okcpulse
03-10-2006, 02:34 PM
Linspire 5.0, the world's easiest desktop Linux, certainly does live up to its name. But is it the world's most prodictive and supported desktop Linux operating system? The answer: no.
Case and point: I recently resurrected an old Dell notebook PC for my wife's grade school brother. Since Linux is generally less resource-hungry and suffers far less virus and malware attacks, I felt Linspire would be a perfect fit, since a nearly 13-year old boy is not yet equipped to handle potential infections, much less prevent them with his surfing habits. I was sure Linux would be the perfect solution, but there was a huge block in my path.
My father-in-law asked me to install a wireless NIC into the notebook. I selected a Linksys wireless NIC, slapped it in after booting up Linspire, and... no connection. Even though Linspire says it supports wireless, the NIC card went undetected. The box, however, did say it was designed for Windows XP. But most hardware that is can also run on Linux. I rebooted several times with no luck.
Finally, I went into the Control Center and opened up the network connections option on the left menu pane of the Linspire Control Center, selected wireless connections to manually configure wireless. But the window had been rendered unaccessible. I eventually gave up, installed Windows XP Home and the wireless NIC was up and running after a few steps through the bundle disc.
Other issues plague me about Linspire. First, the company doesn't run a Linspire distro update every six months, unlike other distros. There are no plans to update Linspire to 5.1 and/or so on, and many Linspire customers do not even have a roadmap to Linspire's future, something Novell, Microsoft, Sun and Apple provide. Six month updates are important because for one, KDE (desktop GUI environment for Linux) is now two versions ahead of Linspire's KDE 3.3.1. KDE 3.5 was recently released. SUSE Linux 10.1 will ship in April with KDE 3.5, and SUSE Linux 10.0, released last October, comes with 3.4. Those newer KDE versions come with more features and a very polished and sleek GUI.
An issue that should have been addressed long ago is the dancing icon problem. The icons are never in the same place upon startup, and that can flat-out annoy any experienced user. Really, do you like other people moving things around on your desk while you're out, only to come back and discover there's been a switch. Dancing icons are a sign of poor codemanship. And, Linspire has to get rid of that ugly GUI. The company has the right ideas. Its willingness to make its version of Linux support all multimedia formats is a big win for those wishing to switch from Windows to Linux. That and far cheaper license costs. But start plugging in devices, and you're left scrambling for that ol' Windows XP installation disc.
Case and point: I recently resurrected an old Dell notebook PC for my wife's grade school brother. Since Linux is generally less resource-hungry and suffers far less virus and malware attacks, I felt Linspire would be a perfect fit, since a nearly 13-year old boy is not yet equipped to handle potential infections, much less prevent them with his surfing habits. I was sure Linux would be the perfect solution, but there was a huge block in my path.
My father-in-law asked me to install a wireless NIC into the notebook. I selected a Linksys wireless NIC, slapped it in after booting up Linspire, and... no connection. Even though Linspire says it supports wireless, the NIC card went undetected. The box, however, did say it was designed for Windows XP. But most hardware that is can also run on Linux. I rebooted several times with no luck.
Finally, I went into the Control Center and opened up the network connections option on the left menu pane of the Linspire Control Center, selected wireless connections to manually configure wireless. But the window had been rendered unaccessible. I eventually gave up, installed Windows XP Home and the wireless NIC was up and running after a few steps through the bundle disc.
Other issues plague me about Linspire. First, the company doesn't run a Linspire distro update every six months, unlike other distros. There are no plans to update Linspire to 5.1 and/or so on, and many Linspire customers do not even have a roadmap to Linspire's future, something Novell, Microsoft, Sun and Apple provide. Six month updates are important because for one, KDE (desktop GUI environment for Linux) is now two versions ahead of Linspire's KDE 3.3.1. KDE 3.5 was recently released. SUSE Linux 10.1 will ship in April with KDE 3.5, and SUSE Linux 10.0, released last October, comes with 3.4. Those newer KDE versions come with more features and a very polished and sleek GUI.
An issue that should have been addressed long ago is the dancing icon problem. The icons are never in the same place upon startup, and that can flat-out annoy any experienced user. Really, do you like other people moving things around on your desk while you're out, only to come back and discover there's been a switch. Dancing icons are a sign of poor codemanship. And, Linspire has to get rid of that ugly GUI. The company has the right ideas. Its willingness to make its version of Linux support all multimedia formats is a big win for those wishing to switch from Windows to Linux. That and far cheaper license costs. But start plugging in devices, and you're left scrambling for that ol' Windows XP installation disc.