http://www.osnews.com/story/9848/Review_of_Xandros_3_0_1_OCE Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:00:18 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Oh great after all the useless reviews that are only about the installer but not the OS you're installing, we now get reviews about the download pages where you can get the installers =) Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That review was amazing, one of the best I have ever read on any website. I now am gonna go out and tell everyone I meet in the street to go and buy Xandros
I wish all the reviews were like this Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Great, so the author has written a very thorough three page review and you take offense at him for also mentioning that xandros has a good website.
Wow, now if that isn't valid and well founded criticism what is? Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? sorry, my last sarcastic post needs modded, I am a little dim tonight and did not see the actual review.
I had a look at it and actually was one of the better reviews that have been on this site
nice one Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just wanted to say thank you for the nice review. Very thorough and informative, the way reviews should be. Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? but I imagine a lot of newbies will break the box.

Same like I did with Mepis about a year ago. Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Touching just the right negative and positive points (I believe) connected to Xandros. Good review! Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I installed Xandors OCE and tried it out. My initial observations were that some things don't work as expected. For instance, I tried to install the Mouse Gesture extension in Firefox, and it installed without any error messsges, but did not work when I tried to use it.

Ark was not installed by default and I had to download it from Xandros networks. I think it is a strange decision not to install it by default.

I also tried to compile mplayerplug-in 2.8 after downloading the source but got compilation errors. I have compiled the same source on other distributions. I wonder if other users have also faced similar issues. Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? the reviewer did not talk about how easy it is to set up a samba file share on xandros 3.0 OCE it is even easier than sharing a drive or folder on a windows system. Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Under the internet banner, there is an easy connection wizard for ADSL and dial-up users. DHCP works right from the get-go and I was pleased to see my SMB network and Debian server assessable from the Xandros File Manager. Sharing folders is also an easy task. This is a very network friendly distro." Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? But Xandros 3 just bails on me with error 2000 at random points in the install. I almost hate that it's getting good reviews, because I can't try it! Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I love rhubarb Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Xandros introduces the concept of trialware into Linux. Thanks, but, no thanks. I'll take full functionality with my linux desktop and I'll make sure that the full distribution is fully open source, such as Fedora, Mandrake or even Suse's download version.

You can fool some people, some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Wake me when Xandros opens the source code to their file manager and when they begin to contribute actively and visibly to the upstreams project that they profit from, particularly KDE. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just tried Xandros myself, and it was very slick, providing the absolute best customization of Konqueror I've ever seen. I was also able to get just about any app I wanted running. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't seem to support even rudimentary hardware acceleration for my laptop chipset (I have an HP with an ATI Mobility Radeon M6), so 2D graphics rendering is unbearably slow and jerky, and 3D is out of the question. I tried installing a more recent version of Xorg (from the Ubuntu repositories; I had read that this is workable), and not only did this fail to improve things, but I ended up permanently breaking Firefox in the process. Perhaps I could have improved things had I been able to get at graphics settings; however, Xandros's conf files are non-standard, and no GUI-based X-Windows setup tool is available. While I guess this follows the model of simplicity and everything "just working", it left me wanting for something like Suse's Sax2. (Suse, by the way, is the only distro I've seen that gave me an option to install "experimental" OpenGL acceleration during the initial install, and it worked beautifully). Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nice review. I am getting ready to give it a spin and now I knowwhat to look out for. If it don't work like it should I'll just put XOS 2.5biz on my system.......... Tue, 01 Mar 2005 03:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with others - a nice review. I have now tried each free version of Xandros as it has been released because of all the reasons people rave about it. Ver. 3.0.1 OCE is the FIRST version that cannot recognise my Win Modem, it knows its there but says it does not have a driver. Version 2 found the modem, installed the driver and worked much faster and slicker than any other distro that i have tried with external modems. What's happened here? Do the pay versions work better.

I have ADSL (using a D-Link modem) but have not put a NIC in my Linux box yet. Are there any tricks etc. in getting ADSL configured? Does it require specific modem drivers etc.?

Regards,
Peter Tue, 01 Mar 2005 05:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? After downloading the OCE about a week ago, this is my new distro of choice. Up until then I was using Arch which I downloaded a few month ago after all the hype. Unfortunatly I never really got into it. Too much stuff wasn't working the way it should and I was getting too much strange and annoying behavior. It's not that I couldn't have fixed that stuff had I put my mind to it, but it was more that I felt I shouldn't need to.

Now I'm no Linux newbie. I've worked as a Unix admin for many years. The first linux box I admined was redhat 4.something I've used red hat as personal a desktop since redhat 5 and I've also admined linux workstations for various companies. I've tried just about every major distro there is including most of the 'hardcore' ones. So I know my way around linux.

But sometimes you get tired of hacking config files to try to do something that should be trivial, and just want a distro that works well enough from the start and can be easily configured into what I want. Xandros gives you that. After a simple install, you get a KDE config which I consider superior to all the other default KDE installs I've seen (I prefere KDE to GNOME, but not by much).

There where a few packages that I wanted that wheren't installed by default, but the Xandros Network quickly let me find, download and install much of what I wanted. And the really cool feature with Xandros network is that, although by default it only searches for packages made and distributed by Xandros, after on click in the menu you get access to most of the Debian package collection as well. So far I haven't been able to break my install by using those debian packages.

I know this is aimed att linux newbies, but even if you are an experienced linux user who just wants to have a solid KDE desktop I would recomend you take a look. It makes most things easy, and the hard, obscure things aren't any harder or more obscure here than any othe distro.

That being said, this distro is never going on a server and I still like Gentoo and Slackware for times when I want that controll (or just good old fun hacking). But for the day to day desktop, Xandros is it. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 09:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think the review paints a bit more negative picture of Xandros OCE than really exists.

"however some other icons littering the desktop link to pay services offered by Xandros, which seems to be the real purpose of this release."

I completely disagree.

I also don't understand what problem the reviewer had with adding repositories to XN. The process itself is terribly simple and he isn't clear about what dosen't work.

As far as bringing Trialware to Linux. Xandros is *hardly* the frist Linux distro to include a time limited demo of some optional program, it's been done by various distros for years.

I'm using OCE V3 right now and it certainly dosen't feel crippled to me. Any software I've wanted I've been able to get and install. I can do anything I've ever been able to do in SuSE or Redhat or Mepis or any other distro, only usually easier and faster. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are dozens of servers on the Net where isos are made available to the public. Why didn't Xandros pick a few of them to host their Open Circulation Edition ? Some of us have no use for P2P and don't trust it enough to allow it through our firewall.

Does anyone know if Xandros offers a better day to day experience than Libranet ? Tue, 01 Mar 2005 15:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've noticed that everyone talks about how slick and good the Xandros File Manager is. I can't understand this, compared to GNOME's file manager Nautilus the XFM is (IMO) a boxy, ugly, Windows Explorer Clone.

Also, can anyone explain *why* Xandros is easier than other distributions like Fedora, SUSE or Ubuntu? For me, it only seems like people prefer it because the *useable* edition costs money, and that it uses a lot of Windows concepts, like trial-ware etc. etc. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Also, can anyone explain *why* Xandros is easier than other distributions like Fedora, SUSE or Ubuntu? For me, it only seems like people prefer it because the *useable* edition costs money, and that it uses a lot of Windows concepts, like trial-ware etc. etc.

In what way is OCE not *useable*? I don't understand that statement at all.

And aside from "trial-ware", which as I said before has been around in various Linux distros for about as long as there've been commercial Linux distros, what Windows concepts does Xandros OCE use? Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Forget my statement of the free Open Circulation edition, that it isn't useable. I had obviously not read enough of the review. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 16:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Also, can anyone explain *why* Xandros is easier than other distributions like Fedora, SUSE or Ubuntu?

Sorry, I forgot to answer this. Here's some examples of what makes Xandros easier for me.

It automatically installs Nvidia drivers for 3d acceleration. More distros are doing this now but not all of them. I'm not sure if Fedora does now, but I hosed many Redhat & Mandrake systems trying to get the drivers installed. If I remember right I borked Mepis several times as well. With Xandros I don't even worry about it.

Xandros automatically connects me to my Windows network, nothing to install or configure or bother with. It's there at bootup (one shortcoming; it automatically sets your doman to Workgroup. It should really optionally allow you to provide the domain name yourself. Not a huge deal, everything still works and it's simple to change).

And Xandros is the *only* linux distro that's ever let me print to my HP printer connected to a Windows machine on my network. I'm sure with enough knowledge and effort you can set it up in other distros but I could never get it to work. With Xandros setting up the printer requires a few clicks during the initial setup wizard and it's done.

Xandros has never given given me any any problems with hardware detection. The boxed set of SuSE I bought would alternately fail to recognize my mouse or keyboard at boot up, always one or the other wouldn't work. There are later versions of Mandrake which I couldn't even completely install because my mouse would get stuck moving only up & down.

If you have a Windows partition Xandros automatically recognizes and mounts it. I can read my XP drive without having to hunt down and install an NTFS driver like I always had to do for Redhat. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 17:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >I've noticed that everyone talks about how slick and good >the Xandros File Manager is. I can't understand this, >compared to GNOME's file manager Nautilus the XFM is (IMO) >a boxy, ugly, Windows Explorer Clone.

First of all why to people always think that boxy==bad UI and smooth round shapes==good UI? As to the file manager itself, it is if anything a slick, superior clone of windows explorer. It just does what I want it to do in a way that Nautilus never has. As to whether or not it's prettier than Nautilus, I haven't given it much thought and really can't see a reason to care. It's easier to use and more efficient than Nautilus, and that's good enough for me.

That being said there are a few annoying bugs in certain features of XFM which makes it far from perfect, but for day to day use I find it more efficient than Nautilus.

>For me, it only seems like people prefer it because the >*useable* edition costs money

In what way is the OCE not useable? I've yet to find anything that isn't useable about it or any reason to upgrade to any other edition. As to trialware, the only trialware included is codeweaver and I fail to see why that's a bad thing. It's not like it's the first linux distro to include trial versions of comercial software. Tue, 01 Mar 2005 22:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Aside from some spelling/grammatical issues, one of the best reviews I've seen here. Looking forward to reading your next review. Wed, 02 Mar 2005 00:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Under the internet banner, there is an easy connection wizard for ADSL and dial-up users. DHCP works right from the get-go and I was pleased to see my SMB network and Debian server assessable from the Xandros File Manager. Sharing folders is also an easy task. This is a very network friendly distro."

The author couldn't go in depth on everything. He covered a lot and I thought the bit I quoted above says enough. Wed, 02 Mar 2005 01:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Some like total control, others performance, still others 99% user-friendliness (will start the coffee-machine before they wake).

However, Xandros - a canadian distro - does very well for windows refugees (count myself, dad & 2 sisters), and we are all happy campers.
Sure our needs are not outlandish - but they do vary & all have found their niche.

A few techno notes :
1) XFM is not a revamped Konqueror - it's a from scratch app, initially designed by Corel corp (CLOS 1.x)
2) The more hand-holding, the more sluggishness you will experience, so don't compare to vanilla Debian or other lean&mean distros (mepis, libranet, ...etc) they don't offer all the conveniences.
3) No distro I know can automagically detect, configure and make readily available 100% of the hdw/peripherals on the market (not even windows).
note : I was a windows support tech a few years back).
4) I find a bit lame the : they didn't customize OpenOffice to blend with the theme/gui ... ad nauseum. Who cares ? That much less eye-candy - great, just make it complete and make it work. If OO should be fantastic to look at - let's send aesthetic enhancement ideas to OpenOffice.org.

Feel the power, enjoy the freedom.
Use Linux ! (and Xandros is one that does work pdg).

LB. Wed, 02 Mar 2005 15:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Everyone,

Thanks for your comments. This was my first review and I enjoyed writing it. More to come.

RW

Oh yeah ...

Special Strawberry Rhubarb Dessert

3 cups of sliced fresh or frozen Rhubarb
1 quart Strawberries (mashed)
2 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

Bring to a boil and add 1 cup of sugar, 1/3 cup corn starch, stir until it thickens (about 5 mins) and set aside

Batter (blend the following)

3 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Cut in 1 cup of butter or margarine (I use ¾ cup of marg.)

Beat 2 eggs with
1 tsp vanilla
1½ cups of buttermilk
Add to dry mixture, stir until blended
Put ½ of the batter in a greased 9 x 12 pan. Spread berry mixture in pan. Drop remaining batter on top.

Topping

¾ cup flour
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup melted butter or marg.
Mix until crumbly, spread on top. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Enjoy, Marilyn Hanley Thu, 03 Mar 2005 04:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments