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

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!"

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.

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 )

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.