13 ms·

Lindows 4.0 (2003)

159 points by ecliptik 4y ago

walrus01 4y ago
Not excactly Lindows related but I still think that KDE2 reached some sort of ideal of unix desktop metaphor GUI design, and all KDE after it were sort of a regression. For similar reasons this is why I use XFCE now.
- bgorman 4y ago
  What was wrong with KDE3? I never used 2 but I was very happy with 3
  - indigodaddy 4y ago
    Trinity Desktop (forked from KDE 3.5.10) seems to still be going—- last release was on 20221030: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/news.php https://www.trinitydesktop.org/news.php
  - Tommstein 4y ago
    I used them both, and think 3 was better. GNOME, on the other hand, was OK at version 1 (contemporaneous with KDE 2, which I still liked better), and went to shit at version 2 (contemporaneous with KDE 3).
- jaimex2 4y ago
  Current KDE Plasma is the best desktop out there period.
  - airtonix 4y ago
    [dead]
  - pxc 4y ago
    I've been using KDE since the 3.2 days, with long stints on GNOME, Unity, Windows, and macOS mixed in, and I strongly feel the same. Contemporary Plasma is really, really good.
    - scheeseman486 4y ago
      Also riding the "KDE Plasma rules" train.
  - quantumfissure 4y ago
    While I agree with you (KDE user myself), I think the two primary desktops (Gnome/KDE) are serving two different purposes at this point. Gnome seems to be catering more towards a 'hybrid' approach, easier to use with touch, laptops, simple out of box. The touchpad gestures are phenomenal and usability with portable/touch devices is really good. Wayland integration and scaling is miles ahead of KDE at the moment. KDE is catering towards customization and traditional desktop use. There's more out-of-box features and using it on traditional desktop with keyboard and mouse make it really stand out. Their workspaces and KDE connect features are incredible.
- krylon 4y ago
  I used to use KDE2 back then, I loved that you could set different Windows decorations for each Window (or is my memory tricking me?) and have a global menu bar optionally. I did not like KDE3 as much bc they removed these features and ended up with GNOME2, and eventually MATE.
  - krylon 4y ago
    PS: I think it was GNOME 1 with the sawfish window manager. KDE2 did support theming the windows decorations, but on second thought, I don't think one could set different looks per window.
AntiRush 4y ago
It was much talked about on slashdot when Walmart started selling a PC with Lindows pre-installed. https://www.wired.com/2002/06/wal-marts-new-lindowsos-pc/ https://www.wired.com/2002/06/wal-marts-new-lindowsos-pc/
- Wistar 4y ago
  My prototyping team bought one of those Walmart Lindows machines to play around with and I remember being impressed, especially with the way a user could find and install software packages. I think the machine sold for some trivial amount, like, $200.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    > the way a user could find and install software packages. And even with app stores neither Windows nor macOS come close to the seamless experience of updating all software from a single place. Apple had, for some time, OS updates in the App Store, but not anymore. The software update in the preferences app is a step backward in that sense - why have two ways of doing everything? And Windows is even worse. I have at least 6 apps I need to open if I want the Windows machine to update everything.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  I bought one of my parents a Walmart PC with Lindows. It worked out pretty much the same as a Chromebook would today, but with more apps.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    My mom was on Ubuntu since she upgraded from MacOS 9. She even learned to run the update GUI by herself and would call me to tell she did it. Sadly, my evil cousin upgraded her PC with Windows and I no longer know when she needs to update or clean up the disk.
    - mmcgaha 4y ago
      My mom used linux from the late 90s through the early 2000s. She did not adapt well to using a mouse and windows but wanted to do online shopping so I set her up with a machine that started directly to a full screen browser and dialed the internet as soon as an internet connection was needed. She eventually got good enough with her mouse that she moved on to an XP laptop but I really loved being able to tell people that my mom runs Debian.
miquong 4y ago
Lindows was my first Linux distro c. 1999. It was my first year at college, majoring in Business Administration, living on campus with internet speeds above 56kbps for the first time. Trawling through the internet at that time, I stumbled on a (likely bootleg) Lindows installer somewhere and fell down the rabbit hole. Looking back, I realize now I’d been a self-denying computer geek before then but for whatever reason Lindows, it’s wacky installer, dual boot support, and fortunate hardware compatibility gave me the right nudge at the right time to send me on a lifetime of hacking. Almost 25 years later, most as a professional software engineer, I have a completely biased affection for this strange OS. Thanks for sharing!
- xattt 4y ago
  Also quirky was their Lindows Rock: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA
  - miquong 4y ago
    Never knew so many levels of parody and irony could be encapsulated in one flash animation!
  - mseri 4y ago
    Do you remember the one they released when they changed name to linspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ memorable
- dopeboy 4y ago
  Many here share that journey. For me, it was printing out the Gentoo "hard mode" installation guide where you compiled _everything_ from scratch, including the kernel. Didn't make it but it taught me the terminal and some foundational concepts in an OS. Set me down the path of linux (ubuntu - bit easier to install) and hacking.
  - miquong 4y ago
    Oh that was the holy grail. I also never got there… had to settle for the lower levels of Gentoo purity.
readme 4y ago
The one area where I don't advocate for GNU/Linux is in graphical user interfaces. The year of the Linux desktop will never come. For whatever reason, the cathedral can make a much better GUI than the bazaar.
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  I really think that within 20 years a Linux desktop will be the dominant platform/choice.
  - airtonix 4y ago
    [dead]
  - readme 4y ago
    20 years from now I would wager very few people will still use desktop workstations
- crispinb 4y ago
  > The year of the Linux desktop will never come Probably true. But largely irrelevant. > the cathedral can make a much better GUI than the bazaar. Can is such an open ended claim it's impossible to judge (there's always another tomorrow). But does? Not so sure. I've used the big 3 extensively. I don't buy into the dafter reaches of Linux advocacy ("your great-grandmother could install it & have no problems & it's way easier than ...). But OTOH the annoyances I get from running Fedora as my main machine are at least no greater than I've had with Windows and MacOS. I prefer it because its balance of positives and negatives suit my preferences best; but I don't find any of the 3 main desktop OS's categorically superior. Admittedly that's because they're all pretty dismal. Every unhappy OS is unhappy in its own way. And every desktop OS is unhappy.
- rascul 4y ago
  The year of the Linux desktop came for me in the early '00s. Since then, I find that there has been some improvements here and there but an overall general decline in usability and quality for desktop systems with GUIs. To each their own. Edit: Had my dates wrong at first, in case you caught it for that minute.
noizejoy 4y ago
Lindows was started by the same Michael Robertson[0], who was behind mp3.com[1], one of the early Internet's rather lucrative IPOs and also involved in a series of litigation around copyrights and later what Matt Levine might now file under "everything is securities fraud"[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Robertson_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Robertson_(businessman... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
- milsorgen 4y ago
  I had a branded mp3.com laptop bag, along with other schwag. Through mp3.com I shared some music I was making at the time and a very long time later I received a ASCAP cheque in the mail for about 20 dollars as a result. I believe the paperwork indicated the music had been played publicly in like France or something. This some 20 years ago and all I have are memories, I was young and more eager to get my cash than anything else. What a wonderful time it was to be online back then.
- com2kid 4y ago
  His insistence on pivoting from an amazing site for independent musicians to sell their music, to a piracy/protest site against US copyright law, set indie music on the Internet back by well over a decade. There still isn't anything like what mp3.com used to be for discovering independent musicians. It is an absolute shame that such an amazing resource was destroyed for the sake of a futile protest.
  - terhechte 4y ago
    I come from a poor family and mp3.com was how I made my first proper money as a kid. I did "remixes" of video game music and mp3.com would pay per play. I sometimes made $1000 per month. It was incredible. Sadly, after a couple of month they changed their model and didn't pay indie artists anymore.
    - 4y ago
mysterydip 4y ago
I had heard of it at the time, but never got a look at it. Thanks!
indigodaddy 4y ago
Barry Kauler will tell you that a root by default user isn’t such a bad idea
- JasonFruit 4y ago
  I immediately started thinking of Puppy Linux when I saw that. My first Linux, d'aww...
  - indigodaddy 4y ago
    I’m drawn to it even these days. I’ll be messing about with EasyOS soon..
unethical_ban 4y ago
I don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me, but that guy with the bomb feels very familiar. I didn't recall dabbling in KDE that early. I remember my brother-in-law introducing me to Linux via Knoppix around that time, though.
rascul 4y ago
Lindows was renamed to Linspire. I think Linspire changed the base or some such at some point after that, then died some years later. But, Linspire released 12.0 last month. https://www.linspirelinux.com/2023/03/linspire-12-released.html https://www.linspirelinux.com/2023/03/linspire-12-released.h...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
billyjobob 4y ago
Never used the distro but enjoyed The Lindows Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA And then after it was renamed Linspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"Lindows Rock" Loved it. Brilliant
lagniappe 4y ago
See also WinLinux and WinLinux 2000: https://archiveos.org/winlinux/ https://archiveos.org/winlinux/
tmountain 4y ago
Not the same, but I deployed Corel Linux with WordPerfect to a corporate environment back in 2001 as an attempt to “disrupt the status quo”. One elderly secretary used it with zero issues for a few years, so I guess it was a success.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  I used Corel Linux for a while and it was really good. I tried to install it out of nostalgia on a VM to compare what we could do with it with very little mhz and MB of memory with what we have now but it started at such a low resolution that I couldn't run the installer and I didn't have the patience to try some kernel command line arguments to force a resolution.
- bregma 4y ago
  Interestingly, the Lindows software was originally developed under contract by the Corel developers. The Corel developers became Xandros (another Linux distribution) and eventually won the non-payment lawsuit against Michael Robertson. Linspire (as it was then legally know as a result of a successful lawsuit by Microsoft) quickly went insolvent and was bought out by Xandros, who within a year stopped making payroll and the corporate principals slipped into the night. As a Xandros employee I visited the Linspire office in San Diego, Ca;ifornia: it was a small industrial condo where the front half was an opulent personal office for Michael Robertson and the back half basically a closet where the other 4 to 6 employees worked.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  In 2000 I installed Linux (and BSD) on various spare Compaq DS10 and DS20 Alpha machines to test it against the stock Tru64 because of a bug that caused local network packet losses when using unconnected protocols like UDP even at very low speeds, and it was 100% reproducible. We later discovered that that packet loss was due to an interrupt fired by the video card driver that would literally kill everything for a fraction of second. That's why we use protocols like TCP, but again, that shouldn't have happened to that extent. Application was ATC so video cards were quite high end. I used the Mgen and Drec tools by the US Navy that I modified to run them in a many-to-many configuration, so that I could for example let them run synchronized tasks over a weekend and compare the logs on the following Monday. Fun fact: Installing Linux on spare machines (we had plenty, one was used as doorstop, no kidding) was our idea. Our PM at the time, which was very likely the most ignorant one I ever had to interact with, didn't veto the initiative, still criticized it anyway because "Linux is amateurish, you should use something more professional". Long story short, after most part of the group, including myself, left because of that idiot, he was finally fired, and according to a colleague who kept working there, after a couple years they started moving everything to Linux.
rrorrjn 4y ago
> The menu is made to look as Windows-like as possible. In every section, there's a link to Click'n'Run. How many programs in each category it could actually offer is impossible to find out by now. Not so - you can see these at the Internet Archive, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20020624035714/http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categories.php https://web.archive.org/web/20020624035714/http://www.lindow...
nivals 4y ago
Early Lindows employee here, great bit of nostalgia in that post. On the other side of the dot-com bust there were a lot of hard things that the team achieved even if the adoption never hit. For example, a $199 PC sold at Walmart was notable for the time. It offered a working desktop with a full productivity suite from first boot. Without opening terminal, updating a repo, dealing with sound card or video card driver issues, etc.
- kajecounterhack 4y ago
  My dad bought this $200 computer for me and I tried to host a web based game I wrote on it! Ultimately I had to install Fedora Core 2 instead because I couldn’t get the lamp stack working. I remember wondering why Lindows didn’t have problems with graphics / drivers when FC did (what torturous debugging). Thanks for your work!
- simfree 4y ago
  Linspire was a delightful OS to run! Truly, I feel like the major Linux distros never got to the same level as Linspire on friendliness and ease of use, the competition to Click-N-Run on modern Gnome Software Center just doesn't feel quite as easy at times. There were so many edge cases on Windows and Linux at the time that Linspire sailed right past with nary an issue.
- JeremyNT 4y ago
  I ran Debian at the time, but I worked in PC repair, and I remember being really excited about Linux being installed on PCs you could buy at a store. It felt like there was a small "window" of opportunity where a competitor to MS might have been able to gain some traction. On those low end computers the "Windows tax" could amount to a large percentage of the overall cost. Sadly I think Lindows was just a little too late to the table. People were already used to the proprietary software they had, and OpenOffice was new and junky - a tough sell for people used to the MS suite. IE was also dominant, and the browser situation on Linux was a real problem due to ActiveX and other IE-only things that kept kicking around for years. I also think the "Lindows" name did it no favors with those of us who already ran Linux. I remember reading about it on slashdot, but I mostly discounted it for my own use because of the branding.
stubybubs 4y ago
Ah yes, 2003: the year of Linux on the desktop.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  These days, I'm debating the last time the desktop (or laptop) was relevant. Outside of professional settings, PC use has fallen off a cliff.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Just go to a coffee shop near a school or a public library and you will see how relevant laptops are.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      I live in a gentrified part of Dublin, and all laptops I see are MacBooks. And the Intel ones are starting to vanish.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        It only reinforces the fact that laptops / desktops are relevant, regardless of the income capabilities of the owners.
        rbanffy 4y ago
        Still, tablets are mostly used for entertainment while laptops are most used for work. Even then, the people writing things rarely use the tablet alone, usually going with a cover with a keyboard (making it a laptop running iOS or Android).
      - dehrmann 4y ago
        The two things stopping me from getting a Macbook are the metal chassis (it's uncomfortable) and lack of a good data recovery story.
    - 4y ago
filmgirlcw 4y ago
Lindows (or maybe it was Linspire by then) was one of the first distros I used that I remember working with my wireless card on my laptop in 2004 or 2005. There was a famous issue back then with Atheros (I think it was Atheros) chipsets that were in some D-Link or Linksys PCMCIA cards that just wouldn't work on Linux and trying to get wireless to work on another distro (Mandrake) is where I got to learn about the concept of binary blobs and how serious people were about anything proprietary touching their precious desktops. I was just a girl who wanted to have her 16" Sony VAIO work in the living room of her apartment without having to drag a long-ass Ethernet cable. Anyway, my search for a working solution led me to discover Lindows, which was in the news over the CEO's intentional fuckery with Microsoft, and it didn't have a good reputation in the OSS community and it cost $50 or $60 that I was absolutely not going to pay, but then a free version of I think it was version 4.5 became available via OSNews or ArsTechnica. In any event, I ended up trying it out and although I didn't like all the decisions, it was the first Linux distro that not only worked with WiFi out of the box (or with very little effort) and it had proprietary media codecs installed too so I could play my music and videos. I also remember the promise of the Click-N-Run technology, though I was happy enough with Apt. I don't remember the reason now, but I got frustrated with something about Linspire and then went to Fedora Core -- or I tried to, but it didn't work with my WiFi card -- before stumbling upon this brand new distro with this weird African name called Ubuntu. Ubuntu had everything Linspire had in terms of out of the box flourishes (or was close enough to get that stuff working) but didn't have the negative reputation amongst the Linux nerds or a CEO who seemed hellbent on doing everything he could to antagonize everyone. Even better, it had spins for both a KDE and a Gnome version and the founder was some rich guy who would even send people a ton of CDs if they wanted them, for free. (I think I still have some of those CDs in my parents house somewhere from 2004 or 2005). As a 19 year old, that was pretty clutch for me and it became my secondary OS after Windows XP. As a college student, I'll always remember Lindows/Linspire for the amount of drama it kicked up in the OSS spaces (and with Microsoft over the name) but more importantly, being the distro that for whatever reason led me to discover Ubuntu in its first few months of existence. It's funny to think back now on just how hated it was amongst the Linux community -- which is sort of a shame. Like yes, Michael Robertson was always incredibly sketchy seeming and he absolutely had no time for the OSS nerds (it was clearly about profit for him, not ideology), but at the same time, Lindows/Linspire was one of the first Linux distros that out of the box could be something a normal computer user would actually be comfortable setting up and that was trying very hard at user-first decisions. I've never shied away from doing things the "harder" or "more technical" way, but there were decisions made in Linux distros at that time that really made you really have to go out of your way to get things done and that then tried to shame you for wanting something like a working WiFi driver for your 802.11g card (because going back down to 802.11b was not great), regardless of the binary blob nature, or jump through way too many hoops to get codecs installed that would play your movies and videos. Lindows/Linspire had an elegance about it that I hadn't seen in a Linux distro before. And although Ubuntu briefly won my heart (before I gave it over to my truest of true loves, Mac OS X), I'll always fondly remember Linspire, if only for being audacious enough to actually make a Linux distro that wasn't designed for enthusiasts.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 4y ago
I think it was Lindows that was ahead of its time with its own app store-type deal before they were cool.
noobermin 4y ago
It's funny how this article is really biased by the more recent perspective on things, like how flash is bad and running around with root was a terrible thing. It likely is today and was unsafe then but those were simpler days before linux mindshare even existed enough for people to make exploits for it. meta note: the article is actually not from 2003, but is from 2018. The title itself is "Lindows 4.0 (2003)", not sure if adding a (2018) to the end would confuse things.
- rob74 4y ago
  Linux actually always had the security architecture with normal users not having root privileges, so giving the default user root privileges would have been frowned upon even back in 2003. However, Windows did it (until Windows Vista), so Lindows apparently felt obliged to follow suit...
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    In practice, is running as root really that bad for a single-user personal computer? Most of your data is already accessible by your user account - root wouldn't actually give you much more. Not to mention, even if you do use separate accounts or "sudo", 99% of non-tech-savvy users will happily type their password in any dialog that looks like the official "sudo" dialog, so non-root malware can elevate its privileges that way anyway.
    - LeoPanthera 4y ago
      There's an xkcd for everything. https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/
      - anthk 4y ago
        Because encrypting the disk and using two separate accounts is too difficult... One for leisure, another one for serious stuff.
        4y ago
prmoustache 4y ago
I think its modern spiritual successor would be something like Zorin right? Or elementary for the mac users.
nailer 4y ago
Lindows enduring legacy is Click n Run, one of the first app stores.
neilalexander 4y ago
The thing that stood out to me most was one of the screenshots claiming this: > An application mostly receives the SIGSEGV signal due to a bug in the application. The application was asked to save its documents. Were Lindows applications really trying to handle SIGSEGV in this way?
resuresu 4y ago
Old linux distros were a magical time, back when Linux was lightweight and snappy. Now Linux is more bloated than windows ever was and I’ve had more problems with systemd than i can count. Linux just isn’t fun anymore, even its DEs have become bland and uncustomizeable, looking at you gnome.
xaduha 4y ago
I remember it partially, these images spark something in me, but without any context. No idea when, where and why I tried it. I'm pretty sure it's Lindows specifically and not just KDE.
markstos 4y ago
This all looks familiar. I probably installed Lindows at some point to test it.
phendrenad2 4y ago
> There once was a time when desktop adoption was seen as the most important goal for Linux Well, that hasn't changed, but people have convinced themselves that Linux on the desktop is 100% fine, and if you don't like it, the problem is you.

Lindows 4.0 (2003)

159 points by ecliptik 4y ago

Not excactly Lindows related but I still think that KDE2 reached some sort of ideal of unix desktop metaphor GUI design, and all KDE after it were sort of a regression. For similar reasons this is why I use XFCE now.

bgorman 4y ago
What was wrong with KDE3? I never used 2 but I was very happy with 3
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  Trinity Desktop (forked from KDE 3.5.10) seems to still be going—- last release was on 20221030: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/news.php https://www.trinitydesktop.org/news.php
- Tommstein 4y ago
  I used them both, and think 3 was better. GNOME, on the other hand, was OK at version 1 (contemporaneous with KDE 2, which I still liked better), and went to shit at version 2 (contemporaneous with KDE 3).
jaimex2 4y ago
Current KDE Plasma is the best desktop out there period.
- airtonix 4y ago
  [dead]
- pxc 4y ago
  I've been using KDE since the 3.2 days, with long stints on GNOME, Unity, Windows, and macOS mixed in, and I strongly feel the same. Contemporary Plasma is really, really good.
  - scheeseman486 4y ago
    Also riding the "KDE Plasma rules" train.
- quantumfissure 4y ago
  While I agree with you (KDE user myself), I think the two primary desktops (Gnome/KDE) are serving two different purposes at this point. Gnome seems to be catering more towards a 'hybrid' approach, easier to use with touch, laptops, simple out of box. The touchpad gestures are phenomenal and usability with portable/touch devices is really good. Wayland integration and scaling is miles ahead of KDE at the moment. KDE is catering towards customization and traditional desktop use. There's more out-of-box features and using it on traditional desktop with keyboard and mouse make it really stand out. Their workspaces and KDE connect features are incredible.
krylon 4y ago
I used to use KDE2 back then, I loved that you could set different Windows decorations for each Window (or is my memory tricking me?) and have a global menu bar optionally. I did not like KDE3 as much bc they removed these features and ended up with GNOME2, and eventually MATE.
- krylon 4y ago
  PS: I think it was GNOME 1 with the sawfish window manager. KDE2 did support theming the windows decorations, but on second thought, I don't think one could set different looks per window.

AntiRush 4y ago

It was much talked about on slashdot when Walmart started selling a PC with Lindows pre-installed. https://www.wired.com/2002/06/wal-marts-new-lindowsos-pc/ https://www.wired.com/2002/06/wal-marts-new-lindowsos-pc/

Wistar 4y ago
My prototyping team bought one of those Walmart Lindows machines to play around with and I remember being impressed, especially with the way a user could find and install software packages. I think the machine sold for some trivial amount, like, $200.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > the way a user could find and install software packages. And even with app stores neither Windows nor macOS come close to the seamless experience of updating all software from a single place. Apple had, for some time, OS updates in the App Store, but not anymore. The software update in the preferences app is a step backward in that sense - why have two ways of doing everything? And Windows is even worse. I have at least 6 apps I need to open if I want the Windows machine to update everything.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
I bought one of my parents a Walmart PC with Lindows. It worked out pretty much the same as a Chromebook would today, but with more apps.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  My mom was on Ubuntu since she upgraded from MacOS 9. She even learned to run the update GUI by herself and would call me to tell she did it. Sadly, my evil cousin upgraded her PC with Windows and I no longer know when she needs to update or clean up the disk.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    My mom used linux from the late 90s through the early 2000s. She did not adapt well to using a mouse and windows but wanted to do online shopping so I set her up with a machine that started directly to a full screen browser and dialed the internet as soon as an internet connection was needed. She eventually got good enough with her mouse that she moved on to an XP laptop but I really loved being able to tell people that my mom runs Debian.

miquong 4y ago

Lindows was my first Linux distro c. 1999. It was my first year at college, majoring in Business Administration, living on campus with internet speeds above 56kbps for the first time. Trawling through the internet at that time, I stumbled on a (likely bootleg) Lindows installer somewhere and fell down the rabbit hole. Looking back, I realize now I’d been a self-denying computer geek before then but for whatever reason Lindows, it’s wacky installer, dual boot support, and fortunate hardware compatibility gave me the right nudge at the right time to send me on a lifetime of hacking. Almost 25 years later, most as a professional software engineer, I have a completely biased affection for this strange OS. Thanks for sharing!

xattt 4y ago
Also quirky was their Lindows Rock: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA
- miquong 4y ago
  Never knew so many levels of parody and irony could be encapsulated in one flash animation!
- mseri 4y ago
  Do you remember the one they released when they changed name to linspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ memorable
dopeboy 4y ago
Many here share that journey. For me, it was printing out the Gentoo "hard mode" installation guide where you compiled _everything_ from scratch, including the kernel. Didn't make it but it taught me the terminal and some foundational concepts in an OS. Set me down the path of linux (ubuntu - bit easier to install) and hacking.
- miquong 4y ago
  Oh that was the holy grail. I also never got there… had to settle for the lower levels of Gentoo purity.

readme 4y ago

The one area where I don't advocate for GNU/Linux is in graphical user interfaces. The year of the Linux desktop will never come. For whatever reason, the cathedral can make a much better GUI than the bazaar.

indigodaddy 4y ago
I really think that within 20 years a Linux desktop will be the dominant platform/choice.
- airtonix 4y ago
  [dead]
- readme 4y ago
  20 years from now I would wager very few people will still use desktop workstations
crispinb 4y ago
> The year of the Linux desktop will never come Probably true. But largely irrelevant. > the cathedral can make a much better GUI than the bazaar. Can is such an open ended claim it's impossible to judge (there's always another tomorrow). But does? Not so sure. I've used the big 3 extensively. I don't buy into the dafter reaches of Linux advocacy ("your great-grandmother could install it & have no problems & it's way easier than ...). But OTOH the annoyances I get from running Fedora as my main machine are at least no greater than I've had with Windows and MacOS. I prefer it because its balance of positives and negatives suit my preferences best; but I don't find any of the 3 main desktop OS's categorically superior. Admittedly that's because they're all pretty dismal. Every unhappy OS is unhappy in its own way. And every desktop OS is unhappy.
rascul 4y ago
The year of the Linux desktop came for me in the early '00s. Since then, I find that there has been some improvements here and there but an overall general decline in usability and quality for desktop systems with GUIs. To each their own. Edit: Had my dates wrong at first, in case you caught it for that minute.

noizejoy 4y ago

Lindows was started by the same Michael Robertson[0], who was behind mp3.com[1], one of the early Internet's rather lucrative IPOs and also involved in a series of litigation around copyrights and later what Matt Levine might now file under "everything is securities fraud"[2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Robertson_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Robertson_(businessman... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3.com [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

milsorgen 4y ago
I had a branded mp3.com laptop bag, along with other schwag. Through mp3.com I shared some music I was making at the time and a very long time later I received a ASCAP cheque in the mail for about 20 dollars as a result. I believe the paperwork indicated the music had been played publicly in like France or something. This some 20 years ago and all I have are memories, I was young and more eager to get my cash than anything else. What a wonderful time it was to be online back then.
com2kid 4y ago
His insistence on pivoting from an amazing site for independent musicians to sell their music, to a piracy/protest site against US copyright law, set indie music on the Internet back by well over a decade. There still isn't anything like what mp3.com used to be for discovering independent musicians. It is an absolute shame that such an amazing resource was destroyed for the sake of a futile protest.
- terhechte 4y ago
  I come from a poor family and mp3.com was how I made my first proper money as a kid. I did "remixes" of video game music and mp3.com would pay per play. I sometimes made $1000 per month. It was incredible. Sadly, after a couple of month they changed their model and didn't pay indie artists anymore.
  - 4y ago

mysterydip 4y ago

I had heard of it at the time, but never got a look at it. Thanks!

indigodaddy 4y ago

Barry Kauler will tell you that a root by default user isn’t such a bad idea

JasonFruit 4y ago
I immediately started thinking of Puppy Linux when I saw that. My first Linux, d'aww...
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  I’m drawn to it even these days. I’ll be messing about with EasyOS soon..

unethical_ban 4y ago

I don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me, but that guy with the bomb feels very familiar. I didn't recall dabbling in KDE that early. I remember my brother-in-law introducing me to Linux via Knoppix around that time, though.

rascul 4y ago

Lindows was renamed to Linspire. I think Linspire changed the base or some such at some point after that, then died some years later. But, Linspire released 12.0 last month. https://www.linspirelinux.com/2023/03/linspire-12-released.html https://www.linspirelinux.com/2023/03/linspire-12-released.h...

deleted 4y ago
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billyjobob 4y ago

Never used the distro but enjoyed The Lindows Rock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA And then after it was renamed Linspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIYtKHnU4mQ

FpUser 4y ago
>"Lindows Rock" Loved it. Brilliant

lagniappe 4y ago

See also WinLinux and WinLinux 2000: https://archiveos.org/winlinux/ https://archiveos.org/winlinux/

tmountain 4y ago

Not the same, but I deployed Corel Linux with WordPerfect to a corporate environment back in 2001 as an attempt to “disrupt the status quo”. One elderly secretary used it with zero issues for a few years, so I guess it was a success.

prmoustache 4y ago
I used Corel Linux for a while and it was really good. I tried to install it out of nostalgia on a VM to compare what we could do with it with very little mhz and MB of memory with what we have now but it started at such a low resolution that I couldn't run the installer and I didn't have the patience to try some kernel command line arguments to force a resolution.
bregma 4y ago
Interestingly, the Lindows software was originally developed under contract by the Corel developers. The Corel developers became Xandros (another Linux distribution) and eventually won the non-payment lawsuit against Michael Robertson. Linspire (as it was then legally know as a result of a successful lawsuit by Microsoft) quickly went insolvent and was bought out by Xandros, who within a year stopped making payroll and the corporate principals slipped into the night. As a Xandros employee I visited the Linspire office in San Diego, Ca;ifornia: it was a small industrial condo where the front half was an opulent personal office for Michael Robertson and the back half basically a closet where the other 4 to 6 employees worked.
squarefoot 4y ago
In 2000 I installed Linux (and BSD) on various spare Compaq DS10 and DS20 Alpha machines to test it against the stock Tru64 because of a bug that caused local network packet losses when using unconnected protocols like UDP even at very low speeds, and it was 100% reproducible. We later discovered that that packet loss was due to an interrupt fired by the video card driver that would literally kill everything for a fraction of second. That's why we use protocols like TCP, but again, that shouldn't have happened to that extent. Application was ATC so video cards were quite high end. I used the Mgen and Drec tools by the US Navy that I modified to run them in a many-to-many configuration, so that I could for example let them run synchronized tasks over a weekend and compare the logs on the following Monday. Fun fact: Installing Linux on spare machines (we had plenty, one was used as doorstop, no kidding) was our idea. Our PM at the time, which was very likely the most ignorant one I ever had to interact with, didn't veto the initiative, still criticized it anyway because "Linux is amateurish, you should use something more professional". Long story short, after most part of the group, including myself, left because of that idiot, he was finally fired, and according to a colleague who kept working there, after a couple years they started moving everything to Linux.

rrorrjn 4y ago

> The menu is made to look as Windows-like as possible. In every section, there's a link to Click'n'Run. How many programs in each category it could actually offer is impossible to find out by now. Not so - you can see these at the Internet Archive, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20020624035714/http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categories.php https://web.archive.org/web/20020624035714/http://www.lindow...

nivals 4y ago

Early Lindows employee here, great bit of nostalgia in that post. On the other side of the dot-com bust there were a lot of hard things that the team achieved even if the adoption never hit. For example, a $199 PC sold at Walmart was notable for the time. It offered a working desktop with a full productivity suite from first boot. Without opening terminal, updating a repo, dealing with sound card or video card driver issues, etc.

kajecounterhack 4y ago
My dad bought this $200 computer for me and I tried to host a web based game I wrote on it! Ultimately I had to install Fedora Core 2 instead because I couldn’t get the lamp stack working. I remember wondering why Lindows didn’t have problems with graphics / drivers when FC did (what torturous debugging). Thanks for your work!
simfree 4y ago
Linspire was a delightful OS to run! Truly, I feel like the major Linux distros never got to the same level as Linspire on friendliness and ease of use, the competition to Click-N-Run on modern Gnome Software Center just doesn't feel quite as easy at times. There were so many edge cases on Windows and Linux at the time that Linspire sailed right past with nary an issue.
JeremyNT 4y ago
I ran Debian at the time, but I worked in PC repair, and I remember being really excited about Linux being installed on PCs you could buy at a store. It felt like there was a small "window" of opportunity where a competitor to MS might have been able to gain some traction. On those low end computers the "Windows tax" could amount to a large percentage of the overall cost. Sadly I think Lindows was just a little too late to the table. People were already used to the proprietary software they had, and OpenOffice was new and junky - a tough sell for people used to the MS suite. IE was also dominant, and the browser situation on Linux was a real problem due to ActiveX and other IE-only things that kept kicking around for years. I also think the "Lindows" name did it no favors with those of us who already ran Linux. I remember reading about it on slashdot, but I mostly discounted it for my own use because of the branding.

stubybubs 4y ago

Ah yes, 2003: the year of Linux on the desktop.

dehrmann 4y ago
These days, I'm debating the last time the desktop (or laptop) was relevant. Outside of professional settings, PC use has fallen off a cliff.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Just go to a coffee shop near a school or a public library and you will see how relevant laptops are.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    I live in a gentrified part of Dublin, and all laptops I see are MacBooks. And the Intel ones are starting to vanish.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      It only reinforces the fact that laptops / desktops are relevant, regardless of the income capabilities of the owners.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        Still, tablets are mostly used for entertainment while laptops are most used for work. Even then, the people writing things rarely use the tablet alone, usually going with a cover with a keyboard (making it a laptop running iOS or Android).
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      The two things stopping me from getting a Macbook are the metal chassis (it's uncomfortable) and lack of a good data recovery story.
  - 4y ago

filmgirlcw 4y ago

Lindows (or maybe it was Linspire by then) was one of the first distros I used that I remember working with my wireless card on my laptop in 2004 or 2005. There was a famous issue back then with Atheros (I think it was Atheros) chipsets that were in some D-Link or Linksys PCMCIA cards that just wouldn't work on Linux and trying to get wireless to work on another distro (Mandrake) is where I got to learn about the concept of binary blobs and how serious people were about anything proprietary touching their precious desktops. I was just a girl who wanted to have her 16" Sony VAIO work in the living room of her apartment without having to drag a long-ass Ethernet cable. Anyway, my search for a working solution led me to discover Lindows, which was in the news over the CEO's intentional fuckery with Microsoft, and it didn't have a good reputation in the OSS community and it cost $50 or $60 that I was absolutely not going to pay, but then a free version of I think it was version 4.5 became available via OSNews or ArsTechnica. In any event, I ended up trying it out and although I didn't like all the decisions, it was the first Linux distro that not only worked with WiFi out of the box (or with very little effort) and it had proprietary media codecs installed too so I could play my music and videos. I also remember the promise of the Click-N-Run technology, though I was happy enough with Apt. I don't remember the reason now, but I got frustrated with something about Linspire and then went to Fedora Core -- or I tried to, but it didn't work with my WiFi card -- before stumbling upon this brand new distro with this weird African name called Ubuntu. Ubuntu had everything Linspire had in terms of out of the box flourishes (or was close enough to get that stuff working) but didn't have the negative reputation amongst the Linux nerds or a CEO who seemed hellbent on doing everything he could to antagonize everyone. Even better, it had spins for both a KDE and a Gnome version and the founder was some rich guy who would even send people a ton of CDs if they wanted them, for free. (I think I still have some of those CDs in my parents house somewhere from 2004 or 2005). As a 19 year old, that was pretty clutch for me and it became my secondary OS after Windows XP. As a college student, I'll always remember Lindows/Linspire for the amount of drama it kicked up in the OSS spaces (and with Microsoft over the name) but more importantly, being the distro that for whatever reason led me to discover Ubuntu in its first few months of existence. It's funny to think back now on just how hated it was amongst the Linux community -- which is sort of a shame. Like yes, Michael Robertson was always incredibly sketchy seeming and he absolutely had no time for the OSS nerds (it was clearly about profit for him, not ideology), but at the same time, Lindows/Linspire was one of the first Linux distros that out of the box could be something a normal computer user would actually be comfortable setting up and that was trying very hard at user-first decisions. I've never shied away from doing things the "harder" or "more technical" way, but there were decisions made in Linux distros at that time that really made you really have to go out of your way to get things done and that then tried to shame you for wanting something like a working WiFi driver for your 802.11g card (because going back down to 802.11b was not great), regardless of the binary blob nature, or jump through way too many hoops to get codecs installed that would play your movies and videos. Lindows/Linspire had an elegance about it that I hadn't seen in a Linux distro before. And although Ubuntu briefly won my heart (before I gave it over to my truest of true loves, Mac OS X), I'll always fondly remember Linspire, if only for being audacious enough to actually make a Linux distro that wasn't designed for enthusiasts.

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heavyset_go 4y ago

I think it was Lindows that was ahead of its time with its own app store-type deal before they were cool.

noobermin 4y ago

It's funny how this article is really biased by the more recent perspective on things, like how flash is bad and running around with root was a terrible thing. It likely is today and was unsafe then but those were simpler days before linux mindshare even existed enough for people to make exploits for it. meta note: the article is actually not from 2003, but is from 2018. The title itself is "Lindows 4.0 (2003)", not sure if adding a (2018) to the end would confuse things.

rob74 4y ago
Linux actually always had the security architecture with normal users not having root privileges, so giving the default user root privileges would have been frowned upon even back in 2003. However, Windows did it (until Windows Vista), so Lindows apparently felt obliged to follow suit...
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  In practice, is running as root really that bad for a single-user personal computer? Most of your data is already accessible by your user account - root wouldn't actually give you much more. Not to mention, even if you do use separate accounts or "sudo", 99% of non-tech-savvy users will happily type their password in any dialog that looks like the official "sudo" dialog, so non-root malware can elevate its privileges that way anyway.
  - LeoPanthera 4y ago
    There's an xkcd for everything. https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/
    - anthk 4y ago
      Because encrypting the disk and using two separate accounts is too difficult... One for leisure, another one for serious stuff.
      - 4y ago

prmoustache 4y ago

I think its modern spiritual successor would be something like Zorin right? Or elementary for the mac users.

nailer 4y ago

Lindows enduring legacy is Click n Run, one of the first app stores.

neilalexander 4y ago

The thing that stood out to me most was one of the screenshots claiming this: > An application mostly receives the SIGSEGV signal due to a bug in the application. The application was asked to save its documents. Were Lindows applications really trying to handle SIGSEGV in this way?

resuresu 4y ago

Old linux distros were a magical time, back when Linux was lightweight and snappy. Now Linux is more bloated than windows ever was and I’ve had more problems with systemd than i can count. Linux just isn’t fun anymore, even its DEs have become bland and uncustomizeable, looking at you gnome.

xaduha 4y ago

I remember it partially, these images spark something in me, but without any context. No idea when, where and why I tried it. I'm pretty sure it's Lindows specifically and not just KDE.

markstos 4y ago

This all looks familiar. I probably installed Lindows at some point to test it.

phendrenad2 4y ago

> There once was a time when desktop adoption was seen as the most important goal for Linux Well, that hasn't changed, but people have convinced themselves that Linux on the desktop is 100% fine, and if you don't like it, the problem is you.