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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.)
Unfortunately, the only way that Linux will have a chance to take greater market share in the desktop or server arenas is through consolidation.
/. said recently, too much free software (whether different distros of Linux or office suites or whatever) can be a bad thing for quality. Paraphrasing, you can probably download 10 different programs that do A-B-C functionality. But none of them do it 100%.
There are simply too many different flavours out there and this causes the problem of limited takeup beyond die-hard Linux users and the wider problem of quality.
As someone else on
In any other movement/"industry", there are periods of rapid growth followed by consolidation. Some might say this is when monopolies form - look at the motor industry or telecoms or computing. There used to be dozens of players in each field but this has shrunk down to a handful.
So - what's more important, diversity or quality? Only one of these will lead to greater adoption in the mainstream...
G4 Hackintosh
I think it's great that people and companies supporting Linux are finally starting to reach the masses with their message. It seems the only things that are really missing from Linux (and other *ixes, for the most part) are games and a few key apps like Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver etc etc. Since I'm not a graphics guy and I don't play games, the switch was pretty easy for me to make on the majority of my PCs.
Personally I prefer FreeBSD + KDE, but I think any market share taken away from Microsoft on the desktop will be good for diversity. Of course, for gamers and graphics nuts, switching over will be more troublesome. Hopefully even that will change as Linux gains more market share and companies start realizing it and diverting more development efforts towards non-MS platforms (ideally cross-platform, although I'd imagine the prospect of supporting too many platforms would be prohibitive for some companies).
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
It seems like their target audience is the kind of audience who is wooed by flashy 1.0's and doesn't want to have anything to do with the word build. So why don't they leverage that to their advantage? Is Lycoris still so unfinished that they can't slap a 1.0 on it?
The thing about Linux is that it has always been designed by geeks for geeks, this is its biggest strength but also its biggest weakness.
Now Linux is very stable (although not with Gnome, if there are any Gnome developers reading this please make it more stable as the user interface is far better than KDE IMO), it supports OGG, it is incredibly secure and it is lightning fast when compared to the bloat that is windows.
Unfortunately most usrs can't get along with it. The command line is a clunky way of doing things compared to an intuitive GUI and simply a throwback to when computers didn't do graphics. Tweaking things is difficult, sure there are lots of options but I still couldn't figure out an easy way of chjanging the screen resolution.
It lacks style. This isn't such a problem for us geeks as we want something that is clean and functional but mr windows user wants anti aliased fonts and fading effects on the menubar.
The good thing is that the Lycoris guys look they are sloving some of these problems with their no nonsence distribution. If we can give people something that looks like windows but has the stability and speed of Linux we can go a long way to establishing linux as a major player in the OS arena.
No, I disagree.
The fact that Linux can be forked off into a gazillion distro's, freely and willingly, is a *GOOD THING*.
Okay, so the old market forces may not agree with this.
But OS's are fast becoming irrelevant. Linux' dominance in the 'adapt to all environments' arena cannot be stopped: it runs on *EVERYTHING*, practically, whereas Windows only runs on PC's.
("PC's are not the most predominant computer platform. Cell phones are.")
What matters is the document formats.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
...hardware compatibility list. You've got to appreciate a 404 for that!
Among the newbie friendly distros I'd pick this one because it defaults (IIRC) to a non-root account. If distros like Lindows that set you up as root become popular, it would kill off the perception of Linux as a secure OS. People don't care/understand how secure the kernel/servers are etc; if you have a bunch of newbies clicking on executable attachments then the public is going to perceive it as virus prone. Therefore if you are going to encourage your granny to try linux pick a distro that doesn't follow Bad Computing Practices(TM).
This is a beta release, not a final product.
Linux will not be a home entertainment OS until it becomes used more at work. The way I see it working is like this:
By the time we get to the last step, all the frustrating things for n00bs should be pretty much worked out. I don't think that Linux needs to start by being a home user OS. It will end up that way, if all goes well.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
The frequent usage of the word "familiar" hints very much at what lycoris became: A cheap Windows XP clone. All the description and advertising is trying to explain that I almost get the functionality of Windows XP. However why dont buy the real thing then ? I want extended functionality and improvements.
Yeah, but I guess it will just end like: "Oh, you are using lycoris/linux. Can't you afford Windows?"
My father runs Linux at home and is as happy as can be. The only reason this situation exists is that I SSH into his machine every week and build/fix/configure/backup whatever is wrong or out of date.
I'm happy he runs Linux. He's happy that his box magically updates without him every seeing or doing anything. This is the kind of hands off tech support I like to get from my plumber, mechanic and company IT department. Why shouldn't the end user enjoy this model as well? I could theoretically fix and update a dozen Linux boxes per day through SSH. A room full of geeks could take care of hundreds a day.
Anyone can run Linux if they have a dedicated geek or live support contract. Currently the clueless have only geeks to turn to. With a company that does everything (I repeat: everything) through live support there can be a Linux box anywhere anytime.
Companies are not leveraging Linux's remote access abilities for the end users. This gives the user a perfect box an a constant stream of cash for the support company. Most will not care if you log into a part of their system and do a weekly fix/backup/upgrade as long as you present it in the right way. The privacy concern is no greater than giving your box to a computer shop for a couple of day.
I doubt that any given mob of customers can be more difficult and demanding than my dad, but I guess we all feel like that sometimes.
The above model is actually taking place right now. How many of you log into another Linux box and fix it every week? All I'm suggesting is to put a bunch of us in the same room while we do it and place a company logo outside the door.
The above idea has some obvious problems with it but I'd like to think that what we all do for our families family could possibly scale.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
Not trolling but what I think people would expect:
I like to see thing that will help Linux be accept by the masses but what I would want to make sure that any Linux distro should be able to do the following without me having to open a command window
Open MS Office files
Play games
Surf the net
As much a M$ might be a monopoly they have spent millions on the UI which works for 95% of the people 95% of the time. Why would someone accept anything less even if it a 1/3 or the price? I use Linux all the time and its great, but would my dad? Don't think so
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
For those of you saying that "Linux won't work for the desktop until my grandma can install it.", please remember your grandma can't install Windows either. Being mainstream is not about how easy it is to install. It's about being OEM installed by major retailers. Most people never install a version of Windows from scratch. The upgrade releases are usually easy, but you get driver and dependancy problems sometimes. This is especially true of the NT/2000/XP line. I find that anyone who can run Windows preinstalled can run Linux preinstalled.
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. .02 worth...
:-)
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
Please take a moment and check out some soothing images if my commentary has stressed you
I am not a coder or sysadmin but I do love technology, especially Linux. I have gone through a number of distros since 1999 and I think the move toward more user-friendly desktop Linux distros is great. Those that can and enjoy getting into the guts of an OS should do it no matter what distro they choose. The rest of us just want something that works and isn't owned by a monopoly. I've been using Xandros 1.0 for the past month and I must say this: it just works! Sure, I have some print over the network issues which will get ironed out in time. But, really, it's the first distro that has allowed me to turn off my Windoze box for a week. I woke it up to get some files I need and also to use Quark Xpress. Just my two bits; I could be wrong.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...