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Lindows Reviewed
Well, the wait is finally over. Lindows, the system that promises to
bring Windows software to Linux, has finally been released in
sneak-preview form. You can catch a
first
hand review of the system on
NewsForge.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I preffer to stay Anonymous (you know - NDA stuff)
/opt/wine-lindows). But - you can move the wine out and play it on Mandrake, SuSE, Redhat or Slackware quite easily ;)
;)
To make long story short - it's based on Debian Woody, it got Xandros (previously Corel) nice file manager, and it got a special version of wine which can install Office 2000 very nicely including Explorer 5.0
You can't install Explorer 5.0 or 5.5 seperated - the process fails after download. You cannot install Windows Media Player 7.1 since it's saying "unsupported OS" and Windows Media 6.4 simply thinks the URL's are wrong.
Running Office 2000 (not 97, not XP) runs pretty nice although there lots of GUI bugs there needs to be fixed.
Biggest shit - it installs and doesn't open users - so all done as root, and even if you open users you won't be able to use the "wine" stuff since it needs root premissions or some serious hacking (it's on
Does it worth the money? yes! I need to run Office 2000 - and that gives me the option to use Office 2000 (and I cannot use other Linux office stuff - need to connect to exchange and just the Ximian exchange connector costs $70 - so $29 more won't kill me).
And since it's a debian woody, then hey - APT heaven is here - give me an hour and the distribution will be totally customized.
Some other stuff - it uses XFS as filesystem, it doesn't install nvidia binary drivers in default (need to do it manually), kernel is 2.4.14 + tons of patches, it tries to load every module on earth and frankly - doing a damn cool job. They'll need to fix the network and priting stuff - it sucks as it is now.
Definately recommended if you're planning to use it in corporations.
Oh, as for who did the wine stuff? lets say it's not transgaming, you know who
MeshMesh
To my dismay, the reviewer's experience with the preview LindowsOS exactly mirrors what you get with a recent build of WINE. Many applications run, but there are serious problems with installers.
This is not to bash the WINE developers who are making great progress with limited resources. I wish them, and Michael, all the success in the world. I just wish that Michael Robertson would commit some of his development staff to improving the core WINE code and contributing it back to the WINE project.
Shameless plug: Do you need step by step instructions on configuring WINE to run popular Windows applications? Check out my web site, Winecentric
Um...why do we need another totally insecure OS? From the review, I got the impression that, thus far, Lindows is a dumbed down XWindows, with Wine and ungodly horrible security.
Linux users won't want it because they won't want to be root all the time. Windows users won't want it because Windows apps won't run as well.
Admiteddly, this is not a full release, but even so, what is the point of purchasing this? With Wine running, a tempermental app at best, you lose a lot of the stability of Linux. With X running as root, you lose the security of Linux, and gain all those nice outlook viruses. And if the primary target is current Windows users, well, I just cannot see a reason they would switch.
A dumbed down X with Wine just ain't gonna cut it in the market, I have to believe.
I am a windows sysadmin by profession (its paying the bills today folks, save the zealous remarks) and we have very good uptime numbers here, but it's a full time job even for a small shop.
Basically, I think you're right on. Saying "well, linux is just inherantly a stabler system" is akin to saying, "you know, most of those old mechanics who build hot rods in their spare time have cars that run much better than the average driver." Yeah ... what did we expect?
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Oh. Right. Real insightful. Excuse the dripping sarcasm.
"It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people."
How self contradictory can you get? It's *not* the OS. No matter how user friendly or unfriendly, it's the user. Period. End of line.
If it's user friendly, you get a pleasant, useful, powerful, computing experience. That's it.
A user friendly OS and program with a stupid person does not make the OS insecure or the program flawed, or the UI wrong. It just means the user is stupid.
User friendly does not imply a stupid user.
GPL Deconstructed
After reading this article. It basically sounds like they are going to take debian, add some KDE skins, tweak the KDE menu and configure WINE so that they have a stable and reliable version that can run as many windows programs as possible.
This sounds basically like the crossover plugin done totally wrong!
There is no reason (technically) that this needs to be a dedicated Linux distribution. The only thing I can think of is that they are doing this for marketing and/or political reasons. I am sure Michael Robertson knows what he is going from a marketing perspective but he is trying to succeed in a technical market.
The one thing that we should learn from this is that it might be time to a dedicated wine-bundle project.
Specifically... Take wine snapshots and QA them and try to get them as stable as possible. This would of course have to be coordinated with the wine project.
This should also include bundling wrappers around Windows programs so that they can be installed easily.
IE you could have a debian package named wine-bundle-ie which would of course install Internet Explorer by downloading it on the client machine similar to the way crossover does it.
This would get you the best of both worlds... Windows apps on a Linux machine and would be an Open Source collaboration.
I try to run 100% Open Source/Free Software but it would be nice to complete invoices for my clients who use Excel.
Kevin
There's probably some truth to both sides of the issue. It's true that careless or incompetent administration can compromise the security and stability of even the best designed system. But it's also true that a well designed system requires less care and less competence to maintain as a reasonably secure and stable system.
Take dealing with services as an example. A well designed system has unnecessary services turned off (or even better, not installed) by default, so that any flaws in those services won't compromise the system. This means that a casual user, who won't be running them anyway, has one less thing to worry about and doesn't need to be as smart or careful to keep his system in good shape. Similarly, a system that allows users to spend most of their time in an unpriviledged mode is less likely to cause problems if/when those users eventually stumble onto trojans/viruses/worms. Adding in an extra, necessary step to make those malware programs really vicious makes it that much less likely that they'll cause problems.
Is good security something that you can buy off the shelf? Of course not. Security is a process, and administration is the key part of that process. But the quality of the product can make that process easier or harder.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
I fear the license wars about to erupt.
314-15-9265