Today is the first time I have come across this thread (didn't really look for it, or others like it, though). I have read the whole thing, as I always do when getting in on one. Something I have noticed and want to pass on to every participant here - after about 5 months, finally, the circular talk seems to have ended. The posts from the last few days seem to have a new vim (not the editor) and vigor. Good job, people - the thread is becoming readable . A lot of good points have been made. I hope it continues to grow in its productiveness.

Kudos to Michael Robertson and crew for trying to make a buck by bringing GNU/Linux to Joe Sixpack. I didn't get it installed when I tried (took the free dev ed route) so I can't say that I have played with CNR, but I don't want to give up any of my limited drive space for it right now to try again. Later...

That's my contribution to Jeremy's bandwidth costs.

Nvu Rocks!

If you're impressed with lindows making a buck, you outta look into SuSE. Easy to use and very secure.

I wouldn't say impressed, especially with the company. Its just a company, like Suse. I just like that Michael has tackled another venture in the online world, despite a high risk of failure. I'm impressed that he has the chutzpah (did I spell that right?) to name his distro in such a way as to invite notice from those who use Windows. I'm impressed that he continues to try and sell his product under its original banner even though a goliath of a company has sued him (without telling anyone about filing - dirty filthy jerks - SCO'd do well to learn from those guys).

I was thinking about getting Suse when I was entering this part of the universe (Linux/GNU/BSD...) but for some reason, it didn't look as well-supported to me in North America. I was wrong - read too many reviews from those who quote stats to their own liking. There is no geographical Linux. I ended up with Debian working.

Kendall, thanks for being here to clear things up and steer people in the right direction.
Rico, thanks for stirring it up. Without questioning things, we sometimes overlook what may be important.

It seems like a lot of linux people are not fans of Linspire because 1 the charge for CNR (which I kinda don't agree with) and 2 Because it's too easy to use. Now, with the CNR issue I think they should either charge money for the distro, or for CNR, but not for both. The people who don't like it because it's too easy, isn't that what we want? That way it gets people started on linux? Linspire is what originally brought me over from Windows. I have now moved on to Mandrake 10.0, but I will never be savvy enough to run slackware or debian, and I still use Linspire from time to time, because it's so easy to use. Plus, of all the distros I've tried since I switched to Linux, Linspire is only 1 of 2 distros where everything has simply worked right out of the box. For those of you who use the harder distros, I'm glad there are people better with linux and computers than me, or the world would be in a lot of trouble (plus who would I have to turn to when I'm having computer trouble ) but try not to be so judgemental to those of us who aren't as good with computers, and the distros that cater to those people.

I don't see what the big deal is, a lot of the companies in the CNR wearhouse benifit from the subscription fee's, and why isnt anyone bashing Xandros or lycoris? they both charge for their distros(and so does SuSE) and look exactly like windows.I started too with Lindows and it got me to the point where i could use redhat and suse, i would never have tried to use linux if it wasn't for lindows and for anyone coming over from Window's this is the distro i would recomend.

I think the naysayers are (1)those who haven't tried it and (2)those who feel superior because they have an "elite" OS on their computers. Fear of losing your "specialness" is often a driving factor for feelings like this. And, hey! This is the internet. People who would ordinarily keep their mouths shut are more willing to open their big mouths and say what's controversial because they don't fear that someone will come over to their house and beat them senseless if they have strong opinions. Maybe I'm wrong. If so, I'll admit it.

So let me get this straight. You complain that people have drawn false conclusions on lindows that are not warranted, but yet you have done the exact same thing by drawing conclusions on people. Hipocracy.... Perhaps you should spend some more tme in Michael's Minutes.

I don't think anyone even had a problem with a distribution charging money. So I don't know why that was even brought up. In fact, I think a distro has the right to earn money through support. But not necessarily by offering software that they didn't even write. Yes, some companies do benefit. But not all of the people that wrote the programs. Don't know how I feel bout that, but I think I know where I'm leaning.

I have had several distros work right out of the box. Hell, even Slackware 9.1 worked out of the box. Hey I'm sure Lindows is easy to use, but don't put it on some pedestal. They are not the best at it, and defenitely not the only easy to use distro. I found SuSE 9.0 to be the easiest to use and it still follows standard linux security measures as well as standards. I bet the first time you screw your system up or get some linux virii because you were logged in as root you won't be praising that 'ease of use'. Heck, try installing software not found in the CNR in the form of source code. Good luck with no compiler. Sure you could follow the instructions obscurely located on the net somewhere on how to install that compiler, but where's the ease of use in that?

Kendall, any word about when Lsongs get unleashed to the world?

For one i didnt say all of them benefited, i said a lot, second im now using SuSE 9.0 and Red Hat 9.0 and I have installed programs on my own, thanks for ur concern, and lastly u know if i would have met someone like u when i first started using linux i would have given up. all u seem to do if focus on the negative of a distro, have u ever thought maybe some people cant install rpm's and the such? u ever thought maybe a 60 yr old woman doesnt want to be bothered with compiling, or maybe someone new to linux doesnt know how to install a tar? look at who Linspire is geared to, theres nothing wrong with being a beginner. it may not be the only easy to use distro but the only one u seen to have a problem with.

"look at who Linspire is geared to, theres nothing wrong with being a beginner. it may not be the only easy to use distro but the only one u seen to have a problem with."

I second that with the rest of your post. Linux can be easy to some and hard to live with for some others. Linspire is simply by far closest to the "easiest distro to use". Anyone that doesn't see that simple fact doesn't "see" at all (or don't want to try or see for some misterious reasons). There's enough said about fast and simple installation but the real goody in Linspire is CNR, enabling all to install, uninstall, update programs available with a simple click. Even a OS update with the same click. Go beat that. Lindows.com.inc might be small but then it really is a "mighty mouse"! I am happy to came accross this great Linux distro. O and, I also use SuSE 9.0 and am able to compare that way. SuSE is great, Linspire is far easier for beginners. Both are "Linux at its best" imho, serving a different audience. Anyone on a dial up will probably not have the fun intended though with Linspire. A fast connection is a kind of a "lifeline" to it.

I don't know how CNR works, but you sound like you are looking at apt-get and tarball compiling as if it were difficult. If you find them difficult, then use an RPM distro, or even Slackware (using rpm2tgz to convert the RPMs).

Compiling from a tarball isn't difficult at all. Here are the basic steps for 98.5% of all tarballs:

1) "tar zxvf TARBALLNAME.tar.gz" for gzips, "tar jxvf TARBALLNAME.tar.bz2" for bzip2s. - extracts the compressed files
2) "cd TARBALLNAME" - changes directory to the uncompressed directory
3) "./configure" - configures the compile for compiling
4) "make" - compiles it
5) (su if not already root) "make install" - installs it (copys to useable directories such as /usr/bin)

When you understand what those steps do, then it's simple. I'm not 100% sure how apt-get works, as I use Slack, but I believe to get a package for apt-get, you simply:

apt-get packagename

You don't even have to download the package, it does that for you. Since you are running Lindows, you might want to try downloading apt-get since it's Debian, to see how easy in fact it really is.

For RPM distros, such as MDK or RH, using KDE or a WM running with Konqueror, RPMs install just as easily as EXEs do on Windows. For Slackware, you can use any package compiled for RH, MDK, or Slack easily, by doing:

rpm2tgz PACKAGENAME.rpm
(su if not already root) installpkg PACKAGENAME.tgz

I try to compile from sources, but when I get dependency problems (which I might add, I've only had a total of two so far, and considering that I've compiled probably over 100 programs, that's pretty good), I usually try to find an RPM or TGZ for the job, since someone else compiled it for me. ZSNES was this way, as it had about 10 dependencies that I didn't want to go searching for.

Either you are misinformed, or you are making yourself think this stuff is harder than it actually is...

If I did have millions of dollars to spend, I wouldn't use it on any WYSIWYG HTML editors... I loathe and despise them, especially Frontpage. They cause a mess of pages, and make 20 lines for something that can be done in 2 or 3. Wasteful.

You obviously haven't used Nvu. Its quite clean and sometimes its nice to whip off a page and not have to plan the whole layout before you start writing. I don't know how complex your web pages are, but for basic html and a bit of javascript, Nvu is a worthy effort.



And why is everyone bashing a Linux distributer???? Especially one which gives back its code? Epecially one which supports many of the developers whos apps you use daily? I don't hear anyone bashing Xandros, but they keep secrets....Enough already! Its a choice.

I hope I quoted correctly and I apologize if I messed up.

When I try to compile from source (after an 'apt-get source <somepackage>'), I do 'apt-get build-dep <somepackage>' and that will usually install the packages I need in order to compile the source for <somepackage>.

As for what other posters have said about people flaming LOS, I started out using Caldera OpenLinux and I was flamed when I switched to Debian. After what Caldera has been doing to Linux users over the past year or so (the SCO lawsuit), I would not touch Caldera with a ten foot pole and I hope the company meets its demise soon. I think one reason many people hate Debian is its association with FSF, GNU, and RMS, esp RMS (Richard Stallman). Since Xandros and Lindows are Debian derivatives, they become targets too.

Yeah apt-get does look pretty easy.

I don't have a problem with Debian, actually I kind of want to try it out. Lindows I don't dislike either, but the ideas sound a little screwed up to me. I would rather try it first before I take sites though.

The distro I REALLY have a problem with is Redhat, and that includes Fedora (core 2 test 1, at least). It is the slowest distro(s) I have tried, ever.

I wasn't too impressed with Mandrake either, but that was awhile ago, before the newer versions. I might try 10, but I probably wouldn't switch to it because I like Slack too much. However Gentoo sounds kinda interesting too, but I haven't tried that yet.

I'm a Web Programmer, PHP/MySQL, so no, it wouldn't work for me at least. If it's cleaner, then I probably won't have as big of a problem with it as I do with Frontpage and Dreamweaver.

They are bloat city.

Try Gentoo. Be sure you give it enough space. A stage 3 (which ain't all binary - I compiled 1/2 of it) base install takes 1.1G (sources and stuff I guess). I hadn't thought it'd take so much room, and I filled the partition when I tried to fetch and install a GUI. Debian will treat you right. If you want a responsive system with a huge software repository at your disposal, then Mandrake 10 will not let you down either. As a Slacker, you appreciate speed, I am sure. Mandy ain't no Slack, but she's closer than before by far. uromi makes rpms tolerable.