New to linux? Dont worry, Linspire Five-O makes Linux as easy as Windows. Linspire Five-O features over 1200 upgrades from version 4.5. You can get it preinstalled when buying new computers from several vendors. But is it worth throwing away Windows for this OS? Are you ready to try Linux?
Linspire 5.0. How does it compare to Windows?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Linspire is the best KDE distro! I would buy it if I was KDE user!!!
What do you use now?
I use SuSE with KDE and it’s great. Would you consider switching? I’m just wondering….
I use Gnome (Ubuntu) at home and Windows XP at work (.net development), KDE is great, just not for me
I still think it’s ugly as sin.
And KDE is overly complicated. (Try finding a file)
I’ve had very good experiences with Lindows, especially with regard to installation and operation on hard-to-make-work laptop hardware. I’d certainly buy Linspire 5.0 right now based upon my previous good experiences, except that Linspire 5.0 does not have KDE 3.4. Although the Linspire folks have apparently done a very nice job of polishing their UI, somehow, having seen the KDE 3.4 screenshots, Linspire 5.0’s UI seems less than appealing to me.
Does anybody know if the Linspire folks have any plans to provide upgrades to KDE 3.4, perhaps via CNR?
Doug
I guess he meant distro that primarily uses KDE, as GNOME and Ubunutu.
The JPEG compression on those screenshots is rather annoying. I wonder why they couldn’t just post PNGs? Or at least >50% compression JPEGs… Anyhow, meh. It’s a nice n00b distro, but little else.
HA HA, KDE is not a distro, also KDE is not a window manager, it’s DE with many applications.
I agree that Gnome is better, but it’s not faster!
That’s just silly. You can download KDE 3.4 yourself if you want to. Linspire is still linux. For the record, KDE 3.4 looks almost exactly the same as 3.3. I’m sure you’re referring to the Kubuntu screenshots, which are admittedly, very nice. Either way, if it’s not just the look you’re after, Linspire’s KDE has about a zillion custom enhancements anyway.
And KDE is overly complicated. (Try finding a file)
???
Click on the main menu –> Search –> File Search.
How simpler can you get?
Note: you can also type “locate:/[string to search in filename]” in a Konq window and it will also work (if your locate db is up-to-date of course).
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=293&slide=3…)+screenshots
For the record, KDE 3.4 looks almost exactly the same as 3.3.
Err… no, it has a new default style, new default color scheme and new artworks.
3.3 http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.3/snapshot5.png
3.4 http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=265&slide=2…
Adam,
1. I was referring to the Kubuntu screenshots. I agree with you that they are very nice, and I’d like my KDE desktop to look like Kubuntu’s. However, from what I’ve read on the Kubuntu site, Kubuntu is not yet ready for use. And I don’t have the time to mess with it to make it work on my finicky laptop.
2. I don’t have the time to mess with stuff such as trying to fix broken dependencies during a manual KDE upgrade.
To me, the appeal of Linspire is that it just works, even on laptops, and that it keeps on working because the Linspire folks do a nice job of making fixes and upgrades available via CNR.
I used to mess around with Debian and Gentoo and that stuff, but I simply don’t have the time (or even the interest) in doing that stuff anymore. I just want a Linux distribution that works. I’d happily pay fifty or a hundred bucks to have the convenience of CNR so that I can spend my time doing more interesting stuff than assembling OS/Windowing Environment combinations.
Doug
The link below shows Linspire’s strong support for KDE amongst other Open Source Projects.
http://info.linspire.com/opensource/
I think you can make your own deductions from that! 😉
Err… no, it has a new default style, new default color scheme and new artworks.
The default style is “Plastik” which was available long before 3.4 in stock KDE. The new icons, etc can be applied as well.
I’m not saying that 3.4 isn’t a nice upgrade, I’m saying “what is it you need?”
Adam,
What I “need” is to save time. I don’t have the time to mess around with upgrading and/or fixing KDE. And I don’t have the time to do a bunch of settings tweaks, etc.
To me, Linspire and CNR provide time-saving convenience.
Doug
3.4 is massively faster than 3.3. Between the internal refactoring and the new -fvisibility=hidden and -fvisibility-inlines-hidden gcc abilities (hides inline and other functions from the symbol table to vastly improve symbol lookup time), 3.4 is almost fast enough to be usable. It’s compositing manager has some bugs, though. I can use normal xcompmgr, but if I enable the KDE one for the window manager I get some funkiness.
Wait for KDE 4.0 guys. It is going to be very fast. After KDE 4.0 comes out, GNOME will lose out heavily.
LinuxDude,
1. When do you estimate KDE 4 will be out? My understanding is that the KDE 4 release is more than a year away.
2. I’m looking forward to KDE 4, and just as importantly, am looking forward to QT 4 and its API improvements. Once QT 4 comes out, then I’m going to start learning how to code against QT.
Doug
I has been commented a number of times, but they don’t seem to put much effort into it. As long as they don’t recreate a whole look and feel in the standards of Mac OS X or WinXP with nice, clean unjagged fonts, they won’t have a significant market share. Mainstream users want a nice interface, not jagged fonts, and hobbist graphic design interface. Learn from the leaders.
Great job on it!
If you’re using SuSE > 9.1 with apt-get and synaptic, don’t switch. I just purchased a copy Linspire 5.0 because people have been raving about Linspire for the past year or more. I wanted to experiment with it and was very disappointed.
1) It has almost no configuration tools.
2) With Click n Run, if you already know a package name and you use the search tool to find it, you can install only one at a time. You can’t batch up several packages to be downloaded and installed afaik.
3) The network scripts (ifup, ifdown) do not work from the command line. The /etc/init.d/network startup script
doesn’t seem to work either.
4) If you have to use a static ip and choose a gateway that’s on another domain, you won’t be able to configure networking to automatically setup additional routes using the scripts in /etc/network….
If you have to deviate from any of the defaults, it’s not going to work that well. If you’re advanced enough to fix things, you’ll find that core system and scripts are not well done and seem broken (eg, ifup, ifdown, /etc/init.d/network).
The mkinitrd script is written in Caml! I needed to use this because I wanted to intall a Win4Linux kernel and I found that it doesn’t honor some of the command line options that are available such as naming the output initrd file.
I plugged in a usb2 pcmcia card and then a usb harddrive — the system didn’t like that and I had to reboot. The second time it worked…
It boots extremely slow, much slower than suse 9.2, on the same machine.
So there you have it…. I’m sure if you don’t have to touch anything it will work just fine. Click n Run does function and is probably the easiest way to install software for novice users. I was able to install the compilers and build environment, emacs, etc.. successfully. It didn’t stay on my machine for more than a day….
shamu,
Thanks for the detailed write-up.
I’ve tried to install Suse (older versions) on my Dell C400 laptop without success. The installers have always hung up, perhaps due to some problem dealing with the laptop’s i830 graphics silliness.
To date, the only linux distros that I have been able to get to work on my Dell C400 laptop are Gentoo and Lindows. For some reason, the Lindows installers just worked, and for some reason, despite my lack of having much of an XServer clue, I was able to get Gentoo to work just fine.
Has Suse’s installer improved much during the past couple of releases? If so, I might give Suse a try again.
Thanks.
Doug
X server, not XServer.
You guys need to get a life. Were talking about Linspire being a easy switch from Windows. Not about the merits of KDE vs Gnome.
I think lately any Linux discussion here always seems to degenerate from good comments to the usual KDE/Gnome bashing sessions.
I suggest the editors implement some sort of slashdot style comment system so we can mod down thread hijackers.
As you can read in many reviews it is great for real n00bies but for anyone who knows half a bit about linux it is overly simple.
All these people arguing over KDE vs. Gnome its a bit off topic but in order of DE’s i use it goes.
1.XFCE
2.Gnome
3.KDE
I like lots of window managers and im always open to new things. I try lots of them when i see them.
But the XFCE DE takes it for me just speed and simplicity.
(PS: My nick is KDE because it is my initials not some fanboy statement
)
Later,
KDE
From my experience SuSE has the best hardware detection.
Since 8.2, the installer has been pretty rock solid.
I’ve only had the installer fail due to the media being bad. The graphical installer should handle the i830.
I guess this is bad that I’m doing this on the Linspire discussion…..
I would give 9.2 a try. Use the CD’s. The dvd is a double layer dvd and I’m assuming the C400 doesn’t have that capability.
Recommendations:
1) At the initial boot screen (grub) select the native resolution of your monitor. I believe it’s the f4 key (??).
2) Don’t change the package selections during the install.
3) After it detects and configures your network card,
it will ask if you want to do an online update (security updates). Skip it at this time and do the update later after successfully installing.
4) When you are first logged in (hopefully you made a user account), you can use Menu->System->Yast->Software->Install Software to install additional packages. After that is all done, then use Yast to do an online update: Menu->System->Yast->Online Update. There are many security updates by now.
shamu,
Thanks!
Doug
Look, the OS is good BUT, I honestly can’t imagine my self doing word processing while looking at white bright colors. My eyes will start to hurt. It is good that we can change the styles and colors. I fully support Linspire but I think white is not a good color choice. Something softer would be nice. I know gray could be boring but it is a professional color choice. Something like creamy, coffee/latte like color would be much better then white (my opinion) it’s easier to look at and softer to the eye. Something like the colors used in this screen shot.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?preview=1&id=21650&file…
I wonder what color scheme he uses.
When looking at the screenshots of Linspire 5, it appears to me that the icons on the desktop are not of uniform size? For example the Trash icon seems to be smaller than the CD-RW icon. I am not sure if this is ths case, or if I need a new pair of reading glasses.
Linspire makes Windows look good! But Windows better watch out. Remember that all pundits agreed that Mac Os was better than Windows but Windows got the bigger market share. Now Linux is likely to do the same to Windows, but all the different distributions are so confusing to the newbie and may hinder its adoption on a large scale. Get your act together Linux! Also stop copying half the features from Windows and the other half from Os X. It looks weird! e.g. Rounded washed out Window’s style widgets but on the right side! What’s with that question mark on the window? Why is the huge Linspire logo in-your-face in the control panels. What is the meaning of ‘OK’ and ‘Apply’ in the Network panel? Does one make changes and press ‘OK’ or press ‘Apply’? Copying the looks of Windows or Os X does not make for a good GUI- it is the behavior that counts. End of rant.
For me these reviews just don’t hit the mark, often along with the distros themselves.
A lot of attention is often paid to the fact [ insert your favourite n00b friendly distro here ] comes with an internet suite, OpenOffice and a plethora of other programs installed and therein lies the ease of use.
Surely they’re missing the point? Windows comes with next to nothing installed and from my experience even the most average ‘joe user’ is capable of downloading software and installing it. My old dear, a complete n00b was perfectly capable of migrating from Internet Explorer to Firefox on her Windows machine without any problems at all.
Personally I’ll wipe a distro off my list of ones to try if it’s not possible to do a base install (or in some cases a base ‘with X11’ install) because software is very easily obtained in most package-based distributions. In fact in most cases it’s simpler than Windows.
IMO, if you want it to compete with Windows, install a base graphical system and let the user install the software they require. Synaptic (for example) is easy to use and a simple search for ‘Web Browser’ will give a clueless user all the choices they need.
The important questions are left out. Maybe not in this case, but often questions like ‘how easy is it to install?’, ‘how easy is it to break?’ and ‘how easy is it to use?’.
At the end of the day, preinstalled OpenOffice or gAIM is not a feature, since it’s so easy to obtain anyway. Why not focus on the more important matters?
Also it’s worth noting that reviews like this tend to shoehorn clueless users into buying/using a distro like Linspire with sweeping statements like…
“You should be able to open a Microsoft Word document in OpenOffice Word and the other way around. I have tested both Word and Spreadsheet and they worked fine.”
Not a hint of ‘YMMV’, testing of more complex documents, or describing what macro support is available. Makes me wonder if this is a Linspire review or a GNU software review, since there’s no depth in either camp.
wow it’s really great that Linspire has saved me so much time, made me more productive, and given me a third arm with six fingers.
Kindly post your fake testimonials elsewhere. It does show the gravity that this blog has considering so many people said how insignificant it was not long ago.
Come on. Windows has the same buttons. And any long time windows user knows that Apply means that it applies the changes but keeps open the dialog window. The Ok button applies the changes and closes the dialog window at the same time.
On top of that people act like you can’t change the colors or icons etc?? Just go to kde-Look.com (Which is supported by Linspire) and stop whining.
To me both the Mac os and Windows Xp by default have ugly themes. So I change them and go on with my life. Doesn’t stop me from using the OS out right.
You can find my review here:
http://linuxinformer.ducaet.be/Linspire5_review.pdf
Darkelve
I don’t think that is true. For a former windows user that has no clue what Linux is, the first thing they always ask me is “Does it have Microsoft Office, Does it have internet exsploder?” I think the desktop companies like Linspire and Xandros understand this and are trying to cut that off at the pass by saying that these applications are incuded and can do the same things and also they are already there so you don’t have to spend another hour installing them.
That is what I LOVE about the click and run. I have my area set up with all the common applications that I know people I move to Linspire will like to use. They can just go there and not have to search or type “web browser” just to find the right web browser and hope that it will install (I have had my fair share of problems with Synaptic.) Also the descriptions in Synaptic are cryptic at best.
I mean hey, if it’s not your cup of tea then it’s not. That is cool. You don’t have to put it down just because you don’t like it. Let other people try for themselves.
You can find my review here:
It’s a better review but still too much emphasis on included packages. At the end of the day I can get all of that software on any single distro, why not focus more on Linspire itself?
Thanks for replying man :]
Don’t get me wrong– I’m not putting Linspire down. I think the work they’ve put into making it easy to use and Windows-a-like is second to none. They laid down a goal and achieved it.
You may have misunderstood me because I digressed a little too quickly from the real issue here– Not Linspire, but the review. I did whine about packages being include but the real point of my post was that I don’t think the review was detailed enough and that it concetrated on the less important points.
I do disagree with your point about Office to a minor extent. You said people will ask “does it have Microsoft Office”. It doesn’t, but neither does Windows. Two separate products that on any respectable news site would warrant two separate reviews.
That’s my gripe, not Linspire
IMO: not that well.
There are lots of easy distros for beginers that are much better than Linspire, and much cheaper also.
Linspire’s marketing campaign tries to make it seem that Linspire is a windows alternative, while other Linux distros are just “Linux” the campaign is geared towards the ignorant.
Sorry Phill. Not trying to blast you. 🙂 Thanks for the respectful reply (Not blasting me. )
What I mean by my MS office comment is that those are the applications that former Windows users first ask for. So that is what people point out.
You are right about the review though. Very true.
To: walterbyrd
Please let us know which linux distros are more easy for beginners? On top of that I think $50 is pretty darn cheep. Much cheeper then say $130 for OSX and 200 plus for XP. (And that doesn’t include any software) Plus you at least get some tech support for your $50. You get NONE from Microsoft or Apple or any of the “lower cost” Linux distros. (Not talking about fourms)
Also I love the flash tutorials that Linspire incudes. (Something very simple that really helped my mother to learn how to use it.) I am surprised that no one else is doing something similar.
I actually prefer Linspire’s usability & features over Windows.
Another point to consider is that people should compare Linux Desktop usability between now and (about) three years ago.
In 2002 the main contenders for the most usable Linux Desktops for newbies, in my opinion, would have been SuSE & Lycoris and Corel.
Linspire (then Lindows) came into the mix about that time and did whatever they could to simplify & automate many tasks that have been quite painful and kept newbies afraid to take a serious look at Linux.
From where I’m standing, it appears that a lot of Linux vendors have been trying to emulate the Lindows & Linspire approach to simplifying & automating Linux.
I’m of the opinion that without Lindows/Linspire coming into play in 2002, the simplification and many advances may NOT have been available as we see them now.
That’s my opinion and how I see the situation.
You are right. Linspire has shocked the world. People thought it was going to continue to be “vaporware”. All marketing. And now hummmm, it’s turned in to an actual running OS. And seeing that there was really no version 1 and version 2 was all fluff. In 2 full releases they have done a darn good job at making a working OS.
Remember Windows has a PRETTY big head start. Yet Linspire 5 is still very useful and very stable. I think people are still in shock that Linspire actually came up with something this nice!
Linspire 5 rocks (especially when you consider all the under the hood changes from 4.5). For those wanting W-XP to be the last MSFT “upgrade” to go through Linspire 5 is for them.
The question is what does the future hold? We KNOW this for certain: “trusted computing” (DRM hardware) is here and its here to stay – they are jamming it down our throats by every hardware vendor doing it so we can’t “vote” it down by refusing to buy. (although I plan on holding out as long as possible by buying up existing h/ware) So what will Linspire do as a company from here? I think it has the potential to join the big guys (Apple, MSFT) and could become the first *nix to get drivers, and even DRM schemes thrown there way. In fact if they were to work closely with Codeweavers with iTunes they could probably help them get it supported 100% instead of the roughly 50% it is now so that it will even burn cd’s and synch to iPods.
I don’t think there’s any chance of getting MSFT to licence them protected WMA and Apple’s made it real clear they won’t protected AAC by introducing the Mac-mini. And creating their own DRM scheme is a huge hurdle as it would include getting h/ware vendors to include support for it so XOver-iTunes seems the only answer for this.
Now, I don’t like DRM either but like it or lump it its here to stay and if they want to become a real consumer alternative they have to jump on that wagon.
I’m using it – and it’s just pretty much a bog standard debian install. Admittedly it needed a little less configuration than most Debian installs – as it correctly recognised most of my very modern hardware – but it is still just Debian – or at least what my normal Debian installs might look like after several days of messing with them.
GJ
Perhaps one of the biggest difference between Linspire & Microsoft is that Microsoft did NOT have a huge monopoly trying to trip them up.
While there were rumors of vaporware, it actually did arrive. And it shocked many, indeed.
Many who do not like Lindows/Linspire will, under pressure, admit that these folks have made tremendous strides. Especially when you consider the impact of having to deal with Microsoft; a company with a long time reputation of, “not playing nice with others.”
This distro is a joke.
Just installed it.
Did not detect my nvidia card, offered a vesa driver.
Did not configure my dual monitor setup.
Unable to configure the resolution of my main display (probably because my second TFT cannot handle that resolution).
How do I configure my dual monitor setup? There are no tools. The Kontrol Center just lets me know that I don’t have such setup. Nice!
I expect to have to manually generate a xorg.conf on Mandrake, not on Linspire.
CNR, the slowest thing I have ever used. Takes forever to display anything, no information about what it’s doing, you just get a blank page and don’t know if it’s broken…Every action takes forever. I’m probably testing this on the wrong day, but still…Not a pleasant experience.
The only cool thing is the spell checker in this window, while I’m typing
By Tyrone Miles (IP: 206.118.48.—) – Posted on 2005-03-24 17:03:02
Sorry Phill. Not trying to blast you. 🙂 Thanks for the respectful reply (Not blasting me. )
What I mean by my MS office comment is that those are the applications that former Windows users first ask for. So that is what people point out.
You are right about the review though. Very true.
To: walterbyrd
Please let us know which linux distros are more easy for beginners? On top of that I think $50 is pretty darn cheep. Much cheeper then say $130 for OSX and 200 plus for XP. (And that doesn’t include any software) Plus you at least get some tech support for your $50. You get NONE from Microsoft or Apple or any of the “lower cost” Linux distros. (Not talking about fourms)
Sorry about my last post, accidently hit the submit button too soon.
>>Please let us know which linux distros are more easy for beginners?<<
Xandros and Mandrake come to mind.
>>On top of that I think $50 is pretty darn cheep. Much cheeper then say $130 for OSX and 200 plus for XP.<<
But very few people actually pay that $130 or $200+, usually the OS comes loaded on the computer. From what I have seen, not having XP pre-loaded, doesn’t lower the cost $200+. Besides, I’m comparing Linspire to other Linux distros (since that all that Linspire is). How many other desktop Linux distros cost $200+?
Also, Linspire wants to keep charging you. For example, they want to charge you for virus protection, then they want to charge every month for their download scheme, then they want to charge you for staroffice. In fact, In their 4.5 release, they put openoffice on the live CD, but not on the installed version. I have no doubt that this was done specifically to try and sell staroffice.
Linspire’s marketing campaign tries to make it seem like Linspire is the only x86 alternative to Windows. But, bottom line, Linspire is just another Linux distro.
It’s impossible to install the latest nvidia drivers on this thing.
They don’t provide the source of the kernel they use in 5.0. GCC is missing symlinks that prevent the nvidia installer to run.
Total disaster if a newbie ever tries to load that thing with two monitors.
not true anon see this post:
https://forum.linspire.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=357217&pag…
Yep, the nvidia driver is too old. It only works on old cards.
I was wrong about the source code though, but you have to search for something special in CNR, “kernel source” won’t bring the los-kernel-source packages.
@walterbyrd:
Also, Linspire wants to keep charging you. For example, they want to charge you for virus protection,
How is this different from any other platform?
McAfee, Symantec and others ALL charge for Anti-Virus Protection…
Linspire did not make VirusSafe and SurfSafe, they are marketing another companies AV and Internet Protection software because people demanded them.
Go read the news release about why they added these products to their line…
If you think there ought to be a Linux Free AV / Surfing Software solution, please… Go write one and offer it for free.
then they want to charge every month for their download scheme,
Um… Bandwith, electricity and support staff salaries aren’t free. Not to mention rent, and the cost of the back end hardware that runs CNR.
Grow up!
You don’t deserve stuff for free…
Everything you get for free is a gift. Be grateful.
then they want to charge you for staroffice.
Last I heard, it’s Sun Microsystems that charges for StarOffice. Since it’s a commercial product.
If you want an equivalent FREE product, that’s called OpenOffice, which is included with Linspire and most other distributions.
In fact, In their 4.5 release, they put openoffice on the live CD, but not on the installed version. I have no doubt that this was done specifically to try and sell staroffice.
See, on the LiveCD, one can’t add software… So everything one would need minimally ought to be there.
I’d have to go back and check, but I’m darn sure Open Office is installed by default on 4.5.
You may be referring to earlier versions.
If not, getting the CNR Express CD solves all that anyway.
If you download the DVD ISO file(s), you can make a regular DVD (versus dual-layer). I did it this morning (I have a 64-bit SUSE 9.2 dvd and one for 32-bit).