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Seattle Times Reviews Desktop Linux Distros
prostoalex writes "Seattle Times section on Personal Technology compares Xandros and Lindows as two alternatives to Windows for desktop computing. Their verdict: installation - excellent; OpenOffice - good enough; digital cameras, printers and other peripherals - excellent; CD burning - no problems; video playback - could be better (with more progress bars and support for Apple's formats); digital camcorders - poor; burning audio CDs - poor; Net access and Web browsing - no problems."
Whenever I burn audio CDs and CPU load or harddrive load jumps at least a bit up, the audio track gets broken, stuttering, breaks, noises...? It's not like buffer underrun, a small peak like at opening Xterm, less than 1/4s, is enough to cause problems!
Will CloneCD employ Realtime Linux extensions to prevent that? I'd like to see it!
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I like the table at the bottom of the article best.
Installation - last year @ 30 minutes versus today @ 5 minutes. I think it was closer to five minutes last year that that, but it is getting harder to remember the days of 45 minute installs. Look at how far we've come!
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That summary could be applied to just about any Linux distribution, not just Xandros and Lindows.
Interesting how in the "normal office" uses (i.e. OpenOffice, Net access and Web browsing) Linux is now seen as at least good enough.
From the article, I suspect the author is comparing installation of Win XP *without other apps* against installing Lindows/Xandros *with multiple bundled apps* - this would mean that Lindows/Xandros installs are actually even better than stated given that nobody installs Win XP without also installing other apps afterwards.
Personally, I've found that installing a "home" Windows PC takes about a day, by the time I install Windows, install service packs, critical patches, MS Office (including finding serial numbers) and sundry apps. With Knoppix or Mepis, it takes me about an hour to get to the same point (i.e install OS to disc, install netselect, find fastest host, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade). Furthermore, installing the Windows PC requires me to actually be sitting in front of the PC doing stuff for a sizeable amount of the time, whereas with the Linux distros I spend very little time actually in front of the PC itself.
Yes, but to make them work, you have to install some additional codec files which can't be distributed freely with the operating system because the license does not allow this.
Till the gaming industry supports windows, it seems unlikely to oust Windows from the Desktop computing market. Given that these alternatives offer the same functionality, the support for gaming would definitely be where they loose out. And most people(non-slashdot readers) wouldn't want to take the trouble of installing 2 operating systems.
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Schrodinger 's Cat : wanted dead and alive
What I would like to know is... if this average joe would also complain about difficulty in burning an audio CD with Nero. Maybe the only CD burning software he's tried is Windows Media Player or Roxio Easy CD Creator or something. Or maybe he just uses Nero Express (the easy to use front end of Nero). What I would like to really know is what his reason for difficulty is. Maybe he just wants a simple "wizard" like application that asks him questions. Disclaimer: I've never used K3b, but I hear it's as easy as breathing.
The opening paragraph:
"Don't you wish some days you could just toss that Windows computer out the, er, window and try something else? Something where viruses and worms weren't everyday occurrences, where you didn't have to suffer through lockups and crashes every few days? Where the screen wasn't cluttered with pop-up ads and strange spyware programs, snooping on your every move?"
I find it interesting that the newspaper on Microsoft's home turf, where Microsoft pumps hundreds of millions (if not billions) into the local economy, feels free to speak so negatively about MS software. If Seattle isn't full of passionate Microsoft devotees, what city is?
If anyone here reads the Seattle Times, is this typical?
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
And why shouldn't they?
Let me reply to this as a Mac user. When OS X was being rolled out (over?) the Mac using faithful, it was understood that while the CLI was present, it's use (and understanding) should be regarded as a feature, but never never to be required. To require the use of the CLI for any task was to be considered a failure of the software HCI design.
No software that's installed by default, and in fact, almost no software that wasn't originally Unix based, uses the CLI as a primary tool of interaction.
Now, maybe Linux doesn't want to be as "dumbed down" as OS X--fine. But until Linux is able to be run for day to day operation without the use of the CLI at all it will not gain mass marketshare acceptance. Either live with niche desktop usage, or change the way the apps work so that no CLI is required.
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$tar -xvf
Unmentioned in the article, but central to Xandros' value is the Xandros File Manager, which was written from scratch by Xandros. It is very good: every useful file association has been pre-configured so that even a newbie can simply click on a file to do something useful. It just works. And, BTW, it includes very simple CD burning. I'm using Xandros, so are more of the PCs in my company, and it is stable, fast, and professional.
It's commercial - $40 - but that is really worth paying for software of this quality. Xandros really continues the old Corel tradition of excellent software at a low price.
Switching from Xandros to Lindows is painful: Lindows just looks cheap and nasty. And every other distro has the same hurdle: they require technical skill to install.
I've seen Xandros installed and used by a person who had never before in his life used a PC, and watched me doing it once. It is that good.
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