Linked by Adam S on Tue 25th Mar 2003 00:52 UTC
Knowing that ArkLinux is the offspring of Bernhard "Bero" Rosenkraenzer (interview here), a former Red Hat employee and KDE hacker, should make it one of the more interesting and, arguably, credible new Linux distributions to hit the streets in recent seasons. With the rise of Lycoris, Lindows, and Xandros, among others, Ark Linux is certainly a far cry from a surefire success. Let's take a look.
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synergy: i agree that windows and osx are more polished in style as well as the apps, but linux is bridging the gap very quickly imo.
Polish in style for the operating system makes little difference. Why? Most Windows users are still using Windows 98 anyway. But yeah, it helps if you can make Linux look more appealing to new users. Having superbig buttons and scrollbars isn't one of it.
And as for apps - the gap is closing slowly... heck, in some areas, the gap is actually widening. Especially when it comes to digital applications that competes with the likes of iMovie and Windows Movie Maker.
synergy: rh8 simply feels much more stable than xp, and i actually enjoy the lack of too much eyecandy and the focus on what's really important.
While I agree I prefer the way default Red Hat 8.0 looks over Windows XP, I have experience less bugs using Windows XP default than Red Hat. Of course, there are annoying ones - like IE status bar dissapearing. But we are geeks. Most of us don't like gee-whiz utterly useless eye candy - end users are attracted by it.
synergy: i just installed realplayer on xp, and had a hard time to tame it the way i wanted ("uh, it was supposed to be a mediaplayer, but it looks like a browser...?!")
Funny, I'm using RealOne on Windows, and I like the default look. If you want something that acts like something else, why not use that something else? So far, I don't see anything anti-consumer about RealOne, except its price tag (which is worth it actually, for the content I mean).
The only other annoying thing about RealOne is the annoying Message service thingy crap.
Of course nowadays I'm using Yahoo Launch radios more often..
synergy: besides, there's nothing under windows that can't be done under linux (admitted, still a little tweaking is necessary, but this will change greatly with "autopackage" or a similar easy-to-use-distribution-independent-graphical installer)
Easy video editing ala iMovie? Easy photo management ala iPhoto/Windows XP? Easy DVD creation ala iDVD? The ability to watch DVD movies out of the box legally? And that's only for consumers.