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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."
The name lycoris always reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry can't remember the woman's name, but knows it rhymes with a part of a woman's body, so he guess that it is Mulva. It turns out her name was Dolores, but it could just as well been Lycoris- I think it rhymes even better!
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
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
is that Mr. Cheek announced in the Lycoris forum sometime back that Lycoris, following the lead of Caldera, is going to per-seat licensing for business use- thus joining the ranks of those selling Linux outright.
That's really too bad, it had a lot of promise for that niche.
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?
Did anyone yet take a closer look on them? Is everything they do in accordance to the respective licenses? I know that they are using a lot of GPL programs, but the only source code I can find is here
i es . hp?category=29
i es . hp
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categor
and it doesn't seem to be much.
Also, one can only download (often GPL'd) software from them if he pays them a fee to access this software
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categor
is that ok too?
Don't get me wrong. I'm a linux enhtusiast too and would love if linux finally came to the desktop and I would also love seeing a company making money with desktop linux...but I have a strange feeling about the legality of what lindows does....can anyone enlighten me? Or just join the discussion?
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?
Well, 3 sites mentioned on the linux front and the only one that isnt slashdotted is RedHat. Does that prove Lindows is only for the Desktop and not a server enviroment ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
I have posted a lot about this, so I hope I get the opportunity to have this question addressed by the guys who can make a difference.
/etc/modules.conf.
.mov (Quicktime) is owned by apple, and they haven't been too kind about giving away the software requierd to get it working on linux, so that I understand. But Divx :-) is an open standard. There are players available. Mpeg is open, and there are players out there. Why doesn't the default desktop install in RH work? KDE? I can't answer that because I still haven't gotten this working.
For the record I would like to say that I hate the way M$ treats its customers, the draconian patents and copyrites, and their business practices. Following that I would like to say that I have Windows installed on nearly every PC in my house (except my firewall) and every non-server PC at work. Here are the reasons:
When I first set up a linux desktop to try it, these problems caused me to recoil from using it:
#1) I had to learn new keystrokes for everything. M$ may be bad, but their choice of keys isn't 3v|L, it's just a standard. It's not a standard because someone agreed to it, but because about 90% of the PC market uses it.
#2) Software install/uninstall is a real problem for people unfamiliar with the platform. Yes, I know what an RPM is and how to use one, but it's flaky to say the least. When I first attempted to start using RPMs they complained about older versions of the utility or app I was installing but (after much searching and downloading) the older RPMs refused to uninstall the older versions, claiming they weren't installed. Is it that hard to wrap the RPM functionality with a GUI and make the latest RPMs uninstall older RPMs?
#3) I don't want to dive into the whole driver issue, but I will go through my nightmare with my latest PC. I installed RedHat 7.2 on a Asus CUV4X Dual PIII motherboard. The apic problem hit me right off, refusing to boot the PC in SMP mode. Something about that problem kept RH from detecting my integrated NIC (an EtherExpress Pro 100). After about 2 days of searching I found the answers I needed, but not the know-how. Luckily, I knew enough about Linux by this time to do the required: Modify my grub.conf file boot line to add the -noapic flag. Once I had rebooted into smp mode I loaded my network driver with insmod e100 and added the alias line to
4#) Following the above issue, I wanted to be able to watch Divx, Mpeg and Mov files on my desktop. Now
#5) I wanted to use my scanner with Gimp. I went out looking and discovered this thing called SANE. After a long time in the man pages (I have NEVER IN MY LIFE used the Windows Help file BTW), I figured out enough to try it. Sane was already installed, but it wouldn't detect my scanner. I downloaded and installed the latest sane from source and got it working, but, little surprise, my ScanMaker 3700 didn't work. There were ScanMaker 3600 drivers which claimed that they might work with the 3700, but they didn't. I'm now going through the source for the 3600 and the specs from Microtek to see if I can get my scanner working. I write code for a living so I can do this, what about everyone else?
If I hadn't already spent a lot of time getting to know Linux, I would have given up days before. This isn't the first time I had this much trouble either. Nearly three years ago I bought a copy of Suse, and I flat gave up on using it on my desktop.
I hate to say it, but all other development is secondary to getting a stable, easy to use and learn desktop working. Until then the Linux userbase will be limited. Only people who have either an excessive amount of time and energy to spend learning linux can use the OS in a meaningful fassion.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
already done it's called RH7.3 or Mandrake 8.2
if you cant install either of them then you cant install windows.
redhat 7.3 is so easy to configure that is it easier than Windows 2000 to configure, and 10 times easier than NT4.0 to configure. (Security of RH7.3 is at least 10,000 times easier to configure than any windows product ever created.)
Gnome or KDE, (I suggest KDE) are braindead to use, configure, and operate.
I strongly suggest giving it an exclusive try for 1 weekend. (i reccomend a week for those with the inability to make unbiased decisions)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Users, being stuck in the office on nice days, having to schlep to the office on nasty ones, occasionally confronting the BSoD, having to put up with their idiot colleagues, Hell, having to work at all, have no love for M$ or much of anything else work related.
M$ may not be kidding itself about that but I suspect that the reality distortion field around Bill Gates these days makes the one around Steve Jobs look like clear-eyed, realistic pragmatism.
Users don't like M$. The great majority of them hate it. Its work.
Customers, the OEM who just want to shove boxes out the door and make enough dough to pay the rent and DP/MIS/IT deparments, on the other hand are applying the same rules that gave rise to M$ in the first place:
1) nobody ever got fired for buying IBM quickly followed by
2) nobody ever got fired for saving money which created the clones, and M$.
Usability was a secondary concern at the time. Remember all those books about DOS and the command line?
Visicalc opened the office door, Lotus 123 swept in followed by WordPerfect and M$ became an expert at ripping off other people's IP.
And nothing much has happened since except in niches like desktop publishing, graphics, (now Apple is doing it again with video editing,) email and the web which didn't depend on M$ in the first place.
Given the downward direction of the ROI and upward direction of the acquisition and support costs of an M$ box, M$ will disappear when Linux becomes just "good enough." Not even, uh, "Insanely Great," but just good enough.
OpenOffice, a free OS that any MSCE can install on existing boxes to extend their usable life (even by a single year,) and cheap site-wide licences will destroy M$ on the desktop almost as quickly as the switch to the x86 destroyed Digital Research, who never made it off the -80 architecture.
The switch to a new architecture on the server side is starting to worry M$ too since they have nothing real ported to it anyway. (NT in x86 emulation on the Itanium architecture? Naw, I think, we'll go Unix or Linux.)
I should be smelling fear from Redmond but since M$ has billions in the bank and can survive a change in course, in direction and in what sea they swim in, they won't disappear.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The provision of source code regardless of whether someone purchases the binaries or receives them for free is not optional - as long as you release copies publically, you must provide the source code for no more than a nominal copying/mail fee. This is covered in the GPL faq:
That's tortourous English, which is probably one of the reasons why the quiz asks the same questions.KMSMA (WWBD?)
I've been using linux as my ONLY os for over 4 years now. Try again troll.
you are right most people arent coders, RH7.3 doesnt require anyone to ever touch anything but a GUI for any configuration. if you think otherwise you haven used it or paid attention.
please, if you are going to even try to debunk me, use truths and expierience with what is being discuissed, not what you think or tried 5 years ago.
I have 5 people who dont know squat about OS's or computers using RH7.2 and 7.3... no troubles what-so-ever.. can you please explain that? or are they magical...
I can hand you and anyone else solid proof. yet noone who claims that it's too hard can hand be one shred of plausable evidence.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I just took a brief look at your screenshots, and the first thing that comes to mind is that most of the icons are ripped off straight from Windows XP! This does little to curb the commonly-held belief that Linux desktops are just half-baked attempts to mimic Windows, and also leaves your fledgling company wide open to copyright infringement suits from Microsoft in the future. Will you be planning on hiring some graphic designers to give the Lycoris desktop a unique look and feel for the final version? I would hate to see such a promising project get shut down before it even has a chance to get off the ground.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
I can't begin to list all the "suggestions" I have gotten for what distro to use. I AM NOT SWITCHING DISTROS every time I want to get this-that-or-the-other working.
And without exception, every time I set up a different distro half my s*t breaks! The source tarballs I download install into the wrong place, rpms don't work right, It's hard to find help because it's not popular etc, etc, etc...
"1 - use KDE and their windows keymap (lycoris does this by default)."
I do, but still there are many many differences (ctrl+f4 switches desktops instaead of closing a window, for a brief example).
"2 - lycoris's update program would take care of this, as would Debian's apt system (which is available for redhat now, too, though it's not completely trivial to set up)"
See my comment about distros. This does not work for me. I need something that's at least as standard on every distro as X is.
"3 - no OS will install flawlessly onto all hardware - if this were windows you'd probably have a harder time finding a workaround. I've had a hell of a time getting windows version X installed onto various pieces of hardware over the years. A couple of those times the problem has been unresolvable."
Very true, but Linux has a lot more problems than M$. I understand that this is more a vendor problem than a Linux problem, finding software support for drivers is hard as hell. But Linux is Waaaay behind M$ on this one.
"4 - that's valid. lycoris, however, does work with those things out of the box."
KDE is supposed to as well, but it doesn't. Neither does Gnome. As it is, the players seem to be way behind conventional windows players.
"5 - the windows help files are absolutely useless, that's why you've never used them. If you had some hardware that didn't work for windows, would you be able to modify some other TWAIN driver to make it work? The latest version of windows doesn't support every piece of hardware out there either."
That's just a troll statement. Windows help files are useful too. The big thing is, the interfaces are intuative enough that you don't need the help files. There are tooltips which clue you in to what this-or-that bitmap buttom means, as well as Pretty standard menus (File, Edit, Window, etc...) which you can assume have menu items which relate to the underlying principle. Mac is the same as Windows. It's only Linux that has this problem.
All of these issues are meant for Distro providers, not standard open-source developers. People should not be expected to produce multi-thousands of dollars software packages for free, with full Q/A and UI design teams. But it is in the best interest of all distro providers to tackle this problem first and start softening up the desktop market for real competition.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
I use Linux. I use it a lot. But I don't use it like a desktop OS. I spend 90% of my time in xterms running vi. Linux is quite simply is not up to the tasks of a desktop environment. KDE and GNOME are bloated morasses of cartoons. I don't know any other way to put it. You can't copy and paste arbitrary objects through some kind of "Clipboard". How does one expect some intern to get any work done if they cannot copy some graphic from the something like Dia into a Word Processor. And that's another thing. There are no Word Processors that can handle Word documents. I find it difficult to believe that I'm the only one AbiWord doesn't work for. There's a lot that has to happen before Linux desktops become viable. Now you can mod me down; I hit the cap long ago.