[KLUG Members] Lindows

[Andy]

Another Distro you may want to look at that is
comparable to Lindows as far as end user experience is
Xandros.. you can e-mail their customer support and
let them know you are testing it for a school district
and they will send you the basic version for free (
normally $45). 

I have seen a lot of interest in *nix systems in
school districts in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois..
the problem I am having is the student administrative
system I support is currently only supported in
Windows and OS9 (they say the next version will be OSX
compatible but they carbonized it so not sure about
Linux/BSD support) 

--- Tony Gettig <tony@gettig.net> wrote:
> I was at a conference for K-12 technology folks this
> past week and one 
> of the sessions was on Lindows.
> 
> The presenter forgot his root password, which was
> recovered by booting 
> from a Red Hat CD in rescue mode, editing
> passwd/shadow, yada, yada. 
> Kinda funny.
> 
> 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. 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.
> 
> 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!
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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. 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!
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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! One
> gentleman asked if 
> the event could be videotaped (he's up near Mt.
> Pleasant).
> 
> 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.
> 
> Tony "nevermind jigdo, just get me the iso" Gettig
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Members mailing list
> Members@kalamazoolinux.org
>



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