As seen over at PCLinuxOnline: “Lycoris is scheduled to announce the availability of Deskxop/LX Update 2 build 46 on Monday. In the meantime, you can freely download the 3 isos from various mirrors as they become available. sunet.se seems to have it available as of this morning.”“Desktop/LX comes with kernel 2.4.18, KDE 2.2.2 (highly modified), Mozilla 1.0, Xmms, Gphoto2, Realplayer, xine 0.9.10, Koffice 1.1.1, games and a few other applications. In addition, Desktop/LX has IRIS which is the Internet Rapid Installer of Software. In order to access more programs available for download through IRIS, you must purchase and enter a personal ID for each of your computers. Pricing starts at 19.95 per machine. A list of programs available through IRIS today can be located here.“
Desktop/LX Update 2 Build 46 Goes Gold
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Does anyone know what sort of package management system this distribution uses?
RPMs.
Why does a survey on the site ask;
“Do you use or plan to use Windows programs under D/LX?”
and the FAQs state;
“Q: Will Desktop/LX run my Windows Applications?”
“A: As far as Windows applications, it’s always better to run applications that are ‘native’ to the OS.”
yet there is no mention of Wine anywhere?
I don’t care much about running Windows apps, I just want to know whether it’s included in the distro or not.
The $19.99 price for the IRIS service which is similar to the scandalously priced $99.99 for Lindows Click N Run is a lot more reasonable price to pay for automated installation of free software, if one needs such things. Hopefully they add some more packages before there are links from the main page of the site.
Can anyone give me, in 25 words or less, a comparison of the current Koffice to OpenOffice.org 1.0? I have not used Koffice. (http://apps.kde.org seems to be broken)
I’ve been curious about Lycoris and poking and lurking around in the forums, trying to figure out whether I should try it. One thing that *is* mildly discouraging is that the rumblings from the forums indicate that the Lycoris installer now fails to work with serial mice. Ick!
Is this really true?
I don’t know if that’s true or not. i do have Lycoris, build 45, but I have a USB mouse.
Well, this really does seem to be a step in the right direction. The lack of downloadable software was a big problem, they said they were working on it when Eugenia did her interview and they have worked on it with results. I wish they had the Walmart deal instead of Lindows.
They should wait for 1.1 instead of shipping 1.0.
—
http://islande.hirlimann.net
Maybe a group of people could influence Walmart?
> One thing that *is* mildly discouraging is that the rumblings from the forums indicate that the Lycoris installer now fails to work with serial mice. Ick!
Joseph from Lycoris told me that this was the No1 fix he wanted to do for Update 2. You might want to give a try to the new version and see if the serial mice bug is indeed fixed.
The $19.99 price for the IRIS service which is similar to the scandalously priced $99.99 for Lindows Click N Run is a lot more reasonable price to pay
I agree fully, as a whole Lycoris seems to be a whole lot nicer to the community than Lindows. Michael Robertson from Lindows seems to f*ck the community whenevere he can. First he doesn’t give a binary, (not entirely required under the GPL, but most companies do it), then he has the nerve to charge users a hundred dollars to beta test for him, he writes a eula that would make Microsoft proud, and comes up with click-n-run which steals open source software, renames(misnames) it, doesn’t post the source or credit authors’ work. Finally at first Lindows didn’t release source code at all, when he finally did, his code was completely useless. The Lindows source code is poorly documented, and incomplete.
Joseph Cheek has been very honest and forthright along the development path of Desktop/LX. He provides a binary and full source for free. 20 bucks seems reasonable considering he has to pay for bandwidth, for his IRIS service. Looking a this distriptions I would like to see him crediting the originating projects by linking to project sites.
In the end Lycoris seems faithful to bringing Linux to the masses. Lindows promises of finishing Wine didn’t happen. While our (grand)parents might be running a Lycoris computer in the near future, I think Lindows will probly be a important case to test the GPL in court.
During the lycoris install, you can play solitary while you wait for the files to copy over!!!!
It’s funny to see the people who are all complaining about Lindows, Lycoris and ELX being “Windows XP Ripoffs” and Lindows Click’N’Run & Lycroris’ IRIS service being A Bad Thing(tm).
In the last week we had the article “12 Steps to Desktop Dominance” http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1410 which many people agreed with.
A couple of major points raised in that article:
1) Nobody felt they should have to learn a new (desktop) system
2) Installing software should be as easy(sic) as it is with Windows.
Lycoris, Lindows & ELX have all set out to solve #1. They have (heavily) customised KDE to make it appealing to Windows users. (Whether this is necessarily a Good Thing or not is not the scope of this comment…)
The result (in product)? A very smooth, nice looking upgrade path for Windows users.
The result (in the OSS community)? A big tongue-lashing, for being nothing more than a “rip off of a bad GUI,” and a general feeling that nobody should be making money off of OSS and GPL software.
The Nett Result? Developers of the above distros are less likely to “play ball” and rethink their committments to Linux on the desktop…
Two steps forward, three steps back for Desktop Linux.
For Point 2, we see a few more options. Sure, there’s apt-get and portage for “the advanced users” (Advanced meaning: “Somebody who doesn’t need an installshield setup ala Windows.”) which isn’t necessarily suitable for Grandma who is upgrading from WindowsXP.
“What do you mean, ‘I have to compile it?'”
We have RPM – I won’t even go there…
Two commercial offerings: IRIS and Click’N’Run. These services are again offered to the “non-Advanced” users upgrading from a Windows environment & don’t want to re-learn how to use their desktop environment.
But what happens? They bet a tongue lashing etc.
Linux is about choice. It doesn’t, unfortunately, have a nice “ports” system like BSD, as this would not be as feasible.
Why? Because Linux is about choice. Choice in the way your desktop and system works. Choice in how you supply your software.
And, of course, it is some people’s choice to want a system that works “similar to Windows.” Let them have their choice, no matter how much you disagree with it.
During the lycoris install, you can play solitary while you wait for the files to copy over!!!!
Nothing actually new there… I can remember the same thing in Caldera OpenLinux a few years back.
Bloody good idea though!
Boss: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Just installing a new server…”
Antarius…I couldn’t agree with you more. The Linux community needs to embrace the “intermediates” that produce a Windows-like Linux in order to move people to comfortable place with alternative operating systems. Instead, a loud minority consistently push their arrogant “RTFM” “my system is better because I configured every text file by hand” mentality.
I wish people would push distros like Lycoris to their friends. The steps they take and research they collect will undoubtedly benefit Linux as a whole.
Can anyone give me, in 25 words or less, a comparison of the current Koffice to OpenOffice.org 1.0? I have not used Koffice. (http://apps.kde.org seems to be broken)
KOffice is way underfeatured. But then again, the amount of dveelopers working on it is a fraction of that at OpenOffice.org. But it is way faster, through tests with my completely idiotic family – much more easier to use than OpenOffice.org, and has almost all the features an average MS Works or AppleWorks user would come to expect. But if you need compatiblity with Office, stick to Openoffice.org 🙂
Lycoris, Lindows & ELX have all set out to solve #1. They have (heavily) customised KDE to make it appealing to Windows users. (Whether this is necessarily a Good Thing or not is not the scope of this comment…)
Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this would help people move to Linux. But heck, I tried Lycoris Update 1, and it is nothing, absolutely, nothing like Windows XP. It imitates the look, but the little things that people get used to are gone!
Besides, if people could move from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (quite a difference in UI) and again with Windows XP (not so significant, but there are a lot of changes), I bet they can change for Linux. But the question is, why would they change? Exactly, the community must give them a reason. 9 months uptime is not a reason. Freedom from the evil empire is not a reason. Security is also not a reason (well, start placing idiots on Linux, viola, viruses… especially with root and Lindows).
The result (in the OSS community)? A big tongue-lashing, for being nothing more than a “rip off of a bad GUI,” and a general feeling that nobody should be making money off of OSS and GPL software.
I’m not going to say Windows XP is a bad GUI. In fact, it is a good GUI. But it isn’t the best GUI. New users still get confused with it. But the fact is that these Windows clones don’t clone Windows to a degree that the users don’t feel like they are in a stange place. Icons imitating the look of XP, and a control panel I could have sworn I saw on Windows XP isn’t enough. But when Windows users see these icons and the control panel, they tend to treat it the same way as they would with Windows XP, and get highly dissapointed.
Making money over GPL and OSS software isn’t a bad thing to most people. Otherwise nobody would support FSF. But it is people like Lindows that make Linux users loath them. First, they charge $99 dolars, then they completely ignore the community rules (source code), then they put security risks for the user and charge something so insanely high for something you would get for 20 bucks somewhere else. Notice no one here is trying to say Lycoris is bad.
Two commercial offerings: IRIS and Click’N’Run. These services are again offered to the “non-Advanced” users upgrading from a Windows environment & don’t want to re-learn how to use their desktop environment.
Okay from what I see, IRIS and CLick’N’Run is just to make downloading software easier. But installing software from CDs for example? Besides, from the screenies I have see, Click’N’Run nor IRIS looks anything like InstallerShield, or whatever they use on Windows
Boss: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Just installing a new server…”
IIRC, the server edition of OpenLinux didn’t have this.
I wish people would push distros like Lycoris to their friends. The steps they take and research they collect will undoubtedly benefit Linux as a whole.
I wouldn’t do that. Lycoris needs to do much more than clone icons and make a new HTML control panel to come anything close to Windows ease of use… or even Mac OS ease of use. Sorry, no offence, but it’s the truth.
BTW, when will they upgrade to KDE 3.0 and GCC 3.1? They are many speed advantages to the upgrade….
“But the question is, why would [users] change [from Windows to Linux]? Exactly, the community must give them a reason. 9 months uptime is not a reason. Freedom from the evil empire is not a reason.”
Yes, this is exactly right. If I want something that looks and acts like Windows, I’ll use Windows; there’s got to be something else. Otherwise, if I install Linux and see that there’s nothing compelling behind the snazyy GUI, why would I even bother? All of the things like free apps/no spyware are only benefits Linux enjoys because it hasn’t fully caught on yet.
And that’s the reason why I’ll never understand why people who love Linux want to ‘bring it to the masses’, even at the cost of adding tons of bloat to idiot-proof the GUI so that AOL users can get a handle around it.
If I were you (a Linux enthusiast), I’d do my best to keep my friends and family AWAY from the OS! Why? Well, think about the movie “The Beach” where a group of people had found this fantasy island and they’d go as far as to shoot anyone who discovered it and tried to enter. Why? Because they knew that as soon as the general population caught wind of it, the whole thing would be ruined.
And the same applies to Linux; if you are actually succesfful in converting the masses, do you not think that the Corporate scum would not be right behind? It’s not like your blessed OS is immune to the weaknesses (especially spyware) that Windows currently suffers from, it’s just that the commercial bastards haven’t bothered to exploit them yet.
Very true, it’s not there yet, but I believe they have the wherewithall to possibly get there.
One other thing they *must* fix – and this is ridiculous – when you use the Update Wizard, it downloads all the packages and then, when it starts to install them, you get a dialogue box for every single package that says the package is either corrupt or has been modified by a third party and they recommend not installing it. Well, at first, you’re horrified at this and have to click “No” on each one. Then, after going through this many times, you begin to realize that the packages are okay and that something is wrong with their install system. Yes, that’s a pretty pretty big one that needs fixed <g>.
The serial bug is harder to avoid than I thought.
I have a mouse that supports both the serial and PS/2 ports, with the PS/2 support coming through the adaptor. It says so on the box. Yet even with the adaptor the mouse doesn’t work, and when the installer brings up the dialog for choosing the right mouse protocol, it freezes! Not even the keybindings work. The moral of the story is that even having a mouse that’s supposed to work on both ports can’t save me.
I’m sorry, but an installer without serial mouse support is not release-quality, period. Serial mice are just too common. I’m glad I only tried to install the free download version of Lycoris. If I had paid for it, I’d be really mad.
I’ve just updated to Update 2 (Build 46) and I didn’t encounter this problem. Perhaps you might want to contact the Lycoris folks regarding this bug.
It’s a pretty nice distro, and probably one of the most newbie-friendly ones I’ve used. Alas, the serial mouse-at-install problem is still there (apparently slated to be fix in a “slipstreamed” update). Also, I do wish that it included Palm device support – especially with the recent release of pilot-link 0.11.1, which now supports USB Palm devices.
Perhaps Lindows is not good really, as the terrible name suggests.
But if it will be a case to test the GPL in court, I hope they will win. The stupid GPL stuff is the reason for a four year old Linux distro being worth nothing and Linux programs estimated as junk while you still have to pay 20$ for e. g. a MacOS 7.6 .
regards, Ludwig
Your are perfectly welcome to dislike the GPL. But hundreds of programmers and companies contributed to software under the GPL and their rights must be respected. While Apple developed MacOS 7.6 with it’s own $(and has every right to license it however they damn well please), Lindows has coopted the work of others, and is not abiding by the license set forth by its developers. If Robertson wanted to remain legal and not actually develop much code for his OS, he could of just used BSD. Look I am not an open-source zealot, but if choose to market GPL’d code, then follow the rules of the GPL. Otherwise pour in your own blood sweat and tears and write it yourself, or find software that is opensourced under a more lax license.
In reality, Lindows was started to capitalize on the popularity and trendyness of Linux. Lindows is a damaging to the reputation of Linux, it is inferior as a desktop distribution to any of the big guys. Micheal Robertson is concerned with getting headlines as the “Crusader against Microsoft”, in reality he is as ruthless and unethical as the Redmond giant.
just buy a usb optical wheel mouse, $15 at bestbuy
but i have no urge to try this distro. the IRIS system doesn’t appeal to me when there is free alternatives on something like mandrake finally.
synaptic by texstar, for example. which did a nice job of removing kde 2.2.2 for me, so i don’t have a hybrid system with kde 3.02.
yes, i know about gentoo’s portage… but i don’t see home users jumping on that any time soon.
I did write to Lycoris about this Update Wizard thing. I was able to successfully update to build 46, despite the messages. Actually, what it first says is that the package does not have a valid GPG signature and then it says it is either corrupted or has been altered by a third party.
That serial mouse business is strange – of all things to not have support for.
The result (in the OSS community)? A big tongue-lashing, for being nothing more than a “rip off of a bad GUI,” and a general feeling that nobody should be making money off of OSS and GPL software.
I don’t think you can mix those 2 together. While i very much dislike what they are doing with the gui, i don’t care if they earn money or not, as long as they don’t violate the gpl.
The Nett Result? Developers of the above distros are less likely to “play ball” and rethink their committments to Linux on the desktop…
I think they should rethink, and if they don’t “play ball”, well, thats what we have the courtrooms for…
Why? Because Linux is about choice. Choice in the way your desktop and system works. Choice in how you supply your software.
Yes yes, but that doesn’t mean people have to like them or like their products. I can’t see how disliking lindows and company are any worse than disliking windows, or debian, or beos, or macos, etc. But because they are based on linux, it is a bad thing to dislike them? please…
The Linux community needs to embrace the “intermediates” that produce a Windows-like Linux
Why? I use linux because i like it better than windows. If you like windows better, then by all means, use windows. I can’t see why so many people are so anxious to get windows users converted at all costs. I believe most of the users in lindows or lycoris target group is better off staying with windows. That some might prefer the win xp gui and want to use it under linux is one thing, but if it is too hard to learn vanilla kde, then you probably aren’t ready for linux anyway.
And the same applies to Linux; if you are actually succesfful in converting the masses, do you not think that the Corporate scum would not be right behind? It’s not like your blessed OS is immune to the weaknesses (especially spyware) that Windows currently suffers from, it’s just that the commercial bastards haven’t bothered to exploit them yet.
I’m sure they will, but you ignore one of the points that made linux possible in the first place, no single entity can take over linux. If it goes in a direction that the developers don’t like, they can just change it. Even if all the commercial linux distros got spoiled by the “corporate scum” we would still have things as debian, and other of the non-commercial distros that couldn’t care less about the corporate motives. There might be bad commercial distros or applications, and your average joe might use them, but that doesnt mean that the users who currently make up the linux community will have to.
And finally, the main reason why i try to inspire others to use linux: I hate supporting windows machines, both at work, and in my spare time for friends and family.
“There might be bad commercial distros or applications, and your average joe might use them, but that doesnt mean that the users who currently make up the linux community will have to.”
Ok, so by your senario, there’d be crappy commercial distros with ‘bad’ apps the the AOL generation (the ex-Windows users) would be using with all the spyware and bloated junk that is currently plagueing Windows. So, how’s this any different than the way things are now?
By your seneraio, that would esentially be the same thing as human beings polluting the planet earth, then moving to another planet, only to have the same thing happen there as well. It’s basically the same set of problems, just a different platform. And your Windows support nightmares would definitely not be over, they’d just turn into AOL-Linux support nightmares. Converting the masses to Linux is a temporary fix, not a permanent solution; it doesn’t address the root of the problem.
Though you might say, what if the masses were to convert to a non-commercial distro like Debian? Yeah, and two weeks later you’d see a version of Kazaa on Debian that installs the Brilliant spyware to run in the background.
Wherever the people go, so to will the greedy corporations. If you were smart, you’d keep them far, far away
The only thing you could do was to create a non-commercial distro and make an EULA that says commercial apps are absolutely forbidden – good luck! hehe
In the end Lycoris seems faithful to bringing Linux to the masses. Lindows promises of finishing Wine didn’t happen. While our (grand)parents might be running a Lycoris computer in the near future, I think Lindows will probly be a important case to test the GPL in court.
Actually, Lindows is not entitled to release the source code to its beta testers. The testers had sign a contract making them Lindows employees (payless employees, mind you), so as “employers” they don’t need to give the source code. Guess why nobody is suing?
And that’s the reason why I’ll never understand why people who love Linux want to ‘bring it to the masses’, even at the cost of adding tons of bloat to idiot-proof the GUI so that AOL users can get a handle around it.
They, perhaps, are under the illusion that they have a mission to kill the evil empire. Or they want Free Software to dominate the world. Or they are jealous at Windows techies getting all the requests for help, and they love to say RTFM. (Hey hey, I’m kidding).
But if it will be a case to test the GPL in court, I hope they will win. The stupid GPL stuff is the reason for a four year old Linux distro being worth nothing and Linux programs estimated as junk while you still have to pay 20$ for e. g. a MacOS 7.6 .
GPL is not responsible for that. You could make money selling GPLed software. First, by making all documentation, graphics, icons etc. not free. Then you integrate your paid-for services into it. Oh no, I’m sounding like Lindows.com…
If Robertson wanted to remain legal and not actually develop much code for his OS, he could of just used BSD.
Most of the violated software is KDE. Not GNU/Linux
…
For all of you people out there saying Linux has to be more like Windows to get onto the desktop, I would like to know why does linux have to go to the desktop and if it does why does it have to replace Windows, why can’t it just be Linux????
“For all of you people out there saying Linux has to be more like Windows to get onto the desktop, I would like to know why does linux have to go to the desktop and if it does why does it have to replace Windows, why can’t it just be Linux????”
Yes, I have been asking the exact same question
Yes, I have been asking the exact same question
Same with me