For once, some one has come up with a project to ship free DVDs of a choice of mainstream Linux distributions which includes Fedora, SUSE 10.1, Mandriva, Gentoo, Debian and Knoppix. People always talk about the stupendous success of Ubuntu. But what many fail to notice is that the very fact that Ubuntu gained so much popularity was because they chose to send free CDs of their Linux distribution to people residing anywhere in the world and the recieving party need not even pay the cost of shipping which made it really tempting to order the Ubuntu CD and try it out. Of course the Ubuntu team has been hard at work at fine tuning the distribution to work flawlessly with an ever growing number of hardware which also added to its popularity.
This project of shipping free DVDs of Linux distributions is the brain child of a Canadian supplier of Linux systems and compatible hardware who has a presence on the web at linuxstore.ca . You may order any one distribution free of cost at this page. Of course it remains to be seen if this is really a smart advertising campaign for a limited time period to bring more publicity to their site and ring in more sales for their other hardware products or they are genuinely committed to providing free DVDs of Linux distributions for as long as possible.
But seriously, all main stream Linux distribution companies should take a leaf from Ubuntu and start shipping free DVDs/CDs of their distributions. It should not pose a problem considering that a blank CD/DVD costs just pennies and what ever costs they might incur in shipping will be more than offset by the added publicity and goodwill generated in the process. And they can always carry on making money by offering extra services such as online support and add-on features.
