winlinux and Lycoris distros ?

[himagain]

Hi there,
Anybody able to comment on these two distros?
Am a Lux Newbie trying to find a SIMPLE distro for other Winescapees in our group of non-geek small businesspeople.

WINLINUX
Lycoris

Ta,

[mdwatts]

I'm not familiar with either one of those distros.

Could you find any reviews on the web? www.distrowatch.com (http://www.distrowatch.com) may have something.

[himagain]

Originally posted by WattsMD:
<STRONG>I'm not familiar with either one of those distros.

Could you find any reviews on the web? www.distrowatch.com (http://www.distrowatch.com) may have something.</STRONG>

Yes, that's how I did find them, this way.....
but I'm hoping to get some real world/life answers from suck... er from Users who have tried them. :-)
I WASTED $A140 on Mandrake 8.0 thanks to "reviews" and too late found out it was a dud.
Cheers,
John

[mdwatts]

Not all distros will work on certain hardware or combinations of hardware. That's why it is always best to check the distros hardware compatability list before making the decision to try that particular distro.

[Timothy L. Miller]

never used WinLinux. Lycoris looks pretty. That's the end of it's positives. It's ALMOST as unstable as windows. Truly a pile of garbage, and the only thing I ever see it doing is giving linux a bad name, since linux is known for it's stability, and that distro is ANYTHING but...

[himagain]

Originally posted by Timothy L. Miller:
[QB]never used WinLinux. Lycoris looks pretty. That's the end of it's positives.
Hi Tim,
ARRGGHH!!
The first bad report. :-)
Have you had much experience with other distros?
More important - would you classify yourself as a geek (commandline lover)?

What r u using?

I've heard (and experienced) bad things about RedHat, Mandrake etc., but was hoping that this one might be it for us real Users.

I'm told that SUSE will impress - rarely fails to install - but is still pretty geeky for a simple convert or virgin to attempt.

Whereas this one almost never fails to install and is a no-brainer.

I didn't think the kernels of *any* of the later Linuxes were unstable! The hard bit is only getting them on to the system.

Cheers,

John

[Timothy L. Miller]

I'm not a geek, but I do prefer the command line. I'm using Mandrake 8.2 on this computer...but I've used Red Hat 7.1, Mandrake 7.1, 8.0, 8.1, Lycoris (and it's beta-version Redmond), I've played around with the "live evaluation" of Suse 7.3, planning on getting 8.0 for my laptop when it's released, I played around with LRs, but after 5 hours of watching the kernel compile, I decided that it wasn't for me, I played with debian, but after 1.5 hours of choosing which packages to install, I decided it wasn't for me. I also have played around with Slackware 8.0, but I'm not geek enough yet to get it working. Gonna get another hard drive along with a TRIOS hard drive selector though and learn it.
Actually, Suse is almost as easy as Mandrake and Red Hat to install. And it supports just as much. Very nice, I prefer Mandrake slightly, but only because I've used it more often. I'm also thinking about getting a 3rd hard drive and running SUSE and Mandrake, and getting Slack to work.

[ 16 April 2002: Message edited by: Timothy L. Miller ]

[klrmar]

I currently have Mandrake 8.1 on a dual boot Linux/Win ME. A friend told me about Lycoris and by chance I was able to purchase an inexpensive a copy of it (or more specifically the Redmond version which is Lycoris' predecessor).

It was not too difficult to install. However, I could not get it to configure my ethernet card (Realtek RTL 8029) during the install. I tried to do it manually after the install but I could never get it right. Also, I was never able to get my sound card to work (C-Media 8738). I tried doing a re-install but it was a bust so I went back to Mandrake.

Most likely I just did not know enough about what I was doing to make it work but since Lycoris/Remond is selling itself as one of the easiest distributions to use perhaps that should not have made much of a difference. Also, it could have been that it did not have the drivers for my components but whatever it was I was never able to really try it out to see what it could do. klrmar ;)

[mrBen]

From what I've heard Lycoris have done a good job of simplifying the install and daily running of Linux as a Desktop OS - cleaned up KDE menus, less 'expert' options, things like that. Probably one to watch for the future.

Xandros (formerly Corel) might also be one to watch, as it's Debian based, which means nice 'n' easy installs, but hopefully with a pretty face ;)

At the moment Mandrake probably edges it from SuSE in terms of newbie-friendly distros, and is the one I would recommend to my friends if they wanted to buy now.

[himagain]

Thanks to all for the replies!
I am narrowing things down a bit with your help.
The key of course, is a distro that installs for *everyday* users who don't want/need Servers, fancy advanced utils - just a simple business-usable package.

I hope to report soon on my personal experiences with at least 2 - 3 of the "simple" ones. I have ordered a basic SUSE 8.0 and Lycoris to try.

While no geek - I have become convinced that trying to be all things to all people is actually dumb.
The only hope of seeing a usable friendly install seems to be in a Vanilla package with no Servers, no techo, not even too many early choices in setup of even the GUI.

It does look as tho KDE has won most support and the Star Office Suite seems to be coming up to scratch quickly, but best of all is WINE.
I HOPE it is not too difficult to get to go for most everyday people, it would sure make transitions easy!

Cheers!

Interesting note from ZDNET downunder!
------------------------------
IBM Australia migrating to Linux
IBM's 10,000 Australian staff are in the process of being moved over to
Linux for file and print serving, as part of a cost-efficiency drive that
has been in the pipeline since last year. http://cgi.zdnet.com/slink?176710
---------------------------