Another Review of Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0

Steve Emms writes "We've published today a review of Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 Deluxe which might interest your readers. Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 is billed as 'an intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box and offers unrivaled compatibility with Microsoft Windows'. So it's pretty clear what the market of the product is - all the millions of Windows users that are fed up with an unstable operating system, want something for email and web browsing, and be able to create, edit and send the boss their Word, Excel and Visio files."

Comments

Has to be Easier than SuSE 9.1

[engywook]

A couple weeks ago, I (computer geek) helped a friend (Microsoft victim) install SuSE 9.1 onto an older PC that he wasn't doing anything with. I was amazed at the amount of stuff that had to be done, figured out, or explained that I will typically just do without thinking. Having my friend there trying to figure this stuff out really brought home the fact that that particular distro was not particularly "novice-friendly". One thing that particularly surprised me was the amount of trouble we had getting X up and running. The config that it came up with on its own didn't work. No matter what we tried with the config file didn't work. We eventually deleted the Modeline entries and let the defaults be used, and that worked just fine.

Now, I'm not saying that everything we did was hard or time consuming, but we did stay up until 4am getting things up to basic functioning.

I'll be installing SuSE 9.2 on a home machine or two over the next couple of weeks. I'll try to make note of everything that needs to be done that does not seem "novice-friendly".

It's good to hear about a distro that can be recommended to Linux neophytes.

I still fail to see...

[Phleg]

Why desktop operating systems intending to migrate folks from Windows use KDE as the default desktop environment. I'm not trying to troll here, but KDE seems to be of the mentality for providing a configuration option for everything, and have tons and tons of menu options.

For the average user, this just isn't a very good idea. Having some experience with converting Windows users to desktop Linux, myself, I've found that the vast majority prefer the simple and clean feel to the GNOME interface. They try hard to use reasonable defaults and provide an option for the most important changes. Also, they try wherever possible to eliminate configuration options that require the user to type something (meaning the user has know about what to type in).

Yeah, it's not as customizable as KDE, but that's not what's important to Joe Average. Joe Average wants to turn on his computer, change the theme and fonts, then start actually doing stuff, not spend time fiddling with hundreds of options to get it "perfect". It's an appliance rather than living space.