Xandros today announced that Xandros Server 2.0 is the first product to be certified by the Linux Foundation through use of the LSB Distribution Testkit. Xandros engineers worked closely with their Linux Foundation counterparts in perfecting the new, automated testing procedures that will facilitate broad application developer support to Xandros Server 2.0 and all other standards-based Linux operating systems.
step towards cementing linux as a platform, it really means nothing unless other vendors are using it.
Well, it means we have one. Lets get two, then three, etc. LSB is more directly for software developers/ISV’s. Having a common deployment platform is essential for simplifying the development and deployment of Linux software across the varied distributions. Everybody gripes because program XYZ isn’t available for Linux, but they often don’t think of what the vendor has to do to support the various distros. If all major distros would be LSB compliant, users would still have their variety, while allowing vendors to target a common deployment platform.
C’mon Novell, Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc. Let’s get on the LSB train!
“C’mon Novell, Redhat, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc. Let’s get on the LSB train!”
If you had bothered checking all of them are already LSB compliant.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Products
Not that it solves the interoperability problem entirely. There are large holes in the process which will hopefully get fixed over time.
Are all of the Certified, as in, proven that it actually is compliant? If so, then I don’t understand the article referred here. How could Xandros be first? For a distro to “say” they are compliant means nothing. It must be proven. Also, the fact that a distro “can” be compliant, and whether it actually is in practice are two different things. I remember previously when I installed Mandrake[iva] that there was a checkbox for “LSB”. It was off by default. If I checked it a warning was given about certain things not working [I don’t know if this is still true]. So is the default install of these distros LSB compliant, let alone certified?
BTW, I hope the answer is yes!
Thom,
You took the headline directly from the linked article. It was misleading there, and is misleading here. Xandros Server 2.0 is not the first product to be certified under LSB. It’s the first to be certified using the automated test suite. Which is what your blurb states.
A list of all certified distributions is here:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Products
and includes as expected RHEL 5, Suse 10, etc. In fairness to other distributions, please change the headline on your article to something like “Xandros pioneers automated LSB certification”.
Cheers.
Thanks for the clarification. It sounds like the state of LSB certification is much better than I though. I agree that this is an important distinction, and I confess, another reason I should always read the article before I open my mouth! :0
But Xandros is not useable in the markets they are trying to sell to. This is what I found from the first version of Xandros server (Hope they fix a lot of these things in the new version)
I love Xandros server, I think it’s a REALLY great step in the right direction. But the problem I am having with Xandros and other Linux companies is the rush to add the next great feature and the lack of focus on getting the good features you already have to work right.
I spent 2 days last week testing Xandros server version one. It was easy to install, it was very easy to set up a managed community (Which allows you to add multiple servers into a domain like structure and manage them from the new Xandros tool Xmc)
Xmc is really cool, it really helps you manage your servers like the Windows MMC (Actually better then the MMC) I like their approach to service management.
Adding a Xandros business workstation to your Xandros server domain is really easy. And it’s easy to log in with your network user accounts, map file shares. Grab your home directory etc.
Xandros server version on is really good. But I have a list of issues that I ran into that I hope Xandros will address. Some of them are show stoppers which is why I am using OSX server instead of Xandros (Even though Xandros is much lower in cost)
1. Lack of MySQL server support in Xmc. Xmc can manage apache, FTP, SSH, Backup software, File sharing (NFS and SMB) etc. But the one thing that it does not have and also Xandros does not install by default is MySQL.
2. Replication in Managed Communities. When you install Xandros server you feel like you are setting up an NT or Active Directory like set up. When you install the second and 3rd servers It’s like you are adding BDC’s to your domain. But this is not the case at all. The managed community information is only on the first server. So if the primary server goes down your managed community is dead.
3. Windows filesharing replication. Windows file sharing is simple to set up in Xmc. It’s easy to set up what they call in Xmc “Network Users” And it’s simple to go in and also make a “Network” computer account in your managed community and then add a Xandros workstation to the Managed community and log in with a Network User account. The issue is that these account are ONLY on the primary server. So if the primary server ever goes off line you loose access to those users.
Also those users and machines do not get access to other machines in the managed community. User permissions do not extend to the other servers you add. (Like you would get in NT domains or Active Directory)
4. Access to Network user accounts. Not sure what method Xandros is using to store the user accounts that you add into the network users area. It would be great if they used LDAP and Kerberos (Like Apple does with Open Directory and Workgroup manager, which are based on Open Ldap, Kerberos and Samba)
5. Make it more easy to add Windows 2000, XP and Vista machines to the managed community.
6. Boot up speed. Need to improve on that.
7. Making it easy to add a Xandros server to a Windows domain on install. Right now on Xandros server version 1 you can not add a Xandros server to a Windows domain during the install process. It asks you if you want to be the first server in a managed community or a secondary server. It would be cool if there was an option to say “Do you want to add this server to a Windows 2000 – 2003 domain”
8. Make it easy to tell when you have mapped a network directory. As it stands now, when you mount a Samba share from another machine. In Xandros it makes you create a local folder to mount it in and then you can access the share. To the user it just looks like any other folder. Because of this you can’t tell which are normal and which are network shares. Also you can’t tell when the network mount is actually mounted in the folder. When you mount a Samba in the Mac OS it doesn’t require you to make a local folder, it also looks different, they give the mount an icon that looks like you have a network resource attached. Xandros may want to make it so that network shares automatically mount into a area called Network Shares that shows up in the Xandros file manager. Also another issue is that you can not tell the amount of space, space left etc the mounted share has. In Mac OS and Windows you can for Samba shares and Windows shares. (This is an issue in the Xandros desktop OS and not the server)
9. (Thanks BNovak from Xandros fourms for reminding me)
No RAID support. Sad (They do support hardware Raid for some controlers. No software raid at all)
Items 2 – 5 are show stoppers for me. I could sell Xandros to my clients (And I would use it also at my office) if these things worked and you could make a NT domain, Active Directory style layout with Xandros servers and have redundant services. Apple has done this with their Mac Server using the same open source tools available to Xandros.
As it stands now I can’t sell any version of Linux to my customers for file and print services because they don’t have the ability to do this (Besides Novell Open Enterprise server) Be redundant, provide directory services to all OS’s. To integrate that with Samba. The only company to get it right is Apple. If the Apple OS could run on non Mac hardware it would be an easy sell (We will see what happens when Leopard server comes out. It will be the first version to run on Intel processors. ) The reason I keep mentioning Apple, is that the tools they are using are all open source and could be put together the same way on a Linux distro.
My fear is that Xandros will add new features like Xen etc and will not fix the things that are already there. Sad
They need to listen to their customers. Make the server a drop in replacement for Windows or Mac server and trust me you will have a larger market.
(Edit for spelling)
Edited 2007-04-25 21:13
Interesting points ‘Windows Sucks” but some of them are misleading; then again you did say you had only tried it for 2 days!!
re point 2; If the primary goes down the managed community is not “dead”. All other servers/services continue to run as if nothing happened.
re point 4: Yes it does use LDAP
re point 9. Yes hardware RAID is supported.
When I said I tried it for 2 days, those two days were 100% feature test days, were we compared it to Windows 2003 small business and standard servers.
Let me clear up what I mean:
Point 2: If the primary goes down the managed community is not “dead”. All other servers/services continue to run as if nothing happened.
I didn’t say anything happened to the servers or services. The managed community can not be managed with the XMC if the primary server goes down. There is no replication like in AD on Windows, ED on Novell or OD on Apple. Also you lose access to your network user database. AND If the hard drives crash then you totally loose your network user database. š
NOT GOOD.
Point 4: You can not access the LDAP used for the user accounts etc to use it for LDAP authentication for things like Applications, computers etc
Point 9: I said some hardware controlers are supported. “Some” I tried it on 2 Dell Servers and it did not pick up the raid controlers on ether. (Hardware raid)
For small business, software raid is popular and important. A lot of times I will sell SMB servers to customers from Dell, Gateway and Compaq that don’t have hardware raid.
Any other version of Linux, Unix and Windows have it no problem.
The current Xandros server is a good start. But there is a lot of work if they want to get SMB customers like MS does with Windows Small Business server.