Linked by Phil Hall on Thu 5th Dec 2002 00:35 UTC
I'm a long-time Windows user, but for years I've been searching for an intelligent alternative. Macs are actually a great choice, but have you priced them lately? I don't have two grand to spend for another system. I had been reading all the hoopla surrounding Xandros Desktop for a number of months and decided to take the plunge. I had been burned two times previously trying to install other Linux distributions. Their tech support was non-existent. I'm essentially working in a vacuum. When something has gone wrong in the past, I've found that I was on my own. 
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"I think a better option is to run something else.
I have tried several versions of Mandrake, and while the distro is very flashy, it also has always struck me as very buggy as well. I admittedly have not tried Mandrake since version 8."
Well, then you're comparing apples with pears.
Don't compare with Win95/98/me (but with XP home). Don't compare with Mandrake 8.0. Or compare the very beta versions of Xandros (then still Corel Linux..) with those.
Especially if you're going to say that the mandrake tools are buggy. I won't say they aren't, but they have certainly come a long way since 1.5 years (which is very long in linuxland).
I'll stay with my earlier comments: Mandrake is a great linux distro for beginners, I also tried RedHat8.0, not bad but less easy for beginners. SuSE I won't touch until I can download and burn to cd's that I can redistribute.
Xandros is something I would give a try if I could download it for free (I really loved Corellinux, that was the most direct threat to MSWin from the linux grounds ever), but it sounds like it's of to a good start.
And for someone wanting to get away from windows, not wanting to switch to Apple (why get away from the software monopolist to go to a place where you're also locked in in terms of hardware, imho), but not wanting the Full Linux Experience (TM) (that indeed requires quite an effort, just as DOS did, or UNIX, or any real system), Xandros seems like a good place to start.
BTW they apparently really understood 'support', that paragraph impressed me.
Of course, to get help with linux is not so hard, one of the few things I really disagree on in the article, that it sounds like you never got help with the other distros you used before (vacuum you mentioned - weird, I usually found more help on linux forums than on windows forums; but maybe it was your internet connection that wasn't working for you) -- ok, you have to know where to go, but it's not that hard.
BTW to really use MSwindows well, and some of the software on that platform, also requires to go out and search a lot on the web; people make it sound like MSwin is so easy, everything just works, and with linux that's not the case etcetc. Well, it just isn't true. Especially when your hd (C:) gets full, and windows wants more swap, or things like that. Or what settings you have to use to make good audio-cd copies, and that you have to use EAC to rip, and DAO to avoid 2 sec. pauses etcetc.
In many ways the usability of MSWin is very overrated, so I feel that often people are not comparing in a fair way - installing linux may be 'not easy', it is not harder than installing windows, and much faster (all is installed, incl drivers and software). But the windows pc came preinstalled.
People forget that at some point you will want to reinstall that one too.
Anyway, I hope that soon there will be more linux-preinstalled pc's available, with Lycoris/LindowsOS/Xandros/Mandrake etc.