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Interview with Joseph Cheek of Lycoris
Glykoriza writes "Lots of talk lately about the future of Linux in the desktop. Red Hat wants to have a piece of the pie, while Lindows seems to do well too. Lycoris seems to do great as well, they released their latest beta a few days ago, and they have already made deals with retailers, like Fry's. OSNews hosts an interview with Lycoris' CTO and founder, Joseph Cheek."
Can they really do better than Dell, Gateway, or any other dedicated system builder who has attempted to provide Linux systems and given up?
Wouldn't the DIY'er who is attracted to Linux more likely download Debian or buy RedHat or SuSE? What's the benefit?
I guess we're just warming up for another "Desktop Linux is Dead" article 3 months from now when Fry's gives up on this silly venture.
I have been pwned because my
This is not a question to Joseph Cheek, but to the linux community reading /..
It said in the article about Lindows:
LindowsOS is based on a distribution of Linux, which is covered by a license that requires it to be made freely available for modification and redistribution. However, a system designer who used an unlicensed version of LindowsOS would not be able to use Lindows.com's logo or join the LindowsOS Certification program, and would receive no technical support.
So, where can I download a free Lindows ISO without the logo?
From the interview:
People saying things like this obviously aren't experiencing financial problems yet. ;-)
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
This reminds me so much of the period before Win3.0 came out. Lots of companies making valiant efforts to produce the 'best desktop'. IIRC, Microsoft beat them all largely because it produced VB and with it, a way for millions of amateur developers to make Windows applications.
I remember using GEOS, a GUI that kicked Windows' ass mightily. I remember trying to find tools to build GEOS applications. Zilch.
Today, Windows is totally out of reach of amateur developers. It is one of the most complex development environments imaginable. And Microsoft seems to be heading at full speed towards even more complexity with every new technology it brings out.
This creates a wonderful opportunity. Instead of aiming for 'end users', Linux desktops should aim at amateur developers who want a free and simple workbench for writing the kinds of applications that made Windows 3.1 rule the world.
Imagine a really simple programming environment for excellent web applications, running on a database that is as easy to use as Access, with as many widgets as you can dream of.
This is the kind of thing that will start the revolution. Not cheaper Window-like boxes.
My blog
The article claims that "Red Hat is warming to the use of the Linux operating system on desktop computers, a difficult market where customers are picky and Microsoft is the leader."
Most customers aren't that picky, but just go along with the mainstream of users and do not understand the power of open source systems such as Linux. The majority just wants text processing software, solitaire, and some internet capabilities, and seem to think Microsoft software is user friendly and Linux software is complex as hell. If customers were in fact picky, Microsoft would have a very hard time competing with these open source software systems, since they provide more stability and speed at much lower cost. How's that for user-friendly? Easy of use is becoming less of an issue in later distributions of Linux and and you don't have these big-brother issues as with XP and the coming Palladium...
No, customers being "picky" hasn't got much to do with it, but many customers are just ignorant.
How user friendly is it to have to push "start" in order to shut down a computer anyway?
I'll try to explain what it is that other people are seeing that causes them to have a different perspective than you have got.
I have long heard the argument that the reason that owners get to keep the majority of the money in a company is that they are taking all of the risks - so that they get to keep the rewards.
But what exactly is the risk that a business owner takes? The answer is: if things don't work out he will wind up as poor as his employees and have to go to work for somebody else. That is not a risk for an employee - that is an iron clad guarantee!
The thousands of employees at Microsoft who did all of the actual work of creating the code are not together worth as much as Bill Gates. People who think that is OK - do so because they have greed and larceny in their hearts; they want to be able to steal from their employees the way that Gates and millions of others have stolen from theirs. When your highest morality is "I can get away with it" you will create a structure that lets you get away with it. Heaven forbid that you should treat your employees ethically.
In a sense the people who write software know that their time is practically worthless - so some of us have decided to become software philanthropists and give our code away - we really have little to lose in doing so; the 'Bill Gates' of the world are going to replace us with hordes of cheap programmers from third world countries in any case.
Mostly we give our code away because we love programming, and we want good software to always be available, but a small part of our motivation is malicious: in response to the way that we have been treated we want to say to the 'Bill Gates' of the world "You want to treat us like dirt? Fine, asshole, try competing with something that costs nothing."
Do you now understand why we might find it objectionable to see business men trying to exploit programmers work by something like 'per seat licensing'?