“Lindows makes the claim that their Linux distribution is user friendly and ready for the desktop. We review their latest version, 4.0, and see if it lives up to their claims. We evaluate everything from the company, to the presentation and marketing to the actual software itself. As Lindows is geared towards the beginning Linux user, so is our review.” Read the review at Linux-Universe. Also, Netraverse partners with Lindows.com and offers a wider application support and eases customer transisition to Lindows.
LindowsOS 4.0 Reviewed; Lindows.com Partners with Netraverse
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 thought this was a good, objective review.
lets see here. spend all your time getting people to move from windows to linux, only to put windows back on the machine in a form of a linux app?
Switching from living in Chicago and vacationing in Hawaii to living in Hawaii and vacationing in Chicago.
It’s hard to determine if they are a serious distro or if they are just trying to be the low end of Linux distros. I mean, some features are nice, but I don’t see anything worth the price. And their gui really needs work! The masking around some of the icons is terrible. Perhaps they should incorporate XD2! Now THAT’S a polished desktop.
it was objective and fair, although it didn’t cover any price issues.
I’ve never been confused about their market. Look at the PCs you can buy from Wallmart on their web site. No nerd or geek is going to buy a system that only costs $199 or $299. Their market is low end Windows users that want to only spend a couple hundred dollars for a computer and be able to use it for writing letters, doing e-mail, browsing the web, and maybe work with digial pictures.
Sabon, I read somewhere (in a newspaper, although I can’t remember which one, sounds silly, I know
) that those wal-mart pc’s are mostly bought by geeks.
I know, sounds weird, but it’s true. You should search the net… I’ll try to find it too and post it here.
Seems like every reviewer dings lindows for not requiring a root passward and not having an option to create a real user. (this reviewer gave it a -2 on this point)
I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way lindows has handled it. The average “joe user” doesn’t need addional users (they only use a single user account anyway). Actually, it would a PIA. Almost every time you install something in a linux distribution, you need to be logged in as root (or at least “su”). Might as well dispense with all the confusion and annoyance for new users about that and just have the root be the only user. so much simpiler.
lindows is good
Yeah I found it to be a not bad distro myself.
KDE on my machine actually felt a lot faster than it usually does too.
I am surprised how it felt fast overall since it is compiled with gcc 2.95.4
Anyway I am a new user to LindowsOS4.0 and I would like to use it the Debian way, please follow this link and help me out.
http://www.osnews.com/phorum/read.php?f=4&i=2813&t=2813#reply_2813
Seems like every reviewer dings lindows for not requiring a root passward and not having an option to create a real user. (this reviewer gave it a -2 on this point)
That total BS, I don’t what reviews you have read and what the reviewers were smoking at the time causing them not to see straight. But it is right there, after you install you have a post-install setup with an advanced mode which allows you to create other users.
Because I am not a total expert I just don’t know if this new user is added to the correct groups upon creation.
I personally haven’t bothered with CNR yet, but the new costs are reasonable. $49.95 per year and $4.95 a month (the catch here is you have to be with them for twelve months). If I were to go for $4.95 I would only pay 4.95×12 but then the following year I would only pay the months that I do use CNR (I hope that is how it works).
MiniReview:
– Fast Konqueror (File Manager) loads exactly 5 seconds on my machine AMD k6-2 450Mhz with 384MB RAM with modern Seagate 40GB HDD. KDE on RH9 or MDK9.1 takes slightly longer, again surprising since I think they have better code optimisation, it might also be because of gcc 2.94 with certain optimisation creates smaller code or something that is better for a slower processor. Gentoo fans might no the reason.
– The calculator app is a joke, it is a calculator turned up side, also you have to pay through CNR to get KCALC (They market it as a scientific calculator, already out of the box WinXP is superior because they got a scientific calculator), LOL!!
At least it shows that they compiled KDE in a totally modular manner, giving you only the minimum and you can add the apps you want.
Everything in the interface is laid out quite nicely, I like their control panel which is a mod of KDE’s, although I think better, I’ll put screenshots in my forum post if I can figure out a way to get screenshots from it, as there is no way obvious to do this. It doesn’t have imagemagik so I can’t do import at the command line, nor does it have the Gimp so how do you get a screenshot what are all the different tools that I could try?
http://www.osnews.com/phorum/read.php?f=4&i=2813&t=2813#reply_2813
– Since I am mainly a Redhat user who has also you Slackware, Gentoo, and Mandrake a bit I found the symlinks for My Computer, My Documents, and System (to go to /) to be confusing at first but I don’t complain anymore since they are there to help the Windows user, although I find /home/user easier to understand.
If you double click on My Computer then on My Documents, then My Computer again then My Documents, the user is stuck in a loop, LOL!! My Computer only consists of symlinks to things like My Network, My Documents, System, nothing special.
The filesystem layout:
– Basically all I have to say here is that floppy and CDROM are at /mnt
– there is a /disks/ which is your windows partitions, mine is /disks/dos which is Windows 2000 NTFS (read only) you can play MP3 this way too. Also /disks/dos2 just my FAT32 partitions.
The good thing about this distro is that it is not bloated which I am happy about, but since I primarily use GNOME I might just apt-get it, again please help me out in the phorums (forums, LOL) because I haven’t ever seriously used Debian.
Lindows OS 4 reviewed…..again.
Their market is low end Windows users that want to only spend a couple hundred dollars for a computer and be able to use it for writing letters, doing e-mail, browsing the web, and maybe work with digial pictures.
I have a feeling that Lindows isn’t staying on those Wal-Mart boxes for more than five minutes when they get home because people are installing a bootleg copy of Windows onto them from a friend or relative.
You see… I see that Lindows.com is a company that listens… so those things that get pointed this time, will, most likely get fix up a bit… or completly… or not like you would like… but they have progress… Besides if you don’t like it there are more distros out… and I dout that someone who hates Weakdoze will give up that easily on linux… I haven’t…
Well… linux is in my desktop and I ain’t taking it out… Thanks Lindows…
Yes, I forogt to put in pricing info on the review. Its my first one, mea culpa. 😮
That total BS, I don’t what reviews you have read and what the reviewers were smoking at the time causing them not to see straight. But it is right there, after you install you have a post-install setup with an advanced mode which allows you to create other users.
I only smoke Parliament, but I did not get a prompt of any nature post-install to create a regular user. It is possible I missed it, but the only thing I got post-install was the nice “desktop tutorial” flash page, afaiRemember. In the review, you can see I describe the installation pretty much page-by-page, so I don’t think I missed it. But I am not infallible, anything is possible. 🙂
Since the install was so quick, I will try to run through it again in the next day or so and look for it again.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Cheers!
“I have a feeling that Lindows isn’t staying on those Wal-Mart boxes for more than five minutes when they get home because people are installing a bootleg copy of Windows onto them from a friend or relative.”
Just because that’s what you’d do doesn’t mean the average (as Eugenia likes to put it) Joe User will. I have a Joe User friend that bought a $200 lycoris pc from walmart.com and he ended up formatting it for gentoo using the gentoo install script that recently came out. I have a WinXP cd and he could easily have installed it. I even offered, but no he chose linux after tinkering around a bit with it. Maybe some day he’ll change his mind.
Sorry for saying you’re smoking.
When you install again and you are finally presented with a KDE desktop, and a window in the middle of the screen.
This windows has I think 3 options, and a checkbox at the bottom for accepting the licence agreement. One of those 3 options I think is labelled advanced, and you can do a couple of things there such as change the root password and create new users.
Someone more experienced than me should look at that because I think adding new users is a bit buggy. You can add a new user and you get a /home/username but I think something is missing in the rest of the setup.
Also everytime you login into the user account you get an annoying prompt about CNR permissions, I always do ignore here.
Anyway again sorry about what I said.
I think that the name Lindows is really lame. It may be a nice linux box, but the name is just plain stupid. Change the name and I’ll give it a go.
Booting of the CD worked fine. Then the GUI portion of the install started.
I wound up with green streaks across the top 1/4 of my screen. Then the screen turned black and there was a very long error message. I wasn’t able to read what it said. It was only on the screen for a second. The GUI did come up though. I selected the take over my hard disk option and it sat at 0% for a minute before an error box appeared. It said the install failed and that I’ve been left with an unusuable system. Someone REALLY needs to reword that dialog! I decided to try again. Same green bars, same error message (I think). This time the installer didn’t crash. It did take a bit before it moved past the 0% mark though. Once the install finished I was prompted to reboot. I clicked the reboot button and it the majority of the screen went black. There’s a lot of colorful patches on the screen. It reminds me of when I used to put the cartridges out of my Atari 2600 when it was still running (no horrible sounds though.) I let it sit for 5 minutes just in case it was doing something in the background. The hard drive light has been quiet all this time. Time to rip the power cord out…
There’s no way anyone is going to leave Windows for this thing. I installed the click-n-run CD and… nothing. I can’t get the files to install. It dumps the files into a cache directory. I tried clicking on the .cnr files to launch them and I’m prompted to choose the application needed to open the file. Lindows apparently isn’t aware of their own files. The click-n-run app is completely empty. There’s not a single file in there to choose to install. I’m sorry, this OS may be cheaper than Windows but this is garbage. Fair or not, this OS will be many people’s first introduction to Linux. They’re expecting it to function like Windows (and if they remember the old add campaign, they expect it to run Windows apps.) The people this is marketed towards don’t care one bit anything other than free and easy. They’re not CompSci majors, they don’t care about open source or the GPL. They’re going to see this thing freak out during installation and not allow them to add any of the apps they were told were on their handy-dandy CNR CD. They’ll proclaim that Linux, not Lindows, sucks and go back to Windows without a second though. This this is going to do to the desktop what SCO is doing to the server side of Linux.
I don’t have Lindows on a machine right now, but have had it on at least for awhile after each new distro. You can create new users anytime. It’s just not obvious to Joe User and that needs work. Actually, just taking it as is, it’s not bad at all. I have serious problems with Robertson, but Lindows itself is not bad. They almost force you to get Click & Run with the paltry amount of applications you get and that’s part of my problem with Robertson.
people like us here complain that Click & Run is a rip off because it’s just a front end for apt-get. But, Joe User doesn’t want apt-get. Robertson has the right idea, but Click & run is a bit steep.
but unles i can find an iso floating around the net there’s no way…..i’m not paying to simply try something. i tried lycoris and then bought it. i tried suse’s 8.2 ftp install, and then bought a box a store because i liked it.
they could release a free iso and still make money off CNR….probably more than now as more people would get it and try it, then get curious about CNR….
anyway…good for them if they can make it a long term success..
My entire company uses LindowsOS full time and we’re very much in love with it here.
I’m not sure why everyone assumes it’s only for newbies. The head of our IT dept was setting up a new employee’s computer the other day and mentioned to me, “I can’t imagine going back to supporting Windows.” It takes him literally like 15 minutes to set up a new computer. He just installs the OS (under 10 minutes) and then uses Click-N-Run to add all the software from our “company aisle” which we set up (StarOffice, RealPlayer, GIMP, etc.).
We looked at Mandrake and others, and Lindows really pays attention to details.
Zoey
“You can create new users anytime. It’s just not obvious to Joe User and that needs work”
It’s ultra obvious if you ask me. You simply go to the Start Menu, choose the Settings Menu, and then the User Manager. Heck, that’s easier that Windows, which burries it in their control panel.
Mark
To John Blink: No big deal. I had simply agreed to the license and that is where I missed the option.
To others: Yes, you can set it up after but it should be part of the standard installation process. Having people running as root is dangerous on Linux (or any other platform). It is one of the reasons you have such a massive virus problem on Windows – almost all the users are running with full priveleges to the entire OS.
Since the option is present in Lindows at the license screen, but not that obvious, I edited my review and changed it from -2 to only -1 for not being in a very intuitive location.
What experienced linux user would *want* Lindows? Ppl here have said that the majority of those cheap wal-mart PCs are sold to geeks. My assumption is that they wipe off Lindows and go with Gentoo, Mandrake, Debian, or whatever distro they are used to, if not a pirated version of windows..(something I would never do
). The target audience for Lindows is the average and not-so-computer-literate person. The reason I like linux is good is because it’s free and it’s more customizable. If I’m going to *pay* for an OS, it isn’t going to be linux, at least not as a desktop OS. One OS I would actually pay for is OS X…too bad Macs are just too expensive.
i’m an experienced user and i’d love to try it. not because i *can’t* build linux from scratch, or install gentoo, or tweak any distro to my liking…..
the main benefit i see from lindows is that it gives you a very bloat free install for desktop use. i’m not willing to pay their price to try it, and i already own star office 6, but if they had a free ISO i’d give er a go.
there’s only a couple things i’d need other than what’s included, and i can build or apt-get them easy enough. for example, multimedia apps like mplayer and all the browser plugins. i just use linux on the desktop at home….
i have nothing against lindows except that robertson has been a little too cheesy for for…..he’s too much of a used car salesmen for my tastes…but if that’s what it takes to give linux the desktop push it needs….so be it.
Goto http://www.lindows.com/warehouse and search for “mplayer”
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_search.php?q=mplayer
Everything you need, and you get quicktime fo’ free working in moz and everything.