NewsForge: Review: LindowsOS sneak preview – it’s not vaporware after all

“…Keeping in mind that this is an early beta of
LindowsOS, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, who is
Michael Robertson targeting? Once the Windows user gets LindowOS
installed, he’s looking at an interface that is, while similar to
Windows, a foreign one. I already knew how to look for a console or
get out of the GUI, and how to set up the network parameters —
even though this was about a two-click process, a newbie isn’t
going to just know how to do it. There’s no help on the Lindows
site or within the desktop, either. There’s no interactive forum or
official tech support avenue other than a feedback form at
Lindows.com.

There’s something scary about an imaginary
LindowsOS-from-Windows convert, happily running as root,
downloading emails with infected .exe or .pif screensavers attached
— or even with infected .rpms. Oh well, as long as it’s not in my
house. Our Insider got Outlook running and found that yes, it would
happily execute common worms. But remember, he couldn’t get his
Norton antivirus program to work. LindowsOS developers may want to
work with one of the antivirus software publishers to correct this
before they release their product to the general public.

Linux users will find this preview fun to play with, but
LindowsOS appears to be hampered without a Windows partition, which
defeats the implied purpose of Lindows: to be able to freely run
all Windows apps on Linux with no need for Windows. To reach Linux
people, this needs to be a true Linux — easy to install but
configurable; transparent to the user so that if he chooses to make
changes he can; and secure — unless Robertson is only seeking
previous Windows users who are not interested in configurability
and security. And if that is the case, I wonder what benefit
Robertson thinks there is for these people to switch to
LindowsOS?”

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