“Helix Code, ‘an open source software company devoted to
improving GNOME,’ released their flagship product Monday. Does
their desktop improvement live up to the hype? Is Linux finally
easy enough for your mother to use?”
“After their web site went live, it was immediately buried with
requests from curious visitors. Fortunately, they had already
mirrored their installation programs and packages. I loaded the
installation instructions and was dismayed to see they expected me
to execute as root, a script piped directly from their web site.
Although this makes installation of the Helix Desktop easy for a
newbie, it is a major security risk. If you are security-paranoid,
Helix Code gives you the option to download the source code, review
it, and then compile it yourself. I chose instead to download the
compressed 1.5M installer binary and go from there.”
“Is the Helix Code desktop that much easier to use? Not yet.
It is definitely on the right path though. With its sister
company Eazel, working on the next generation file manager
Nautilus, and the Outlook killer Evolution on the way, the free
software community is going to broaden its appeal to a wider user
base. However, I would not recommend that a newbie attempt to
install Helix GNOME at least until the next version of the Helix
Installer is released. There are some major hang-ups that need to
be resolved first. I’m eagerly anticipating the next release of the
Helix Code desktop. Now, to submit some bug reports. :)”