OpenLindows.com: Wherefore Art Thou?

Joe Barr writes "I ran across a curious website recently: OpenLindows.com. The name alone intrigued me. It gave rise to speculation about a weird mix of free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech alternative to the $99/year Click-N-Run software subscription offered by LindowsOS, the most Windows-like/proprietary Linux distribution out there. This is a report on what I found, and perhaps even more importantly, what I didn't."

Comments

sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wherefore" means "why," not "where." When Shakespeare wrote, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" he was saying, "Why are you 'Romeo?'" As in, "Why did you have to be born the son of my father's enemy?"

Basic literacy, you know?

Re:sheesh

[kst]

It's a pity that people think the word 'where' means 'where' instead of 'why' these days.

Yes, 'where' means 'where', and 'why' means 'why'.

'Wherefore' is a different word. You can tell by the extra 4 letters at the end.

No, it's not commonly used these days; probably the vast majority of uses are quoting that line from "Romeo and Juliet". ("art" and "thou" aren't very common either, but people don't seem to have much trouble with them.)

If you're interested (or even if you're not), the word "wherefore" is closely related to "therefore", which is still in common use.

I'm not going to argue that anyone who doesn't know what "wherefore" means is illiterate, but don't you think knowing what is means is better than not knowing what it means?

Re:sheesh

[rleibman]

Unfortunately I can't take take credit for it. Barry Kraft (OSF's dramaturg and a leading bard scholar) mentioned it on passing at a lecture I attended. R&J is not originally Shakespeare's, the story goes much further and even some of the text, so it is conceivable that one of those sources had something that made more sense.

why is there a need for this?

[sujan]

dpkg + synaptic achieves pretty much what lindows is trying to market with click n' run. Save the outrageous charge to install free software, of course.

Wherefore != Where

[RimmerExperience]

The article points to the lack of an Open Lindows community (e.g. 'where is it'?). 'Wherefore' in Olde English...e, however, means 'why' or 'for what reason'.

Wherefore [realdictionary.com]

(Juliet laments "why are you Romeo", not "where are you Romeo?")

Re:Wherefore != Where

[rsidd]

To all those who argue for dictionaries incorporating wrong meanings because people use them thus, let me point out this very eloquent article.

For the language-impaired, "wherefore" has the same relationship to "therefore" as "where" has to "there". Let's keep things somewhat orderly here -- unless you argue that Juliet, spying Romeo, would say "Ah, therefore's Romeo!"

Re:OpenLindows.com?

[Anonymous Coward]

n00b, lindows is based on debian.

Re:For us Non-Lindows people

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can plaw right ahead. That's what a lot of the thrashing in the forums is about -- windows people trying to understand how to do exactly what you just described.

this is what the lindows.com community liason said

[atari2600]

From the article


The skinny
by LindowsBrian on 2003.08.27 15:07 (#67071)
User #183638 Info

I just contacted Joe about an hour ago and explained to him our take on this article and with Linux news in general. He was nice enough to send a very prompt reply requesting that I post here, so here goes nothing.

First of all, this article isn't FUD, as a couple of our "hardcores" seem to be claiming. I apologize for that, but I love their spunk. ;-)

I'm actually very glad to have seen this article written as Peter, the owner of LindowsDownload.com and OpenLindows.com has been very, very helpful to us in the past and has created a great site that deserves recognition.

To keep this fairly short and as interesting as possible, I'll just sum up some things real quick instead of waxing philisophical.

First off, a minor correction to the article.

1.) Lindows Plus (CNR Memberhsip) is $49.95, not $99, although it once was. Then it included commercial software as well. LindowsOS and Lindows Plus together are only $89 now.

And to respond to a few comments here:

We don't charge for the free software - We charge for the delivery service. For any Linux company to have a shot at making money, you almost have to go the services route. We also offer deep discounts on Commercial software that you can't legally obtain for free-as-in-beer.

We Do give back to the community. Our largest contribution came in the way of Wine. We contributed code as well as nearly half a million dollars. For more info:

http://www.lindows.com/contributions

Getting back to the article, we are not in any way affiliated with LindowsDownload.com, LindowsUser.com, LindowsClub.com, or OpenLindows.com, but I do have what I consider to be a good relationship with the owner.

We don't try to hide the fact that sites like this is exist in order to gain more revenue from CNR. If we wanted to do that, we'd simply make it impossible to use APT, and we don't - Apt is fully functional in LindowsOS and for those more technically inclined, they are more than welcome to use it instead of CNR if it meets their needs.

Most users of other Linux Distros have different needs and different mindsets than our users. Our users want to be able to install software at an affordable price with one-click of the mouse. They don't care if it's GPLed Software, BSD-Style software, commercial software... They simply don't care. So yes, we do market differently than most Linux companies because we are different than most Linux companies - We're going after the desktop space the MS currently owns.

I'm sure we've done some things along the way that aren't in line with most Linux companies and have upset alot of you, but I assure you we do care about the community, we give back to the community, and are currently working with some members of the Debian Community personally.

Brian Thomason
Lindows.com Community Liaison

P.S. Feel free to email be at brian.thomason@lindows.com or shoot me an IM on AIM at LindowsBrian

Re:Article summary

[jared_hanson]

You're summary hit the nail on the head, and you didn't even read the entire thing!

I expect more stories like this in the future:

Joe Smith sets up a website. No one knows about it, but I happened to stumble across. I take that back, it looks like his grandma posted something here a couple of months back. He links to some weird site.

Man, how did this make Slashdot.

Re:For us Non-Lindows people

[Craig Nagy]

RTFC C=Comments

We don't try to hide the fact that sites like this is exist in order to gain more revenue from CNR. If we wanted to do that, we'd simply make it impossible to use APT, and we don't - Apt is fully functional in LindowsOS and for those more technically inclined, they are more than welcome to use it instead of CNR if it meets their needs.

But.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are when are they going to fix the BIG security hole in Lindows, running as root by default! Its a time bomb waiting to happen. If there is going to be a LinBlaster, then Lindows will get it first.

Before you all scream "TYPE IN A CONSOLE USERADD USER", try telling that to your mum. All she wants to know is how to run frozen bubble, so therefore I sandboxed mine in Mandrake, secure, and idiotproof.

clarifications

[pistooli]

:-) openlindows.com is just a hobby where is can put my own applications... lindowsdownload.com is just a small place where you can get binaries for lindows os. nothing less, nothing more... cheers - pistooli ( a long time GNU/Linux and debian user )

Where do they get the titles anyway?

[Frank O. File]

Whence did the title of this story come? I pity whomever tries to use rarely-used inquisitives in English. "Wherefore" essentially means "why" (it's actually more like "for what reason" but that's roughly "why"). Hence when Juliet asked "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" she asked (in modern parlance) "Why are you Romeo?" She was upset that he had to be born of the sworn enemies of her family. She was *not* asking where Romeo was at that moment. So the question is, what did the poster mean by "Openlindows.com: Wherefore art thou? Either he's really smart and means by this to ask why such a thing exists ("why are you" ~ "why do you exist") or he doesn't know what "wherefore" means and just wants a catchy title. I bet it's the latter. So the question is, wherefore exists such an editor as to use this title? By the way, openlindows sounds like a really good idea to me - it allows an easy way for lindows users (presumably less knowledgeable about software than most linux or unix users) to get acquainted with the idea of open source software and development. Sure, most of the users won't be developing themselves, but that's true for linux anyway.

Re:For us Non-Lindows people

[elgaard]

Normal Lindows users don't apt-get. CNR is simper to use than synaptic, kpackage, dselect, apt-get etc.

Technically the answer is versions and dependencies. I experienced Lindows 3 preinstalled on the laptop (http://www.agol.dk/elgaard/lindows.html). The Lindows specific programs were all cleanly installed as Debian packages, which make upgrading with apt safe and simpler. However the installed packages were an interesting mix of Debian/KDE/OO versions. Many programs were backported. I was not able to come up with a sources.list that matched what was installed and what I wanted to install. This means you get a lot of conflicts. You can resolve those, but then you end up updating _a lot_ of packages, and loosing most of the extra Lindows packages. It still works, but there really isn't much point in doing it compared to installing a fresh Debian, unless you have a preinstalled Lindows computer without floppy or CD drive.

OpenLindows packages on the other hand matches the installed Lindows packages. I started trying out OpenLindows. I downloaded OO from Openlindows, put it on a CF card, met my girlfriend with the Lindows laptop on the way to a meeting, put the CF card in the laptop (it has a CF slot), apt-get install openoffice, and it was working.

The laptop now runs debian unstable (except for Netscape), but that is just because I could do it. I liked a lot of things in Lindows (not the root thing) and $49/year (per family i think) could be worth it as long as you are not locked in---You have a way out (apt-get) if you decide it is no longer worth it.

Re:Why is Linux so anti-Lindows?

[biggj]

You have a really good point. I was there for a long time. I started with DOS, then Windows 3.1, made the jump to apple for a few years and then came back to Windows when W2K came out. For the last year or two I have installed and reinstalled various different version of RH and Mandrake, along with attempting to install PPCLinux (a RH distro). Each time I would be okay for a few days, and then I would find some major thing I couldn't do that I needed to... and back to Windows I went.

When RH 9 came out, I was really hesitant to try it as my main desktop, so installed it on my extra machine (I have two at work). There I messed with it for a while, making sure that I could do everything I wanted. There are tons of GUI tools built into both KDE and GNOME. Along with ton's of help groups.google.com. After a few weeks, I decided I was ready for the switch.

I have been using RH9 with Ximian (mod of GNOME) as my desktop (which you have to install separately). I have KDE installed so that I can use some of there apps for burning and media and such. I have Crossover Office installed to run Excel and Word. I will admit I am on my second install, don't know why, but the first one got hosed (I think it had something to do with recompiling glibc). But since the second install, I have been fine. There isn't anything I can't do that I could on Windows. It a bit faster, and I had no trouble with the worms that were floating around.

A couple things I can say are:

1) installing with a flat Workstation/Server/etc. install doesn't typically give you ever thing you need.

2) the groups are you friend. Every question you can think of has been asked.

While Redhat may not be the best distro (I personally couldn't say), there are a ton of people using it, therefore there is tons of support for it.

That's my 2 cents ... (** flame away **)

Lindows does not run as root anymore

[David Jao]

Make Lindows run as something other than root, ludicrous to run as root with Linux.

Let's please put this myth to rest. This is the third time this month that I have posted to correct this misimpression.

Lindows used to run everything as root, but current versions of Lindows don't run everything as root anymore. You have the option to add regular users during installation, and the installation encourages you to do so.

Just like in redhat.

Just like in debian.

I'm not advocating Lindows by any means (I don't even like their product), but I do think it is important to get the facts correct.