[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.
> Open Source got a LOT of mentions, both at presentations and in casual 
> conversation.
> >>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.
> He was very serious and given his scenario, it might just work. I work 
> for a much larger district, so there will be different challenges. For a 
> fat client, it doesn't seem too bad.

Does the NDS client support Debian/Lindows?

> ...
> > 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.
> It comes with OO, not sure about others. I need to check that out closer.
> ...
> >>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.
> Actually, what I meant to type was "it's nearly un-usable without it". 
> Sorry, bad spot for a typo. In production, I don't see how it would be 
> very useful without a subscription. :(

Ah, that was what my impression has always been.  And I haven't seen the
feature that Lindows has that Ximian doesn't; unless they've gotten the
WINE integration to work.

> >> 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).
> I'm waiting to see if that is something we can possibly add to our SLA 
> with Novell next year.

That will be interesting.

> Which reminds me, I talked to a Novell engineer and tossed out my 
> prediction that all the user desktop prefs on a Ximian desktop would 
> eventually be stored in the directory and he just smiled and did not 
> disagree. He didn't confirm it either, but it seemed like I might have 
> hit on something...

Actually I can confirm that this is under at least very preliminary
developement.  The Ximian speaker at KLUG talked about it, it has been
mentioned on several mailling lists,  and the design of gconf includes a
plugin architecture for just this purpose.

> And it seems they have an internal program at Novell called "cold 
> turkey" where employees can switch to a Linux desltop "cold turkey". 
> This particular engineer had done such. Even some of the top brass at 
> Novell are switching. That was interesting to hear.

Wow, that is cool.

> >>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"
> I'm not so sure. For instance, the OO prefs still pointed to /root/My 
> Documents for the "tony" user I created. AND I seemed to have at least 
> read rights to it...

Hmm, that does sound really wierd and rather hackish.

> >>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.
> I think I'll just forward him Ralph's excellent meeting summary notes. :)

Good idea, and less fuss.

> >>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.  
> I talked to an admin type from the UP and it appears that M$ is the 
> exception up there. K12-LTSP in the labs, Linux in the classroom, and he 
> gives Red Hat CD's to kids to take home so they can install it. But when 

Huh, who'd have thought of the UP as bieng on the leading edge of
*anything*.  (Other than unemployement and teenage drinking).

> you have diddly for a budget, and things are going to get tighter yet 
> this school year, Linux makes great sense.

Nothing motivates like neccesity.  What ever budget they do get for IT
will probably be sapped to zilch by this insane plan to give sixth
graders laptops (when most teachers can't figure out how to use one; 
and what is the life expectancy of a dell laptop in the hands of a sixth
grader - is that expressed in weeks or months?).