A Review of LindowsOS 4.0 [LWN.net]

October 15, 2003

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

Introduction

Lindows.com was established in October 2001 in San Diego, California, USA by Michael Robertson, the founder and former CEO of mp3.com. It was a stormy start. The company had initially succeeded in attracting media attention on two fronts - by ambitious claims about the future ability of LindowsOS to run many popular Windows applications, and by engaging in a legal battle with Microsoft over alleged trademark infringement. While in the following months Lindows.com quietly shelved their original plans, they were successful in defending the right to use the word "Lindows" both in their company name (Lindows.com) and their product name (LindowsOS).

After many months of development, Lindows.com finally announced the first general release of LindowsOS, version 3.0, in November 2002. Unfortunately, many reviewers found the comparatively expensive product buggy and still a lot harder to use than the operating system it was meant to replace. Yet, it wasn't all bad news. The company's developers had clearly done some much needed usability studies to bring Linux closer to general population and developed an excellent software installation utility called Click-N-Run. Lindows.com also sponsors several open source projects, including Mozilla, GAIM and KDE-look.org.

LindowsOS 4.0 was released in June 2003 and the first reviews gave an indication of a vastly improved product. For this brief overview, LindowsOS 4.0 was installed on a fairly standard system with Intel Pentium 4 1.4 GHz processor, ASUS P4T motherboard, 384 MB RDRAM, nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200, onboard Realtek 8139too network card and Lemel 17" TFT monitor.

Installation

The installation of LindowsOS 4.0 was uneventful. As expected, the user is not required to make many decisions, with the only exception being the screen prompt to select between the "take over an entire hard disk" option and the "advanced install" option. The term "advanced install" is grossly misleading as the sole available "advanced" choice is the selection of a pre-existing partition on which to install the operating system. There are no options to create/resize partitions or select more than one partition for installation, and neither there are options for specifying the file system or boot sector. LindowsOS automatically formats the hard disk or the selected partition with ReiserFS, while lilo simply overwrites the master boot record, no questions asked. There is no package selection screen either, but users are prompted to enter an optional root password if they so desire.

The entire installation took no more than a few minutes. In fact, in took less time than the subsequent first boot - presumably due to all the behind-the-scenes hardware autodetection and configuration, and also because the OS laboriously mounted all 22 partitions on my two hard disks. Some, but not all of the Linux distributions on these partitions and their correct names were present on the LindowsOS boot menu. Once the long boot completed, I found myself inside the KDE desktop environment and the first window calling for attention was a message asking me to accept the LindowsOS license agreement together with a chance to adjust a few simple configuration options. The hardware detection was flawless.

I was logged in as root with no password requested. Although LindowsOS does provide a place to add individual users to the system from within the initial configuration screen, it makes no effort to encourage the user to do so. Neither is user addition mentioned in the accompanying "Getting Started" guide. As such, it is probably fair to assume that the majority of LindowsOS users do run their operating system as superusers with no passwords set.

Applications and System Configuration

The first impression was extremely favorable. It was immediately obvious that a lot of thought had been put into making the desktop as pleasant as possible and LindowsOS has certainly succeeded in creating an intuitive and highly likable working environment. From the desktop, panel and system tray icons to careful menu design, one could immediately see that this is not just a standard default desktop as designed by KDE developers, but a highly polished and well organized setup by professional usability experts. Unlike Lycoris Desktop/LX, LindowsOS does not go out of its way to create a Windows XP lookalike, choosing instead to retain a distinct LindowsOS look and style.

The basic edition of LindowsOS does not come with many applications. Mozilla serves as a default program for web browsing and email, while GAIM is the preferred instant messenger. It is interesting to note that LindowsOS keeps GAIM up-to-date, despite never-ending changes in authentication schemes of Yahoo! Messenger and other popular instant messengers. Among the multimedia tools, only basic CD and MP3 players are supplied, while the system lacks a video player. Office applications are also missing. A simplified KDE Control Center, called LindowsOS Control Panel, is used for system configuration tasks.

Click-N-Run

The Click-N-Run warehouse is the major selling point behind the distribution. While it is essentially just a giant repository of Debian packages, its design, execution, features and general user-friendliness make this service unique among Linux distributions. At $50 per year, it is a bargain. Click-N-Run not only provides for a single-click installation, it also serves as an all-purpose tool for system and security updates (inclusive of automatic download and installation of critical updates), with useful information about the hundreds of available packages. These can be grouped into custom categories, or "aisles" in LindowsOS terms, based on user preferences. Many aisles containing task-specific package groups are already pre-configured for a single-click installation, and although they often include proprietary software requiring extra payment, they are generally useful for installing a whole group of packages without going through a tedious search process. Installed packages immediately appear on the system menu, as well as on the desktop as icons.

For those who are unable or unwilling to part with the necessary cash to join Click-N-Run, LindowsOS comes pre-configured with apt-get, with its sources pointing to Debian's testing branch.

Pros and Cons

The overall experience using LindowsOS was surprisingly positive. Besides the excellent Click-N-Run warehouse, there are many small touches where the product's attention to detail is immediately visible, such as CD automount or automatic MIME type configuration after installing new applications. Inserting a CD into the CD tray magically starts the relevant application or the file manager, just like in Windows. The Audio Assist Tutorial set provides a convenient introduction to the system, while the brief, but well-designed "Getting Started" guide is all that a new user needs to get up to speed with the new software. Hardware autodetection and configuration was amazing and even the K3B CD-burning application was all set up and ready requiring no further configuration. Lindows.com also provides active user forums with Lindows.com staff (including Michael Robertson) actively participating in the discussions.

On the negative side, the system defaults to running as a "passwordless root" and LindowsOS makes no effort to encourage proper user setup. Excessive commercialization has to be noted as another shortcoming - even inserting an unencrypted DVD promptly directs the user toward purchasing a Lindows DVD player - a commercial edition of xine with a license for DVD decoding, although even a plain xine would play the DVD just fine. The default system tray includes icons for commercial Lindows.com products, such as Virus Safe and Surf Safe, some of which are of questionable value.

Conclusion

Lindows.com has done an excellent job with LindowsOS 4.0. While some of the earlier editions came under heavy criticism by reviewers, it is clear that the developers had read those reviews and made the necessary improvements. LindowsOS 4.0 is an aesthetically pleasing, highly usable operating system with superior hardware autodetection and excellent Click-N-Run software warehouse. However, the system's default of running as a passwordless superuser is a sore point, which from a point of view of any veteran UNIX user, makes it hard to express wholehearted recommendation for the product - it would be unfair on the users and their data. There has to be a better solution to the convenience versus security compromise than the present default, or at the very least, Lindows.com should make more effort to educate and encourage users to set up proper user accounts.

(Log in to post comments)

xine and dvd license

Posted Oct 16, 2003 3:20 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

elanthis seems to have swallowed some of the MPAA's propaganda. (He seems also to have missed the distinction between encrypted and unencrypted DVDs, but I won't comment further on that.)

The posting above is unnecessarily alarmist. While Lindows might get in trouble for distributing unlicensed DVD players (it would be hard for the consortium to argue at this late date that their trade secret remains legitimately secret, particularly in light of events in Norway courts), nobody could get in trouble for having installed one.

Similarly, nobody buying a DVD has agreed, by that act, to any onerous licensing restrictions. They've just bought a disc, and are subject to nothing more stringent than ordinary copyright law. Indeed, they have an implicit license beyond its provisions: in the U.S., the Uniform Commercial Code implies that they are allowed to do anything they need to do to make full use of the product they have paid for. If the box didn't list restrictions, the vendor isn't allowed to add any that can be discovered only after the box is opened.

xine and dvd license

Posted Oct 16, 2003 5:23 UTC (Thu) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link]

I thought he said it was an unencrypted DVD. Wouldn't that mean no CSS
and therefore no DMCA problems?

xine and dvd license

Posted Oct 26, 2003 11:43 UTC (Sun) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

"Normal Xine", with some external plugins, can play DVDs, but not *legally* (in the US and some other countries, anyways). Say what you will about how dumb that is, if you intentionally buy a DVD, you are agreeing that you don't mind the license requirements (if you *do* mind, then you shouldn't be buying DVDs!), and you thus should follow the (admittedly infuriating) laws and only use a licensed decoder.

Been drinking the Kool-Aid, have we ?

Your thougths are exactly the ones the IP-cartel would like you to have, but thankfully you're wrong.

A movie (typically) is a copyrigthed work. Thus it's distribution and COPYING is governed by a set of laws called copyrigth-laws. Nowhere in these laws does it say that you have to purchase a "approved" player to access a copyrigthed work that you have legally bougth.

In the case of ENCRYPTED DVDs the DMCA makes additional trouble, since bypassing the protection is illegal even in the cases where the access itself is legal. But the DMCA is totally irrelevant for UNENCRYPTED DVDs like the one discussed here.

Typical DVDs doesn't come with any license saying anything about which players can or should be used. (atleast none of the many dvds I have came with such a thing.) And even if they did, a court would be very unlikely to uphold them.

Ask yourself; Do you think a court would uphold a "EULA" printed on the inside of the back-cover of a book saying that the book can only legally be read through glasses licensed and approved by the BPAA ?

If not, why do you think movies are different ?

A Review of LindowsOS 4.0

Posted Oct 16, 2003 19:07 UTC (Thu) by ksmathers (guest, #2353) [Link]

I think the reviewer missed many of the features of Lindows that I would have liked to know myself before installing LindowsOS 4.0. Certainly the installer is oversimplified, click-n-run is simple to use, and the installation easily lets you bypass creating a user account for running your software, but anyone who has minimal familiarity with Lindows would already know all of that.

My own experience is that Lindows is uncomfortable in many other ways that aren't immediately apparent on installing the system. Lindows is installed by default without any reference documentation or software build tools: no gcc, no ld, no as, no headers, no man pages. And installing e.g. gcc through click-n-run only installs enough of the compiler to compile, not enough to actually link an executable. The solution to this is to go to the 'Aisles' on click-n-run and find the Aisle of developer tools, and install the entire Aisle. This will try to upgrade your system to a full developer's system, but with the caveat that the Aisle was created for 3.0 and doesn't entirely work on 4.0.

Also annoying to me is that it is very difficult to find documentation on how Lindows decided to configure their system. Using Redhat, if you install kernel sources you'll get a complete configuration including the options that Redhat used to build their default kernel. Not so for Lindows which requires you to reselect every device already built before you can add the single new driver that you need to add.

Many programs on click-n-run are listed as 'untested'. When it comes to kernel modules, this is basically just a codified way of saying 'doesn't work'. Getting autofs or automount up and running on LindowsOS 4.0 took forever, again due mostly to lack of documentation.

Network configuration is also painful. If you are running your network using static configurations or NIS you will find that Lindows is very difficult to configure for those environments. I still haven't managed to set my domainname correctly on the machine I installed.

What Lindows does well is act as a non-developer, home computer operating system. Installing games, personal productivity software, movie players and the like are much easier than for Redhat, with click-n-run doing the brunt of the work. Just don't wander too far from the standard configuration.

Adding user accounts and running as non-root works reasonably well except for the default behavior of click-n-run to start up at login adding the need to type in your root password shortly after your user password. Luckily it is fairly easy to disable click-n-run on login, though not as simple as disabling the user training tool that starts up on first login.

There isn't a lot of information about configuring Lindows available online. What little information I found was in the Lindows discussion forums, but didn't include any discussions of e.g NFS. I only made a single attempt to contact Lindows help desk for more information with a problem, and promptly got a response indicating that I would be better off contacting the original developer. Since I knew that the original developer had already fixed the problem, I sent that back to the help desk and got a reply indicating that my message had been forwarded to the click-n-run team to incorporate the update. Lindows help desk is at least responsive if not always clueful enough to find answers without help.