Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 18th Mar 2002 18:07 UTC
Many companies tried to create a truly easy-to-use Linux distribution, but as they say in Greece "they reached the well, but weren't able to drink water". Corel, Mandrake, Lindows, Xandros, Stormix and many other distros tried or are still trying to bring Linux closer to Windows' ease of use and the millions of the desktop-oriented users. One of the new distributions that has many people impressed so far, is Lycoris (formerly known as 'Redmond Linux'). OSNews tested the latest Lycoris Desktop/LX and here is what we experienced.
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I'm sick of some of these reviews coming from people who have grown up with everything Linux/GNU/BSD/etc have to offer, complaining about a desktop distribution because it is "limited".
Lycoris are trying to make a distribution that is useful to the end user. The end user is not a power user. If the end user was, they'd use one of the multitude of other distributions out there.
All the end user needs is the equivalent of what you'd find on Windows 9x/2000, with some productivity applications (which would have to be purchased extra in the case of a microsoft platform).
Who cares if the distro doesn't contain development utilities like GCC. Does the general MS user complain because Visual C++ isn't installed? No. Updates can be downloaded in binary format and installed with RPM/DEB packages.
What I'd have liked to see is the reviewer sitting down an average joe at the Lycoris system, and asking them if they could perform x/y/z tasks that would they would expect to be able to perform on windows, and observing the result.
Don't forget the target audience. It's like a physics professor complaining about a teenage sci-fi novel because it isn't correct enough to his liking.
Blah.
Nick