Using Lycoris Desktop/LX was nothing short of amazing. From the
beginning, the
interface was a lot like Windows,
simple to use and something that I believe any user
could sit down and learn within a few minutes.
But the more I casually looked over Desktop/LX and
gathered my first thoughts and opinions on it, I
wondered if this was just another distribution of Linux
with a "pretty" interface making big
promises that it couldn't live up to. Would it
still have it's complex usability problems that have
always plagued desktop users who are looking for
simplicity and ease of use?
I decided to sit down and test three major areas of
Desktop/LX, from the perspective of being a standard
user; third party software installations, ability to
network/connect to the internet, and configuring
system preferences. It is essential that a
desktop operating system have its focus towards each
of these three areas to make it easier for the end
user as well as easier for
maintenance and troubleshooting. The last thing
any IT staff member wants to do is learn something
entirely new as they troubleshoot to fix it.
Considering that an operating system is not the only
software needed to use a computer, businesses are
constantly developing software and applications to be
installed on the operating system. Most of us
are familiar with installing software such as
Microsoft Office, ICQ, and any other programs you
might enjoy. This is what has made Windows such
a widely accepted operating system, regardless of
its frequent crashes. The only knowledge required by
the user to install software is to insert a CD or to double click on an
*.exe file. I decided to do what any home user
would do after receiving a new computer and that was
head to the internet and download several of my
favorite software applications.
I created a list of several applications that I felt
would encompass what users would most likely download
or use in replacement of their Windows software.
Topping my list was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
1.5.234, along with OpenOffice 1.0.1, Opera web
browser 6.0.3, and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 4.0 for Linux.
While downloading the files, I noticed that the
software packaged in RPM format was denoted with a
special windows-like setup icon which would be very familiar to any
Windows user. Acting instinctively, I chose one
and clicked on it to begin the setup process.
The program I chose was AIM, and to my surprise the
RPM package began to install immediately using the
Desktop/LX Software Installer. A window denoting
the overall process was shown and when it finished was
I was prompted that AIM had successfully been
installed. My one complaint with the AIM install
was that it did not create any shortcuts on the
desktop or start menu's. In order to get AIM to
start I simply had to type "/usr/local/bin/aim" at a
console screen.
The next program I installed was the Opera 6 web
browser. Just like AIM, Opera was packaged in
the RPM format allowing the native Desktop/LX
installer to automatically install Opera with a single
click of the mouse. This time I did notice that
Opera was smart enough to create a icon and shortcut
inside of the Internet options on the start menu.
A side note for people who are wishing to download and
install Opera, the Opera website offers several RPM
packages for various distributions
of
Linux. Lycoris Desktop/LX will only work with
the QT Shared SuSE/Debian/Other selection and not the
RedHat 7 RPM version.
Installing OpenOffice and Kaspersky Anti-Virus was not
as easy as AIM and Opera. Both of these
programs were packaged in the standard Linux tarball
format allowing Desktop/LX to see them only as
archives and not programs to be installed. In
order to install either of these I had to open a
console window, manually extract and then install each
of them. Installing OpenOffice was not as hard
as it first appeared as long as the directions on the
OpenOffice website are followed exactly. For any
experienced Linux user, installing tarball files
should be a relatively easy process, but
for someone migrating from Windows or Mac platforms to
Lycoris this would be a bit of a challenge to get
working the first or second time.
The second area of Desktop/LX that I felt I should
cover was its ability to network and be networked.
In recently years with the growth of broadband
internet and homes getting more than one PC,
networking in the home is becoming just as common
place as networking in the office. For any
operating system that is going to make a push to be
competitive in the desktop market, it is essential
that it can network and be networked flawlessly.
The biggest impression I got of
Desktop/LX was how quick
it recognized and accessed my Windows 2000
Domain/network here in my office. On the desktop
is a Network Browser icon similar to the My Network
Places in Windows. It's purpose is to browse
networks and domains allowing easy access to files and
file shares. I decided to try using that to
access my MODEMNET-NET Windows2000 domain.
Instantly Desktop/LX showed my domain and the
file shares contained within. Not since the days
of Corel Linux 1.0 has any version of Linux ever
recognized and accessed my network with such little
effort.
Even though Desktop/LX uses Samba 2.x for its file
sharing and connections to Windows PC's, it still is
not fully compatible with NT/2000 domains in that it can not join or
fully become
part of domain. That is not as much a problem as
an annoyance. Instead of having the seamless
integration of Windows clients, using Active Directory
allowing user to go wherever they have permission,
Desktop/LX forces you to enter the username/password
for each share you would like to visit. This can
be overcome by using the assigned Windows username and
password, but again it is more of an annoyance than an
actual bug. For this reason I would not suggest
a wide deployment of Lycoris Desktop/LX in the
enterprise business where normally all file, email,
and logon servers are
Microsoft NT/2000 based.
After seeing Desktop/LX connect to my office network
almost perfectly, I decided to try something that I
had dared not tried before with Linux. That was
to try and get Linux to see my networked HP DeskJet
990c inkjet printer which is connected to one of my intranet
servers. By just following the basic prompts and
icons, I navigated to the Control Center where
I was able to click on Printers and Other Hardware and
start the process of setting up a new printer. I
was given the choices of what type of printer I was
installing (local or networked), letting Desktop/LX
search the networked printers, and choosing what
driver I wished to install. Upon the completion
of the printer detection, out came a test page from
Desktop/LX on my printer.
It is very worthwhile to note that since Linux has
always been designed as a server operating system, it
contains daemons or services that allow web browsers,
ftp programs and telnet programs to connect to it.
By default in other distributions such as RedHat Linux,
these services are turned on automatically leaving a
possible backdoor for malicious users to
cause damage to the system. Also not only could
that be an open door for hackers, but those services
do take up extra system resources.
Since Desktop/LX is a desktop oriented operating
system I felt that those server daemons should not be
there, at least not installed and running. To
check this I simply opened Internet Explorer, telnet
and WS_FTP on my Windows XP computer and tried to use
those programs to access the IP address of my Lycoris
test machine. On each of the above programs
Desktop/LX either denied access or the daemons simply
were not installed.
