Before I add ‘my’ two cents worth upon the current heap of Xandros reviews, let me introduce myself… rather my Linux self. I am a noobie. Perhaps not such a newbie as a newbie could be since I have been playing with and learning Linux since ‘Corel Linux’ (1999-2000?). Before Corel I’d purchased a copy of a 1998 Turbo Linux in a discount store and was beyond elated to find something to mess with.
Note: This article was written by a simple user who decided to have a journey in the Linux land, not an experienced writer, so please excuse the “themes” used in this article.
Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
However at that time, I knew absolutely nothing. I was a pre-noobie and I could never get that sucker installed. Partition what? What’s all this dialog? Swap what? Ah! Feeling defeated, I flew the surrender flag and went back to Windows. That is until I met Corel Linux. Then things began to happen. I guess you could say she really turned me on. She installed so easily! That jubilation lasted for just a short while after realizing I still knew nothing. But that was my monolithic Linux moment. I could install it. I was IN!
Shortly after and by the Grace of the internet Gods, I discovered high speed cable connection and at the very same time a friend gave me Red Hat 6. An updated Corel was no where to be found…. My new Network connection and my Linux leanings lead me to a Linux nirvana, otherwise known as the magical land of ‘Distrowatch’. In those days :), in the before time, Distrowatch had on the top of its page by default what seemed like a million little Linux distro icons yelling and screaming “Pick me!” and “Try me!” and “Download me a lot!” and “I am the prettiest most handsomest looking icon-thingy so I must be the best, me me me me! Phew! I almost had a heart attack. And I sought many, tried many and made many coasters along the way (if your a noobie a “coaster” is a failure to burn an iso or anything properly to cd, resulting in nada, zilch no boot-a-rama! A Coaster for the drink you make after). And not to yap about any distro for too long here are a few with sound-bites impressions. And please don’t write me about the ones I’ve left out, I’m writing this on the fly. I promise to get to Xandros eventually.
Okay, not necessarily in cronological order…
Red Hat: Was one of my first real Linux experiences. Meaning I got it installed 🙂 Somehow through all the versions from 6 to 9 that I’ve tried have left me wanting. I think 8 was my favorite. After losing Grub which always gave my system agida, and getting 8 setup, it was damn stable and I would find myself getting bored(which isn’t Red Hat’s fault I know). And my noobiness never helped because I still don’t know what half of the package lists really are/do?, I’m just pretty good now at recognizing what I should have installed for this application to work.
ELX: was exciting for me because it was full of stuff! And I didn’t have to install anything. It was the “Candy Store” of Linux distros. I loved the ELX Launch Pad. Yet ELX was also a bit broken, slow and I had more crashes in ELX than any Distro I think. The truth is many Distros just a couple of years ago were crashing all over the place. I practically never see that bomb exploding image any more. Saw it in Xandros though and I’m sure I deserved it. ELX also appeared abandoned, so as with any good noobie adventurer I left that cute Dolphin and…
Libranet: was, fun. Frustrating because I couldn’t get the current then/now release without paying for it. The older “free” download version worked well enough and many reviews attest to Libranets wonder to this day. But because I have not been willing to lay the cash down and because I knew whichever version I had was not the “newest” one I couldn’t take it I tell ya! I just couldn’t…and I’m not sure I like the name Libranet. Sticks on my palate…I did very much like their administrative controls though…
Beehive: heard great things but never got it to install.
Debian: The Debian with all the cds I also could never get it installed back when I was more of a noobie then now. So I gave up. Also there was no KDE for what seemed like forever and I got to know KDE. I was getting to know my way around KDE. Gave up on Debian until “Knoppix” changed my world.
Icepack: always wanted latest version but there was never an iso for the latest one. Left me wanting so I left, I couldn’t take it!
TurboLinux 8: It was okay. Installer looked cool. Different menu layout… other than that, not for me. Not sure why.
Mandrake 8.2-current: Can’t exactly say why but I have never felt comfortable with Mandrake. Installs okay, but always had trouble messing with fstab and other stuff. And I do like to mess with things. If I can’t mess with things, I can’t take it!!!! I like to mess with things! One of the main reasons for leaving WinXP was control and what I had to tweak to get it back. And you’d think after all this Linux time, Mandrake could get a handle on their menu layout. Am I wrong or is it just me??? I like Mandrake, but not enough to stick around.
Now I digress. You see it isn’t just about stability. It’s about color, wallpapers, little tweaks, fast installs, cutting edge wonder and kde-look.org…I’m rambling, but we all noobies and beyond know there is a “thang” happening with Linux. It’s like a revolution and an evolution. Unlike Windows, we are a part of the evolution process and with a little knowledge ‘we’ can change its course or simply sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s a marvel to behold! It’s also a terrible thing because I never seem to settle down to actually use my computer. I’m always installing a new distro or trying to tweak it to the point of breaking it. And then there’s a new release and another and with improvements…I’m such an addict…
Gentoo: I’m too newbie to get it installed. Pisses me off big time! I’ve tried and failed on several occasions. Maybe one day.
Yoper: Fun for a day.
Conectiva: means well. First fell in love with “Crystal” icons with Conectiva. But always felt it was a little broken or something.
Lindows: Where do I begin. When I first heard about lindows it was to be the greatest thing coming. Yeah, windows apps on Linux…skip ahead to some apps using a Lindows tweaked wine… skip ahead to regardless a pretty darn good system over all. It gets things to work other distros don’t. I continually have trouble getting my Digital Camera to work in other distros. Especially in user mode. Lindows plops you in the command chair of root, so the camera just works. Linux permissions can be such a pain. Even after all these years I’m still a bit lost. The CNR package management system works very very well. My biggest problem with Lindows is a picky one. It leaves so much out of the original install that I have to click n run up my ass. And for a tweak like me who re-installs a lot, that is a royal pain. And I’m upset that I bought “win4lin” from lindows and not Netraverse. Take my advice and buy the cd set. Otherwise you will not be able to use win4lin with any other distro. Lindows uses a key embedded into CNR. Aside from that it’s a great Debian distro. Not easily tweaked so who needs that 🙂 And there’s no Kuickshow!
Knoppix: I’ll keep this short. I love Knoppix. It was my first Debian experience after my failure to install the Debian Debian. Has lots of great programs ready to go. No great update tool, but it installs so fast that it doesn’t much matter. Tweaked fstab. Had it set up to be my one and only distro, until…
MEPIS: Sometimes it’s the little things I say again. MEPIS has a sweet and simple install process. With Knoppix you have to enter prompt mode and go text install from there. Not complaining. Once you know the “how to” the install is a breeze. MEPIS though takes it one step further and goes grapical with a nice repair Lilo option. And I mean that is important. And an option to save your files on a re-nstall, invaluable. MEPIS frightens people by being based on Debian unstable and all I can say is it seems pretty darn stable to me. And if it weren’t for Xandros’s file system and my ever changing need for exploration I’d still be using it. And MEPIS has kuickshow! Kuickshow is a tiny picture viewing method that I absolutely addore. Not gonna tell you why 🙂
Xandros: Xandros, Xandros Xandros. Why am I here writing about and ending with Xandros. Why is it special? I don’t think it’s all too special. Codeweavers feels tense. Explorer seems shakey. Can’t access maestro on myswa through Internet Explorer, so wine/weavers is ho hum still. Xandros is sparse in applications as Lindows is. The menu however is nice and clean and simple. The look reminds me of Corel and I feel warm all over. Some of Corel is still visible today. Changing your screen resolution which still can be difficult in other distros, Corel/Xandros has had working for years now. My favorite thing though about Xandros is the file system layout. No tweaking to get it working. All my drives are right there. Windows drives, linux drives all accessible with a click of the mouse. Yesterday I made three coasters trying to burn isos using the Xandros cd burning feature…I did succeed though and shame on me I think my problem was I was clicking too fast!
Okay, but here is why I say Kudos to Xandros. Bear with me. First, no kuickshow. I need kuickshow for my picture viewer. Kuickshow isn’t listed in xandros networks. I decided to tweak Xandros. I changed the apt sources list to:
# Unstable
deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp2.de.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
posted from another Xandros review. I ran: apt-get update from console. Then: apt-get install synaptic
Then ran synaptic and did a system upgrade just too see hee hee. Went through a lot of changes and selected default for most if not all of the prompts. Rebooted and expected it to fail as had Lindows 🙂 But to my surprise I saw my “Cottage” desktop wallpaper and before that the KDE wizard indicating I now had KDE 3.1.5! It doesn’t get much better than this. I opened the console and typed:
apt-get install kuickshow
It gave me the option to install and I did and it did and I installed koffice and here I am with a cutting edge unstable Xandros that allowed me to tweak it. I love that! Lindows wouldn’t allow me to install kuickshow without breaking it. And still being a noobie, if there is another way, I don’t know it.
And I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention tons of things. But Kudos to Xandros for allowing me to upgrade however irresponsible that may be. And after said upgrade, much of our default KDE is back in the menu and Xandros is there as well. The wonderful file system is there… they are coexisting… ehh, as far as I can tell.
Gotta have a sense of humor and as “Distrowatch” says… “Put the fun back into Computing. Use Linux.“
I have nothing but respect for OSnews, but this review was written rather badly (In my opinion, of course.). No offense to the author, but it just doesn’t really fit in with other OSnews articles.
It is an article written by a simple person, not an experienced writer. This is apparent. I believe that such “real life” articles should also be read from time time, even if they don’t read as professional.
A user, no matter if we like the way he writes or if we like his opinions, is also a “customer”. One less such person leaving the Linux market just because he couldn’t be “heard”, means $50 bucks less in the Linux market. Put 1000 such people on the basket and you just lost the Linux market $50,000.
A simple person? Or a person? Even though he is not a professional writer, this article does give a new feel to OSNews. Would I want to read articles like this one all the time (prob not); however it gives a nice mix into all the other articles out there.
This was just plain fun. I like seeing a little variety in web sites. I hope that Xeta Prime keeps writing articles. Xeta is a user just like every else, different experiences and so forth. You might just see somthing that Xeta does that an experienced user might not do in the course of running a particular distro. Who knows, it might just spark an idea. Perhaps it might encourage other people to write articles about their fav distro. Would there be any harm in having every day user having their article published? Articles like the above could also encourage other people to try a different OS’.
Keep writing Xeta Prime
Ive got to agree. Very refreshing/layed back article when compared to the other more technical ones(READ: articles that hurt my head).
@ Author
If you ever have the time, you should check out PClinuxOS.Its a liveCD based on MDK that has all the best apps(including filesharing,big plus for me) and is very easy to install.
I appreciate someone that brings his sense of wonder to the point to try out each single installation of linux that may be found on the market today.
I do really appreciate someone that desires to tweak and find out each single weakness of a distro and then tell it.
That said, what’s the point?
I did really read allthat artichle only to find out that he loves Xandros because he can install kuikshow in it?
Let alone the fact that Gwenview is far better than kuikshow, but did he really have to write all an artichle (that seems focused mainly on somethig other) just to tell us that Xandros is way from being stable, but he has kuikshow on it?
That’s it?
No offense, and kudos to the author for actually writing something and submitting it, but … Eugenia, couldn’t you set up at least _somewhat_ of a standard? I mean, this “review” read like if I’d asked somebody in a casual conversation what his opinion on all the distros he knows is.
Nice and interesting, but not at all professional. Not a bit.
Still thanks for taking the time and writing this, Xeta!
I can’t comment on the professionalism of the article because englisch is not my native language. But it was *really* fun to read. I especially like the part about distro watch.
The title, however, was a little bit misleading. “Distro switches of a newbie” or something similiar might have been a better choice.
Thanks to Eugenia for publishing it.
I think if Xandros Networks requires you to change apt sources to get some stuff, then there is a problem. It can break things. You need to make sure you have pinned certain packages so that they are not overwritten by base packages. Is this done by default.
Xandros is not a distribution for hobbyists who frequently download, install, and uninstall new software. Businesses, especially, should discourge (better, prevent) installation of unauthroized software.
Xandros users are warned that changing sources may cause serious problems with installed official Xandros software and make problem resolution difficult or impossible. There is no discussion of pinning, since that is beyond the scope of the needs of the Xandros market.
FWIW, I’m an experienced Linux users and there’s nothing in the other sources that I want on my desktop.
It makes it look like http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop/ could be really sucessful, provided debian’s release cycle gets sorted out (i.e. there is something fairly stable newer than stable).
The guy needs to lay off the crystal meth. Seriously man, slow down a notch or two. You remind me of my 10 year old nephew who can’t sit still for more than 15 seconds. He’ll come over and beg me to play with my GameCube but he can’t stand to play 1 game for more than 3 minutes before wanting to move on to the next one.
It sounds like you get more joy out of installing Linux than you do actually using it. Maybe getting a Linux distro to install gives you a sense of accomplishment? Well, I guess .. if that’s your thing. But I think there’s more to it than just getting it to successfully install. What are you looking for anyway? I don’t just don’t understand the thrill behind downloading an ISO set, burning it to CD, installing it, then formatting and moving on to the next one without even giving the distro a fair shot. “This is ugly. Screw it. Next!”? Maybe you should be a bit more observant when picking a distro to begin with? Find one that will fit your “needs” and then give it a fair try before giving up on it. If right out of the box it doesn’t act and behave exactly like some other distro that you were previously happy with, then maybe you should start asking yourself why you ever left that previous distro to begin with? Obviously you aren’t learning anything new with all these distros you are trying – so like – what’s the point? “Tried this one, the default wallpaper sucked so I’m not going to use it.”
When is a review not a review…apparently when it’s posted on OSNews these days.
I’d rather have no new articles/reviews than to have this one set a template for what’s to come.
Maybe getting a Linux distro to install gives you a sense of accomplishment? Well, I guess .. if that’s your thing.
Well, that’s the problem with Linux: for noobies, just getting a distro to install can be an accomplishment. As the proud owner of a RedHat workstation which sat dead for 3 months because even the Linux experts in my office, who had advocated for Linux when I wanted something less, couldn’t figure out the problem installing RH (or couldn’t be bothered to), I sympathize with his feelings.
I think the article is great fun to read, and might be healthy reading for other noobies interested in Linux. It certainly gives me a more positive view of Xandros.
Nowhere in this article nor in the title does the author say that this is a review. The title says it all, it is based on his journey through Linux distributions and his opinions about them that has led him to Xandros. Not every article posted on OSNews is a review! If you want hardcore news, go to CNN-Tech or nytimes.com. Check the OSNews Title, “Exploring the Future of Computing”. A lot of us are here to have fun exploring the different options and like to hear other people’s experiences to say “Hey, I relate to that!”
I was in love with Xandros 2.0 for about 5 minutes. Then I felt like I was in a straight jacket. They only support packages that you get from their server and there aren’t many of them. I tried installing from a differnt source and it broke a bunch of stuff. It may have been my fault but I don’t care, I dumped it in a hurry after that. It reminded me of Microsoft for some reason but I’m not sure why.
>Maybe getting a Linux distro to install gives you a sense of accomplishment?
Actually yes. I remember how excited I was when I finally found a Linux distro that actually worked. It was the first release of Caldera Linux, I was much impressed that after many many kernel panics trying to install slackware and other linux versions that I finally had something that installed.
As to the opinion piece (it’s not a review), maybe it’s not very professional but it’s honest and pretty accurately reflects my own trials in finding a Linux distro I could stick with. After several Redhats, SuSEs, Mandrakes and several others I found Xandros 1.0 and then 2.0. After a few flirts with Fedora, and Lycoris I settled back on Xandros and have enjoyed it ever since.
There’s no “One distro to rule them all.” And people will always differ over what the “best” distro is. But I’ve found Xandros meets my needs, (easy install, clean interface, good file management, great integration with my Windows network, easey updates and patches and more) more efficiently and with far fewer headaches than any other distro I’ve tried.
>They only support packages that you get from their server and there aren’t many of them.
Not true, there are hundreds of apps available from the Xandros servers (maybe thousands I’m not going to count them) and you can get the full 10,000 selections from Debian if you want them. Are you expecting Xandros to support all 10,000 apps themsleves? They can only support a limited subset of applications that they’ve tested and verified.
> I tried installing from a differnt source and it broke a bunch of stuff. It may have been my fault but I don’t care,
Probably your own fault. I’ve installed and removed a hell of a lot of applications (from a variety of sources) from my system without breaking a thing.
>Maybe getting a Linux distro to install gives you a sense of accomplishment?
Actually yes. I remember how excited I was when I finally found a Linux distro that actually worked
That’s cool. I just didn’t realize finding a Linux distro that “actually worked” was much of a challenge any more? (I’m not being sarcastic either.) Fedora Core 1 and RedHat 9 seem to me to be every bit as easy to install as Windows XP and even easier than Windows 95/98. (Since with Windows 95/98 you still have to partition outside of the installer.) Mandrake 9.x is also very easy to install.
I remember back when I first started tinkering with Linux (1996) – that compared to MS-DOS, getting Linux installed was definitely rather challenging. A big part of the reason was just learning what files you needed in the first place and then actually finding them. And as far as getting X up and running, well – I can’t accurately gauge exactly how difficult it was back then because I could never get it working.
(Though knowing what I know now, I could probably go back to that computer and get it working now.) It wasn’t until I started messing with RedHat 5.0 that I finally started working with X.
But anyway, my point is I just thought the entire issue of Linux installation was pretty much a thing of the past. (Assuming your hardware is supported. But problematic hardware isn’t the OS’s fault is it? Whether it’s Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, or whatever.) Post installation is another story. I still think there is work to be done to give users that warm, fuzzy feeling “out of the box”.
Most posters here are ‘typical’ linux users IN MY EXPERIENCE. Too serious. Too rude. No sense to humor. It’s unfortunate that OSNews labelled or posted it as a ‘review’ because it is clearly a personal experience and opinion piece. I enjoyed reading and actually read the entire thing. Most ‘reviews’, I just skim over and get bored after three paragraphs.
As a NOOBIE myself, I can totally relate to this article only my experience with linux so far has been nothing but total disappointment. However Xandros Desktop 2 is the closest I have come to actually having a linux dektop that is useable. If I only had the apps that I could use on a daily basis, I’d switch in a heartbeat. Pesonally, I do a hell of lot more than surf the net or type letters on my computer and linux just does not have what I need.
It seems the OSNews staff overlooked the lack of reasonable content in this article _because_ it was written by a self-proclaimed ‘noobie’.
We should remember that a person with limitted experience does not imply they lack a solid foundation for learning, reporting, and sharing their experience in a coherent manner.
Unfortunately this article should have been destined for /dev/null long before it made it to the front page of OSNews.
OSNews moderators can post what they like – and the readers can take their eyes elsewhere.
“Well, that’s the problem with Linux: for noobies, just getting a distro to install can be an accomplishment.”
You bet !
A long time ago I used to suffer when installing a distro when I had to configure X or an winmodem. But I was able to install even gentoo 1.2 eventually. Linmodems.org was my friend
Now I struggle to install almost any distro. I can’t even pass the first steps of the installation procedures because my USB keyboard isn’t configured and I can type nothing with it. Knoppix 3.2 configured it properly. Knoppix 3.3 has problems with it too. Gnoppix 0.6 beta configured it properly. And man, I am talking about Live CDs ! I don’t even risk to install them to the harddrive for fear that they won’t work after that.
I wish all the linux developers used USB mouse and keyboard. 😐
Mandrake, RedHat, PCLinuxOS, MEPIS, ArkLinux, SlackWare, Gentoo, etc. I have tried many ISOs and almost nothing works.
I hope some will hear this and buy some USB keyboards
For those of you who don’t like this review because it doesn’t stroke your Linux the right way:
You’ve missed the point COMPLETELY.
In fact, you missed it SO much, that I’m going to say this again:
YOU’VE MISSED THE POINT COMPLETELY.
Have you forgotten why you STARTED using M$ in the first place? Don’t fool yourself – M$Winblows is awesome for those people who want to just point and click on stuff, and not have to think very hard about the SYSTEM part of “operating system”.
(now, don’t get so ticked off that you don’t finish the rest of my post… hang in there…)
Guys, don’t forget that the main reason Windoze crashes to death all the time is that it is “clicked” to death by people who don’t know any better about maintaining a system. I am an avid Linux user, and I’m somewhat of an “evangelist” when it comes to FOSS as well… but let’s face simple facts:
when you first install Windoze, it *does* work, right out of the box. It doesn’t do MUCH… but what it has, does work. It’s when people start trying to “customize” it that it starts to fall apart.
So why am I writing all this? Because this REVIEW isn’t a review of the SYSTEM of Linux… it’s a review of the EXPERIENCE of Linux. And whether or not you agree with the author’s choices – you must admit, it sure seems as if he had a good time learning how to use Linux.
And THAT, my friends, is the issue. If we ever REALLY want to gain mindshare from the Evil Empire of Redmond, we’re going to HAVE to hit them where it hurts – in the EXPERIENCE department. We, the users and developers of Linux, are going to have to address the issue of the Linux EXPERIENCE – and bring it up to par with M$ or OSX.
That means leaving the “RTFM, you brainless prat!” attitudes at home, and bringing the user experience up to such a high level of usability that people’s response will be to SWITCH, not bitch.
When someone can install Linux, ANY distro of Linux, and think, “Dang, this is easily just as good as XP… and it’s free? and I can put it on as many machines as I want? And it doesn’t get viruses or crash?”, THEN we will have got the point. Until then:
It’s the *EXPERIENCE*, stupid!
Just a thought or two…
>That’s cool. I just didn’t realize finding a Linux distro that “actually worked” was much of a challenge any more? (I’m not being sarcastic either.)
Not these days no. But back then during the linux stoneages, yeah it was.
I find the article a bit odd to have on OSNews, but I guess it’s fun to see something like this once in a while.
In addition to that, I did enjoy it because I have the same phycotic switching habits that the author does. I’ve had 4 different OS installs on the same machine in a day before. I have learned a lot from it though. This is because when one distro does something automatically a way that you like it, you can look and see how it is done (fstab is a great example) And if it doesn’t do something, then going to hunt down the answer will teach you a lot.
In the end I am on slackware. I still will try other stuff once in a while, but I like slack with dropline gnome so much that I don’t even lust over OSX as much anymore. I reccomend that the author gives slack a chance, it is actually very easy to install once you have a little experience, and its VERY easy to tweak. I love to mess with stuff and hack to OS to do exactly as I please, and slack is very simple and for that reason is easy to beat on. Read Eugenia’s articles on it.
After experiencing KDE 3.2 RC-2 with http://slax.linux-live.org , I will never go back. KDE 3.1 looks horribly old and unproffessional to me now.
This article belongs on some teenager’s blog. Something so flippant and dismissive rather lowers the bar for the standard of reviews one might hope for on OSNews.
It’s not a newbie thing, it’s not an anti-linux thing. It just sounds like the sort of stream of conciousness stuff that journalism – in whatever form – just should not be.
this idea that we have an intact, comprehensive journey which concludes is totally erroneous. This is just where the merry-go-round of distros stopped on the day XP (love the initials!) decided to take put this glib article together. And even though XP may be a user just like us – heaven forbid the whole lot of us put up something like this.
As a die hard Microsoft person, converted by “work” from Apple, and that idiot Steve Jobs…God, just let the OS be open…Well anyway, I’m a friend of Xeta, and I think the most intelligent responses have been simply, huh, nice to see an article on someones experiences, instead of just another Techie article.
Those who have the time to rip this article have too much time on their hands.
-Lao Tzu
Why would OSNews post this as a newsworthy post. It has nothing to do with reviewing the O/S, and is a summary of some n00b’s linux adventures.
Dr. Phill has a place for those who need to vent their experiences, perhaps the folks at OSNews that allowed this to go to print as a review, should make an appointment with Dr. Phill also.
cheers – gabbman
Xandros did not install on my system, i had all the rec specs and it hung at configuring hardware, it threw an eppy at my video cards, can’t handle dual display it would seem.
Also trying to get most linux distros to recognise my speedtouch usb adsl modem is a waste of time, of course i could waste hours installing all the files from sf but why should i ? At least with windows you get decent install and detection, when linux can match this then i’ll be back, but not for a few years methinks.
Nice try but nada cigar.
MOD THIS UP!
Oh, wait, this isn’t /….
Well, anyway, the poster hits it on the head. All those complaining about the article not being “professional” – wake the hell up, the editors TOLD YOU it wasn’t “professional”. Can you read?
The article author is an interesting “newbie”. I’d say the term is not quite right for someone like this because he’s obviously too much into computers and installing distros to be considered a “newbie” at PCs – he’s just a newbie at learning Linux.
My take on “desktop Linux” is simple:
1) If you are a “casual PC user” who simply uses your PC to surf the Web, play MP3’s, get your email, and type up the odd Word document, Linux as a desktop is ready now. You don’t install hardware and you rarely install software. So unless something breaks, you’ll never have to see a command line. (You might be confused by some of the menus, but you’ll figure it out if you want to.)
2) If you are a “power user” who isn’t afraid to find out how to do something on your PC – even if it might a bit difficult or “techie” – then Linux as a desktop is ready now for you as well. You might have to poke around to find out how to do something, or even have to drop to the command line once in a while, but you’ll figure it out because that’s the kind of user you are.
3) If you are in between the above two types, i.e., you do look for new hardware and software to install, but you aren’t interested in learning anything about the system or learning how to do something that isn’t obvious, then Linux as a desktop is not ready for YOU. In a year or so, if IBM, HP, Sun and Novell start leaning on hardware manufacturers to start providing timely drivers (and drivers that work with any distro), and if the distros can automate a source install to the point where it is indistinguishable in the average case from a package install, and make both of them as easy to do with a double-click as a Windows install AND as conceptually easy as a Windows install (i.e., you don’t even need to know it’s source or what is going on, e.g., NO compile messages displayed by default – but of course accessible if desired), then this third class of user – who are the majority of users – will be satisfied as well.
And then Linux can get the 20% of the desktop market that Siemens is predicting in the next five years. I believe that is optimistic, but if the above minor problems are resolved over the next year, I believe Linux could get 5% market share in five years, and another ten or more in the next five, and lots more beyond that – as long as it keeps evolving as it has been the last year or two.
I actually found the “review” rather enjoyable reading. For those of us not married to our computers, such an article has relevance. That’s not to degrade those of you who prefer to spend countless hours tweaking, twiddling, and searching for solutions to every problem that arises. Everybody needs a hobby and to those of you whose hobby it is to spend time doing so, GREAT!
I too have spent many frustrating hours attempting install after install with countless distributions of what was heralded as the next, greatest, Linux release. And much like Xeta, I learned from each experience. Although I’m unsure of Xeta’s other computer experience, I have over 25 years experience in the computer industry ranging from IBM 360/30s running COBOL and FORTRAN to the current crop of multi GHz PCs with the latest Microsoft has to offer. That doesn’t make me a Linux PRO.
It also doesn’t mean I prefer to read what can prove to be boring, mundane, technical reports on a subject that really doesn’t interest me. I scroll carefully down the list of articles and reviews and select those I believe to be of interest to me. It’s much the same as being able to change the television channel or turning it off.
OK, my point. If you didn’t find the “review”, or “article”, or whatever you prefer to call it, interesting, why go to the trouble of reading it all, then attempting to ridicule the author? Strange behavior at best, I’d say.
One final note. I did find it amusing that some of you offering your opinion of what a terrible writer he is, seem to have difficulty with grammar, punctuation, and correct sentence structure. Those who live in glass houses,,,,,,
Hi,
How many reviews on XandrOS we can excepte for the mouth of february ???
No one can write some review about NetBSD, OpenBSD,FreeBSD or anything else than XandrOS !!!!
Osnews is paid to produce 34523 XandrOS reviews if not they got some bbaaaddd managers.
Peace.
I have been hanging around here for about a year. I have been playing with Distro’s for a couple of years- mainly installing them and playing with them- not too deep, but surface.
I’ve tried the RedHat’s and the Mandrakes, and the SUSE’s, and the Xandros’s, the Knoppix, Libranet, etc. I dual boot with XP currently and both OS’s see 2 80 gig drives and a 160 gig drive formatted as NTFS.
I am not quite ready to convert to Linux completely YET. I am not swayed by the “Professional” reviews. I actually like the “experience” of hearing from a recent convert. Nowhere in the headlines did this say this was “Just Another Xandros Review”.
Do you all remember where you came from??? I bet many of you were like Xeta at one point. Or did we all forget that????
Folks like Xeta will form a piece of nucleus running away from MS and their follies. Instead of chopping up his experience- maybe we should embrace it.
Maybe we need another site called osnews-for-noobs.com, or osnews-for-pros.com!!!
Chris
The author startd out with Corel Linux; he ended with Xandros; the wheel has turned, and he ended at the point where he started.
I’m a Libranet user; unlike the author, I’m willing to pay for the latest version; he should give it a try.
Knoppix doesn’t have a great update tool? How bad is “apt-get update” exactly?