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you have no clue what you are talking about, few years off win95? do you remember win95 ever autodetecting 90% of your hardware? or autodetecting, configuring networking? or file sharing? how about even having USB support?

i don't think so.

and you are accusing the author of trolling.

xandros isn't bad, but not perfect. i couldnt get it to work the way i wanted it to, with my multi-partition setup, and it didn't work well with my linux compatible pcmcia wireless card. it worked with beta2, but beta3 and the final release didn't work.

Great so I'm trolling with my little review?

the end to windows was what I was calling my review as I wrote it as "I" was so impressed by Xandros that like I said "This is the first Linux distro that I've installed that makes me even consider switching my home computer from Windows to Linux"

And thats the truth, I'm a common windows user who dabbles in Linux, and this is my experiance in linux with Xandros. I've been contemplating formating this laptop to Run Xandros exclusively, I've never even considered that with ANY other Distro, not Red hat, not Suse and not Knoppix (which I also love) For someone who's not built to edit a config file to get his monitor to work, Xandros worked right out of the box, I've had but one or 2 little problems with it but more importantly, I've been both productive and had fun working in Xandros.

You jugde my review by the tile... read deeper... its just a freaking title.

The question is: Linux is going to the home/corporate desktop! That´s the point!

Distros like Xandros are doing what the user wants: Easy to use, less configuration and compatibility.

Linux needs more standards to really be able to compete in the desktop market share, but it´s on the correct way.

I´m really thinking about to try Xandros...

Chris,

Just ignore that dude. People are SOOO critical when you review. It was nice to see your view on this subject. Thanks!

Not like it can already become the "CONTENDER", but Xandros is on the right path. Lindows does a good job too. I wonder what would come out if the two would merge - it's not like there is a posibility, but still:) Let's see what Lindows 5 brings to OsNews when it will come out. Hopefully, with KDE3.2, ReiserFS 4, Kernel 2.6.

BTW, it is a decent article you wrote.

:::PROUD TO LIVE IN THE BIRTHLAND OF LINUX:::

in word this article looked much longer... also I've noticed a few spelling mistakes that I missed prior.

Since I wrapped this up, I've installed mIRC in Wine, and continued to work in Xandros, every day, 8 hours a day at work,

Xandros is not "perfekt" by any stretch, but it is a step in the right direction, less "bubbly" to the eyes then Lindows, and more corporate friendly, I'll be purchasing X2 Business edition when it is released.

Short and pithy review.
I like that

>
Xandros is not "perfekt" by any stretch, but it is a step in the right direction, less "bubbly" to the eyes then Lindows, and more corporate friendly, I'll be purchasing X2 Business edition when it is released.
>

That is how I feel about it too. I just now booted back in XP because Xandros makes my mouse hang or something. Not everything works, and I am a bit annoyed about the fonts (badly tuned in sizes and kinds) - it makes the desktop look a little more rough than XP. There will probably be many more problems as I explore it further. (does anyone know how to activate TV-out on an NVidia card?) I hope I will make everything work in the end though, because I think I like it better than XP.

since I finished I did get a mouse issue too, When I boot my laptop with a mouse plugged into my PS2 port neither the mouse nor the touchpad work.

you can check out the Xandros messageboards, maybe they have a solution for TV out on Nvidia...

do you remember win95 ever autodetecting 90% of your hardware?

Yup. I never had to edit any sort of text file to get the hardware I had on my 95 box to work. Can't say the same for Linux of the same era.

or autodetecting, configuring networking?

Again, I don't remember ever having a problem using my cable modem back then. I tried it under Linux and gave up after having to compile drivers, edit numerous text files, and poll the isa slots to get a device ID.

...how about even having USB support?

Now there's a strawman argument if ever I saw one. USB wasn't even out at the time Windows 95 was released. How can you use the inability of an OS to utilize a non-existant (at the time) technology as a problem? Microsoft released 95 OSR2 at about the same time USB was becoming available and then followed it up with 98.

I have been searching the 'Xandros' site for an ISO download of 'Xandros'. Is there none? Do they really expect people to pay 90 bucks for a product that is based to 99.9% on other peoples (free) work?

When the paying customers slow down on the dowloads the Eval Iso will be posted.

> Hopefully, with KDE3.2, ReiserFS 4, Kernel 2.6.

Mandrake will have KDE 3.2 + Kernel 2.6 in the next release. (MDK 10)

A preview is out, and the first Beta, I believe will be out this week!

MarkP

Do you mean "hobbleware"? Do they give anything back to the free software comunity? (esp. considering that they take so much of there produkt from it)
And Im not being a troll, Im just wondering.

>I have been searching the 'Xandros' site for an ISO download of 'Xandros'. Is there none? Do they really expect people to pay 90 bucks for a product that is based to 99.9% on other peoples (free) work?

There's a 30-day free trial iso coming so you can try it before you buy.

As for paying for it. Of course they expect you to pay for it just like Lindows, SuSE, Libranet and all the other commercial distros expect you to pay for thier full product and support.

With Xandros you get an excellent File Manager, Crossover Office & Plugin which cost about $90 alone, good network support (it's the only distro I've used that supports my network printer), and an overall well designed distro. It was well worth the $69 I paid for the upgrade.

if you guys noticed, i was replying to a now moderated down comment.

in response to Anonymous (IP: ---.chvlva.adelphia.net):
i don;t know about you, but i always had to install drivers after a new install of win95, reboot 10 times, and always had to set up networking via the network properties dialog.

even until this day, to get a working windows system with XP takes over 3 hours, yup, 3 hours. i do it all the time.

from the time of OS install ~ 30min - 1 hour, to driver installs, ~ 1 hour, to software installs (office, winrar, photoshop, etc...) ~ 1-2 hours more.

to get to the same point in a typical modern day linux distro takes about 30 minutes to an hour.

i still use windows, and i use linux, but from my experience windows takes longer to install from scratch.

and about USB support, the comment i was replying to said that xandros was years behind win95, which is what i was debating.

If someone writes one of these reviews named "Windows - The end of open source" or "Windows - The penguinkiller". Would it get published on OSNews?

Somehow I think there's so many issues that people tend to forget. The last thing which comes to my mind is what will happen now that MSN will start broadcasting TV for this 9,99$/month offer?

That is what being ready for the desktop is about today/2k4, not being able to run Office apps (that's what users expect from an operating system early staged with its first apps)...

So is Xandros ready for 2k4 desktop?

I believe the concept is some sort of a time bomb,

After its been installed 30 days or soemthing it shuts down after 30 minutes of usage.

At least the last time I had asked about it, that was the response I got.

SuSE is avalible for download on there and other FTP sites. So is Mandrake, and my favorite Slackware. So is several other...

The real deal here is "Xandros" is NOT a free software distro but a money only driven company who is not capable of writing there own OS. Kinda like MS (Though MS can write there own kernel). They are not a Linux 'distro' but an OS product living of the Linux community. BIG diff!

>Do you mean "hobbleware"? Do they give anything back to the free software comunity? (esp. considering that they take so much of there produkt from it)

Yes they do. They've committed updates to several opensource projects including KDE. They also gave away $100,000 worth in copies of boxed Xandros at a Linux expo last fall. They're a member of the Desktop Linux Consortium, and here's a list of Xandros' commits to KDE from the last beta.

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-cvs&w=2&r=1&s=xandros&q=b

//even until this day, to get a working windows system with XP takes over 3 hours, yup, 3 hours. i do it all the time. //

Ever hear of Norton Ghost?

You do it all the time ... the wrong way, obviously. I can rebuild a XP box in 30 minutes.

You can buy the standard edition for 49.99. The reason why they have a version that costs $99 is because Crossover office is not free software.

And if you don't like how Xandros sells theirs look at the price of Red Hat now. Starting at over $300 for their lowest priced OS they sell (That is full of free software)

you ever hear the statement "2 sides to every coin" well, the better question is "what coin"

At home, I don't really think any OS can touch windows for me, for gaming atleast windows is the way to go,

But for work, Where I'm not under my own discressions, I expect my OS to run the applications I need, interact with the other machines and above all, not crash.

> Since I wrapped this up, I've installed mIRC in Wine, and
> continued to work in Xandros, every day, 8 hours a day at
> work,

I'm not being critical, but I notice that you're running an awful lot of Windows software over Wine for which there are very good Linux equivalents. Have you tried OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office, or XChat instead of mIRC? I've used both of the programs mentioned here in both cases, and I find the Linux equivalents to be preferable in both cases.

I don't know Xandros (I use mostly Fedora and Mandrake, myself), but instead of Mozilla-Mail you ought to take a look at Evolution. It's a GNOME app, which might be something you'd rather not have if you're running KDE, but you'll find it looks very much like MS Outlook. And you can get Ximian Connector (from Ximian, of course) which will make Evolution a complete Exchange client. If you want a native KDE email app, KMail is probably the one to look at. Oh, I should mention KOffice too. I like OpenOffice.org better, but KOffice is certainly something to look into.

Considering that is a selling point of Xandros, I figured I would check it out.

but yes, I have Openoffice.org installed and I did move my text document between MS office, OOo and I even purchased Sun Office 7 and installed that (which I run instead of MS office mostly) however my work requires me to be 100% compatable, so being able to tell my boss, "I'm running microsoft Office" was a perk.

And I did try Xchat and BitchX, however I couldn't get things quite right like getting them to run through X and not in the Console window, Besides, I heard mIRC worked so I tried it, I'm not a big IRC guy, I was just checking.

Sorry but it is true... Playing DVD's or DIVX's, using 3D hardware. Kicking the s*it out of a sound board. Nothing beats the MS 32bit OS's (2K,XP) for stability. When It comes to servers and "headless" machines I use Linux. NTFS is buggier then a hyena, the Samba software beats MS SMB/CIFS everytime and the Linux machines are much easyer to manage and maintain. But for entertainment workstations? No sir, I don't like it!

and about USB support, the comment i was replying to said that xandros was years behind win95, which is what i was debating.

I'm still curious as to *how* you were debating that by using the example of an OS that was released before USB was out and then using it's lack of USB support as some way saying that modern day linux is better.

Again, it's nothing but a strawman argument...not a very good one at that. You have no qualified list of reasons why the author feels that Xandros isn't quite up the level of Win95, yet persist in using one obscure, and falacious argument as a way to try and show that he is wrong.

I use Norton Ghost with Linux also. But the one thing that you won't get when you reinstall Xandros or Lindows (Up to this point) is an extra 30 minutes to an hour of installing patches that you haven't updated since you made the ghost.

And lord forbid if you have to reboot 2 or three times after installing the patches. Or you install a patch, reboot and find out that you have another patch to install to fix the patch you just installed. LOL!

A matter of taste. I've used nothing but Linux at home for probably 6 years. It's done everything I've ever wanted to do. Which Windows wouldn't have. And my parents (in their 70's) have been happy Linux users for years. As for nothing beating MS2K or MSXP for stability, well, let's just say we have different experiences and let it go at that.

By rockwell (IP: 12.24.216.---)
pertaining to ghost image, it wont work well with different hardware configurations, i've tried it. also it isn't exactly trivial to ghost 4 GB of windows and extra software on one CD.

a default windows install alone takes up over 600MB without any applications. even if you just want a simple windows web server. ive installed many linux servers and they ALL take up less than 75MB of space with all the server software installed.

By Anonymous (IP: ---.chvlva.adelphia.net)
again, if you read my post, i did not compare to win95, it was another poster, look at the moderated down comments,
your point is moot, the moderated down commenter stated that linux was years behind win95, which is entirely not true. it would also be a close argument between linux and XP.


By Tyrone Miles (IP: 206.118.48.---)
you're right, even after an older ghost image of windows, it takes forever to download service packs, updated IE service packs, and other patches. and rebooting and babysitting the install for a couple of hours is a great pain, and annoyance.


i'm not trying to start a windows vs. linux debate, just relaying comments on previous posts. i use both OS's, and like both OS's for their own purposes. personally, i find it easier to install, and find apps for linux (debian in particular).

i don't have to log into irc, or search in google for cracks and pirated software for my linux box, because honestly, how many people pay for photoshop, MSOffice, winzip, ftp programs, mp3 ripping software, cd burning software, etc.. for windows? how much time do people, and i have wasted searching for "warez"?

im actually in the middle of converting my windows desktop to linux, the only things holding me back were counter-strike and dreamweaver, which i now got running in linux.

over and out.

I think the reason we all run linux, well i speak for the desktop linux users, is the fact that we can customize in a way no other o/s offers. I can run 4 diffrent window managers/desktop enviroments and choose which one i would like to use when ever i please.

The point of linux in my view was Free, Customizable, and Fun. Xandros looks corp, to clean, not very much to play with.

Also maybe some one can clear this up. Why exactly are we pushing linux to the desktop again? *winks*

btw Fedora is free, FreeBSD is Free, Debian is Free. Those which changed linux and created the nitche still remain free, amazing.

"Ever hear of Norton Ghost?

You do it all the time ... the wrong way, obviously. I can rebuild a XP box in 30 minutes."

Ever heard of dd? I can re-build a Linux box that way in 30 minutes or less also.

Unfortunately for you, that has nothing to do with the argument. He's saying it takes longer to re-install Windows than Linux. Drive imaging has nothing to do with it. If it did, I could use pre-installed hot-swappable hard drives as proof that I can re-install Linux in 1 minute as evidence that Linux installs faster. Ludicrous.

I dont think I have burnt a CD in a 13 months. Just mount an SMB share over your LAN and do your ghosting to and from there.

Tyr installing a gentoo on a 500Mhz VIA... Then complain about slow...

What I dont understand is why this he absolutely need to install M$ Office... If he just needs it for his Word needs he can just as well use OpenOffice Writer.

Internet Explorer I agree is OK to have sometimes if you need to access IE-only pages, but what is that thing about viewing PDF files in IE? Mozilla, or even Adobe's own Acrobat is just as good for that? (its included or you can download it from XN)

No need for GAIM when you got Kopete!

Another thing that also crosses my mind...Why do you want to use Konquerer? Xandros own file manager is almost (if not completely) the same.

All in all a nice _personal_ review but those points above is a bit fuzzy for me. If you added some more information about the OS itself and not only Windows/"move over" specific functions itself it would have improved a lot. Tell us what you really like about Xandros!

And to those who said that "Linux is not perfect". Fine! But who is? Windows? Naaah... NOONE or NOTHING is perfect (except me of course )).

//even until this day, to get a working windows system with XP takes over 3 hours, yup, 3 hours. i do it all the time. //

"Ever hear of Norton Ghost?
You do it all the time ... the wrong way, obviously. I can rebuild a XP box in 30 minutes."

Thats great! What happens when you get to the product activation part?

Lots of people have to run word and excel.

There's a little something called a "macro". Why don't you read up on it, instead of just saying that openoffice can replace office. Maybe in a lot of places it can, but not everywhere. Get over it.

I'm stuck with Excel becasue of macros. open office is completely useless to me, as it can't even open my work documents properly.

I absolutely need MS office (don't say M$, it looks stupid and it immature) because the Web (.asp) based applications I work with run of MS office protocalls, and I need to be running the standard to correctly assess our application.

Again, In the web application I use every day, I have to open links to Adobe files. I installed IE just to have it installed and incase I find an incompatability with Konq, I run this work in Konquerer using the user agent set to identify my browser as IE in Windows 2k.

Personal Preferance here, I like GAIM.

Hows that? This is not a "personal" review, this is me working Linux into a Microsoft shop and having to conform to the Microsoft applications around me.

Not to be nitpicky, but I don't people people are users of any OS by nature, only by convenience or habit.

First thing, Windows, although having all the apps, is bloody terrible platform for media development especially sound. It is very dicy and requires much hand holding to do the job well.

Secondly, office documents with macros are always told to disable macros in our workplace because we get documents from many various sources and we are not prepared to have a macro virus bring down our network. Very poor idea implementation on MS's behalf. If they did the job properly instead of their usual half-assed way then macros and VB scripting could be quite good. As it is there are too many back doors left open so they are diabled or we don't handle the documents for our clients.

If YellowTabs's Zeta goes down the pan, I think my next stop OS wise would probably be something like Ximian as it appears from my perspective to be a middle ground in the Windows VS Linux war, the best of both worlds so to speak.

User friendly isn't just nice, its expected and from the comments I've read on this and different forums, I think that these folks are onto something in a way that I just haven't seen from the big guns of linux - redhat Mandrake Suse etc etc

Please.....
I have been running MythTv at home with haupage pvr350 and it is ultra stable, it's been running for months now and recording TV shows for my Wife and kids every day.
So don't tell me windows is needed for stable entertainment use.
The game developers need to get together and just stop writing games for M$, then people wlll use Linux. We just need one Killer must have game that is Linux ONLY.

You dink, of course Gentoo is going to install slow on a VIA processor, it's a source based distro, but you probably don't know that you can install the whole thing with binary files using GRP.
It takes me about 40 minutes to get a headless base system up and running on a Athlon XP with stage3.
Of course it takes many many hours to install X and KDE.

Not a damn thing wrong with this review. It didn't represent itself as anything other than a Windows user's experience with Xandros. Looks like he did just fine. Nonpartisan impressions like this should be required reading for anyone interested in Linux advocacy.

Thank you kit, thats exactly what it was, a windows user with Xandros,

Why are you running gentoo if you are going to use stage 3? Kinda defeats the mening of gentoo. Stage 1 is where the money is at. You do a stage 1 install on a VE5000 and then tell me its fast! :-)
oh, and billybob. I have gotten some MM apps running for days on Linuxes too. But are they as stable as on M$? I think not, if you claim that you are not pushing your systems enough....

PS. I would consider ALSA as stable as windows audio, but a bit more of a mistress then a wife.

My desktop Linux distribution will always be SuSE. Xandros and Lindows cripple too much, GAIM for example is included with SuSE and I dont have to hunt for it. Good review basically and as the author saidfor people who dont want to know anything about the computer and have a resident geek living around then Xandros may be a good thing.

>Xandros and Lindows cripple too much

I use Xandros and don't notice any lack of functionality compared to any other distro I've used. It has an AOL/Gaim compatible chat client and if you want Gaim it's readily and easily available for free from Xandros Network.

>Xandros and Lindows cripple too much

What? Xandros provides a streamlined system without a lot of redundant apps. So I get one text editor instead of 7 installed by default. To me this seems like Xandros did the right thing.

Also, Xandros is debian based. I added a debian repository mirror to Xandros networks and can install most any applications that I need right from their GUI. I use my Xandros system for Java development and crunching oceanographic data. It works great. It's been much more stable and user friendly for me than Mandrake 7 and 8, Redhat 8 and 9 and Gentoo. (Please save your flames, those distros were fine but I had some problems with each, such as stability problems (redhat), or taking up too much time (gentoo))

"When the paying customers slow down on the dowloads the Eval Iso will be posted."

What about the sources? Isnt all software built on GPL source supposed to be released under GPL?
So, where is Xandros GPL source?
I cant seem to find it on their website...
I certainly havent investigated every single commercial product with a basis in OSS, but I would think an OS distribution would want to obey this rule.

Techwiz (IP: ---.tamqfl1.dsl-verizon.net) - Posted on 2004-01-15 07:46:04

>>What about the sources? Isnt all software built on GPL source supposed to be released under GPL?

Under the GPL the sources only need to be made available to the user - i.e. in Xandros's case someone's who bought it.

>>So, where is Xandros GPL source?

Even though they only need to make it available to customers they still post it to the public at
http://www.xandros.com/source_code.html

GPL FAQ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

>So, where is Xandros GPL source?
>I cant seem to find it on their website...


Did you actually look for the sources?

It takes two clicks from the front page to find the info and ftp server address. Click 'Support' at the top and then 'Source Code' on the left.

http://www.xandros.com/source_code.html

> The game developers need to get together and just stop writing games for M$, then people wlll use Linux. We just need one Killer must have game that is Linux ONLY.

First, many developers like DirectX.

Two, nobody will buy a Linux only game. Many Linux people won't buy it since it is not free.

"First, many developers like DirectX.

Two, nobody will buy a Linux only game. Many Linux people won't buy it since it is not free."

That's ludicrous. I buy Windows games, so why won't I buy a Linux game? It's the same money paid for the same experience.

...and it's aim is more commercial that home - for now...
It's not like it comes crammed with games or stuff to impress visually (although I like the esthetics).
I had the opportunity to use it for "work" or rather for job-searching and found it covered 95% of my needs.
1) Résumé creation
2) Email
3) Filling in some web-based forms to apply, some even had the gall to make them in some proprietary way the forced me to us IE, which Xandros fired-up in no time.
4) Chatting with colleagues & friends.
-> all this done without a single crash, and no viruses perturbed the process.
What's more, I have never been a victim of intrusion (thanks to my linux gateway/firewall/masquerade) although I will admit it's possible - has not happened in over 3 years.

So all in all, is Xandros ready to take over the desktop ?
-> a resounding YES !
{except the extreme gamester - and even they should pay M$ in other ways than Windows, for example - get yourself and xbox, ... and even in this dept there are alternatives...

Xandros 1.0 / 2.0 - King of the desktop !

LB

About that "don't say M$, it looks stupid and it immature":

M$ has repeatedly (very much repeatedly) shown that they're a greedy company with no business ethics whatsoever (and constantly acting against the deeper wishes of their customers), and they've been doing that for decades now, so that's enough proof that they're not a particularly lovely company.

And if I want to write M$, then I WILL write M$ (since it reflects nothing but the TRUTH), and nobody will be able to change that, not in the least people making stupid comments about that.

If anything could really be commented on as being immature, then it's M$'s management (you just need to look at that idiot called Ballmer doing his ridiculous monkey dances, or at recent very strange security related announcements or similar events that make you laugh out loud).

IMHO it's people of the type "why, has Microsoft done much wrong?" that need to wake up and smell the coffee, not the "enlightened" people who are knowledgeable about IT development and thus have long since viewed that company as what it actually is: a pain in the a*** and a huge obstacle to proper competition and advances of our IT world.

To sum it up: leave me bloody alone with such comments, since M$ worked very hard to really deserve such naming, as an incredible number of "crimes" against end users shows (kill this DOS version, make that Lotus not work any more, steal that Stac IP, force that Windows version on OEMs, yadda yadda yadda) which turn up once you do some internet search.

No the issue is that you never hear Microsoft writing in there reporst anything like that, they don't put a bit "f-you" somewhere in the name linux,

The reasoning behind that is it give a negative light on the whole opensource. like its all ego and no "respect" right? Microsoft may be an "evil" corporation to you, but being a jerk doesn't help anyone.

Microsoft
Linux

Not Micro$oft, not so much disrespect, but ignorance.

when you say M$, it seem immature and childish, like some kind of L337 hax0r trying to impress his friends.

For hardware support, I'd give xandros a pretty high mark for laptops. Unlike nearly every other distro Xandros has resolved all hardware issues and quite frankly beats XP hands down. A PCMCIA card *Chronos*(NEC USB2.0) would not work at all on any other distro even with max tweaking, but xandros found everything fine, a rollerball usb mouse at the same time as a ps/2 touchpad. I also can't stand KDE (Gnome's my choice) but xandros has made KDE fairly fast. I'm chuffed.

I have been a windows/Microsoft user since the early days of DOS. However, I agree with most others who think that Microsoft is a greedy ruthless company and would like very much to get away from the big M. Also, I have installed several different versions of Red Hat Linux starting way back when it took me two full nights to get the distro fully installed.

My latest experience was with Lindows 4.0. I was very happy and pleased at how easily and effortlessly it installed. I was also happy at how the open office worked since I couldn't get Red Hat 9 to work at all on my laptop. Anyway, after installing Lindows 4.0, I looked on their list of approved hardware and spent $400.00 for an Epson Perfection 3200 USB scanner. After 10 days of phone calls and e-mails, I finally gave up and am back to Win2K. No-one at Lindows could help me with the USB Scanner and neither could an independent consultant. After this experience, I have been more cautious. It is my understanding that Linux also cannot burn DVDs. I understand that burning CDs is possible.

Can anyone tell me if Lindows 4.5 or Xandros 2.0 can run a USB scanner? How about burning DVDs (of course for back-up)? With all the bad luck I have had with Linux, I am still willing to try again if I could be certain that i could use my Epson Scanner or even my HP 4500 Scanner (both are USB).

If i could find written documentation on console commands for the various distros, that would be nice too.

I loved the review. Its this kind of review that will get Windows users to try Linux.

I've only dabbled in Linux, and quickly went scampering back to Win XP. I tried a few different distros and really didn't know what the heck I was doing.

Xandros sounds like a good "baby step" in moving away from Windows into Linux.

I will definitely try the 30 day trial to see for myself.