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Xandros Recruiting Beta Testers
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the folks at Xandros are getting ready for a new release of their Linux desktop. They're recruiting beta testers so those of you who like to try something new, you can sign up from here. No details about when or what to expect in the new release. Xandros always lets the other distros get the bugs out of the latest bleeding edge software before they do a new release so this should be another solid release with updated KDE, kernel, X, drivers, etc. Can't wait. Gotta get me on that beta list."
why would i want to give my phone/address/etc information, to do a beta test, for a linux distribution that isn't even free!
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
A friend of mine almost got a coop job working for Xandros. Would have been interesting to know from the inside what it is that they are doing over there.
As it stands, I havent used the distro, but I have heard that it would be very comparable to Ubuntu in terms of target audience. And both debian based too. With the VERY quickly growing Ubuntu community, and what seems to be bleeding edge software that is incorporated with it, does Xandros even stand a chance?
Sure, the article sais that they wait for other distros to make it bugfree.. but Ubuntu might get there soon, and it would seem to me, that no one uses such a distro for mission critial tasks, only as desktops. Most tasks/users of these two distros are likely already stable enough.
Anyone know what Xandros could offer that Ubuntu cant?
Okay, we, the readers of /. probably do not, but does this type of Windows-alike desktop environment really add anything to Linux? In my opinion, it does not. Windows users will find that Linux is a worse Windows than Linux, and experienced Linux users can install their own DE that is customized to their needs, either by tweaking KDE/Gnome, or installing a more minimal environment like Fluxbox, XFCE, FVWM, and adding apps as needed. This distro seems to target Linux noobs whose only previous OS experience is Windows, yet in a way that encourages them not to learn about Linux! I had that same experience with Redhat when I installed it, and I don't think it benefitted me in the least.
I admit, the Xandros File Manager looks pretty slick. But, a file manager does not a distro make. The summary notes that Xandros lets other distros "get the bugs out" first, making for a quality, bug-free release. If I wanted that, I'd just run Debian. (Xandros is based on Debian Sarge.)
I might download their file manager to check it out, but I'm not going to download the whole distro. It's just not worth it to me.
disclaimer: I run an ~x86 gentoo system here at home and love it.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
I thought that book was required reading here. Eric Raymond discussed that linux has been successful because it was released early and often. This compared to comercial software built in the cathedral style which takes months to get to a buggy release. This beta signup sounds like a cathedral style.
I am a KDE convert. Converted from GNOME to KDE and must say that I find KDE absolutely usable. I have the feeling to work under a true Desktop Environment and I detect new stuff with every minute I am using it. I am impressed about the consistency, speed, interoperability. I today found out that you can drag&drop files from konqueror (be it local, webdav, ftp, http or whatever) to your kconsole and voila it downloads them exactly in the dir where you have kconsole. These are the things that make life easier.
Also Krita is growing fast and hopefully will become a full GIMP replacement.
As an avid Debian user I wanted to move my parents from XP hell to a linux distro. But not having used (daily) any other distro in a long time I went looking for a polished debian based distro. After a quick trial of Knoppix I tried Xandros.
;-)
Basically I was amazed at how simply the install went. Four clicks, amazing. Way better than any other distro or OS for that matter. They love it. No problems.
So while Xandros may not get a thumbs up from hardcore linux users it's definately the most polished and the easiest (IMHO) distro to switch a windows user to.
btw, hint for ppl trying to install Firefox on Xandros, 'xhost +'
Actually no...
.net on it for a test, had the .net framework going and everything.
It also includes Crossover Office which is similar to but more powerful then WINE. I was even able to install visual studio
Even (just for fun) installed IE 6.0 so I could do "windows updates" for IE and visual studio... it was quite impressive and seamless.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I feel that I should express my personal experiences with various "easy to use" distros. My mother, who is quite unskilled with computers (what a surprise), kept on complaining how her computer wouldn't work properly. It was always down to spyware, or other background programs eating up resources, etc. I decided that enough was enough, that I didn't want to spend several hours per week cleaning the same crud off her drive.
I tried installing Xandros on her system. It installed fine, configured everything, and in general worked great out of the box. BUT, it was rather painfully slow, on a duron 1.6ghz + 256MB ddr box. There was not too much I could do in terms of optimization, without breaking the packaging system, and after several months of using this, I *did* manage to break it beyond reasonable repair. IIRC, it was something to do with trying the actual debian kde packages, and finding that reversing the situation was more trouble than it was worth.
I took the opportunity to try whatever else I heard was looking good, and installed yoper. It ended up working fine, quite a bit faster (probably due to the 2.6 kernel), but still had strange issues which seemed to appear out of nowhere: using the accelerated nvidia driver caused random lockups, and before long, trying to apt-get dist-upgrade would freeze up with no error messages, and would continue to do so in different places in subsequent runs.
I wiped it, thought "enough is enough," and installed slackware. It installed perfectly. I honestly don't think that the installation is significantly more difficult than the "easy" distros, unless you choose to make it so (eg. selecting to install all packages rather than individual selecting). I installed the 2.6 kernel from testing/, ran swaret to update all the packages, downloaded the nvidia driver, and it just *works*. No random lockups, VERY FAST performance, easy administration, and my mother has now moved on to complaining how the connection to hotmail is too slow.
After ranting for so long, I think the point I'm trying to make is that maybe these new distros are making things too complicated in their quest to make it more easy. To me, that's ultimately the wrong way to do things. You'll end up with "only one way to do it", unless you want to risk breaking whatever system the distro designers decided to prop the system up with.
With the slackware style, I seem to get more simple, *more transparent* packaging and set-up, while at the same time getting updates within the packaging system reasonably quickly (unlike with Xandros, which was often hopelessly out of date). Shouldn't it just be that simpler==better?
I used Xandros 2.0 for over a few months, and I loved it. Everything worked, I beat windows users at there own game, new hardware? plug-in and play, say why are you looking for drivers?, starting applications?, nice menu, Internet->Browser, Office->Writer, why are you looking at Start->Programs->MS Office->Word? :)
Really while running Xandros, I beat the snot out of any windows instalation, it is that good, I loved that part, and hated it most of all, because I felt that I lost my Linux Control, so I'm back to Debian and Gentoo.
But where not importand here, most of the Slashdot crowd has no problem using a distro like Debian and reading some manuals, where already using Linux.
Now enter my Girlfriend, who hates, I state here, hates PC's, if they don't work, if they slip, she gets mad, real mad at the PC in 5 seconds flat. She kept screaming at here MS Windows, and I kept saying, hey, Xandros is on another partion give it a try then. And after getting mad she did, now she still get's mad at Xandros once in a while, but that's mostly websites that don't work because there IE only, and she's more pissed that she as a customer isn't getting respected for using an OS that does work.
Since she can complain about absolutly everything, I signed her up for the beta test, because I believe she can saddle up the Xandros people with enough things the "average" user cares about that they have enough for Xandros 4.0!
She found plenty of things she wanted "fixed", now ofcourse I fixed it, using "IT Ninja Tech Support" ( SSH ), but I think she sees the stuff we, the geeks miss.
I don't care what system someone else uses when I don't have to fix it, but if the average user starts using Linux, we win also, because hardware will get Linux support, we can demand open source drivers ( hey, you want native support for 15% of the market and growing?, then you better get of you horse and give is stable debuggable code ).
Not to mention that websites start taking care of there HTML code, maybe even force IE to be standards compliant, force MS Office into supporting KOffice and OpenOffice.org documents
We might not like it, but we need these average users to be seens as Full