Star Lycoris Desktop/LX Review
Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Mon 18th Mar 2002 18:07 UTC
Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 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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Long time computer user looks at Linux installs
by Allen on Fri 22nd Mar 2002 00:02 UTC

This is the fifth distro I have tried, and while it was the easiest to do, the end result lacks a lot for me, and I suspect for other end users.

I use 98 at home, 2K and Redhat at work and am trying Lycoris on an older P1 150 with 64meg and an 8 gig drive.

Install was sweet. Solitare passed the time and it connected to the net after I turned on DHCP, but I had to hunt that down - not hard, but annoying.

I'm a technical writer so I have to keep cross-platform issues well in mind and this is where Lycoris fails. I need to import and export to others who are using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, Illustrator. I need as good a screen capture tool as Snagit.

Personally I find KDE harder (though pretty good in this version) than Gnome. The KDE word processor can't export to native .doc format as does OpenOffice, etc.

I understand the desire to have a simple install with functional tools, but Windoze comes with minimal tools and you select the ones you want after-market. I think this is a better model as you can select the software that suits your needs, not what someone else thinks you need.

So the InstallShield/Wise type of install from the Windoze world is the model to look at and this is where all the Linux distros fail for the desktop user.

I do some work for a non-profit and they would like to migrate but it's still too complex and not compatible enough for me to recommend yet. Lots of the stuff covered in the review is good to know, but doesn't deal with functioning in an office enviornment and sending documents to users who have Mac's, PC's or whatever.

For myself, I'll stick with the Mandrake 8.2 even though it's a pain to get the install correct and then clean up afterward.