Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition Reviewed

JimLynch writes "The new Xandros is out and we've got a review up on ExtremeTech. With the exception of some burps with our wireless card, we had a great time with this distro. Highly recommended if you're in the market for a replacement for Windows."

Comments

Don't forget...

[SCO$699FeeTroll]

...to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree that this is a troll!

Distributions like this and Red Hat piss in the face of the developers at least in spirit. By taking the toil of others and putting a brand name and slogan on it, suddenly something that was created by others and given away for free now costs almost as much, if not more (Red Hat) than a copy of Windows. Note that the distro is Xandros Desktop OS, not Xandros Linux. Even mention of Linux is minimized.

Companies like this are the basis of Microsoft's TCO claims. And touting themselves as a Windows replacement without the Windows compatability is misleading to any would be casual buyers. More techinical people know better and will just install Slackware or Debian instead.

I am not a fan of Microsoft, but I am even less of a fan of commercial Linux distributions like this. They are would be Microsofts who don't want to spend the R&D budget and cash in on the Linux name.

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

See, it's these /. traditions that make this the Site of Justice.
Meanwhile, is there a decent reference for configuring Windows firewall/security crap?
Seriously, getting any late-model Windows to work, first rolling back all of the blatantly homosexual interface 'improvements' to Classic, then trying to grasp WITF amidst the byzantine maze of counter-intuitive 'dialog' boxes the actual setting information is contained, is becoming as painful as your initial Linux installation, without the documentation.
Redmond, if you want to continue to advertise in favor of Linux, don't change anything. Don't offer and detailed, technical walkthroughs of what is going on. Continue to hide the configuration information from the user. Don't explain how to log things, so that it is possible to review what didn't go right, and take action. Please continue to bork my hard drive partition table every time I have to do a re-install. I love that turkish prison feeling when I use your products.
U r teh b3st!

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

To whoever marked me as a troll here. Go fuck yourself.

I said nothing trollish, only a criticism of the selfish corporate mentality around certain linux distributions.

If you consider that trollish, then your nothing more than an act of onanism gone awry. At least your coward ass could have tried to correct any misconceptions or have said something counterpoint, but you are probably not that clever. Instead you choose to mark me a troll and push my point under the rug.

You sir, are a shit faced cock master.

Re:Don't forget...

[agraupe]

If I had mod points, I would mod parent up. He makes a good point. At least Novell/SuSE gives back. All RedHat does is issue bug-testing releases that are billed as stable. It is completely rude to not even *mention* linux in your name, if you are a linux distro. Try a good distro, like SuSE, Debian, or Gentoo.

Re:Don't forget...

[northcat]

After reading the parent post and responses to it, I'm shocked to realise that there are atleast some people on slashdot who are not full of shit. My world is collapsing on me. I think I'm going to commit suicide.

I made a similar post a while back. And I wasn't even condemning commercial distros - I was just asking whether slashdotters feel bad about commercial distro makers taking developers work, making money from it in a cheap, dirty way (I used very mild, non-insulting terms). I got modded down as a troll. And I got about 23 million responses explaining why I was wrong/a troll/Darl McBride.

Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is not ready for the desktop. Linux supporters are doing themselves a huge disservice promoting it as a Windows replacement.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[bluewee]

Not with that attitude... I am installing this now, and it seems to be quite the replacement, at least for the install, and the screen shots seem quite promising. Then again, I have gotten quite use to the emerge abilities, of gentoo.

Hey Gentoo-Dev How about emerge xandros for all the setting and niceness of xandros, in the nice package setup of gentoo.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Codename_V]

Cmon now jack. Not only can Xandros do everything Windows can, including run Windows applications like IE, office, quicken, what have you, it's debian based and runs every single Linux application I've ever thrown at it just fine. Add to it a sweet little "unsupported" apt repository that Xandros maintains and I'm set.

I mean, what do you run on your families desktop machines? Windows XP? Have fun with the viruses and spyware my friend. I've had Xandros running on my wife's, my mom's, my brothers, and my uncle's computer for months upon months now and let me tell you, aside from the various updates Xandros provides, it's set up the exact same way I left it the first time I touched the thing. Try that with a Windows box bud. But hey, do what you want man, it's your time.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[kv9]

Operating System: Win2K Professional 5.0 Service Pack 4 (Build #2195)
Installed: 2K was installed 68wks 4days 14hrs 57mins 14secs
Uptime: 3w 3d 1h 44m 48s

im no windows fanboy. i got a lil ssf compaq right next to the w2k box, running slack happilly 24/7. its just a matter of the right tool for the right job. i find the win32/*nix combo quite satisfactory.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, how l33t of you, oddly enough my XP box and my gf's havent had any problems either.

Perhaps if you given XP the same time and effort as Xandros it would run as smoothly plus be able to play all the latest games and have decent driver support (ie acceleration) for D3D games, huh?

PEBCAK is usually what fucks up an OS, not the OS itself.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

OK:

I am not using Linux, and will not be using it anytime soon, although I would love that.

Reason:

1. SPSS. There is not a really good statistical app. on Linux. CrossOver won't support it, WIne either.

2. Endnote 7 integration with Oo.org/or LInux for that matter. - I need this as i am working on my doctoral thesis. Endless reference crap. :)

If any of these app makers would choose to port their apps, i would be in front of a LInux desktop right now. /and i am a linux n00blar. - :)

GG NO RE K THX :)

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another post with an opinon or point marked as a troll? He said nothing of trollish. If you disagree with what he said, state why. There is nothing inflammatory about the presentation of this criticism. Someone at Slashdot needs to take away some member's abilites to push people posts under the rug.

I happen to agree that linux isn't ready for the home desktop. It makes a good effort, but it simply lacks the idiot-box user friendlyness needed to make it perfectly suitable for ma and pa. The home users are mostly dolts on matter of technology and just want to have email, flash cartoons, and porn. On occasion they may need to do some word processing. Despite all of these things being available, no distribution has the process simplified enough to not overwhelm the would be common user.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[incal]

My family desktop machines happily run hacked versions of win2k sp4, with removed IE, litestep as the shell of choice, firefox/thunderbird and open office. I also have one slackware box working as 24h/7 router/proxy server/edonkey client.

We don't have any other uses for linux/unix machines - I run graphic/multimedia workshop, and need industry-strength applications like Photoshop/Illustrator/Premiere combo, my father is engineer and uses quite extensively AutoCAD, and my sister need just office suite/games/movies platform. Is linux ready for this? Don't think so.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[agraupe]

A lot of people I have seen seem to use TeX for the whole thesis thing... If that's the only thing you need, you could conceivably dual-boot.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[agraupe]

We all know macs are best for graphics. I'm a linux user, but I like the Unix base that OS X has. Combine that with good hardware, and excellent applications for graphics if you need industry-strength, and you've got a good system. I think it's more important to get people *away* from windows before we herd people *toward* linux. Once UNIX-based OSes become a large part of the market, more people will have to consider porting there software, and then things will only get worse for microsoft.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[northcat]

Why was parent modded down as troll? Oh yes, I forgot, this is slashdot. Only unreasonable Linux support and outright rejection of Windows as a suitable OS are acceptable.

OK, so Microsoft is 'evil' and all. And I won't fight with you if you say that Linux is an overall better OS than Windows. But saying Linux is better than Windows in every way is just being unreasonably ignorant. The Linux desktop has a long way to go before it can even be compared to the Windows desktop.

Re:Linux is not ready for the desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

My family desktop machines happily run hacked versions of win2k sp4, with removed IE, litestep as the shell of choice, firefox/thunderbird and open office.

As soon has you said "litestep" you "stepped" on a landmine. It's an unstable piece of shit.

We don't have any other uses for linux/unix machines - I run graphic/multimedia workshop, and need industry-strength applications like Photoshop/Illustrator/Premiere combo, my father is engineer and uses quite extensively AutoCAD, and my sister need just office suite/games/movies platform. Is linux ready for this? Don't think so.

Translation: you don't know. Try it out on Crossover office, and after removing your foot from your mouth you can fill us in.

Previous versions

[euxneks]

Previous versions of Xandros (2.0 specifically) are extremely stable and solid for me. The forums were always helpful to a complete n00b, and I'm proud to say I've been Windows-free since I've installed Xandros 2.0.

Re:Previous versions

[Anonymous Coward]

...and stay tuned for tomorrows AAA edition on how to stay "guilt free". This concludes todays discussion.

Re:Previous versions

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to chime in and agree. The amount of work and detail they put into the distro is amazing. Very smooth, very easy, very pleasant to use. Prolly not for the average Slashdot-type, but an awesome distro for the "average user", myself included.

Re:Previous versions

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree... I've used Linux since 1999 and Corel 1.0 was the first distro I tried... Back in those days (funny how 1999 is 'those days) you still had to choose an xserver, manage your horizontal and vertical moniter settings, snd sndconfig your soundcard... I gave up on Corel, because although it was nice for a few hours after install, as soon as you tried to install anything it broke the distro due to its proprietary nature.

I was a Mandrake user after that first experience, and eventually migrated to Red Hat, since it was the "Standard'... Boy was that a mistake. They started dropping things like mp3 support and whatnot, and I had to configure everything. I was spending more time configging my PC then using it, and Linux became a drag to use. Mind you, I knew how to do these things, but I shouldn't have had to...

I chose Xandros 1.0 for my work Laptop a few years ago during the hight of this frustration, and decided to keep the 'Real' Linux on my desktop... I started using my laptop more than my desktop, which eventually led me to decide giving Xandros a try on my desktop, once 2.0 business came out...

I was impressed... The Xandros folks have come quite a ways since 1.0 and they have come a millenial jump from where Corel was when they dreamed of a Linux for the common man.

I feel no shame in using such a distro, and find Xandros is a perfect fit for me... If I want to install a program, I do a search for it in Xandros Networks and install it with one click... Its that easy.

If one enables unsupported sources in Xandros networks, you can pretty much utilize anything from the Debian repository, but look first to make sure it doesn't uninstall anything... You CAN break it.

I reccomend Xandros to anyone who wants to give linux a try, and for users that are seasoned users, but are sick of fighting the computer and just want to use it... They also offer repeat customers a discount on the next version when it comes out (I got Xandros 3 for 39.90, since I had bought Xandros 2 before).

For those of you still clinging onto 2.0 / 2.5 Xandros 3 seems to have a much more solid and stable feel to it, so you can either hold out and see if they have an open circulation version in six months, or for 50 bucks you can have it 30 minutes from now... I chose the latter and so far it seems to have been a wise choice.

New Xandros is good

[Anonymous Coward]

..but it can't compete with windows.. I mean, good try, keep up the effort and all.. but no go.

Re:New Xandros is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the GUI for example, its an exact rip-off of Windows only more amateur looking.

Re:New Xandros is good

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall Windows having sloppy focus, customize my panel to have it look however I want, use of really cool customizable themes...

Whats the point of Xandros

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Ubuntu is out?

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[calibanDNS]

RTFA. The article mentions that the laptop they tested on previously had Ubuntu. The author is switiching back to Ubuntu because he couldn't get his wireless card to work properly under Xandros, but says that he'll switch back to Xandros as soon as it does. He cites the VPN client included with Xandros as the feature that seperates it from other distros (specifically Ubuntu).

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[Anonymous Coward]

if you prefer KDE and a more bussiness oriented linux system

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[Herr_Nightingale]

Well I for one am hoping that it's more multimedia-friendly than Ubuntu. And the new kernel probably will allow me to use my MP3 player as a universal mass storage device.
A lot of people want these features, and XandrOS might provide 'em.. plus there's the CrossOver Office, which might allow decent book-keeping software to run. Hopefully.

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Wow. A VPN client that works and is easy to configure for Linux would be nice. Right now my developers and I are using pptp-config.php (I think that's the long drawn out name) and it's...not the best tool for the job. Wonder if this VPN client is Open Source as well?

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[JimLynch]

Well for starters, Ubuntu isn't quite as polished and it's Gnome only. So Xandros is a bit ahead of it as far as slickness goes. That said, I think Ubuntu is a great distribution that's only going to get better.

Really, you can't go wrong with either of them. I like them both.

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[JimLynch]

It's very similar to the wizard in Windows. Long overdue and should be a part of every linux distribution. VPN connections (without extra effort on the part of the user or the IT department) are basic networking functionality and should be a part of everybody's desktop.

Re:Whats the point of Xandros

[Jerry]

You've obviously have never taken the opportunity to compare the install of Xandros with that of Ubuntu. Ubuntu's install is a step backward, Xandros' is a step forward.

I don't run either of them. My preference is with Sarge, but I put LibraNet 2.81 on my wife's box because it recognized her nVidia card and set up 3D automatically during the install. Works great, too. Give's her 1 GHz box with 500MB of RAM 800-1200 fp/s, IIRC. Plays Tux and Flight Gear nicely. AND, its copy of mplayer plays my protected DVDs nicely, without having to add those two special files.

Prices .

[qualico]

1. Xandros Desktop OS Version 2.5 - Business Edition $ 118.00
2. Xandros Desktop OS version 2.5 Deluxe $ 87.00
3. Xandros Open Circulation Editon CD $ 4.99
4. Xandros Desktop version 2 - Standard Edition $ 36.00
5. Xandros Desktop OS Version 3 Deluxe - NNTP CD $ FREE

Re:Prices .

[qualico]

lol!
How is this overrated?

Re:Prices .

[Anonymous Coward]

6. ???
7. Profit!

Re:Prices .

[Anonymous Coward]

5. XandrOS Desktop OS Version 3 Deluxe - NNTP CD $ FREE

How about a torrent? It's actually not on usenet (yet) anyways.

Re:Prices .

[Herr_Nightingale]

NNTP == usenet
NNTP means "no need to pay"

Re:Prices .

[metricmusic]

6. The look on microsofts face when Xandros takes over the market - Priceless

Re:Prices .

[boylinux]

So Kevin. Would you appreciate doing consulting work and then the person refusing to pay for it because it should be free? Thought not. Why don't you stay away from priating small business products who would like to keep making a good product enhacing Linux's reputation.

Re:Prices .

[Anonymous Coward]

nice dream

Re:Prices .

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm currently downloading it to test. Version 3.0 NNTP version is the only way I'm going to be able to find out if my necessary business software will work on XandrOS, and if it does, I'll be happy to buy it. In fact, I'll be ecstatic. I've got a bunch of legit (PAID FOR) Windows 2000 lying around, and I'd pay just as much to replace 'em as I would to 'upgrade' to WinXP. And I've avoided WinXP by testing the NNTP version of that.
Try before buy. It's standard practice, even if illegal and/or morally wrong. XandrOS only stands to benefit from this particular download.
And I won't speak for the hordes of others d/l'ing at this time.

Re:Prices .

[qualico]

I can totally appreciate a person refusing to pay, not because they think it should be free, but because they find out that the service was not worth the price.

Why don't you stay away from making assumptions?
Did I say I was pirating? (Notice my correct spelling of the word). Thought so.

Also, I hardly think Xandros is doing anything for Linux's reputation.

I personally do NOT want Microsoft products running on Linux.
Linux's reputation is doing fine without MS.

Re:Prices .

[boylinux]

What is your message then for freely downloading a product that others have paid for? And your assuming that your opinion is the only one that matters? Many others appreciate the fact they can run Windows applications under Linux. Making Linux easy to transition to from Windows is exactly what the linux community needs. Not everyone likes whips and chains of having to compile things themselves or spend two or three days configuring their system to work. Advocating something and not doing amounts to pretty much the same thing. Just because you drove the car but did not rob the bank doesn't mean your not guilty.

Re:Prices .

[qualico]

How is it that I'm assuming my opinion is the only one that matters?

I'm simply offering another viewpoint of Linux, one which is certainly welcome to debate.
I totally respect that others may want MS apps on Linux. Albeit, it's usually the same people that shouldn't be allowed to turn on a computer.
For me personally, I like Linux as a guru option; it keeps the stupid people away. ( you know, the ones who buy into Nigeria money transfers and Rolex watches )

All I was doing was providing information.
Don't shoot the messenger! :->

Re:Prices .

[imnlfn]

These prices are why just yesterday, I replaced Xandros 2.0 Standard on my workstation at home with Ubuntu 4.10.

I think I bought Xandros 1.0 Standard for something like $40 through some sort of special offer. When Xandros 2.0 Standard came out, I think I paid an upgrade price of $40 to download it. Recently, I received an email stating that I could buy Xandros 3.0 Standard for an upgrade price of $45, if I emailed Xandros support for a coupon code.

I guess $40 is my threshold. That and the fact that Xandros was requiring users to subscribe to a "Premium Membership" in order to download certain packages (Gimp 2.0, for example). I don't mind supporting companies that make products I like, but I suppose it was beginning to feel like Xandros was changing their terms (in their favor) with every upgrade cycle.

It turns out, for my purposes, Ubuntu is wonderful. Initially, I balked at its lack of KDE because my experiences with Gnome a couple of years back had not been positive. Then I realized that at least a couple of the applications I use on a regular basis (pan, Evolution) are better suited to Gnome than KDE. I never got Evolution's support for Palm devices working correctly under Xandros, since it seemed that I was going to have to install most of Gnome to get it to work properly. Now I find the native Palm support is even more than I hoped it would be! Also, it seems that my system is more stable and is running faster.

Installing Ubuntu actually went much more smoothly than did the install for Xandros 2.0. With Xandros, I had to force the installer to use an alternate scheme (APM instead of ACPI) and then discovered some bug that prevented me from installing OpenOffice from the Xandros CD. On the other hand, with Ubuntu, the only special thing I had to do was specify a host name so that my DHCP server would provide an address, and that option was plainly available. The rest of the installation was smooth as silk and I was especially impressed with the option to install security updates during the initial install process. As far as post-installation is concerned, I've had to do more futzing with Ubuntu than I did (initially, at least) with Xandros, but the "Unofficial" Ubuntu support page is fantastic and spelled out everything I needed to know, explicitly. (For example, now I don't have that annoying NVIDIA splash popping up every time I restart!)

YMMV, certainly. For my out-of-date hardware, specific needs, and level of experience (more extensive than the average user, admittedly), Ubuntu was the better (and more inexpensive) solution.

Re:Prices .

[qualico]

Wow...

Thanks for the info, if I was allowed to mod my own threads I'd definitely give that Informative.

I was not aware of the Ubuntu distro.
Dam...keep learning something new everyday on Slashdot.

I love the spiritual link from http://www.ubuntulinux.org

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Now that's good for Linux!

Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

I find it telling that a Linux distro compares installation and configuration against the ease of Windows. Don't get me wrong (I run Suse 9), but I think this is an example of how far Linux has to go.

What most *nix folks don't seem to appreciate is that the vast majority of computer users are just that: users. They don't care what's happening inside the machine or anything else; they just want to DO stuff. Making apps easy to (un)install, without having to worry about dependencies and all that, and making the system easy to configure, is probably THE thing that Windows does that keeps Linux from being a contender.

Looks to me like Xandros is meeting that need. I'll be checking it out and if its as easy as the article says (yes, I did actually read it), I'll be trying to get folks I know started with it.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[calibanDNS]

I totally agree with you, but I've known a lot of people switching from Windows to anything else (Linux, *BSD, OS X) in the last year because they are tired of fighting all of the security problems that they run into on Windows. This isn't to say that alternate OSes don't have just as many (if not more) security flaws, but they are less agressively exploited. I think the immunity to Windows exploits will drive a lot of people to try Xandros and similar Windows replacements, and probably get quite a few converts in the process. The folks working on Xandros and other desktop Linux solutions are doing an increasingly good job of supplying a product that average users can use on a day to day basis without too many headaches. In some areas, I'd say that desktop Linux is far ahead of Windows. Most notably is the wide variety of file formats that you can open out of the box with Xandros (OOo, MS Office, etc), though I do agree with the article that they should package the Gimp with Xandros.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Neil Blender]

I find it telling that a Linux distro compares installation and configuration against the ease of Windows...but I think this is an example of how far Linux has to go.

And how far it has come. Perhaps you didn't use Linux when its compatibilty sucked and installation was not point and click.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

That's part of the point that I was trying to make: if the Linux distros were to apply themselves to making the systems easier to use/administer, Linux would be making a lot more progress against Windows. That would provide people with a system that was easy to use for Joe/Jane Average User, but still pretty darn secure.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

Actually, I tried to use Linux back when I still had a 386 system, and it purely sucked big rocks. BSD wasn't much better, so I ended up sticking with Windows until a couple of years ago. The thing that convinced me to try *nix again was when XP demanded to re-register after an upgrade - followed by my Windows apps wanting to do the same thing. I decided that Bill Gates could kiss my ass, and switched to Linux - except for the couple of apps (CAD programs) that Linux can't handle that still live on a Win2K machine that doesn't do anything else.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[ssj_195]

Indeed. When things go right (which, in all honesty, is almost all the time) I find installation of software under Linux to be actually superior to Windows; just bring up the Install Software GUI, browse/ search the categorised list of 1000's of pieces of software for the application(s) you want to install, click Install and go and make a cup of tea while everything is downloaded and installed. Or, if you want to grab one app very quickly, just urpmi/ apt-get/ emerge from the command-line.

It sure beats "google for app name, find download page, download, double-click setup, choose install dir, click through installation" etc, especially when you want to install several apps at once (say, on a clean install). It's even scriptable!

Having said that, when things go wrong and the dependencies are broken, or you want a more up-to-date version than is provided in the repositories, then yes, Windows thrashes the pants of Linux for ease of installation.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[donscarletti]

What many people who make similar comments to this don't realise that many computer users are hackers and use computers for their hobby and/or their job. If linux ever fails to accomidate them, not only will it loose its core user base, but its volenteer development will grind to a halt and it will pretty much cease to exist.

Linux's universal adoption would be cool, however for it to do so, it must first and formost win geeks over though performance, flexibility and general coolness if it is ever going to stand a chance of becoming intuitive enough for the new user.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I find installation of software under Linux to be actually superior to Windows; just bring up the Install Software GUI, browse/ search the categorised list of 1000's of pieces of software for the application(s) you want to install, click Install and go and make a cup of tea while everything is downloaded and installed.

Although there are other areas where Linux excels, this is one problem I have found. Every distribution requires one to go to a different area of the GUI (or even worse, command-line) just to install or uninstall software. And having to go to the command-line just to install software is not what the "average user" really wants to deal with anyways. When you are dealing with the advanced user, then I'm sure they want the option for command-line installs (especially when they aren't even using a GUI). But when dealing with average users, GUI is the way to go.

It sure beats "google for app name, find download page, download, double-click setup, choose install dir, click through installation" etc, especially when you want to install several apps at once (say, on a clean install). It's even scriptable!

Again, the average user does not or is not going to want to have to worry about scripting something together just to install multiple apps at once. At this point it would be alot easier to just use the click-through-installation method (unless of course you are installing on alot of computers, which there are tools available to install on multiple machines).

Re:Comparison with Windows

[killjoe]

It's easier to install software with Xandros then it is with windows.

First of all it's all in one place. You don't have to search the web to find it, you just fire up the gui and search.

Secondly there is no download, save to disk, double click, unzip, answer click OK 5 times, input a 30 digit CD key or anything like that. Just click and go.

The best part is the updating is done the same way.

Way better then windows.

I tried all the distros and xandros was the best for me.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[ErichTheWebGuy]

SuSE has come a HELL of a long way. Configuration is super-easy, and application (un)installation is almost idiot-proof (you can't tell me that Windows is anywhere close to that level). Grated, we have tools like apt-get and such, but nothing is as easy for the joe-six-pack user as installing software in YaST...

[click] Open YaST
[type] root password
[click] Install and Remove Software
[type] into search box either what the prog is, what it does, what it contains, what it requires, etc.
[click] to select the program(s) to (un)install
[click] to confirm
[click x2] (maybe) to resolve dependencies

If the user wants, say, a chess game, no longer does he or she have to go searching through the Internet to find one (not that there aren't good chess sites out there). All one has to do is search for chess or even games and there it is!

Re:Comparison with Windows

[ErichTheWebGuy]

nothing is as easy for the joe-six-pack user as installing software in YaST

Sorry, I have to retract that statement. I have forgotten how easy it is to install software using Internet Explorer and visiting the wrong website... So, my bad.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[NevermindPhreak]

"You don't have to search the web to find it, you just fire up the gui and search."

a lot of people are really confused by this concept. they see a file on a webpage a friend showed them, and they say "hey, i want that." they want to get it right then from right there, not from some other program/location. and they usually just "run from location" instead of saving to disk. i dont know if IE offers that option anymore, i havent used it in a year, but its what i always did for installs when i used it.

essentially, non-techie people need that option by default, or else theyll get confused. one central installer program is great for updating and uninstalling, and for doing batch installs (like on a clean system, for which i use a custom-burned CD for right now). but windows users mainly want that "download file, run, program installed" process.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to get users to run Linux is to make the availability of restoration CDs (with a user friendly Linux distribution on it & booting straight into a GUI mode (the first time the user uses it) and asking the user to set a password for use (the first time the user uses it) - just like those Windows restoration CDs.

This will allow any Windows user to just boot the PC with the restoration CD and the restoration CD will automatically re-create the (Linux distribution) image that is stored on the CD onto their PC without any user intervention. By the way, the restoration CD should contain just one set of desktop tools and applications (and of course, it must boot into GUI mode). Do not forget to rename all the desktop tools and applications to the same/similiar naming conventions used by Windows. It's best if the short-cut keys, taskbars etc ... also looks similiar to those on Windows.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[danamania]

What many people who make similar comments to this don't realise that many computer users are hackers and use computers for their hobby and/or their job. If linux ever fails to accomidate them, not only will it loose its core user base, but its volenteer development will grind to a halt and it will pretty much cease to exist.

I think Linux will stay able to accomodate the geeks among us. That's where the leading edge of development is, really.

It helps to think of Linux not in terms of "Linux" in the same way that MS has "Windows" and Apple has "Mac OS X". There isn't really one Linux. If the people who want an easy to use, simple distro that any Average Joe off the street could operate because Average Joes need an operating system too, that's not going to detract from the latest Debian, Gentoo or Slachware releases.

Apple get criticism sometimes for 'dumbing down' Unix to make OS X for example; perhaps that's a valid observation as effort put into the GUI of OSX could have been put into geekier parts of the OS if Apple redirected their labor pool. It's not so with "Linux" as what the Xandros team do is pretty much independent of Gentoo, say.

So yeah - all that my rant has said basically is... don't fear for the geeky versions of linux. geeks will still keep making those, and others will make a linux for n00bs, that's the beauty of free/open source here :).

Re:Comparison with Windows

[JimLynch]

The Xandros folks told me in email that they chopped GIMP off the main CD because of size constraints. It's still there but just on the applications CD. So no biggie but I just always think of GIMP as being a natural part of my Linux desktop.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[hyperlinx]

I have some disagreement with what you're saying. As an SuSE user as well, I do think linux software installation has to make further strides. If you install off the CD or online via FTP, then most, if not all, the software works without major problems on a pretty modern machine. But as new versions of software comes out, and you try to install of an downloaded RPM, you may still have "dependency" issues and may have to uninstall some other program which uses a different version of a some lib. That's the most annoying thing I've found that still needs work in most all linux distro's, not just SuSE. A new user expecting some type of plug and play (or insert and play) and then advances to the point of trying to install some desired program via RPM and starts getting hit with dep errors will have a steep learning curve not very well addressed in most texts or newsgroups. There are solutions (apt, etc) but we aren't quite there yet.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[ssj_195]

Although there are other areas where Linux excels, this is one problem I have found. Every distribution requires one to go to a different area of the GUI (or even worse, command-line) just to install or uninstall software.

I'm not sure I agree with this (although I obviously agree that the average user wouldn't want to user the command-line to install apps! ;)) - I think most people would prefer to have a list of available categorised software for them to browse through, and pick what they want. Say someone thinks "I'd like to play a puzzle game!". They load up the Install Software GUI (you can put a link to this on the desktop, so they don't have to hunt for it), click "Games", click "Puzzle", and then choose any games they want (Mandrake's repositories offer a brief description of all apps, so they will have a reasonably good idea of whether the game sounds interesting to them). They they check the checkboxes next to the ones they want, click the Install button, and do whatever they want until the "Software is installed!" prompt appears. Theire chosen games are then ready to play. To make an admittedley strained anaolgy, it's the difference between going to a restaurant and rooting through their cupboards to decide what to eat, or being given a swanky Menu to choose from :)

Again, the average user does not or is not going to want to have to worry about scripting something together just to install multiple apps at once. At this point it would be alot easier to just use the click-through-installation method (unless of course you are installing on alot of computers, which there are tools available to install on multiple machines).

Perhaps I wasn't clear; it's not necessary to script installation for installing multiple apps (although it is definitely a very nice feature for the power-user, or a guy who builds & installs Linux PCs for other people); you just check off all of the software you want in the GUI, go away from the computer or do something else, and when you come back everything is ready to go. To me, this is immeasurably more convenient than having to download each app individually from disparate sites and baby-sitting it through the install process (choosing paths, ignoring EULAs, etc ;)) and I don't really see how anyone could disagree with this.

One of my favourite "Doh!" moments occurred when I was playing Unreal Tournament 2004 and suddenly everything ground to a halt; the frame rate dropped to sub-20fps, and the harddrive was going crazy. After a while it stopped, and I just wrote it off as Linux being lame. When I'd finished playing, I closed UT04 and was surprised to find an entire fucking office suite installed on my computer; I'd forgotten that I'd done an urpmi openoffice [could have done it from the GUI, but it's sometimes slightly more convenient from the command-line, if you're not afraid of it] before playing, and the slowdown occurred when the download had finished and the actual installation had begun. I didn't have to read one crappy License Agreement, or choose one option; everything installed by itself without needing to be baby-sat. I was really very impressed :)

Re:Comparison with Windows

[silverdr]

It probably is not what Windows DOES, but rather the way Windows does it, is the way "just users" are used to and (as most people) they hopelessly resist even trying to learn any, even equally or more (in)efficient ways of thinking and doing stuff.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

...application (un)installation is almost idiot-proof (you can't tell me that Windows is anywhere close to that level).

As a Windows software developer, I can vouch for this. Installing software on my Linux (and my BSD) box is so simple in the vast majority of cases (I do tend to prefer the FreeBSD "ports" collection personally).

On my Windows XP box (where I develop Windows software), I've run into situations where one of my own programs, upon launch, triggers the "Windows Installer". My software doesn't use Windows Installer (I prefer InnoSetup), yet launching my own app will sometimes cause Windows to ask for the CD of some other (unrelated) program, like Nero 6. Windows Installer (IMHO) needs some serious work, and has caused many headaches for users of my own software (note that I've managed to hack around these issues, until the next Windows version).

On my Linux boxes (including the servers that host my Windows software), I have no problems even remotely similar. Granted, there's the occasional dependancy issue on my RedHat box, but the system actually tells me what file(s) are having issues and why (version too low, etc). For every hour I spend mucking with the server or my personal *nix machines, there are probably about 8 hours spent figuring out/hacking around a Windows issue... though as a Windows developer I'm probably a bit biased (and, I admit, I only develop Windows softare because there's much more market/money in it)...

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Sourcemage Linux is very easy to administer. All dependances are atomaticaly taken care of. Many companies are being tricked into thinking that because tons of unused and vunerable apps are installed atoumatically that those distros are worth paying for when they are theroreticaly as bad as windoz.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Taladar]

What makes you so sure EVERY Linux Distro out there targets Joe/Jane average User? Most Source-based Distros do not, none of the Server-Distros do.

Another flaw in your logic is the comparison between the Install procedures. Normal Users don't install Windows but Linux has to make Installation easier than Windows since Linux does not come preinstalled from most vendors.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Taladar]

That is a problem of all RPM-based Distros and the reason it is named "rpm-hell"

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

That's what I was saying: that Linux distros DON'T target J.A. User. And installing can also include non-OS software, such as word processors, etc.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

Consider that computers were around for a long time; but PCs (vice Macs) didn't really "take off" until Windows' GUI became fairly common.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Dorsai65]

What many people who make similar comments to this don't realise that many computer users are hackers and use computers for their hobby and/or their job.

So the secretary that types up letters for her boss is equivalent to a hacker?

Would you also say that all of those folks that made AOL all that money fall into the category of "hackers"? Or would you say they're more likely just a bunch of ordinary folks that couldn't care less what was going on inside the computer, and just wanted to use it, like they use their most everything else in their lives - to just get something done with it, without having to become a guru?

The Windows-like ease-of-use of Xandros makes it a good choice for the non-geek crowd to get away from Windows, thus giving them a solid, stable, secure OS while keeping things simple enough for them to be able to actually get things done with the computer - word processing, web surfing, and all the rest.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[FKnight]

It's easier to install software with Xandros then it is with windows.
First of all it's all in one place. You don't have to search the web to find it, you just fire up the gui and search.
Secondly there is no download, save to disk, double click, unzip, answer click OK 5 times, input a 30 digit CD key or anything like that. Just click and go.
The best part is the updating is done the same way.
Way better then windows.


If it were that easy in Windows, people would complain that it's a security flaw that allows software to install too easily .... oh wait...

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Lproven]

You have *GOT* to be kidding.

Here's a test for you, then.

Try this.

[1] On the latest SuSE 9.2, try to play, say, a DivX clip. Ponder the inscrutable message about missing codecs.
[2] Go to www.videolan.org
[3] Download the latest VLC in SuSE package format. Stick it on your desktop or somewhere.
[4] Click it in KDE. Note how KDE doesn't know what the hell an RPM is any more.
[5] Open YAST. Give your root password. Notice how ticking the "keep password" box *doesn't* in fact remember it for next time, same as in SuSE 9.1.
[6] Go into add/remove software. Discover how there is no way to open a nominated package from disk.
[7] Go into "change installation sources". /Add/ (not replace or edit, now, careful - and be very careful, you're in as root). Add the desktop as a source.
[8] Go back into add/remove programs. Note how there's no "install new apps" option or anything. No, you have to search for the app you've just added.
[9] Search for VLC. Find VLC. Tell it to install VLC.
[10] Marvel at the vast list of dependencies that YaST throws up which it has /no idea/ how to resolve. Consider how even ten years ago Debian had fixed this problem with APT.

You seriously think this is a good software installation system?

It's a PoS! It's rubbish. Windows users don't have this kind of crap; neither do Mac users. Debian users /on Linux/ don't, so long as it's in a repository somewhere. You're stuffed if it isn't, of course.

YaST is crap at this kind of thing. If it's not on the disks SuSE provided, you are *NO* better off than with raw RPM - and that's a broken bit of trash as well.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[Listen Up]

Which is exactly why I switched to Mac OS X. I haven't looked back since.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[silverdr]

I wouldn't agree to that. I remember very well the flood of MS-DOS (PC-DOS) based PC crap long before Windows started to be there. The "computing we know" started around early '80ies of the past century while computers were around much longer of course.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[mal0rd]

Wow, that really makes you think. How come not all windows software is made as easy to install? By legitimite venders I mean. That would make linux and mac look user-unfriendly in comparision.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[killjoe]

"a lot of people are really confused by this concept. "

I don't think so. With windows they didn't have a centralized repository of software that runs on their machine. With Xandros it's right on the desktop. Click on it and there is all the software that will run on your machine. Once you get used to that why would you spend hours looking for software on the internet?

"but windows users mainly want that "download file, run, program installed" process."

That's only because that's all they know. Xandros offers a much better way and I don't see anybody wanting to go back to the crappy windows way of doing it especially since 90% of the stuff you download is likely to be infected.

Re:Comparison with Windows

[NevermindPhreak]

i really have to disagree to most of that, unfortunately. i usually spend about 2 minutes total looking for a new piece of software on the internet, and that includes being able to see screenshots and features and what not on the sites homepage. and the last time i downloaded something with a virus in it from a website was in the mid-90 when i was an AOL fiend, new to the internet.

this is all just my opinion though. a central location for all your downloads and installs probably works great for a ton of people. its just not what id prefer, is all, and theres a whole lot of people in my category.

what the?

[joe six pack walmart]

Wow! I can't believe there are so little comments. You mean some people have better things to do on a friday night.

Re:what the?

[St. Arbirix]

It's exam week.
They're either studying or going home.
Until exam week studying goes on hold.
Then Slashdot goes on hold.
It's a cycle, yin-yang-like.

Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the install is easy, users will be put off by the ugly looking fonts in Linux. TrueType fonts just don't render well with the current engines. I don't know why we can't get hinting without turning on antialiasing which just blurs things. As more users get LCDs this will be more apparent.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[talo]

I might be wrong, but I think that OS is not run by fonts. "Linux fonts are ugly, so I can't use it", yes well... You would like to have OS's that have a lot of eyecandy and pretty fonts, even if they don't work and still you would use one. I don't think that people use windows because of the pretty fonts and nice little icons it contains. I my self prefer, simple and readable fonts that I have found on my linux desktop. First when I read your comment, I thought that you are on guy from my work. Because he says that "linux has ugly fonts, it's shitty OS." But then on the other hand, he can't speak/write english very well. I hope that there are not too many of your kind :)

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[DrJimbo]

I run Linux on a laptop with a 1600x1200 15" LCD screen and a 1600x1200 21" external LCD monitor. I use the Bitstream Vera Fonts for almost everything. They are available here. They are as sharp as sharp can be. I've been using them for over a year and I am still thrilled by how crisp they make everything look. I do have anti-aliasing turned on to remove the jaggies but there is not even a hint of bluring.

Next problem?

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux does need to work on fonts. I spend all day looking at text, I don't want it to be ugly. The fonts included with Ubuntu are a step in the right direction, but there's still work to be done.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[pair-a-noyd]

What total crap.

I run Suse 9.1 with an Nvidia card and a 22" Iiyama CRT.
I use the default fonts and font settings and the text is magnificent! I could not possibly ask for better fonts, as they don't exist.

When I was running 9.0, YOU insisted that I install the M$ fonts, it nagged me on every update until I finally did. CRAP... They screwed up the entire system. I was pissed.

Now, having learned that lesson, I will NEVER install any M$ fonts on any nix box, ever again.

My default fonts are so clear, sharp and strong that anyone sitting 10 feet away can read my CRT clearly and I run at 1400 x 1050 @ 76hz.

Sounds to me like you've been looking at Redhat 3.0 on a 60hz display. Now THAT would leave anyone with a bad taste in their mouth..

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Ontheotherhand]

I agree. Fortunately they are. By default, out of the box, on every linux distribution I have tried this year. on my very nice LCD screens. Maybe you aren't running in the native resolution of the screen......

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[talo]

Sounds to me like you've been looking at Redhat 3.0 on a 60hz display. Now THAT would leave anyone with a bad taste in their mouth..

Well it was also the time of Win95, so I'm not sure if the rh fontpack would have left so bad taste :)

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

RH 3.0.3 was released on March 15 1996, but there was no anti-aliasing at at time. In fact, Linux didn't have anti-aliasing until 2003 or so. Looking at my old screenshots, this was quite ugly.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Alioth]

I've not used Xandros, but I regularly use Fedora Core (and I've used RH since 8.0 - prior to that, I typically ran Debian or Slack).

IMHO, the fonts in RH/Fedora are better than in Windows. The whole Bluecurve theme works very well for both KDE and Gnome. "Ugly fonts" were a complaint that went away at least 2 years ago. I use Linux on both CRTs (Sony 21in) and LCDs (laptops).

The best font support on any OS though is without a question OS X.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[bloggins02]

Wait a minute... I have to DO something to get clear fonts? I don't have to do that with Windows.

That's the problem.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[jasoneyre]

I'm a bit of a font fetishist myself and all I can say is that Mandrake 10.0's font smoothing is far superior to Windows'. (ATi R9800SE, CRT)

It's probably the premier reason for me wanting a Linux machine.

See, the Internet DOES aggregate the most screwed-up people in the world :)

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

Installing Gnome is doing something? Uh, as opposed to XP that jumped off the cd into my computer?

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[NaDrew]

Wait a minute... I have to DO something to get clear fonts? I don't have to do that with Windows.

Sure you do. Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects -> [x] Use ClearType to smooth edges of screen fonts. Why this is not enabled by default is beyond me, but it's not.

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't have a 1600x1200 LCD screen. I have a 1024x768 LCD screen. And the fonts don't look as good. Bitstream Vera or not. The kerning just isn't right. At size 9 "s" and "c" are stuck together with no visible space between them, while between "a" and "p" you can see a two pixel gap. \You have a high-end display, you use one particular font "designed for Linux", and you indirectly claim that "fonts look good on Linux"? And you get a +5 for being informative?

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[Anonymous Coward]

Vera only supports latin script, so it's a no go for large chunk of the population

Re:Desktop is not usable until fonts are sharp

[mcn]

Totally agree. I always go back to Windows, and my linux partition (mandrake 10.1, btw) is collecting dust. I just can't get the fonts to work right, especially on the browser (mozilla 1.8 alpha, self-installed; I dumped the one that came with it). It is too fat or too skinny, and it's not anti-aliased like the rest of the desktop. I can't stand browsing the web with such unpleasant fonts. And the first thing I start is my browser when I boot my PC.

I wonder ...

[xdesk]

I can not stop wondering why none of the (many) recent Linux reviews are mentioning essential notebook features - like power management or the suspend/hibernate/resume ability ...

Re:I wonder ...

[calibanDNS]

Are these features really essential? I find a lot of them annoying. We got a new Vaio last year, and this was my first new laptop since my K6-2 300, and included lots of new fangled "features". The first time that I closed the laptop to carry it to a differnt room it "hibernated", which I wasn't really expecting. Maybe I had been away from modern laptops for too long, but that wasn't really a feature I was looking for. If I want to turn a computer off, I'll shut it down myself. I don't want the machine guessing when I want it to turn itself off.

Power management I will give you as a useful feature, but those others just annoyed me until I disabled them.

Re:I wonder ...

[BenjyD]

You can control the power control actions taken on different events through the files in /etc/acpi, or with the config tools.
The time from power on to desktop from hibernation is about a third of the full power on time on my laptop - it's a very useful feature.

Re:I wonder ...

[calibanDNS]

The machine that I encountered this on is a Windows XP box. When I was debating turning off all of these features, I timed its startup from hibernate and from a full shutdown, and there was almost no noticeable difference. I was surprised at that, but it convinced me that there was no advantage to the hibernate feature, at least on that laptop. I also now have a Dell Latitude (from work) Win2K box, which comes out of hibernate much more quickly than it does a clean boot, but I still leave the hibernate feature disabled. I really miss the days when every machine just had a single button for power on/off and you didn't have to hold it down for 5 seconds to cycle the power.

Re:I wonder ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about the standby. 1 second to standby, 1 second to come out of standby.

Re:I wonder ...

[vistamonster]

I'm not trying to be a Mac troll or anything, but this is one difference between Mac and PC that raises the bar for mac-users who would consider switching to linux. When I open my laptop from hibernate (we call it "sleep"), we're ready to run in less than 5 seconds. By the time the screen is open, it's already checking my email and logging me into IM. This has been the case since OS 10.0 came out in March 01.

Re:I wonder ...

[calibanDNS]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm already fairly convinced that my next machine with be a Mac. That Vaio was almost an iBook, but at the time my wife was worried some of the exam software that her law school used not supporting the Mac.

Re:I wonder ...

[mark_lybarger]

PLEASE GET RID OF THE FREAKING IPOD SIGNATURES AROUND HERE. FREAKING ANNOYING AS HELL. SLASHDOT IS THE LAST PLACE I WOULD EXPECT TO FIND PYRMID SCHEMES.

on to the message. there's plenty of advantages to hiberante functionality in both linux and xp. one, it restores current memory. if i'm writing a paper, coding some app, whatever, i can hibernate and return to the exact same desktop, nothing lost. i don't even need to worry about non-committed files. next, batter life is critical. these machines get less than two hours on a charge. i'm sure some folks claim 4 or so hours, but that's not hours of usage. i'd like to see a laptop play 4 hours of dvd's on a single charge. as far as restore from hibernate, i can only mostly speak to my linux restore. the bios/grub startup seems to take the longest time. linux takes maybe 15 seconds to restore from hibernate.

Re:I wonder ...

[jayloden]

"these machines get less than two hours on a charge. i'm sure some folks claim 4 or so hours, but that's not hours of usage. i'd like to see a laptop play 4 hours of dvd's on a single charge"

I've run a few different flavors of Linux on various laptops, and though my current laptop has very short battery life (Ni-Mh battery until I can get a new Li-on), I had a Dell Inspiron 8000 that got 3.5-4 hours of battery life out of a charge.

I don't put up with hibernate, standby, or any of that crap, I'm talking 3.5-4 hours of coding, surfing the net, and watching movies/tv shows on it. If you're wondering, this was under Mandrake 9.2 on a PIII 700mhz.

-Jay

Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros for NEWBs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would be a better starting point for newbies? Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros OS 3 ??? Thank you.

Re:Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros for NEWBs?

[eclectro]

Which would be a better starting point for newbies? Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros OS 3 ???

Xandros without a doubt. This distro "just works" and doesn't have the issues that Mandrake has.

For one, take the floppy drive. Mandrake for one reason or another checks the floppy drive every thirty seconds if you have a floppy in it. This is very annoying. Suse won't even let you use the floppy without giving you a "protocol error." With Xandros the floppy "just works."

Also, Xandros can automount a pendrive, so you don't have to worry about damaging the pen drive by removing it while it is mounted (according to the pen-drives instruction manual anyway)

I am a noob to linux, as this post may show, but I am not a dummy. I consider myself technically literate. If I have problems, I know for sure my mother will.

The fact that Xandros "just works" in many areas and that there is a market for their product really does show that there is much work to be done.

Coders need to stop working on the MP3 player and start addressing usability up front and center.

But this has been said a thousand times, and the only one who is listening is Xandros.

Re:Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros for NEWBs?

[Slack3r78]

But this has been said a thousand times, and the only one who is listening is Xandros.

Sorry, but this is absolutely untrue. Xandros is one of the nicer bundlings out there, but their particular brand of easy doesn't mean they're the only ones working toward it.

Really, your complaint sounds aimed more at the component software than the actual distros, and great progress has been made in that realm in the past year. The Freedesktop.org initiative has done more for Linux usability in roughly a year's time than I've seen in the 6 or so years I've been using it. The new HAL stuff is still a little quirky, but for the most part runs beautifully. The whole aim is to have a consistent set of tools and behaviors across all distros, no matter how the config files are stored or the filesystem mounted.

The work *is* being done and it *is* making great progress. I know from personal experience that both Dropline Gnome on Slackware and Ubuntu Linux ship with HAL support enabled (though it's more polished in Ubuntu right now as Todd recently abandoned Dropline and the project is in a transition to community development). I believe I've also read that FC3 has HAL turned on by default.

This makes a bigger difference in usability than any amount of packaging I'd expect the Xandros people to be (reasonably) capable of, and should provide a relatively similar experience across various distros.

Re:Mandrake 10.1 or Xandros for NEWBs?

[bach37]

Mandrake 'automounts' usb drives in the same fashion. Mandrake does not check a floppy drive every 30 seconds, nor have I ever had any error messages with a floppy drive after 3 years of using Mandrake.

I would say that Xandros is easier to pop in the disk and install, but Mandrake's urpmi is nicer than most other distros- much more software available to easily install. Mandrake has Gnome, also. I don't know if Xandors is KDE-only?

Opera's free, but Mozilla costs money?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the comparison matrix - http://www.xandros.com/products/desktop_matrix.htm l - you'll notice that the free version of Xandros comes with Opera (ad-supported) but not Mozilla. The pay versions, however, come with Mozilla, but not Opera. Seems like someone got the two mixed up.

Nothing to see here, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Another day, another distro. Same crap, move along please.

Slashdot dies when Michael Sims is "editing".

[Anonymous Coward]

Happens every week. I guess decent people (and Slashdotters...) just hate being anywhere he is.

SOCK PUPPET

[Anonymous Coward]

This first post reeks of sock-puppetness.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not support pay distros. Fedora is free, why not Xandros? Did they work harder to create Xandros or did they just hop on top of Debian and go from there? Screw them, Gentoo is free, Fedora is free, and oh hell yes Debian is free. Xandros can suck it.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the whole commercial part is mostly the commercial apps included with Xandros, like Crossover Office (Which you can get yourself for any distribution anyways...)

Re:Meh

[JimLynch]

It's great that you like free distros but that doesn't mean that somebody else might not find Xandros or other distros worth paying for. To each his own, there's certainly no need to belittle companies that charge for their distributions. Nobody is being forced to buy them.

Re:Meh

[Selanit]

I do not support pay distros. Fedora is free, why not Xandros?

Somebody didn't look at the downloads page, where you will find a free BitTorrent link for their "Open Circulation" edition. If you want to d/l using standard HTTP, there's a fee of a whopping ten bucks.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I would like to point out that the original post of this thread is marked as a troll. What is going on with he slashdot community that you have become such Nazis about people opinions?

Second, is the Xandros "Open Circulation" the same thing as their other dirstributions or is it like Mandrake's castrated and demonizing "download edition" that had flags everywhere stating you didn't pay it?

Mandrake is the only distribution I ever paid for and their "customer support" left a sour taste in my mouth and I had to go back to Windows (proprietary video and audio drivers). When I tried to "upgrade" later to see if it had improved, I was reminded at every step that I didn't pay for the the upgrade medium.

If I wanted to be shamed because I didn't pay, I would stick to Windows and just use shareware past the 30 day evaluation period.

Re:Meh

[northcat]

The open circulation edition is not allowed to be used for commercial purposes. According to the site "It is strictly for non-commercial use".

Re:Meh

[realdpk]

" First, I would like to point out that the original post of this thread is marked as a troll. What is going on with he slashdot community that you have become such Nazis about people opinions?"

The community needs more metamoderators, with powers to revoke moderator privileges.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not support pay distros.

Agreed! Don't pay for Xandros. Don't pay for Redhat, Suse, or Linespire, either. And damned sure don't pay for Sun's desktop linux.

Hell, you're probably not evening paying for room and board, living in mommy and daddy's basement and all...

Some of us don't want to fuck around and want commercial support. Grow up.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are juvinille enough to think that because you shelled out money for the commercial distro you will get better support than from the original developer who has an actual interest in fixing what is broke?

You twit. If it's broke, it's broke. It wont be fixed until the developers of the software fix it. Just because Xandros sold you a copy doesn't mean they will take it upon themselves to fix these things. They will just repackage a new version when it does get fixed. You would do just as well to pay the developers of the software packages you use for support directly. That would ensure continued improvements and the most expert support you cna ge on the matter. All Xandros does it take you money and put it in ther pockets.

No sir, you need to grow up and realize that noone has your interests at heart. And these commercial distros that don't give back to the community are sucking the life out of it like leeches.

If you are truely interested in support, you will hire a competent IT staff and let them tailor a installation to your needs.

Yes, it is essential ...

[xdesk]

For the vast majority of notebook users that is an essential feature ! (and somehow related to the long battery life)

The main reason...

[Twisted64]

...why I use windows is quite simple - I can play all the games I want to there. It's still a pain getting games with linux support to run under linux. Were it not for the games, I'd have no worries about changing over.

Re:The main reason...

[joe six pack walmart]

May I suggest puppy linux? It's small 50meg and it boots off of cd, completely loads into ram upon boot so that you dont need to have the disk in the cd drive once its started. It's great way to try out linux without installing on the old hard drive.

Re:The main reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever try to get games running on a Mac? Of course not. If you had, you would know that Macs play Unreal, GTA, Clancy*, etc right out of the box. (Mac OSX is a BSD port)

Its only a matter of configuration. And its not a real pain if you would ask the community for help. I was trying to get Unreal woking on redhat 8 and some people on the redhat mailing list helped me out for several days, even through configuring my nvidia driver and trying to get it loaded as a kernel module (or something, i dont even remember now i just know its worked since).

Re:The main reason...

[NevermindPhreak]

youll probably get a slew of comments saying things like "it only took like four days of configging to get this one game running," when in reality a ton of games dont even support linux at all. theres always wine, but thats a bitch to configure everything too.

so, if you want both linux and windows, your only real option is to dual boot. simple solution, espically if you have two hard drives, and you can just use windows when you need it, and use linux whenever else you want.

Re:The main reason...

[Alioth]

I thought the same thing, and took a deep breath, and thought:

"Right I'm going to blow away the Windows XP partition. I'm going to take a hard line - I don't buy a game unless it's supported either on Linux or Mac OS X (my laptop)."

The most recent game I bought was Doom 3. Runs great on Linux - took all of 5 minutes to set up following the instructions, and unlike the Windows version, you don't have to put the CD in every time you want to play it.

And I don't miss Windows one bit. (I use both Windows and *BSD at work, and I find myself gagging for Expose's F9 key on Windows - the desktop gets so cluttered so quickly...)

Re:The main reason...

[ssj_195]

The most recent game I bought was Doom 3. Runs great on Linux - took all of 5 minutes to set up following the instructions, and unlike the Windows version, you don't have to put the CD in every time you want to play it.

s/Doom 3/Unreal Tournament 2004/ and this describes my experience exactly - a very pleasant surprise :)

Re:The main reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, industry-standard apps for every non IT industry are for Mac OS / OSX or Windows. You have to know one or the other if you plan to work with computers in your job, unless and only unless your job is only about computers.

As long as the GPL continues to prevent people from leveraging community code for commercial purposes I am skeptical this will ever change. I know I'm in a minority here, but I agree with the Founding Fathers that creators need to be able to profit from their works in order for the useful arts and sciences to advance.

But one critical question remains

[Anonymous Coward]

who the *FUCK* cares?! Xandros blows cow-nuts any motherfucking way.

Re:But one critical question remains

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that cows don't have nuts, I think what you mean to say is, "Xandros blows bull-nuts any motherfucking way." Next time get it right!

Windows replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

I need a break from the linux tax. Yeah, you know the one -- the one that makes you pour hundreds and hundreds of wasted man-hours into using poorly written programs with little or no documentation. What can you expect from spaghetti code written by hobbyists and students? I'll happily give my money to the professionals any day, no matter what News for Nerds declares. Honestly, I know most of you agree with me!

Re:Windows replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree at all. The "professionals" you are happily giving hundreds to seem to have a nack for creating insecure/unstable programs and making you pay again for new versions of the same stuff. Personally, I'll happily use free, open, stable, and secure code written by hobbyists and students (who are better than alot of your "professionals")

Personally, I run Linux because...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

... I *DO NOT* want a Windows replacement, I want something better. The Linux community needs to quit trying to make another Windows and focus on its core strengths as an alternative! I actually started out back in the days of RedHat 6 and have never looked back. I currently run SuSE 9.1 and can still not see why anyone would choose to run Windows if they know what else is out there.

I have converted several of my friends and family (with the exception of some designers that wanna use Dreamweaver for whatever reason). Those that I have converted have all said things like "wow, I just accepted that the Internet sucks like that [when using ie]" and "wow, my computer really is fast"

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[reverius]

"some designers that wanna use Dreamweaver for whatever reason" ...

As a web designer and server admin, I really hope they're only "designing" and not "implementing". If they think they can handle ASP, Perl, PHP, or JSP, then they should be able to handle the learning curve of GNU/Linux. If they can't handle server-side web programming, it's quite possible they should stick to better design tools (Photoshop? Publishing apps?) and let decent coders implement the mockups.

Code that comes out of Dreamweaver might look pretty (when rendered), but a comprehensive and efficient solution Dreamweaver pages do not make. At least it isn't Frontpage.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are of course right, however I think people mean something different when they talk about a windows replacement.
Linux simply is not windows, will not be windows and should not be windows, however what distros like xandros try to provide is a linux environment that is accessible and easy to use for people familiar with windows (that's after all probably more than 90% of the people using linux).

I think this is the right way if you want to make it as easy as possible for the average joe to run linux and the great thing is, if you, like me, don't like these kind of distros with all their wizards and stuff you are free to use an other distribution that is more geek targeted.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

I really hope they're only "designing" and not implementing

Trust me, this is the case. In fact, most of our recent design work has been mambo templates, with some real coder/sysadmin types hacking the backend to do whatever is required of that specific site. And it works well, I work with a kick-ass designer who cannot code, and I am a coder who could not design a decent webpage to save his own life.

But the combination works out extremely well. We both realize our limitations, but as a team are extremely effective. And we are only getting more business, which is *the* key indicator!

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Linux simply is not windows, will not be windows and should not be windows
Agreed.

however what distros like xandros try to provide is a linux environment that is accessible and easy to use for people familiar with windows
Mostly agreed, but I still see huge parellels between YaST (or whatever config engine - including RPMDrake, HardDrake, and even the KDE control center... And need I mention RedHat's 'Install/Remove Applications') and the Windows control panel

if you, like me, don't like these kind of distros with all their wizards and stuff
Obviously you have never used Windows 2000/XP with all of its wizards ;-) In fact, remember when Windows 2000 was released? One of the major marketing points I heard was "more wizards, easier administration/configuration"

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[JimLynch]

Excellent point, that's one of the beauties of Linux. There are some distros that are quite easy to use and some that require more experience and/or provide the user with more control.

To each his/her own. That's one fo the things I love about Linux.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[reverius]

that sounds -perfect- to me.

last year i worked with another web designer who was better at the graphic design side of things, while i'm a code monkey... things worked out pretty well.

now i'm the only web designer, and i'm reworking my designs until they look good, and struggling with it... and i get photoshop mockups that don't look like web pages are supposed to look like, and i'm supposed to make them work with our templating system, and agh, it's horrid.

not really. it isn't all that bad.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

that sounds -perfect- to me.

Dude, trust me. You haven't lived until you (as a coder) have worked with a good designer who you get along with. When that hapens, things click, you both agree on code, graphics, usability, layout, accessibility, etc. etc. and real work gets done. The results can be quite impressive. I do not want to spam my sites on slashdot, but I guess if you want examples I can post them...

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[krammit]

The Linux community needs to quit trying to make another Windows and focus on its core strengths as an alternative!

I always hate when posts like this come up. There is a market for distros like Xandros. That is why they exist as a commercial entity. There are plenty of people who make OSS apps that are innovative and different approaches when compared to the "One Microsoft Way".

The thing is that there are a number of people (probably more than those looking for pure innovation) who want a Windows work-a-like without the virus and ad/spy/malware problems. You may not want a Windows replacement but Xandros isn't targetted for people like you. So go find your niche and let them work theirs. That's the beauty of F/OSS.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[Spoing]

1. I *DO NOT* want a Windows replacement, I want something better.

Look at Gnome on a desktop like Ubuntu. It's not better in all respects yet, though it is often much better. The folks on the Gnome project are showing how to do a clean desktop with just what you need...where it makes sense and where it is consistant. A simple thing is that they put the desktop application menu on the top -- not on the bottom. For corporate use, it would be the one I'd like to support and not KDE.

For the record, while I use Evolution right now I'm using KDE and have for the last few years and enjoy it. It is entirely likely that I'll switch to Gnome in the next 6 months.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[shish]

... I *DO NOT* want a Windows replacement

Neither do I, and neither do most people who know how good the alternatives are, but unfortunately:

If you've used Windows' "Start" button, you'll feel right at home with Xandros' "Launch" button. It's pretty much the same thing. We can't help but wonder why everybody who creates operating systems doesn't just call that button "Start." Can Microsoft have trademarked the word start? We somehow doubt it.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[deaddeng]

Especially when millions of windows users are being hosed by malware. Microsoft is facing its Waterloo with this issue; they aren't going out of business tomorrow, but they have no answer to the fundamental insecurity of their flagship produce.

If we can offer them Linux distibutions that look familiar and runs some key windows apps (via Codeweavers/Wine), they will come. Hell, they already are-- $200 at Walmart will buy you a desktop (sans monitor) with Xandros basic installed. Spend another $100 for more RAM (it comes with 128MB) and Codeweavers Crossoffice and most Windows users will never look back, and never worry about CoolWWWSearch again.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[kayen_telva]

The Linux community needs to quit trying to make another Windows and focus on its core strengths as an alternative!

translation: the linux "community" needs to do my bidding because their diversity is ruining my 1337 image

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[dourk]

focus on its core strengths

The very fact that Linux can run supercomputer clusters, embedded devices, or just be a Windows replacement is one of it's core strengths. Some people really do like the windows look-n-feel. Let them have a distro too, all right?

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[jayloden]

"with the exception of some designers that wanna use Dreamweaver for whatever reason"

Well, then get them crossover office from CodeWeavers. I paid the 40 bucks for it and I run Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Photoshop 7 and IE on Linux for the occasional time that I actually need one of the above. As far as I can tell, they run flawlessly, and faster than they ever did on Windows XP or 2000, at least for me. I've been really happy with cxoffice and it's one purchase I heartily recommend to people who are candidates for switching to Linux but need their Photoshop, Dreamweaver, or Excel.

It's helped me convert plenty of Windows users who are sick of viruses but feel lost without Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, or who complain that such and such site won't work right without IE. It also allows me to design websites and test them in IE 6.0 without needing a windows machine soiling my home.

There's more information at CodeWeavers

-Jay

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them have a distro too, all right?

No.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[discogravy]

I *DO NOT* want a Windows replacement, I want something better. The Linux community needs to quit trying to make another Windows and focus on its core strengths as an alternative! I actually started out back in the days of RedHat 6 and have never looked back. I currently run SuSE 9.1 and can still not see why anyone would choose to run Windows if they know what else is out there.

You're arguing a point that doesn't need to be made. There are already a variety of *nix-based OSes that are better than windows. Folks who are resistant to switching have two solid reasons, generally speaking, and they are: a) linux doesn't do what I want it to or b) I don't want to learn a new system. Period. Linux is better at a lot of stuff -- especially for power users, or folks who need more unix-like stuff in their system -- but still lacks some things that a lot of people consider completely critical "MUST HAVE" things. Full MS Exchange compatibility - including calendars, thanks...being able to read email is the main focus of exchange but is not the be-all end-all of it, especially in larger companies. Software that is not available on linux/mac OS X etc is another big one for folks in column A -- consumer apps like iTunes/Quicktime, production apps that are standards like Dreamweaver or Photoshop; all these things add up. And while there are work-arounds and ways to keep the functionality without using the same program, you're usually going to find it an uphill battle.

The other folks who just don't want to change aren't going to and you're just going annoy 'em if you insist. Linux is the right tool for a lot of things, and one of unix-like systems big strengths is that it's flexible enough to do just about anything with it, if you really want to. Getting someone to want that and work for it can be a big PITA. Use what works for the task at hand. Find a solution to a problem, don't force a solution on a problem that it doesn't apply to.

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[JimLynch]

Amen, well said. :-) One size definitely does NOT fit all when it comes to Linux and that's a good thing!

Re:Personally, I run Linux because...

[angrykeyboarder]

One has the option of putting the desktop applications menu on the top or the bottom of the screen in both KDE & GNOME. It's up to the distro as to how it's done.....

I have said menu on top in both. Speaking of which, why limit yourself to just KDE or GNOME? I alternate, depending on need or mood quite frequently.

Then of course there is XFCE, Fluxbox, Enlightenment.....

The great linux font myth

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting tired of this kind of bs.
I do have several linux distros installed on several computers and the fonts are pretty and sharp in all of them.
So please, spear us your whining, fonts might have been an issue some time ago, but they simply aren't anymore.

From my experience everyone who says otherwise is simply trolling.
Please spear us this crap.

199.98 ? Are they high ?

[budword]

I did read the F**king article, then went to their site. 200 bucks for something you can get 99% of free ? Who would do that ? Not me, and I've bought two versions of Mandrake and one of SUSE. They are not in their right minds. 2 cents less than 200 ? What are they thinking ? 199.99 might be too much ?

Re:199.98 ? Are they high ?

[siliconjunkie]

Where are you reading $199.98? From the final page of the article:

Deluxe Edition $89.95; Standard Edition $49.95; Open Circulation Edition is free.

Re:199.98 ? Are they high ?

[siliconjunkie]

Oh, I see where you're reading that it's $199.98 (here)...but that is with the hardware as well...

Xandros, the leading developer of easy-to-use Linux solutions, today announced that Wal-Mart.com is carrying a fully loaded Linux desktop computer with the pre-installed Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) for only $199.98. Built by Microtel and available at Wal-Mart's online store,* the new desktop PC offers a complete suite of pre-installed software for home, school, and small office desktop use. Blah, blah blah (blahs added)

Re:199.98 ? Are they high ?

[budword]

Front page of their web site, didn't see any price info in the article. :( upps...thanks...might try them now :)

Re:199.98 ? Are they high ?

[JimLynch]

I suspect that you might be a bit more advanced in terms of your OS experience than some Windows users who are interested in transitioning to Linux. Nothing wrong with that at all but remember there are some folks that want something easy to use and maintain. Xandros does a good job in that respect.

Re:199.98 ? Are they high ?

[l3v1]

Read the freaking article, ~200 bucks is for a complete machine loaded with Xandros Linux Wal-Mart.com is carrying a fully loaded Linux desktop computer with the pre-installed Xandros Desktop Operating System (OS) for only $199.98

Again, RTFA, man.

Valid question

[donscarletti]

The parent may be flamebait, but it is also a valid question. The only reason that I am aware that people ever were willing to pay for Xandros is because it is easy to use. Now Ubuntu is out and is not only a free download but is also a free CD while being just as easy to use as Xandros ever was, are people really going to seriously consider Xandros if they know about both?

Re:Valid question

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu never installed properly for me. Xandros did. 'nuff said. Plus, Ubuntu's installation process is _less_ than friendly.

Corel Linux -- the original Xandros

[green pizza]

The original release of Xandros was Corel Linux. They spruced up a Debian-based distro with a custom configuration of KDE with a few extra utilitites and a nice set of custom icons. They even ported a few of the Windows apps. Corel Draw suite and Corel Word Perfect were both available for Corel Linux. WP was a native port, while Draw used WINE libraries, but was still an impressive piece of work.

Though it was unrelated, anyone remember the Corel Netwider?

Re:Corel Linux -- the original Xandros

[Erore]

Actually, WordPerfect Offie 2000 used WINE as well. I was a beta tester.

Only WP 7 and 8 (and I think 8.1) ran as native Linux apps.

Re:Corel Linux -- the original Xandros

[Jerry]

True, and I bought both of them.

The Linux native version of WP 8 was sweet and full featured. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it captured the printer and wouldn't let go of it when you closed WP8. A real PITA.

Since we standardized on WP Office at work I decided to buy WP Corel Office 2000 for Linux.

BIG MISTAKE.

Slow. Crash prone.
When I ran strace against it to see what the problems were I discovered that it was running on top of WINE and it swallowed 25MB of memory and/or swap for each feature you opened, which was why it slowed down very quickly. Strace showed that the crashes were the result of unanswered calls to exe and dll stubs. I returned the product and got a refund.

With the advent of OpenOffice 1.x the race for a world class Open Source Office app to replace MS Office is over.

Re:Corel Linux -- the original Xandros

[zurab]

With the advent of OpenOffice 1.x the race for a world class Open Source Office app to replace MS Office is over.

Similar to my experience, except the main app I used to use from their suite was Paradox. Since Corel acquired Paradox (why?) from Borland, they didn't improve it at all, but they kept including it in the pro version of the suite. It's an extremely nice tool if you are doing any amount of complex DB applications, for development and test data manipulation, easily manageable complex cross DB source queries, writing , etc.. Nothing else I have used comes close.

I believe Borland still includes an extremely stripped down version of Paradox called Database Desktop with its development tools, but it's obviously not the same thing. I still run Paradox via WINE and don't like it.

You, sir, are both a thief and a murderer

[Anonymous Coward]

For you have killed a baboon and stolen his face

Re:You, sir, are both a thief and a murderer

[X0563511]

Who the hell is this? I have seen this posted AC for no reason in a bunch of recent stories.

Re:You, sir, are both a thief and a murderer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a stupid comment anyway - gamers will re-install directX, switch video cards, reinstall windows - just over and over again. Change from ps2 to usb and back.... you name it.
They defrag their harddrive all the time switch to DMA, then DMA Ultra, then DMA Ultra delux professional, but none of this /ever/ makes a difference in the fps or lockups - the answer is always around the corner. lol.
Gaming sucks.

I'm tired of this

[l3v1]

When I read trhough the comments, I saw the fortune down the page was: The prejudices people feel about each other disappear when then get to know each other (Cpt. Kirk)

Now this is also true for Linux distros. I just got fed up over the years with the ever going bashing and false arguments.

I mean like: install and looks like Windows - so what the heck, exactly a point why I never would want such a distro on my machines; or it's the best multimedia distro - again, what the heck, it's just what you make of it, my main debian box (this one going, updated and cared of for more then 1.5 years - hardware changed about 5 times since then, the linux remained the same - try that Widnows) is just as good in multimedia as any other you would find out there, because I'm not just chatting about it, but I actually install and customiaze everything to my needs. Or better yet: hey, it supports this and that [hardware, that is] - biggest BS that could be - aside from some company customizations, the kernel is the same, stop making my head spin.

And I could just go on. Thing is, at least IMO, while all this BS-ing is a good way to show all-time Windows (l)users that Linux can be Windows-like if one wishes so, I just couldn't care less how Windows-like a distro is. And I'm not alone.

And that means one has to come up with more than such argumentation to even consider me switching. That doesn't mean I don't try and use other distros than Debian - it's just means Debian stays, others come-and-go all the time.

Re:I'm tired of this

[The_Wilschon]

No one is trying to get YOU to switch to Xandros.

We are trying to get Windoze (l)users to switch to Linux. Thus, all the claims that it works as easily as Windoze, and better to boot.

Xandros vs. Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one is a better desktop distrobution?

Re:Xandros vs. Ubuntu?

[JimLynch]

Both are good, you can't go wrong with either. See my review of Ubuntu here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1651199 ,00.asp You might find some of that helpful to contrast with the Xandros review. Note that Ubuntu only uses Gnome and isn't quite as polished in some respects as Xandros.

VPN support

[Plug]

So, this version contains VPN support. PPTP? IPSEC? Cisco VPN concentrator? Can anyone give me any more details?

Is the VPN client open source?

Re:VPN support

[Alioth]

I'd imagine at least PPTP and ipsec, since pptp support has been around for at least 3 years and ipsec is built into the 2.6 kernel series.

Re:VPN support

[OldGreyTroll]

From: http://www.xandros.com/products/home/desktopdlx/ds k_dlx_whatsnew.html

PPTP VPN client
Whether you're using your work computer on the road or need to connect your home system to your company's network, accessing you're corporate virtual private network (VPN) is a requirement for many people. The new PPTP VPN client from Xandros makes accessing your corporate VPN easy.

Re:VPN support

[Plug]

PPTP support relies on compiling the unsupported MPPE into your kernel, and until recently, either using scripts or a GTK1 gui written in PHP.

It's possible, but not pretty. I'm interested to see if the Xandros GUI can be used on other distros.

Re:VPN support

[juhaz]

PPTP support relies on compiling the unsupported MPPE into your kernel

Well, only if the other end insists on using MPPE, nothing in PPTP support itself requires it.

and until recently, either using scripts or a GTK1 gui written in PHP.

Perhaps, but the config file "scripts" or php gui create are rather simple, making more modern gui that doesn't require phpgtk probably wouldn't be all that hard if there was sufficient demand for such. Apparently xandros believes there is.

Re:VPN support

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless your company uses Nortel Contivity. :(

STOP COPYING WINDOWS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, if you are going through all the trouble to write a desktop environment (shell) then stop emulating windows. This looks so much like windows in fact that Microsoft may do something about it. Stop it.

The key to getting linux accepted is not to replace the windows environment but to build something better. Windows people who switch to mac have no problems getting up and running and they have very little (visually) in common.

There are so many other desktop environments out there that work so much better than windows (BeOS, OSX, NeXT, Ti99A) stop it, stop it, STOP IT! When is the last time you heard someone say "the only reason I have not switched from linux is that I am used to my windows desktop".. Please.. STOP

Re:STOP COPYING WINDOWS!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You might not be aware of this, but writing in caps is considered yelling and extremely impolite. And like in real life yelling doesn't make your point any more valid.

2. It's simply not true that people who are only familiar with windows don't have a hard time switching to OSX, they do. If you don't believe me, take one windows user, sit him in front of OSX and watch him struggle to do his daily tasks in this unfamiliar environment.

3. What exactly is your problem? If you don't like the way Xandros works, don't use it but use an other distro and use an other DE/WM. Nobody is stopping you from using ion3 if you think that fits your needs.

4. Xandros is targetting users that want to have a drop in replacement for the OS they are used to and with more than 90% market share this is very likely windows. Now what exactly is your problem with Xandros making their product as accessible and easy to use and get used to as possible for the people they are targetting?

Plain ol' Debian for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Debian for years, and following its progress has been like watching the tide coming in. These Debian-based distros are easier for a lot of people for now, but the sticking points (most notably installation) are progressively being removed.

In a few years people will tell "noobs" "use Debian Andy/Jessie/Stinky Pete/Zurg (or whatever Toy Story name they are up to by then), it just works".

Statistical app

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried R?

Re:Statistical app

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, but thanx for the link. if this turns out to be ok, all i would need then is a good reference management software under linux.

omg/// then i would have to choose a distro! /which is better for total linux noobs with years of computer experience (soft and hard).?

First Impressions Count

[reallocate]

First impressions count, a lot. If the first thing someone sees after a Linux install is an amateurish looking desktop with an unappealing color scheme and ugly fonts, he has every right to conclude that the rest of the system was put together with equal lack of attention to detail and polish.

Re:Desktop is not usable until you edit them!!!

[6800]

You guys (folk, people) are a bunch of whimps! I solved this by editing all my fonts by hand until they were as sharp as physically possible with my display equipment... I honed them until.... One pixal per character achieved the maximum possible sharpness. signed A Bit Dotty

This is how it works......

[6800]

Simple, each pixal just blinks out the morse code:-)

Live Xandros

[The_Wilschon]

Something that might be very useful in the Linux Advocacy field, (assuming that Xandros really is that great), would be a live Xandros CD a la Knoppix. Because then, you can show off the spiffiness, ease of use, and general awesomeness of Xandros without your potential user being forced to commit to it by wiping the windows partition before they even see it. And no, screenshots do not suffice.

Licence violation?

[northcat]

Just looking at the screenshots tell us that Xandros contains modified version of GPLed or other open source apps. Doesn't that mean that they should release the source code of their modification? I can't seem to find a link to download source code. (I know they have free version but does it offer the source code?) In fact, not just Xandros, most of these commercial distros don't release their modified source code. And Lindows (Linspire) didn't even have a free version until yesterday (metaphorically yesterday. don't bite me.).

Re:Licence violation?

[OldGreyTroll]

Looking in the Xandros FAQs I found: http://www.xandros.com/support/source_code.html

Source Code
Much of the software that comprises Xandros Desktop is Free or Open Source software. Many of the licenses that govern the redistribution this software require Xandros to make the source code for these components available to anyone who receives a copy of the product. You can access the source code for the Free and Open Source software components in Xandros Desktop in our FTP archive.

Re:Licence violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still prefer RedHat because it 100% open source, and they even open source technology they acquire. The fact of the matter is Xandros is NOT a fully open source OS, while RedHat is, and that makes the difference for me!

Re:Licence violation?

[adamfranco]

The fact of the matter is Xandros is NOT a fully open source OS

You may have a valid point with XFM (Xandros File Manager) which was basically an in-house re-write of KDE's file manager. This may or may not be open source. That's really the only thing that they have "aquired" or built that is question.

The big proprietary part that you get with Xandros is Crossover Office. Note that they don't own this and haven't "aquired" it. They just license it to provide it in their distro. You could also license it directly from Codeweavers and run it on Red Hat, but Xandros (rightfully, based on their success) figures that they'll get more happy customers just including it than requiring that people buy, download, and install it separately. By putting it in by default they can advertise the "Ability To Run Windows Programs" that some people might want. If you don't, don't but the Deluxe Edition. If you remove Crossover Office, a-la the "Open Circulation Edition" you are left with an open source (or at least freely distributable in the case of XFM) distro.

Xandros is a great distro

[HangingChad]

Xandros is the only OS this box has seen. Some minor problems here and there but overall it's the least frustrating transition distro I've tried.

It's not free but comes bundled with CrossOver, which is not a free app. And it works. It's amazing to run IE and Photoshop on this box.

If you're an uber geek Xandros isn't for you. I use it because it's easy and when I get home from the MSFT environment at work I don't want to fight with technology. I just want something that works without being a security freak show and that's Xandros.

Re:Xandros is a great distro

[adamfranco]

If you're an uber geek Xandros isn't for you.

I'm an uber geek and I take offense at that!

Ok, well, maybe I'm not uber in terms of the crowd around here, but I do write open source software for a living, made a linux digital picture frame, design my own parabolic WiFi dishes and manage 4 Linux servers (2 Debian, 1 Red Hat, 1 Suse) and a FreeBSD server. I'm not coding graphics applications in assembly just for the fun of it, but none-the less, I could run any distro I wanted without hitch.

Still, I run Xandros on my desktops. Why? Because it "just works". Its not quite OS X in that department, but its the closest thing I've seen on x86 (Maybe Win2k or WinXP is good in this respect, but I haven't tried either as I got out around the time of WinME). As much as I love computers and writing software and such, I despise spending 20 hours trying to get a piece of hardware working or configured. I do it, but I'm not a happy camper. I'm not saying that Xandros is perfect by any means, but like Knoppix most everything is working when you first boot it up.

The 100s of hours saved configuring hardware over the past year or so are definately worth $100. Its really just Debian with some nice add-ons. I've yet to find anything that I can do with Debian that I can't do with Xandros. Plus, I get the benefit of running Photoshop while waiting for the GIMP to become useful for MY needs.

Re:Xandros is a great distro

[HangingChad]

I'm an uber geek and I take offense at that!

My apologies to Xandros-running uber geeks everywhere! lol.

You're right on about the time savings. Printers, scanners, share drives with the token Windows box...it's a breeze.

Just ordered the boxed edition of 3.0. Can't wait. Wish I could find a customer for their desktop management server. Be fun to play around with that.

I bet you could substitute Xandros on business desktops and most users would hardly notice the difference. Except that wasn't crashing from a virus every other day.

one more machine needed

[zogger]

I thought it was a good review, and it fits with the demographics of extreme tech, but it is not a review for "average windows users wanting to switch", for the simple reason your test machines are sort of pretty high endish and don't reflect what most humans have currently. On slashdot and extreme tech those specs are normal, back in meatspace reality I doubt they are, seriously doubt it. It needs to be tested on a box with an older processor and only 128 megs ram (or 64 for that matter) for instance. There are millions and millions of machines out there that are still in daily home and office use with the cheapo vendor industry standard lowest common denominator amount of ram installed (typical four ram slots, one stick installed deal to keep retail prices low) and that have never been upgraded.

Re:one more machine needed

[JimLynch]

Thanks, Zogger. Glad you liked it. :-)

Re:one more machine needed

[adamfranco]

It needs to be tested on a box with an older processor and only 128 megs ram (or 64 for that matter) for instance.

I currently have Xandros running on my digital picture frame, a Dell Inspiron 3000 with a 200MHz Mobile Pentium MMX processor and 64MB of Ram. Its pretty sluggish, not snappy by any means, but I think that is mostly a factor of using KDE. While its slow, it usable* and not that much slower than it was with the Win95 that was on it when I got it.

* I tried using it a bit with Xandros before converting it to picture-frame mode.

Re:one more machine needed

[zogger]

Thanks for the input! Besides slow, how did you find the OS in general terms? Good/fair/ teh suck, great? I am liking the concept of a simpler and more no brainer distro myself, there's just so many of them to try out, and I have to mail order them because of being on dialup, etc. And for the older machines of course.

Community Edition of 3.0

[nurb432]

Does anyone know if they will relase a "community edition"?

There was one for 2.x, however as of the other day a 3.0 had not been released.

Ya im being cheap.

Re:Community Edition of 3.0

[northcat]

Ya im being cheap.

No, you're not. They are obliged to release atleast a community edition after making money from software that has developed by the community.

Re:Community Edition of 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm... no. They arent obliged to anything other than to offer the code back that was given to them under a gpl licence...

Besides, you probably diddn't write any software they use, so they have no obligation to you personally anyways. If you did, write them a letter about how they owe you somthing... That would surely be in the spirit of gpl... not.

Xandros = Debian. Easily fixed.

[MsGeek]

# apt-get install mozilla
or
# apt-get install mozilla-firebird
or both if you have the space.

There, does that solve the problem or what?

Xandros is Debian under the hood, and you don't need to use the Xandros repository.

BTW folks, for those willing to work a little to get their desktop running, the Debian Sarge Installer is pretty damn good. It's not click-and-drool easy yet, but it's good. And it's free as in beer, speech and freedom.

Whether you go the Ubuntu, Mepis, Xandros, Linspire, Knoppix hdx-install or pure Debian route, it's all Debian and it's all good. And if you don't like the customizations a given distro uses, then all you have to do is:

#apt-get update
#apt-get dist-upgrade

and you can get to Pure Debian Sarge, Sid or even Woody from there.

Really, every distro should be like this. I'm talking to you, Mandrake. You hear me, Fedora? Achtung, SuSE! RPM is dead, babies. Long live apt/dselect and its gui children.

Re:Xandros = Debian. Easily fixed.

[GrimReality]

Really, every distro should be like this. I'm talking to you, Mandrake. You hear me, Fedora? Achtung, SuSE! RPM is dead, babies. Long live apt/dselect and its gui children.

I wish this were true, but unfortunately, reality is far, far away from it.

With Red Hat and SuSE (both RPM based) leading the way in terms of corporate acceptance (see Novel, IBM and other heavy weights in this arena), RPM, especially with the LSB enforcement will entrench itself as a defacto and in time, (it already had), many binary only packages and even open-source official binary releases would only be available in RPM.

Of course, we can always say we don't care, but, we would be the dead ones, since we would merely be renegades, rebels, elite, whatever. With RPM standardizations, the bad thing of fixed installation directories might pop-up. Worse, alien RPM apps will insist on installing in the 'sacred' apt-dpkg managed locations.

So, I think, it is a bit premature to gloat.

200 isnt bad if you consider...

[nurb432]

Don't forget you also get Crossover for that price, and support

While its true you can do most anything with 100% free tools if you fight with it long enough, there is value in re-packaging, and VAR components to make a users life easier..

They are also geared towards a business market, integrating with their server/management tools, not the home market.

Besides, they offer a cheaper edition with out all the 'extras'..

Broadcom?

[jeffkjo1]

I'm stuck with a Linksys WMP54G wireless card, with the broadcom chipset. Needless to say, wireless internet does not work, at all. Does Xandros solve the problem of having to configure NDISwrapper manually?

Re:Broadcom?

[boylinux]

We do include NDISWrapper. You have to manually load the windows drivers but the wireless configuration is all GUI.

Not to mention

[BoomerSooner]

You can get Windows XP Home for $92.25

I'd be willing to pay around $30 for an OS that 99% of it they didn't develop but $89.95 is a joke.

Re:Not to mention

[eviltypeguy]

That's not really a valid comparison since:

a) It's the stripped down Home version

b) That's an OEM copy without any support, and it must be purchased with hardware which means you're not including the additional cost of hardware that has to be purchased

Re:Not to mention

[BoomerSooner]

Stripped down? I use XP Home on my laptop and develop software for a living. The only thing you cannot do on Home that you can on Pro is localhosting of web-apps. I see no need since I have development servers to host them on (plus if my laptop gets stolen I don't have to worry about what HIPAA related data might have been on it).

OEM is the same as buying it retail from Best Buy. No support. Additional hardware can be something as cheap as a $1.49 ATA Cable

If you need support you certainly shouldn't be installing an OS yourself. Xandros offers 60 Days for the Deluxe version and 30 Days for the Standard version. This support is INSTALL SUPPORT ONLY. Microsoft offers the same OEM or Retail (you pay).

My comparison was primarily on cost. How the hell can you simply program a few interfaces for things like VPN take 10's of thousands of hours of someone elses work and charge the same as the Evil Empire? It doesn't make sense to me.

BTW Ubuntu is comparable and it's free. Like Fedora... and many more

Re:Not to mention

[reallocate]

>> How the hell can you simply program a few interfaces for things like VPN take 10's of thousands of hours of someone elses work and charge the same as the Evil Empire?

Easy: You want to earn your living selling Linux.

>> Ubuntu is comparable...

Nope. Ubuntu is Gnome-centric. Xandros is KDE-centric. The Xandros install is simpler than the Ubuntu install. The retail version of Xandros includes a professional manual that explains how to use all of the major applications it includes. Ubuntu has no manual. Xandros looks more polished and professional out of the box.

Re:Not to mention

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing you cannot do on Home that you can on Pro is localhosting of web-apps.

There are a number of things that Pro does that Home cannot, and you just discredited yourself. The most important IMNSHO domain support, followed by SMP and EFS. Get a clue.

BTW Ubuntu is comparable and it's free. Like Fedora... and many more

I'm a Debian junkie.. I'm well versed in Mepis, Libranet, Debian, and Xandros. I've used Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse and Knoppix on a lark.

Understand now, junior, Unbuntu isn't even in the same league as Xandros. I'm a nerd that needs to get work done and coexist in a Microsoft Office environment. Xandros just works. If I need corporate support, it's there, albeit at a cost.

At home, Debian Sarge is the order of the day. The ONLY competition for Xandros in being a compact brutally effective commercial distro is Libranet, and they still haven't released 3.0. Mepis Pro will get there some day, but isn't there yet.

Fedora Core 3? Joke.. seriously, it sucks ass. Suse 9.1? Respectable.. but HYOOGE (haven't used 9.2 yet).

I still fail to see the infatuation with Ubuntu.. I think it's a failed Mepis.

Re:Not to mention

[poofyhairguy82]

I still fail to see the infatuation with Ubuntu.. I think it's a failed Mepis.

More like a Fedora with over 10,000 availible programs. Remember, Mepis is KDE based.

Anandtech is better than Extremebabies.whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

And here's why:

There was an article about a month ago where the poor cry-babies at Extreme-whatever were complaining that they didn't receive a certain video card or peice of hardware that other LEGITIMATE online sites were getting to review.

Sorry guys - anandtech gives more in-depth reviews without the fluff, and I don't trust you any longer.

Re:Anandtech is better than Extremebabies.whatever

[JimLynch]

Sorry to hear that you won't be visiting us any more. I hope you'll change your mind and drop by again. The door is always open... :-)

Seems to me though that there's plenty of room for both sites. If you keep em' both on your bookmark list then you'll get the best of both worlds. :-)

Re:Anandtech is better than Extremebabies.whatever

[angrykeyboarder]

Since when is Ziff-Davis not "legitimate"???

BitTorrent

[hendridm]

For those who are interested, their Open Circulation Editon is available for free via BitTorrent: http://www.xandros.com/torrent/xandros-201-ocd-ins tallation.zip.torrent. Too bad it's a moldy version, but still a good one.

not where the problem is...

[dollargonzo]

mod me to hell if you must, but what exactly are these glorious advantages??

the only "advantage" i can think of is that the kernel is more secure than the windows core. the rest is all software. if you put firefox, openoffice, gaim, cygwin on a windows system the only thing you are now missing that might possibly make linux better is the desktop (kde, gnome) and package management (ala apt). you can say that X's network transparency or the multi-user abilities of linux are better, but the average Joe doesn't need network transparency (and get a good X server from cygwin anyway) and doesn't give a crap about multi-user abilities. neither kde nor gnome has any advantages over windows. and package management is not something the average really cares about either.

it's so typically slashdot to equate firefox with linux. i use linux because the first computer i ever used was a unix machine. i prefer to type commands most of the time as opposed to using the mouse. also, being a fully functional unix operating system, i prefer it for development. however, there is seriously nothing that linux has to offer the average joe. nothing! it's not a superior kernel or operating system (feature wise) by any stretch of the imagination (with a rather backwards design), so everyone, please stop saying "use firefox, switch to linux!!"

Re:not where the problem is...

[angrykeyboarder]

"BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft."

Uhhh. I run Linux and I don't hate Microsoft...

Where is Xandros open circulation 3?

[exeme]

Where the heck is the free Xandros Open Circulation 3 download? The downloads page only lists version 2 which is really out dated. http://www.xandros.com/products/home/desktopoc/dsk _oc_download.html

the clock

[mixmasterjake]

I know this is petty, but.. almost all distro screenshots look really fantastic with one exception. That craptastic clock with the fake digital font looks so terrible. i can't stand it! It seems really outdated, yet all the distro screenshots have that same terrible font. Hasn't anybody changed that?

Re:the clock

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a KDE problem, I agree with you. XFCE has a much improved "digital" font though.

Re:the clock

[angrykeyboarder]

Apparantly many disagree. After all, it's easy to get a "normal" looking (vs "lcd") "digital" clock in KDE (as well as an analog "face" one). Apparantly people prefer the LCD digital look.

I happen to be one of those people.. :-)

Xandros CTO

[Anonymous Coward]

I met the Xandros CTO at LinuxWorld last year and he was the biggest douche bag there. He kept talking about how great the Xandros installer was because it took only 4 clicks to install, but refused to give me a demo of it. He thought I wanted to see the source and was shady on that. The best part was when he went on a bashing spree of Windows, saying Xandros was able to mount his USB key easily while WINDOWS 98 could not. Wo the fuck compares recent OS features to WINDOWS 98?

Good Distro

[MrRuslan]

picked up everything on my laptop (ZE4545US) from hp except for wireless wich is normal for my broadcom chip...i never use it anyway and i can make it work with ndiswrapper...good for newbs and even hardcore users cuz there apt frontend is already pointed at debian testing and u just install all the debiad goodies u want...i install alot of debian stuff without any problems...very god stuff and highly recomended ...used to use suse but i dont like the way suse lays out there packeges...Xandros 3 is the solution to that...this distro is only surpased by gentoo in my opinion...used to use it but i got tiered of compiling....

Xandros is *EVIL*

[Anonymous Coward]

Xandros is for all intents and purposes, a proprietary product which embodies everything that the Open Source community supposedly despises with respect to vendor specific lock-ins. They go out of their way to stifle compatibility with software that is not distributed by them. The average non-techie user has little choice except to subscribe to their update service. But hey, since it doesn't say Microsoft on the box, it's all OK.

Xandros is NOT Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither Corel Linux nor Xandros release their modified source code, and probably infringe the GPL. RedHat/Suse help the community by:
1) making 100% of the software they develop Open Source (even the software they acquire)
2)Hire Kernel/KDE/GNOME hackers to work on those projects

Xandros has done nothing of the kind - in fact, they're behaving much like M$ in terms of hoarding code, albeit on a smaller scale.

Re:Xandros is NOT Open Source

[ShinmaWa]

Not true --

All GPL'ed software they modified is available from their FTP servers and many of the changes they've made have incorporated into back into the original software.

Now granted, Xandros Deluxe does cost money. That's because they are selling non-Open Source software along with their Linux distribution, such as CrossOver. However, Xandros didn't make CrossOver -- they are just a reseller.

If you don't want the commericial software along with the open source stuff, then get the "open circulation" edition which is available via BitTorrent and costs nothing (or $5 if you want them to burn it to a CD and mail it to you).

So, they are complying in every way with the GPL, contribute patches, and offer a free edition. What's your problem again?

You are a partial Mac troll :)

[xdesk]

The difference is NOT between Mac and PC - my X300 will resume from sleep in less than 5 seconds, about 30 seconds from hibernate (but I have 640 MB RAM and with current HDD drives that will take some time to save/restore). The only problem is all the above will take place on the X300 only on XP :(

Don't be childish.

[jotaeleemeese]

The "windows replacement" moniker is understood as replacing with something better, not equivalent.

Mindless useless nitpicking is frankly irritating.

Re:Don't be childish.

[Anonymous Coward]

shut up jerkface dont make me tell on you

It works, period

[avanaardt]

I have been using Xandros 2.0 since last year. I have played with Fedora 3, Suse 9.1, Mandrake 10.0, Ubuntu, RedHat 9 -- all OK-ish, but Xandros is by far the easiest and most stable. In our little town there are now 12 very satisfied HOME users that have switched from WinXP to Xandros -- all PAID for.

I can't wait to install Xandros 3.0, and I do not mind paying at all -- it just works and does exactly what I need. Yes, I like to play with OS's (see list) but my production work is done on Xandros.