[KLUG Members] Lindows

[Adam Williams]

> I was at a conference for K-12 technology folks this past week and one 
> of the sessions was on Lindows.

Excellent, at least Open Source got a mention.


> Anyways, the interaction in the room was great with a lot of good 
> questions and answers. The presenter had tried Mandrake, Red Hat, and 
> other distros, but from an "end user" perspective, was most impressed 
> with Lindows.

Was he being serious?  May glances at Lindows have using resulting in a
case of spontaneous wincing.

>  I just got version 4 last week and loaded it into VMware 
> prior to leaving for the conference. Granted, it's not exactly my distro 
> of choice, but given the lowest common denominator of end users, I have 
> to say it really doesn't look that bad. In fact, I will go out on a limb 
> and say it looks pretty usable. It's debian underneath, but they've 
> really made it easy to install and manage software with the 
> "Click-n-Run" feature.

Does it actually come with usable software this time?  OO, Gnucash,
etc...  Last time it seemed you needed to pay the click-n-run game to
get anything resembling a workable box.  Ximian & Red Carpet can do that
for free.

> Speaking of install, I installed it on a spare hard drive in literally 8 
> minutes. That is, from the time I booted from the CD to the time I was 
> at the desktop and playing a music CD, it was 8 minutes. Cool!

That is impressive.

> The presenter has not rolled it out into production yet, but says he has 
> had good luck connecting to his Novell servers using the Native File 
> Access feature of NetWare 6 (I'm guessing over NFS). Others asked about 
> browsing their W2K network, and many folks in the room were quick to 
> point out it was not a problem with Samba.

Actually as a client you don't even need to install samba.  GNOME's VFS
SMB module will do that with zero config.

> My biggest beef with Lindows is the cost. It looks like you can install 
> and run it without buying the "Click-n-Run" thing, but it's nearly 
> usable without it.

Nice to hear.

>  But then again, for businesses (in my case, school 
> districts) that can't seem to understand the word "free" and feel 
> compelled to somehow buy a software license, they apparently have very 
> attractive pricing for K-12. One gentleman in the room bought a site (or 
> district?) license for $500 for one year. That is, he can install 
> Lindows on as many PC's as he wants for that price. I am going to look 
> into the details of this as I understand the pricing may have gotten 
> better over the summer. Again, I think this is nutty, but if an 
> attractive price will satisfy bean counters who think if it's free it 
> can't be good, then great!

Red Carpet enterprise offers the same sort of site license thing, I've
never checked the pricing, I'm just an Express customer ($99 per annum).

> Yes, I would agree with many that say there are security issues with 
> Lindows, such as being able to have no root password, but I think it can 
> probably be secured for an enterprise by a knowledgeable administrator type.

I think all you have to do is create a user account and it starts to
operate "normally"

> Side note: a lot of school districts in Michigan are Novell shops. I 
> mentioned that Novell was presenting 10/21 at KLUG and gave the website 
> url. There seemed to be quite a bit of interest! 

Excellent.

> One gentleman asked if 
> the event could be videotaped (he's up near Mt. Pleasant).

Hmmm, I can ask Novell.  Sometimes corporations are funny about such
things.

> Overall, I caught a LOT of positive Linux talk at this conference. Very 
> encouraging indeed! And Lindows seems to have somewhat of a future in at 
> least a few school districts in Michigan.

Wow, thats so different from the impression we get from the outside
looking in.  

> Tony "nevermind jigdo, just get me the iso" Gettig

I don't even know what a jigdo is.