Lycoris - Anybody tried it?

[Calum]

i just ordered a lycoris CD from http://www.creativechanges.uklinux.net/

i just wondered if anybody had tried it (i suspect some have) and if so, what were your thoughts on it? i will be hopefully trying out a few linuces on the laptop now we have a desktop machine and since i am not totally happy yet with red hat or mandrake, it's even possible the desktop machine will end up being a Lycoris machine.

Of course my one huge concern is package management. I like to have a lot of flexibility and ease of use in the options i have for installing and uninstalling stuff, I'll also be looking out for audio/video usability and so on. I see from the lycoris site that they have a kind of GUI a bit like the mandrake and red hat network updaters (but probably not as nice as synaptic when it works, and i think it's a GUI only thing)

Next i think i might try Debian. Or slackware. BUT WAIT! this isn't a 'what's the best distro' thread, i just wondered if you had tried lycoris and what you thought of it.

[Faust]

I've tried lycoris/lx
(free on front of magazine 8-) )

1 looks a lot like XP... even has a "control panel" actually not looks like, looks EXACTLY like

2 VERY easy to install and use (works a lot like XP... notice a trend?)  If you just used it a little you could be forgiven for thinking it WAS XP.

3 Couldnt autodetect my mouse... even if i specified what to look for... redhat / mandrake both can

4 very little choice while installing... eg you WILL install kde and nothing else, you WILL install koffice and not open office etcetera. no choice of what packages to install... 8-( probably can change that from within though... I only used it for a little so i have no idea

5 Nice game of tetris to play when its installing

[Calum]

i will be bullying it around once it's installed. i suppose it will be an opportunity to try and install gnome from source... and openoffice from source too (or maybe an rpm if i am too dumb)

also sounds like i might get a little practice hand editing my XF86Config file too.

[slave]

Calum, if you want gnome use red hat linux because red hat makes the best distro for gnome (they even have several gnome developers employed)  I wouldn't bother trying to compile it from source; it's just too much work.  KDE is all right, and that slicKer project I saw a while back looks promising, but I love Gnome 2 for its stability, speed and simplicity.

[Calum]

well the insecurity of GNOME in mandrake 8.2, 9.0 and red hat 8.0 is a good reason why i do NOT use it.

also, i'm going to try out a few OSs on the secondary computer to try and learn a bit, you see, so stability and ease of use aren't quite the priorities they would usually be here. Anyway, i suppose lycoris does not even come with GNOME? it's only one CD (well it's three, but CD1 is the install binaries, CD2 is the source of CD1, and CD3 is the 'DevTools', like kdevelop, which i am NOT up to using yet).

so we'll see. if i can get my FreeBSD 4.5 CDs, that might be fun on this machine too. i haven't used them yet so it'd be a shame not to try them out. 'Course they're in storage six hundred miles away...

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

I've had it installed and had no problems with hardware, i was downloading the betas week after week (56k as well) eventually the distro got my sound working.

One thing to note is that Lycoris does a Lindows with installing software.  In other words you can go online and select it and it will download and install it for you.

Also Lycoris doesn't use KDE 3 yet, it still uses some version of 2.  There aim is to have a simple distro so it will never develop drivers or anything, just build on established software.

Installer is a bit newbie, it offers basic options on partitioning so be prepared.

O and its very XPish.

You can also pay games on Lycoris as well i think they have a special gamepak developed with WINeX.

[DJ]

I used it a bit on an old PII 266 I have but it was so ungodly slow I got mad and used a third HD I have and did a dual boot with RH 8.0 on my main box. This is probably not the fault of Lycoris, but because of the machine (has 64mb RAM as well). So I am currently looking for a lightweight distro to try on that machine (suggestions    )

Anyway HERE is a link to a review someone did on Linux Newbie on Lycoris and Xandros both. It was pretty informative I think, check it out if you like.

Dj

[rtgwbmsr]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
I've tried lycoris/lx
(free on front of magazine 8-) )

1 looks a lot like XP... even has a "control panel" actually not looks like, looks EXACTLY like

2 VERY easy to install and use (works a lot like XP... notice a trend?)  If you just used it a little you could be forgiven for thinking it WAS XP.

3 Couldnt autodetect my mouse... even if i specified what to look for... redhat / mandrake both can

4 very little choice while installing... eg you WILL install kde and nothing else, you WILL install koffice and not open office etcetera. no choice of what packages to install... 8-( probably can change that from within though... I only used it for a little so i have no idea

5 Nice game of tetris to play when its installing

I agree with points 1, 2 and 4.
As for 3, it detected my Logitech Trackball USB just fine.
As for 5, my installer had solitare  

[Calum]

so, since some of you have used it, i think i'll ask a question or two.

i see that this is redmond linux with a new name. i would never have tried it had i realised, but what with all the rave reviews i am thinking this might be the very thing to replace mandrake with as the 'family desktop' system.

Anyway, i'll be playing with it before i take that drastic step. So:

KDE 2.2, mozilla and so on. Is installation and upgrade of packages going to be easy or hard for me? i know it is easy to do the things you are supposed to do but what if i want to install tarballs, that'll be fine i suppose, but i see that it has rpm support. does that mean red hat rpms and mdk rpms or ONLY redmond rpms? will the 11 CDs of red hat and mandrake rpms come in handy for me or are they going to be dead weight?

GNOME & GTK+ libraries. There's no GNOME so there's no GTK+ i presume. many of my favourite programs are GTK+ ones, so i will need this. again, will i need to install tarballs or can i use rpms, if so need i install the GNOME stuff or can i just use the libraries? and as for the programs themselves, can i install the likes of galeon, gnutella, gftp and gaim on here? or is that just dumb?

and so on.

[Nobber]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
if i can get my FreeBSD 4.5 CDs, that might be fun on this machine too.

I've got a set of three FreeBSD 4.7 discs, if you want them. (The "live" disc is the only one missing.)

[Calum]

yes please! get in touch with me via PM or email (calum AT linuxmail DOT org) if you want to swap for something (i don't know what if anything you'll want to swap for but that would be great).

Ta!