My girlfriend bought a Lindows laptop. She is a Windows user. I am not, but I think that selling computers preinstalled with Linux to Windows users it a good thing.
The video card is an "S3 savage 4". No 3D acceleration in X (yet). The monitor is bright and clear.
The 2 hour battery-life seems to be realistic.
The keyboard is fairly good, considering the size of the laptop.
The mouse is a touch-pad with 3 buttons. The middle button is actually a double button, it can be clicked both on the top and bottom end. It was probably designed for scrolling, however pressing down generates a "mouse2" event and pressing up does nothing. A 3 button mouse is a big plus on a Linux laptop.
Next to the power on/off button, there are two special buttons with an envelope and "i" button. Both apparently start a file browser with a wrong file argument. However they do generate X events, so it should be possible to use them for something.
There are two USB-2 ports. One in the back and one in the right. I inserted a USB flash drive with a FAT12 and an ext3 partition and two Icons called "USB Disk (D)" and "USB Disk(F)" appeared on the Desktop. Very nice, especially since this notebook does not have a floppy drive.
There is a CardBus/PCMCIA slot in the right side. There is a firewire on the right side. I did not try it.
On the left side there is modem. Lindows have some Linmodem software, but I did not test it.
On the left there is a 100MBit ethernet. Just plug it in and if there is DHCP server you are online.
On the left there is also a Compact Flash slot. I like that there is both a PCMCIA and a CF slot. I put the CF card from my digital camera in and a file called "C:" appeared on the desktop. I used the CF card to install OpenOffice from openlindows.com
CNR junior is just 17 programs: KWord (renamed to Write PRO), CD-players, a few small games etc. I did not use CNR, but it looks good. I.E. in the "Programs" menu, every sub-menu has a CNR menu so that you can easily add programs in that category.
The default is to run as root without supplying password. However it is easy to add more users in the nice user manager. Initially it boots directly into a KDE desktop as root. If you add another user, it boots into "kdm".
The GUI is most KDE configured to be like Windows (e.g. double-clicks, removable drives called "E:" etc).
The browser is Netscape.
It is all based on Debian Woody, some Lindows-specific Debian packages, and KDE 3.0 packages.
KEY=""deadbeaf42 [1] key 88888888 [2] key 99999999 [3] key dddddddd [4] key [2]"" Instead of: KEY="deadbeaf42 [1] key 88888888 [2] key 99999999 [3] key dddddddd [4] key [2]"As a temporary solution I put this script on the desktop:
#!/bin/bash sed -e "s/\"\"/\"/g" < /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts > /tmp/fwl.opts mv /tmp/fwl.opts /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts
This was my first encounter with a desktop computer preinstalled with Linux. All in all Lindows got most things right. It actually is useful for people new to Linux.
I had expected more focus on running MS Windows programs, but Lindows has a very realistic approach now:
Personally I think that $99/year to get StarOffice and CNR installation is overpriced. And I think that a preinstalled Linux desktop should include an office suite like KOffice or OpenOffice.
But I do not have any problem with Lindows selling LindowsOS for $99/year to people who think it is worth it. For most costumers $99/year/family is a better deal than the alternative.
And if $99 really is overpriced for Debian with a fancy program installer and a few non-free programs, then lets hope Lindows gets more competition.
Yes, I know Walmart sells preinstalled Mandrake PC's, but I have not tried one yet.