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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."
What keeps a normal Lindows user from editing their /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get installing away?
Is there some kind of design limitation in Lindows, obscure config file layout to keep these people clickin and paying?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Interesting how the author mentions community. Does a great software program really need a community? Can't there just be a great product without community? I assume good software will automatically attract a community, but perhaps this is not the case anymore. Maybe it is just as important to produce a great product as it is to promote it.
I understand Lindows better than OpenLindows. The WalMart bargin basement box has an interface that the average computer user (the much maligned Joe Sixpack) is familiar with. To them Windows == Computers (yes, I know this is a Bad Thing).
OpenLindows, however, seems to require as much effort as installing any other Linux distribution.
So what niche does it cater for, exactly?
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Actually, he has it almost right.
/.ers for suggesting that they redirect their /etc/apt/sources.list to Debian. It's a reasonable approach.
There's nothing stoping you from running apt-get on Lindows, except lack of knowledge. What you end up with is Lindows with some Debian packages installed. Not Debian.
Personally, I don't think that any distro that encourages people to run as root deserves to live, but that's the main fault of Lindows. And that was a conscious choice. They did include apt-get, so there's no problem with upgrading from Debian. So you can't either fault Lindows for crippling their distro, or fault
FWIW: I currently use LibraNet Linux. Another distribution that's essentially Linux. And I have more Debian links in my apt sources than I do LibraNet. In fact, it installed itself that way. But I have the LibraNet sources listed first, which means that if there's a version on the LibraNet site, that's the one that gets picked.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Excellent point, however your explanation of a misconception has a possible misconception.
You say "Olde English," which if one takes to mean "Old English," would refer to the English spoken by the people in Britain before 1066.
Although the word wherefore may have had Old English origins (the OED indicates that it does not), Romeo and Juliet is Elizabethan English.
After all, every machine I've seen my peers purchase from WalMart.com or Tiger gets reformatted and Windows 98 installed on it from the old CD they have lying around. For $199 it's tough to bit...and Lindows blows.
I have purchased a few of them, installed SuSE 8.2 and made Hylafax servers out of them. Blah.
ER
there is a nice copyright at the bottom of the page, and the ENTIRE site is ripped straight from oscommerce.com
hmm WAY TO GO...
Yes, and? The question is, "wherefore art thou?" -- in other words, "why are you?" -- which fits pretty well. Why does the site exist, practically? Wasn't that the point?
/. replace the u-Umlaut in "wofur" with a regular 'u'? ..."wofuer," then. :)
Btw, wherefore is probably related to the German "wofur" meaning "what for," as in "what's that for?" -- similar enough to "why does that exist?".
Hm. Why does
There are two things that bother me about people's misconceptions of Romeo and Juliet. The first is the line "Wherefore art thou, Romeo," and I can deal with it, because it's still better than people who don't understand the concept of contractions of homonyms.
The second is that people still think it's a heartwarming love story. It's not. It's a tragedy about the destruction of two feuding houses -- two families, too old to produce any more children, who lose all their kin as a result of this pairing. Whether lovesick Romeo (who immediately forgets the girl he had previously pined for when he meets a new chick who is WAY too young for him) and dutiful Juliet are truly in love is up to the interpretter, though I'd have to say in true deconstructionist spirit that there's no way. But if it were really about their "love," the story would have ended with their deaths. It continues...not merely as denoument, but to deliver the message: foolish feuding only leads to tragedy.
It's an anti-mob play, same as Julius Caeser. There's nothing romantic in the second act at all, just a lot of foolish teenage sentiment and real adult grief. Therefore, a phrase like "we're starcrossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet," has always seemed insultingly ironic to me. Except when Milhouse said it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju