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Is There An OS On My Hard Drive?
stm2 writes "Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their Fluoride). According to the PR, the OS can autodetect and configure itself on the host machine."
because now you get for free somethis you needed to go after
What?
At least it will be easier to explain to people why new hard drives need to be formatted. To get rid of Lindows.
Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water"
Great, so not only do they make a crappy OS, their also after my precious bodily fluids.
now you get for free somethis you needed to go after
:-/
that's how i tried explaining it to my girlfriend, but just like these hard drives, she didn't buy it either
is a poison.... What are you trying to tell us?
I'll save everyone some trouble, and get the obligatory usual comments over with now...
I, for one, welcome our new pre-installed overlords!
1. Have your OS pre-installed on HD's
2. ???
3. Profit!
Actually, click-n-run is probably their step 2. I wonder if it will work for them?
And yes, I know you can just add the debian sources and do an apt-get install packagename.
while i applaud lindows and seagate for this, I personally use Ark Linux arklinux.com which does the auto-login thing that lindows does but in a safer way. Plus the fact that arklinux is community based is a big plus as well. the way lindows runs as root is just wrong, arklinux created a program called kapabilities that makes it simple to give a user access to certain configuration things. plus its one of the few linux distros thats apt-rpm based. its really hard for me to weigh in on lindows. sometimes they seem like a smart and helpful company and sometimes they seem SCO/Caldera like. still, anything that gets more people using linux on the desktop is great to see.
Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water"
This is very funny. There is a long history of wackos equating floridation of drinking water with government mind control. Here is an example, which is very tame by the standards of the alternate-science crowd.
Gotta go, my alien gray masters are calling me by mind control satellite to their sub-antarctic base again!
There is a big chunk of people out there who aren't afraid to open up their own machines, but use Windows because they don't have enough Round Tuits to try Linux.
If Lindows is easy enough to give a go it might last for a few days before being scrubbed (doesn't play game X)... but then the idea that Linux systems can do things pretty well will stick in the back of the mind for the next time they have to assemble a 'second machine' for general use in the house.
Beep beep.
I can't think of a good reason that any of these situations would merit booting a default OS from a hard disk, rather than formatting it, and installing what you want.
The only people who might leave the Lindows OS on the hard disk are shops that build beige boxes, and don't want to burn a windows license to deliver a working computer. Maybe the mom and pop PC market is what they're after.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
First off, it's not MS Windows so it's not *that* bad. second, you can opt to just get a blank drive. Third, it's kinda convenient.
:P nobody has a gun to your head saying you need to buy Lindows pre-installed on a seagate drive. I'm certainly not, although if i was buying a seagate i'd consider it.
:)
so quitcher bitchin
Plus for consumers this'll be "wow, no configuration, just plug the new drive in and the OS is there?" it's going to be great. Might even cause another mini-migration from windows for people who decide to get these drives.
But i could be wrong.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
The first ten comments consisted of:
- 1 first post
- 5 complaints about the submitter's lack of English skills and/or the editors' failure to correct same
- 2 comments on how fluoride is not good for you
- 1 comment making a double entendre about "getting stuff for free"
- 1 Gentoo fanboy comment
- Exactly zero comments about the article itself
I predict that these proportions will be true for this article no matter how many comments it collects.
I think Robertson's at 6.7 deciJobs, and climbing.
...their "fluoride" causes a fatal exception in h2o.dll, and causes lungs.exe to be closed.
I've finally got a fan! Now what do I feed him?
Who cares if most people will wipe their drives? Some might not, and either way some people will find out about the existence of Lindows. I don't think Lindows is betting their company on this move, so there is no need to rip on them for being dumb. If a drive is going to ship, it might as well have something on it by default. And if its going to have something on it, why not Lindows? Seems like they got a deal, even though its not going to make a huge difference. I think this is a smart move, and props to Lindows being smart enough to do it. People are so anxious to call Lindows (the company) stupid that they are overreacting to a small move made by the company.
When does Kazaa partner with Western Digital to bring us hard drives preloaded with assorted music, movies and games?
They could do like NetZero does and advertise it as Internet SuperDuperDownload Accelerator. Download music and movies instantly! It's just a form of caching right? Right?
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
(1) Shut down computer.
(2) Install hard drive, connect power and IDE cables.
(3) Turn computer back on and make sure it autodetects the drive.
(4) Tear your hair out as the computer proceeds to boot Lindows instead of (FreeBSD/Windows/Linux/Plan9).
(5) Uninstall the hard drive, and sigh in relief as your old set-up proceeds to boot normally.
(6) Return the hard drive to the store, yelling and screaming until they agree not to charge you a restocking fee.
Why should it cost more? You don't think Seagate writes a crapload of bits to the drive during testing? You don't think they could see to it that the last pass leaves a certain combination of bits (Lindows) instead of some other combination of bits (1010101010.. or SEAGATE OWNERZ YOU!!!)
Anyway, even if there is a cost, it seems clear that Lindows is paying it. Lindows isn't going to sell more hard drives, if anything it will sell less since people don't need the uber-GB that an XP install requires. So if Seagate isn't getting anything out of it, there's no reason for them to increase the cost to customers and hurt themselves in the market.
Rather, it makes sense they are selling this otherwise empty space to whoever wants to use it. Lindows gets a change to make a convert. If nothing else, its free advertising. Hell, if I buy a drive that comes pre-loaded I'd probably check it out for curiousity sake.
It's a smart idea. I predict that other hard drive makes make similar deals. What if someone decided to load the drive full of DRM music that people could just click-n-buy? Think about it...
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
the way lindows runs as root is just wrong
It is possible to set up user accounts in Lindows. KUser, the KDE user manager tool, is available (renamed to "User Manager") and you can create users.
It doesn't work perfectly out of the box: you will need to manually add each user to the "dialout" and "dip" groups if you want Kppp to work, and the "Click-N-Run Installer" will ask for the root password each time a user logs in. (The solution to the latter problem is to disable the C-N-R Installer from auto-running).
Once you have created a non-root user, the KDE login manager will run and prompt for user name and password.
The above applies to Lindows 4.0 at least; I haven't really looked at other versions. (I wrote a review of Lindows 4 for Linux Journal.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It will now be possible to go to a store, buy pieces and have a working computer when you get home with no other work necessary. That's a good thing!! Segate sells a lot of retail drives. If it works out even a little bit for them maybe others will follow suit. I've heard ATI has MMC for Linux in-house somewhere...but that's a big step to sell linux in the retail box. Most mice & keyboards work in linux. Most networking equipment works with linux [heck most home routers RUN linux!] This is a perfect path to getting Linux market share
It's too bad BeOS didn't think of this first! After all, Robertson is making an end-run around the infamous MS bootloader license. Shops can sell pre-tested barebones systems...then conveniantly slip you a pre-formated Linux drive. They are just selling "upgrade" pieces. And they aren't selling Linux at all...the Manufacture just adds that as a "test" feature. Very, very clever.
OK.
So the biggest problem Linux faces on the Desktop is the Microsoft-sponsored stranglehold on the industry.
Not only are OEMs strongly discouraged from installing Linux, they are usually contractually obligated not to install anything else!
So, Mr. Cowpland, making the best of a *bad* situation, goes one back in the supply chain - to the hard disk manufacturers!
Wow. Good thinking! No OEM contracts! Product delivered, ready for use!
I know, 90% of these preinstalls are going to be nuked. So what. If Lindows gets 1%, given the cost of duplication on the drives, this is a smashing success.
And, what else is he going to do? Knock Lindows as the orphan child of Linux, but, like Red Hat, this is clearly a positive commercial influence.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The good news is that Lindows is built on Debian. And even better news is that the Lindows.com guys didn't rip out the APT tools. Lindows doesn't use them (they use their "Click-N-Run" stuff) but the tools are there.
/boot, a 256 MB swap partition, and the whole rest of the drive as a big ReiserFS partition, mounted as the root partition. I have not yet been able to build a kernel that can deal with the root ReiserFS; I keep getting the error "Unable to open initial console." I believe the problem is that it's trying to mount DevFS while the root partition is still mounted read-only, and I think the solution is to use an initrd (initial ramdisk). The 2.4.20 kernel that comes with Lindows 4 uses an initrd, and it of course works. I need to try building an initrd kernel soon.
It is actually possible to upgrade (or "side-grade" if you prefer the term) Lindows to just plain Debian.
Basically, you just edit sources.list to point to a Debian mirror near you. (Lindows has it pointing to the main Debian server; be a good net citizen and change that.) Then "apt-get update". Then blow away all packages that have "lindows" or "xandros" in the name, if you want that pure free-software feeling... or don't bother, if you don't mind a few Lindows packages floating around. "apt-get dist-upgrade", handle any conflicts APT can't suss on its own, and install anything you are missing. If you blow away the lindows* packages and xandros* packages, you will lose LILO and the kernel, so you will need to replace those.
Lindows by default sets up three partitions: a small
There will be an article about this on the Linux Journal website sometime soon... I'm not sure exactly when. I took a Lindows MobilePC and upgraded it to full Debian unstable; it now boots with GRUB and has a GNOME desktop, because that's what I prefer.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
They had a nice selection of scantily clad ladies in Lindows outfits, who were giving out snackfood. On the snackfood package was a picture of an octopus punching Bill Gates in the nads with 8 arms. No I am not kidding. It tasted quite good. I picked up my Lindows show-bag as well.
In the booth they had Lindows on everything with "Lindows approved" stickers pasted over the "Made for Windows XP" ones.
Everyone was trying to rm -rf / the PCs, but were failing quite miserably.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Most of the negative comments here are obvious, but I think Lindows should be applauded for this move. A version of Linux (even if it's one for newbies) has managed to find a new and unique distribution channel that Windows doesn't have and is unable to compete in.
I expect drives to have a brief burn-in / testing period at the manufacturer anyway, so it makes no difference to me what comes on it by default - all zeros or an OS. As long as I'm still able to low-level format / repartition / high-level format it.
Admit it: if you ever got such a drive (especially if the pre-installed Lindows option didn't add to the cost), you'd boot into Lindows at least once to check it out, wouldn't you? If you were building a machine for a friend or relative, you might even want to see how they got along with it for a few days before you nuked it and installed Windows. Am I right?
Is this a sneaky way to get a machine with Linux preinstalled? Can I now get a Dell box with a Seagate harddrive in it that has Lindows preinstalled? If so, this is pure genius.. it really makes you wish that Be had figured out this strategy instead of banging their head up against the OEM brick wall.
How we know is more important than what we know.
... am looking forward to 'Lindows Refund Day'
In Europe and the UK, there is a lot of discussion over adding fluoride to water. In Scotland, they've pretty much stopped adding it in most places. It's poisonous, and too much fluoride (like if you have fluoride in the water and use a toothpaste with fluoride, ie. nearly all of them) it will cause horrible damage to your teeth.
Also, some people are highly sensitive to fluoride. You can get non-fluoride toothpaste, but can you imagine the hassle it must be, having to use bottled water for things like brushing your teeth, making tea or coffee, and in fact damn near anything else where you might ingest some of the water?
After reading (and agreeing to) all the comments pointing out that this pre-installation totally misses any targeted audience, I think at the end of the day this might be just a strategy to inflate the number of "sold units" of lindows.
You know, much in the same way as it is argued that the real installed user base for Windows machines is actually lower, since OEM sales of boxen that are later re-formatted and Redhatized are also counted as Windows installations in industry statistics. So, every drive sold marks one unit of Lindows out there, whether it's DOA or not.
This is what it should do. Sit on an idle and protected partition on the hard drive. Allow Windows to be installed as usual. Then, after six months, or every time there is a BSOD, virus attack, new piece of hardware that needs the now unfindable installation CDROM, popup a little window saying:
Hi. I see that you're having some trouble
using your Windows operating system. Would
you like me to install Lindows so that all
your problems will disappear?
[OK] [Not yet] [Tell me more]
Ceci n'est pas une signature
These are the tactics that we accused Microsoft of when they were trying to push other browsers like Netscape and other OSes like Linux out of the market. I'm pretty convinced they work.
:-) I'm a lazy guy!
Give people for free the stuff that you want them to at least try once. They they have to DO THINGS to get rid of it or change it. People are lazy, so at least some won't.
As to where will this end up? Well the small white-box assembly shops might be tempted to use the Lindows install on the drive to burn-in the computer. And leave it on if the customer didn't order a MicroSoft install. So the end users might end up seeing it. Great.
Some people buy a new HD, and will install it as the first drive, move the old one over. Bingo!
I installed two machines last week. They came with Seagate drives. Had a Debian based installation already been present, I'd just have upgraded that.
Right at the bottom there is a lovely disclaimer....
Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way - in fact, we don't even really like them because they are suing us.
James