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Interview: Xandros and KDE
Fabrice Mous writes "The Xandros Desktop OS is known for their intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box. Their polished desktop product is based on KDE. The
KDE News website had the privilege to talk to Rick Berenstein, Xandros Chairman and CTO and Ming Poon,
Vice President for Software Development about Xandros and their products and the relationship between
Xandros and the KDE project. Without further ado ... enjoy the
interview!"
I had a quick look at the Xandros OS screenshots, since I hadn't heard of it before (sheepish grin).
Most of it seems to be an exact replica of MS look and feel - the same start button, the task bar, task trays, heck even the colour variations!
Why is this deemed "intuitive" then? Isn't this just another attempt to replicate MS experience on another OS? Or am I missing something?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
$90 a download, I'm not sure really what they have that other distributions don't? I think they have simplified a few processes (look and feel of the desktop) a little for the average user, which is fantastic, but most of which is in some form or the other on other distributions.
Sig it.
I went to Xandros once, then clicked my heels and ended up back Gnome!
You can't re-use code, if you can't find it.
They're merely familiar!
You don't need to buy it. Just compile Debian Sid and buy Codeweaver you really need the Microsoft 'familiarity'. It's alot cheaper and Codeweaver actually develops 'stuff' and support WINE. Unlike Xandros that just resells stuff and doesn't give back to the FOSS community.
One of those screenshots shows a dialog to switch users. Has that been incorporated into any other distros desktop? I love that feature of XP. Makes it easy to share a single computer with the wife.
*Chuckle* :P
Whoever modded it informative deserves to be shot.
Ok, you might not read the article
but ffs, check the fscking links if you're gonna mod it informative?
(Oh and, why was ol' tubby censored?)
...after that, it's all learned.
-- attributed to Bruce Edigar
sorry xandros , but kde without konqueror just isnt kde. i'll stick with mandrake...
Why the heck are we still focused on emulating windows right down to the exact contextual menus? Why not try to strike out on a new path.
I use OS X and I love it, but I also love mu Suse and I have always thought that a good GUI (ahem...not like windows) could launch linux into the stratosphere. Why spend time and effort "creating" a GUI that is already in use???
C'mon, don't waste your talents for another second!
Why do people have such difficulty conducting interviews properly? They ask "Could you tell us somewhat more about the work that Xandros has done to integrate KDE in their products?" and the answer has all this stuff about XFM. Then they completely ignore the talk about XFM and move on, only to come back and ask "In the Xandros Desktop OS there is an application called "Xandros File Manager"[XFM]. Can you tell us a bit more about it and the technologies it support?" later. Did they just write down a list of questions and not probe the interesting answers?
Okay so maybe they just sent a list of questions and published the list of answers they were sent back, but they really should have tried to integrate this stuff into a decent flow. It reads very badly.
Why is anything anything?
I have heard that Xandros is the only linux distro that does NT authentication and that it is some non-free component ... if any users can confirm or deny that (and how well it works), I'd be happy to hear about it.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
OK. I admit to liking QT a fair amount. However implying (as CTO Ming Poon does in the interview) that programming with GTK+ is worse than programming in MFC says alot about their attitude IMHO. People who think that a C API is inherently inferior to a C++ API are obviously clueless. Personally, I would even choose Win32 over MFC.
...and I love it. With the possible exception of Crossover Wine, which seems to be a bit flaky, I have no complaints other than the really nasty window skins and colour schemes.
It's true to say that it might be confusing for a new user. As always, when switching from an OS you've used for years you will find things difficult if you're not used to Linux.
I personally have had few problems with it. It detected my monitor, LAN card, all my hardware. Something even Redhate failed to manage.
Of course, it's not FreeBSD. But hey, it's a start...
When is a Linux distro going to finally try to emulate the look and feel of Microsoft BOB, a truly intuative GUI?!?!?! Jeeesh!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Jef Raskin says, in The Humane Interface, that people misuse the word "intuitive". In the context of user interfaces, they mean "familiar".
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It has already
Many of the posts here are slagging Xandros for trying to look like Windows and are questioning the idea that this makes it intuitive.
Maybe you are all just trolling, because I find it hard to believe that you haven't seen the desktop numbers (or at least heard about them). Almost everyone uses Windows on the desktop, except a few who use the Mac (with MS's full blessing).
The purpose of the Xandros distribution is to appeal to Windows users. It is supposed to be intuitive to Windows users, not Linux users. 'Lock-in' really exists and it is really important: it is very difficult to switch to another OS if you've only ever used Windows. It's not a matter of which is better, it's a question of familiarity.
I personally would like to see more Windows users using Linux (in any form), and I would especially like to see a small dent made in the MS monopolies so I'm glad to see Xandros working on this.
Now, if you want to slag Xandros, there are lots of better ways to do this. Most importantly to me, they don't seem to contribute much back. People are attacking Red Hat a lot these days, but take a loook at the amount that Red Hat contributes to important OSS projects (eg. GCC). Xandros does not. But that is their right - they are not breaking the GPL or anything (to the best of my knowledge). By the way, Dream Weavers (which is included in Xandros and shares some ownership) is also an excellent contributor (to Wine).
It also seems to me that their product is way over priced, but I guess I don't know what their strategy is.
Flamebait??? It's a joke you morons. Didn't you ever see "Fletch?"
-JemI had to install Xandros on a professor's new laptop and desktop. Selected the packages I wanted installed, clicked "Install" only to have it fail with the error "bad package". No indication which of the dozens of packages I had selected was bad. I ended up installing the systems six packages at a time so when I got an error I could uncheck them individually until I found the bad one.
What a pain in the ass. Naturally, after all that the modem in the laptop didn't work (driver version was too old), neither did selecting the proper resolution for the flat panel using their display control panel (no matching modeline). I fixed the XF86Config file, only to have Xandros overwrite it on a subsequent boot.
For his money and my trouble, he basically got an old Debian sid snapshot with an XPesque Playskool theme, plus the CrossOver plugin. Big whoop.
I don't know how this thing actually works in practice, but if the quality of their graphics is an indication, I'm optimistic. I had a quick look at the screenshots and my immediate reaction was "at last a linux GUI that doesn't hurt my eyes".
In case you hadn't noticed there are numerous desktop environments out there for Linux. Some/many of these DEs are nothing like Windows and have clearly stated that they will never implement Windows look and feel or features. The fact is that there are DEs that are very Windows like and there are many others that are not. Some of those are very unique and innovative.
Yet, we see a recurring theme of desktops that are Windows like. This is "market" driven. The fact is that the vast majority of PC users want a Windows like desktop. People are exercising their choice by choosing the desktop that they like best. Developers are not stupid, not always anyway. Many of them are simply acknowledging the demand for a particular type of desktop and are catering to that demand.
You have a far greater choice of desktops with Linux than with any other operating system. You can choose any one that you like. The fact that most people are choosing a Windows like desktop would suggest that either that is what they are most comfortable with or perhaps, Microsoft's years research and development have indeed provide a very good desktop design.
Open Source is supposed to be all about choice. What have you against people exercising thier choice?
If you're going after a market dominated by Windows, you try to make it look like Windows. People aren't terribly good with new and unfamiliar things. Don't believe me? Try standing sideways in an elevator while everyone else is facing forward. People around you will get uncomftorable...the same way they will if there's not a "start menu."
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
- just a nitpick... besides, what's the proper usage: "I use Linux," or "I use a Linux-based OS"? :-)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Bing! http://www.jefraskin.com/ points to a user environment which, although unfamiliar, is much easier to use. For example, the system NEVER discards your keystrokes. If you're pointing at a piece of read-only text (e.g. somebody else's web page), typing at it forces the cursor to slide over to the end of the read-only text. So if you just walk up to your machine with somebody's phone number in your head, you can just type it in without caring what context you're in.
For another thing, you never have to save anything in The Humane Environment. It autosaves (with undo!) for you.
For another thing, you don't have to start programs in THE. You access your data, and it takes care of starting the program that manipulates the data.
We can do this all, and we can do it long before Longhorn comes out.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Just curious: I looked at this screenshot.
:0.0 and :0.1? Or is a screen a different virutal desktop? Is a session a particular user's login session? Why not just call it "login as a different user" instead of "create a new session"?
In the phase "create new session on screen X" what do they mean by 'session' and 'screen'? Is screen in the sense of display:screen as in
And "lock current screen when switching" is ambiguous too. How can I both lock this screen I am looking at and still use it? (assuming a more nieve user)
Since all the comments above me are from people who say that "Xandros is no more than Debian + KDE + Codeweavers, just go compile your own", I figure I should add something.
I moved one of my machines to Xandros 2.0 last December. It was my first machine to move from Windows 2000. I hadn't switched until then for a few reasons:
1) While I can figure out technical things, I want some basis of familiarity to start with. Most Linux operating systems are completely foreign. I had previously installed Debian once, but I had no idea what to do to make my sound work, and no real way to find out without wasting weeks of my free time on my own, or going to a newsgroup to get unhelpful advice.
2) I had been very nervous about making an -insecure- Linux box. Back in college I had a SGI workstation with Irix. I learned a good bit about the OS, and even reinstalled it once from scratch. I didn't learn until it was too late, however, that buried somewhere back in section 6 chapter 7 page 35 of the documentation was a list of default accounts with no passwords! The machine was exploited. I waited until Xandros 2.0 so I would have a Linux operating system with the simplicity of Debian updates to keep it secure.
Xandros 2.0 has worked very well for me. A few accomplishments:
1) In four years, my wife and I have not been able to get Windows networking to function on our six computers. Her second machine could see my second machine in the workgroup, while my second machine could see her primary machine. None of them could see anything else, even though they were all in the same workgroup and even attached to the same hub, with all of them set up the same way. We used FTP to transfer files, and moved the printer cable manually. With Xandros, I set up a fileserver with (almost) a right-click and "share this folder". Amazingly, even now when the machines can't see each other, they ALL see the server. Samba does a better job of Windows networking that Windows does!
2) I have an old HP scanner. The HP driver for it blue-screens Windows 2k on boot, and they never provided an updated driver. I haven't used it in two years because of this. When I used Xandros Networks to install their scanner program (Kooka) and then plugged in my USB scanner, it just -worked-. (The first day.)
3) I have several Windows applications running well in Xandros with Crossover Office, including Excel (didn't like OO.o), tax software, GURPS character creator, etc. This helps build hope that I could leave Windows entirely one day.
Now, that said, there are some things that have gone wrong:
1) That Samba share worked great for all the Windows users, who could great and modify files in the shared directory with ease (when I had permissions set correctly in the graphical dialogs). To get my user on the Xandros machine to be able to also create and modify files at the same time, I had to dig through the Xandros support site and the Samba online docs to find the right setting to make in a config file.
2) The mouse in Xandros was "sticky". The cursor wouldn't move until I had moved the mouse a certain amount, and then it "jumped". This made it VERY hard to do things like resize columns in Excel. The fix was adding a "resolution" line to the pointer's configuration, which again I had to go to support forums to find. I have no idea why this wasn't configurable from the control center.
3) After using my scanner the first day, two days later it completely didn't work. Again, after digging around on support sites, I found the solution - it was a permissions problem. (Why did I have permission the first day but not on later days? I have no idea.) Anyway, it works fine again now, and I was even able to help some other folks who had the same problem.
In summary - Xandros 2.0 has a market. Maybe it's not a market for most Slashdot readers who work in IT or are in college or high school and grew up with Linux and PCs. But it has a market for this electrical engi
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
...will any Linux distro forego familiarity and try to revolutionize a new desktop? People are familiar with Windows, but, as stated here, is it really that intuitive? Not unless you've used it for some time. So why not develop the next gen desktop and trump MS. I know IceVM and the like are vastly different, but I don't know how Joe Sixpack would adapt to the interface. Who knows, maybe he would... but I would definitely like to see some innovation in the desktop as it has been untouched for decades, really. Christ, I remember GEOS on the C64 that was an 8bit, 64k version of today's desktop. End of rant... informative or not...
I can say why it's easily worth the price tag.
1. On every PC we've installed it on (about 10 in our company) it just worked, with the exception of a notebook that had some CD hardware problems.
2. It installs smoothly and gives you a good set of applications without overloading the UI.
3. It has an excellent one-click GUI update manager that is based on apt and is compatible with it.
4. The Xandros File Manager really _is good_. Whatever file you have, you click and the 'right' thing happens. Want to burn some files to CD? Selected them, right click and select "Burn to CD"... Want to unpack a zip file? Right click, choose "Unpack". and so on.
5. It is stable.
Overall Xandros gives you the feeling that you are driving a luxury car. Smooth, highly polished, and incredible attention to detail.
6. It is Debian: want to add something? Find the sources, unpack, build, install.
Now the poor points:
1. Slow release cycle, annoying if you're a thrill seeker. With one release a year, Xandros gives you reliability over performance and gadgets.
2. Not free. You can't just copy it and share it. I believe Xandros is preparing a free version.
3. The Windows support is flaky and not something you should bet on. It's better just to migrate to Linux/portable applications such as OOo over time (it took me about 6 months to migrate, switching one application at a time: office, media players, browsing, streaming, agendas, and finally email.)
I've tried many different distros, but I'm not willing to spend much time installing, or learning the details. It has to work quickly and smoothly. That's what Xandros does.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
And it's the first distro I've ever bought 'officially'.
I'm mixed about it. I wanted an easy desktop but I also want to be able to config "some stuff". Like, I wanted to be able to upgrade kernals, or upgrade to kde 3.2 etc, which I couldn't.
I suppose it wasn't really aimed at me, but for the average windows user it is fantastic. Amazing hardware support (minus USB) easy installation, looks great (you CAN have Gnome in it, it's a matter of "apt-get install gdm" and "apt-get install gnome-desktop") also the software is easy as pie. You have their GUI interface to apt-get, meaning you literally click and install or click and uninstall. This is also true of patches, select patches, then click the patches to install.
Setting it up with Samba was amazing, it detected it all by itself with my other Windows box, config'd great with my router and modem.
It's also not a bloated Redhat box, it runs fast, this was on an AMD XP3000+ 512ddr, 64mb gfx but there was no sluggish behaviour at all.
The worst thing was their own servers, though. Their own xandros-compiled database of applications was very limited, which meant I had to rely on Debian-based programs a lot of the time, or compile myself, but then I suppose I was going for slightly more obscure programs (though I don't consider amsn and gaim that obscure.
In all, if you want a Linux desktop that you're not going to want to touch much (just for office, web, email etc) then go with Xandros, if you're like me and want that little bit more power, like being able to choose to upgrade the kernal when you like and updated WM's then give it a miss.
standard home user edition $129. well, why dont people just use windows directly?
I installed Xandros on my IBM Thinkpad T40 a few weeks ago, and love it. Before that I had Gentoo installed, and spent several days trying to tweak the configuration for accelerated 3D in X (the T40 has a sweet Radeon) and getting my CD-R to work properly.
/dev/input/js0 before I can play PyDance.
When I installed Xandros, and did one upgrade / update using Xandros Networks then rebooted I had almost everything on the laptop working perfectly. I could play Tux Racer at full speed, and burn CDs without any trouble. I installed MS Office 2000 and it worked, including printing to my (CUPS - on Gentoo server managed) HP OfficeJet.
The only things I'm left wanting is the ability to sleep / suspend my laptop. (I end up powering it off and back on whenever I'm not using it.) And better behaivour when I plug in a USB Joystick. At the moment I have to run a little script that loads the right JOY modules, then sets the permissions for the
If Crossover Office let me run Visual C++ and create windows applications, I would be using it full time at work too!
It's well worth $90 for the configuration time it saved me!
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
It simply works. Users have windows. They aren't willing to learn a new desktop. Gnome would scare the crap outta most of my customers. 4 or 5 clicks and anybody can install this and it works and acts the same as windows... without the blue screens that is.
It has lots of proprietary stuff in there like the file manager. When was the last time you installed mandrake or RedHat and your windows lan was detected and accessable right away.. no configuring samba.
If the hardware is on the supported list, there is no extra work needed to get anything going. I've tried just about every other distro and have had varying degrees of success... but NONE have worked right outta the box like this one. My opinion is if you are capable and want free, there are lots of distos out there for you to play with. This is for the home user that can't reinstall windows... and there are millions of them ;-) I charge $40 canadian for reinstalls and they can buy the basic Xandros for $55 canadian and do it themselves.
I don't like the fact that I can't just install any package without breaking something. All updates must be done from the Xandros Networks. It does work well and they will add apps if they are requested. This removes all dependency issues for the end user as well.
It is a very polished distro, and I am impressed with it. Now if we could only get Simply Accounting ported over I'd be laughing.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
The biggest reason for look-and-feel cloning is to make migration from Windows, with it's 98% control of the desktop market, to Linux as pain free as possible.
Besides, imagine trying to sell off the idea of Linux migration to a Fortune 500 company saying that "Oh, yeah, you'll have to retrain all of your staff who will be using the new Linux installation because we feel our WM and Desktop environment is cooler/slicker/13373r than that Windows crap." as opposed to "The computing environment will be familiar requiring minimal retraining and no loss of productivity."
the proper usage is "I use the GNU OS, based on a Linux kernel". This may be contracted to "I use GNU/Linux".
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Where can I download the Source Code for this product? I am only interested in "Free" (as in freedom). However I would also like to get it for Free (as in Beer).
Posted AC originally but I thought it needed better visibility...
The biggest reason for look-and-feel cloning is to make migration from Windows, with it's 98% control of the desktop market, to Linux as pain free as possible.
Besides, imagine trying to sell off the idea of Linux migration to a Fortune 500 company saying that "Oh, yeah, you'll have to retrain all of your staff who will be using the new Linux installation because we feel our WM and Desktop environment is cooler/slicker/13373r than that Windows crap." as opposed to "The computing environment will be familiar requiring minimal retraining and no loss of productivity."
No, he says things which you dont agree with. That doesnt mean 'troll'.
Hi, my name's Brent, I'm a developer, and I'm migrating from Windows to Linux. ("Hi, Brent.") About a month and a half ago, I got fed up with the intricacies of Active Directory and Exchange 2003's wacko registry keys, and decided to ditch it all.
I'd tried Linux every year or so, but the installation process kept turning me away. I couldn't find a distro that worked out of the box with my IBM Thinkpad T21 (strange video card running 1400x1050, and integrated 3com Hurricane ethernet card that isn't supported anymore.) This time, I decided I was going to make the switch no matter what.
Over the course of two weekends, I tried every distro I could find and had nothing but problems. My video card setup was particularly problematic: I just wanted dual head video with one video card, two flat panels. Most distributions just stubbornly refused to work out of the box. I contacted a lot of Linux users in my area via IRC, and nobody had the time (even though I was offering great money) to come set it up for me.
Out of desperation, I shelled out $90 for the downloadable version of Xandros, figuring that since it came with Crossover Office, it'd probably be worth the money.
Wow. It was. Among other things, Xandros detected the ATI video card out of the box, eventually got dual head video working, and the user interface is pretty straightforward. It still couldn't handle the onboard Ethernet on the Thinkpad, but I've given up on that laptop by now.
Here's the punch line: users leaving Windows don't care about the window manager. They don't care whether it's Gnome or KDE. We want an easy transition, and we're willing to pay good money for it. We don't want a *BETTER* user interface - if we did, we'd buy Macs. We just want to do the same things we're doing more, but more reliably and more securely. People who argue about whether Xandros is copying Windows are missing the point. They got my $90. If I could do it all over again, the only thing I would have done is bought Xandros earlier in the process.
What's your damage, Heather?
Here's some more information for you to ignore:
When we started the Corel LINUX project back in March of 1999, GNOME/GTK was there so we actually reviewed both GNOME and KDE to make sure we used the right desktop environment to start. We had a very short and aggressive cycle and the simplicity of KDE/Qt won again. Looking back, we never regretted about not supporting GNOME at all. Most of us came from OS/2 PM or Windows GUI development or freshly from a new object oriented technology called Java back then. MFC was a big life saver when it came out in Windows in developing GUI apps. Java was even better where everything was simple and made perfect sense. There was no way any of us would like to go back in time and program in something (GNOME/GTK) that was even more awkward than programming in pre-MFC days where we had to deal with the Win32 C API only. KDE/Qt was just like Java where everything (well most of the time anyway) made sense.
We have also seen a lot of poor arguments made on Qt where it cost money if you want to develop a commercial closed source application. Usually people argued that the $500 per developer license fee was just as much as a developer's salary in some third world countries. That may be true but they don't really take into account the months of headaches and development time they will save by using Qt every year. That alone is probably worth the $500. KDE/Qt is simple and is designed for the desktop. We like it and we have no regrets in supporting KDE at all.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I'm familiar with Raskin's sentiment; it goes back a long way. The term "intuitive" has been mis-applied as a synonym for "familiar" ever since it was first used, because the uninformed audience conflates the two terms.
The term *you* use, "discoverable", is much better because it's explicit.
That said, there are terrific problems with the concept of "discoverability" that can all be summed up in one two-part question: What's discoverable, and by whom?
Apparently Lindows, now known as Linspire, shared code and lent Xandros money to develop their own Linux much like Lindows.
PC OnRamp AKA EPC sells Xandros for $40USD on an install CD.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Anyways, why is it people are STILL trying to jack with KDE? Id really love to hear from people WHY they like KDE, personally, the few times i have tried it, it made me feel violent, i just couldnt stand it. Maybe its all the eye candy crap, i dunno.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
For the article, Xandros looks nice with its slighlty modified KDE and won't disturb much users with MS Windows experience. Nice effort, but I think a full-blown desktop distro- the Deluxe one, should not cost more than any good new video game, 50EUR. - Yes I'm cheap when it comes to software. I won't buy them, but wish them good luck.
Splitting hairs mode : Linux is the One kernel. Kernel developpers didn't miss anything in this regard. The first tier is OK, let's climb higher and look on the distro tier.
If I get what you said correctly, here lies the problem. Most distros are promoting free-as-in-speech softwares, and free-as-in-beer to cut costs. So they basically can't put everything in their repository.
With Gentoo, IIRC you can emerge commercial and/or proprietary softwares - Sun JVM and some games such as Neverwinter Nights comes to my mind. You must however provide the binaries/data in one way or another, since the download is under some restrictions. The primary purpose of these tools is to facilitate integration in the whole system, nothing less, nothing more. The downloading part is a convenience but nothing more, heavily used when it's legal to do so, but not in other
Sun also provides RPM for its JVM. Whether they do for other distros the packaging job or not is up to them .
Whether you provide nice apt/yum/chihuaha repository for your database software people can't obviously live without is up to you too. :-)
As for selling software for big $$$ through these tools, well you can't(*). But it would still apply for the 30-day-trial-after-that-foot-the-bill evaluation version.
So go make those .deb, .rpm, and ebuild. Just don't expect voluntary packaging for your proprietary and non-free-as-in-beer tools.
Moreover there are some meta packaging tools that could save your day, such as autopackage. They're not complete yet, but they're worth a look.
Waiting for the rather nasty reply, Batman. ;-)
Just my 0,01EUR.
(*) unless you code a free plugin for these repository that implement a pay-per-download system, that is.
My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack.
I prefer "I use a GNU variant including xwindows and linux". Thats long, so I contract it to "GNU variant" or "GNU distro".
The way I see it, Linus only wrote 2%* of a small chunk of the OS. What gives him the right to rename the GNU system?
* According to his wiki.
What, is "intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box" the phrase of the week?
Ohhh! Pay Dirt! A pair of half-eaten choco-pants!
Ha ha ha
It's "intuitive" in the sense that Xandros is marketing to current Windows users. If you know how to use the Windows interface, you won't stare at Xandros and wonder what you're supposed to do next.
Similar reasoning lies behind KDE, Gnome, etc.
Interface designers do not live and work in a vacuum. The Windows interface exists and establishes the skills and expectations of most computer users. It would be foolish to design a commercial interface that ignores that.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It's an "ok" replica but I don't see why should anybody buy Xandros when you can take an easy distro like fedora or mandrake and get wine to work for your M$ programs. Reading a page or two of instructions won't kill you.
No matter how "easy to use" somebody will make a linux desktop look like, users will sooner or later have to search for something on the net to make "A" thing work or simply to get info. Not because it LOOKS like windows that it means the users will be headache-free. Have a few friends who use KDE but still go nuts on some things that just won't function right but they know how to use google or forums so they get the answers. Will the average joe have time to go on forums, post or search thru pages and pages found on search engines?
Frankly, I'l stick with fluxbox cause I like simplicity, want performance and I know how to read documentation. IT's NOT HARD TO READ, just matter of not being lazy. Sadly, people are so thats why Xandros exist I guess.. right?
I'm so freakin tired of seeing that 10 year old start menu.. its fuckin ridiculous..
it looks like hell.. we need a new type of GUI..
i dont really understand why everyone must copy of MS's idea of the start bar.. if we really want linus to prevail, then there needs to be an appealing GUI.. something pretty.. something easy.. and something thats not a start fucking menu.. GET IT OFF ME!!!
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Am I the only one who doesn't want Joes' all over the world to migrate to Linux or *BSD?
I will never try to stop someone who wishes to migrate to a FOSS desktop, but neither will I today encourage people to switch unless they themselves want to.
In my world, Windows is for people who is either not interested in the world of computing, and for gamers. Linux is (once again in my world) be for people who are actually interested in computing, and wants to learn more.
At that price ( deluxe version ), people that aren't tech saavy, that want "windows like" ability are going to buy Windows.
I don't see how this distro helps the Linux cause.
my 2 cents.
Got better idea, buy Windows XP. You get all the compatability that you need, all the joystick support you want and the ability to run VC++. Why you so called Linux geeks insist on fighting MS I will never know. I use to be like you guys, screw MS, I'm switching to Linux. Yeah, then after doing an install for 5 hours, finding out that my video card doesn't work in X, trying to get a damn printer installed, tweaking the stupid thing just so that it didn't run slow and finally waiting for like 5 minutes for any X application to open, I switched back and never looked back.
The day all morons get together and create one distro that actually does all the things that Windows does, I take a look. However from what I have seen of this community, it will never happen. Linus is smart guy, don't get me wrong, but he will never be a Bill Gates and the Linux community will never conquer MS.
Nope
I'll admit to being guilty of confusing intuitive with familiar. But let's be honest here, no interfaces are created or used in isolation. They are always based on some previous knowledge, understanding or bias and exploit a framework of shared understanding between users. That "Network Neighborhood" icon is only intuitive if you know what a "Network Neighborhood" is and can guess that the little drawing is about.
I ran into this problem while designing a webmail interface. I had to battle the impluse to go with my personal preferences for a clean, unobtrusve interface with small icons and hovering tools tips. I found out that icons that made perfect sense to me were uselsess to my users. My preference for having additional information appear only when an item was focused on (ie. hovered over) instead of splattered all over the screen up front wasn't shared by my users. Moreover, I found, when I asked for feedback and input, that "experienced" users alway asked for things to be laid out like the software it was replacing (Eudora, Outlook, etc.) while the "new" users, once given a brief tour accepted the interface much more readily. I'm guilty of that myself. I use the Gimp whenever I can, but because I cut my teeth on Photoshop and have hundreds of hours experience with it, I find myself giving the Gimp negative reviews - mostly because it's unfamiliar (read counter-intuitive) to me.
So, after sitting for a while and trying to literally think out of the box and come up with a truly new interface for an OS, I realized that almost everything I imagined was impossible (or at least impractical) with current technology, or heavily biased toward familiar paradigms and conventions. When it came down to it, most of the thing's I'd change are little annoyances instead of overall design. I think if anything, incorporating some fuzzy logic into the interface so that it morphs to my usage patterns. I mean subtlely, I hate it when windows chops off a menu and removes objects I haven't used yet. It's a good idea, but how about leaving them where I was used to seeing them but making the most used items progressively darker, sharper, bigger, whatever. Don't remove them from sight or even rearange them.
For me personally I rely on relative location of objects rather than what they look like for immediate recognition. It drives my wife (and my boss) crazy, but what migh look like a complete mess in my office to others is "organized" to me. Whatever you do, don't move anything. When I'm reading a book, I can literally stop in the middle of the page and be able to pick the book back up months later and know exactly what word I left off on, because it hasn't moved. So for me, spacial orientation is critical. For my wife, it has to be labled and "organized" according to the Dewey-decimal system or she's lost (I don't know how we've made it for 18 years). So, I guess what I'm saying is that comming up with a revolutionarily intuitive user interface may be impossible. That leaves us with an evolutionarily familiar interface. I mean, my God, vi is NOT intuitive, by any streatch of the imagination. However, it IS powerfull and familiar to me, meaning that I'm more likely to turn to vi for many tasks and get things done more quickly, than I am to fire up a graphical editor. My mom on the other hand has no compatible frame of reference and would be totally lost in vi.
So, for those of you who ar
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
This is a quote fron the movie Fletch. Its not flamebait.
Linux guy:
Windows sux! big time, OSS rocks, Linux is the single best operating system, even my grandma could use it!
Windows guy:
Linux looks too complicated...
Linux guy:
Bullshit, take Xandros for example or the KDE environement, they just look and act the same as Windows, intuitive huh! Windows just can't do that! Linux rox!
and could be a little more upfront and honest about it's product.
After reading this article I don't feel it gives a balanced view of Xandros at all. I'll tell you my experience.
It installed fine off the CD, even detected winmodems and installed them correctly. They have to be congratulated on getting so much of this right. In general it is a great desktop Linux, but beware of the pitfalls, some other issues come to bite you only after being showered with positive press releases and simple installer satisfaction.
First problem, don't approach apt-get the same as you would in any other Debian distro. There is nothing I found in the documentation to warn you of this, in fact you are encouraged that Xandros is compatible with installing any *.deb. Not so. I made the mistake of putting the local Sarge mirror in my sources.list and running apt-get upgrade (after I had run the initial update directly from Xandros Networks). If I wasn't supposed to do this there should have been an explicit warning. What happened was a conflict with the Xandros and Debian Sarge KDE files and my system failed to boot, fresh install, lesson learned, or so I had thought.
You can't run apt-cdrom either, it doesn't catalogue the CDs correctly, I did this on both Debian Sarge and Debian Woody r2.
During the last install, and install of seemingly unrelated package off the Debian Sarge CD, it blew away Xandros Networks, which is the UI you have to use to install anything off the CD.
In my case, it would not cache anything to /var/cache/apt/archives as it is supposed to. It would not be as painful if I could have made backups, but with none of the updates backedup to cache as it should be, the install and updates have to start over again, and this is a slow, costly and tedious process.
It usually takes me 3 days to get a reply from support, and this seems normal from what I see on the Xandros support forums. For licenses that allow you support for only 30/60/90 days, depending on license type, this is hopeless for a commercial product. And it wouldn't take much to hire some more support staff. would it?
Here's some quotes from support
and
and
They have to do a lot better, otherwise they might start winning the corporate desktop, but they are also going to get a lot of people pissed of with Linux.
Also, I really find it hard to believe the one about almost 150 users not realising it wasn't Windows when they logged in. Of all the people I have meet locked to a Windows Desktop, I don't think any of them are that dumb.
Now I'm going to HAVE to dig out my BOB CD and get it to run under Wine!
"Interface designers do not live and work in a vacuum. "
I'm not so sure. Some certainly live on other planets, and some planets have no atmosphere.