LindowsOS Softens Microsoft-Compatibility Claim

jukal writes: "As seen originally at newsforge: On Friday we reported the appearance of Microtel PCs with LindowsOS pre-installed at Walmart.com. Then, Walmart.com and Lindows were claiming that LindowsOS 'delivers the stability of UNIX with the ease of Windows and the ability to run most Microsoft programs.' Today, that last phrase has gone missing and there is no more talk of running any programs designed for Windows, let alone Microsoft products"

Comments

How Long Before

[JohnHegarty]

"most Microsoft programs"

How long before "most Microsoft programs" have little bits of code added to shot them working on anything but offical microsoft windows.. that really would be the end of lindows

A little too early

[Iscariot_]

Is it just me, or is giving linux to the consumer this early a bad thing? I'm sure Lindows is great and all, but your average Joe buying a PC from wallmart for $700 is NOT going to want to run linux applications, much less deal with managing the OS. I still think linux (or in this case Lindows) has a long way to go.

Am I wrong? Do people that buy PCs from walmart frequent this site?

Re:A little too early

[morgajel]

users come in waves. think of us as explorers, and these people as a wave of settlers. they don't know what they hell they're doing, but they're pretty sure there's a better life out there, and they're willing to try it.

Re:And the people buying PCs from Wal-Mart....

[thesolo]

Wait, with XP and the ability to get raw socket access, we're in trouble anyway.

OT, but here we go. You know, with the increasing ease of creating a worm or a virus that can take over a machine, kill routers, flood mailservers, etc., how long will it be before computers start getting treated like cars? i.e. They have their purposes, but you need to have a license to use one legally.

Frankly, I'm just waiting until this happens, or rather until someone at least proposes the idea in a bill. Of course, if the CBDTPA passes, we essentially wouldn't have computers anymore anyway.

Hmm

[ins0m]

No, I doubt many people who buy prepackaged comps from walmart actively follow /. However, what I do think is great is that the concept of linux is being offered right next to the Blue Light Special on aisle 5. Seriously, even if the "W" word is missing from the current marketing campaign, the fact remains that the hybrid-ish OS is widely available to people who may never have heard of *nix, or may have only heard of it in context with the "geek" community.

So long as Lindows remains in that sort of distribution circle, I have a feeling that more people are going to gain exposure, and even if touted as interoperable with most MS programs, most people only care about surfing websites, word processing, and gaming. So long as Lindows can perform with Win* on that regard, they should be fine; if the comparable cost of a PC pre-installed with "L" vs. "W" is low enough, it should be a success.

Hell, people may just be excited when they see that their fav porn sites pop up quicker. But for a moderate linux user (freebsd is my fav. os), I find that Mandrake is not hard to install or configure; anything easier than that will definitely have a mass consumer base. It's just a matter of keeping it on the shelves; I applaud the move of removing "Windows" from their promo, so long as they aren't going to get hosed for name-brand recognition entirely by doing so.

Re:Hmm

[jonadab]

I concur.

This is a good thing. Most people have very vague notions about what Windows and Microsoft even are; the advertising campaigns have some of them believing that it's an important part of computing, but only because all computers seem to have these buzzwords "Windows" and "Microsoft" attached to them. Exposure to the idea that computers don't need these buzzwords is a good thing.

In terms of user experience, users want to do a few simple things:

• Send and receive email, without understanding anything about how email works. When someone sends them an image attachment, they want it to just display for them, and have a clearly visible "print" button. They also want to be able to exchange inane animated greeting cards (the ones spammers deploy to collect email addresses), so they'll need the Flash plugin. But they don't have even the foggiest notion what a "plugin" is, and they shouldn't have to.
• Print stuff out. This means mostly pictures, bog-standard word-processing documents (letters, resumés, garage sale signs, ... nothing complicated), and the kind of thing people used to use Print Shop for in the 80s (mostly inane greeting cards with cheesy clip art, but these days they want to do this in color; banners are also popular). Printing pictures is no problem. Word Processing is no problem; Open Office is serious overkill for these people. The thing that remains in this category is the cheesy greeting-card/certificate/banner printing package, and I've discovered that people will crawl over broken glass to do this stuff. The software can be _horrific_ (a la Print Artist) and they'll _LOVE_ it. Quality is not necessary, and ease of use is really not important either, as long as it will let them insert stupid clip art and style bits of text with shadow and outline effects and stuff, and give them prefab templates to modify. Currently I don't know of a Linux app that fits this bill, but maybe that's because I wasn't looking.
• Surf the web. This shouldn't be a problem. I've been deploying Mozilla for a while now at a public library, where the people who use it have no PC at home and know virtually nothing, and Mozilla works fine; I get very few complaints, and those I do get have to do with printing or with the difficulty of navigating certain sites.
• Play silly little games. Not a problem. Give em a dozen kinds of Solitaire, Gnome Mines, Iagno, and a handful of others, and they'll be happy playing them quite literally forever. (Yes, there are also people who want cool games, new games, 3D shooters, and such, but those people are younger and know more about computers.)
• That's pretty much it. Most people don't know they can do more than this with computers.

I'm glad Wall-Mart is no longer claiming that LindowsOS runs most MS programs. Lindows was not ready for that claim. But Linux *is* ready, or very close to ready, for the consumer desktop, as long as it comes preinstalled and preconfigured. I worry just a little about the silly-greeting-card thing... developers don't do such inane things, and I don't know whether anyone has put together a Print Artist equivalent for Linux.

more accurate, but death for sales

[dirk]

The new wording is more accurate, but not stating it runs Windows apps will be a killer for many sales. This box is meant for Joe Enduser, who probably has never heard of Linux, and thinks Windows is the greatest OS around. All he really cares is if Word, Quicken, and Quake 3 will run on it. Most users don't want thousands of applications, they want the 2 or 3 they use. While this is a great line for geeks, that isn't the market for the PC. I predict this line of PCs will last about 4 months before they are pulled or have Windows put on them unless the marketing is changed ASAP.

Re:is this a suprise?

[analog_line]

Sorry, we Mac users already have a highly functional, highly stable, and highly usable UNIX operating system that comes free when you buy the machine, that also happens to run most free software (beer or speech) you might want to use.

Thanks for drinking Coke. Play again.

Re:is this a suprise?

[analog_line]

1. It's a brand name that hopefully, through the efforts of many people using it, will go the way of asprin and cease to be a trademarked brand name here (asprin is a brand name everywhere except the US).

2. I certainly do pay for the operating system on my Mac. However, unless you can point out how much that is (not like Apple charges itself OEM licensing costs) or find me a way to buy a Mac new, without the operating system installed, and show the price difference, we'll talk.

Apple is a hardware company. Iron (well, plastic too). Darwin is free for the taking if I want it. The only thing I pay some small amount for is the interface, which is certainly worth it to me. They don't slap extra charges for each bit of everything that comes with it. Here's what you get. Here's the price. Don't like it? Next customer please. They're in the game the same way IBM is (and they're using FreeBSD the same way IBM is using Linux). To get their iron out the door. A different class of iron, but iron nonetheless.

Please get your head out of your rear. Apple isn't even trying to play the same game as Microsoft is with Windows, let alone compete. They don't want their OS to work on anything under the sun. The DO NOT WANT their operating system to run on your cheapo homebuilt machine, or your cheapo Dell, or your expensive homebuilt machine, or your expensive prebuilt machine, becuase they aren't getting money from the hardware, which is how they pay their bills, ya know?

Re:Licensing

[gorf]

License? What license? I don't recall ever signing an license...

"The rest of us" ain't that rich

[po8]

When Apple's $300 OSX box comes out, I'll be first in line to buy one. Until then, I'm afraid JQP is stuck with commodity HW and free SW. Guess he'll survive somehow.

Contracts require consideration

[yerricde]

You may well find that you are *not licensed* to use it on anything but a Microsoft Windows operating system.

You assume that Microsoft EULAs are completely enforceable. Don't be so sure of that. To be enforceable, a contract must be legal, and as alienw mentioned, monopolistic product tying isn't. In addition, a contract must require both parties to give something up, such as money or rights. (In legalese, this is called "consideration.") In the United States, a EULA doesn't give the user any rights that 17 USC 117 and other applicable law doesn't already give the user.

Where's the beef? In particular, where's the consideration that would validate an agreement forbidding a user from using a Microsoft Windows application with LindowsOS or any other Wine distribution?