Lindows OS4

Looking for a desktop operating system rather than a general linux distribution? Then this could be for you.

Lindows, like Lycoris' Desktop/LX, is designed as a desktop operating system instead of a general Linux distribution. The company has had unusual success in having the distribution pre-installed by OEM vendors on cheaper PCs; the cost of running Windows on low-end PCs can often overtake the hardware costs once you add applications. Lindows, along with Knoppix and Xandros, is based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, but sold in a rebranded form.

The installation is the simplest of all in terms of choices; all you need to do is decide where on the drive to install, enter a name for the computer and a 'security' password, and it proceeds in just few minutes. In other respects, this makes the installation more difficult. The disk set-up is limited: you can only take over an entire hard drive or use an existing partition: you cannot create or modify your drive at all. There is no control over the boot loader - in true Windows style, Lindows will simply overwrite your bootloader without a warning. For the vast majority of people who will want to dual-boot Linux and Windows, it's a big problem. Fortunately, it does still detect Windows partitions and allow you to boot them subsequently.

After a reboot, Lindows starts a wizard to let you change a few settings, such as the desktop resolution - this is well designed and quite painless. Notably there is no insistence on creating a new user. Lindows is quite happy for you to remain logged in as root (the superuser), which is frowned upon from a security perspective.

The desktop has a set of useful icons and a clear menu laid out in a style more similar to Windows. Each entry is named well, and attractive icons are consistently used. The installation doesn't offer any choice of software to install, but it is a similar set to Lycoris' Desktop/LX, including media players, graphics viewers, and the Open Office suite (an old 1.0 version).

We had no problems getting multimedia files to work on our test PC, and the usual plug-ins for the Mozilla (renamed to a Lindows brand) were installed. There's also a commercial DVD player available for a small charge; other distributions can play DVDs with manual downloads, but the legality is ambiguous.

Lindows pushes its Click-NRun service, a graphical front end to the Debian package management system. As a subscriber to Click-N-Run, you can browse a large repository of software from Lindows. The popular titles are explained well, though there are several multiple entries and lesserknown entries are unclear. Here you can get hold of development utilities such as GCC, and the Gimp graphical tool (unfortunately not provided on the CD). Installing by Click-N-Run was as simple as it gets - an icon is added to the desktop and the correct menu entry set up, and it was a case of one click to run the programs. One clever feature is that each menu section has a Click-N-Run option, taking you directly to more applications of that type.

There was a major issue with our test PC. Lindows did not support the onboard network controllers, and a broadband connection is important on a small distribution like this. Since development tools are only available by downloading, it was impossible even to hack together a driver manually. The only option was to plug in a supported Ethernet card. We also had some problems with shutting the PC down; there were occasional hangs, meaning the hard drive had to have slow, full checks on the next boot-up.

As a desktop replacement, Lindows is a good choice - providing the hardware is compatible. Clearly a lot of time has been spent on integrating Click-N-Run and the relatively small amount of software means it is a necessity. Experts can still download Debian packages in the normal way, but this could interfere with the configuration.

Lindows can be purchased as a set from the Lindows website, or as a paid downloadable version at a lower cost. The base operating system costs $59.95 (approx £35), or a bundle offer including a year's subscription to Click-N-Run is $99.

Contact: Lindows 001 858 587 6700
www.lindows.com

System requirements:

• Pentium II 800
• 128MB of Ram
• 2GB hard disk space

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