Despite his earlier doubts about Lindows, Jim Lynch waxes rhapsodic in a review of Version 2.0: “… We finally had a chance to sit down with it and surprise, surprise; here at ExtremeTech we were impressed,” Jim Lynch writes. “Lindows is a very slick, highly useable OS. In fact, I liked it so much I’m actually writing this review in it – using Abiword on Lindows OS.” Also, the retail giant Wal-Mart and its partners hit a new price point while introducing customers to Lindows with a new sup-$200 PC.
Review: Lindows 2.0 Dissected
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I have to admit, Lindows 2.0 is sounding better and better with each positive review I read. I don’t like the pricing structure, but the distro itself sounds pretty dang good. I wish they would offer a free download w/o the click n run so people could try it out first.
Lindows gave itself very bad PR at the begining. The “run-win-apps” propaganda made it seem seem dishonest and cheap. Most people, including me, still see it that way. But when you view Lindows as another Linux dist, it doesn’t really sound bad.
I don’t like the fact that they insist on charging people a HIGH PRICE for a crippled version of Debian(Which as some newbies may not know, its FREE!). If you want a quality distro then try Mandrake, Suse or Redhat. I tend to like Suse and Mandrake they both offer great package installers and a TON of packages, esp Suse. I am pissed to see that Lindows renames programs they did not create and also does not come with Jack on its installtion. There are a ton of things I could go on about that I dislike. But mainly its their misleading advertising, outrageous prices, and not releasing their source code/playing by the rules.
I’m still waiting for Eugenia’s SuSe 8.1 review. Any estimate when it will be published? 🙂
Next week.
With the recent releases of RH8.0 and MDK9.0, neither one it that far from competing with Lindows. I really think that if Lindows starts to gain any market share, RedHat and maybe Mandrake could easily undercut their prices and make their desktops as easy to use.
The biggest problem I see is that Lindows doens’t have something really exclusive, therefore they can’t charge so much for it. If it was $39.99 plus $20.00 per year, then they might have a real shot. Meanwhile Redhat seems to be going for the enterprise desktop, and they could get some real marketshare in that space. And if people use it at work, they might just bring it home.
The Only think that bothers me about Redhat is the MP3 thing!
I dont know if its possible, but does anyone know where we could get these computers in Oz or at least something as cheap. currency conversion tell me that i’d have to pay at least $400 dollars for it, but im my mind, that still cheap!!!
Any ideas?
>>The biggest problem I see is that Lindows doens’t have >>something really exclusive.
What about.
Click and run (really works!)
Click and run is a great piece of softwae for a newbie user and that is where this Linux distro is aming at..
Thumbs up for Lindows!
Apt-get is quite nice, and I think I would be almost trivial to make a front end like click-and-run for it. Ant he latest from mandrake, and now redhat seem to work almost as well as apt-get, so it wouldn’t be to hard for them either.
Apt-get is the first piece of software that when an error occurred, it gave me help message that managed to exactly fix what was wrong.
Besides, click-and-run offers ~1100 packages, the lastest debian is up to ~8700!! I believe(but most of those aren’t for joe user).
A very close friend of mine decided to take the plunge and became a Insider. I remember him mentioning about it 2 months ago on IRC, but we didn’t talk about it.
I thought it was a pretty bad idea he choosed to become an Insider. Why? If he had asked me, I would ask him to wait for Xandros cause it is a better deal. He isn’t that intested in Click N Run, plus IIRC, Xandros doesn’t have Click N Run.
—
bas: What about.
Click and run (really works!)
Click-N-Run is an Corel idea for Corel 3.0. Just rebranded by Lindows.com. Plus, it isn’t new, try Red Carpet. Also, it is trivial for any company to copy them (it is that easy – just create a web based front end to URPMI or apt-get RPM).
Harbinjer: Besides, click-and-run offers ~1100 packages, the lastest debian is up to ~8700!! I believe(but most of those aren’t for joe user).
And you are forgeting, some of the thousand-over packages at Lindows.com CNR is actually offically part of KDE, and in Debian, would fit into one package. For example, you need to download ksnapshot.
I think Lindows’ novel idea is their OEM pricing. But it remains to be seen whether they would make a profit.
I’m still not really sure why anyone would pick this over Windows. Sounds like the installation went like a typical Windows install (good thing) and the interface looks just like Windows. The pricing structure makes no sense though. I could buy XP for $90 or get this for….$99 ???
Or I could buy SuSe for $39 and not have to bother downloading more apps from a “warehouse”.
The only advantage I see is the ease of use but most people that are considering switching to Linux are at least tech savvy enough to be able to deal with the slight inconveniences of a regular distro. The speed at which it seems to work is a nice bonus (but not worth the extra $ IMO)
The partenership with Wallmart could be a boon to them though. With some luck this could become the OS of choice for rednecks everywhere
rajan,
Red Carpet sucks…
Look at the gnome mailing channel lots of broken linuxes
thanks to red carpet.
Bas
I’ll stick with debian, thank you very much
I tried it myself, on Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2, worked perfectly. Yeah, it may have its bugs, but most complaints I have seen is about older versions of Red Carpet.
One thing I like about RC is the fast downloads, though now I can find faster mirrors…. And the main reason why I stop using RC is that it don’t have “unstable” non-Ximian and non-GNOME apps (betas, alphas, so on). Plus, after awhile, the service started to get slow (after they annouce the subscription stuff).