I heard so much about this product (some good, some bad), but I had never really tried it before Lindows.com sent us in the latest version of their OS, LindowsOS version 3.0. I took it a spin for two weeks now, and here is what I think about it (and for the eye-candy seekers, screenshots included).
I received the LindowsOS 3.0 via download, and the ISO file was a 397 MB file. I had an empty 8 GB partition on my dual Celeron 2×533 Mhz machine waiting for it, but booting its CD and not seeing anywhere the option to disallow it to overwrite my MBR and my boot manager, it was a no-go for me to install it there (that machine has 9 OSes in it and I don’t feel like indanger its bootmanager where WinXP relies on (XP can become a pain if you overwrite 7 hex numbers that it needs in my MBR). The only other machine available I have here is my AthlonXP 1600+ with 768 MB of RAM. It already had 3 OSes there, but I don’t use that machine often and putting back its original bootmanager wouldn’t be that hard, so I decided to wipe out my SuSE 8.1 PRO installation in order to make some room and install LindowsOS for this review. I believe that the option to “Do not install Bootmanager on MBR” (in a form of a simple checkbox or something) is greatly needed in the installation process, not only for the majority of their customers who buy LindowsOS as a standalone product (not as part of a PC that is), but also for the various reviewers. The positive side is that in their GUI-based boot manager LindowsOS includes the other bootable partitions found on that PC, so not all is that bad.
LindowsOS’ installation is truly dead easy. There are only 3-4 steps in the process and the only thing you really pick is the fact if you want LindowsOS to utilize the whole hard drive, or to pick a pre-arranged partition and install it there. Overall, I think the whole installation process took about 10 minutes. The only thing that LindowsOS should lose are these in-your-face capital character sentences that they popup to the user when you are about to install the OS. It looks very unprofessional, despite the importance of the message. Perhaps they should bold or indent the characters instead of capitalize them like that.
Booting the OS (in graphical mode – safe mode/expert mode also offered via its boot manager) takes the usual Linux-distro time; it is after all a Linux distribution based on Debian, while they have licensed a few bits from Xandros. You will be greeted with the KDM login screen, able to only login as root, at first. Login in to the only DE available, you will find KDE 3.0.1-CVS running with the Keramik theme. LindowsOS uses XFree 4.2 and is in fact includes and installs by default the nVidia closed source drivers (if you have an Nvidia card that is). Of course, on my machine, these included Nvidia drivers would crash LindowsOS completely, the exact same way as Red Hat 8.0 and SuSE 8.1 did as I described in their respective reviews on OSNews a month ago. All these people who emailed me to give me “tips” on how to make these drivers more stable are really in vain. The conclusion just is that the Nvidia drivers just don’t run on that machine. And you know what the funny part is? That the AthlonXP 1600+ I used for this review is a MicroTel/Wal-Mart PC, which Lindows.com have special contracts with and have approved it. The only thing I have added on that machine is the Asus GeForce2-MX400, which is one of the most stable and quality GeForce cards around. The fault here is, of course, the driver’s bugs in conjuction with the VIA chipset. The bottom line is that LindowsOS (and any other Linux distro with various kernel parametres) would consistently crash every time, until I changed the driver to “nv” on its /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file. After that point, I did not experience any LindowsOS crashes.
The first thing I tried to do after I first booted to Lindows, was to add a new user (“eugenia”) so I wouldn’t have to be logged in as root all the time. I created the account, setup the password and everything, but the system wouldn’t let me log in as “eugenia”! I was getting an error like “you must change your password; Root re-inforced” or something like that. I went back in as root, I changed eugenia’s password, retried to login, but it would still not let me login! I then pressed ALT+F1 and went to a real console where I tried to login via the command line. And there it would give me the same error, but at least it would offer me the chance of changing eugenia’s password after inserting the password that it didn’t like! After doing so, I was able to login properly.
After I was logged in as “eugenia,” I was at last comfortable to use the system. There were very few applications installed by default, no Kedit, not an easier-to-use text-based editor other than VI (for the times we have screwed up with X – it happens to all, admit it), not even the KDE calculator. Also, there is no Office suite to be found. Instead, you will find 4-5 games, Kwrite and Kate editors, KreateCD, Netscape 7.0 as the main web browser, an email client for the system, and Help files available half in HTML form and half in the KDE-help window and a few other things not so noteworthy. The Netscape 7.0 default theme selected and its huge menu fonts (that you can’t change) do not help with the consistency of the rest of the UI. Personally, I found KDE’s default menu fonts to be very large as well, but these at least are easily fixable through the KDE Font preference panel.
LindowsOS comes with kernel 2.4.19 and ReiserFS as its filesystem of choice.
I noticed an annoying UI bug in their Keramik theme (doesn’t happen on my Keramik on SuSE and Gentoo Linux). When you look at the KMenu, there is a particular background color, but if you detach the opening child submenu, or even when simply opening it, the submenu’s window has a different color than its parent and this behavior just doesn’t look professional or well done.
Lindows.com have changed KDE in many places, for example there is no “About KDE” in any of the “Help” menus of any KDE application (just as Red Hat 8 did so). Also, they have simplified Kicker and it does not include virtual desktops (you can easily put them back though). The big icons involved in Kicker are the KMenu, Help, web and email… Konqueror is also based on KDE 3.0.1-CVS, but it has received a number of patches and it is effectively the same as the one found on Xandros’ early betas. It also sees / as a “C:\” and when you do properties to a directory you are getting the same pref panel as in Xandros File Manager to share that dir (Xandros has added more options since last year though – Lindows’ Konqueror patches are not as current as Xandros’ anymore). Unfortunately, Konqueror for me was unstable. I could easily crash it (I think I crashed it about 7-8 times in less than a week) and in some cases I would have to logout and log back in, in order to be able to reload it!
The KMenu includes a new option found only on LindowsOS, which is a program that lets you kill any open window. It is effectively a “front end” to xkill. But I find it really weird to have that option in the main/root KMenu, it is like saying to users: “our applications are unstable; you will need this kill application a lot.” And indeed, I used it a few times, mostly with Konqueror and twice with… Lindows’ jewel, ClickNRun.
One thing that surprised me in the beginning was the absense of Lindows-specific preference panels. The only such panels one will find is the “first time wizard” app which simply loads other pref panels, the (buggy) “change your monitor’s resolution” one and the Networking pref panels (wireless, PPPoE, sharing panels). All the rest of the pref panels can be found everywhere else as they are part of KDE or GNU/Linux. The resolution panel would only show me resolutions up to 1024×768@60Hz, while my (fully compliant) monitor can do up to 1600×1200@75Hz. I had to check a checkbox to force the app and show me all the possible X resolutions before I was able to setup my monitor the way I wanted to! More over, that panel does not include 16:9 resolutions found on some new laptops or Trinitron monitors for 2 years now (exotic maybe, but still a limitation of the system).
The Networking panel was pretty good and it was easy to setup and restart networking on the fly. There is also a tab on that panel for wireless configuration and PPPoE. So, except these three Lindows-specific panels, there are no other preference panels for hardware to be found. Also, there are no other useful tools like an automounter or an integrated firewall. You don’t even have a GUI tool to edit in and out the services (PCMCIA daemon starts automatically btw, and I don’t even run Lindows on a laptop, plus the OS does not launch telnet or SSH daemons, which can be useful when something crashes).
I mentioned earlier, the Lindows’ jewel (and the center of many online debates), Click-N-Run. Click-N-Run is actually a nice service. I was able to install more than 20-25 applications this week, and they all installed fine. However, CnR is not perfect. The UI is weird and limited: it does not let me resume a broken download, even if the backend is actually wget which allows such a feature. And it is dumb: it re-downloads packages all the time, even if the application was downloaded but not successfully installed (it happened three times with StarOffice – and we are talking about 180 MB here). And talking about StarOffice 6 (which is a featured free download on CnR, a value of $75 USD) I had to download it 3 times before CnR was able to download it all or install it without weird problems/errors. Another problem I found was Hancom Office’s Spreadsheet application which is also distributed for free via CnR. After it got installed it gave me a message with a serial number, but I closed that window as I thought “I will deal with this later”. However, “later” I could not find that serial number back. Still haven’t found it and I don’t feel like re-installing its 50 MBs.
However, the main problems of CnR are the applications themselves. The quality, versioning and availability of application is extremely limited. There are applications offered there (a lot of them statically linked making them several MBs that they are usually on other platforms) that are _old_. KOffice is offered in pieces (you download each component like KWord or KSpread individually) and it is still on version 1.1.1. Others haven’t been updated in many months and the developer tools are also dated. On top of all this, they have changed the naming of applications, so you don’t download “Quanta” or “BlueFish” anymore, you download a thing called “HTML Editor” and I end up having two entries on my KMenu/Development with the name “HTML Editor.” As for KWord is renamed to WritePRO or something, Gnumeric became Numeric and other such weird stuff that would only confuse users who already know these popular Linux applications.
There are a few Gnome applications offered via CnR like Evolution, Gaim and Gnumeric, but these are not many. Only GTK+ 1.2.10 applications are offered, and they are indeed very limited in number. I am sure that LindowsOS would have more quality applications to offer if they put more people to work in the CnR department. More applications need to be decided and brought in (there are many popular, quality applications missing from CnR), compiled, tested and uploaded to CnR. A very annoying problem I have with Lindows’ approach to GTK+ applications is that Lindows uses by default the CRUX theme and it simply looks incredibly BAD (Gnome apps also load with huge fonts – I wonder if Robertson has a vision problem :-). Crux does not go well with Keramik — it is dark gray and unsuitable to the default KDE theme. Even Red Hat 8 does a great job “merging” the look and feel of Gnome and KDE applications, but Lindows completely fails in that respect, even if Lindows is the “pure” desktop OS in this comparison. I hope Lindows consider use Geramik in the future and offer more Qt and GTK+ applications.
As for the quality of the packages, well, Heroes the snake-game, was badly “ported,” it looks for its sound files on the wrong path and it creates 3 entries in the KMenu, while a single entry would be sufficient. Additionally, the /usr/games/ (where all games get installed) is not in the $PATH. Having a different directory for different kinds of executables is a good idea probably, but I don’t see why they don’t do it for more kind of applications, and moreover, why they don’t add these new paths to the main $PATH. Another problem was that some paths on AbiWord was wrong or something, and Abiword was keep complaining about some fonts. The rest 20-25 applications I installed via CnR, were installed fine and with no issues.
Last problem I have with CnR is that you need to be root to be able to install anything. Of course, this is the Unix way (only the superuser can install OS-wide applications), but CnR should find a way to install packages for the specific user as well as for all users. It should at least ask upon installation. This is how MacOSX and WinXP work, and I believe that this way offers flexibility and power to the plain user without having to rely on a sysadmin or break the whole system.
Let’s clear up some misconceptions now. Most people who are whining against LindowsOS have no clue what Lindows.com and its team try to create, market and sell. They see LindowsOS as an unethical Linux distro. They even see CEO Michael Robertson as a liar of some sort. Too bad, because these people who claim these things, just don’t get it.
LindowsOS is not your traditional Linux distro. It was never meant to be one. LindowsOS (as well as Lycoris) are created to simply power home PC appliances. This is why functionality on Lindows is so limited (always root, very few pref panels, very few options in general). It is meant to be this way. LindowsOS is not for geeks and it was never meant to be a product for them. In fact, you sir, you that you are reading this article right now on OSNews, a site primarily populated by geek readers and developers, you would probably never have a real interest running LindowsOS other than for pure curiosity! I would not suggest buying LindowsOS to any geek/developer. It does not come with developer tools, Lindows.com’s marketing line is to NOT advertise the fact that LindowsOS is based on Linux and at the end of the day, other systems can probably give you much more flexibiliy and power over what you want to do with your OS.
However, for people like my brother, my cousins and the rest of the non-geek customers, LindowsOS can position itself favorably, and I personally welcome this product to that specific market. Both Lycoris and Lindows can fill up a niche: The absolutely cheap OS alternative that comes with dirt cheap PCs in the form of a “home PC appliance.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, LindowsOS can make some money and be successful in this niche market. It can even be more successful financially than other “Linux distributions” that you might favor.
Other readers were unhappy by the fact that Lindows.com said that it would run Windows applications, then they said they will support some of them, and then they dropped that marketing line altogether. This situation has angered some readers. For me, it is only natural: WINE can’t run all Windows applications because of the hidden APIs, and to even support a few of them well, it needs quite some work specific to these apps (as Transgaming and CodeWeavers taught us). I can clearly “see” Robertson, 1 year ago, having lots of ideas and pushing the idea of running Windows apps among his engineers as this would have been essential to his product, and after months of engineering he would find out that it would not be possible to develop and maintain WINE in such a level with less than 35 engineers (and Robertson not being a programmer himself would add up to having misconceptions of what WINE can and can’t do). So, I would assume that the WINE plan was dropped quietly, but people do not forget neither forgive. In this specific issue though, I feel that I understand the incentives and the natural way of things happened overtime behind the scenes so I don’t feel bad about it (in fact, Lindows.com have returned a lot of code to the WINE project from the days they were working on it !)
Another issue that people don’t feel happy about is the superuser issue. Well, in that issue, I am 95% on Lindows.com’s side. Apparently, the first thing you see after you boot for the first time to LindowsOS is the “first time wizard” app where it has a big, blunt button to setup new users. So it is indeed up to the user to click that button and add accounts for the rest of the family or for his/herself. Please do not forget that WindowsXP’s default behavior is also the exact same and MacOSX’s behavior on the issue does not differ much either. However, there is a problem here. Except that terrible behavior I experienced and described earlier when I created the “eugenia” account, several applications installed via Click-N-Run were not installed correctly. While in order to launch CnR you have to give your root password (and I did so) after installing Star Office 6, only the root user was setup with the application and it was the only user that could run the app. Any other user would get an error message for missing files and it would load the “repair SO6” application. And if that was not enough, a bunch of applications (like KreateCD if I remember correctly) were hardcoded to write their needed files on the /root/ directory instead of the current ~ home dir!! I find this both hilarious and sad seeing the LindowsOS engineers having “ported” and modified applications to behave this way! Again though, I have this feeling that Lindows.com wanted to only have a single user account in the past (root), and now, as people are shouting about the issue all over the place, they are trying to slowly revert back to a multiuser-on_demand scheme, but applications they have written/ported/modified months ago do not play anymore well with the new scheme! I guess, they now pay for their earlier design decisions…
The last issue I will tackle here, is the price of the OS and Click-N-Run. In this issue, I will have to fully agree with the… usual suspects (I mean, whiners ;). LindowsOS+CnR price is outrageously expensive for a “cheap” alternative to Windows. It is $129 USD for LindowsOS and one year of CnR, while you would normally not pay more than $25-$30 USD for WinXP OEM that comes with your PC. This is not just way more expensive than the Windows/OSX and their freeware/shareware market offerings, but it truly feels like a rip off for essential things like “application enrichement of the OS” (which is what makes the OS at the end of the day – BeOS’ failure to captivate markets proved that years ago already). Whatever Lindows.com tries to tell you about CnR, I proved and mentioned above that it is not perfect, neither it includes the whole range of quality applications found in the Linux development community and market. CnR feels restricted (not many apps, neither newest versions), limited (not enough CnR-application options, UI is weird at times) and buggy (crashed it twice already, StarOffice was a pig to get it installed with fast cable line). And at the end of the day, we should not be forgetting that the kind of people who will buy a PC with LindowsOS on it, have no clue how to use (the included) apt-get. Their only solution to enrich their OS with needed apps, will have to be CnR, as it is unfortunate that the default installation of LindowsOS has very few applications in it (I wish they would include KOffice 1.2 and a Calculator by default at least!). The whole deal sounds like “we don’t put many apps in the OS, so you will buy the CnR services.” It looks like a trap and feels like a rip off to me. For this case, that’s not the way to go, Mr Robertson.
LindowsOS’ bigest competitor in this “home PC appliance” niche market is Lycoris. Between LindowsOS and Lycoris, I might have to pick Lycoris at this point. I don’t feel that LindowsOS has the appropriate “depth” yet. LindowsOS is only “saved” by the fact that their installation procedure is much more simple and that CnR is much more direct and approachable than the (false in my opinion) Lycoris direction of including less than 80 application in their (almost free) CnR-alike web application named IRIS but then selling many different package add-ons for Lycoris with more applications (with no Gnome apps at all to be found in these Packs). If Lycoris was to enrich IRIS with many quality (and Gnome) apps for a price around $50 per year, I see absolutely no reason for a future on Lindows (as it stands today that is). In that specific niche “home appliance PC” market, Lycoris would have won (read our recent review for a few things that Lycoris still need to get right though) but the current situation is not as such, so Lindows still has a shot to become more acceptable and more affordable.
But they will need to enrich their OS with more default applications that make sense to be there and add value to the OS itself. They should also stop pushing CnR so much to the point that it becomes painful to the potential customer, fix bugs, include more recent and more apps in general on CnR and be a bit more serious and professional at places.
Oh, and Lindows needs a system like Lycoris, Windows and OSX already have and it is truly convienient, than having to re-install the whole OS every 2 months when Lindows.com decides to release a new version with a brand new major version number for only some small bugfixes: Update the OS via the web. Automatically. You have the technology already (CnR). Use it! (Update:I was just told that there is such a feature. Well, haven’t seen it, it is not apparent at all as it is part of the CnR app itself apparently, instead of being a standalone app based on CnR technology.)
The current installation procedure does not even offer an “update” feature (at least I did not see one – maybe it is present only if the installer finds a Lindows partition, dunno). And it is truly ironic that an effectively, internet appliance (as LindowsOS really is), does not update itself via the web.
Installation: 9.5/10
Hardware Support: 8/10
Ease of use: 7/10
Features: 6/10
Credibility: 7/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 7/10 (UI responsiveness, latency, throughput)
Overall: 7.4 / 10
As this os is shooting for and probably seeing the public more than many other linux distro’s, how well does it represent linux? First impressions matter a great deal and if on their first use it gets cracked because of security holes that could kill a moose or perhaps crashes more than XP on the same machine, linux as a whole will probably get a trashy reputation for it. Furthermore, they don’t want to have to mess with drivers or anything and well, command line use is out of the picture entirely. That’s one of the reasons that some people I know have switched to a mac, it has the general reputation of being a plug and go (play, same thing just less buzzwordy) system. Give the coders more caffeine brfore the next release, hopefully it should help.
>how well does it represent linux?
It does NOT represent Linux, even if it based on it! It was never meant to do so!! Read here:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1362
Nice review, I was debating whether or not to try out lindows but based on what you said I can’t see any reason to do so. It doesn’t even *look* good. Red Hat 8.0 with the ‘bluecurve’ theme or SuSe, Lycoris, and many other linux distros look much, much better than the screenshots you posted of lindows. The whole must-rewrite-mbr is also a big turnoff.
Indeed, I can’t even see a reason to recommend this to friends/family if they want a low-cost alternative to windows. Seems like lycoris or even red hat (with some help) would be a better option.
It was really suprising to see that click n’ run wasn’t even half as good as I would think it to be. If I am going to pay 99$ for a yearly service I expect it to run fairly decently and with a wide range of apps and definately not hard code things to install to /root (that has to be the epitome of dumb design). Ugh.
> Red Hat 8.0 with the ‘bluecurve’ theme or SuSe, Lycoris, and many other linux distros look much, much better than the screenshots you posted of lindows
Red Hat 8 does look best, more unified and more consistent than any other Linux distro, indeed (because of BlueCurve and XFT2). Lycoris too (mostly because they only include Qt apps, so it is easier for them), but its font rendering suck big time (read our review of Lycoris for more explanation of the issue). As for SuSE, they are not too bad, but they can do better.
> The whole must-rewrite-mbr is also a big turnoff.
This needs fixing indeed.
> I am going to pay 99$ for a yearly service
I think it is $129 now actually…
Almost forgot. You didn’t mention anything about the speed of click and run, as in downloading speed. I don’t know about your home connection but what time of download speeds where you expierencing? I guess for 99$ a year I would also expect at least 75+kbytes/second.
The download speed was not too bad. It was fine I would think so. I am on the ATT cable connection here (max of 250 KB/sec). CnR did around 90 KB/sec for the StarOffice download.
Nice work Eugenia. I am curious how you could compare it to Xandros?
Xandros is pitched slightly more to a business user but it is, like Lycoris and Lindows another attempt at an idiot proof linux like distro. I really disliked an earlier version of Lycoris that I tried and your review of Lindows extinguishes any bit of curiosity I might have about trying it (although I might recommend it to my sister and mother–AOL users both). Xandros also uses dated packages and has even less of a choice of applications on its version of CnR than does Lindows but it is bundled with Crossover Office and the file manager makes up for a lot of sins.
So if you were going to maroon your mother or sister on a desert island with either Lindows or Xandros, which and why?
>and the file manager makes up for a lot of sins.
The file manager is a bit of the same, just a newer version. KDE 3.1’s Konqueror is already better than both attempts from Lindows and Xandros.
> So if you were going to maroon your mother or sister on a desert island with either Lindows or Xandros, which and why?
Tough one… I find the two distros pretty similar in the end, from any point of view… Lycoris stacks up the same as well, it just has more control over hardware and preferences, but it lacks other things that Xandros and Lindows do have.
Overall, I would try to get them with… BeOS first (which is dead easy to use and it doesn’t have any of the Linux headaches usability-wise) and after they learned their way around with it, I would introduce them directly to Red Hat 8.x along with a… RH book.
Heh… funny. If this review was written for Red Hat, Mandrake or any other distribution that has an established fan-base, all the (closed-minded) trolls would have been attacking Eugenia (as they have in the past).
Now, because this (great) review was for Lindows, a distro that most dislike for political reasons rather than practical ones, everyone is playing it cool.
Thanks for yet another great review Eugenia. I trust you will continue writing from time to time after your leave.
Great review, Eugenia !! …. but afterall i will stick to RH8 or Suse
One question to RH8…. I don’t know how to get the sound cart working. It says something like “Module not installed”
when i try to play some music. RH8 is my favorite distro, but the multi-media support is very disapointing, especially for newbies. I feel that “Linux distros” should offer better multi-media support to be competitive w/- Apple or Microsoft. What they all miss is something like “Real One” or “Media Player”. Both are very easy to install and are very well integrated into the OS. People don’t care how expensive or inexepensive the S/W is, as long as it does the job w/out fiddling around too much…..
When you buy a new car all you need to know is how to fill it up w/- gas, and not how the engine works.
Oh, and Lindows needs a system like Lycoris, Windows and OSX already have and it is truly convienient, than having to re-install the whole OS every 2 months when Lindows.com decides to release a new version with a brand new major version number for only some small bugfixes: Update the OS via the web. Automatically. You have the technology already (CnR). Use it!
They already do! Look a little closer at the CNR client, you’ll see recommended updates there, this is how many people upgraded from 1.3 to 2.0 to 3.0.
Very nice review!!! Thanks for that! Greets from Germany
Fascinating review, Eugenia. I have not tried Lindows, but have thought about it based on the posts by so many Lindows users here and in other places extolling the virtues of CNR, the easy installation etc. But, after reading your review, it sounds like there are some major bugs and flaws present in the system. I was most interested in the fact that there are not really any Lindows-created gui tools. I have tried Xandros and Lycoris and both of those companies have worked hard in creating their own tools to help the newbie out. Xandros’ great File Manager is an example, as is Lycoris’ Control Panel.
Thanks for the review and again, good luck with everything!
I’ve been using (and upgrading) Lindows since beta 1 came on my Wal-Mart Microtel 🙂 The review is very accurate. I can say that Lindows has improved quite a bit since beta 1 though. Click N Run has improved alot. I have not experienced any download problems yet. I have Road Runner, so it makes big downloads possible, but I haven’t run into any problems yet. Looking at things from the Joe User point of view, it is especially impressive that downloads go automatically into the menu categories they should be in.
The fact that you get almost no software with the basic install is as bad as getting too much software in the big distros. But, of course, Click N Run is the hook. All of this wouldn’t be so bad except that, apparantly, after your initial $129 (or $99 in my case), it is supposed to go up to $299 your second year. That is suicide.
I can’t wait until Lycoris goes to its next big release with KDE 3. Lindows is makng a splash, but my heart is with Lycoris.
Lindows checks for system updates once a day and at every boot up. If you look close in CNR you will see updates on the left side at the bottom. I did a CNR update from version 2 to 3.0 and it worked perfectly. In fact I have never had any of the problems that you mentioned. All I know is that this is the first Linux distro that my wife can and does use on her own. She can even install her own apps and does so on a regular basis. This is something that she couldn’t do even in WinBloze.
Our house is now completely MicroCRAP free!!!
Keep linking Lindows with Linux?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what Lindows does. There are already a tonne of other distro’s out there, so, take your pick. Once a user gets used to using Lindows, they’ll find out more and know about upgrading to another distro.
Personally, I am finding SCO Linux 4.0 rock solid and extremely fast, BUT, I certainly don’t say it represents Linux.
All of this wouldn’t be so bad except that, apparantly, after your initial $129 (or $99 in my case), it is supposed to go up to $299 your second year. That is suicide.
The standard CNR membership is $99. The $299 is for an Insider membership which is not the same thing. Insiders get all interim beta releases and members just get the stable releases. Also, a regular membership renewal fee has not been decided upon yet. It may not necessarily be $99. It could be less.
Thank you Eugenia for that review. I originally wanted to install it on a PC at work for testing but based on your review I know the user is not going to be satisfied.
Again, very well formed and in-depth review.
-eks
LindowsOS uses a version of Netscape 7.0 with the adbocker xpi installed and disabled by default.
Mistake?
Other than that the review was very good!
About the fonts, somehow they completely screwed them up in the final version. In the previous versions the fonts were more normal. I really don’t understand why they did that.
What bootmanager are you using with XP btw? I’m using Xosl and never had any problems with XP. I never knew XP cared about my mbr. Xosl should also be able to boot LindowsOS, but I had a problem with LindowsOS trying to overwrite my mbr every boot (while I had changed my lilo.conf to point it to the root partition) with 2.0. Does 3.0 respect the mbr after the install?
>Lindows checks for system updates once a day and at every boot up
Sorry, it didn’t came up for me, I haven’t seen that feature. Which probably suggests that it should probably be more apparent.
>LindowsOS uses a version of Netscape 7.0
Yes.
>What bootmanager are you using with XP btw?
BeOS bootman. And the problem is that *MY* version of XP PRO requires seven hex numbers in the MBR, that this stupid BeOS bootman overwrites, so everytime someone overwrites my MBR, I have to go with a hex editor and put these numbers back by hand! This is why I don’t want my MBR touched.
>Does 3.0 respect the mbr after the install?
No!
I’m surprised more Lindows users aren’t responding here. Maybe, as Eugenia alluded to her in review, that most Lindows users don’t frequent sites like OSNews.com. Or, perhaps, it because she’s hit the nail on the head and, despite what the Lindows users say, there are serious problems with the OS.
Yes, Kirk is right, the updater is in C&R.
Eugenia points in out one of the screenshots that in the CNR app, StarOffice is listed as being 328 MB, but in the download box it shows staroffice-common as being 180 MB. She draws a couple little lines to illustrate this, as if it were some big mystery.
It’s not.
In the app-selection pane, it reports the size of SO installed- how much it’ll take up on your harddrive when everything is said and done, which is 328 MB. As often happens with archives, the compressed version is smaller, 180 MB. I can’t tell from that shot, but the archive size may be a bit bigger- 180 MB is for staroffice-common, there may be a couple more smaller parts. But regardless, even if there are, the total archive size still won’t equal 328 MB.
“I was able to install more than 20-25 applications this week, and they all installed fine.” … “And talking about StarOffice 6 (which is a featured free download on CnR, a value of $75 USD) I had to download it 3 times before CnR was able to download it all or install it without weird problems/errors.”
It sounds to me like you give Click and Run more credit than it deserves. The all did not “install fine” according to your reports of Hancom, and StarOffice. Maybe the overall experience from the other installs made it feel good but from the review, I felt like CNR was junk, but you say it worked fine… I don’t get it…
>But regardless, even if there are, the total archive size still won’t equal 328 MB.
Then, they should not give these two numbers to confuse even experienced users. They should only give the tarred size number, not how much space it takes. If they want both, they should give both, but make clear which one is which.
>I felt like CNR was junk, but you say it worked fine
READ AGAIN then. I CLEARLY mention WHICH applications had problems. The “installed fine” part was for these 20-25 of apps (majority) that they did installed fine indeed. The ones that did not, are mentioned in the article and I CERTAINLY do not write that CnR is perfect. Read again the last two pages, where I say that CLEARLY.
Lindows checks for system updates once a day and at every boot up
Sorry, it didn’t came up for me, I haven’t seen that feature. Which probably suggests that it should probably be more apparent.
If you open CNR and click on the “Click-n-Run Status” tab, you will see a listing of everytime CNR checked for updates.
So if you were going to maroon your mother or sister on a desert island with either Lindows or Xandros, which and why?
Debian. They’re on a desert island. They’ve got plenty of time to read the docs and figure out how it works. And the free software upgrades won’t run out on them.
> If you open CNR and click on the “Click-n-Run Status” tab, you will see a listing of everytime CNR checked for updates.
You call this “apparent”? Something like system updates should definately be more apparent and ask the user if he/she wants to perform updates.
Except if we are talking that Lindows is an embedded system (like TiVO), in which case upgrades will be performed when needed without the intervation of the user.
Which one LindowsOS is?
I enjoyed your review on Lindows. As a Lindows user myself i want to point a couple of mistakes. A new user does not need to download the whole Star Office package. Lindows has a CD product out called Express that has all the big apps on it. Packages like Gimp, Hancom Sheet and Open Office and Star Office. Also Lindows DOES up date in CNR. Those insiders that had Lindows 2.0 have now gotten lindows 3.0 via CNR. Ialso thought you should have included that Lycoris/LX has a much nicer control application. This is of course is modified kcontrol which is very user friendly. lindows definably needs a control panel like this.
Craig Black
> I enjoyed your review on Lindows.
Thank you.
>As a Lindows user myself i want to
> point a couple of mistakes. A new user does not need to download the
> whole Star Office package. Lindows has a CD product out called Express
> that has all the big apps on it.
Lindows.com did not send me the physical media, they directed me to download for free LindowsOS 3.0 from a location, for the review.
> Also Lindows DOES up date in CNR. Those
> insiders that had Lindows 2.0 have now gotten lindows 3.0 via CNR.
Which is not apparent at all (as I explain in the comment section)
> Ialso
> thought you should have included that Lycoris/LX has a much nicer
> control application. This is of course is modified kcontrol which is
> very user friendly. lindows definably needs a control panel like this.
Maybe I should have mentioned this, thing is that according to my review, LindowsOS is a “home appliance” so the less configuration and more visualization is actually an advantage rather than a disantvantage.
As a non-home-appliance user though, I do agree that Lycoris has much better pref panels, however they are not great either compared to let’s say, MacOSX’s, as they are full of UI incosistencies, hardcoded fonts and other such stuff mentioned on my Lycoris review 2 months ago…
Moral of the whole story: All these home distros have problems. None can compete nicely with Windows or OSX, while this is supposedly their incentive.
I have used a number of linux flavors. Lindows is by far the easiest to install and configure for the windows users or any user. My wife uses it at home and loves it. She has used windows 9x, suse, redhat, winxp, and now Lindows. She could never install anything with the other linux flavors but has no problem using CNR. She looks for somthing she wants on cnr clicks it and its installed with no hassles and the installed programs are even added the kde menu. Lindows gets booted by her first thing in the morning and I halt it before we go to bed. Lindows needs a some improvements as do all the Linux flavors.
Do you have a membership? If you do you need to log into the Lindows forum. Its the most active forum for users than anything else available in the Linux Community. If you had access your misconspections would have been cleared up fast.
“If you had access…”
Exactly. That’s my problem with Lindows. It’s closed, it’s secretive, and it’s not convincing me to spend my money. If they allowed guests the opportunity to view the forum, or perhaps take a trial run of the software (maybe without access to CNR) they might convince more people to sign up. I can’t get a “feel” for the community at all and that’s a shame.
I’ve been using Lindows for a couple of weeks now (I also have XP Pro and Mandrake 9 installed on my Athlon machine) and it’s a nice OS.
I couldn’t believe how fast it installed; it took roughly 7 minutes. But I agree that the installer should have a few more options, especially whether or not you want to install Lilo. A partitioning utility, such as Mandrake’s, would be a nice addition to the “advanced” install too.
I’ve also played with “apt-get”, which works wonderfully and is simple to use (installing Debian’s Synaptic utility makes it even easier); typing “apt-get upgrade” downloaded some 16MB worth of updates, which didn’t take long with my cable connection. Very cool.
From Lindows.com web site:
Includes Membership to the Click-N-Run Warehouse
Includes Click-N-Run Express
How much does it cost and what’s included?
· $129 for full LindowsOS 3.0 Membership Edition which includes:
o LindowsOS 3.0 Installation CD
o One Year Full Membership to the Click-N-Run Warehouse giving you hundreds of software products, including StarOffice 6.0 ($75 value)
o Click-N-Run Express Installation CD
o Color QuickStart Guide
o Built-in Help, and complete on-line support
o INSTANT DIGITAL ACCESS to download the LindowsOS and Click-N-Run Express installation CDs. No need to wait until your package arrives if you’re anxious to start using LindowsOS right now!
· $119 for Digital-only Version Save $10 and any shipping costs if you prefer just to digitally download all the LindowsOS software and do not require a physical copy of LindowsOS 3.0 Membership Edition package.
· $299 Insider’s Program – Includes everything in the $129 Membership Edition but with special “Inside” access to interim releases, newsletters, chat rooms, forums, etc., PLUS Click-N-Run Membership for TWO years.
This is the initial pricing structure; I haven’t seen anything definitive on renewal costs…
I liked the review and thought it was well rounded. LindowsOS costs 129dollars for the version that comes on CD with CnR Express, and $119 for the download edition. Renewing the CnR subscription will cost $99, the initial cost of 129 or 119(difference is the medium via which you receive)includes one year of CnR. I think they should offer a tiered pricing model with a lower price for open source apps…But that would mean there would be fewer commercial programs or else the tiers would be considerably more expensive because of fewer bulk orders. The best part is that they are improving by leaps and bounds. If you post on their messageboard, they listen to you and if possible try to do what you ask for, stuff like including game demos like UT2k3 in CnR, etc. I think it’s definately worth it for people who want to try a different OS, but get stuck when it comes to installing new apps.
Somewhere I read that newly created user accounts are all in group root, true?
And why is a recently released Lindows version based on a KDE CVS version of March? If they didn’t patch at least the version string they will not have all KDE security fixes since then too I guess.
You’re the editor-in-chief and you get to look at/play with lots of distros.
Question: which Linux or BSD distro do you like best/use the most and what (generally) do you like about it?
Decent review. Common informational mistakes corrected along the way. Several of my fellow Lindows users are voicing their experiences like I have which is also a good thing.
The main problem is that most hard core Linux people don’t like the way Lindows is being marketed, and/or don’t understand the pricing, etc. because they don’t want to look at it closely. It’s kinda like me walking into your sandbox and building a castle. You wouldn’t like that either.
As far as CNR goes, I’ve had almost no trouble with it whatsoever and I’ve been using Lindows since v.90 last November and full time on this computer (my main computer) since September. Yes there are a few glitches now and then, but I expect that with any system under development. Yes, Lindows is still being worked on. It will be a while before it’s as solid as it should be. It’s not the fault of the Linux kernel they are using, but rather with the enormous number of drivers needed. This is no different than any other OS, and I’ve looked at lots of them in the last couple of years.
I use it and will continue to use it and promote it to everyone I know and that will listen. I’ve actually converted some people, which is a great feeling. They are as tickled as I am to have a very easy to use system that NEVER crashes! I don’t have to compile anything, I don’t have to try to figure out where it installed, I don’t have to worry about someone watching my every video or song list in the media player. I don’t have to worry about having pirated software on multiple computers in my home. I would HAPPILY give a system like this to my grandmother and I know she’d be able to use it.
So in a nutshell, Lindows is my operating system for the foreseable (sp) future. CNR makes it the best of the available systems. Coming from a 13+ year computer tech that has seen every version of DOS, Windows, Unix & most Linux systems, that says a lot for it as a desktop system.
> which Linux or BSD distro do you like best/use the most and what (generally) do you like about it?
For a server, FreeBSD or Red Hat Linux 8.
For a workstation, Red Hat Linux 8. It is the most UI consistant distro of all, includes recent software and dev tools, it has great support from devs (so RPMs are available easily) and Red Hat and overall, just works well. Of course, it has downsides, for these, just read my review of RH 8: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1842
I should point out here that my main workstation, is WindowsXP PRO. It works perfectly for me. Second choice would be MacOSX, then BeOS and then RH8.
I don’t reboot to any other of my (8-9) OSes for any workstation-based work but purely just from curiosity or when I have to review something.
Very nice review, I expected Lindows to bea little better. I’m glad to finally find a review of it though, i think you ahve the world’s first review of Lindows 3.0!
BTW where can I get WinXP OEM for $25-$30 USD. And why the comparison of OEM to full price software (no mention of the cost difference between Wintergreen LOS and XP machines ~$150 USD).
I don’t know if this review was meant to be good, but to me it gives a *really* bad impressiong of lindows.
I mean, i didnt like it in the first place, but with the installed software, the entire setup, the quality of CNR, and no apparent addons compared to the competition, i just cant see the point of wasting money on it.
I dont care if it is not supposed to be a “linux”. the fact is that it is one, no matter if it is meant to be or not. The software, the underlying system, its all linux, and its all available elsewhere in what sounds like better working versions.
I don’t expect any normal users to be able to install it by themselves, which makes lindows still have to rely on the somewhat more advanced users, and/or on being preinstalled. I think they might stand a chance in the latter option, but not in the first (as in you need to get it installed and configured by a fairly advanced person) as i doubt they would choose to set it up compared to things like redhat 8. I know that i wouldnt setup a lindows box for my parents, despite the fact that they are probably in the target group.
Face it, its overpriced and doesnt give you more than the others, and now i even get the impression that it is buggy and that their own software sucks.
I dont doubt that they might get a little market share, but i would imagine that it only lasts until one of the big players decides to enter the same market, which i think would be much better for the users anyway.
> I don’t know if this review was meant to be good, but to me it gives a *really* bad impressiong of lindows.
“Good review” is not the one that praises a product.
“Good review” is the one which presents BOTH the good and bad points of a product, tests the product and offers an opinion as to who might find it useful and why. Or not. In general, a good review is the one which answers questions that are in the head of the reader, together with the usage experience of the reviewer.
Lindows.com’s marketing line is to NOT advertise the fact that LindowsOS is based on Linux and at the end of the day, other systems can probably give you much more flexibiliy and power over what you want to do with your OS.
The first time I saw a LindowsOS 3.0 box was at a fair (the biggest in Malaysia). Guess what was written on it? “The stability of LINUX with the ease of WINDOWS”. There – http://www.lindows.com/lindows_sales_intro.php
Plus, if you read up about LindowsOS fom their website, though matter how stupid you are, you would probably leave the site thinking there is a connection between Linux and LindowsOS (even though most people won’t know what’s Linux)
The absolutely cheap OS alternative that comes with dirt cheap PCs in the form of a “home PC appliance.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, LindowsOS can make some money and be successful in this niche market. It can even be more successful financially than other “Linux distributions” that you might favor.
I don’t think so, miss. Okay, I look around trying to find people that fill this niche. So about half my extended family fills that niche. So they can use LindowsOS right? Well, wrong. At least half of them actually use Windows at work, but just don’t use the computer at home. And the rest rarely use the computer.
So tell me, since they all have PCs, why they should move to LindowsOS? Why waste time and energy and money on something they probably won’t use? I couldn’t find a answer. It is not like LindowsOS comes with a super-duper killer app. If this is the niche they are targeting, they aren’t doing a fine job, plus they are bound to fail.
Plus, the only retail way of getting to LindowsOS is for those living in San Diego and those living in the UK (Datel and Evasham). Even Datel’s website don’t feature LindowsOS, all their preconfigured PCs, except for Tsunami uses Windows XP Home. Tsunami uses Windows XP Pro.
(Oh, BTW, most of them (the people I know that fills this niche) bought their home PCs 3-4 years ago when the Internet boom started among the middleclass in Malaysia).
WINE can’t run all Windows applications because of the hidden APIs, and to even support a few of them well, it needs quite some work specific to these apps (as Transgaming and CodeWeavers taught us).
Actually, this is way off-base. Win32 is a complicated API. It is very hard to implement it on a alien OS. If Microsoft took years and years with all their thousands of employees to implement it on Windows NT, I don’t think Wine would ever succeed, even if all the APIs is documented ala Be OS.
But I’m sure Robertson would know this before opening up their own company, unless he is stupid enough not to research enough. Lindows.com would never be as known as today if wasn’t for their promise (along with their name).
(and Robertson not being a programmer himself would add up to having misconceptions of what WINE can and can’t do).
I’m not a programmer. Yet if I started this company, I wouldn’t have any misconceptions whatsoever. Unless I have a reason to have them and later take them back.
(in fact, Lindows.com have returned a lot of code to the WINE project from the days they were working on it !)
But in reality, CodeWeavers preasured them to contribute back some code. Wondered why CodeWeavers and Lindows.com relationship broke? There is some interview somewhere around that tells this tale.
Apparently, the first thing you see after you boot for the first time to LindowsOS is the “first time wizard” app where it has a big, blunt button to setup new users.[…]
Yeah, I found that out a couple of days ago at that fair :-). But read on, it discriminates against non-root in CNR….
LindowsOS+CnR price is outrageously expensive for a “cheap” alternative to Windows. It is $129 USD for LindowsOS and one year of CnR, while you would normally not pay more than $25-$30 USD for WinXP OEM that comes with your PC.
It is a terrible comparison. LindowsOS have OEM pricing too.
crashed it twice already, StarOffice was a pig to get it installed with fast cable line).
Just to point out, SO is available on CNR Express CD.
LindowsOS’ bigest competitor in this “home PC appliance” niche market is Lycoris. Between LindowsOS and Lycoris, I might have to pick Lycoris at this point.
But what about consumers? On a mainstream newspaper which also targets consumers, I lost count on how many times LindowsOS was mentioned. Never once I saw Lycoris mentioned. Consumers can’t pick what they don’t know.
>So tell me, since they all have PCs, why they should move to LindowsOS?
Because the PC came with it. I am not talking about Lindows getting sold as is (that will never sell well), I am talking about “home appliances” there, so the PC would be included and it would include LindowsOS.
>But I’m sure Robertson would know this before opening up their own company
Don’t bet on it. Back then, hype was flying about “Wine 1.0” and other such dreams. Robertson might have been the food for his own fish here.
>But in reality, CodeWeavers preasured them to contribute back some code.
I don’t know that. I am surprised you mention rumors, even if they might be true.
>It is a terrible comparison. LindowsOS have OEM pricing too.
Even so, the LindowsOS price is similar to WinXP Home and MacOSX (actually, Jaguar is $68 these days) while the overall experience of LindowsOS is kilometres away from both WinXP and OSX. Its price just doesn’t match its quality and overall experience.
>But what about consumers?
Did I talk about consumers there? Of course and LindowsOS has a bigger hype machine than Lycoris (a 4-people company Vs a 45 people company – Robertson could count for 5
I am talking about overall experience and control of the PC. Lycoris is just better than LindowsOS today in that respect. Lycoris has other problems of course, of a different nature.
Eugenia, how do you think Lindows compares to Xandros 1.0? I see some comparisons between Lindows and Lycoris, but I’d be interested in how you think Xandros fits into that puzzle.
I think I have already answered this, in this forum… ;D
Quite right.
My mind must be going in my old age…
I checked Lindows when it first came on the scene and wanted to know more about it. Sure, I visited the wesbite all looked at the pricing and what the whole idea was and I really wanted to lessen my dependence on windoze. The unforunate thing is son after they e-mailed me informing me that my info was presented to MS for the lawsuit they’re going through. Not a nice thing to know, thought I’ll be crufied but it never the less crossed my mind. I certainly don’t like the idea of the pricing changes, I just wish the whole thing gets finalize and allow users with CDs and not a d/l, be 100% dependantable, I don’t see that from a newbie point of view. Oh well, your review adds more to my knowledge, thanks.
Large fonts in Netscape 6/7 and Mozilla can be fixed. In the Gnome Control Panel (sigh). I’ve installed Debian recently and noticed that all Gnome applications had too large fonts. So did Mozilla. Changing the fonts to something smaller in the Gnome control panel fixed both.
Hope someone finds this bit of info useful. It might just work on LindowsOS too.
There is no “gnome control panel” on Lindows.
Because the PC came with it. I am not talking about Lindows getting sold as is (that will never sell well), I am talking about “home appliances” there, so the PC would be included and it would include LindowsOS.
Most LindowsOS machines are sold on the Internet rather than in brick-n-mortal retail stores. Who buys machines on the Net? Geeks, of course. Consumers, if they were buying from the Net would go straight to companies with big brand names like Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, IBM, Apple, etc.
In other words, Lindows.com really should consider geek needs. There should be a limit to how much someone dumbs down a OS.
Don’t bet on it. Back then, hype was flying about “Wine 1.0” and other such dreams. Robertson might have been the food for his own fish here.
Trust me, Robertson is a much better businessman than that. At the time Lindows.com started, there was little investors, and investment money was not going out freely. It takes more than hype of a certain project to convince investors to invest in Lindows.com
I don’t know that. I am surprised you mention rumors, even if they might be true.
I’m quite certain it is true because certain CodeWeavers employees mention a little about it on Wine’s mailing list (when Lindows.com drop the Windows advertising line, I check it out). In a Jeremy White interview, I remember him mentioning this.
Even so, the LindowsOS price is similar to WinXP Home and MacOSX (actually, Jaguar is $68 these days) while the overall experience of LindowsOS is kilometres away from both WinXP and OSX.
Still faithful to the good ol’ metric system, instead of the empirial system, I must say :-). Yeah, I agree in this regard.
Did I talk about consumers there? Of course and LindowsOS has a bigger hype machine than Lycoris (a 4-people company Vs a 45 people company – Robertson could count for 5
Making hype doesn’t depend on how much employees one have.
Thanks for helping to support Lindows.com in there journey.
I think you hit it right on the head, Mr. Robertson has a bad reputation, I know the guy and let me tell you, he earned every bit of it. He reminds me of a Bill Gates wannabe. His reputation is whats influencing the popularity of Lindows OS and what people think of Lindows, but to give credit where credit is due he did get Lindows on Retail machines, even tho you have to buy a modem, a network card, a monitor heck you are lucky you get a mouse and keyboard. But he did get it done. As for Lindows, It has no future, it will be dead within a year or two. My desktop distro of choice is the new Xandros OS. It is more feature rich than Lindows and I think it has more of a future because the creators dont pull stupid stunts to get their name in the news. Did you ever watch the CNN interview that Mike did in regards to the Microsoft lawsuit? It sounded more like a television commercial than anything else…
Eugenia,
The general polish of SuSE 8.1 has greatly increased with the Updates I have done through YAST2. It is a pity they did not wait 1 more month a get these updates in the box. Your review would have been more positive I believe.
I am writing this from Konqueror and it seems the latest KDE updates have improved the UI responsiveness. It is quite noticeable.
well i can say that i’ve tested many of these late distros
well i don’t think much of then can really make people move away from the windows Side
well let’s hope that the next versions will be even better if we consider the leaps made by each of them for the current versions
vasheel
p.s:- Linux will one day rule the world!!!
I really enjoyed reading your review. I noticed you tried to help bail out Michael Robertson. Perhaps you’re right. I know there were a lot of people though that really wanted Lindows to succeed in their first direction (run Windows apps) just because they hate Microsoft so much. Really disappointing. I use RH8.0 and haven’t kept up with Lindows that much. This is the first I heard about NOT doing Windows apps. Again, really disappointing. Well, perhaps, like you said, they have a market with what they have. I certainly beleive it would have been a bigger market if they could have pulled it off. You have to remember that Lindows wasn’t just Linux…it was Linux that did Windows (pun intended). After reading your review and seeing the screen shots I’ll stick with Red Hat.
Keep up the great articles!
The Lindows.com licensing “prohibits the distribution” of the LindowsOS without paying Lindows.com $500 per month or $6,000 per year.
In otherwords, The Lindows.com Licensing prohibits me from purchasing LindowOS fot $99, puting it on a computer and then selling or giving that computer away. I first must pay Lindows.com the “HIGHWAY ROBBERY” DISTRIBUTION FEE!!!!!.
I contacted Lindows and it is true. No Distribution without paying the $6,000 fee.
GPL VIOLATION YES.
Am I the only one that see’s this?
If this is allowed to stand, it will be the end to the GPL and Bill Gates will just simply go ahead and buy Lindow.com and that will be that…..?????
“Bill’s Way or No Way”
Oh boy, this ‘OS’ looks like a complete disaster from what I can see in the review. I would give it a 2/10 if you ask me. The only thing they added is an acceptable installer. Big deal. For a end user distribution a recovery CD based on Knoppix would do a better job already. Unless those companies understand that it actually takes some software engineering to put together a professional distribution I do not see anything changing. At this point only RedHat understood what is going on. Hey Michael Robertson, go back to beeing a painter, maybe that suits you better…
I contacted Lindows and it is true. No Distribution without paying the $6,000 fee.
GPL VIOLATION YES.
Lindows = GPL softs + proprietary softs
If proprietary softwares are not based on or using any line of GPL code, they don’t have to be GPLed.
You can’t redistribute Lindows because of the propietay softwares included, but if you remove them and only redistribute the GPL softs, then it’s all good.
Btw, Bill only likes BSD as he can legally steal the code source and reuse it to build his OS. Hence, he’s now fighting against Linux/GPL and no longer against open source software.
But, still, Lindows sucks no end.
Lindows needs work, and your review points to some of its biggest faults – including the boot manager issue. And personally, I’d give Lindows much less than 8 out of ten on hardware compatibility. But I think the distro is a move in an interesting and exciting direction for alternative OS and Linux.
Nonetheless, it has some nice ease-of-use features that I haven’t found in other Linux distros. And I think the CnR warehouse is a fantastic concept! Needs improvement too, but I love the concept.
for a Walmart LindowsOS 2.0 pc. It’s for my wife – no geek (erm, expert)she. Nor me. But, after reading nearly 60 posts regarding “Eugenia’s preview”, I’m concerned that we’ll be stranded when it comes time for technical help. The Need for serious assistance, at some point, seems to be a lead-pipe cinch.
We’ve only ever used DOS and Windows, and are extremely frustrated with random crashes, long boot up, Ctrl-Alt-Del, etc., ad nauseum. Fortunately, I can still cancel. Lookin’ for help here. —> Denny (Seasoned Citizen)
Tinic: *exactly*!
after your initial $129 (or $99 in my case), it is supposed to go up to $299 your second year.
The USD299.00 is for Insider Membership not regular users. Misinformation apparetnyl is not the sole province of the government. Get the facts and research your findings before you speak little puppet boy.
I’m surprised more Lindows users aren’t responding here. Maybe, as Eugenia alluded to her in review, that most Lindows users don’t frequent sites like OSNews.com. Or, perhaps, it because she’s hit the nail on the head and, despite what the Lindows users say, there are serious problems with the OS.
Strange…. My experience as a seasoned GNU/Linux user upon evaluating LindowsOS for suitability for people like my family has been very good. Sure no distribution is perfect and anyone who dares claim RedHat is perfect or even close, especially for the home user, is not facing reality. On the 32MB PII 266MHz computer I used for the evaluation it ran reasonably fast, and on the 512MB PII 500MHz LindowsOS ran much faster than either Microsoft Windows 98SE or Microsoft Windows XP. For the target audience LindowsOS addresses their needs regarding email and web borwsing. As to the price, try getting Microsoft Windows XP and an office suite for less than the price of LindowsOS – student discounts (bribes) disallowed in this comparison.
Somewhere I read that newly created user accounts are all in group root, true?
By default the group selected in the add user panel is ‘root’, but you can change the group BEFORE the user account is actually created. Hence, while an annoyance it is not really an issue but rather something to be aware. I think the root group default was meant to address application installation and system configuration where you would be prompted for the root user password when logged in as a regular user. So to answer your question in one word – NO.
I contacted Lindows and it is true. No Distribution without paying the $6,000 fee.
GPL VIOLATION YES.
No, no, no! The GPL explicitly allows distribution for a fee.
You must provice the source code to any GPLed portions of the distribution, but those parts that do not use GPLed code but are 100% proprietary do not have to be included in the source code released. That is, if you add a proprietary installer that is used to install GPLed code as in say a Debian GNU/Linux-based distribution no source code for that installer need be released however you must release the source code to the underlying distribution, say Debian GNU/Linux, or an applciation like GAIM.
Yes! Do youself a favor and get the latest RH, SuSE or Mandrake. They’re all very newbie friendly, and there’s a large support community behind each of them
Please tell where I can buy Windows XP for $25. And although your reseller may tell you that that’s the actual price for the OEM version, there’s no way you can tell, because you _can’t_ leave it out. Just have a look at the regular Windows XP prices and take that as a comparison instead of your ridiculous $25 for Windows…
Another review by a geek, for a geek… starts off by describing what the install screens look like, complains about the weird naming conventions in the GNU world, then complains about the fact that the weird names have been replaced by meaningful names for non-geeks….
My mother has no clue what vi is, nor X, nor KDE or Gnome, nor does she have any clue about the “about KDE” button having been removed…. Common….
The best reviews I have heard so far have been from Yo-Yo Ma and Ellen Feiss, at http://www.apple.com/switch/ads. Sure, they’re reading a script when they made these ads, but the point is, most non geeks just want a PC that works and does what they need it to do, and Linux doesn’t do that for non-geeks. I use Gentoo, I’m a power user, and I love (and hate) Linux. But non-geeks don’t give a hoot about Gentoo, or about the fact that the “Keramic them bug” doesn’t show up on Suse or Gentoo. Common !!!!
How about reviewing some useful features, like: can I use this PC to read my hotmail account ? Can I view websites with lots of Macromedia Flash or Java applets? Can I view the funny ads at the Apple site mentionned above ? They’re Quicktime video, most Linux distro’s can’t run that. Can I listen to music in popular internet formats? MP3? WMA? Is there a built-in firewall ? Is it easy to use ? Can I easily download music, organize it, and burn my own CD’s ? can this PC do all this *out of the box* ??
Who wants to spend Christmas afternoon downloading applications from Micros…. errr, I mean Lindows ?
Commonn!!!!!
I didn’t bother trying Lindows yet, as version 2.0 was still too buggy to consider forking out the money for at the time, but I did take Xandros 1.0 for a test drive a little while back. You’re welcome to read it here:
http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/32_1.php
I should point out one other little undocumented goodie in Xandros. If you install lame (easily obtainable via apt-get or on the web), you can do direct CD ripping from an audio CD to .mp3 on your hard drive. Insert an audio CD in your drive, open up the Xandros file manager, select the .cda files you wish to rip and drag them to a folder on your hard drive. A popup box will come up, ask you if you want the copy compressed or uncompressed. Your choices at that point are .mp3 or ogg vorbis (compressed) and .wav and .cda (uncompressed). After that, the Xandros file manager will give you a couple options on how to name the files, then POOF – you’re ripping.
Very nice feature, thought everyone should know.
Regards,
Pete
-BeyondUnreal
http://www.beyondunreal.com
Yes you can disrtibute if You Pay $6,000 a year!.
This is way of of line and inconsistent with GPL standards as established.
Bill Gates should be prooud of Michael ‘Magic Minute Man’ destroying GPL as we know it.
Look, I can purcahse any copy of Windows or “ANY OTHER OS” and put it on a computer with out paying over on average $200. But Lindows.com wants me to spend $500 a month which is $6,000 a year.
Lets see 12 copies at $6,000 = $500 a copy
See how it works. LINDOWS SUCKS ROCKS!!!!
I will stay with Red Hat and Save BIG $$$$$$$$$$$
EVEN Red Head has a FREE Verson of their Commercail Ver. 8.
hi
i have Win98 , Win 2000 installed in my machine
can i install lindows 3.0 with multi boot without
any problem ?
thanks
bye
I think your review was great. As someone who was looking at Lindows to be a Linux OS that could replace Windowz, I have learned many things from the review and the comments. A couple of things bother me though about this OS and my experience within the Linux community. One is the size of the downloads when you use the CNR. Most people (the masses) still use dial up modems, can you imagine how long it would take to download Star Office at 56K? Try a week!! Also, the pricing of Lindows is very inflated at $129.00 for a CD copy of the OS when a personal version of any RH/Mandrake OS goes for around $29.00 to $39.00 (sorry about the others but I don’t have much experience with them). One thing I wish Lindows would do is offer a free/reduced price version so you can at least try it and see how it works. On Lindows home page they tout how great this OS is an alternative to Windowz, but fail to mention that the total pricing is still close to an upgrade to Windowz XP.. no value here. In order for this or any Linux OS to be a true competor to Bill and his boys INMHO has to be dumbed down for the “Joe user” so all they have to do is put the CD in and it works. (oh, here comes the flame mail now). Lastly, as some who is trying to use Linux as an alternative to Windowz is can be frustrating to spend countless hours trying to find answers to questions on RH’s site only to post his own answers to his own questions. Also, if you don’t where to look for answers, you may not ever find them. It took me 3 months to find a simple answer to how to insert a module that would load automaticaly.
My ranting now over, keep up the good work, and again thanks for the great review, as I will NOT be trying this OS until it gets improved. Thanks again..