Slashdot Mirror
Buy Lindows, Get Fedora and Mandrake Too?
tacarat writes "Lindows has an interesting deal going on right now. If you go to Linuxshootout.com, you can get Linspire/Lindows 4.5, Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 2 or a mere $29.95 download or $39.95 for the 8 CD set. Yahoo! News covers this story. Quoting Michael Robertson,'Our emphasis on Linspire is ease of use -- making Linux quick and easy to install and use,' he said. 'Other products may have a different focus. That doesn't mean they aren't great products, just that their focus may be different. Every new Linux computer helps the Linux desktop industry, regardless of what company's product you choose'. Also, 'We want to encourage side-by-side comparisons of the latest Linux products.' Interesting strategy. Will their sales go up because people are buying Lindows plus the other two distros, or will it be the other way around?"
Their intentions seem well, and I think it's a great example of how the Linux community, even between 'competing' distros, tries to help the movement as a whole.
I know nothing
If you check my ebay auction, I have sensitive and important information on how to get a FREE download of Fedora Core 2 and Mandrake Linux 10! That's right!
For only $4.99 + $2.00 service charge, I'll email you a very secret link, not found anywhere near www.redhat.com or www.mandrake.com.
Or... something...
I think that anything that furthers Linux deployment on the desktop is a good thing. Whether or not this will have that effect is doubtful.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
>Linspire/Lindows 4.5, Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 2
and extra cheese please.
Andrej
This isn't a terrible plan if you a truly confident in your product. I think we've seen that Robertson is confident in Linspire, and although he may be controversial, I think he's done a lot to promote Linux. Promotion is not a bad thing, and from my experience, Linspire is not a bad introductory distro, so this is probably a good thing.
When you can encourage consumers to compare your product with others of similar caliber, it must mean you feel you're doing some things right yourself. An interesting move, at the very least.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
... if you check their Shootout list their motives seem to be less than friendly towards the other distros...
Bill Claybrook vice president at market research firm Harvard Research Group, said he can't see the point to Lindows' three-in-one packaging. "Who is going to pay money to download three Linux distributions?"
...
Retail-box is also useless because one order mandrake and fedore CD from chapbytes.com and host of other websites for less $$
Looks like lindows is having hard time selling their *own* product
I think Robertson's shooting himself in the foot here. Lindows is stripped down so much that probably only the extreme newbie (as in computer newbie, not so much Linux newbie) will find it suitable. The other two allow a bit more breathing room.
He better hope that the people who buy this package try Lindows first and decide not to install Mandrake or Fedora Core otherwise there won't be too many CNR subscriptions coming his way.
In summary, he's going for the wrong market. Stick to bundling it with cheap Wal-Mart PCs, Michael.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Moron.
apt-get is still in there. You only need to pay if you WISH to use Click-N-Run.
If you know how to use apt-get, then use it. If not, and want an easy graphical way to install software and see value in the service, then pay for it.
Sheesh.
Ditch the Linshit/spire/whatever, drink the beer, and install the two linux distros. Trust me, you will be happier in the long run.
In fairness, it looks like The "Click-N-Run" is $49 initially for one year. Not sure what the renewal costs, but I think you just buy another one year licence.
Apt-get is free and great for experienced users, but it can be tough for new users to understand. Packages aren't always organized cleanly, and there is lots of old kruft on the Debian tree (How many text editors would a non-techie need?).
I've easily spent more then $49/year of my personal time dealing with problems from Apt-get.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
The site is produced by Lindows, and the bias is obvious. What makes me laugh even more is the example shootout with the "magic eraser" that makes it clear that they think Lindows is the best distro available. There is no talk about compensating the Fedora and Mandrake products, and there is only minimal support included. If a site doesnt clearly display such an important bias, I normally write it off (just like MartinLutherKing.org ... yet another example of where a (very important ) bias is not discussed)
I agree in that this seems to be a great idea. However, it would be interesting to see the "comprehensive" checklist they've included with that bundle. Notice how the screenshots on the Web site only show pictures for Linspire.
I think it's clear that Michael Robertson believes in Linux. I don't think he intends to compete with other distros in a dishonest fashion. Lindows are clearly entitled to use this bundle to promote Linsipre not only over Windows but over said other distros... I just wonder how are they doing it? (If they are doing that to being with)
In any event, it's a great marketing trick. Hope they manage to attract enough customers with it!
The revolution will not be televised.
The Gentoo folk would have liked to issue a statement but were unavailable when the story went to print because they were too busy compiling.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
From the site: "Pit the best Linux products against each other!" Okay ... so can I get a CD package with Slackware, Debian and Gentoo on it? /runs away from inevitable distro war
Seriously, I wonder why there's no comparison of other desktop/newbie oriented distros, such as Xandros and Lycoris? Seems like that's the real competition to Linspire.
Then there's the supposed comparisons in their "shootout", which are just opinion in the top section, while the middle and bottom section are just outright lies.
Kinda scummy, in my opinion.
Can anyone explain to me why I would want to give someone a distro that runs the root user as the system default (a.k.a. windows baggage).
In fact, I went to Frye's the other day, saw the Lindows demo, brought a manager over and showed him how to foobar the entire distro in 10 seconds by changing the /etc/passwd file (with the default root environment)
First off, the cost of Click-N-Run *is* far too high. But "don't pay money for software" -- thats a dangerous mindset for the industry. Just because its FOSS doesn't mean you shouldn't pay -- especially if you happen to think the developers deserve it. It's more like a donation to a cause that you support. I also think commercial software has its place, and obviously should be payed for. I'm sure people who program for a living would agree with me.
1. Hardcore geeks on dialup, a set that's getting smaller all the time, or
2. A corporate IT center who wants to elvaluate multiple distros for a production environment, and it's just easier to buy three distros from a single source.
Moreover, this would seem to be exactly the opposite of Lindows/Linspire's current target market, i.e. people who want a computer that sorta/kinda works like Windows, but is cheaper than paying the Microsoft tax. Joe Blow picking up his $299 Lindows box at Walmart is the last person who needs multiple distros (or, for that matter, even knows what a "distro" is).
What am I missing? Who's the market for this package?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
To me it seems like three diffrent levels of distros in userfrendlyness, to the new linux user.
- Lindows for the newbie
- Mandrake for the more novice
- Fedora for the more expreienced and experimenting
This could be the package for people new to linux wanting to try it out.. And ready to blow their machine up some times.
Lindows is indeed a soft switch for those migrating to linux from windows. But somewhat locked into that position.
This would perhaps mean that the user buys at least one CnR license, then realizes he doesn't realy have to pay anything and switches to the one with the cutest penguin(mandrake?).
Perhaps better for Linux in general than for the Lindows distro.
Mohahah!
I actually see this as good/evil marketing.
:)
If you go through the site it seems to be a pathetic means of pointing out Lindows as a better distro.
By pointing out the fact that Fedora takes WAY TOO F'ING LONG to install, and that mandrake and fedora are "harder to use" and lack things like flash, support, and effective auto device finding (I still can't get my prism2 based wi-fi card to work under mandrake 10)
True things like apt, urmpi are freaking easy to use, but they have to be configured, and lindows is a "newbie" os.
The target market for this is newbies, and press/tech editors who don't know any better.
For a real Shootout may I recomend modified fedora and mandrake distros like
Blag Linux - A live Fedora based distro with the stuff you really need, and is only on 1 cd.
PClinuxOs- a live mandrake distro with synaptic, a front for Apt-get
Knopix- A debian based live cd, that has tons of great stuff, and dosn't use the root acount for everything like linspire (which is debian based)
PS. Someone AIM-daphreak07, icq -17654783 if they can help me get my wi-fi card working so i can be free of winblows XP once again... Help a poor college student
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
Sometimes cdrom set is more convenient than an .iso. But even then, it makes little sense to pay more than a pittance for a distro if you aren't planning on exploiting the support that comes bundled in with boxed versions.
Who's gonna INSTALL the other distros? If you're paying to ship/download Lindows, Fedora, and Mandrake ... chances are, you're doing so because you want to install Lindows. Otherwise you'd just go get Fedora or Mandrake.
Who doesn't like free music?
In my opinion...
I think that is much more clever than including a installable distro...
That does not say that the intention is very well indeed...
Am I the only one who doesn't think 40 bucks for 8 CDs is really cheap. I just bought for half that money FC2, Mandrake 10 and a third distro (Arch Linux) just for fun. In total 10 CDs for 22 bucks with free shipping. Sites like linuxcentral.com or osdisc.com usually charge 2-3 dollar per CD. So, especially since this a shootout deal, you would expect it to be a bargain. And it isn't.
Of course downloading is even cheaper. YMMV, but when I can get a CD set in my mailbox for only a few dollars more than downloading and burning one myself, that has always had my preference.
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
This seems like a pretty clever plan to get people to try their distro. They give the user the "comfort" of being able to thing "Oh, this is good... at least if I don't like Linspire I can try out the others... there's bound to be one distro I'll like," and even if that person does end up choosing one of the others, at least they made a profit.
Were I a newbie looking to try out Linux, I would probably test drive Mandrake or Fedore before giving Linspire a spin, so this seems like a clever way to profit off that tendency.
lots of old kruft on the Debian tree [...] How many text editors would a non-techie need?
How is providing choice "kruft"? Nobody, non-techie or otherwise, has to install the 500 text editors Debian provides. Most non-techies don't really know what a text editor is, whether they have any installed, etc. So how again is this "kruft" or otherwise some failing of Debian?
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
"Pornography web filtering available?: Yes ( Linspire ) No ( Mandrake ) No ( Fedora )"
I'm thinking a big no on Linspire.
Slashdot sucks
you're essentially paying them to do package management for you. Once you've downloaded the software, you're free to back up and use the packages to you're hearts content. From the email:
"You can backup your programs to your hearts content. Just so you know, once you download a program, you will have access to that file forever. Under Click-N-RUn, on the Left, My Products -> All Categories. You will always be able to get these even after your subscription expires."
Oh, and if you want legal DVD playback, they've gone to the trouble to buy the licenses. For home users this isn't really an issue (yet). For system builders, you can't just go bundling libdecss with you're machines (it's also illegal to tell them to download libdecss on their own, btw).
So, no, Lindows isn't Microsoft in the making.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder how long it takes before our beloved mr Gates gets the same idea and offers a couple of linux CDs with every Windows to "try them out"...
That'll be the day!
I have tried all these distributions, and here is what I think of them.
Lindows. I got this back at an Osnews promotion a while ago. While it was easy to install, the software selection was limited and if you wanted more you had to pay for click and run. It was just a spiffed up KDE and a few flash demos. Didn't stay on my system for long
Mandrake. The best out of the three, very easy to use, large software selection. I used the cooker for a while but I got bored of Mandrake and tried Fedora Core 2 instead.
Fedora Core 2. Easy to installm but takes a long time. Uses GNOME by default but a castrated GNOME. KDE was screwed too. The Nvidia drivers on it sucked so out it went.
I now use SuSE 9.1, which in my opinion is the best Linux yet. It so easy to use, with a massive software collection, including loads of GAMES, the NVIDIA patch makes it easy to set up, so this is the distribution that has won the shootout.
I have also tried Debian (too hard), Gentoo (too easy to smash the portage tree), Ark (weird), Xandros Open Circulation (Too strange), Windows XP (worst of all, uninstalled in less than an hour).
found here
To me, this doesn't seem to be helping the others... Anyone can sell a copy of these distros, and make a profit. Your only costs are the CD you need to burn it on. To me, this isn't a way for Lindows/Linspire to help the other distrubitions, it's another way to make a buck. It's not against the rules, but, it certainly isn't helping Mandrake or Red Hat, if anything its taking money out of their pockets.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Get aptitude and be done w/your problems. It has automatically corrected errors in package dependencies that apt-get didn't. It shows progress bars and it seems to be updated pretty frequently (twice since I started using it about 6 months ago).
It's also free.
Not only is this a good idea because it helps to spread Linux as a whole, but it gives a nice taste of the various distros, and gives those who feel they are ready to dive a little deeper two solid distros to try out. I can see a user purchasing the set, starting with Lindows for a while, then eventually switching to Fedora or Mandrake once they are a little more comfortable with their environement... However, both Fedora and Mandrake are fairly easy to use on their own (and Mandrake 10 is just flat out awesome, made the switch from Slack, for now at least), so maybe it really won't matter in that aspect.
That is the single most damaging mindset in the OSS camp. The goal is not for software gratis, but to have software libre.
The ideal Free Software scenario is when companies, governments and indiviuals pay people to write good, quality software. Maybe not a whole project, sometimes even just for minor improvements and bugfixes. It may be even implemented as a subscription model.
The value of software is created when the programmer programs. To make OSS succeed and suplant the commercial model we have to find ways of rewarding this activity. You can't do away with money in this society, maybe in some arachist utopia, but not in the present. For programmers to survive, we need to find ways for them to be rewarded for their time.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Some years ago (IIRC something around '96-'98) SuSE regularly produced a multi-CD set with several popular distributions (SuSE certainly, Redhat, and perhaps Slackware and something else, too long ago to remember). Was also not too expensive, something around 25 EUR for six or seven CDs. Back then it came quite handy as downloading a whole distro via dialup was not really fun.
I remember that, our local Linux group used to give it out for free at meetings to the noobs. I got a copy and installed Slackware from it back in 1995, IIRC. It also had a full Linux FTP site on a few CD disks of applications.
All Linspire/Lindows is doing is what InfoMagik used to do, only without the Linux FTP site on a few CD disks.
I wonder if they can include a Linux version of the OpenCD or some other OSS installer disk?
Linspire/Lindows has some customized code to run the same data and media files as a Windows workstation, too bad they did not make the code for that as GPL to share it with other distros.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
They can charge you for the distribution of the Linux software. Also Linspire/Lindows contains commercial code that does not fall under the GPL. Sort of like CrossOver Office being based on WINE. While you can download WINE for free, CrossOver Office is only available if you pay for it. Such is the same deal for Linspire/Lindows.
;)
Finally a Linux company with a workable business plan, find a way to make Linux pay off besides just charging for support and Tux Dolls.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I've given money to Red Hat and Mandrake in exchange for using their "free" (gratis) distributions, since as a software developer myself, I know it costs them time and money to produce them. My paying them money makes the software no less "free" (libre) and hopefully helps it become better - and that's in addition to my own contributions to open source software.
Yes, you could get these other distributions from some other source, but don't kid yourself that it's "free" (gratis), since it's costing *someone* bandwidth and storage. Just not you.
Perhaps I'm just a sucker, or a traitor to the politics of "software liberation", whatever that is, but I choose not to be a leech.
it is free. free as in speech. it's free as in beer as well, but in my experience, if somebody offers me free beer, i end up having to work for it.
free beer linux just means you have to learn your distro's quirks (after i spose you poke your head over the *nix learning curve). i really like free beer, so i run debian/sid on my desktop. that's 200 bucks worth of free beer for me, my desktop box came with winme preinstalled. plus i don't have to buy and/or subscribe to virus dealies. whoa, i can spend more of my money on effin hardware. and i guess my old P-75 can still run win95, but can win95 act as my NAT/gateway? here's a hint, NO.
and when i come up with some code (not likely) that i can contribute, i'll gladly do it. not that anyone wants my inept rather wordy perl scripts that keeps my P-75 up and running when my dynamic IP changes. for us closet geeks, there is a fun variable that is missing in microsoft products.
Serenity now, insanity later.
Spent the weekend at Mom & Dad's house trying to get Linspire (nee Lindows) to print a test page on his Epson inkjet (connected via LPR/LPD on a DLink print server). Started: 4pm; Finished: 9am the next morning. Next I loaded RedHat 9 -- same thing.
Stuff like this is why OSS software will have a tough time displacing software from Redmond.
Chip H.
When Lindows was first announced, I signed up for the Insider program. Recently I received a coupon for a free copy of Linspire 4.5 and a 5 month full membership to their warehouse feature. Quite simply an offer I couldn't refuse. I downloaded Linspire 4.5 and checked it out, and I'd have to say it's pretty tight. My hardware all worked out of the box with no configuration (other than switching the network settings away from DHCP), and the click-n-run feature is drop-dead simple. In no time I had a queue of software waiting to be installed, downloading and installing using Debian's apt-get utility in the background.
Overall I'd say it's a really good introduction to Linux for less-than-computer-savvy users, as well as a solid operating system for someone who really doesn't care what's running their computer -- just that it works. I think it would work especially well in an office environment for people who just need to use their standard office applications to get their work done.
That said, I remain a die-hard Mandrake devotee.
In the past I've had a lot of respect for this guy. But in the last year, it's been nearly completely eroded. He seems to think that it's still the 1990s, and you can run a business by jumping from one buzzword to another every couple of months.
Michael, here's a clue: concentrate on one thing until it's done, before you jump on to the next thing. And keep your personality out of it!
I've drunk the Lindows/Linspire Kool-Aid. It seems like a worthwhile project. I actually went out and bought copies, and I've installed them on friend's and family's machines. It's a nice distro, as far as it goes. Few Slashdotters would be happy with it, but for someone whose whole world has been Windows-based, it's perfect. And CNR is darn near brilliant.
For a couple of months, a lot of the Lindows developers' focus was going into one of Michael's pet projects, NVU, which was going to be a free, open-source replacement for MS FrontPage. Great idea, right? Well, it got to version 0.2, which almost-works but appears to be completely stalled. The announced 1st-quarter release date has long since come and gone.
This month his focus seems to have shifted over to this silly "shootout" between distros. Hey Mike, another clue: Lindows is a pretty nice thing, but you haven't got a chance in Hell of competing with Fedora or Mandrake. They're aimed at a much different target audience, and that audience doesn't need a pre-installed GUI. And your average Lindows user is going to take a look at Mandrake and run away fast.
Last month it was his VOIP startup, SIP-phone or whatever it's called. It sounds like a great idea, but I'm not buying it, because I don't know if his focus is going to shift to something else while this one falls by the wayside in a month or two, half finished.
Actually, if you decide to stop paying for CNR you *can* still use the programs and you *can* still download the programs you have already downloaded if you have to reformat or whatever. For example, if you have downloaded the Gimp v2, then you can re-download it as many times as you want even if you discontinue your CNR subscription. The system keeps track of what you have downloaded using CNR in case you ever need to again, even if you stop subscribing. Oh, and I have used apt-get with Lindows successfully.
I am a lifetime member/Insider and will support the company as long as I can. I believe in what they're doing, and after having tried over a dozen different distros it's still the best for me.
Look, not everyone is going to like any particular company, but at least tell the truth about it. If you don't know the truth, please keep quiet because spreading false information always makes a person look like an dork.
Have you hugged your penguin today?