The newly released Xandros Desktop Linux 4.0 is one of the few remaining for-pay Linux distributions on the consumer market. The Home Edition is available for $40, or $80 for a Premium Edition. What do you get for your hard-earned cash? Let's take a look.
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Member since:2005-11-14
1) You're right. Installing the nvidia drivers is not a point and click process on SUSE Linux or Ubuntu, although it is on SLED 10.
2) Ever since GNOME 2.0 the HIG proposed a solution to this problem. On my menu I have "Epiphany Web Browser", "Gimp Image Editor", etc. I'm not familiar with KDE but I'm sure the menus also have clear entries. This is unlike Mac OS X and Windows by the way, which use names like "Outlook Express" and "Safari".
3) That's a bug in the CrossOffice version you tried. It should create a "Windows Programs" category on your main menu (for GNOME or KDE), which is the same as the "Programs" menu on Windows. This is done on any version of CrossOffice, not just the one in Xandros.
I don't know if the normal CrossOver handles .exe files (installers for example). But if it doesn't it's quite an easy fix that Code Weavers customers should request.
4) Your mom did something very uncommon, I'd say because she was badly trained by a previous environment.
Ubuntu and SUSE are both configured so that when you double click a PDF document from your file manager or web browser the right program is loaded. The idea is that the user doesn't have to know what a PDF is. My mom uses GNU/Linux so she wasn't forced to learn, unlike Windows users that have to go and download extra software from Adobe. So having a Windows background is the problem here.
(as a note, SLED 10 comes with Adobe Acrobat pre-installed already).
5) I think setting up a network is not something the regular mom or aunt would do. Couldn't you help her with that? 
Now, I have to admit I'm partial against Xandros, because I'm not a big fan of proprietary operating systems, specially when it doesn't offer anything appealing against other 100% Free alternatives. That's a problem for all proprietary systems based on GNU, Linux and GNOME or KDE, and to be honest I don't have much faith in the future of these companies.
Member since:
2005-07-04
1) My Aunt's son bought a new Nvidia card for Windows, and she wanted to install the drivers for SUSE. She downloaded them from YaST Online Update (as I told her to do in an email), played around with SaX2 (as I told her in the next email, because, you know, SaX2 makes a whole crapload of sense as opposed to, let's say, "Graphics Configuration"), managed to sort of enable them, X11 would no longer start, so a woman who can barely manage Windows was stuck at a bash prompt....great. These drivers are enabled out of the box last time I checked on Xandros, even on their free download edition. I've never had a problem with this personally, but I'm not a newbie.
2) Some of the software names are just downright retarded, and Xandros has been sensible enough to give them more appropriate names. How is a computer newbie supposed to know what Konqueror, Gimp, Evolution, etc do?
3) Installed a trial version of Crossover Office for my Mom so she could give it a testrun on Ubuntu. Think any of the installed programs would actually show up in the Programs Menu? Nope. A newbie doesn't know how to open a terminal, and launch the program with the correct argument manually. This works almost flawlessly under Xandros.
4) I believe it was Adobe Acrobat Reader that my Mom tried to install on Ubuntu (she didn't realize that XPDF was already installed, probably because it wasn't in the Ubuntu menu for some reason). Was it anywhere in Synaptic....nope. (I think it is actually in Multiverse...however, I somehow doubt a completely newbie would know to cd /etc/apt/ && nano -w sources.lst to fix it, as, if I remember correctly, this option wasn't available in Synaptic in that version of Ubuntu). Plus, the name Multiverse makes no sense in the first place, and people don't know what it is. Believe it or not, something as simple as a weird name can trip up a newbie.
5) Setting up Samba so my Mom could access her files on her old computer was ridiculous. While it was very easy for me to open up the samba config file, read a quick tutorial on a Ubuntu website, and then have it running, expecting a newbie to do that is a long shot, to say the least. Networking is point and click easy with Xandros on the other hand. And with regards to Samba on SUSE, YaST is an absolute joke for setting up Samba. It is easier to edit the config file myself to get it working.
6) My Aunt's soundcard would simply not work on SUSE. With Xandros OCE it did work, but my Aunt wanted Windows back after her troubles, so she never ended up using it.
Things may have improved, as I haven't been using Linux much since I got my Mac, but I know Ubuntu and SUSE didn't last long on my Mom and Aunt's desktops. Xandros is what I would recommend to any newbie interested in Linux that approached me today.