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OEone New Releases and Review
Mike Potter writes "After our initial launch, we received a ton of requests asking for support for RedHat 7.3 and Mandrake 8.2. OEone is happy to announce that HomeBase DESKTOP is now available as a free download for those two platforms. There's a great review of OEone DESKTOP at Linux Orbit."
In the last year I've moved both my mother, and my father and his girlfriend to linux. My mother I did first, and I set her up with a window-maker/gnome desktop. She's smart, but also lazy and never bothered to learn her way around the linux file system. She always relied on me for support, and never felt like it was "her" computer. That was important to her and she eventually blew $2000 on an iMac with OS X.
:P
My father and girlfriend don't have the money to burn, and also are more easily befuddled by technology. I set them up with a fresh install of OEOne. What OEOne does well is make you feel like you own your computer. They're so far very happy.
There is a dark side to OEOne desktop, however. Its not really a prodcut, but a PR attemt to sucker geeks like us into using it and giving it mindshare. It has no built in modem control applet / internet wizard. They've written one for their set top box, but pulled it from desktop, basically to keep it from being a useful product.
Remember, OEOne is written for grandma, and grandma doesn't ever want to miss a call because she's on the net. She sure doesn't want to be unable to call out because she forgot to power down her comp. The mailbug has a really good connection manager, basically you never know the mailbug uses the modem because it does all its stuff when it senses you're not using the phone.
The user interface is decent, but a little clunky. Its got a lot of tiny mystery meat icons, scattered in unintuitive locations. They need to pay their graphic designers more or something.
Overall though its not a bad choice. The lack of a window manager is a big win for newbs. Instead there is a task bar and you swap back and forth between tasks. If the task isn't running it starts it up automatically. This is a good idea. I wonder when the condesending bone heads working on windowmaker will figure this out.
If you don't have the $2k for OS X, but you do have access to a geek willing to spend 3 days installing it, I think I'd recommend OEOne desktop. I worry about their committment to open source, blah blah blah. Not offering free security updates is somewhat worrisome too. Oh well.
No. The words are NOT so mild.
"6. DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ("DRMs"). The Software may include third party DRMs as Plug-in components which are subject to their own license agreements. DRMs are designed to manage and enforce intellectual property rights in digital content purchased over the Internet. You may not take any action to circumvent or defeat the security or content usage rules provided or enforced by either the DRM or the Software. DRMs may be able to revoke your ability to use applicable content. OEone is not responsible for the operation of the DRM in any way, including revocation of your content. OEone is not responsible for any communications to or from any third party DRM provider, or for the collection or use of information by third party DRMs. You consent to the communications enabled and/or performed by the DRM, including automatic updating of the DRM without further notice, despite the provisions of section 5(b). You agree to indemnify and hold harmless OEone for any claim relating to your use of a third party DRM."
"
So it claims that it
1) already may contain DRMs
2) I should consent to that DRM operations
3) that DRM modules could update itself.