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Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro 267

Posted by Zonk 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."
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Review of Consumer-Friendly Linux Distro

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  • Voice narration? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sharkb8 ( 723587 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:30PM (#13198914)
    How helpful will a voice over be when Linux doesn't install your soundcard drivers properly?

    • Re:Voice narration? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:25PM (#13199198)
      Debian is more PnP for me than Windows XP.

      I just installed Debian stable (sarge) last week on my Dell GX-270 at work (adding an XP partition and getting rid of FC2). In my past experience, all the dell optiplex hardware will work, but often times the proper config needs to be made, just like you mention.

      Anyway, this particular install of Debian everything Just Worked. Sound, network, USB mouse, LCD monitor, Intel video, USB ports - everything, no extra config needed.

      • I concur, Debian in particular is getting light years better over the last 18 months... even my laptop *almost* works out of the box with the Debian installer (though unfortunately that's taken steps backwards the last 9 months or so)...

        And whatever ubuntu put on top of debian, everything does just work with the exception of some Wine oddities... but I still prefer plain Debian so my servers are the same as my clients.
      • WOW. I have never had any version of windows recognize any hardware on any optiplex. Not even the network card. I have always had to go and download the drivers from another machine and put them on a USB key so I can get the network going.

        If what you say is true then it's quite a coup.
      • I had an even more impressive experience with Debian. My motherboard died so I replaced it along with a new cpu. The new motherboard has built in ethernet and sound. Plugged the harddrive into the computer and it booted up and everything was already working. I was extremely impressed.

        Later I plugged in a bluetooth dongle that was recognized though connecting the bluetooth keyboard took a little more research than I would have liked.
      • I also think that modern Linux distros will find and configure more drivers than Windows XP will. HOWEVER this is not really a fair comparison. Windows XP is what, from 2001? Lets pit Debian 3.0 with its native kernel against Windows XP and see which one gets more drivers out of the box correct.

        Don't get me wrong, I use Linux on all my systems and don't have any devices which don't work out of the box. I dislike microsoft as much as the next Linux using slashdotter, but I don't think its fair to compare a

    • After all,
      > This is one of most accessible tutorials on any Linux distro

      Why, that's as fully reassuring as, "one of the least violent mob enforcers" . . .

      :)

      hawk

  • Mirror of full article (Score:3, Informative)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:30PM (#13198917) Homepage Journal
    here [networkmirror.com] . Though I doubt that that a review of Linspire is going to get slashdotted late on a Friday afternoon.

  • 50 bucks? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eternauta3k ( 680157 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:36PM (#13198941) Homepage Journal
    The tradeoff is the price- Linspire Five-O can be downloaded for just $49.95, significantly less than most other retail desktop Linux distributions.

    You know, fedora's quite cheap...

    • Re:50 bucks? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:42PM (#13198978) Homepage
      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....

  • Whats up with the screenshots??? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheWorkz ( 866187 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:38PM (#13198950)
    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...

  • ... jarring word choice ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ninjagin ( 631183 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:40PM (#13198969)
    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 ...

  • Punch Card (Score:5, Funny)

    by locokamil ( 850008 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:41PM (#13198973) Homepage
    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::

  • What I like about Linspire (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:45PM (#13198999)
    There are many things to love about Linux based Operating Systems especially on the virus/malware/addware side, but what I have come to like about Linspire is that it just works as advertised. It just works! SuSE does not (remember multimedia)? Second, it's beautiful. I love its fonts. For other distros, I have had to tweak X11 and download this script http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh [unimi.it] in order to see fonts as I like them. What troubles me most is that even for Debian based ones, the invoking of this command "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" might leave you with an unusable system.

    Now, if Linspire could adapt autopackage http://autopackage.org/ [autopackage.org], the better since Linspire packages would be able to install on any distro.

    • [Semi-OT] Your debian problems were caused by not using dist-upgrade. The dist-upgrade function fixed the "broken system" problem that you mention by installing and uninstalling packages as needed during the upgrade.
    • I like the Bitstream Vera fonts better.

  • GCC? I think not. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:46PM (#13199003)
    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?
    • ...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.
    • No gcc? can't install many apps..... Why should I pay for GPL'd software?

      It's not for you. This is intended for people who have never heard of a compiler.

    • Re:GCC? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:06PM (#13199107) Homepage Journal

      Philosophically, I agree with you, but I can see their point, too. Using GCC to compile and install non-Linspire sanctioned applications gives non-novice but non-advanced users the ability to majorly screw up their system. These users would then proceed to unduly tax the company's tech support people and, even worse, gripe about how unstable Linspire is to all of their friends and Internet forums.

      If you don't want to pay for GPL software, you don't have to. But remember the beauty of GPL software—Linspire can sell it to people who will pay for it if they want to, and the promise of stability and ease-of-use makes me lean towards thinking that it's justified.

    • Why should I pay for GPL'd software?

      Because it 100% legal to do so. Now you know. Right?

    • 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 t

  • Awful review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @06:55PM (#13199050)

    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?

    • 7 pages? WTF? Was that really necessary? Combine several pages (especially page 1 which only has two paragraphs) or at least provide a printer-friendly version.
    • Photographs for screenshots? Weak. Maybe that's fine for cases where you can't really get a screenshot (during installation, though you could've run an installation through Virtual PC or VMWare to get screenshots), but after that you can easily take normal screenshots. In fact, the images are a mishmash of screenshots and photographs. Why would you take a photo of the Linspire Control Center (for example) when you could take a screenshot?
    • Horrible conclusion. If you're going to give a pro/con list, you should explain it in your conclusion. You say that Linspire is "not as performance oriented as others", or "lacks important features"? What are they? I saw nothing about either of those two problems in the conclusion, and I really don't feel like going back through six other pages looking for the one sentence where you explained what you meant by "lacks important features".
    • Grammar. "These lax requirements is what allows Linspire (and other Linux distros) ..." wtf? "Requirements" is plural, so you need to match that with your verb ("are" instead of "is").
    • No explanation of system requirements. What is a "Linspire-compatbile sound card" or a "Linspire-compatbile ... modem, cable modem, or DSL modem"? If Linspire has a compat list, link to it. If they don't, why not do a bit of research and provide a nice list for users?
    • Still too much focus on installation, and praise for stupid crap. Linspire uses a GUI installer, making it appear more friendly? Woo! Distros have been doing this for years! Installation is pretty much a solved problem as far as I'm concerned (even Debian is supposedly getting a better installer some time). Besides that, though, the installer still doesn't appear to make partitioning any easier (whether it should or not is not the question here). The review chooses to go through the Advanced installation option, but never touches on the most difficult part. If everybody simply had their partitions magically configured like the reviewers, I'm sure nobody would ever be confused by partitioning.

    • Review of the review review (Score:4, Funny)

      by jlapier ( 739283 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:24PM (#13199196)
      "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 don't have mod points, but that was funny. Thanks for the laugh on a friday afternoon.

      • Review of the review review review (Score:4, Funny)

        by Stauf ( 85247 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @09:29PM (#13199841)
        "Review of the review review" was a reasonable review of the Linspire review review. However, the reviewer of the review's review was more then a little brief, and skimmed right over a few of his most important points. He claims to have "especially enjoyed the comments" about length and screenshots, however he neglected to back them up with any quotes or specific points from the original review of the review; leaving the audience to wonder exactly what it was he was agreeing with (many of us prefer to read the review's review before reading the review of the review).

        However, the author, jlapier [slashdot.org], 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

  • Five - 0 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quirk ( 36086 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:01PM (#13199079) Homepage Journal
    Copyright infringement?

    Book him, Dano.

  • Performance? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ucahg ( 898110 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:09PM (#13199126)
    From original article:
    The minimum requirements for Five-O:


    - 800 MHz or higher processor
    [snip]
    These lax requirements is what allows Linspire (and other Linux distros) to run well on both inexpensive and old computers- both of which may have trouble with Windows XP.


    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?
    • I was thinking the same thing. I have a p.o.s. 500 MHz PIII laptop at work and it runs XP Pro. I can't run too many apps at once, but Outlook, SQL Enterprise Manager, and Visual Studio can all be run simutaneously. Here are the minimum requirements:

      XP Pro: [microsoft.com]
      PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended;
      233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);
      * Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
      128 megabytes (MB) of

    • Re:Performance? (Score:3, Informative)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
      I'm running Mandrake 10.2 on a PII 266. It's a little slow to boot, and doesn't compile stuff all that fast, but otherwise it's perfectly good for browsing the web, editing photos from my digicam, typing up documents, and most other day-to-day tasks. I don't understand why they would say 800 MHz is the minimum.
      • I'm running gentoo on a pentium 166 with 64 megs of ram. Sure I can hardly run X...and those compile times were killer. But it works! Thank God thats not my main box and only a little router.

  • The killer: media players (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChiralSoftware ( 743411 ) <info@chiralsoftware.net> on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:26PM (#13199203) Homepage
    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.

    ---------------
    mobile search [mwtj.com] - coming soon

    • Totem with gstreamer seems to handle most WMV files fine. Multimedia support is inconsistent in the open source community, but that doesn't mean that it's lacking. You need to know where to look.

      Incidentally, I use Debian, which handled all sorts of multimedia playback right out of the box, so to speak. So in some cases, you don't even have to look at all.

      • doesn't totem just use xine-lib?

        I'm lucky I didn't have to worry about multimedia support

        I just emerged mplayer and win32codecs

        and on my ubuntu box I just followed ubuntuguide.org's instructions.

        No problems at all.
    • Media players are just fine in linux, it's just that none of the big distros are brave enough to include one with a working configuration. I suggest you try slackware with maybe Xine. I don't think Pat would cripple a package like other distros. I don't use Xine but MPlayer so I don't know how it works. Compiling MPlayer with GUI support is easy. Last time I checked MPlayer requires GTK1, not GTK2 -- there's a difference.
      • I'm running Slackware 10.1, but 10.0 also worked (didn't try to get Xine working with any earlier versions).

        So:
        1) Install Slackware
        2) Grab the codecs off of the MPlayer webpage
        3) Put them in /usr/lib/win32
        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 /usr/lib/win32, and it works with the default Xine package.

        Pat's the man. He'd never purposely cripple a package. $25 for the subscripti

    • 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.

      video playback works fine for me in linux, i find windows harder to setup (download varioud codecs manually, what is this? 1998?)

      and I still can't get a GUI working on MPlayer.

      Im pretty sure gmplayer is working out the box on debian testing

      What I had to go through to get this far: Download and compile MPlayer.

      sudo apt-get

    • Helix Player 2.0 in development (Score:5, Informative)

      by kforeman ( 596891 ) * on Friday July 29, 2005 @08:36PM (#13199613)
      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/ [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

      • I've found Helix Player isn't so much a media player as a launchpad for other media players. What's the big deal about that?

        I'm tired of all the useless KDE and Gnome multimedia apps in my Applications Menu that don't work, I won't waste my time installing them anymore. Even XMMS, which used to be my fave linux mp3 player has stopped playing mp3's die to some legality. It's no use to anyone now, especially not me!

        So far, Realplayer and MPlayer are the only media players worth using nowadays (and MPlayer can
      • Multimedia on Linux is behind other platforms.

        Multimedia on Linux is behind Windows, but ahead of OS X. For example I can play most Windows Media files on my Linux box, but not on the iBook - even if I open the files in the Windows Media Player. (Actually, I havent't yet encountered a file that the Mac WMP can play.) If the current Mac WMP doesn't support the current WM codec then it's pretty pointless to install it.
        It's similar with other codecs - without VLC, I couldn't play any Windows Media encoded
    • I also use SuSE 9.3. After downloading the four Multimedia packs from YOU (no MP3 support otherwise, etc.), I added pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de and suse/9.3 on packman.iu-bremen.de to YaST's installation sources and installed MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than the default MPlayer GUI). That was all, I think. (It must have been simple; after all, I got it to work!) Xine plays Xvid, Divx, mo
      • Great. Now, for the rest of the world running Windows, how the hell are we going to figure all this out? See, I wanted to play an mpeg 2 file on my Windows machine. I downloaded the file, double clicked on it and it automagically opened in media player and played. I didn't have to load anything else, didn't have to add "pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de" or "MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than th
    • I use Slackware. It could be a lot easier, but I've gotten most videos to work on all recent releases of slack.
    • I can't say I've shared your experience, the only dodgy part was getting DVDs to play while I was still using Mandrake, the (well known) trick is to install libdvdread and decss, after that it works perfectly. I'm now using Gentoo, and multimedia is absolutely zero effort to get working. Portage has pulled in all of the codecs (win32 + others) for me automagically and I have yet to find a video I can't play, the same goes for DVDs.
    • One of the many reasons I use Linux is because of the multimedia support. WMP doesn't seem to come equipped to play DVDs; when I insert a disc, it cries, screams, and runs home to mommy, who doesn't have any codecs to give. On the other hand, everything is always perfect with xine. It even loads faster than WMP. Come to think of it, I have yet to run into a video format that xine wouldn't play.

      It doesn't even seem to (in my case) require much special setup if anything. It worked great in Gentoo, and
    • I found your comment insightful but didn't have any mod points to say so.

      I recently thought i'd try abandoning Mandrake and switched to Suse (9.3) as well). I read the good reviews and thought Novell's backing might have done it some good. Oh what a mistake that was. As you said, there was virtually no multimedia support. Then in my case, after doing the automatic updates my NVIDIA 3D drivers would refuse to install. Curiously too, Everything seemed significantly slower. Apps would take longer to start and
    • You should really use VLC media player [videolan.org]. I even use the win32 port on many windows machines because it doesn't need codecs or special format support. Its fast and light on resources.

      The rest of your issues seem distro related. You should try Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org] (with Totem-xine, see the Ubuntu guide [ubuntuguide.org]) or any other friendly distro. Just because something costs money, it doesn't mean its any better.

  • Tux tour (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NullProg ( 70833 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:35PM (#13199257) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • I must say that the first distro I paid for was Mandrake 7.2 and it not only came with tutorials but there were online tutorials for common tasks. There was confusion at that time as to what to do with CD-RW drives and changing the settings was all laid out for you with step by step screen shots.

      Those are the distros that I like, the ones who answer faq's with detailed fixes and insight. I would think a Wiki or some other type of site could be perfect helping first time users. They can decide to go as deep

  • Linux (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nate nice ( 672391 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @07:35PM (#13199260) Journal
    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.

  • Marble Blast Gold is an insanely boring freeware g (Score:4, Funny)

    by crivens ( 112213 ) on Friday July 29, 2005 @09:05PM (#13199756)
    "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.
    • Besides, we all know that Windows ships with action-packed games such as Minesweeper or FreeCell. I can see why the reviewer was disappointed by (the IMO quite entertaining) Marbe Blast Gold. You just can't expect to keep up with the apex of modern gaming technology that is Solitaire.
  • For home users they are all trying to be as user friendly as Windows. I don't see why more Linux developers are not focusing to make Linux as easy to use as a Mac. This would have a couple real advantages. First you are able to keep up with Windows interface changes because they just try to copy what apple does anyways. Secondly OS X architecturally is much closer to Linux then windows is. So some of the development would be easier. If Linux could be the OS X for the rest of the PCs then Linux could ha
  • Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master.

    https://e.ututo.org.ar/xp/modules/news/ar [ututo.org.ar]

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