Lycoris Desktop/LX Review

JigSaw writes: "Lycoris Desktop/LX (formerly known as 'Redmond Linux') is viewed by many as the new big distribution in the "Linux on the Desktop" arena. OSNews features an extensive review of the latest Lycoris and outlines the good and the bad things of the distro. In short, Lycoris seems to suffer from the general GNU/Linux situation to not be ready to power a true desktop-oriented, easy to use distribution yet."

Comments

Heh, what did you expect?

[FortKnox]

. In short, Lycoris seems to suffer from the general GNU/Linux situation to not be ready to power a true desktop-oriented, easy to use distribution yet

Just making another distro isn't enough to be "Linux's answer to the desktop." It'll require more products, more "wizbangs", easier installation, and general "user friendliness" on all aspects. I'd concentrate on more products, ensuring you can go seamlessly between Windows and Linux flawlessly (Word docs as a minor example), before making a distro to be the "answer."

Re:Heh, what did you expect?

[niftyeric]

While I agree, I wish they would quit trying to "mimic" Windows. Linux != Windows. Not only do I prefer a GUI different than Win9x+, it might confuse new users as well, "This looks like Windows, can I run $favorite_application?"

But I guess it does make the transition from Windows to Linux a lot easier. :P

Why?

[PopeAlien]

A good point of the distro is the inclusion of a WINE release. While I could only run correctly simple applications like notepad.exe and the Windows calculator, it is a nice addition. All the .exe programs are marked with the WINE icon and if you doubleclick them, WINE will try to load them.

..Uh, but there are far better native apps available for free.. Why would you ever want to run windows notepad or calculator? I understand the eventual goal of WINE to run all those exe's seamlessly, but why is WINE a nice addition in this distribution if it just runs simple programs that already have better native versions?

Why is it

[madenosine]

that every "easy to use" Linux distro is actually only an easy install for the user?

Real work needs to be done in helping the user in case an application fails.

Also, every one of the distros seems to be very superficial; they simply include some nice skins and applications that resemble those in windows, but many of these applications are hardly as functional as their "hard to use" counterparts.

Shouldnt these companies put more of their money behind making powerful products easier to use?

The Me Fallacy

[fm6]

but there are far better native apps available for free.

You've heard of Legacy apps? Everybody has software that they just can't abandon. It's one thing for a hacker to hand-convert all his documents to KWord. It's quite another thing for a large company to abandon or convert hundreds of thousands of Word docs and Excel spreadsheets. Such a user will not even consider a solution that does not fully support the legacy data. In theory, you can filter all the data over to a new format, but I've never seen that done in any big way in the real world.

I think both you and the reviewer are applying a fallacy I often see in online reviews and evaluations -- especially on Slashdot. I call it the Me Fallacy. This fallacy is the assumption that your own needs are the needs of the product's target audience. So you applaud and criticize when the product succeeds and fails to meet your needs -- even if that's not what the product is trying to do.

I see this in the review (which does make some good points) when it criticizes Lycoris for not providing development apps. This is an end user distro, for Pet's sake! Of course, a developer might want it anyway (I'm going to try it in the hope that it will integrate with my company's IPX network better than the others), but such a user is perfectly capable of downloading apps -- and is more interested in how well the distro accomodates third-party packages than what specific packages the distro provides.

IceWM

[mikosullivan]

Anybody attempting to design a truly user-friendly Linux distro needs to start by making IceWM the default window manager. IceWM gives the average users What They Want: a simple clean desktop. The taskbar isn't filled with junk (well, maybe a little, but the distro should default it out), just a set of simple buttons. Yes, it looks a lot like Windows, but that's not necessarily bad. What's important is that it's a clean interface that users can understand right away. The desktop war is won or lost in the first minute that the user looks at the screen and decides if s/he understands what's going on.