Winning over the home desktop market is a goal sought by many Linux distributors. Usability has certainly come on leaps and bounds since the days of text-only installs, complete with their torrents of technical questions. Lycoris, based in Redmond, Washington, has entered the market with its product Desktop/LX.

Desktop/LX focuses on providing a look and feel familiar to Windows users, and a glance at the screenshots will show the distinct similarity to Microsoft's latest version, XP. There, though, the similarity pretty much ends; as Desktop/LX is still a Linux system based on the KDE desktop, with a collection of some of the most popular KDE applications.

The first version, Amethyst, has been the recipient of much praise from the Linux community for its easy installation and configuration. It is due a new release, 'Update 2', and here the release candidate is covered.

Desktop/LX is based on Caldera's OpenLinux distribution and uses a modified version of the excellent 'Lizard' installation program, here called Lyzard. The first surprise of the distribution is how easy the installation is and particularly how fast - taking approximately 15 minutes.

Lyzard successfully detected and configured all of the installation PC's components: the wheel mouse, SBLive card, CDRW, ethernet card and modem, and even the USB-connected HP 950C printer. The Nvidia GeForce3 Ti200 and monitor were correctly identified and sensible resolutions (like 1280x1024 at 85hz in 24 bit colour) were listed and could be tested. This way the graphical set up is confirmed and working before the hard disk is touched - something very useful even for experienced Linux users.

Many of the more technical questions typically found are avoided. For example, Linux distributions usually ask for the keyboard type to be set with lines like 'generic 104-key keyboard'. Desktop/LX instead uses the user-friendlier 'standard keyboard with Windows keys'.

The disk configuration section is often a concern when installing onto a system with an existing Windows installation. Desktop/LX makes this as easy as a dual-booting Windows-only system. Like most distributions, it will detect existing Linux partitions and use those, or allow you to create new partitions in free space. Unlike most, the choice of filesystem (irrelevant to a typical desktop user) is taken away, and the standard journalled ext3 filesystem is automatically used instead.

After some simple configuration on network, printer and timezone settings, the bootloader is installed - automatically detecting Windows - and Lyzard gives you a game of Patience to play while it installs the operating system.

After a few minutes the KDE login screen appears. All hardware is configured, with the drivers working, the operating system installed and running, and all without a single reboot.

Desktop/LX is perhaps alone in that it doesn't offer any choice in the applications that are installed. This doesn't mean it has a poor selection of software - quite the contrary. An impressive list of applications are available, including Mozilla (web browsing), Koffice (office suite), Xmms (media player), and Gimp (advanced image manipulator). The applications are sensibly laid out in the menus, and they all work as expected; a significant point overlooked by many Linux distributors.

Lycoris has provided the KDE filemanager, Konqueror. Clicking on a text file launches a text editor, and other common 'mime' types, including MP3s, MPGs and images, launch their appropriate applications. Also provided is a unique 'Network Neighbourhood' style browser for Windows shares.

Every option to make KDE more attractive has been switched on by default, ensuring that the minimum hardware specifications are indeed the minimum. Many files are previewed in the file browser; menus fade in, and animations use up any remaining spare CPU cycles. Linux being Linux, all of these can be switched off through the control panel. The KDE control panel has been modified substantially, making many administrative tasks, such as adding a user or setting up a remote Windows printer, logical and straightforward.

Being a system aimed entirely at the desktop, many of the common utilities that are found on other distributions are not present. The 'deluxe' version contains an additional CD with development applications, though with over 100mb of free space on the main CD there could perhaps have been room for some more utilities and applications.

Compatability with Microsoft Office is relatively good. Koffice's word-processor and spreadsheet will open simple Word and Excel documents and, on the whole, display them adequately. While they are more than adequate in their native formats, if Microsoft Office compatability is paramount then you should look more towards Sun Microsystems's StarOffice, which claims 100% compatability.