February was a month of rapid growth for Lycoris. Its flagship product, Desktop/LX, has been selling well and attracting worldwide partners. In addition to favorable reviews in the Linux world and surrounding tech community, Lycoris is responding to users’ needs by providing Hewlett Packard PCs Pre-Loaded with Desktop/LX. OSNews will be featuring a Lycoris review in the near future.
Lycoris Growing, Now Offering HP PCs PreLoaded With Desktop/LX
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Eugenia Loli
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It looks like a nicely put together KDE desktop. I wish more companies would focus on the GUI rather then with all the other crap that I don’t need on a desktop computer. Too many distributions try to be everything server/desktop/coffee maker/…. rather then pull all their resources towards one market.
I wholeheartedly agree. As an example of this kitchen-sink tendency on which Matt touched, I find it next to astonishing how many packages are included with Linux distributions targetted to desktop users. Though one could argue that there’s no harm in including the extra packages, I disagree; having observed several people’s first Linux installation, it is often relatively overwhelming for a new user to note the presence of thousands of packages that seem horribly cryptic (“Why on earth could I need twenty different text editors? How are any of these going to be different from Notepad?”) I’m by no means claming it to be out of line for the majority of distributions to come bundled with so much, well, stuff, but for one destined to the desktop, a little restraint and focus would be a good step in the right direction.
It amazes me that open source zealots so frequently complain that MS Office is bundled with so many features (read: bloat) that “10%” of people actually use, and then go home to a Linux system with 4000+ packages, of which they’ve used no more than 30 or 40. Lycoris is the first Linux bold enough to say, “Here’s what you get. You want something else, go find it yourself. In the meantime, this product works, and it works for 90% of our audience.”
The result is the most gorgeous and useable Linux I’ve ever seen. I have an MCSE buddy who’s been intimately involved with Microsoft since Windows 3.0 and his words are “…it’s the first Linux I’ve seen that comes close to actually challenging Microsoft on the desktop.” I couldn’t agree more.
> It amazes me that open source zealots so frequently complain
> that MS Office is bundled with so many features (read:
> bloat) that “10%” of people actually use, and then go home
> to a Linux system with 4000+ packages, of which they’ve used
> no more than 30 or 40.
The point is that with open source software, you can actually choose what to have installed. Nobody is forcing you to install all “4000+” pieces of software. With software like MS Office, you need to install something like 100MB just to get the thing running with basic functionality. That is called ‘code bloat’.
GNU/Linux can be made to fit on a floppy disc. A minimum Windows installation takes up almost a gigabyte. With GNU/Linux, a gig can give you GNOME, KDE and a whole lot of apps.
>>GNU/Linux can be made to fit on a floppy disc. A minimum Windows installation takes up almost a gigabyte. With GNU/Linux, a gig can give you GNOME, KDE and a whole lot of apps.<<
My old copy of Windows 95 is still from the floppy era… it was 13 floppies in total, of course there were some other things on them. Talk about a tedious task to load an operating system!
that most installers install 4000+ packages per default. It should be the other way round:
100 packages per default, and 3900 optionals, and they should of course provide an easy way to install say any given application with a point/click installer like in Windows
It is so annyoing to have to click 3900 times to get the junk out of a RedHat
Michael
Does come with a firewall? Something similar to Suse personal firewall. This would be good to have especially to a new users. I am new to linux and have yet to understand iptables.
I downloaded the the base iso and the dev tools iso over the weekend and started playing with it. The installation is smooth and pretty quick since less is installed on your system. Everything worked for me the first time I booted into it. If you’re looking for a minimal installation (the base system doesn’t even include make/gcc) of Linux, this is a good choice.
The link on the news headline didn’t work for me, can anyone help me get to the Lycoris homepage?
>>>My old copy of Windows 95 is still from the floppy era… it was 13 floppies in total
What MS_W95 is that? Mine is 23 1,3MB floppys in total (2 preinstalling, and 21 for installation).
Lycorix is ugly as hell INMHO. Copying the ugly is not a good idea. Same XP icons and a teletubbies clouds&country wallpaper; these are easily changeable of course, but it already sets me back. KDE’s design doesn’t help either. Not a clean desktop, and I don’t see how functionality is improved anywhere.
No Lycoris for me. Thinking of Linux on the Desktop I wish I had a copy of the Xandros beta, those guys are taking for ever.
Adam-
Okay, I use MS OFFICE jsut as much as the next person, and perhaps I get 25% rather than 10% out of it….but on my system a basic XP installation is 1.4 GB, PLUS, another 500 for a full install of Office XP.
That’s 2 gigs for nothing, just basic functionality. Now, I can swap out the harddrive, and in the same space, load all 3900+ programs and get a fully functional productivity, gaming, programming, and networking environment that is only limited by my knowledge, and my non-existant programming skills.
Seems pretty clear to me which is better.
Let’s take a step back. Don’t misunderstand me, I am a proponent of Linux and alternative operating systems, but it’s ridiculous how many people “forget” that Linux is still far from being a legitimate competitor. Like it or not, “ugly” in your humble opinion or not, Lycoris IS the first Linux distro to simply the install so that almost anyone can do it and make the desktop understandable for those who aren’t OS experts. “Copy a CD” is a lot simpler than XCDRoast, for example.
As much as Microsoft infuriates me with their sneaky and underhanded business practices, Windows 2000/XP are both great products, and I probably use 30% of the features in MS Office. Without the reliability of Microsoft – and by that, I mean it’s the same on every desktop everytime – my job would be a nighmare and fewer people would use and understand PCs. The closer Linux gets to Windows, the faster it can pull people away from it.
I agree on the rough edges for LINUX, as well as for the other alt-OSes out there, but I am quickly shifting from a live and let live strategy to wondering whether dealing with the rough edges is better than continuing to live with than the growing intrusiveness and invasiveness of Microsoft.
For my part, I’m going to pick up the full system, and see how it works. Just the idea of having a linux destop that is pre-installed on hardware that (I assume) it was tested on just makes me smile.
I just hope it won’t end up as another BEBOX!
If you haven’t tried Lycoris yet, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its incredible ease of use. I realize that I’m beginning to sound like a commercial, but this thing has me psyched that Desktop Linux is a lot closer than I expected. If Lycoris is any predictor of Xandros, and Ximian and The Kompany continue their work, I’d say that at this pace Linux will be fully useable in any setting within the year. My goal is to be Windows free within 2002. Of course, XP is still really nice, and with 80 GB at RAID 0 I really don’t care if it takes up 3 GB for sys and apps, I’m not sure I’m ready to give it up just yet… but with Linux this close, it’s awfully tempting!
>>What MS_W95 is that? Mine is 23 1,3MB floppys in total (2 preinstalling, and 21 for installation).<<
Helk you might be right actually… it’s been so long since I’ve used those disks I might have lost a few maybe he he!
So here is the trivia question… what was the exact number of Windows 95 floppies were there, of course I guess different revisions had different numbers maybe?! Oh well it’s still alot!
As a mostly Microsoft user I am glad to see that Linux is starting to get somewhere with a viable desktop.
I hope the Linux community decides to standardize around the Lycoris platform (to some extent) and help grow its popularity. Maybe some of the big commercial software houses might even start developing for it too at some point, if it gets big enough.
It is also always good to see someone keeping the pressure on Microsoft so that they don’t get too complacent with the dependency of their user-base.
I can’t install it 🙁
Graphics go mental and I can’t see the screen properly. With safe-mode install graphics are OK but the cursor won’t move.
Using Diamond Monster Fusion (Voodoo Banshee) & PS2 mouse.
I think one of the benefits of Linux is how unrestrictive the hardware requirements are. But for Lycoris, a solution that does not profess to be a server OS, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to put some decent hardware requirements on the user. After all, XP asks for a 400 Mhz proc and an 8 MB video card, right? It’s time that desktop Linux start becoming a little more restrictive in the name of standardization and feature optimization.
Whatever you people say about stability and goodness of Windows 2000/XP I agree – I use it more than 50% of my time. But I always consider MS product to be “average” grade. Or say even more polite – oriented on average Joe.
From this point I don’t see what the difference Lycoris
makes – it is also oriented on average Joe. This is a loosing game. All other companies that still survived M$ competition are oriented on some niche people – Apple tries to appeal to creative people, Sun to nerds and high tech blue collars.
I haven’t tried it – teletubby cloudscape, big icons and Start button give me stomach ache. But I have a question to those who tried – does Licoris include “AOL” skin for mozilla ?
If Lycoris attracts Joe Average from MS, why is that such a bad thing? Certainly there will be hard-core character-based Linux users but there is also a demand for Linux to satisfy the less sophisticated users too. A small office of a couple of secretaries may want a simplified system whereby they can easily and comfortably do their work. Furthermore, our parents and grandparents want basic use too for email, web-browsing, letter writing and money management. If these simplified desktops and configurations allow these users to use Linux comfortably and pull them away from MS, that is a good thing.
The installation was really smooth, just as easy as installing Win2K. It even ran nicely alongside Win2K on my box, no problems with dual boot. In fact, the dual boot stuff was as smooth as with Mandrake 8.1. The thing that really impressed me was that it correctly identified my video card (Geforce 2MX/400MX), which I haven’t got working as I want on Mandrake so far (Yup, I am a linux newbie, but I am not the only one). The fact that it didn’t include gcc was a setback. I guess it is located on one of the other ISO cds that I didn’t bother to DL, maybe I should give it a second chanse?
If you are a Linux newbie and just want to try Linux at the simplest, I can highly recommend Lycoris/Redmond. If your hardware is modern and doesn’t include any “funny stuff” it will probably be easier to install than win2k.
I’ve tried Lycoris (a Redmond Linux Beta) and I have to say it was nice. It was the first Linux I’ve ever installed which gave me anti-aliased fonts (you either love then or hate them, and I’ve loved them since I purchased a Acorn Archimedes computer in 1990) out of the box, a nice focused default set of applications and a nicely integrated desktop. My only complaint is that the Xserver didn’t have the NVIDIA drivers installed – apparently that’s being saved for the gaming edition, don’t know why.
What I realy wanted to say was, in the usability stakes, I keep hearing about Lycoris, Lindows, and Xhandros – but never ELX http://elxlinux.org. What’s going on? Has anyone actually tried this yet?