Lindows: Where do I begin. When I first heard about lindows it was to be the greatest thing coming. Yeah, windows apps on Linux...skip ahead to some apps using a Lindows tweaked wine... skip ahead to regardless a pretty darn good system over all. It gets things to work other distros don't. I continually have trouble getting my Digital Camera to work in other distros. Especially in user mode. Lindows plops you in the command chair of root, so the camera just works. Linux permissions can be such a pain. Even after all these years I'm still a bit lost. The CNR package management system works very very well. My biggest problem with Lindows is a picky one. It leaves so much out of the original install that I have to click n run up my ass. And for a tweak like me who re-installs a lot, that is a royal pain. And I'm upset that I bought "win4lin" from lindows and not Netraverse. Take my advice and buy the cd set. Otherwise you will not be able to use win4lin with any other distro. Lindows uses a key embedded into CNR. Aside from that it's a great Debian distro. Not easily tweaked so who needs that :) And there's no Kuickshow!
Knoppix: I'll keep this short. I love Knoppix. It was my first Debian experience after my failure to install the Debian Debian. Has lots of great programs ready to go. No great update tool, but it installs so fast that it doesn't much matter. Tweaked fstab. Had it set up to be my one and only distro, until...
MEPIS: Sometimes it's the little things I say again. MEPIS has a sweet and simple install process. With Knoppix you have to enter prompt mode and go text install from there. Not complaining. Once you know the "how to" the install is a breeze. MEPIS though takes it one step further and goes grapical with a nice repair Lilo option. And I mean that is important. And an option to save your files on a re-nstall, invaluable. MEPIS frightens people by being based on Debian unstable and all I can say is it seems pretty darn stable to me. And if it weren't for Xandros's file system and my ever changing need for exploration I'd still be using it. And MEPIS has kuickshow! Kuickshow is a tiny picture viewing method that I absolutely addore. Not gonna tell you why :)
Xandros: Xandros, Xandros Xandros. Why am I here writing about and ending with Xandros. Why is it special? I don't think it's all too special. Codeweavers feels tense. Explorer seems shakey. Can't access maestro on myswa through Internet Explorer, so wine/weavers is ho hum still. Xandros is sparse in applications as Lindows is. The menu however is nice and clean and simple. The look reminds me of Corel and I feel warm all over. Some of Corel is still visible today. Changing your screen resolution which still can be difficult in other distros, Corel/Xandros has had working for years now. My favorite thing though about Xandros is the file system layout. No tweaking to get it working. All my drives are right there. Windows drives, linux drives all accessible with a click of the mouse. Yesterday I made three coasters trying to burn isos using the Xandros cd burning feature...I did succeed though and shame on me I think my problem was I was clicking too fast!
Okay, but here is why I say Kudos to Xandros. Bear with me. First, no kuickshow. I need kuickshow for my picture viewer. Kuickshow isn't listed in xandros networks. I decided to tweak Xandros. I changed the apt sources list to:
# Unstable
deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
posted from another Xandros review. I ran: apt-get update from console. Then: apt-get install synaptic
Then ran synaptic and did a system upgrade just too see hee hee. Went through a lot of changes and selected default for most if not all of the prompts. Rebooted and expected it to fail as had Lindows :) But to my surprise I saw my "Cottage" desktop wallpaper and before that the KDE wizard indicating I now had KDE 3.1.5! It doesn't get much better than this. I opened the console and typed:
apt-get install kuickshow
It gave me the option to install and I did and it did and I installed koffice and here I am with a cutting edge unstable Xandros that allowed me to tweak it. I love that! Lindows wouldn't allow me to install kuickshow without breaking it. And still being a noobie, if there is another way, I don't know it. And I'm sure I've forgotten to mention tons of things. But Kudos to Xandros for allowing me to upgrade however irresponsible that may be. And after said upgrade, much of our default KDE is back in the menu and Xandros is there as well. The wonderful file system is there... they are coexisting... ehh, as far as I can tell.
Gotta have a sense of humor and as "Distrowatch" says... "Put the fun back into Computing. Use Linux."
- "Linux Editorial, Page 1"
- "Linux Editorial, Page 2"
