What are the real benefits to subscribing to the Mandrake club?

While the 9.2 isos were released to club members only, the FTP tree is up to the public, and you can update with urpmi

Also, do club members truly get a unique urpmi source? Aka, more packages than 9.2 base and contrib from Easy URPMI (when it gets updated). Can you get updated packages without having to add the cooker sources?

I would really like to subscribe to the club and support Mandrake's great effort, but I am a student and have absolutely no money to spare, unless there is a definite benefit for subscribing.

Thanks!

There are not that many benefits but you do get more rpms because you basically get to download the powerpack edition (not the iso's but the rpms) which contains things not in contrib or cooker. Apparently, there's a problem with the FTP install of 9.2 at the moment because of lacking hdlist.cz files - there are ways around it if you prepared to download the whole tree first and do it locally by using genhdlist to create the missing hdlist.cz files.

The main point of the Mandrakeclub is to help financially support a great distro. I've been a member for a while now. I also *gasp* purchase their products

That said, there are tutorials, articles and extra software made available to club members... but on the whole this isn't material unavailable elsewhere on the web.

If you'd rather not join the club, consider donating some money, time, resources or all to a project you enjoy (KDE comes to mind, or Mozilla, or EFF, etc).

The purpose of Mandrake Club is to support the distro. I'm another member who buys Mandrake products; boxed sets as Christmas gifts and a disk set for myelf. I choose to support Mandrake because 1) I can 2) I like Mandrake 3) the Mandrake community supported me. Now you'll find me hanging around Mandrake Club, Mandrake Expert or the Mandrake Users Board.

Mandrake Linux is, most important, a libris (free-as-in-freedom) Linux distro. All Mandrake-developed software and documentation are released under the GPL or other libris license. But Mandrake also packages gratis (free-as-in-beer) software like Nvidia and ATI drivers, Aguere linmodem drivers and such and the Mandrake community tests them to make the distro more usable. One benefit of joining Mandrake Club is the right to nominate and vote for applictions to be included in the Mandrake distro.

Students choose spending priorities differently than some other folks such as parents. Two of my progeny are university students. Both use Mandrake. Neither are Mandrake Club members. Both benefit from Mandrake Club.

As a student, check with your school's Linux Users Group (LUG). You will probably find at least a partial mirror of Mandrake on a local server and maybe a lot more. For example, look in http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake/devel/unsupported/MandrakeClub/ for Mandrake Club rpms. If you look around enough, you can findthe tangible and intellectual products available from Mandrake Club. Don't join for 'the stuff' - join to support Mandrake.

Don't worry about not joining right now. But remember Mandrake after you graduate, the increased productivity provided by 'wizards' versus learning shell scripting, the ease of install and all of the other things that make Mandrake Mandrake. Buy stock now. It'll rocket up when last year's students become managers.