lindows 4.5 developers

[jesseejames]

i wanted to try this OS and cannot get it to install it goes as far as 60+% then gives the error 200: rsync whatever that means I am going back to windows as if it is this much of a mess to install the OS must be a mess too. I am willing to try if anyone can offer any help

[krohnjw]

Well, with that attitude I would suggest staying with windows. You will face a steep learning curve with linux, and if you aren't ready to step back and attempt to solve your own problems, then it will be a waste of time.

As far as your install problems go:
Did you download the ISO image? (if so did you verify the md5 sums)
If you can verify the md5 sums, or have a manufacturer's disk, i would suggest doing the linspire install in diagnostic mode, as that will give quit ea bit more information as to what is actually happening. From what I have read at the linspire support forums, with a simple search, this is usually due to partition sizes being too small, with a 3G min and 6G reccomended.
If you are using larger partitions, then I would suggest copying the last 10 or so lines of the diagnostic install and maybe then it will be a bit more evident what the problem is.

[samwichse]

It's funny, but I've had more trouble installing Lindows than any other distro.

It seems it is completely and absolutely non-fault-tolerant. Your CD drive must be 100% perfect (basically, you have to install it through a near brand new CD-ROM in my experience), your hard drive can't have any bad sectors, etc.

I think this comes from the trick they use to make it install so fast, which is they just basically copy an exact system image from the CD in the fastest (burst, I believe) mode.

I actually ended up putting the drive in my primary computer and using my brand new DVD drive to install, then sticking the drive back in the computer I was trying to use and it worked perfectly. I think it uses some sort of Knoppix-esque hardware dectection when you do the rescan at boot.

Sam

[jesseejames]

thanks it looks like more problems with getting it to install--new cdrom-larger HDD etc. I really wonder how much those who hate window$ are willing to put up with. I would like to see competition in operating systems and would use somethng other than window$ but all I have tried so far have been more problems to use than I am willing to deal with. Thanks for your help--krohnjw and samwichse

[CMonster]

Contraray to popular belief, most Linux users do not 'hate' MS Windows - in fact most of us have a copy of Windows around or work in industry where we must deal with managing MS Windows envrionments - the fact is that Linux gives us more control over our OS and how it behaves.

What samwichse was saying was that to him Lindows/Linspire was problematic and may have install requirements that exceed other Linux distributions, and he described the unusual hoops he had to jump through to get it to install - peculiar glitches due to the dumbing-down of Linux into "Lindows" in order to facilitate a Windows-like ease-of-use (once again taking the control away from the user). I think the bottom-line of his post was recommending that you try another distribution - I highly recommend Mandrake Linux.

As for hard disks and CDROMs etc. most of us have been computer affectionados for some time, are constantly upgrading, and have tons of surplus parts cluttering up one room or another - that is kind of what this site is about - but you are right my friend, if Lindows (now Linspire) want's to present itself as the easy-one-stop replacement to MS Windows it has some hurdles yet to overcome. I'm sure given a little time the good folks at Linspire can deliver the OS complete with "Warning this program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" and "Linspire has caused an invalid page fault in module ....." after all they have produced the only version of Linux that actually needs an antivirus program...

That said, any OS is a very complicated thing -with Windows you are just using a set of very simplified controls. Learning Linux is like learning to fly a jet vs learning to drive a car.

And I would have to say this, considering your apporach and your understandable frustration this far, once you got into the OS and discovered that the applications are somewhat different, your favorite Windows tricks don't work, and your fav Windows programs typically don't run on Linux (though there are many substitute programs) you would be even more frustrated. Stick with Windows - maybe in the future you could take a class and get into Linux.

[samwichse]

What CMonster said.

I should have mentioned that I just stuck the Fedora Core 2 disks in the same machine (I don't like Lindows much anyway) and the install went right through.