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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."

5 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Voice narration? by sharkb8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    How helpful will a voice over be when Linux doesn't install your soundcard drivers properly?

  2. ... jarring word choice ... by ninjagin · · Score: 5, Funny
    I started reading the review, but I was shaken free when I read this, on page 2:

    "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.

    ... must ... resist ... powers ... of ... critique ...

    --
    .. 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
  3. Punch Card by locokamil · · Score: 5, Funny

    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::

    1. Re:Punch Card by markdavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tell that to my computer-challenged mother, who uses Linux. A friend at work who uses Linux and has no idea how to admin it. My best freind's 68-year-old father, who uses Linux.

      Linux doesn't *HAVE* to be any harder to install or use than any other OS.

  4. The killer: media players by ChiralSoftware · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I have a friend who is smart, but not a real "computers guy". He was at my house and needed to borrow a computer. I only have Linux computers here, and so he tried it and was impressed. He could do everything he needed to do under Suse without any problems: access his mail, access the Web, access Excel spreadsheets (with OpenOffice), etc. Except for one thing: he couldn't play video clips, and when he got his laptop, he said, "I'll use Windows on this so I can play video." That's all. Otherwise he would use Linux.

    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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