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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."
Audio CD's are no problem with applications such as K3b. Heck, even regular cdrecord burns audio cd's without a problem.
Seriously, Audio CDs - Poor ????
K3B is the best piece of buring software that I have ever used.... makes nero seem pretty shocking....
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
isn't xandros capable of integration into the existing windows directory and can use it to authentificate the users ? That would be a great thing to be able the authentificate users with their windows passwords (without using pam_smb)
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
I think saying 'burning audio CDs - poor' misstates the verdict in the article, by the way. He had trouble finding how to copy .cda files directly, though burning from mp3s was fine. Odd, since you can just grab them right out of Konqueror IIRC, but still a long way from 'poor'.
"video playback - could be better (with more progress bars and support for Apple's formats)"
how is mplayer and xine not sufficient? mplayer has OSD progress bars even and quicktimes movies has never been a problem.
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.
I had the chance to play with a Lindows machine in the last month, and it left me impressed with the simplicity, but concerned about the mentality it's going to help keep breeding.
While not all windows users are the "luser" type, there's a massive amount of Joe Average users who can't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag. Linux has continued to grow for more than a decade now, and has been doing well without these windows style distributions, and leaving behind a group of users with a wealth of knowledge that leaves any Joe Average in the dust.
What I'm concerned about is... with an OS like Windows, why would anyone need to learn to troubleshoot? They can jump from one candy handholding OS to another without going through any kind of knowledge gathering to do so. It's keeping up a culture of ignorance among computer users. That's a legacy I think will come back and bite us on the butt.
It can't really be argued that most of the gadgets such as palm's, digital cameras, iPods etc. work easily with linux. Most of them can be made to work with fiddling and some software that someone has hacked together, but at the end of the day the hardware vendors have more resources to throw at the software, and inevitably produce better software that works well with their product. Until they start producing software for linux, its simply too difficult for the average computer user to get things working on a linux desktop. Take my iPod for instance, with windows I just put the CD in, click install and its done - with a GUI that is _far_ better than gtkpod's (although gtkpod is great), whereas with linux you have to install different things, compile them in some cases, and its just much harder work.
THomas
In using linux I've noticed that we have real problems with installing and uninstalling software (just image uninstalling mozilla on many platforms). This would have to be sorted before Linux could be used by the general public.
I hostly feel how ever that once this and other areas such as connecting devices have been delt with Microsoft have a big problem on there hands. Some projects that could sort the
installation/uninstalltion problem include autopackage zero-install and A-A-P
Why were only Xandros and Lindows reviewed? While I don't have a problem with Lindows, unlike most linux users. I think open source linux has better distros available then those two.
;)
My problem with the article is the possibility that a linux newbie might buy Lindows without trying Fedora, SuSE or SlackWare. What's the point of buying a Windows clone just so you can say you switched to Linux?
Although if Lindows were to change its name to something more respectable I might consider trying it out.
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.
--
Schrodinger 's Cat : wanted dead and alive
"Fortunately", the mis-conception of games being something only for kids is just that: a mis-conception. On the bright side, it helps keep politicians in the business of screaming about how _M_ rated games are some conspiracy to turn 12 year olds into serial killers, because surely noone in the _M_ age bracket would buy a game. But that's the only "bright" side there is to that mis-conception. Actual studies show that the average age for gamers is more like in the mid-to-late twenties nowadays. Like any bell curve, that extends both ways a lot. There are 50+ years old people in there too. (E.g., my father plays Counter Strike.) And that's not even taking into account the millions who play Solitaire or Minesweeper some online web-based Backgammon game or such. Those usually won't say they're hardcore gamers, but guess what? They're still playing a game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm not too sure why they selected Xandros or Lindows over Mandrake for such a review.
Unlike either of the two, Mandrake is composed of 100% FLOSS, is freely available, and it simply "kicks ass".
In fact, I'm some what insulted they chose lindows at all. Lindows is a rather craptacular distro, with super annoying marketing practises, and a high yearly fee for people to get additional software.
Sunny Dubey
What I'd really like to see was a free linux distro among the tested versions. I have no beef with commercial linux distributions, but I'll never use one myself. It would be much easier for me to spread the word of the wonders of linux, if there was a free linux that would score as high as these two apparently does.
What I see here is two windows clones based on linux. If linux is so much better than windows, why try so hard to behave like windows?
So, what I'd really like to see is a Linux version that's easy to install, works out of the box, and stands on its own two legs. To the best of my knowledge, there's no such distro yet. Or what? I'd love it for someone to tell me that I'm wrong and point me in the right direction
Underholdning.info
They're right on the back of the CD jewel case, usually on an orange sticker about 3 inches across.
creation science book
The whole point of this article is to show that these linux distributions are fully capable of carrying out every day end-user tasks, and that there currently isn't a problem with worms, viruses, or spyware on Linux. So it most definitely is a compelling reason to give Linux a try, your embracing of a hellish computer experience of patching and babying your computer as opposed to doing real work notwithstanding.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
I think that the time for linking to every article that talks about Linux or compares it with Windows has passed. Linux is becoming mainstream. The time has come to focus about other aspects of it on slashdot.
In the first paragraph he suggests that worms, viruses and popups are somehow the fault of and only restricted to Windows, and using Linux will solve all those problems.
This is not the reason to switch operating systems, it is a reason to use better software, patch your system, have better security practices etc. Articles that start with this proclamation don't warrant reading any further.
Given that this article was written for the average computer user, I'd say you're dead wrong. My housemates all run Windows (98/XP) and they have constant problems with viruses and spyware. I help them where I can, but even with me around, they, as your average users, get screwed by it.
I moved my girlfriend and my family over to GNU/Linux, and they've not had any problems. All of a sudden they don't suffer from worms, viruses, popups and adware.
Average users simply do not protect themselves from crap like worms, viruses, popups and spyware, for whatever reasons. So you see, it's a perfectly valid reason to switch for many people. If Windows can't protect average users from that crap, average users should be looking elsewhere.
> The good folks at RealNetworks have an opportunity
> to become a de facto standard but they should run
> right out of the box
I never thought to see "good folks" and RealNetworks so close in one sentence...
When I used partion magic on it, it got confused (or something) by the complicated set up and screwed up the partion table, making the system unbootable. Fortunatly, I had backups of the data, but not the entire disc, so I could restore my documents but had to re-install the OSes, resulting in a new system layout (one without BeOS).
Let's face it...if a desktop operating system doesn't come with a great thumbnailing preview app, excellent support for streaming media formats, and the ability to survive having the keyboard and mouse suddenly being disconnected to have semen cleaned out, then it really isn't up to scratch. In future, I'd propose to reviewers evaluating desktop Linux systems a few extra categories:
Disabled accessibility: Many operating systems have features designed to make them easier to use for the blind, deaf, or just plain stupid. But can the interface be easily manipulated using one hand only? Can the video player be precisely controlled with only a few fingers, while the other hand is wrapped around the user's own few inches?
Web brower pop-up enabling and tracking: While most users claim to clamour for browsers which block annoying pop-up ads, in reality they crave what these pop-ups are offering: free porn. Does the desktop OS under review offer a browser platform which makes following these pop-up nuggets of jizz-candy easy to follow and track? Can the browser in fact follow its own trail of pop-ups, closing those containing circular links, and launching the download manager when a rare find of actual porn is found?
I'm sure the Slashdot community will have plenty of other ideas to contribute. I look forward to hearing the community's response!
camstream is a nice collection of tools for webcams and other video-devices that uses video4linux2. Combining it with some Image Processing Library(gimp?) and a fancier gui should make it a decent enough tool.
Good thing you never have to patch linux to keep it secure and up to date, right? I don't get why all the linux people are always acting like you just install it and its set for the rest of its lifecycle. While it may be inherantly more secure, and un-patched box is still an un-patched box; linux's saving grace is that its average user is typically more savvy than your average windows user is.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Isn't all this pulse checking getting boring already?
Hi we're a bunch of nerdy Linux geeks and Linux is rilly rilly kewl and 1337 to install (which I guess as an end consumer you're going to do a LOT of as a matter of course in your normal purchase cycle?)
So trust us, here's a bunch of distros that are all only about 40% harder to install and run than Windows and when you're done they will run more or less 80% of what you originally intended Windows to run more or less 90% as well.
Worms and viruses and popups etc are THE main ways that windows manages to eat away at productivity.
The authors suggestion that worms, viruses and popups are totally a windows thing, and that they can very effectively be remedied by upgrading to a more thoughtfully designed OS such as linux is in no way false, and definatly suggest that a well written article follows.
Being able to avoid these annoyances is definatly a MAJOR reason, (but not the only reason) to abandon windows and switch to a more serious, productive work environment such as linux.
Remaining with windows, and "using better software", "patching your system" and having "better security practices" does make partial sense to me, but if you can recognize some benefit in abandoning IE and Outlook in favor of Mozilla or something (i.e. getting it half right), then whats preventing you from recognizing that this is the same idea behind abandoning windows in favor of linux?
Apart from you being a windows fanboy that is.
Do you realize that its the open source development model behind free software such as Mozilla, that makes it so solid and reliable dont you? You do realise that its the peer review process thats lacking in Outlook, IE, and windows itself thats to blame for the shoddy design and poor security of these programs?
Save yourself hassles now, ditch windows, it really is a crap OS.
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 10,000 Microsoft employees cancel their subscriptions in protest to their communist tendancies the next day.
It's a joke. Laugh.
How well did they rate "Using non-standard hardware." Including printers, laptops, and virtually unknown brands of cdroms, ethernet devices, win modems (Ok maybe this one doesn't matter much anymore), windows keyboards (how much function can you get out of those functions), etc.
I'd like to know how well speed step performs in linux. Can a laptop hibernate if it needs to? On my i8k in Mandrake it allows either battery or external power. If I plug in / detach the cord, the computer freezes (although the battery does kick in because whatever was on screen stays on screen). I can only assume everything worked by the high ratings given. Also I can assume from the ratings that the system instantly recognizes when any new USB/Firewire/PCMCIA device is hotswapped, and in most cases can identify it. Right? I mean, I did see the word "excellent" so I think it should at least be equal with Windows.
You know, this is a common argument. However, one from someone who obviously doesn't have the facts straight.
1. How compatible is it with games? Many games are made for WindowsXP. You expect OS developers to make them compatible? Why not ask the companies that make these games why they don't make a Linux version. Many companies do make Linux versions of games without a problem. It shouldn't be our job to make software built for one OS for another OS.
2. When will Microsoft make Ximian Evolution compatible with Windows? Oh, they won't? And why not? Because Evolution is not developed by them, and they don't care to port it.
3. Running Linux doesn't mean you stop playing games. I play lots of games: Unreal Tournament, Neverwinter Nights, Enemy Territory. But I prefer playing games on my PS2, as I have a bigger monitor, and a couch to sit on.
So continue using Windows, and continue making excuses why you don't want to switch. If you don't want to switch, by all means, don't. But don't pretend that it has something to do with your "games" that you must have, and place blame on those that shouldn't be responsible. Rather than demanding game companies be compatible with Linux, continue to support the lack of choices.
AC Morons...piss me off.
Jason Lotito
I was like, burning some audio cds from my mp3s.. and it was like BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP, and I was like, what happened? And it went BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP again and the next thing I knew, my mp3s were gone. They were some really good mp3s.
Best death? What, die from a naked lady avalanche?
"If you are not a joe user but you still want a good destkop OS to get your work done you should try the power of Gentoo."
To start with the punchline: actually that should IMHO read "if you're a masochist and want the computer equivalent of a kick in the teeth, you should try the power of Gentoo." Yep, that's some real power in that kick.
"Its fast, modular, not too hard to install (just read the docs, it holds your hand) and free."
Heh.
I was recently persuaded by some co-workers to try Gentoo on my Athlon 64 system. Now the thing that should have made me think twice is that said co-workers are hardy fronteer men. Real Men (TM) who edit source code in vi, will only configure anything with vi, and use a text mode browser. In fact, they start X and KDE to get a news ticker, then fire up xterm and lynx to browse the web.
I guess at home they sleep on a heap of rusty nails too, because using a bed would be too much like those lusers who want comfort. I guess the kind of people who, back in their age, had to walk 5 miles barefoot through the snow to school. Uphill _both_ ways. And they _liked_ it.
So I try it too. The first impression is that the install CD dumps me to a text mode prompt, with only a text file and links2 as a text-mode browser to download and compile the rest of it.
_That_ primitive. In fact, the only way to be more primitive would be to make me feed punched paper tape into the computer and toggle switches on the front pannel to make it load. Like in the good old days in the 70s.
The philosophy of Gentoo seems to be "why automate something, when it can be done by hand in text mode?"
E.g., it has a tool to find the best mirrors, but they don't even let you use it until later. First you have to use the text mode browser to go to their site and manually find a mirror to download stuff.
E.g., it has the tools to configure the network, but it's too stupid to launch them automatically. No, I have to read that text and launch them by hand.
E.g., if it knows that I'll have to create this and that directory and chroot, why the heck can't it provide a nice front-end that does that for me?
E.g., if it has 3 syslog demons total that it can install, and a recommended one... why can't that be on a nice page with 3 radio buttons? Why do I have to launch scripts by hand just to choose 1 option out of 3? No, seriously. I want to know.
The whole thing except maybe configuring and compiling the kernel could jolly well be automated. But no, let's be Real Men (TM) and do that by hand instead. Just having a user-friendly ncurses front-end wouldn't be macho enough, I guess.
And what's the point of the whole exercise spanning several days of recompiling everything? Just to be able to put my very own "-O3" in the compiler flags? (Which half the ebuilds will tone back down to -O2 or -O anyway.)
Why not just get Mandrake which is already compiled like that for you?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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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