The Lycoris Development Team is hard at work finishing Desktop/LX Update 2, a very exciting enhancement to the popular desktop operating system. Included, is a new Desktop/LX Control Center that makes it easier to accomplish configuration tasks in a simple, plain language way (screenshot). A new Desktop/LX Software Wizard allows you to install software from local media or right from the Internet using Iris, the Internet Rapid Installer for Software (IRIS). Lycoris also put work into the Desktop/LX Installer and some cosmetic changes are readily apparent (screenshot). “Fry’s Electronics will be carrying Desktop/LX on the west coast. More to follow for sure. We are hard at work finishing Update 2 and dealing with our explosive growth.” Jason Spisak of Lycoris told OSNews.
Lycoris Desktop/LX Update 2 on the Way
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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man, i wish they would port OS X to x86 cpus… it doesn’t make much sense for them too… unless it would be binary compat. with the ppc version.
otherwise, it would be too hard to gain much market share. or it seems like it would be…
still, it would be nice.
oops… stupid me. posted the comment to the wrong post…
i must be tired…
Dude, you’ve GOTTA be tired… How’d you end up in a different forum than the one you thought you were posting on?
LOL!!!
My only real comment on this Lycoris thing is that this blatant ripoff of WinXP’s GUI pisses me off.
I mean… Allowing your OS and/or apps to be skinned to look like XP is one thing, but pushing out an almost exact clone of the XP GUI is just nuts!!
If a Linux newbie sees this and buys it thinking that it’ll behave and be configured the same as their Windows box, they’ll be sorely disapointed. This in turn they’ll blame on Linux, not the Lycoris look/feel, which will then ensure that Linux has lost a potential user.
Also, this just gives Microsoft the ammo they need to take their competition to court and sue them out of business. Can Ford make an exact copy of a Chevy car, apart from the company’s logos, and expect to not get sued? No. Why software manufacturers think that they can is beyond me! The goal is to innovate and expand on what’s been done. Not to repeat it over and over.
I thought that Linux users were supposed to be the smart ones out here… Did Apple make OSX look exactly like Windows? No.
Did BeOS? No…
So why someone seems to think that Linux needs to in order to succeed is beyond me -And don’t even point out that BeOS didn’t succeed… My point still stands! 8)=
My only real comment on this Lycoris thing is that this blatant ripoff of WinXP’s GUI
I agree. And their attitude that they are actually doing something orginal is funny too. These satire Lycoris splash screens sum it up best I think:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=868
Dude, you’ve GOTTA be tired… How’d you end up in a different forum than the one you thought you were posting on? LOL!!!
yeah, I know. I was up till 3 last night so i have an excuse…
Lycoris is a great distro. But it tried to be a Windows XP clone. If you can’t make a proper clone, don’t bother. For example, by looking at the screenshot, the control panel has ugly non-AA text, there is an address bar, toolbar, menubar (not found in XP), making it quite confusing for users. Lycoris should realize something, Windows XP is easy, a Windows XP clone not done properly is not easy to use. And also, Windows XP isn’t the most easiest to use OS. They don’t have to be a Windows XP clone in order to help new users from Windows get used to Linux, David Courney, and a whole lot of pure Windows zealots manage to find moving to OS X easy. And OS X isn’t at all like Windows XP (maybe some things stolen here and there by XP, but not at all the same).
Well, at first i didn’t agree with you about the icons and the GUI. But i see your point, i think tho that lycoris should stick with the general feel of the icons and look it has, it looks pretty good. But if they are blatantly rippin MS off, that is both dumb, and bad for the end use(as a copy of a not-so-great design can’t be a good thing). I think many distros have this windows copying problem. Linux needs to stop imitating windows and start doin its own thing more.altho i do want some nice dandy gui installer for linux programs:)
yeah, I know. I was up till 3 last night so i have an excuse…
Only until 3?! Call yourself a computer geek?!
Gawd, that’s when I start drinking coffee! Call me when you’re up until lunch time – that’s more like it!
Geeks Hours of Business: 3pm to 11am…
Geeks Hours of Business: 3pm to 11am…
I meant 3 AM. AM, early morning. Not afternoon. If I could, I would stay up till 3 then sleep till noon… but unfortunally, that’s not an option.
LOL Antarius, I pity Kevin. Most of us have real jobs and real school, and aren’t nocturnals.
Well, at first i didn’t agree with you about the icons and the GUI. But i see your point, i think tho that lycoris should stick with the general feel of the icons and look it has, it looks pretty good. But if they are blatantly rippin MS off, that is both dumb, and bad for the end use(as a copy of a not-so-great design can’t be a good thing). I think many distros have this windows copying problem. Linux needs to stop imitating windows and start doin its own thing more.altho i do want some nice dandy gui installer for linux programs:)
Maybe Windows XP isn’t so bad. But Lycoris copy is terrible. If they can’t make a proper copy (KDE is open source and Free Software…), don’t bother. It would confuse the consumer more. Besides, I kinda like XP icons, but Lycoris looks like blatant ripoffs (well, if you could see the difference, XP icons look more superior, like more work went into it).
One day, when I gather up enough programming know-how, I would try to make my own distro, but it would be anything but a badly copied Windows UI…
And I agree, it’s a total ripoff, the same icons, the same colors. Are they somehow thinking that Microsoft won’t react at all? Most often I feel the sues in the software industry has been totally wild and stupid, but in this case I must agree. This is a rip off. Leave Microsoft (and Apple) alone and do you own thing.
And then to this “Convering Windows users” mentality. Stop that, it makes me sick. You sound like those morons (yes, I spellt that correctly) that come up to peoples houses telling them that they are wrong, that they have to live their lives according to mystical and idiotic rules, or they will be damned for all eternity. You are speaking about humans, whom have a lot more in their lives than choosing an OS.
If the linux based operating systems wants to win market share, they will have to do so by being better. As it is now they release schedules are confusing at best (I still wish that KDE came with a Linux distro (as in KDE maintains their own distro, not the other way around), then I would install linux again), their quality is shoddy (as in testing, documentation, documentation of quality, release schedules, and much more), and there are way more distros than justified. A LinuxOS specification is sorely needed where basic rules are laid out so that an application programmer only needs to build one package (they build for red hat now, jippie…) and so that a user can go from one distro to another without getting confused (it happens to me, and I’ve used linux for 7 years. I just don’t have it on my main machine anymore).
That is todays rant from me, enjoy;)
…for somebody to gather all the cool aspects of linux – svg, xft aa hack, all the little things that once installed make your linux install so sweet, and package them into a default install.
(I’m lazy.)
Yeah, I looked at Lycoris’ screenshots on their site. However, I don’t see the rip-off of XP that everyone’s complaining about. The default XP background is clearly the Teletubbies backyard, while the Lycoris destop is from The Sound of Music. Totally different places.
As for the icons, I would hardly call full-color, soft, rounded comfortable icons a Microsoft thing. They copied that from places like Mac and Gnome. However, the icons do look suspiciously similar to XP.
By the way, I used to work with the CEO of Lycoris, Joe Cheek. We also worked at Microsoft at the same time. He is a pretty cool guy.
I would try his distro if it was Debian, but then again, I would try a lot of different distros if they were Debian. Oh well.
i think lycoris want to make the migration from window to linux as easy as possible for new users. Especially, at this time, companies are under pressure with ms new Licence and they are forced to decide whether they’re going to stick with ms or find alternative. I’ll do the same if I own Lycoris.
good luck lycoris
Linux has come a far way, but is FreeBSD following the same path? I hope so, and I hope not. I hope that FreeBSD becomes more like Linux in some respects. I am a true beliver in KISS, that’s why I loved BEOS so much.
:/ oh well.
LOL Antarius, I pity Kevin. Most of us have real jobs and real school, and aren’t nocturnals.
Yeah, thanks.
It’s hard to be pretty much nocturnal and still have to go to school at normal hours… 
I use desktop/lx in my home and in my work (I live in Brazil). Your look ‘n’ feel, to me, is the best than others Linux distros. It’s easy to users of the Windows begin to use Linux. The difference is minimal. Congratulations for the excellent work that Lycoris have made.
Screw linux on the desktop, it’s never been up to speed and never will be. Mac OS X is already here and 1000x more usefull. Linux on the desktop is _dead_, get over it.
XFree gets crappy as time passes. Almost anything is quicker, more responsive than XFree.
Joe
Wow. I had to double check my laptop, see if I was running Lycoris instead of XP……..I’m fairly certain that Microsoft has the explorer shell and icons copyrighted, so Lycoris better get the lawyers ready. Redmond doesn’t take these things litely…
But, the larger question is WHY? Are we suppposed to believe that the only way for Linux to be competitive on the desktop is to copy Microsoft?
well there is no wa in hell the Eugenia would move to mac full time since she is very hardware minded rather than total package minded….same goes for a lot of folks.
I am of the school that a computer is not the sum of al its parts. and most folks in that school I would bet, use Macs (I use a win XP laptop to be fair…but I love my G4 and wish I had opted for the TiBook
)
Screw linux on the desktop, it’s never been up to speed and never will be. Mac OS X is already here and 1000x more usefull. Linux on the desktop is _dead_, get over it.
XFree gets crappy as time passes. Almost anything is quicker, more responsive than XFree.
I despise you! I use FreeBSD, Lycoris, Windows and BeOS. MacOSX is to rich person. Use BeOS/OpenBeOS and brain shake in your head.
I think you need to drop the emotions dude, and don’t cop some rich person crap about OS X, it is just silly.
I wills witch to OSX as my main os I a fraction of a millisecond, if some one gives me a mac.
It’s a very nice OS, IMOP. I plan to get a mac as soon as I have an extra thousand+ dollars. But that is a ways off. 
i think lycoris want to make the migration from window to linux as easy as possible for new users. Especially, at this time, companies are under pressure with ms new Licence and they are forced to decide whether they’re going to stick with ms or find alternative. I’ll do the same if I own Lycoris.
A few Windows zealot editors/writers from places like ZDnet manage to move to Mac OS X without problem… while Mac OS X interface is almost totally different….
Yeah, thanks.
It’s hard to be pretty much nocturnal and still have to go to school at normal hours… 
Yeah, I know.. I’m schooling too 🙂
Screw linux on the desktop, it’s never been up to speed and never will be. Mac OS X is already here and 1000x more usefull. Linux on the desktop is _dead_, get over it.
XFree gets crappy as time passes. Almost anything is quicker, more responsive than XFree.
Yeah, thats why until now (10.1.3?), my Mac friend still says Linux is faster…
But nontheless, XFree is crap. More like X11 is crap. There are many projects working to replace XFree86. Meanwhile, KDE and GNOME manage to hack their way and still keep floating even with the limitations of XFree86 (i.e. they got AA!)
Wow. I had to double check my laptop, see if I was running Lycoris instead of XP……..I’m fairly certain that Microsoft has the explorer shell and icons copyrighted, so Lycoris better get the lawyers ready. Redmond doesn’t take these things litely…
Actually, the icons were made by themselves without copying XP, but was made to look almost similar to XP.
well there is no wa in hell the Eugenia would move to mac full time since she is very hardware minded rather than total package minded….same goes for a lot of folks.
I’m also hardware minded. I like OS X. But then I normally driff back to Linux (I don’t know why). There isn’t any point using Linux on a Mac as you can get a better deal with hardware, plus software wise, you get Opera, CrossOver Plugins etc….
I think you need to drop the emotions dude, and don’t cop some rich person crap about OS X, it is just silly.
Actually, by keeping emotions to himself, he might get mad. (If he wasn’t already mad).
OS X isn’t a rich person OS, the hardware it runs on is 🙂