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Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro
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."
How helpful will a voice over be when Linux doesn't install your soundcard drivers properly?
here . Though I doubt that that a review of Linspire is going to get slashdotted late on a Friday afternoon.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Come on... taking screenshot images of the OS through a Digital Camera?? How about VMWARE? or Video Output? Anything is better than a monitor picture. Jeeesh...
"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotted a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."
After "gotted", I think that as I continue to read the review, I'm going to be looking for these little goodies more than actually taking in the content.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
When will people understand that Linux is for real men who honed their skillz by walking uphill both ways to the mainframe building in order to run their punch card programs? ::sigh::
Now, if Linspire could adapt autopackage http://autopackage.org/, the better since Linspire packages would be able to install on any distro.
Linspire does not include GCC, and it is only available with a CNR subscription, unless you go back to using apt-get, which Linspire says may screw up your system. No gcc? can't install many apps..... Why should I pay for GPL'd software?
What's wrong with the review? I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to read through it. But from looking at the presentation and skimming the article, it sucks. Why?
Book him, Dano.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
...because you know to install everything on your own without the handholding.
This product is for people who do not have your knowledge, and would gladly pay for the software to install on its own.
That is in the GPL you know.
Lax requirements? Better than XP? Those requirements seem high to me, as someone who has Windows XP running just dandy on a Pentium II 350MHz PC. 800? Minimum? Why?
"Awful review" was a great review of the Linspire review. The author plainly stated his opinion and then backed it up with a tightly prepared bullet-point synopsis of serveral points. I especially enjoyed the comments regarding the length of the article and the photographed screenshots. I couldn't agree more.
The only bad thing I could say about this review (of the review) was that it was anti-climatic. After an intense, bullet-driven analysis, the author leaves us with no conclusion, instead leaving us to ponder over the difficulty of disk partitioning rather than tying together the point he was trying to make.
4(/5)
I am very experienced with Linux and computers in general and I still can't get Windows Media video to work properly on this, and the only DVD playback I have is through MPlayer and I still can't get a GUI working on MPlayer.
What I had to go through to get this far: Download and compile MPlayer. Ok, that's no problem and it plays DVDs. Download and install the Windows codecs pack. Now MPlayer (still with no GUI) can play WMV. That's great. Xine (KDE's preferred video player) can't detect these Windows codecs, even though I put them in /usr/lib/win32, which is where they're supposed to be. So no integrated desktop playback; if I want to play a clip, I download it, save it, open up a console window, and point MPlayer at it. I tried to get MPlayer to compile with --gui-enabled so at least I could have a front-end for it. No luck; it can't find gtk2+ development libraries. I tried to install them and couldn't find them anywhere that MPlayer could find them. I also tried to install a dvddecss lib where Xine could find it so Xine could play encrypted (standard) movie DVDs. Again, nothing I could do worked.
Mind you, this is all with Suse 9.3, the latest and greatest. All of this stuff is supposed to be worked out by now. I can get it to just barely work, with no desktop integration and no GUI, and I'm an experienced and knowledgable user. What are other people supposed to do, just use their imagination?
Oh and the situation is even worse with Flash. In my previous Suse installations, Flash worked fine in Konqueror. Now with Suse 9.3, I get a crash when Konqueror tries to render a page with Flash, so I have to use Moz or Firefox to view it, and guess what, those have problems working with KDE's sound system so I might not get sound with my Flash.
I realize that there are legal problems with codecs and DVDs and whatever. Before Linux is ever going to get consumer-level acceptance, these problems need to be solved, or worked around. A solution would be to get a commercially-developed Linux media player that a) integrates with the desktop and b) works and c) package that with the distro. A work-around would be to make up a media player installer that you just click on, it downloads whatever it needs from non-US sites, and it does all the stuff, and it WORKS.
I'm happy to pay for Linux distros (I think I paid almost $100 for Suse 9.3 pro). If they have to tack on another $10 or $20 to include a solid, well-integrated working media player, they need to do it.
All the other apps are more than good enough right now. OOo is a good consumer-level (and biz level) replacement for MS Office. Firefox is better than IE. All that is lacking is multimedia playback.
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mobile search - coming soon
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.
Does anyone remember the disk you used to get when buying an Apple? Apple made a nice tutorial for all thier computers. I'm suprised the Gnome/KDE/whatever teams don't have something like this. It could be a flash animation or an interactive web site. Show them how to cut/paste, system configuration etc. Hell, do a interactive Tux demo.
People love to be shown how to do things rather than reading TFM.
Food for thought, enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Linux is an amazing kernel regardless of how it's been developed, which actually makes it all the more impressive. The thing is right now there simply are not the resources to develop a competitive desktop operating system based on Linux. Every year Linux gets further behind Mac OS X and soon Microsoft's Vista for typical desktop use in business and homes.
Linux is however superior for servers I think. Everything makes sense. Security, configuration and the many options are at least equal to what is shipped by others and the development tools are fantastic. Nothing as pretty as MS's Visual Studio but functionally Linux can offer anything that MS can. On the desktop, there is no Linux solution that offers the functionality that Windows or OS X have.
I guess I stopped caring about Linux on the desktop a year ago or so. I gladly use it at home to run my various servers but use Win 2000 and OS X based systems for general tasks.
Don't get me wrong, I used Linux as a desktop for s few years and thought it was decent. But after using OS X enough and even Windows 2K I just cannot bring myself to use Linux on a desktop all the time.
Like I said, I enjoy using it for my servers, routing and some programming but it has a ways to go (and a fleeting ways at that) to catch up to commercial offerings. It doesn't take anything away from Linux and you don't have to tell me that Linux can be used as a desktop. I just think Apple and Microsoft provide better systems for day-to-day desktop use. Linux provides equal and better services for networks/servers.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Why should you pay for GPL software? Simple. Because you don't want to compile it yourself. (No, I don't mean you personally, of course.) It's the same reason as I'd pay for plumbing. I don't want to be elbow-deep in sewage, and I wouldn't have a clue what to do anyway.
The software is free, but that doesn't prevent others from making a profit off services. The GPL specifically allows it. And the point of the CNR service is that it supplies working software to users who either can't or won't compile their own. Is that wrong?
By the way, Windows doesn't come with a compiler. OS X does, but you have to install the development tools specifically. Ubuntu doesn't have the development toolchain in the basic installation. It's not as unusual as you seem to think, at least for a regular-person-targeted OS.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
I'm running Slackware 10.1, but 10.0 also worked (didn't try to get Xine working with any earlier versions).
/usr/lib/win32
/usr/lib/win32, and it works with the default Xine package.
So:
1) Install Slackware
2) Grab the codecs off of the MPlayer webpage
3) Put them in
4) Play WMV files (and others)
5) ???
6) Profit!
Again, Xine works great under Slackware. All you have to do is grab the codecs off of the MPlayer site and drop them into
Pat's the man. He'd never purposely cripple a package. $25 for the subscription, $40 to just order the CDs as a oneshot. (And yes, I'm a complete Slackware fanboy.)
Jeff
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
"As it turns out Marble Blast Gold is an insanely boring freeware game"
I stopped reading at this point as it was an insanely boring review.
I'm sorry, you said "skillz". Clearly, a violation of section 4.
You can turn in your punchcards on the way out.
However, the author, jlapier, did raise some interesting points about the conclusion of the initial review's review. He claimed that it was "anti-climatic", and backed up his claims with a witty reference to the review's review's final point.
A well written, snappy review. Even though it suffered a little without reference to his primary material.
3.5 / 5