Lindows Allowed to Use Company Name in Holland

Supp0rtLinux writes "It appears that Lindows/Linspire has finally made some headway against Microsoft in the Netherlands. According this article, the Judge ruled that Linspire's continued, but minimal use of 'Lindows' for legal and trademark purposes doesn't violate Microsoft's trademark. With the US court date on this issue coming up soon, one can only wonder if Microsoft will have effectively cut off its nose to spite its face. And following immediately on the heels of today's Netherlands news, the latest Michael's Minutes from Linspire pegs all the blame for virus problems on Microsoft and basically says that Linux (well, Lindows anyway) is the cure."

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Re:Irony

[dmaxwell]

What's sad about this is that Linspire could EASILY do this the way OS X does it. When you install something in OS X, a box pops up asking for the admininstrator password. It's easy and maintains security for the system level stuff. It wouldn't be that big a deal to prettify and simplify something like Kpackage.

Re:Linux is magically more secure

[It'sYerMam]

Also, because developers often release updates very frequently, bugs get fixed very quickly. You don't get Microsoft Windows XP.6.5-1.358, now, do you?
This of course may change if Linux "goes mainstream" as developers start being more concerned that users don't want to get updates every two minutes
Still, the use of update system like up2date mean that this happens relatively painlessly.

Perhaps, though, a patch based system similar to CVS would be a better idea, so as to minimize download times and bandwidth usage.

Go Lindows/Linspire!

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoy reading the weekly Michael's Minute, always a good read, except of course for the obligatory Lindows advertisements.

With regards to the fight over the Lindows name, I like to see Lindows standing up for principles and also for taking on Microsoft.

I applaud Lindows efforts to create a user friendly Linux release, I wish that it was a free distribution that I could just make copies of and give out to people, with revenue coming from optional support, click n run subscriptions.

keep the new name

[qBeaks]

I wonder if they will change the name back, I'm just starting to like Linspire better than Lindows.

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Re:Windows a generic term?

[Sique]

Nobody says "windows" as a generic term for "operating system" unless they are terminally stupid.

I remember once to dispute with a quite intelligent but somewhat computer illiterate woman about the weaknesses of Windows. She was contradicting me the whole time and not accepting the flaws I pointed out.

Later I realized she was using a Mac, and for her the Mac desktop was "Windows" because it had many of them. Talk about generic terms...

Waiting for the KILLER virus

[georgep77]

The main problem with windows in-security is that there hasn't been a virus/worm attack bad enough to make people really look at alternatives. Lax building codes don't get addressed until a supermarket roof collapses and many people are injured/killed, the same is true for the computer world. If a worm was created that automatically nulled all sectors of a hard drive 4 hours after infection people would take notice and steps would be taken to either i) fix the problem ii) change the product that has the problem. I think MSFT is on pins and needles hoping that this never happens . It would be catastrophic if said worm ever did exist but that might be the only thing to get people to really take this seriously.

Cheers,
_GP_
p.s. Why didn't they call in "Lin+dows - Linux + XWindows" ??

Re:Re viri: MacOSX is the one to watch

[Anonymous Coward]

Numbers are hard to pin-down as to desktop installs of Linux, but there have been several surveys in the past 6 months that have asked that question.

They all seem to conclude that the total deployment of Linux on the desktop (any distribution) is somewhere in the range of 150% to 200% that of OS/X. I don't know if anyone's though to ask about all Apple operating systems combined (there are still quite a few users of MacOS pre-OS/X).

Regardless, the adoption rate of Linux on the desktop is still greater than OS/X. Not that OS/X isn't a fabulous product, but it has more stringent hardware requirements and doesn't have a straight migration path on dominant hardware platform (IA32). There also seems to clearly be more third-party developer support behind Linux at the moment.

I suspect that Linux will eat away more Windows desktop share (but not become dominant) than Mac OS/X share, and that will ultimately become beneficial for Apple as the familiarity with UNIX derivative environments and the incumbent accustomization to slightly different UIs will make their product seem less alien to consumers and businesses.

As far as viruses... There will be some exploits for MacOS/X and Linux like the sort that have always existed but nothing like the Windows situation -- except in the case like Lindows where every action is done as root.

Re:Windows a generic term?

[plopez]

And Microsoft using the terms 'Windows', 'Office', 'SQL Server' and 'Access' are not an attempt to capitalize on name recognition? 'Winows' was in use before MS tried to TM it in X window and also used by Apple.

'Office' is a generic term, but makes people think if you want office automation only MS has the answer.

'SQL' is the name of an ANSI standard. Once again giving the impression MS is the only one with a solution.

'Access' is also a generic English word.

So MS is hijacking the ENglish language for profit. This is simply a case of the pot calling the kettle black.