Lycoris Build 71 Beckons For Your Desktop

PenguinRenegade writes "Lycoris has released a new Beta, Build 71. Lycoris is not a Linux distro for those who already know Linux, but more for the masses, for those who want to migrate from Windows, and don't really want anything to do with the command line. Lycoris Desktop/LX equipped computers are available from Wal-Mart starting at $268.00 (build 46). It's a great OS for the masses, $30 or less, $19.99 from the company if you download your own and just want the Product ID. Registered users get REAL e-mail support and full access to IRIS, an RPM-based click-to-install program base." (There's no cost to download the beta.)

Comments

Re:Lycoris dropping the ball with version numberin

[IamTheRealMike]

This is a beta release, not a final product.

Consider the following

[ewanrg]

Our company has Windows on the desktop, and Red Hat Advanced Server on our servers. Our programmers have to X-Window into the Linux servers when they do server programming.
Why don't they have Linux on their desktops? When we looked at moving folks over, we ran into the following:

Testing the Red Hat, Lycoris, and Lindows desktop offerings we would have to buy a number of additional licenses - while we already have a campus license for MS Windows and Office.

Both Lycoris and Lindows seemed to have trouble recognizing some of our hardware - particularly Firewire and Wireless Networking.

In all three cases trying to use the available options for working with MS Word documents (used by virtually all our clients) showed compatibility problems with any of them that had a large number of tables or that used automatic labelling of Figures.

As a final straw, there is currently no way to sync a PocketPC with appointment and contact data on any of the Linux offerings.
My point is that no one is going to switch to Linux just to be running Linux to do the same things they do on Windows. The ONLY way that folks are going to be convinced to make the switch is to have a Linux that does something folks can't do easily or cheaply in Windows, and then promote the heck out of that.
Personally, I think that the Gimp is a start in the right direction - and that Lycoris and Lindows isn't.
Just my .02 worth...
Please take a moment and check out some soothing images if my commentary has stressed you :-)

Re:Beh

[be-fan]

If you have no reason to use it, then you probably shouldn't be using it. Don't fix what isn't broke. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons to use Linux, if you have the right usage patterns. Why I use Linux.

1) I program. Development tools (especially GCC) are better on the Linux side, and free to boot. I don't like IDE's I prefer a bunch of xterms and VIM. Sure I could do the same thing in Windows, but Cygwin is a little too laggy for my taste (fork() is really slow).

2) My gaming is limited to a few Linux games (NWN, Quake), a few older WINE-able Windows games (CounterStrike, StarCraft), and PSX emulators. They all work fine enough in Linux to suit me. For real gaming, I turn to my Gamecube, which I like better than 99% of PC games anyway :)

3) I've got a lot of freedom to choose software file formats. My usage of MS Office formats isn't anything that KWord or (in a pinch) OpenOffice can't handle. Usually, all my communication with the outside world is done with standard file formats like PDF, HTML, etc.

4) I run Mathematica and Matlab on occasion, which have (cheap!) Linux student versions.

5) I do 3D modeling, and SideFX has an Apprentice version of Houdini available for Linux.

Other than that, I do the same stuff everyone else does. I listen to MP3s on JuK (a KDE jukebox), I talk with my friends on AIM, send funny pictures over the school network, the usual. Since I'm used to Linux, and not very used to Windows (I stopped using it around when XP came out) my workflow is a lot faster, and the tweekability of KDE allows me to optimize the computer to my work habits much more than I can in Windows.