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Mandrake, Corel, and VA Software are all losing money. It's particularly impressive just how proud VA is that they've only lost 3.7 million in the first quarter this year, as opposed to the 9.8 million they lost first quarter last year. And you can't exactly claim it's starting losses either, all 3 have been around for years.

Transgaming doesn't have financial information on their site, but they're a tiny (20 employees according to this June article) private Canadian company. While that's great for those 20 people, I don't think selling access to freely distributable software and asking people not to distribute it is really a scalable business model. Lindows is apparently another small (they claim 50 employees when trying to explain why they charge for click-n-run, who knows if it's accurate or not.) private company.

And Loki... You know.

SUSE may be the only other major profitable company there, I can't really tell since they also don't list financial information. (At least, not on their English site, and not that I could find on their German site with Babelfish.)

So, out of 8 Linux companies, one is (maybe 2 are, if SUSE is good.) large and profitable, 2 are small and private, 3 are large and losing money, and one already went bankrupt. Still not enough to really mean anything, but not quite as happy a picture as just considering Red Hat.

Mandrake, Corel, and VA Software are all losing money. It's particularly impressive just how proud VA is that they've only lost 3.7 million in the first quarter this year, as opposed to the 9.8 million they lost first quarter last year. And you can't exactly claim it's starting losses either, all 3 have been around for years.

Transgaming doesn't have financial information on their site, but they're a tiny (20 employees according to this June article) private Canadian company. While that's great for those 20 people, I don't think selling access to freely distributable software and asking people not to distribute it is really a scalable business model. Lindows is apparently another small (they claim 50 employees when trying to explain why they charge for click-n-run, who knows if it's accurate or not.) private company.

And Loki... You know.

SUSE may be the only other major profitable company there, I can't really tell since they also don't list financial information. (At least, not on their English site, and not that I could find on their German site with Babelfish.)

So, out of 8 Linux companies, one is (maybe 2 are, if SUSE is good.) large and profitable, 2 are small and private, 3 are large and losing money, and one already went bankrupt. Still not enough to really mean anything, but not quite as happy a picture as just considering Red Hat.

The Lindows webstation PC's that they are giving away are diskless Live-CD based machines. Mouse, Keyboard, Case + CPU + Memory, CD-ROM drive. Sound and video are integrated on to the motherboard. These are really cheap boxes -- still it looks from their normal sales price that Lindows will be losing money on the deal (the machines normally sell for $169, but the settlement terms require you to produce sales receipts for any claims over $100.) Full data on the webstation is located here.

Worst case:
I buy Lindows for $49. It's already licenced from SCO and they still don't get my $699.

It doesn't matter. The DeCSS code is everywhere now.

Yeah. There are no find - download - click - install routines.

Consistency? RPM could be considered something which most people would know how to install -- be it by a graphical installer, up2date, or on a command line. All of these packaging systems work basically the same. Download a package. Install package. Run program.

RPM+APT is a lot easier than the BS with the void that is Windows library dependencies. I can't tell you how many times I've downloaded some crappy little app for Win32 that is missing this or that dll. RPM+APT takes care of all that garbage for you.

Well, speaking for myself, I don't, and for a whole lot of reasons.

The first reason is that open source software is written to scratch the itches of people competent enough to write it. It must be, because people who are not competent enough to write operating systems by definition don't write operating systems; and, unless you're being paid to, you don't write programs to do things you've no interest in doing. So Linux will always be a geeks operating system, and will only ever be good as a geeks operating system, and that's how it should be.

If, in some act of self-denying humanitarian madness, the Linux community did turn round and make Linux into an operating system for Joe Average to use, we would just by doing that make it an operating system which was not comfortable for us to use, and so we'd all drift away to using something else and there would be no-one left to maintain or develop Linux.

Joe Average is inevitably going to have to continue to buy operating systems which people get paid to write, because there is no-one who is motivated to build a Joe Average Operating System ('JAOS'?) for free. Microsoft seem to perform this function perfectly well.

Of course the corporate (and government) desktop is different, because large organisations can afford to pay sysadmins to tune an operating system to the needs of the organisation, and lock it down so that the lusers can't make a mess with it. They're going to have to do this anyway whatever operating system they choose, so they might as well start with a free one.

Obviously, there's some benefit for us in Linux being more widely used. The bigger the community, the greater the number of contributers, the more software there is that's available to us. Great. But actually there's even more benefit to us in letting a thousand flowers bloom. The more heterogenous the operating systems in common everyday use, the more important interoperability is, and the less possible it is for wannabe-monopolists to 'embrace and extend', or to save files by default in proprietary formats.

So don't - don't - strive, campaign, persuade or even hope to see Linux on every desktop. It won't do us any good and it won't do Joe Average any good. Strive instead to expose Joe Average to a wider range of options he can understand. Let's face it, Mac OS X is a good operating system for Joe Average - at least as good as Windows - and once the Joe Average desktop market begins to fragment there will be more chance for new operating systems to emerge and break in there, and that can only be interesting for us.

And yes, perhaps, in future, we will see JAOSes emerging which are based on Linux; perhaps Lindows is the first of those. But please, we don't want Linux to become a JAOS. That's in no-one's interest.

Ask that Lindows guy... Oh, you can't, he's been on Ask Slashdot recently and won't be here anytime soon, busy donating cash to Mozdev or funding some other Xbox Linux prize.

www.lindows.com


.sig not included

On the contrary, most Apple users are one with their machine. Somehow Apple makes the interior a bit more accessible by bundling all of the basic drivers into one big happy shell.

Microsoft's business model is to make you dependent on them to change your underwear. If they weren't so clumsy at it, I'd be worried.

To make a blanket statement about the Linux community is dumb. I've built Linux stations that people just walked up and used. They didn't know or care what it was running, it served the web, museum information, etc. The only reason we don't have a click-n-drool interface for Linux is because it hasn't been someone's priority. Scratch that, someone HAS designed a click-n-drool interface. I've used it. It's as easy to use as windows. Most people simply aren't aware as to how difficult Windows is to actually use.

If this thing has no hard-drive, wouldn't that make email a little difficult? Unless they mean web-based email or an IMAP client then people are gonna lose a lot of there email.

On the WebStation page (linked to in the posting here on Slashdot), it says the following: Web-email, Send & reply to messages! You made a good point about this machine, but your question was easily resolved by RTFA. :) At least Lindows doesn't overtly pretend that this thing will be a full-blown POP/IMAP/whatever e-mail solution.

Knoppix is debian.
Lindows is debian.
It would not be that hard to make a bastard child of the two. After all there is no sense in reinventing the wheel.

"ohhh pretty colors, we'll buy it!!"

In my experience, that is how bosses make buying descisions...

As well as the average Joe, just today, after recommening an acquintance several Linux distros (he is looking to try it, out of interest), he asked: "What about Lindows? Look how good this looks!" and gave this link to a *really* silly flash commercial: http://images.lindows.com/closed/LindowsRock.html.

Look and learn folks! This is apparently how you get users... sigh.

Anyone remember this?

Those were to be made by StepUp Computing and to be sold at $799. The same company that now sells Windows Tablet PCs for over one grand.

Of course, you have to sacrifice a bit of raw speed for the sake of a more efficient design, but it's better than second-degree burns to the groin.

Btw, it doesn't help for a laptop to be "thin-assed" if it can also double as a furnace (type quickly or your fingers will burn!) and roars like a jet engine. These days, the only useable laptops I see are used. Though these might be pretty good...

...like this computer. As far as I've heard, C3's get better performance than the crusoe while having equally low heat production/energy consumption - haven't seen any numbers, though. Btw, has anyone gotten one of those Lindows laptops? They're pretty cheap, light, and small...are they cool and quiet, too?

The article claims that since Debian's technical advantages can (and to some extent have been) be "borrowed" by other distributions, and since Joe User doesn't care about the policy advantages of Debian, then Debian is doomed to be marginalized as the Linux market grows with unprecidented numbers of Joe Users. I strongly disagree.

Debian has always had a strong following with Systems Administrators who want a strong, stable, supportable platform for their GNU/Linux based services that can be centrally administered without waisting a lot of time. The same forces will make Debian significant as a corporate desktop. This is a huge market, and while Joe User might be on some of those computers, he's not the one making the decision.

Red Hat wins its share of this market through marketing, Debian wins its share through precisely the same policy superiority that the author discounts. Sure, Joe User doesn't understand the policy advantages, but Joe User doesn't play in this field. Sure, Red Hat and other corporate marketted distros will mean Debian will probably never even get a majority share of this field, as long as there are systems people who are allowed to make systems decisions, Debian will be a player here.

The other two markets are Small/Home Businesses, and Home Users. These are the fields Joe User plays. And no, he's not necessarily likely to gravitate towards Debian (actually, from my experience he is, but all my evidence is anecdotal, and it's irrelevant for my point). What the author misses is a key differentiation distros that borrow from Debian.

Some distros, like the example of Red Hat borrowing apt-rpm/apt-cacher, are alien distros borrowing a tool that was developed by Debian. While they probably will contribute to development of the tool, these don't do much for Debian as a whole.

Other distros are derivative of Debian. They put their own installation and look and feel, do their own marketing and often usability testing. They might not even mention their relation to Debian, but, at their core, they're Debian, and developers developing for these Distros are directly helping Debian development. Some significant distros in this category are: LindowsOS, Progeny and Libranet. They're not Red Hat, but they're growing, and growing strong.

I feel Debian's chances of being marginalized are slim.

Actually, that's a URL. This is a link.

Maybe show your mom this music video (Flash): link.

This is something Linux has always needed: A theme song!

Thank god for Lindows. SCO will crap their pants now, where's their theme song?

Hey, it's even catchier than the Hampster dance. Rock-on, dude!

Do the Lindows Rock. Sorry, it had to be posted. Probably the scariest bit of this is that it's actually hosted on a lindows.com system.

You mean that people are releasing operating systems based on Lindows, but calling them Linux instead? Huh. How about that. Learn something new every day I suppose. Is Michael Robertson backing them too, or are they bastardizing Lindows and trying to get a free ride off of its good name? I mean Lindows, Linux... they're so similar in name.

Do you honestly think that no one at /. has heard about that lawsuit? Slashdot has covered it here and here (and probably many other places). The Lindows.com site also has information on the law suit.

This is what Micheal had to say about microsoft paying off TigerDirect:

After my expose piece on Microsoft last week, I promised one reader that I wouldn't write about Microsoft again for awhile. Unfortunately, I think I have to break my promise and here's why: As I've written about previously, the real key to desktop Linux gaining momentum is to get retailers to sell computers with Linux preinstalled. Sure, some people are smart enough to download software from our web servers then burn a CD and install it, but the majority of people want to buy a computer, plug it in and have it ready to go. Getting Linux computers onto store shelves sounds easy -- what store wouldn't want to stock computers for $200-300? (I just bought a computer for $249 and upgraded the RAM from 128MBs to 256MBs for 30 bucks and it is a solid little performer!) Consumers really want affordable computers and any retailer who stocks them sells large quantities of them. It seems like it would be an easy decision, right?

There's one additional dynamic that comes into the equation - Microsoft's money to discourage retailers who start selling large numbers of LindowsOS computers. Microsoft routinely offers financial inducements to computer companies to not carry LindowsOS computers. With $40 billion in the bank, it's an easy decision for them to use a few million dollars to block Lindows.com from major retailers. Every month that Microsoft keeps their monopoly position, it is another billion or so in profit. You've probably heard rumors of such behavior in the past and maybe you're skeptical because the tales are, not surprisingly, light on facts. So allow me to give you the facts from one such retailer to convince you.

LindowsOS computers have been available from TigerDirect, a popular mail order technology business, run by a savvy CEO, Gilbert Fiorentino. After selling thousands of LindowsOS computers in the last few months, TigerDirect describes their experience with LindowsOS in their most recent catalog, saying they have found it to be "faster, leaner, and more stable than Microsoft Windows," mentioning how "...LindowsOS never crashed, even in extreme testing situations," and then go on to say that they are "more enthusiastic about the LindowsOS than ever."

We've met with TigerDirect in the past and they've remarked what great sellers the LindowsOS computers have been for them and how they were surprised at the demand for Microsoft alternatives. However, at these same meetings, they talked to us about e-mails and phone calls from Microsoft attempting to bribe them to stop selling LindowsOS computers.

While TigerDirect has resisted Microsoft's pressures in the past, recently Microsoft has stepped up orders to their staffers to increase the financial incentives to impede LindowsOS sales at TigerDirect. At some point, Microsoft's monetary inducements become so large that it makes economic sense for just about any retailer to abandon LindowsOS - no matter how many computers they might be selling. TigerDirect is in the business to make a profit and if Microsoft will guarantee them a profit, nobody can begrudge them for taking it.

Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook. Microsoft is giving TigerDirect unheard of discounts on Microsoft software, allowing them to sell Microsoft Windows XP for just $50 to all of their customers who have purchased LindowsOS computers. TigerDirect is paying less for some copies of Microsoft Windows XP than even the largest Microsoft customers like Dell. Besides radically discounting their software, Microsoft is agreeing to spend a lot of marketing dollars to advertise their products through TigerDirect and more specifically to past LindowsOS computer buyers. Additionally, Microsoft is paying TigerDirect to collect market research on Li

This is what Micheal had to say about microsoft paying off TigerDirect:

After my expose piece on Microsoft last week, I promised one reader that I wouldn't write about Microsoft again for awhile. Unfortunately, I think I have to break my promise and here's why: As I've written about previously, the real key to desktop Linux gaining momentum is to get retailers to sell computers with Linux preinstalled. Sure, some people are smart enough to download software from our web servers then burn a CD and install it, but the majority of people want to buy a computer, plug it in and have it ready to go. Getting Linux computers onto store shelves sounds easy -- what store wouldn't want to stock computers for $200-300? (I just bought a computer for $249 and upgraded the RAM from 128MBs to 256MBs for 30 bucks and it is a solid little performer!) Consumers really want affordable computers and any retailer who stocks them sells large quantities of them. It seems like it would be an easy decision, right?

There's one additional dynamic that comes into the equation - Microsoft's money to discourage retailers who start selling large numbers of LindowsOS computers. Microsoft routinely offers financial inducements to computer companies to not carry LindowsOS computers. With $40 billion in the bank, it's an easy decision for them to use a few million dollars to block Lindows.com from major retailers. Every month that Microsoft keeps their monopoly position, it is another billion or so in profit. You've probably heard rumors of such behavior in the past and maybe you're skeptical because the tales are, not surprisingly, light on facts. So allow me to give you the facts from one such retailer to convince you.

LindowsOS computers have been available from TigerDirect, a popular mail order technology business, run by a savvy CEO, Gilbert Fiorentino. After selling thousands of LindowsOS computers in the last few months, TigerDirect describes their experience with LindowsOS in their most recent catalog, saying they have found it to be "faster, leaner, and more stable than Microsoft Windows," mentioning how "...LindowsOS never crashed, even in extreme testing situations," and then go on to say that they are "more enthusiastic about the LindowsOS than ever."

We've met with TigerDirect in the past and they've remarked what great sellers the LindowsOS computers have been for them and how they were surprised at the demand for Microsoft alternatives. However, at these same meetings, they talked to us about e-mails and phone calls from Microsoft attempting to bribe them to stop selling LindowsOS computers.

While TigerDirect has resisted Microsoft's pressures in the past, recently Microsoft has stepped up orders to their staffers to increase the financial incentives to impede LindowsOS sales at TigerDirect. At some point, Microsoft's monetary inducements become so large that it makes economic sense for just about any retailer to abandon LindowsOS - no matter how many computers they might be selling. TigerDirect is in the business to make a profit and if Microsoft will guarantee them a profit, nobody can begrudge them for taking it.

Microsoft's latest offers to TigerDirect are extremely lucrative and I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately cave to Microsoft's pocketbook. Microsoft is giving TigerDirect unheard of discounts on Microsoft software, allowing them to sell Microsoft Windows XP for just $50 to all of their customers who have purchased LindowsOS computers. TigerDirect is paying less for some copies of Microsoft Windows XP than even the largest Microsoft customers like Dell. Besides radically discounting their software, Microsoft is agreeing to spend a lot of marketing dollars to advertise their products through TigerDirect and more specifically to past LindowsOS computer buyers. Additionally, Microsoft is paying TigerDirect to collect market research on Li

The survey is linked to from the article... here

Fraid not.

It looks wank.

Did he really think by naming his product 1 letter away from his closest competitor they was just going to lie down and take it ?

hell they couldnt even make their website look original and copied Apple

A light CHEAP laptop: Lindows Mobile PC. That's what I'm taking, along with a powerful desktop of course.

Here's an excerpt:

Lindows.com announced today that it has previously entered into an agreement through which SCO would provide Lindows with certain technology. According to Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.com, this means that Lindows.com customers will not have to worry about SCO's ongoing attempts to "protect its IP." Interestingly enough, this may cause a much larger impact than Robertson bargained for.

Also, here's the original Lindows announcement.

no front page download link? hey michael, it's GPL! hand over the source code!

[sarcasm]My God! There's no link on the front page of their site! They're obviously breaking the GPL.[/sarcasm]

Two seconds on Google found me their GPL source information here

Firstly, filter it if you don't like it.

Secondly, I believe it's very important to keep track of any and all movments of the biggest, richest, most powerful company in the world.

Of the company that controls 95% of the desktop market that Linux might, hopefully, break into.

If they're looking into new strategies, even ones that are years behind their time, we should know about it. When you only look at yourself, you'll sometimes see innovation or monopolism take over while you're busy staring at your shoes.

A company with such terrible operating practices should be watched closer than any other company, and I'm all for it.

Despite your obvious trolling, I will agree that it might seem a bit much, but I'll tell you, I'm glad we're looking too hard, than not looking hard enough.

I wait for these same comments about the SCO case in a few days.

M$ will never include image and popup blocking (think about it). They may add tabbed browsing in the future, but there is no real rush. Like you said, they alreay have their 95% so why do anything innovative or steal another idea?

Maybe I'm starting to sound like a zelot... But if zelot means hating the things that M$ does, sign me up.

Here is a link to the Lindows site, with their linux laptop for $800.00. I believe Lindows is a Debian based linux distro.

Lindows Mobile PC

Oh, and BTW, Apple has a definite point here. The difference is that Apple took an unfriendly OS and turned it into a consumer product.

What's more, he recently wrote a whole memo about how he didn't like the direction that online music distribution was going. This would be a way for him to make a strong statement about that.

-renard

What's more, he recently wrote a whole memo about how he didn't like the direction that online music distribution was going. This would be a way for him to make a strong statement about that.

-renard

On "Ask Michael" you say:

Q: Is Lindows.com still working to improve WINE and LindowsOS' ability to run MS Windows compatible programs?
A: Lindows.com is still involved, along with many others, in advancing the WINE project. ...

However the most recent Lindows patch dates back to about a year ago (2002/05/07) and only 5 patches were ever submitted by Lindows (the MS Office work was submitted to Wine independently from Lindows).

So what areas are you working on, and when do you plan to contribute that work back to the Wine/Rewind community? How many people do you have working on it? Is your work based on Wine or Rewind? If you sub-contracted that work to another company, do they have your authorisation to return their work to the Wine/Rewind community? If yes, what are their recent contributions?

What happened to the Clicky developer competition? The page was last updated early last year, saying that winners will be announced in October. October 2002 has come and gone, and still there's been no news.
As a developer of one of the nominated applications (KFireSaver3D), I'd be interested to know what's going on, and why you havn't given any more information.

I very much welcome the promotion of Linux-preinstalled hardware by Linux Distros. This is vital, since most users don't want to install an OS (even when it has gotten incredibly easy to install Linux). They actually prefer a simpler solution: open the box, power on, surf the net. In particular, there is a great niche for affordable, Linux Laptops with no MS tax. Your Mobile PC looks promising, but it received some criticism for the use of a VIA processor, a low-power processor that is therefore considerably slower than an Intel/AMD processor of comparable clock speed. This is a valid option for people interested in long battery life. Nonetheless, there is a market for people who need more computing power. Are you working on a deal to sell a similar solution but with a more powerfull CPU ? Any other news in the hardware related arena that you could share with us ?

On your web site, there's a recent "Michael's Minute" about Intel's failure to provide Linux drivers. This was picked up by everyone's favorite tech tabloid, and a few days later, Intel spokesman Scott McLaughlin was telling CNET that we expect complete Linux driver support for the Intel Centrino mobile technology.

E-mail to Intel support proved unhelpful -- they didn't seem to know anything about Scott McLaughlin's statements. Can you shed some light on this? Is the wireless chipset the primary concern here, or is even getting support for chipset features like DMA for IDE a problem? Have you (or anyone) asked Intel for specs so an open source driver can be written, or is the complaint a lack of drivers just given to us?

Also, is the binary vs. source issue important to you? Of course, it'd be nicest if Intel would produce good open source drivers, but failing that, would you prefer for Intel to release technical information and allow drivers to be written, or do you just want binaries that "go"?

He explains it here, where he justifies it by saying "Note: Section #1 of the GPL license provides for a fee being required for the physical act of transferring a copy of the source code."

What a loser.

Not having viruses is one of the upsides of Linux. Why do you sell a virus scanner for linux. Shouldn't you be presenting the lack of viruses as one of the reasons to switch?

And debians logo might get a visit from Sega or maybe even eFax

And Lindows.com might get a visit from Apple

if your looking for originality in design, your not gonna find much, ask parc.xerox

"Lindows.com gives back 100% of our WINE programming back to the public WINE tree." This is a direct quote from lindows.com. I am not a WINE developer, nor do I maintain the public WINE tree, so I can't verify the statement. However, I have no reason to believe Lindows would lie.

Perhaps still a little haughty over their win, Lindows decided to take on another of Microsoft's products. In late 2002, Microsoft put into market the Media Center Edition of its popular Windows XP operating system, complete with system requirements dictated to OEM system builders. On January 28, 2003, Lindows released its own Lindows Media Computer as a direct competitor.

After looking over all the media hype, I went searching for one of these little machines. Could the Lindows Media Computer really pull off meeting the new Windows machine in a pitched battle? It did boast Instant on DVD, CD, MP3, and VCD playback as one of the prime features. And, it was only a fraction of the price for a Windows Media Center system. At the time, only one vendor had them available, iDOTpc.com. After some communication, the folks at iDOTpc.com were kind enough to loan me one of the units to take for a spin.

This is it, right out of the box. One word came to my mind after seeing it next to my PogoLinux machine - tiny. I hoped there was some serious power packed in that little box or someone was going to be unhappy. With that in mind, on to the system specifications.

VIA C3 E-Series 933MHz Processor

VIA PLE133 + VT8235 Chipset Motherboard

128MB RAM PC133 and up to 1GB of PC100/PC133 SDRAM capacity

20GB ATA 100 5400RPM hard drive attached to one of 2 Dual-channel enhanced IDE Ports supporting UDMA 66/100/133

16X DVD Drive in the single full height 5.25" drive bay

4 USB 1.1 Ports (two in front, two in back), 1 Serial Port, 1 Parallel Port , and 1 PCI Slot

Integrated Trident 2X AGP with 2D/3D Graphics Acceleration

Integrated VIA AC97 Audio, 3 Audio Jacks: Line-in, Line-out, and Mic-in

Onboard VIA 10/100 Base-T Fast Ethernet Controller

Mini-ITX Tower Case with 150W Power Supply

Dimension: 10.24"(D) x 5.31"(W) x 11.75"(H)

LindowsOS 3.0 MP3.com Edition with dedicated tech support

One Year Parts and Labor Warranty

FRONT

BACK

Some of you who are avid readers may recognize this box. It is none other than the FIC Falcon CR51 small form factor PC that was announced last October. However, it has been updated with the etDVD software from Elegent Technologies. The etDVD software is a boot time embedded software set that does all the magic of audio and video playback at boot time.

Brains! I need Brains!

Of course, I couldn't resist cracking the case. While there were some instructions included, I thought it would be more interesting to see how intuitive it would be to go without. Three thumb screws on the back side released the side panel which slid away. Inside, there isn't a whole lot to see. Yes. On the left you can just get a glimpse of the hard drive which is mounted to the floor of the chassis. Dead center is the DVD drive, and to the upper right is the teeny tiny power supply. Again, not too interesting. But, I discovered that one of the thumb screws actually held onto the DVD drive sled. After popping off the front face plate, I found the mate to the thumb screw. Removing this, I was able to get the DVD drive out of the way and have a better look at the rest of the insides.

As expected, I wasn't a good photographer. But let me assure you, everything was clean and small. You can make out the twin SDRAM sockets there at the top, the CPU and fan assembly just below that. Under the green heatsink resides the chipset, and over there on the right you can see the single PCI slot. Not a whole lot of room in there for anything else.

Fire It up!

Once I had it back together, I connected it to my spare monitor, keyboard,

If you look at the Lindows web site, you'll notice that their focus has changed from running Windows apps to integrating well with current environments by easily open Windows files, etc. Basically, rather than embracing Windows, they're working to get people to migrate and use native tools instead. I think that they realized just how hard the effort would be. That's not a reason to close the doors and call it quits. They're just working under a new strategy now.

Can LindowsOS run software written for Microsoft® Windows? and How can I best "migrate" from using Microsoft® Windows to using LindowsOS?

If you look at the Lindows web site, you'll notice that their focus has changed from running Windows apps to integrating well with current environments by easily open Windows files, etc. Basically, rather than embracing Windows, they're working to get people to migrate and use native tools instead. I think that they realized just how hard the effort would be. That's not a reason to close the doors and call it quits. They're just working under a new strategy now.

Can LindowsOS run software written for Microsoft® Windows? and How can I best "migrate" from using Microsoft® Windows to using LindowsOS?

Perhaps still a little haughty over their win, Lindows decided to take on another of Microsoft's products. In late 2002, Microsoft put into market the Media Center Edition of its popular Windows XP operating system, complete with system requirements dictated to OEM system builders. On January 28, 2003, Lindows released its own Lindows Media Computer as a direct competitor.

After looking over all the media hype, I went searching for one of these little machines. Could the Lindows Media Computer really pull off meeting the new Windows machine in a pitched battle? It did boast Instant on DVD, CD, MP3, and VCD playback as one of the prime features. And, it was only a fraction of the price for a Windows Media Center system. At the time, only one vendor had them available, iDOTpc.com. After some communication, the folks at iDOTpc.com were kind enough to loan me one of the units to take for a spin.

This is it, right out of the box. One word came to my mind after seeing it next to my PogoLinux machine - tiny. I hoped there was some serious power packed in that little box or someone was going to be unhappy. With that in mind, on to the system specifications.

VIA C3 E-Series 933MHz Processor

VIA PLE133 + VT8235 Chipset Motherboard

128MB RAM PC133 and up to 1GB of PC100/PC133 SDRAM capacity

20GB ATA 100 5400RPM hard drive attached to one of 2 Dual-channel enhanced IDE Ports supporting UDMA 66/100/133

16X DVD Drive in the single full height 5.25" drive bay

4 USB 1.1 Ports (two in front, two in back), 1 Serial Port, 1 Parallel Port , and 1 PCI Slot

Integrated Trident 2X AGP with 2D/3D Graphics Acceleration

Integrated VIA AC97 Audio, 3 Audio Jacks: Line-in, Line-out, and Mic-in

Onboard VIA 10/100 Base-T Fast Ethernet Controller

Mini-ITX Tower Case with 150W Power Supply

Dimension: 10.24"(D) x 5.31"(W) x 11.75"(H)

LindowsOS 3.0 MP3.com Edition with dedicated tech support

One Year Parts and Labor Warranty

FRONT

BACK

Some of you who are avid readers may recognize this box. It is none other than the FIC Falcon CR51 small form factor PC that was announced last October. However, it has been updated with the etDVD software from Elegent Technologies. The etDVD software is a boot time embedded software set that does all the magic of audio and video playback at boot time.

Brains! I need Brains!

Of course, I couldn't resist cracking the case. While there were some instructions included, I thought it would be more interesting to see how intuitive it would be to go without. Three thumb screws on the back side released the side panel which slid away. Inside, there isn't a whole lot to see. Yes. On the left you can just get a glimpse of the hard drive which is mounted to the floor of the chassis. Dead center is the DVD drive, and to the upper right is the teeny tiny power supply. Again, not too interesting. But, I discovered that one of the thumb screws actually held onto the DVD drive sled. After popping off the front face plate, I found the mate to the thumb screw. Removing this, I was able to get the DVD drive out of the way and have a better look at the rest of the insides.

As expected, I wasn't a good photographer. But let me assure you, everythin