“Xandros has defined the goal clearly: their product is for all of us. It’s no longer necessary to be a computer enthusiast or a geek in order to run Linux; Xandros has designed it so that anyone can install it and be immediately productive. That was the vision. Let’s set out and discover how far Xandros has gone in making the Linux desktop a reality.” The review by DistroWatch
Review of Xandros Desktop 1.0
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This Asimo may not be Lt. Commander Data, but he is probably the closest thing we’ve got to B9.
Looking at the future with hope…
2c
it got out of that “it has a good installer” stuff.
Why pay the price of XP to get something that only has part of the functionality of XP?
Forget windoze-like distros and make great distros instead. We need commercial quality linux, GUI, hardware support, games and apps far more than the ability to run Office reasonably well under Wine.
‘Less XP and more quality.’
..in Soviet Russia desktop Linux distros review YOU!
OK, back to serious mode: I would really like to see, once, a review of those one-floppy Linux distros. A review/comparison of more of these distros, so that we can really see what these things can do! You know, one of those reviews like what c’t uses to do, with nice big tables with all kinds of comparative data, does it have snoop, does it have FTP, does it have NFS, what platform is it compiled for (386, 486, 586 etc.) etc.
>> I would really like to see a review of those one-floppy Linux distros.
Then why don’t you write one, instead of waisting your energy on posting messages that have nothing to do with the topic discussed?
>>Then why don’t you write one, instead of waisting your energy on posting messages that have nothing to do with the topic discussed?
Or wasting your time posting angry messages?
Because I’m not smart enough to write one! As for my energy, do not worry, I have lots of energy otherwise.
And anyway, who are you to criticize my post, while yours was even more offtopic than mine?
The point is not to fool people into thinking it’s Windows. The point is to provide an easy-to-use desktop Linux system.
If Xandros isn’t commercial-quality Linux that the majority of average computer users would be able to deal with, I don’t know what is. I’ve seen people freak out over Mandrake desktops, for crying out loud. Face the facts, Linux needs to and is getting easier, and Windows is about as easy as it gets (In terms of configuration/setup).
And if you went over to his excellent site
Distrowatch (www.distrowatch.com) you will have access to
all the reviews you could possible want . From the largest
distro to the smallest.
Ok, lets compare:
$AUS650 for the full, NOT THE UPGRADE, of Windows XP from Grace Brothers
$AUS220 for Xandros which includes support for Office 2000 and 97.
So, from the above example, Joe Aussie can look forward to saying $AUS430 by not buying Windows XP.
Why not compare it to an upgrade pricing? because there is no Windows –> Xandros Linux upgrade pricing.
Not really. I thought I was clear when I said I would like a comparative review. There are so many single-disk Linux distros, it makes no sense to write a review of one of them. Something like this: http://www.distrowatch.com/source.php?1
or this:
http://www.distrowatch.com/top.php?1
And when I said “who are you”, it was just a rhetorical form, it wasn’t like I really wanted to know who he was.
I like the review. Exactly what I have been feeling about Xandros.
My only gripe about it is that I cannot get VPN (PPTP); pptp-command working, and not-up-to-date KDE.
I haven’t tried Xandros yet. But I plan to, for one simple reason; it lets you choose where you get your hands dirty.
I don’t mind digging in to get applications installed, running, modified et al. But base system, kernel, and hardware issues I have no interest in. I really -DON’T- care about compiling my own kernel, doing fancy things with drivers, or configuring hardware more than absolutely necessary.
From the sounds of it, Xandros will take care of everything happily if I want it to, and if I want to get my hands dirty in a particular area, then I can do so, and Xandros will continue to take care of the rest. That means I can be stuffing around with existing applications, or building my own, but at the same time be able to install new hardware and have it play nice from the word go.
This is one of the reasons I really like my MacOS X computer; it lets me do the same as well.
My suggestions were that Xandros would sell LITE versions (yeah, everybody has already said that) and, :
1. Develop integrated software, instead of the OS itself… for example, drag and drop CD (or even DVD) burning. Wow!
2. An INTEGRATED ALL-IN-ONE media player, ripper and jukebox, which is a good desktop point on the other 2 main desktops we know. You can use the codecs from MPlayer etc etc. What the heck, real one for linux (a complete one) should have been there a long time ago, and I would have even paid 20 bucks for it. (killer app?)
3. A better desktop with Eye-candy. You should see the ‘eye-candy’ section on their site… laughable. Transparency, and whatever the heck. Make it an option if Xandros needs to be run on slower PCs as well. I suggest moving straight to KDE 3.1 if they can.
4. If they haven’t, I would like GTK apps to look the same as KDE ones
My opinions as an end-user.
I am a happy Xandros user. Its an excellent distribution and well worth the money. There is a mention of fonts in the review. Even though there are not a lot of fonts that come with the system you can easily add all the True Type fonts you wish from your old retired Windows sources. On the Xandros forum you will find a simple howto that describes the steps needed to add the fonts to your system. I used this howto to add ALL the fonts from my old copy of Word Perfect 8 for Windows and all of the fonts used by Crossover from Microsoft Office 2000. I can now see hundreds of available fonts in my copy of Open Office. I have not turned on anti-aliasing as everything looks OK to me.
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=9
(look for the post from Trantor lower down the page)
Part of the reason on why Windows clones are sprouting up is the belief that companies don’t want to spend a lot of money on retraining. Yes they don’t, but they do when they upgrade to each version of Windows in the first place anyway.
I for one is 100% for distributions imitating *good* parts of the Windows UI. Bad parts should *stay* out. But with most of these distributions, it is often the bad parts that gets implemented first 🙂
Besides, the retail price of Windows XP is $200 for Home Edition, and $300 for Pro Edition (which should be compared with Xandros because they are after they same people). That means Xandros retail is $200 less. OEM cost of the other hand, I have no idea. Xandros website have no details on OEM cost, and I haven’t recieve a reply from Xandros for the email I just sent on the cost for a OEM version (didn’t expect them to reply so fast anyway).
“Besides, the retail price of Windows XP is $200 for Home Edition”
True, but you have to realize that most of the people that this distro is targeting already have a version of windows and hence looking at upgrade pricing *is* relevant. Most of Xandros potential customers would be eligible for the $99 upgrade to XP H.E. In other words for those customers the cost to buy Xandros and XP home would be the same. You have to convince these people that Xandros is really a better product for what they want to do with their computer, because most end consumers will not be buying Xandros for being cheaper. That is not to say that greater stability and other *good* things about linux combined with codeweavers can’t sell people on Xandros, but people are not going to flock to Xandros for being cheap!!! In fact unless Xandros can get Codeweavers significantly cheaper than retail I doubt that the OEM pricing is going to be cheaper than windows. OEM that ship enough units can *legally* buy windows licenses for less than $50. In other countries where there are tariffs on windows this might be a different matter, but since Xandros would also be tariffed at the same rate I couldn’t see any savings in other countries unless the local M$ distributors have a higher markup…
At large, there is no point in reviewing them… I wonder how you got that desire in the first place. These floppy-thinggies normally suit a specific task, be it a DSL/ISDN Router or some such thing – you can only fit that much on 1,44 MB…
True, but you have to realize that most of the people that this distro is targeting already have a version of windows and hence looking at upgrade pricing *is* relevant. Most of Xandros potential customers would be eligible for the $99 upgrade to XP H.E.
This is true. And not only that, but if they bought their PC in the last year, they already have XP, so instead $99 for Xandrose vs $200-$300 for XP, it’s $99 for Xandrose to replace the copy of XP they already have. In this case, you’ve got to give them a pretty damn good reason to make the switch, and ‘freedom from Microsoft’ is simply not going to do the trick.
Not only that, but if they’ve bought their computer in the past year (maybe more), then they have a copy of Office XP or MS Works 2002 or higher. And if that’s the case, if they want to run Office, they’ve got to ‘downgrade’ to Office 2000 since Crossover doesn’t support Office XP. In this situation, one of the biggest draws to Xandrose (the inclusion of Crossover) has been rendered completely useless.
i was just about to get excited, until i discovered it uses kde 2.2.2. just like lycoris, it’s behind in that area. and i won’t even consider trying it until it uses kde 3.x. hmm but i can’t really try it without parting with $100, and typical return policies were thought up by nazis. so xandros will be out of the question now.
i’ll pass. hell, i’m happy with xp. i Need office xp, i Need visual studio for the time being and i’ve just upgraded my home PC so i can play a few newer games that had me drooling.
Thank you.
Please stick with XP if it makes you happy. Use the operating system that gets the job done for you. For some like me that is linux. For others it is Mac OS or BeOS. The OS partisan attitudes in the comments of late have been annoying to say the least.
Don’t be suckered in by a blind hatred of Microsoft. If your computer does the things you want then stick with what you have.
I will say that I understand the kde 2.2.2 thing though. My experience has been that kde 3.x is much slower. Have no idea if it even played into their decision or what.
XP sure is stable enough and runs everything I need. Linux is still my hobby OS, or for running Apache. I’m not going for Xandros 1.0; If you can wait, wait for 2.0; there’s likely to be a stripped-down version for less or free (pray and plead!).
One dream that I have is for nettraverse’s win4lin. I would like it to act like wine, i.e. when I open an exe, windows (95/98/me), that would be running in the background(hiddnen) would open the application in an ordinary window, without the windows taskbar or anything; all the windows stuff should be hidden. It should seem as if the windows app is running natively on linux! That would be way-awesome, and means that all win apps except games would run beautifully in linux. I wonder if this is possible, or this is just a dream?
An excellent review. He seemed to think that CXOffice could only run MS Office, actually that isn’t true. Although OpenOffice is a good replacement for MS Office, what about Lotus Notes? Quicken? QuickBooks? IE (i use ie under linux for web development). There are lots of apps CX Office can handle that make it worth the money I think.
Oh, one more comment – I don’t mind them charging for their distro at all, but not giving people a way to evaluate it is a serious problem! I want to recommend Xandros, but can’t do so in good conscience based on only a few reviews. Surely making a Live CD version of it a la SuSE wouldn’t be too hard?
Live CDs are a great way to try out a new distro before you start using it.
I realize that many have had no problems and positive experiences with Xandros. However, this is not the case for everyone, and I would like to share some of my unfortunate experiences here. US$99 is a lot of money for some people, I believe folks should be warned of potential problems before they buy.
* I live in Hong Kong and ordered my copy of Xandros in November. I had to pay US$99 for the product and US$50 for shipping. A couple of days later, Xandros announced free international shipping on its products and continues to offer this today. Naturally, I was annoyed that I was not warned about this at the time of purchase. I have contacted Xandros about this matter but received no reply from them. Obviously, I was too “eager” to try their product.
* On receipt of the product, I tried to install it on my Toshiba Satellite laptop. I have already successfully loaded Redhat, Libranet, Suse and Mandrake on this machine without any issues and with perfect hardware recognition and configuration.
Xandros couldn’t even start the installation routine, it croaked immediately with a kernel panic at the “loading modules” stage.
* I then tried to install it on a Compaq desktop machine in the office. Again, this machine has previously accepted installations of the other Linux distributions mentioned above.
This time, Xandros did install but didn’t recognize the video card (it defaults to vesa) and the sound card (no sound at all).
* On contacting Xandros support, I was told that the sound issue was being worked on and that the video issue needed to wait until XFree 4.3 is released. However, the video card was detected and configured perfectly in the other Linux distributions using the current XFree 4.2.x.
* It is very easy to “lose” something under Xandros Linux. On the Compaq machine above, I have experienced the following:
> Unable to reboot at all because LILO suddenly develops errors (despite no changes made to any configuration)
> Display sometimes fails to come up despite using a simple “vesa” driver.
> Various items of hardware seem to work or not work at random after each reboot (mouse, monitor, video card, floppy drive, for example).
Therefore, I personally have learned the following lessons from my expensive Xandros “experience”:
1) When Xandros releases something, do not rush to try it or buy it, hold off to see if they waive the shipping or drop the price.
2) Don’t expect replies from queries or complaints to Xandros about their business practices.
3) Hardware detection and configuration may not be as good as other Linux distributions currently available.
4) The system may become unstable or un-boot-able at any time for no apparent reason (possibly linked to serious flaws in Xandros’s hardware detection routine, which runs on every boot?)
5) Xandros support is either unable to solve problems or gives erroneous “solutions”.
I expected more from a company that charges so much for its product. And I am sharing all this here as a warning to other potential purchasers – you may be paying simply to “beta test” a so-called “finished” product.
You have been warned…
Fuckin bullshit!
Sure, Linux can break too but accusing Xandros for being in beta stage?! Come on, Xandros simply rocks! It’s super stable!! And anyways, compaq machines are doomed to mess up things!
And about your complaints about the sale after you bought it, WTF ?! Maybe the sale wasn’t planned by the time you ordered it?… And if it was planned , just how many weeks before, should they announce it do you think?
Xandros support has been excellent to me. Quick replys and good friendly tone.
“Fuckin bullshit! … WTF?”
—> it’s a pity you know how to recognize a “good friendly tone” but don’t know how to maintain one yourself.
“Xandros simply rocks! It’s super stable!!”
—> for such a stable OS, may I ask what you had to contact support about?
“compaq machines are doomed to mess up things!”
—> it didn’t mess up Redhat, Mandrake, Libranet, Suse.
“Maybe the sale wasn’t planned by the time you ordered it?”
–> i ordered two days before the sale was announced. I would have no problem with “weeks before”, but a couple of days before and I think a good business would cut some slack, especially since my shipping was half the cost of the product itself.
I live in Spain and suffered the same “problem” with the free international shipping offer (I felt really stupid at that time) Apart from this and as I’ve already said here is OSN, I had no issues at all with Xandros (of course, I’m not saying your remarks are not true) The software ruled as expected from the previous reviews and Xandros support did reply my two e-mail with helpful information.
You can have or not reasons for buying Xandros, I had mines and I bought it. I’m not going to write here my biography but I can tell you people I’m not a newbie in Debian. Prior Xandros, the reasons for not having a 100% linux desktop at home were:
– I own an old IBM ThinkPad were KDE/Gnome “experience” was _terrible_. KDE from Xandros runs as fast as XP GUI on this machine
– I’ve been using Quicken for a long time and I have a huge Quicken file I want ready to use (dual-boot? No thanks) Quicken runs fine on my Xandros
– I don’t use Office at home (don’t really need it) but my girlfriend does. MS Office Spanish ed. runs fine on my Xandros although fonts look smaller than in Windows. Access is not “officially” supported but can do their job for simple database files
– Unable to make my winmodem work, even trying with drivers available at IBM web support. On Xandros my winmodem works fine (and I finally could remove the USRobotics from my desktop)
– “Switch user” feature is a must if you have to share your computer and you already have tasted XP. The reviewer is right: This is an example of something really easy to implement on the GUI but not yet implemented in other distros (as far as I know)
I’m sure there are some other linux distros out there that can work even better than Xandros today, but I’m not very interested in installing/trying all of them and I’m used to Debian; not because I think “is better”, just because I’m used to it.
Xandros is not perfect, of course. It has some problems that need to be fixed:
– I don’t feel the need of KDE 3.x but it’s true 2.x has some bugs Xandros inherit ((icons are not placed where the supposed to be, etc)
– Boot time is slow (mainly because the hardware detection engine running). There should be some *simple* way for disabling that feature after you have all your hardware ready
– Personally don’t like smooth fonts over the desktop (yes on OpenOffice, yes on Mozilla) and comparing Xandros with some RedHat screenshots out there it is clear there are some room for improvement
– Lack of some desktops utilities: A wizard for VPN, a way of enabling/disabling services, etc.
– English-only version. Yes, you can change language settings but parts of Xandros coded by Xandros are only in English, notably File Manager (remember that Xandros works with a modified KDE version). They told me they’re working on that and plan to offer free downloads of the languages packages.
Overall I’m very happy with Xandros and I think they’re doing well as a Company. C’mon, we’re talking about v.1 right now (remember RedHat 5 screenshots), things can only improve!
DB
For pollycat,
1. You should go throught the hardware compatibility list that’s on their site BEFORE buying Xandros, and check whether your hardware is supported and how much (d-uh!)
2. Instead of using e-mail for support, use the forums which are much better, and Xandros employees hang about there a lot.
Cheers.