On Sat, 7 Dec 2002, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: > hi, > what is all the fuss about lindows ? any pointers anyone ? the site is a > mess of ritzy blurbs and the bbc clickonline gave off the impression that is > a dressed up debian. so does anyone have any experience of this pretender ?
Lindows isn't FLOSS (IE: there are proprietary parts to it), similar to MacOS-X. It is all Free Software under the hood, but proprietary stuff on top. Lindows is a derivative of Xandros (the technology is all done here in Ottawa, Canada), Xandros is the modern version of Corel Linux, and CorelLinux/Xandros are derivatives of Debian. Lindows is the marketing effort by the same man that brought us MP3.com, Michael Robertson. I believe this marketing is going to pay off well for the Linux community. If you are already a Linux user, Lindows isn't relevant to you. If you are a non-technical user that wants a Microsoft Windows replacement for home usage, this is perfect. The fact you can buy a cheap PC from companies like Wallmart in the USA will allow them to dive into that market and convert people. I don't see this as relevant to the Indian market other than the fact that the more Lindows/Linux/etc users there are, the more FLOSS software will be written, and the more people will get hired to do so (and of course any sentence with the phrase 'more people' in it relates to India ;-) --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen and not a third party. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/ -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
