Interview with Joseph Cheek of Lycoris 161
Glykoriza writes "Lots of talk lately about the future of Linux in the desktop. Red Hat wants to have a piece of the pie, while Lindows seems to do well too. Lycoris seems to do great as well, they released their latest beta a few days ago, and they have already made deals with retailers, like Fry's. OSNews hosts an interview with Lycoris' CTO and founder, Joseph Cheek."
On the subject of Lindows (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categor
and it doesn't seem to be much.
Also, one can only download (often GPL'd) software from them if he pays them a fee to access this software
http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categor
is that ok too?
Don't get me wrong. I'm a linux enhtusiast too and would love if linux finally came to the desktop and I would also love seeing a company making money with desktop linux...but I have a strange feeling about the legality of what lindows does....can anyone enlighten me? Or just join the discussion?
Re:On the subject of Lindows (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing to see here.
Re:What makes Fry's special? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously you've never been to Fry's. They are a California-based electronics chain but far, far better than CompUSA, Best Buy, Radio Shack....
I have had the pleasure of living near a Fry's for 9 months and, basically, it is a Slashdotter's wet dream. You name it geeky/gadget/electronic/radio/software... they've got it.
I hope you too one day have the chance to visit a Fry's.
The long and short of it... (Score:2, Insightful)
For the record I would like to say that I hate the way M$ treats its customers, the draconian patents and copyrites, and their business practices. Following that I would like to say that I have Windows installed on nearly every PC in my house (except my firewall) and every non-server PC at work. Here are the reasons:
When I first set up a linux desktop to try it, these problems caused me to recoil from using it:
#1) I had to learn new keystrokes for everything. M$ may be bad, but their choice of keys isn't 3v|L, it's just a standard. It's not a standard because someone agreed to it, but because about 90% of the PC market uses it.
#2) Software install/uninstall is a real problem for people unfamiliar with the platform. Yes, I know what an RPM is and how to use one, but it's flaky to say the least. When I first attempted to start using RPMs they complained about older versions of the utility or app I was installing but (after much searching and downloading) the older RPMs refused to uninstall the older versions, claiming they weren't installed. Is it that hard to wrap the RPM functionality with a GUI and make the latest RPMs uninstall older RPMs?
#3) I don't want to dive into the whole driver issue, but I will go through my nightmare with my latest PC. I installed RedHat 7.2 on a Asus CUV4X Dual PIII motherboard. The apic problem hit me right off, refusing to boot the PC in SMP mode. Something about that problem kept RH from detecting my integrated NIC (an EtherExpress Pro 100). After about 2 days of searching I found the answers I needed, but not the know-how. Luckily, I knew enough about Linux by this time to do the required: Modify my grub.conf file boot line to add the -noapic flag. Once I had rebooted into smp mode I loaded my network driver with insmod e100 and added the alias line to
4#) Following the above issue, I wanted to be able to watch Divx, Mpeg and Mov files on my desktop. Now
#5) I wanted to use my scanner with Gimp. I went out looking and discovered this thing called SANE. After a long time in the man pages (I have NEVER IN MY LIFE used the Windows Help file BTW), I figured out enough to try it. Sane was already installed, but it wouldn't detect my scanner. I downloaded and installed the latest sane from source and got it working, but, little surprise, my ScanMaker 3700 didn't work. There were ScanMaker 3600 drivers which claimed that they might work with the 3700, but they didn't. I'm now going through the source for the 3600 and the specs from Microtek to see if I can get my scanner working. I write code for a living so I can do this, what about everyone else?
If I hadn't already spent a lot of time getting to know Linux, I would have given up days before. This isn't the first time I had this much trouble either. Nearly three years ago I bought a copy of Suse, and I flat gave up on using it on my desktop.
I hate to say it, but all other development is secondary to getting a stable, easy to use and learn desktop working. Until then the Linux userbase will be limited. Only people who have either an excessive amount of time and energy to spend learning linux can use the OS in a meaningful fassion.
Customers (MIS depts) or users? (Score:3, Insightful)
M$ may not be kidding itself about that but I suspect that the reality distortion field around Bill Gates these days makes the one around Steve Jobs look like clear-eyed, realistic pragmatism.
Users don't like M$. The great majority of them hate it. Its work.
Customers, the OEM who just want to shove boxes out the door and make enough dough to pay the rent and DP/MIS/IT deparments, on the other hand are applying the same rules that gave rise to M$ in the first place:
1) nobody ever got fired for buying IBM quickly followed by
2) nobody ever got fired for saving money which created the clones, and M$.
Usability was a secondary concern at the time. Remember all those books about DOS and the command line?
Visicalc opened the office door, Lotus 123 swept in followed by WordPerfect and M$ became an expert at ripping off other people's IP.
And nothing much has happened since except in niches like desktop publishing, graphics, (now Apple is doing it again with video editing,) email and the web which didn't depend on M$ in the first place.
Given the downward direction of the ROI and upward direction of the acquisition and support costs of an M$ box, M$ will disappear when Linux becomes just "good enough." Not even, uh, "Insanely Great," but just good enough.
OpenOffice, a free OS that any MSCE can install on existing boxes to extend their usable life (even by a single year,) and cheap site-wide licences will destroy M$ on the desktop almost as quickly as the switch to the x86 destroyed Digital Research, who never made it off the -80 architecture.
The switch to a new architecture on the server side is starting to worry M$ too since they have nothing real ported to it anyway. (NT in x86 emulation on the Itanium architecture? Naw, I think, we'll go Unix or Linux.)
I should be smelling fear from Redmond but since M$ has billions in the bank and can survive a change in course, in direction and in what sea they swim in, they won't disappear.
Re:But, but, on MSNBC they said Linux was dead... (Score:1, Insightful)
The article said that Linux was having a hard time on the desktop of Joe User. Which is true. Read the article. No where is the word 'dead' used.
I beleive in Linux, use Linux, and promote Linux. But with facts and figures, not misquotes and allegations. Until we all stop fingerpointing without proper cause we are going to have a hard time getting a proper foothold with our beloved Penguin.
Linux now has the same sort of spin doctoring that we accuse MS of. Come on people.
And once again I want to see the Slashdot log files on the browsers that roll in here. And to make it fair since most browse at work and are forced to use windows boxen. We will take a samlimg from 6 pm to 5-am.
Puto