> Anyway the product itself (Mdk 9.2 for AMD64) is quite good, so I believe
> that it was fair for me to pay 120EUR for my Club Membership.
> 
> All in all I think that the Club Membership is a good deal even though the
> Club itself is not very nice. I think of my membership as a way of paying
> for the help Gwenole Beauchesne is providing on this list. This really
> makes it look like a bargain ;-)

Thanks.  I may do the same.  I am, however, thinking about getting the
4-disk AMD64 set from Mdk-store instead, as a way of sending the message
that the AMD64 distrib, specifically, has some demand that translates into
$$, as well.  That despite the fact that it's in the biz section, not the
individual section.  However, it'd be nice to know how much of that $100
Mdk actually gets to keep, and how much goes to the CD pressing and
shipping, when I'm not going to be using the CDs much anyway, ideally.  If
Mdk only gets to keep $20 of it, that's not worth it.  Likewise with the
club.  Paying for Mdk to provide all these services to the i586 crowd
isn't all that useful to me, nor does it indicate to Mdk that there is
demand for AMD64.  Rather, it indicates that they have yet another i586
user to cater to, which might be counterproductive to my goals, if it
causes them to focus harder on that to the exclusion of AMD64.

Thus, the quandary..  It isn't the $100-120 that's the issue.. I spend
over $1500 upgrading my hardware to a dual Opteron system, so a hundred or
so to Mdk for the OS platform and software isn't a bad deal at all (and
is rather a bargain, tho not so much if I spend that every year over the
5 year expected life of the system, tho even then it wouldn't be a /bad/
deal). I just don't know how to best "vote with my wallet", here, which is
what I very deliberately am attempting to do.

Anyway, Mdk does deserve something for the couple years I've been on the
586 side of things (tho I DID buy a couple boxed sets I didn't use that
much earlier.. Mdk 6.x-ish, so I've already paid them some), but
sometimes, I wonder about Gentoo, which as part of its targeting is
deliberately individual installation CPU customized.  I don't know how far
that extends into non-32-bit systems, but the question is there..  Would I
be better off on something else, now that I'm no longer a Linux newbie,
and no longer on what remains Mandrake's primary focus, the i586 plus
market?  After all, that's one of the reasons I went Mdk rather than RH,
i586, rather than the lowest common denominator, i386, targeted. Now that
I'm no  longer simply i586 and descendants based.. i586 is beginning to
look an awful lot like i386 did back when I chose Mdk over RH.

That's a legitimate question to ask, going forward, I think.  Just as I
had to change ISPs when the one I was on changed focus and no longer met
my needs, and that didn't mean they were wrong and I was right, just that
our interests diverged, the same applies here.  Are Mdk's interests
diverging from mine?  Should I look for a better fit elsewhere?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin