For anyone unfamiliar with Lindows, their business model is different than the other Linux distributors. Lindows sells a subscription to the Click-N-Run warehouse. The price now is down to $49 a year or $4.95 a month. So their distribution is does not come with as many packages installed as other distibutions. Instead you can download the packages from the Click-N-Run warehouse as you need them. (On the bright side it installs much faster than the other distributions :)
As I mentioned in the introduction I read the Mom Meets Linux article on Extreme Tech website and they gave Lindows 4.0 a fairly decent review, so I decided to give it another look.
I had much better results than I did with Lycoris. I had to download some software from the Click-N-Run warehouse, which was pretty simple.
Most of the stuff I tried actually worked. I had trouble with Ripping and Encoding MP3's from a CD. I downloaded Grip from Click-N-Run and it installed without any apparent trouble. But when I tried to run it, it complained that it could not find the oggenc encoder. Which I thought was strange, because there shouldn't be any grief over licensing with Ogg Vorbis. So just for grins I tried changing Grip to use Lame with the same result. This isn't a surprise because MP3's DO have a licensing issue.
One of the things I don't like about Lindows is that it runs as root (administrator). When I tried to run XSane it warned against running it as root.
One thing I thought was kind of strange was that it only allowed screen resolutions of 640x480 and 1024x768. I would have expected to at least get 800x600. Just to test it I changed to 640x480 and restarted it. It changed but it moved all of the icons that were lined up neatly along the left side and spread them out all over the place and some seemed overlapped. Then when I changed back to 1024x768 of course the icons were still screwed up.
Lindows OS is based upon Debian Linux and I have heard that you can use Debian's "apt-get" program to install software in Lindows. Just for grins I tried to use "apt-get" to install the "emacs" editor. It didn't work and I suspect that it wasn't configured correctly. If one took the time to set it up (and learn how to use it) I believe you could use that to install any of the Debian software packages.
Overall I was fairly pleased with Lindows OS 4.0. I feel that a Linux newbie could probably use it and accomplish many tasks without a lot of grief. I give it the thumbs up. I hope Consumer Reports retests.
| Version | Lindows OS 4.0 | |||||
| Installation | Very simple. I would say this is the easiest installation of all the Linuxes I have tried. | |||||
| Change Screen Resolution | Yes, but the only choices were 640x480 and 1024x768 and had to restart. | |||||
| Word Processing | Yes, installed OpenOffice from Click-N-Run, there were many others available as well. | |||||
| Mount Data CD | Auto mounted when I inserted the disc and unmounted when I pressed the eject button on the drive. | |||||
| Play Audio CD | Yes, auto played when I inserted the CD. | |||||
| Play MP3's | Yes. | |||||
| Play DVD | Yes, had to download player from Click-N-Run Warehouse. | |||||
| Play Internet Radio Station | Yes. This is the first Linux I've used which automatically brought up XMMS and played. | |||||
| Rip and Encode MP3's | No, downloaded Grip from Click-N-Run, but the encoders were apparently not installed. | |||||
| Burn CD | Yes. | |||||
| Printer | Yes. The set-up had some complicated questions, but it set up the printer and it worked. | |||||
| Digital Camera | Yes, I just plugged in the camera and a folder opened on the screen. | |||||
| Scanner | No, installed XSane with Click-N-Run, but it couldn't find my scanner | |||||
| Additonal Software Installation | Click-N-Run. Very easy to use. | |||||
| Geek Stuff | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ssh and scp | No. | |||||
| vi | Yes. | |||||
| emacs | No, but Xemacs is available for download from Click-N-Run. | |||||
