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Talk With Michael Robertson
Lindows CEO Michael Robertson is vilified by many Linux advocates. At the same time, he is probably drawing more attention to desktop Linux than anyone else in the world. Is he evil? Or is he just a typical American businessman trying to make it big (for the second time; before Lindows, he founded -- and later sold -- MP3.com)? One thing is for sure: Unlike many CEOs, he'll give a plain-talk answer to a straight question. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions submitted here by Slashdot readers to Robertson tomorrow, and run his answers, unedited, as soon as he gets them back to us.
In you opinion, is the future of the linux Desktop based on KDE or Gnome? Any reason why Lindows chose KDE? What improvements in KDE would you like to see?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Questions:
Q. The main reason someone would buy LindowsOS is to run Click N Run. However, browsing through its aisles, we see some very old versions of the software presented there. Gnumeric and other apps haven't been updated for a year or so. Additionally, lately we don't see much new software on CnR. Any insight on that?
Q. Is work being done to unify the looks of KDE and Gnome? Also, the last time I checked, Lindows was only coming by default with Gnome/GTK+ of the 1.4 era. Any plans to upgrade?
how can an OS completely dedicated to emulating another OS would ever be popular?
if copying Windows is your focus, isn't your OS already second-rate by design?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Unlike many CEOs, he'll give a plain-talk answer to a straight question.
Who wants to take bets that he'll give self-affirming, buzzword-laden, market-speak answers?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Lindows has made many inroads to desktop acceptance, despite the gripes the open source community has had with the concept.
That said, where do you see a break even point for Lindows financially?
Also, what is the reasoning in not allowing binary downloads? I would never consider shelling our cash for a GPL based product I had never test driven.
What one thing do you think can happen to make Linux a more desirable desktop over microsoft right now? Is there one feature or item or event that would 'convince' everyone to give Linux a try (minus 'bomb Redmond')?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Mr. Robertson,
What are your plans (if any) for helping support the rest of the linux community. If more contributions were made back to the OSS community, then I think people would come to respect Lindows much more. Of course, as a corporation, you are totally entitled to do what you want to do. But this is an area where many feel the best strategy is to not get ahead at the expense of others, but to extend a helping hand back to the community that gave you life.
Is this how Lindows is going to continue to work in the future? I think this is one "feature" of Win9x that would really be better to leave in the past.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The best way to get anything to the public at large is to sell it at Walmart. Does Walmart have any plans to sell Lindows machines in stores, or will it stay on the website?
The early pitch for Lindows was it was the Linux distribution that would run the major Windows applications. Later you stopped marketing it this way and instead decided to emphasise Click'n'Run and ease of use.
Why the change? Were the technical problems associated with Wine too great to overcome? Was it fear of legal action from Microsoft?
I would have thought there was a large potential market for Lindows as originally conceived. Why move away from that vision to something much less clearly differentiated from other Linux distributions?
Sailing over the event horizon
Dear Mr. Robertson,
Could you please update me on your efforts to patent your once-click-software-update solution?
If you are granted such a patent, do you plan on allowing the open source community free (beer/speech/both?) licensing?
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
Lindows is based off of the Debian code and uses apt-get to install software from the Click-n-Run repository.
What is in place to keep people from changing the apt-get sources from CnR to the Debian sources and install something like Synaptic (and getting newer, updated packages for free) instead of paying the $99/year (with a few execeptions)?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
The thing I hear over and over as to why people stick with Win-- is the relative lack of first run games. They're not talking about the free OSS games but rather major titles from the likes of EA and others. Is there anything you have up your sleeves to help convince these guys to port more games to Linux and I'm talking native ports, not WINE / WineX compatible ports. It seems that with the SDL toolkit, a lot of these DirectX games could be ported to Linux without a herculean effort. The world has changed significantly since Loki's stumble.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
How wold you describe Windows emulation in Lindows today? What do you expect for it in a year or two? Do you still expect Windows support to be an important distinguishing feature for Lindows?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Do you think the hostility toward Lindows that characterizes some members of the Linux "community" can be attributed to their desire that Linux remain a "geeks only" cult object?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Linux is great, but nothing is perfect... what do you feel is linux's SINGLE greatest weakness at the present? (And no, I won't believe you if you answer "the fact that everybody isn't running Lindows").
When you started, you put a lot of effort into Wine, sponsoring things like WineConf. That didn't work out, but Wine improves constantly, as the latest releases of CrossOver and WineX show. Do you think you'll ever return to it someday, or are you disillusioned with the whole thing?
Since the Lindows PCs have been selling for a while, your marketing and customer service folks must have gotten some kind of feedback from current or prospective users.
What are the things people ask for? What are some things general users would like to see in Lindows or Linux-based desktop distributions that aren't there yet?