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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Both Lindows and Lycoris sent me a copies of their software to review, and I thought that each worked pretty well. The installation process -- which many who buy preinstalled systems won't even need to go through -- took about 20 minutes for each OS, and the software seemed to recognize every bit of hardware on the old Pentium II machine I used for testing. Each connected painlessly to Salon's network and the Internet.
The first thing you notice about Lindows and Lycoris is how closely each resembles Windows. To achieve this effect, the OSes use the KDE graphical interface and some very unoriginal, though perhaps comforting, names, pictures and menu conventions. By default, the Lycoris desktop starts up with a shot of an idyllic meadow with clouds passing through a bright blue sky, a picture you've no doubt seen before. Instead of Microsoft's "My Computer" icon, Lycoris has "My Linux." Lindows sticks with "My Computer." Lycoris' Recycle Bin is the same shape as Microsoft's Recycle Bin, but Microsoft's is transparent and has friendlier glow. (Maybe a friendly glow costs more money?) Overall, Lindows looks a bit less like Windows than Lycoris does, but it works the same way. Following the Windows style, each system uses a main menu in the lower left-hand corner of the screen to start up favorite applications, and the desktop can be used as a main repository for personal files.
Neither Lycoris nor Lindows have been secretive about their desire to put a Windows face on Linux. Lindows is called Lindows for a reason, after all. A few months after Lindows started selling its software, Microsoft sued the company, claiming that some customers might mistake the name Lindows for Windows. (The trial is scheduled to start in April. In a pre-trial ruling, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour wrote last year that Lindows "certainly made a conscious decision to play with fire by choosing a product and company name that differs by only one letter from the world's leading computer software program," but he added that "one could just as easily conclude that in 1983 Microsoft made an equally risky decision to name its product after a term commonly used in the trade to indicate the windowing capability" of a graphical user interface.)
Initially, Lindows wanted to do more than offer a Windows look-alike -- the company wanted its software to run most Windows applications. Robertson founded the company to take advantage of Wine, a project that aims to get Windows software running on Unix-based systems. When Lindows was formed, in 2001, Robertson was predicting that within a couple of years, his software would run most Windows applications just like a native Windows system. Robertson, who was the founder and original CEO of MP3.com, has had some experience shaking up huge industries, and his claims were given much play in the tech press. But a few months later, after recognizing the difficulty of running Windows programs in Linux and after a run-in with Microsoft's legal department, the company began saying that Windows emulation was not the company's top goal. Its Web site now says that Lindows "will not run Microsoft Windows applications at a level of quality we're satisfied with."
Lycoris never said that it wanted to run Windows applications, but it too is bent on copying the Windows way of doing things. The company is based around the corner from Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., and was originally called RedmondLinux. Joseph Cheek, the founder, worked at Microsoft for a year and a half as a network tester. It's not clear how much contact he had with the people working on Windows there, but he says that his time at Microsoft taught him a great deal about the software business. "A lot of the technical ways of building software I learned at Microsoft," he says. "The way they organize their time, for example. And I'm using a modified version of their build process and some of the same design goals that they had there. I'm borrowing heavily from things I learned there."
Microsoft has long been criticized for the way it plays fast and loose with other people's innovations. Countless times, the company has co-opted rival firms' ideas and, through superior resources and a keen disregard for fair, or legal, business practices, it has pushed its software to the top. It did this most notoriously with the Web browser -- but its portfolio of products abounds with examples of ideas it didn't come up with, but merely polished: Word, Excel, the Windows Media Player, its instant messaging software, its online service, and much of the Windows look and feel, including its Recycle Bin.
So what are we to conclude about the Linux world when the companies that are seen as having the best shot at toppling Windows on the desktop are doing (to Microsoft) just what Microsoft has done to others? Are Lindows and Lycoris selling out, or are they just getting smart -- joining Microsoft rather than beating it?
Joseph Cheek, of Lycoris, says that he doesn't think about such things. "The impetus for creating this wasn't to sell against Microsoft," he says. "It was really just to see if Linux can be made simple enough so that other people can use it. I was tired of introducing Linux to people without a tech background and getting the reaction that it was too difficult to use." Cheek sees his software as a "steppingstone or a bridge between Windows and traditional Linux."
Some people may not care that they're stuck in a PC world dominated by one company, he says, but "we believe that there are enough people who do care, and we're also trying to appeal to the technical person who has some influence over non-tech people. For instance a Debian or a Red Hat user who wouldn't necessarily want our software for their own personal use but has three or four friends or relatives that they'd really want to convert to Linux. They wouldn't do it with their own favorite distro because it's too difficult. But if we could convince them to put a friendly version of Linux on their friends' computers, people would see they have a choice."
But one has to wonder -- what's the point of converting your friend to Linux if the only version he'll like looks exactly like Windows? If your friend is already using Windows, why would you put him through the ordeal of a transition? If it's only because you don't want your friend supporting a monopoly, you're not being much of a friend.
