Quote:
Originally posted by bongski55
Barely a week using lindows.Here's what I found out.
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I'd like to add to this thread with my brief experience(s) using Lindows for around a week's time as well. The text that follows in this post is all in MY opinion:
I had heard a lot of bad things about LindowsOS on the net, but I decided to give it a try anyway, having found a special offer coupon code which would allow me to download it for free. I tried the latest version just last week and here are my experiences with it:
I gave LindowsOS around 18 gigs all to itself and was up and running within minutes. Unlike the other distros out there that I've tried, LindowsOS found my Lucent Winmodem and I was up and running on the net in a short time following a quick modification to the Lindows firewall file. All of my hardware was detected automatically, even my usb jumpdrive which I happily plugged and unplugged with joy. But I had this feeling that this was all too good to be true, and in my opinion it was. Everything in LindowsOS was running very, very slow. Unusually so compared to Gentoo, Mandrake, Knoppix (hdinstalled), Peanut, Red Hat, and the other various distros I've tried in the past. Something felt very, very wrong. Everywhere I went in Lindows it seemed there was mention of the CNR application, which I didn't use aside from it connecting to the net when I went online with LindowsOS for some reason or other.
I used apt-get and started installing some software. Everything was working fine until I apt-get install(ed) TVTime and restarted KDE. I received errors before I could even get back into KDE and I knew it was time for a reinstall. That was it, game over. I wasn't going to spend time at the command line trying to fix anything at this point, when everything was going so slow. I gave the issue some thought, and rather than mess around and fix what was wrong or reinstall LindowsOS, I decided to format the drive and never install LindowsOS again. Of course it was me who borked my system by using apt-get, but this shouldn't be. Some of the simple program installations and updates with apt-get in LindowsOS have apt-get wanting to remove some critical LindowsOS related applications or easily break KDE when they don't break KDE in the other distros I've used. These were but a few issues I experienced in using LindowsOS that made me regret wasting my time with it.
I mentioned earlier in this post that I had heard a lot of bad things about LindowsOS, while that's true I've also read a lot of good things about it. However, much of it seems to come from those who use CNR. Of course I'm sure if you do use CNR with LindowsOS it may work great for you, but when I switched from Windows to Linux, I switched to click and free from the land of click and pay. And I have no reason to return, no matter how pretty or easy some people make their commercial versions of Linux look. When I began using LindowsOS I thought, "this is great for newbies! I should recommend it to those I know who are still using Windows" but I cannot. Instead I will recommend Mandrake to newbies and warn them of my bad experiences with LindowsOS.
My experiences on the LindowsOS site's forums was very positive. They seem to have a wonderful, though small, community of users who are friendly and ready to help answer questions quickly and intelligently. It's a shame I didn't find the LindowsOS itself to be quick and intelligent.
^ The text above in this post is all in MY opinion.
Edit: and of course I don't find the Lucent Winmodem auto-detection to be so amazing when it's simple enough to install drivers for in other distros. Same goes for usb jumpdrive support. It was nice to see the Winmodem autodetected and running from the start though, but if that's the only thing I can say that I liked about LindowsOS... :P And please, if you're a LindowsOS user, don't bother wasting your time replying to this defending LindowsOS, I'm not posting this to attack it, I'm posting my opinions via my experiences with it. Quoting me and listing your opinions on what could have possibly been wrong on MY end because of ME will put you on the road of error. I've used plenty of Linux distros for many years, and the problems I experienced were not related to my doing at all. (except installing it! heh) And please no "But you didn't use CNR so you...." etc. posts because they are useless to me. I've used plenty of Debian based distros without the problems I experienced in LindowsOS issuing simple apt-get commands that led to major problems.
I clicked and I ran.... away from LindowsOS. Far away.