[ale] Linspire and other commercial distros

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Wednesday 29 September 2004 10:15 am, Mlfveer at cs.com wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm new to the ALE list, but not new to oss. Generally, what is the
> response to 'commercial' Linux variants? I cut my teeth on Corel's version
> of Linux years ago, and progressed to SuSE (which I now use). The reason I
> ask is that I am consistently asked for 'the easiest distro to install for
> a non-geek.' I've always felt that SuSE was pretty easy to install, but
> have read some glowing reviews of Linspire and Xandros.

Generally the response is positive in that we (the Linux community) appreciate 
what the companies are doing and think it is a good thing.  The response is 
luke-warm in that not that many people buy these distributions.  Why buy 
something when you can get it for free.  The distributions with the most 
purchasers have free versions available, too.  

In particular, Linspire is an interesting case.  I think it has almost zero 
uptake in the Linux community because it is so proprietary and it has a huge 
security problem--it encourages you to run as root, so any virus or worm can 
take over the system.  Linux fans ignore it for those reasons.  On the other 
hand, it has real marketing muscle behind it and it is pretty easy to use.  I 
think I've seen more preinstalled Lindows desktop computers than any other 
distribution (walmart, tiger direct, Fry's, sub300.com).

I think that xandros, libranet, lycoris all get a lot more respect from the 
community, but don't have the maketing savvy and $$ of Linspire.  

As an aside, I'm still interested in anyone who wants to give a 15 minute 
presentation on any of these "alternate" distributions.  By alternate I mean 
anything other than RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian.

Michael