DesktopOS.com interviews Kevin Carmony, President, Lindows.com, Inc.

DesktopOS.com ^ | Jan 22 2004 | Tim Mullins

[PFKEY]

Red Hat is the one I downloaded onto countless floppies several years back only to give up when I couldn't even figure out how to decompress .GZ files. I think that was the extention.

Not being computer illiterate and having to expend too much effort to understand what compression SW was needed and the documentation assumed I should know this.

[N3WBI3]

Linux works with the Neuros, and the iPOD (and iTunes).. I worked with my new Kodak Digital camera right out of the box, it also worked with my TV Tuner cand (wintv) right out of the box. Both my wife's Clie and my Palm work on a redhat distro out of the box.

The fact is that Linux has been adopted by the whole industry amd there are many games (linux-gamers.net).

Im not going to pretend that Linux provides the total range of hardware support Windo0ws offers but its not as far off as people would have you belieeve..

[Orangedog]

Here's what really frustrated me with the companies who sued MS in the 1990's: If they really saw MS as a threat to all of their businesses, why didn't they collaborate on WINE and devote the resources they spent on lawyers to that project. If they could have made it work they quite possible would have been able to cut MS off at the knees.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Why migrate to Linux when I can run Linux apps under Windows? ;-)
www.cygwin.com

[N3WBI3]

http://fedora.redhat.com/ ,if you have a spare system lying around (say an old PII or Pentium) try it out I think youll be impressed how easy the install has gotten and with RPM support installing applications is easy..

[N3WBI3]

Three letters D R M

[N3WBI3]

I prefer VMWare, but that cost money. Yes Cygwin is a good learning tool.

[blackfarm]

redhat does not have a built in porn or virus blocker or scanner.

[goldstategop]

I have Lindows 4.5 Laptop Edition. Install was under 10 minutes and its very easy to download software from the Click N Run Wherehouse. Xandros just came out with V2 of its OS. Linux is ready for the average person. You don't ever need to use the command line anymore to run it. As a matter of fact Michael Robertson, the CEO of Lindows, plans to send Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, a copy to show him how simple a desktop operating system can be in a Microsoft-free world.

[FastCoyote]

You want the low down - It ain't for everyone, but it is for a lot of people and situations. I am an IT guy, I use it for my web servers, I develop on it for myself, great for a Mysql database server. But, it takes a fair amount of work (as much as you put in learning Windows over the years). The great thing is, three years from now it will be on a par in ease of use with Windows (tortoise and hare kind of thing). Cost of ownership for some organizations can be substantially less (not always). Linux has now won its place in the sun, it is not going away as much as Bill Gates would like. If you can't stand the aggravation of Microsoft's tax every two years, if you think Office and Mediaplayer are spyware (they are), if you are tech savvy and want a real operating system, then go for it, the water is fine.

[N3WBI3]

Neither does windows

There is a pretty simple one one http://webcleaner.sourceforge.net/

[FastCoyote]

"Less vunerable to virus attacks might also be a good one but I've never been infected so that incentive is not strong enough. "

If you ever look at web logs or what hits your firewall, it will scare the bejesus out of you. Only a matter of time before a mass Microsoft meltdown in my humble opinion.

[PFKEY]

If you ever look at web logs or what hits your firewall

Actually I have and I can't distinguish between what I requested and what an attack might look like.

My laptop uses botha SW and HW firewall but my desktop is too old and doesn't have enough memory to run the SW firewall.

My wife know enough not to launch attatchments and ignores email not from those she normally communicates with.

Knocking on wood, this has worked flawlessly for nearly 7 years.

[Bush2000]

At the end of the Interview the Lindows President gives a coupon code for a free copy of Lindows.

And it's worth every penny you paid for it. /SARCASM

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

Learning tool? Heck we're using cygwin in production.
Now there's also Services for Unix which MS has just very recently made available for free download. I haven't checked it out yet so I can't comment. It's an interesting move though.

[N3WBI3]

I would never use CYGWIN in production, because using it (for anything other than minor scripts) is a waste. Use a real Linux box you avoid the reboots needed to patch the windows server that cygwin is on

[philetus]

Have you looked at Xandros?

http://www.xandros.com/

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

It depends on the application. I work at a large financial institution where many applications require both security and 24/7 stability. For those we use VMS clusters for departmental computing and OS/390 mainframes for the corporate computing and online transactions. We wouldn't consider Linux as a reliable alternative, at least not yet. It's got far too many security holes. We use Windows server applications in decision support applications. That's also where we've found a use for cygwin.

[N3WBI3]

I also work for a finantional institution, use us IOS390, and AIX. We are moving to Linux as Oracle now says RedHat AS is its primary platform, as does BEA weblogic.

Linux has no more holes than a windows distro, and in a purely desktop mode (no apache/sendmail/ftp..) it has far fewer than windows does. We are moving off of windows for everything but SQL server (and why we are staying with that pos when we own an oracle license is beyone me). On the desktop we are keeping windows because our time tracking and invoice system is built on PB but when we are done migrating to EJB's I inntend to push for the desktop to go away as well..

[AuthenticLiberal]

Linux will always be in an uphill battle against Microsoft for the home market until the entire software industry decides to embrace Linux.

And that won't happen until all of the home users are using it. This is why BeOS, a much more technically superior OS to Linux or Windows, failed.