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Interview with Joseph Cheek of Lycoris

Posted by michael on from the everyone-loves-licorice dept.

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."

2 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. History repeats itself by pieterh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:What makes Fry's special? by mccalli · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Can they really do better than Dell, Gateway, or any other dedicated system builder who has attempted to provide Linux systems and given up?

    Yes.

    People can see the OS first, rather than just picking a drop-down off some web site. Besides, although I don't know about Gateway Dell buried their offering so deep it was almost impossible to find on the site. You had to go in via some special URL - if you just went through to order a laptop via the normal route, you wouldn't have ever seen Linux as an option.

    Also, as far as I remember, the Linux option was actually made more expensive on Dell machines than buying a Windows license.

    Cheers,
    Ian