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Lycoris - Linux for the Masses?
Dejected @Work writes "MSNBC.com, a definitely sketchy source of Linux information, just came out with an article "Linux for the Masses" about the ease of installing Lycoris(formerly Redmond Linux) on the desktop. The author even concluded you can 'fall in love with an ever-easier-to-use operating system.' It sounds like great news but am I missing something?" Several favorable reviews of this distro recently. It looks like all you have to do to get the reviewers on your side is to let them play solitaire during the install. :) Update: 04/13 14:53 GMT by T : Eric Krout also suggests the two-part review (part one and part two) over on monolinux.
Lycoris, like most modern distos have every driver in the world build as a module so you will never have to do this.
/etc/modules that will make it load on boot.
If their hardware probe didn't find something, find out the name of the driver and do a 'modprobe drivername' and then submit a bug report to them saying that it did not install it automatically.
Keep in mind that they don't have the manpower or money to test this on all possible hardware. But if you tell them, they can fix the autodection for other people with your soundcard and they will probably give you some line that you can add to
Solaris 8 gives you a web browser during the install (after network setup), which I think is fucking brilliant...
I bought my wife an IBM NetVista and Redmond Linux was the ONLY distro that detected the video card w/ the Flat screen monitor. (Mandrake 8.1 only had it in 800x600 with tweaking)
It's a VERY easy distro to use. It's NOT for power users. You are very limited in what you can do. They make it very hard to fuck up your system. It has a customized version of KDE (which is VERY good in my opinion). It's near impossible to add Gnome to the desktop. It uses Caldera RPM's so you can just grab them off of Caldera's site.The install was so easy, she did it herself. (She is not tech savvy). She did it while I was in the shower. I had to redo it so I could see for myself. I think it's an excellent distro for mom & dad. However, power Linux users will get frustrated by it's lack of choices. There are no servers installed (except sshd). Not even an ftp server, or Apache. (which is by design...Mom isn't supposed to be running a webserver on the machine she does her taxes on, ya know?) All in All, I give it 9 out of 10 for newbies, 4 out of 10 for veterans.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Next time search for a good review that's thorough rather than linking to some half-baked MSNBC article.
n ame=News&file=article&sid=670&mode=thread&order=0& thold=0 n ame=News&file=article&sid=667&mode=thread&order=0& thold=0 4 -12-014-26-RV-DT 4 -12-005-26-NW-DT l e=article&sid=1856 l e=article&sid=1848 / 12/1740252 / 11/1459213
The best review out there isn't exactly a top-secret either, as is apparent below.
1] http://www.tuxreports.com/modules.php?op=modload&
2] http://www.tuxreports.com/modules.php?op=modload&
3] http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-0
4] http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-0
5] http://pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?name=News&fi
6] http://pclinuxonline.com/modules.php?name=News&fi
7] http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04
8] http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04
9] http://www.distrowatch.com/index.php
Thanks.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
The weakness with Linux today isn't ease of install - hell, Redhat has been trivial to install for at least a couple of versions now, even on the weirdest hardware Joe "Dude, You're Gettin' a Dell" Sixpack is likely to have.
Installation is ALREADY pretty brain dead, even to the most clueless newbie. At most, they're looking at a 5 minute call to their vendor / friend / LUG / 7-year old neighbor.
The trouble comes when they want to run the stupid elf bowling program some cow orker sends to them. Or when they want to free up some drive space. Or when they want to install a game. Or install ANY new software via four to six clicks of a mouse button.
Put the creative energy in the right direction, and Linux WILL win. This isn't it. This is the road more travelled.
-l