Loosely based on Red Hat Linux 9, ELX BizDesk 4.0 is designed primarily for corporate users who are looking for a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Windows and Office. DesktopOS.com has just published a comprehensive review that examines this Indian-designed distribution.
ELX BizDesk 4.0 – A Flawed Masterpiece
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
If have used several versions of ELX and always had similair
experiences as the author, its buggy, non consitent look, slow, bad installer. It has some nice feautures but going as far as saying: “if ELX can sort out the bugs and add in some extra polish, BizDesk will be the business desktop that others set their standards by” is completly BS.
Its nowhere near SUSE or Mandrake and completly lack corparate support but i do expect it to grow very fast if Indian Businesses take up Linux. Keep watching it.
but going as far as saying: “if ELX can sort out the bugs and add in some extra polish, BizDesk will be the business desktop that others set their standards by” is completly BS.
I suspect you’re right, but I had to say something nice about it after taking it to the cleaners so thoroughly 😉
“if ELX can sort out the bugs and add in some extra polish, BizDesk will be the business desktop that others set their standards by”
Couldn’t the same be said of ANY distro?
Interesting review, but this would be the last distro I’d deploy in the workplace. Bugs everywhere; dated packages; licensing nightmares …
I can see that I’m going to regret that particular one-liner.
The reason I said this was because of the fact that – leaving the bugs aside – ELX is the best business-oriented distro I have seen. It is focused, enterprise-ready and fairly up to date applications-wise (lower level packages is another matter, though).
If one compares it with other distros by the feature-set alone, it is cheaper and more functional than Xandros, Lindows or Lycoris, and more appropriately focused than Mandrake/RedHat/SUSE.
It’s just so darn buggy!
but Jason, we can’t even use it without getting sued
ROFL, good point!
“However, the legal implications are enough to make any credible attorney cringe, as ELX almost certainly do not have an explicit license to distribute these libraries”
I was just wondering if you asked the developers about this issue? If not, what are you basing the assumption on, did you grep for the license files or what?
Garret
The site is falling apart with only 117 online.
Based on the summary statement, I kept expecting the distro to have some redeeming quality somewhere. But the more I read, the worse it got. And then in the conclusion, the reviewer (understandably) says it’s the worst distro he’s ever seen.
It was a comprehensive review though. I like checking out various distros just for fun, but this is one I have no desire to see – at least not in it’s current incarnation.
. . . and I wasn’t super-impressed. The installer didn’t account for sufficient space, and would run out of hd space partway through an install. It tried to be friendly, and to some extent it succeeded, but at the time I was trying to install it onto an older machine, and kde was too slow.
The page seemed stagnant, and I thought this distro had died, so I was surprised to see it in the news today.
“Based on the summary statement, I kept expecting the distro to have some redeeming quality somewhere. “
It is fine when there are local distros like ELX.
I wish them all the best.
I did try it some years ago, but did not start to use it then.
One of the things that annoyed me much was the text
loading ELX when honest distros say loading linux on boot.
Rather childish, I hope they are loading linux today.
I’ve just installed it. Seems OK to me!
I think the author needs to know first that even Linux is supposed to be having legal issues, courtesy SCO, hence may be we should stop using Linux altogether to start with.
Secondly have you ever asked a office goer to try use Red Hat Linux, Suse Linux or Mandrake Linux to install and run in his office machine. Nine out of ten will fail to do that. Due to this reason alone Linux Desktops have not become popular in the desktop segment.
Elx has done a great job and it is a great distro. It is one of those rare distros which any desktop user can use and play around with. As far as bugs are concerned, how many of you have ever tried to load Oracle 9i on Red Hat and succeeded to run it properly. Hence kindly stop talking out of thin air and let the author be more focussed on doing technical evaluation of the product and not get busy in proving his grammatical knowledge of English. Some thing which you like, might not be liked by some one else, that does not give you any rigt to criticise the name. And if you so well know what all feautres should be added and where all what feature should be used, try writting a disto for yourself and you will know the result.