“Xandros Desktop is a beautifully crafted operating system by a staff of meticulous and talented human beings. Had I not experienced one major roadblock during my initial installation, I would doubt that this creation had sprung from human hands. With that said, I will take you further into the highest highs and the melancholy lows of my awkward waltz with Xandros.” Read the article at LinuxLookup.
Xandros Desktop Deluxe 1.0 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I received my copy of Xandros last Friday and have yet to get it succesfully installed. Being as it is based on Debian Woody this is very troubling to me because Debian Woody installs/runs fine on the same machine. I will not take the time to explain my experience in depth, but it is quite “strange” to say the least.
Just my $.02
I also run Xandros and have not had a single problem with it. I’ve installed it on several machines. I would be curious to know what your system is. Try the forum to see if anyone else using similar hardware has had problems like yours.
I entered the experience as curious Mandrake user used to creating separate partitions for my /, /usr, /var, /tmp and /home directories.
Yes, nothing like people who learn partitioning from Mandrake, and make about 10 different partitions for a single user system. It’s really nice to see Xandros has saner defaults, as the terrible Mandrake partitioning has always been a major problem on several systems I deal with at work.
The author is citing the lack of a /usr slice as a bug. Certainly the login issues he experienced were a problem, but there is nothing wrong with the default configuration not separating off /usr as its own slice. These are single user desktop systems, not shell servers with a few hundred users. Yet another thing Mandrake does wrong…
I’ve installed it on 3 desktop computers and a Dell laptop and it installed flawlesly on all. I have never spent so little time in configuring, tweaking, etc. a linux distro as with Xandros. Everything works out of the box — nvidia, acrobat, realplayer, java, flash.
There’s a friendly community growing at forums.xandros.com and by and large everyone seems extremely pleased with the distro.
It just works without any hassle.
When I installed Mandrake 8.2, it didn’t create a seperate /usr partition by default. IIRC the default was just to create root, swap and /home partitions.
I have posted on Xandors Forums and did not ge a response.
ECS K7VTA3-RAID (may be the problem, not a very stable mobo)
Geforce 3 Ti500
Lite-On 48x16x40
SB LIve!
D-Link TX-530
As for a description on what was going on….
At first it seemed to be a unsupported video adapter problem. (Should not be the case since Woody works fine.)
But then after getting it to boot into “safe video” mode (which was quite a task!!) I could not get any sound or internet connection. This was highly irregular due to the fact that ass the above hardware with the exception of the video card was correctly identified and configured.
All this considered, I still lean toward my mobo being the main culpret(sp?). It has been very unstable to date, but I have been running Debian Woody. Debian ran with a few bumps in the road,(nothing I couldn’t fix with a little tinkering) but Xandros has just been a beast!!
I am ready to cut my losses and save my sanity. I just am out of ideas and patience.
As I stated above I have posted on the Xandros Forums but have received NO help, not even one reply!!
Sounds like its a hardware issue….possibly interupts. I would try removing the sound card and reattempt the install. If that fails also remove the NIC and try install again. If one or both works, try putting them in different PCI slots, or consider a higher quality motherboard like Asus or Gigabyte.
Did you file an official support request with Xandros? You do realize that the forums are just users helping each other out. and that the forums are not official support, don’t you? It may be that no other user has had your problem.
So, file an official support request, give it 2 to 3 days, and I think you’ll have an answer. Everyone that has sent an email to support has gotten help, from what I understand.
“ECS K7VTA3-RAID (may be the problem, not a very stable mobo)”
I’m sorry. I’m not at all familiar with that motherboard. I have always avoided the ECS motherboards because so often I have read poor reviews on their products.
“Geforce 3 Ti500”
I’m using a GeForce3 also. Its not a Ti500 but I have not seen a single problem with any GeForce cards that I have tried.
“Lite-On 48x16x40”
Just a standard IDE CD drive, shouldn’t be an issue.
“SB LIve!”
I haven’t used one for a while. Currently I am using an Asus A7V333 with an onboard sound card so I can’t offer any advice on this one.
“D-Link TX-530”
I absolutely despise D-Link cards. I ahve had to use them at work and usually end up yanking them and tossing them in the trash because of all the wierd glitches I see with them in both Linux and XP. If I remember correctly they juggled chips on this model a lot. Maybe someone out there would remember more about these.
My likely culprits would be first the D-Link and then second the motherboard.
Since its easy and cheap to swap out the D-Link try sticking something generic like a cheapo Realtek in there and move it to another PCI slot to see if its the problem.
I agree with the other poster, it sounds like an interupt issue between the sound card and the ethernet card. If it goes away after you yank the ethernet card you may have your culprit. BTW, Xandros will run slow with the ethernet card pulled until you go into the Control Center and turn off networking as it will be looking for the network unsuccessfully.
Sorry I didn’t see your post on the forum or I would have offered help there.
I really want to thank all that posted.
I am beginning to despise that POS ECS. It gives me a lot of trouble. Even with win2000 have been having strange things happen. What’s troubling though is the fact that any other distro (not just Debian Woody) works. Maybe not as well As I would hope due to the crappy mobo, but they work.
Soon I will be moving to a P4 system and of course in turn getting a better mobo and various pieces of hardware.
I believe that this will fix my problems.
BTW, the ECS was a low-cost quick-fix about a month ago. Last itme I go that route.
In the first paragraph the author discovers that this Xandros distribution was ¨…crafted…¨ by ¨…human beings.¨ Indeed…
On the **second** day of his installation attempt, he ¨… applied some Linux knowledge and switched to the command-line interface…¨, so I guess he pressed Ctrl-Alt-Backspace or Ctrl-Alt-F1. Hu-hu, very interesting…
Finally, for the screenshots (none of which can be found in the review) we are referred to another review at the Distrowatch site (but without a link).
Yuuuk!
I have the ECS L7VTA mother board as well as a Nvidia card and SB Live soundcard. Xandros works well for me.
It must have been the D-Link DFE-530TX
Took it out, plugged into onboard LAN and installed and everything is going great. (Well, installed 3 times.)
Thanks everyone for the support!!!
OS News, and Eugenia….you’re the best!
/me with hands clasped, waiving from side to side
How does Xandros compare in speed to other distros? Is it any faster, slower or about the same?
I would say it is on par with other major distros.
Now that I have it installed, I do have to say I love it.