This is exactly what I'm planning to do on this machine. I've downloaded the Live CD versions of KNOPPIX, MEPIS, PCLinuxOS, and KUBUNTU and have been experimenting with them for the past two weeks to see which I want to permanently install. Not all of the Lindows on this box is broken, just the browsers and Open Office. When I try to load them, they appear to start to load but never finish.

It was/is an excellent beginner distro. My daughter was 13 when I bought her computer which came with Lindows 3.0 installed. I bought it for the low price, $200, and planned to install Win98 on it. But I let her "play" with it running Lindows for two days first. When I gave her the option of which OS she wanted, she asked to keep Lindows. She's 15-1/2 now and has been using it ever since. It's an excellent newbie Linux OS.

And CNR is great for the newbie. There's no question about that. It's just that when it's the ONLY way to install new software that $50 a year fee starts to feel like being held hostage. I've no qualms or complaint about CNR if it was truly voluntary, if the choice was between paying for the Click-N-Run convenience or learning to do it the hard way. My irritation is with being effectively forced to keep renting the ability to install new software on the system because the hard way no longer works. That feels too much like B___ G___s and his company's force obsolescence and exensive "upgrades." Freedom from such things is part of the appeal of Linux.

That said, I'll probably have purchased another Linux 4.5 computer with OS and CNR by the end of this week. I found a commercial offer that's just too good to pass up. That means that my daughter will continue to use CNR again for her machine as well while I, too, will do the same. At the same time, this one, a rather tired HP Pavilion AMDK6-2 333Mhz machine, will end up with either Knoppix debian or KUBUNTU on it. Dang it! I *WILL* progress beyond the level of CNR and Windoz. <Grin>

Thanks for a user view of CNR.

What are your thoughts on defaulting to root?

Pro Linspire folks say that nothing prevents you from creating a regular user account, I worry that the issue is not properly explained & the purchaser therefore does not make a properly informed decision.

Well I personaly don't like the idea of running as Root all the time (allthough I can understand the Linspire idea behind it).

The Linspire argument is the following :
- All personal (important) data is storred in $HOME (/root for the root user or /home/username for a user). now when you do someting wrong (like rm -rf /) you will loose ALL your important data (no mather if you run as Root or as user) and since most people have a computer for themselfs (most households have more then 1 PC like 1 for dad, 1 for the kid, ...) so there is no need for a multi-user setup.
Also running as root has the advantage that you don't need to switch to root (or su, sudo, ...) in order to install sofware or do some maintenance. Also since they target Windows users the default of root feels more natural to them.

About the user accounts, when you first launch Lispire it gives you a popup window where you can do some things like, Change password, add users, ... so it's very easy to add a user account to Linspire. I agree that the reason as to WHY one whould create a user account isn't made clear but then again they don't feel running as root is a bad thing.

I do, too. This is not enough.

Thanks for the screenshot, aysiu. I don't do/help with many Linspire installs, so I don't recall ever seeing it before.

As for their point of view, thanks for outlining it, CloudyWizzard. One flaw in their (not your) argument -- rm -rf / will do way more damage when logged in as root than as a regular user. Not to mention the cracking possibilities.


So, Linspire is good for beginners & transitions; & a conscientious "expert" can recommend it provided the prospect has a clear understanding of these two issues. A cheap 1st stage on the journey to divorce Bill & M$. Perhaps to be thought of as legal separation (if you like the divorce metaphor).

When I got my first Lindows machine in May of '03, I'd already had some very minimal experience with a now-deceased dual-pentium Mandrake 9.1 box that my brother had sent me. So I didn't really give the issue a thought. The Lindows box was to be my daughter's but it was understood that my wife and I would both use it on occasion. So the first thing I did on its arrival was to set up different user accounts so that each of us could have his or her own preferred set of progs and preferences. Root is run infrequently on that box. It's served my wife and daughter well and, being LINUX, doesn't present the annoying lockups and periodically necessary rebooting of a more commonly seen OS.

When I put Lindows on "my" machine, an AMDK6-2, I also set up different user accounts during install. However, since Lindows was put on this machine as a second OS more for experimenting and experience I tend to run as "root" rather than under my user name probably way too often.

I just bought another Linspire 4.5 box Thursday (9/29/05) and it should arrive by Oct. 6 so I expect to once again be a CNR user for another year or so. <Grin> Fry's was/is selling Sempron 2200 computers with Linspire 4.5 installed for only $160. At that price, Linspire EXCELLENT operating system. <Grin>

Yes, but with a 10 Minute install they don't see it as a problem. Most people who wrech their $HOME will do a reinstall anyways.

That's the last piece in understanding them -- not agreeing, but at least having some idea of their logic.

This thread has been very useful, I feel that I can explain the issues fairly to a prospective purcahser so that the decision to buy will be properly informed. Thanks to all who contributed.

Of course we'll still be using SimplyMEPIS in my next "Moving to Linux" class starting at the end of the month. (Here in Houston if you're close enough to take it.)

<chuckle> and a very valid point that is, Cloudy. Last night I discovered an old 12 Gig HD in my junk pile. Just for grins, I decided that since I'd never tried Red Hat I'd install it on the "new" drive and see what Gnome was like. It took me three tries to correctly guess my graphics adapter and monitor but the installs only took 12 to 15 minutes each time. When I was finished, each time I had a complete, usable computer with desktop GUI, web browsers, office suite, games, working internet connection, etc. I know, I'm talking Red Hat and this is a Linspire forum but the time and results are pretty much the same for installing either. My point is the comparison with the big W OS.

But I didn't care for the GNOME desktop and decided to take the disk back to "new", a single partition. Also, I had a copy of Win2000 I'd never tried. So I installed Win2000 on the drive. Where it had taken me, at most, 15 minutes to install LINUX it took me 2.5 hours to install Win2000. Admittedly, my internet connection was running at the end of that install. And it was a good thing, too, since I then had to go online, download, and separately install Firefox, Thunderbird (okay, Win2000 did come with Outlook and a browser so that's not fair.) I also had to download an IM client (came with Linux,) office suite (came with Linux,) any games better than minesweeper I might wish to play, and anything else needed to make my computer actually useful once the OS was installed. I've spent almost seven hours so far doing the same job that ANY Linux distro would have accomplished in 15 minutes.

The last time I installed Linspire, the installation also took about 15 minutes from start to online looking at the CNR offerings. Given the ease and essentially no-brainer installation of Linux coupled with the ease of adding software that CNR provides for newbies, I certainly would not hesitate to recommend it for Linux first-timers. But, as always, I do feel that CNR should be a stepping stone and not a dead end wall for those users.

I meant to say "...ease and no-brainer installation of Linspire along with the ease of adding software that CNR provides... ." <sigh> It's been a long morning.