Finally! Lindows PCs reviewed

Somebody finally reviewed those microtel wal-mart PCs. I was looking forward to this as I still remember how annoyed I was when I tried a beta version.

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For this review, Microtel provided us with a AMD Duron 850 MHz system, with 10 GB Maxtor hard drive, 128 MB of memory, and 52x Samsung CDROM drive. Sound and video are integrated on the motherboard. Sound is supported through the VIA chipset, while the Trident Cyber Blade video shares main memory to do its tasks. The modem is a 56K Lucent software modem, but LindowsOS already has the appropriate driver installed. Absent from the system is a floppy drive, which I suppose is less than useful for a system that will upgrade its software from the Internet.

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No floppy drive? Man, that sucks. I don't care where the software comes from but floppy drives are universal, I would never want a computer without one.

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Surprisingly, the basic LindowsOS fits in a mere 450 MB on the disk. It features a KDE desktop with a selection of icons and menus which should make most Windows users feel right at home. Icons are activated via a double-click, which was peculiar to me as a Linux user, but this action should feel comfortable for most of the intended buyers of this system

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Just confirms that Lindows is just a rip off of windows mixed with a bad linux distro.

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So far, very nice. But then X Windows came up. Unfortunately, the monitor I normally use for testing is not a multisync monitor. This apparently was a problem for the system as configured. As a result, the screen became entirely unreadable. Faced with this, I decided to do what any novice user would do: I powered the machine off. Yes, I could have gone to one of the text consoles, logged in as root, and issued the shutdown command, but very few Wal-Mart buyers would know about that

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I wonder why that is. Can anybody shed some light on that? I don't normally use one myself.

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I try a fourth package, only to find that my Click-N-Run test has now expired. I have had my three free test downloads (even though two failed) and now I will have to pay $99 to get full access to the Click-N-Run software warehouse.

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Considering people have to pay $99 for full access to click-n-run it seems like a rip off if you have to constantly keep try to download software. Seems like a hassle.

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Oh no ... a rescue CD

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Enough said. The rest of the article can be located here http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/07...4.shtml?tid=23

No floppy drive? Perhaps they learned something from Apple.

Yea, but those new apples are amazing with their superdrive. A cd/cd-rw/dvd/dvd-rw is really cool. Who doesn't want the ability to make their own dvds and cds? Apple is much better than lindows.

No doubt. I've thought about buying a new Mac at times, if only for OS X being paired up with those superdrives. I think apple has done well with their newes OS, now for the glorified desklamp they call an IMac, there is a little something to be desired.

With apple, how does their OS install? Does it come on a cd? I have never heard of it being sold or pirated or anything so I was wondering. Because how do people recover if something goes wrong on their apple?

Yeh, the OS comes on a CD. I don't recall the key sequence you have to use to force the machine to boot from CD, but it's really quite easy to reinstall the Mac OS if you know what's up. When you boot from the OS disk, it does most of the work for you. I think there were only 2-3 questions asked of a user before the OS actually installed. Once installed, reboot to fully activate the extensions, and work complete. Now you just do the user config process. In comparision to other OS's, this has it's advantages. One thing I've never really looked into with it though is networked installs, or even fully automated installs. I guess if I would really like to know I'll have to buy one to find out.

The last Mac I used was the SI made in the mid-90's, and never messed with one since. In Fortune magazine, there was a big article on the new iMac which looks really, really cool. I as well as a lot of people know Macs are better, and has always been a step ahead of the game. Since nobody in my circle owns a Mac, nor does any school in my area have a Mac, I would love to see one in action. Oh well. We are in a Microsoft world.

As for Lindows, if I want Windows, I'll use Windows. If I want *NIX, I'll use *NIX. It's kinda silly to see a hybrid IMHO.

My interest in Macs has grown considerably since Apple's decision to go with the *nix platform (FreeBSD, I believe) in OS 10. I haven't had the opprotunity to try one out yet, but from what I have heard/seen it looks pretty sweet.

The only thing stopping me from buying a Mac is the significant difference in price between their hardware and PC hardware, as well as the fact that Mac hardware cannot be upgraded to the degree that PC hardware can . I would rather spend ~$1200 and build my own (with my choice of hardware) than spend the big bucks for their G4 powered Macs. Although, I wouldn't mind a shiny new Ibook dual booting OS 10 and PPC Linux.

--Sudo

Yup, OS 10 is based on unix for stability is what I read in a brochure. Does anybody know if that means MACs allow raw socket access to a user? I was wonderin.

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So far, very nice. But then X Windows came up. Unfortunately, the monitor I normally use for testing is not a multisync monitor. This apparently was a problem for the system as configured. As a result, the screen became entirely unreadable. Faced with this, I decided to do what any novice user would do: I powered the machine off. Yes, I could have gone to one of the text consoles, logged in as root, and issued the shutdown command, but very few Wal-Mart buyers would know about that

I wonder why that is. Can anybody shed some light on that? I don't normally use one myself.
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x-windows is the graphical interface of linux, so you can have some windows like interface (with windows). Without it you could only use 16 colours or tekst only. If you can't set it up properly (like I do), you will have to have some linux knowledge to repair that... :)

Depending on the version of X they have used, might be to their advantage to run run x with the -configure option. Should generate a config file that is well adapted to the hardware config. Copy the config file to the appropriate directory, and problem many times will be done with at the next starting of X


Mac OS X should allow raw socket access. You also have the ability to establish firewalling, and server apps on it. Very nice OS based on BSD. Like I said, I was tempted to buy a mac, but I'm in agreement with Sudo, they just cost too much for my blood. I can build a PC for less, though it may not be as well adapted to graphics needs as the Mac would be. But, I don't do design on computer, I do my design on design boards and canvas, so the differences for me and the graphics aspect are negligible.

*annoyed* neel I know what X windows is.

The 'no floppy' concept is good, IMO, only as long as there is a recovery CD to go with it, and the boot sequence can be adjusted in the BIOS to load the CDRW first (ATAPI-compliant, etc). Still may be a bit of work for the inexperienced user to figure out though...hence the longevity of the floppy, I presume. Unless the whole system boots through the CD...then....hmmm...Well, you'd probably have a hell of a time upgrading your CD drive.

And 450MB seems awfully small for a full OS. Is half of it compressed, or what? That makes it a bit difficult to dig for files on the CD, to find a particular driver to replace a corrupted one, forinstance.

As to the last point...I'm certain that in the near future, multisync monitors will be the standard, that is the main complaint that most IT professionals (especially network admins) complain about.

Ouroboros

I've got a multisync monitor that gets grouchy at times. For a lack of knowledge of monitor and video card functions, the best I can describe it as is lazy or tired. Every so often when I do decide to run X, it displays w/ blind settings, 640x480 w/ the enlarged text all garbled. Usually a drop out of X, run "XFree86 -configure" and copy the XF86Config file to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config and restart X, usually works around it. At other times, I have to halt the system, power down the machine and the monitor, restart and turn the monitor on, then reconfigure X and all is well.. Go figure.. I'm pretty certain it's the fault of the monitor because w/ a composite monitor, no issues seen for months on end. Go figure.

Well, seems to me this site is promoting hacking by unfair treatment, if more servers go down thats the webmasters fault for letting immature people control his website, Today I got a very, very stupid message saying, "you been asking inappropriate questions like "How Can I Hack HotMail"? Stop!", Yet I never even asked ONE question reguarding anything, the only thing I do on here is state my opinions, seems to me someone likes harrassing me about my point of view, if you don't like me, you can go suck a dick, or you can simply ignore me, you don't have to ****ing threaten me with your lame and immature lies saying i'm asking **** you came up with right out of ****ing nowhere, so i'm continuing to protest until this harrassment stops, or I get banned, if I do it won't be a big loss, because all i do on here is chat and state my opinions, and if you don't like it, you can take YOUR opinion and shove it up your ass...

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Well, seems to me this site is promoting hacking by unfair treatment, if more servers go down thats the webmasters fault for letting immature people control his website, Today I got a very, very stupid message saying, "you been asking inappropriate questions like "How Can I Hack HotMail"? Stop!", Yet I never even asked ONE question reguarding anything, the only thing I do on here is state my opinions, seems to me someone likes harrassing me about my point of view, if you don't like me, you can go suck a dick, or you can simply ignore me, you don't have to ****ing threaten me with your lame and immature lies saying i'm asking **** you came up with right out of ****ing nowhere, so i'm continuing to protest until this harrassment stops, or I get banned, if I do it won't be a big loss, because all i do on here is chat and state my opinions, and if you don't like it, you can take YOUR opinion and shove it up your ass...

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Dude, you just need to relax a little bit. Stress is not good. Yer heiny hairs are wound just a little too tight. Kick back, read alot, and keep the posts limited to good advice. If it's an opinion being posted, perhaps a disclaimer would be warranted?

Hmmm,
I don't know about Lindows. On one hand, it would be good if it could help more people
transition into Linux. On the other hand, they might need to work on it some more so that it won't turn
people off. From reading the article and some of the responses, it seems the Lindows people might
want to make a fairly quick second release to incorporate some feedback and fix some issues.
What really interests me is the Microtel PC the Lindows is on. Good price for a (I guess)
fairly decent second PC. Hmm, I could get one and install the Redhat 7.3 sitting on my closet shelf
and hook it and my Mandrake 8.2 Hewlett Packard box into my Linksys router and have my own
little two box network going. /me sighs... But I've already sunk a lot of money into what I've got now.

CaNiBudda,
I hope you'll take this as the friendly advice this is meant to be, but I would delete the post you made
right before this one. You might have a short stay on this site if you keep posting things like this. Hope this helps.

This canibudda guy, um, why is he posting in my thread with his rant?? I don't see how his post is of any relevance to lindows. Sorry, but I jus' don't get it. And preacherman, I was thinking the same thing. These PCs seem half decent and they would probably last at least 4 or 5 years. And they're dirt cheap clones. Hehe, my damn clone, 133mhz and 32 megs o' ram and a 1.2 gig hard drive cost me over $2000! My sis always complains about my hogging the PC so I was thinking this was a realtively inexpensive way to give her something to do her typing on, and never use all the cable bandwidth either. I woulda bought one except I need a floppy drive, because at school she uses disks to bring home her work and documents. If they would only include a floppy disk drive.