[NTLUG:Discuss] Fry's and Linux

[Jeff Miller]

On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 22:07, km5cw wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 21:47, terry wrote:
> > Lance Simmons wrote:
> 
> > 
> > "I can't get over the fact that Linspire boots into a desktop running as 
> > root!"  WOW, I can't either! If that's so, they're doing more harm than 
> > good (for the linux community), [by exposing new users a box that boots 
> > to root].  If they get on the internet with it, well, Kady bar the 
> > door!!!  (People will see just how vulnerable Linux can be.)
> 
> A lot of new owners may not make it to the internet if they are in root
> and don't know what they are doing, they will most likely crash and burn
> in short order. So your right the retailers aren't doing the linux
> community any favors.
> Joe
> rh9.0 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

As someone who has run other flavors of Linux (ie: redhat, mandrake,
slack) and who bought one of the Fry's special linspire boxes (for those
that don't realise it, linspire is lindows, just changed the name to
help alleviate some of the legal problems they were experiencing)  it is
very much a Linux distribution, just a bit more proprietary.

The Good:
It is very easy to set up, the box I got was the display box at Fry's so
the first thing I did was drop in that restore disk, one of the easiest
Linux installs I've done, just did a Debian install today and it was
much harder(not that that's necessarily a bad thing.)  

It has a very easy package install program:  It calls it click and run. 
You do need a subscription to the service which I went ahead and got to
give it a try.  Installing a package is as easy as choosing what you
want from the click and run website and telling it to install.  A lot of
it is free to subscribers, and some is commercial software that
subscribers get at a discounted price.

It does not boot directly to the desktop logged in as root in it's
default config, it boots up to a screen similar to winXP home where you
click on the user you want, then enter the password for that user.  If
the box you saw booted directly to desktop, it was not the default
config.


The Bad:

It's not as stable as any Linux distro I've used to date.  I could have
weeks of uptime, even months on either slack or mandrake, with linspire
I'm lucky to get a week, beyond that it get's graphics funkiness and
programs will just refuse to load.

If something fails to install through the click and run interface, there
is no other option for installing it, and it will not succede in
subsequint attempts to install it.

All that being said, in a couple of days I'm probably going to flatten
this linspire box and put Debian on it.

J