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Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro

Posted by Zonk on from the easy-on-the-eyes dept.

miketronics writes "Linspire Five-O is a full-featured Linux operating system which is intended for desktop use, mainly as an alternative to Windows XP. XYZComputing has a review of the latest version. The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers." From the article: "Once the installation is over with Five-O is ready to go. The first time the OS is used Linspire's tutorial program will activate. This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro and it should be a great help to new users. Though it does not go into extreme depth, it does give the user enough understanding of the OS to get started. Even if you are a Linux pro it will probably be helpful to check out the CNR section, as this system is unique to Linspire. The fact that the developers have the tutorial voice-narrated shows Linspire's commitment to user support -- this feature makes the otherwise boring tutorial watchable."

4 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Re:50 bucks? by Sancho · · Score: 3, Informative

    Guess it depends on definitions. Fedora isn't a retail desktop Linux distribution, is it? Fedora's counterpart, is an enterprise solution, and thus doesn't fit the "desktop" modifier.

    In fact, offhand, the only other retail, desktop Linux distribution I can think of is SuSE, which is downloadable for free, but costs money if you want it on CDs. The full retail package of SuSE is around $90, but again, you're getting more than just a download.

    I have seen Debian CDs for sale in retail stores, and they were less than $50 I believe, however I haven't seen this in awhile.

    Truthfully, I'd like to know about all these other retail desktop LInux distributions....

  2. Re:50 bucks? by cosmic_gravy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Distrowatch has a page discussing the "freeness" (I know, not a word) of various linux distros:

    http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=freedom/

    Linspire is listed under "4".

  3. Helix Player 2.0 in development by kforeman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I agree with your assessment. Multimedia on Linux is behind other platforms. Real, Linspire, Red Hat, Novell and others aggressively working to change this landscape. Specifically, we are now working on the Helix Player 2.0 https://player.helixcommunity.org/ which provides for support of Windows Media, MP3, RealVideo, RealAudio, Flash, etc as well as other great features like Ad-free radio and Automatic Bandwidth Detection.

    I urge all interested to join us by joining the project mailing lists and letting us know if you encounter and bugs in the product.

    Kevin Foreman,
    GM, Helix

    --
    Kevin Foreman
    1. Re:Helix Player 2.0 in development by DashEvil · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'd like to point out that XMMS didn't drop mp3 support. Distributions like RedHat and Fedora strip the mp3 support out.

      I'll install xmms from source, and the latest versions are of great use to me.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.