Slashdot Mirror
Review of New Xandros 4.1 Professional Linux
holden writes "OpenAddict has a review of the new Xandros 4.1 professional.Some of the big changes in professional include a newer kernel, AIGLX, and support for 3G wireless. One of the subtle, but still very important changes, is that Xandros has finally removed the registration requirement, and users can now access Xandros Networks without registering first. Techworld is one of many that is already looking at Xandros as a possible challenger to Windows Vista"
I first heard of Xandros when No Starch Press based their book Linux Made Easy on the distro. I assumed it was a distro meant for those with simple home needs. But here we hear about a "professional" edition. What's the niche of the distro, and how do its maintainers intend to set it apart from the many other options out there?
For all the MS bashing in the linux world, why do all distributions use a crappy gui that tries to copy the crappy startmenu/explorer interface of MS? It sucks, copy apple at the very least.
coral cache:3 4
http://www.openaddict.com.nyud.net:8090/page.php?
You can distribute a disc that has GPL software along with non-GPL software on it. As long as you include the source for all the GPL software you're not necessarily breaking any GPL rules.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I am one of the very few slashdotters that have publicly said that Xandros, Freespire and especially Xandros are one of the best distros out there. I even contributes a few days ago that these distros actaully work as advertised.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208360&cid=169 89294.
What came out of that contribution was being touted as one who had contributed flamebait!
Now, with this view from Techworld, I feel very happy inside. This makes me wonder why there is all this hype about K[U]buntu, which is dogged with all sorts of bugs. Thanks once again to the folks at Xandros.
True enough. And I can refuse to go anywhere near it. Choice is good!
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Seamless access to shared Windows folders and printers
The ability to write to Windows NTFS partitions
Seamless Microsoft Exchange connectivity
If an enterprise already has a Windows environment, why would they be interested in upsetting everything and installing new Linux workstations? I'm not saying Linux can't perform, but keep in mind that if things are running smooth already, the least of their costs are going to be Windows client licenses. They are spending money on Windows servers for file storage, mail, directory services, etc, so they may as well use Windows as the client software as well. Vista isn't going to be this enormous expenditure because most corporate computers will not upgrade to Vista until the computer hardware is replaced anyway.
This sounds like just another one of these "Linux Is Read and Poised To Overthrow Microsoft on the Desktop!" articles that Slashdot sees every couple months (especially around the end of the year, when next year just might be the Year of Linux).
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Seamless access to shared Windows folders and printers
The ability to write to Windows NTFS partitions
Seamless Microsoft Exchange connectivity
Can't I already do that with debian?
Not only that, but contrary to popular belief, a Linux distro company is not required by the GPL either to provide the source for download or even to provide the source with a copy of the distro disks. Section 3 of the GPL makes it very clear that the minimum required is a written offer to provide the source.
The companies that include by default do so out of good practice and community spirit.
Also, on a less than entirely random note, the Open Circulation edition of Xandros is not limmited to 30 days, but naturally it doesn't have all of the third party software that Xandros has licensed for inclusion with its for $ versions.
Thats just wonderful. Im very happy for all you Linux fans. Will I be able to Watch the same movies and video clips I do now? What about my E-Book Collection? Will I be able to use the programs I use now for backing up my DVD Collection ? ( AnyDVD and CloneDVD ) Will I Be able to play the games I own right now ? ( Battlefield series Ect......Not that I did'nt reallllly enjoy Tux Racer) What about my hardware , will I have to "Roll my own" drivers for my computer ? Will it do all of this out of the Box (or the download) How much will I have to Relearn about computers (sorry I have very little free time to put away for learning a lot of new crap to do the same stuff I do now.) I do not mind spending a little time on learning a new operating system. I do mind spending a lot of time on Kernels and drivers and all of this other crap. When I can install this ( on the same computer as my XP just in case ) And it gives me the same uses as XP does without a trip thru Geekfest 4000 then i'll do something besides yawn) and to all those who put people down for using windows or what not because its not as LEET as Linux remember two things 1.Windows is the number one used operating system in the world for a reason. 2. I got your LEET hanging right here.
I'll bite.
Actually, most folks who run Linix/*BSD/whatever don't do it due to Windows costing money.
Having an OS that doesn't suck is priceless.
Using Windows drives me nuts.
Are you a hobbyist? Yes you are. How cute! *pinches cheeks* You managed to miss the point entirely.
*nix wouldn't be half as good as it is today without massive corps like IBM funding development, and they do it for business reasons. If Windows were free, companies wouldn't give two shits about free software, and Linux would be hosed and unusable.
Even today businesses fund a lot of Linux development.
Get over it. It'll be some time before Linux has the ability to compete on the same playing field. Linux is to Windows as college football is to NFL. Maybe someday those players will push up to the pro leagues, but in the meantime a pro team will clobber them.
5-6 years, minimum.
It came installed with Mozilla and not Firefox. This is where the road back to Win2K/Xp stared. Looking thorugh their software repository I searched for Firefox and it wasn't there. So I check the forums. I found a post about installing Firefox. Well it was about 7 pages at that time. Reading through the first two showed me that no way in hell was I going to go through all the admin mumbo jumbo just to install Firefox. I was too lazy from trying out several destop distros that day.
Anyways I went back to windows cause it just works. Now before I get flamed by the "You're just too stupid to run Linux" fanboyz, know that I've ran/run and setup Slackware 10.1 and FreeBSD 6 web servers at home with no problems so my techincal abilities/curiosities are above the average computer user but what had to be done to install Firefox on XandrOS was just retarded and this is what keeps a steady supply of new users away from Linux. Most joe/jane average computer user has no problems finding/installing and configuring software preferances but thats if its provided for them through an installer.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
A more poignant poem exploring the differences between OSes, I have yet to see.
I'm a fairly experienced user, and I love Xandros... Whoever says Xandros is for newbs needs to give it another look. It's nice to have a distro that 'just works'. Its not always the most up to date on things, but Xandros tends to use what's stable and avoids upgrading packages unless there is a significant need to do so or there's a security issue.
:)
Another thing is the default KDE. I really don't like gnome, so I like having a distro that doesn't include it... Less wasted hard drive space. For those that do like gnome, however, you can always get it off Xandros networks, and it integrates relatively well...
Another thing that makes Xandros so good is the forums.... The community is very tight knit and tries their very best to help when there are issues, and I'd venture a guess that over half of all questions are resolved the first time.
Some of their marketing is pretty dumb (Premium membership?), and Xandros Antivirus blows (All it is is a proprietary front end on ClamAV, and dazuko isn't even included), but overall the distro is great and the community is what really makes it a distro worth using.
It is definitely worth checking it out if you haven't... Oh and if you bump into redrum on the forum, well, that's me
Windows users, if they're like my family, have no problems because I do all the heavy lifting. At most, they have to reboot the machine after a few hundred hours uptime to get a given application running again. They use Office, Limewire, AIM, Winamp, iTunes, etc. If desktop Linux can provide that level of use to ordinary users, fine.
Now in terms of deployment, Windows sucks. Everything has to be hand managed. The patches required to deal with the security problems, spyware, adware is huge problem. And managing all of this to get things running and keep them, is a chore. So again if Linux can fix this or eliminate them then great.
But ordinary users don't want to do the Linux way of installing and futzing with things that sort-of work.
I believe 4.0 OCE (Open Circulation Edition) will be available soon. The current version of Xandros OCE is 3.0 and isn't representative of the current product.... 4.0 is much better.
"...If Windows was OPEN and FREE, companies wouldn't give two shits about free software, and Linux would be hosed and unusable."
There, I fixed that for you.
You almost made some good points, AC.
Windows is still a cesspool I choose not to swim in whenever possible.
Very few companies really care if they can modify the software themselves, especially if it works. You're confusing businesses for hobbyists again.
Small businesses already rarely use Linux, and larger ones would (and do!) take out contracts with Microsoft to get things fixed ASAP.
Well, that, and it's probably easier to just throw the source in a tarball on an ftp server and forget about it than train a secretary on dealing with an obscure request that only comes up twice a year.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The only distro of linux that is even vaguely close enough to mature to be a valid challenger to Vista might be Ubuntu, and that is still pushing it.
I bought the Xandros a month or so ago. I tried using it. Although it installed well (as is the case with most Linux distro's these days), I was unhappy with the selection and even the philosophy. The main thing that bothered me most was that I could find nearly no software on their network and most of what was installed out of date. I also didn't like the idea that all these facilities touted in these posts were only available on a paid for basis. The home edition didn't even have basic things such as the ability to play movies or listen to music. You had to pay for the premium. Didn't make alot of sense to charge for the these basic facilities.
I could have just gone and installed this stuff by getting the packages and struggling with them. I even started to do that, but I found there were almost NO repositories for it. When I went looking for info on the forums most people were not happy with either the software selection, the philosophy, or the registration mechanism.
Let's just say I was disappointed and went looking for a distro that had the software I wanted (basic essential stuff for a home system). I paid about $100 for it and then had to abandon it. I don't know what their 4.1 professional is but I suspect it is exactly more of the same.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Perhaps, and I don't argue with your timeframe (I can't even imagine how much Linux will have improved by then) but MS doesn't always fix things ASAP even with those contracts. Believe me, I know. Then again, neither does Redhat. Given the choice with using either Windows or Linux though, we'd rather go with Linux. It's not necessarily the source or freedom, although they're nice, nor necessarily the price, although that's also a bonus. It's the open standards that it's based upon, versus whatever modified and encumbered standard of the release that MS comes up with. Because of those standards, we can bring software developed on Linux to other platforms with much less effort. That's useful when you need to move your code to a larger server running Solaris or AIX.
To whatever monkey who learned how to use a keyboard who modded my last post offtopic, let's run down what "offtopic" means. It means "off" the "topic". Isn't that easy?
The topic is Xandros Linux. The post was about Xandros Linux. See the problem here?
This post, on the other hand, is offtopic. It is also a flame. Please feel free to moderate accordingly and properly.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The issue/problem is trying to unseat Windows as the current/incumbent OS. Many efforts are made to give Linux distos a "Windows" feel simply because that is what people are used to. In order to educate people that the OS is NOT what the story is all about, you need to show them an interface that they are comfortable with and willing to work within. When all the applications that they want to run *just run*, then they might understand.
:)
One of the biggest conceits within the Linux community is "Of course it't better, so just use it". Even if it's true, you need to help people along the path. Think of it as a language. If I could *prove* that, for example, Esperanto was a better and more efficient language for communication I would have a hard time making people switch if it was completely unlike anything they had ever seen before. There needs to be a strong tie to the language they already know to ease the pain of switching, or else it just isn't worth it.
I could ramble on about the problems, and where Linux apps really aren't as polished as Windows (Gaim vs Trillian for example) but I'm pretty drunk right now. Typing this much has been a pretty significant accomplishment.
IIRC, Xandros is what became of Corel Linux.
.Net architecture.
As well, IIRC, Corel sold their distro to Xandros about a year after Microsoft pumped $135 million of much needed cash into Corel in a "joint development and marketing alliance" to get Corel to port their various Windows apps to the
Prior to this, Corel had been poised to port WordPerfect to Linux (natively - I believe there was already a WINE-based port) and were working on all sorts of initiatives to help make desktop Linux competitive with Windows. Then they got this investment, they talked about staying the course with Linux, but it languished, announced projects languished, and then they sold it.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I *started* with the *Mac* introduction to menubars, back about 1986. Windows was merely EmbraXtending the original brilliant design. Now, fully a quarter of my job is about wandering the weird options buried in menus to solve nuisances for those above me who decide they shouldn't have to care. I became grumpy with IE7 taking away my menubar, and found the command to put it back, and back at the *top* of the screen.
Again there are alternating comments upon the ease of use of Xandros. I'm a moderate user... on Windows. This makes all my knowledge completely worthless for Linux, and I'll be reduced to beginner's luck. Y'all who are already experts don't need convincing. "Newbs are where your target audience is". I'd like to think I'm a semi intelligent Newb(N), but then I also can't seem to navigate the RMVehicle efficiently either.
Since I switched out of MacOS about 1998, I've used about fifteen Windows systems. When it comes time soon for me to do the Big Switch, I'll keep some detailed notes. Anyone interested?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Can we get past the idea that we have to have two completely separate computers... one for gaming and one for business? This is 2006. I think we can have one machine that does both.
XP Professional does both. Hell, even Macintosh does both to some level.
Telling people that they should dual boot is not going to get new users any time soon.
I wonder if I'll be able to upgrade my OCE 3.0 install to OCE 4.0. Apt-get seems to work well enough on OCE 3.0 and Debian is pretty good at upgrading distros. OCE 3.0 is pretty old (Woody based, I believe) and there don't seem to be any updates recently.
For a system that is supposed to work friendly with a Windows environment OCE 3.0 has some serious limitations. As a normal user I can't write to a Samba share every other Linux distro I've used has no trouble with. I have to change files on the server as root or use FISH/SSH. Pretty annoying.
I rather like the Explorer-like Xandros File Manager but I still tend to use Konqueror since XFM doesn't support tabs and had limited Kioslave functionality. Also, K3B isn't in the Xandros OCE repository and CD burning is limited to 4X (oh well, I'm not in a hurry).
I could just blow Xandros away and install a modern distro, but it still works fine for web surfing and listening to MP3s and I don't see the point in burning a few hours with a new install and all the attendent fiddling just to overcome a few minor annoyances.
Does it include a shell? I'd like to type rm -rf / sometimes
"Very few companies really care if they can modify the software themselves, especially if it works. You're confusing businesses for hobbyists again."
You're confusing "works" again.
I don't think it means what you think it means.
Converting all those nasty Unix boxes to Windows back in the day took many an IT department from a part time job for one engineer to a full time job for 20 monkeys. Been there. Done that.
MOST "software" is written in house, for in house use.
People seem to forget that.
With Windows, you get to play roulette with the OS, and you have precious little control.
(how is THIS update going to hose our system..???)
This has been interesting.
Thanks for playing, Mr. Ballmer.
Just a reminder for opensource developers: please don't forget legacy hardware, many users run them (and I still do), and those users sometimes dream about linux... ;)
I demand moar legacy-oriented distro support!
This is a poorly designed system that can not tolerate raid and I uninstalled it within an hour.
since the articles unreadable on a 1024 x 768 screen here is the article text, anyone remember when pages formatted themselves to the size of the users window :/
/proc/cpuinfo:
Xandros 4.1 Desktop Professional - Review
Introduction
Xandros is a distribution based on Debian that is meant for home users and small businesses that use older versions of Windows (98, ME, 2000) while letting those users utilize all of their saved information from Microsoft Office by using CodeWeaver's CrossOver Office, which seamlessly installs and runs a variety of Windows' programs. Xandros is specifically designed for people who have only known and used Windows and offers solitude from viruses, et al. as well as freedom since Xandros is on the Linux platform.
What this means to these types of users is a safer, more efficient computing environment without extreme technical knowledge to install and run a very suitable and substantially inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Windows. This also means that since Xandros is a Linux distribution, that viruses, spyware, ad-ware and trojans are an almost non-existent threat. But to sure up the confidence level, Xandros also implements a full security suite to satisfy even the most paranoid of users when it comes to security and Internet safety.
Test machine
My test machine is a Dell Inspiron 1150 2.6 GHz Celeron processor laptop with a 14.1" display (Intel Extreme Graphics 2 - 64 MB), 512 MB's RAM, 30 GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD drive, Intel 82801 modem, Broadcom 4401 10/100 Ethernet and Broadcom 4306 802.11 b/g wireless card. I've had this laptop for almost 2 years and it is my carry-everywhere computer, so I need to be sure that all my hardware and drivers are compatible in case I am out of town and need to use the Internet. In short, no OS goes on this hard drive unless it's proven, stable, and lets me utilize all of my hardware to get online and do what needs to be done. My hard drive is divided up as 20 GB's for Windows and 10 GB's set aside for Linux. The OS that previously housed my Linux ReiserFS partition was Freespire.
Another thing to take into consideration is that I attend school online and my school insists that all of its students use Outlook Express or Outlook as well as Internet Explorer 5.5 or newer. Another demand from my school is writing papers and saving them in Word format (*.doc). Listed below are the exact hardware specs of my test machine.
model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.60GHz
stepping : 9
lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem
Updating Xorg from 6.9 to 7.0, simply monolithic to modular, fucked up my PC and took me a day to fix.
Yeah, Linux upgrades are TOTALLY smooth and don't do anything wrong at all.
And I don't have a Debian machine that won't apt-get upgrade successfully anymore because I didn't upgrade it for too long (~1.5 years).
And I don't have a machine that won't even boot off an Ubuntu boot disk (installed Gentoo on it instead, but that disk only half-worked, too, the GUI stuff on it didn't work at all).
Linux is flawless and ready to go! Let's fuck over everybody for this supposed "readiness".
by train you mean tell them "if someone asks for the source code, mail them one of these CDs". that doesnt sound much more effort than putting a tarball on the server.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Fixed that for you, buddy.
$100, it is too much, potential new users wont pay that much, they would rather buy windows home editions.
There is an option where you can put two fingers on the trackpad and click, and it's equivalent to a right click. It's sweet. But trackpads drive me nuts usually, and it's easier just to plug in a USB Logitech Marble Mouse (God's own pointing device!) and right click 'til the cows come home.
If you haven't used Mac OS X lately, or not at all, give it a spin. It's been good since Panther, Tiger is nice, and Leopard will make the new MacIntels fly thanks to more native IA64 code. It's like Linux only more things work out of the box than Linux and you have to fiddle with it less. Oh yeah, the Terminal's used BASH for a while now. Just like Linux.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
explain why a bunch of heavily paid microsoft researchers cannot do the same thing.
Two words: backwards compatibility.
What kills Microsoft and produces problem after problem is their requirement (driven by perceived customer need) to have long backwards compatibility. They can't 'clean slate' things as often as Mac OS or Linux can.
If some part of Linux is demonstrated to be insecure by design, chances are somebody will decide it's ugly and rewrite the thing. Sure it might get patched, but eventually some programmer is going to decide that it's crufty enough to offend him, and just start over. Because you have a lot of people looking at the code, this happens often -- if the code isn't simple or elegant, another programmer may decide to try their hand at redoing it.
The people working on Windows are probably no smarter nor stupider than Linux developers, but they don't have the option of sitting down and re-implementing broken stuff. So instead, things get patched, and patched, and cruft grows, unseen except by a few people that understand it. There isn't the impetus to redevelop, because fewer people are working on the code; and broad changes are discouraged because of the need to retain compatibility and prevent a stable environment to commercial developers.
Providing a stable environment is Windows' major benefit to developers besides its userbase, but it also makes it architecturally inflexible and prone to design failures rather than simple code bugs. While any platform or piece of software can have bugs, and those bugs can be fixed, only a flexible one that's not overly concerned about backwards compatibility can fix architectural flaws when they become apparent.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I provided a rural church with their first computer, to be used by a secretary that only knew how to click on buttons in Windows XP to use email and type letters. Even the concept of nested directories was somewhat of a stretch for her. I didn't want to spend much time on support (well really none), so I setup Xandros 3 Professional for them and didn't say anything. It took a few months before she realized that Xandros wasn't just another version of Microsoft Windows.
Xandros was a perfect match for someone who fits this segment: a light Windows user with no real interest in becoming computer knowledgeable. They have a couple of tasks they do and aren't very interested in anything else about it.
Its been over a year now and she's learned a lot about using OpenOffice.org (she figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't MS Office, but it was close enough that she's never complained) and Firefox. No *issues* beyond dial-up being sometimes flaky.
There are some users that -won't- switch away from MS no matter what for whatever reason.
The average marketeer knows it's nearly impossible to convert these users so don't waste too much energy on them. Apple does waste a great deal of energy on them over the years and look how it hasn't really worked.
What does work is finding the consumers ready for a change or urgently needing something that they can't get in windows and building on them.
That's why when I see opinions flying about "as good as Windows" where good can be substituted for pretty much anything, it's just doesn't translate to business success. Yes, things on other platforms need to be similar to the norm, but within that context, transparency and 3D desktops aren't what drives adoption. Killer applications do.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
In theory that's sort of true but for the reality of Mac. This shows that it's possible to put an end user friendly face on *nix.
Not sure what you mean by enterprise though. AIX, Sun, Z/os, OS/400 are all perfectly capable enterprise systems.
You'd be surprised how hard is it to train someone to deal with infrequently occuring events. Especially relatively unimportant ones -- this isn't a fire you're trying to escape.
if it occurs that infrequently then there isn't any harm in them asking someone in charge what to do.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Burning CDs and DVDs became more difficult around kernel 2.6.11 or so. The kernel developers discovered that ordinary users could to blow away the burner's firmware and decided to make this impossible. You can always burn as root, but not as an ordinary user. I've configured the KDE launchers for K3b on my machines to run as root.
I assume this problem exists on Windows as well but is ignored. Because Linux is by nature multi-user these sorts of problems are more serious. You wouldn't want someone to be able log into your machine remotely and destroy your burner.
For more on the issue, see this and related postings by Alan Cox on the Linux kernel developers list (http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/8/2/290).