Extensive Xandros 2.0 Deluxe Review

Ms Pacman writes "This article is the fifth and final installment of Barry Smith's series on Debian-based commercial distros in a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environment. In this in-depth article, the newly released Xandros Deluxe 2.0 is being reviewed and compared to all previous distros Barry Smith used and reviewed the past 2-3 months. Of special interest is the blurb about Xandros' customer support."

Comments

Xandros 2.0 Deluxe Review

[CreamOfWheat]

The fact that the distros are competing among themselves as much as with Windows is disturbing; the linux market will only grow significantly if a large number of windows users get interested in Linux. If won't make much difference to Xandros that all Lindows users defect to them but it will be some effort. But any small number of Windows users adopting Linux will make a BIG difference. Granted distros still compete against each other to get the biggest slice of these new customers. But normally, industry lobbies (ever heard about the Agro business ?) fight united to make their common market bigger and make internal competition less cutthroat. Linux companies (and the author) don't seem to get it.

Re:Xandros 2.0 Deluxe Review

[Sarojin]

but, this competition isn't particularily harmful - many publish their tools under the GPL to give back to the community, just as they all will use pretty much the same software underneath the packaging.

to make a long story short

[jest3r]

This review is needlessly long .. when its all said and done Xandros 2.0 didn't make the cut.

Final Decision:

Primary system - Libranet
Secondary system - Lindows

Conformality

[vpscolo]

As nice as it is to have choice one things Windows brings it is a constant. Things normally work on most PC's. With each distro of Linux things aren't the same from one point to another which can be seen as a strength, however if things aren't careful it could come as a bad thing if infighting gets worse. Of course KDE and Gnome do help but in this case standard should be a good thing Rus

I use Xandros 2.0

[MaxQuordlepleen]

.. and I like it a lot. I've used it pretty much only on IBM laptops, and the Radeon 3D support is quite lacking. Other than that, it's a dream to work with and use, especially for an experienced Debian user. Xandros has been my primary work desktop since 1.0 and I'm sold.

Besides, as far as I know it's my only option if I want a made-in-Canada distro.

"Community" Doesn't Matter To Consumers

[reallocate]

>> You can't possibly learn about a distro completely until you've also had a chance to explore its community surrounding it.

The market these consumer distributions are targetting -- home and corporate desktop users -- have little reason to be aware of any pseudo-community surrounding a distribution. If a distribution requires people to go online and start asking questions before it works, it is a failed distribution.

Linux enthusiasts and hobbyists comprise these so-called communities. These are people who are interested in Linux for its own sake, not as a means to an end. These are the people who will install a new OS just to play with it. On the other hand, pretty much everyone else could care less. For the people these distributions are targetting, Linux is about as interesting as their refrigerator. They don't want to depend on a refrigerator community, either.

Who really is using this?

[Ars-Fartsica]

What is the market for the Lindows/Xandors distros? I mean, I know what they describe as their audience, but I don't see much market presence. People who tend to not want to worry about the details of their software ("it just works") seem to be using the Windows that came preinstalled on their systems. The techie crowd seems to have zero interest in these types of distros also. I would be surprised if Lindows and Xandros are still around in two years. It seems the Sun/Novell (Suse) approach of focusing on business desktops has more momentum.

Xandros/2.0 is very, very good

[heironymouscoward]

We have used Xandros/1.0 for 6 months or so on our systems, and it was already wonderful. Xandros/2.0 went onto a couple of new systems last week and is simply excellent.

If you have to support MS Office, go for the professional version, which comes with Crossover Office, a decent way of running MSIE, MS Office, and some other applications. It's Wine plus some extensions, and well-integrated into Xandros.

If you don't need this, just go for the basic package.

The best thing about Xandros is that it combines the 95%+ device detection we're starting to expect in modern distros along with a clean and lean Debian-based chassis. You get simple graphical installation of the standard Xandros packages, plus access to everything in Debian unstable via the normal apt-get interface.

The Xandros/2.0 file manager handles pretty much everything you can throw at it. It mounts everything it can, lets you burn CDs, map network drives, and so on.

Just for fun I installed a Lindows 4.5, then took a deep breath, and wiped it with Xandros. Lindows is so *full* of stuff, while Xandros shows the meaning of "less is more".

There is no shame in paying for good software, and Xandros/2.0 gets my vote as the best office distro of 2003. Install it, forget about it. You can't ask for more.