Ashley writes: “I originally wrote the gist of this review as a comment on Xandros User Forums. Rather than discuss every single aspect of Xandros, I’ve tried to focus on those aspects that distinguishes Xandros from the competition. I will warn you though, I am a long-term Xandros user and this review explains why I use Xandros and as such is not a balanced review as it focuses on the distribution’s good points.” Read
the full review here.
Review: Why I Use XandrOS 2.0
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Had DVD video, Office, AIM, Firebird, and TrueType fonts going perfectly within an hour (including install time!). Accomplishing this on any other distro I’ve tried has been such a huge pain I never finished it even after hours of messing around. A+ – Xandros will be the first company to get money from me for a Linux distro.
That a website dedicated to the Linux desktop would have a Luna-like interface, eh ?
I must admit that the review was pretty interesting, though.
The current version of Xandros 2.0 doesnt work with DC and AD. There was an apparent misprint in their marketing documentation. I know what your thinking; it did the windows thing in 1.0 and 1.1 but not in 2.0. Xandros is saving that for their business release.
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=3671&postdays=0&postorder…
This is just a heads up:
“Hi everyone.
To make up for our miscommunication and oversight, I will offer anyone who bought the V2 Deluxe product and need Domain and AD authentication support free upgrade to the Business product. All you will need to pay is the S&H charges – US $9.95 to US and Canada.
However, I must emphasize that we had alsolutely zero intention of deceiving anyone. It was a mere oversight that our sales and marketing team did not complete the product comparison matrix with the Business Edition as a third column at this time. They were planning on doing that when the Business Edition is launched.
Contact [email protected] after the Business Edition becomes available. Once again, I apologize for our miscommunication.
Thanks,
Ming”
Xandros is still putting up their typical quality distribution.
PS: I am not smacking the distro, just giving folks a disclaimer.
She complains that linux doesn’t make fast user switching easy? Um, to my knowledge vanilla Gnome 2.4 with X 4.3 vanilla will leave you with options in your Applications Menu for:
nested logins
new logins
So, no major configuration there. I use Arch, it’s not known for ease of use, I didn’t configure fast user switching and I have it.
CD burning, file sharing, etc etc, all stuff we’ve been doing for a while now. Just takes a little work occasionally. I’m not anti-Xandros, but the things she mentioned are pretty basic; and usually easy.
I had a little time to play with this before going on vacation. – Installation is impressive and though I didn’t have a chance to test the CD burning, so long as it works as advertised, it’s nicely integrated into the file manager.
– Fonts in KDE and non-KDE apps are not consistant. If you want to configure the fonts in the Gnome apps, according to Xandros user forums, you have to apt-get the gnome control center or find it in Xandros networks somewhere. Also, user interface fonts for Mozilla, OO, Evolution, etc are too small. According to Xandros forums, their support team is looking into the issue. I’m sure there is a ‘Linux’ way of fixing this but being mainly a Windows user, I have no idea how.
– Default interface is clean, but apps are sparse out of the box. Installation doesn’t ask you to install apps from CD2 – you have to do that in Xandros Networks, and it took me several hours to figure out that if you have a machine with two CD drives, you have to have CD2 in the second drive before it’ll work (have verified this on two different machines.) Otherwise, you get all kinds of strange errors.
– The Xandros File Manager seems to lack a ‘List’ view and suffers from some redraw issues (filenames being cut off) in Small Icons mode, it seems much faster than the default KDE file manager.
– Xandros Networks is not what I thought it would be. I will talk about it in full when I review Xandros 2.0, but suffice it to say that it ends up being little more than a slightly better looking apt-get interface than synaptic. Though I’m sure that’s not necessarily a bad thing as far as Linux users are concerned, having to dick with apt sources in order to get the latest ‘bleeding edge’ software is not exactly what I had in mind when I purchased the distro. I’ve also noticed some annoying quirks when you start playing with apt sources ‘outside the box’ which I will talk about in much more detail later.
– Crossover Office: Unless you’re running the officially supported apps, your odds of getting something to work the easy way are not in your favor. A few apps do work (Forte Agent being one of them), but most of them just die/hang at startup or have severe redraw problems. I have a site bookmarked back at home called Frank’s Corner (or something like that), that shows you how to get some of these apps to work by hacking the wine config file and doing something called DLL overridding (?), but this is not exaclty optimal for somebody who just wants to get things done. Even in the supported apps, things are not always exactly right. Some dialogs and Windows look like they are in 16-bit color mode, the toolbars in IE6 flicker incessantly when you move your mouse around, and fonts don’t seem to look quite right either, even after installing TrueType fonts via the CO interface.
– The RealOne player bug – I noticed it after about an hour of playing with Xandros, and commented on it in a previous Xandros 2.0 article. Ironically, I was blasted by the author of this particular article (who I would guess is probably a shill for Xandros). However, this is not the only problem with plugins that I have found.
– Other assorted issues that I don’t have the time or space to get into here.
Now, don’t get me wrong .. it’s not ALL bad, as this distro does a lot of things right. It’s just not the ‘mother of all distros’ that some people have made it out to be. As far as user-friendly Linux goes, this is probably the best one I’ve seen yet, but defintely not a distro to unleash on your mama.
More to come later …
Re: Chris
As far as Windows network sharing goes, can you do it in other distros by simply right clicking on a folder and sharing it, without having to configure anything beforehand? It’s not the capability that’s important here, but the ease-of use factor.
“That a website dedicated to the Linux desktop would have a Luna-like interface, eh ?
I must admit that the review was pretty interesting, though.”
It is not just dedicated to Linux though. If you read what they are about and look up the different forums, you will find that Windows is also a focus of the site. They in addition to being a Windows and Linux site offer forums on Mac, games, and a couple of other things. It looks like the site just launched though so there isn’t a whole lot on the site.
Where’s the source?
http://support.xandros.com/kb-view.php?topic=9
Like having the abilit to restore items from the trash and playinga music cd from cdrom drive 1 or 2, everything is just so smoothly integrated.
Source appears to be on their ftp server. The link is just broken.
ftp://ftp2.xandros.com/src/
It runs pretty darn smooth, installs in 10 minutes, and everything I’ve tried runs great! Installed K3B (dvd burning;)), support for playing DVD Movies, Frozen-Bubble (muh fav. time waster), etc. All worked great with minimal head scratching (and zero headaches:)) and it’s very polished (despite looking somewhat like it did before – but you don’t notice the subtle differences until you use it.). Highly Recommended!
It’s funny to sit down in front of a linux machine and really feel 100% comfortable without windows. It’s a feel it has to it, and it accompleshes it very well. I mean – for example, Mozilla loads up within a second or two – must be preloaded, so it’s not frustrating that way. Something crosses my mind that I want and there’s XN and I can check out what’s there. I don’t sit there wondering if something’s going to work – it just does. It’s really kind of neat to see in a non-windows (or non-mac for that matter) system.
I don’t try anything extravagant on it – and i’m sure if I did I’d get met with the standard headaches, but if Xandros can continue to grow in this vein then there’s nothing stopping them from being a true competitor in the desktop market.
Well I am happy that you guys like DesktopOS.com. I only just go it online on Friday! It’s going off!~! But yeah not much on there yet, but that will change, everyone is welcome to write reviews and submit them, this was the first one, and there will be many to follow! Plus more…
Now in regards to the review, I really like it, and I agree with that it has to say. I’ll be writing my own reviews soon too… Stay tuned!
Yeah, and please do reviews on community distros too. 90% of home linux users use community distros. Because frankly, these commercial distros are all the same. Where the real meat is at is with the community distros.
I’d rather wait and purchase Xandros that ships with KDE 3.2
I really like Xandros, but I got a feeling the next release will be the best.
It is like waiting until MS has released two service packs before upgrading from win2000 to XP.
Actually, Xandros sports a look ala Wndows 98, rather than Luna. I really think they should change their UI, but CrossOver apps looks better with the default UI. Butt-ugly compared even with KDE 3.2. But totally fixable… (IMHO, LindowsOS looks more uglier… but at least they tried)
Actually, community distros like Mandrake are good for Windows geeks that want to try out Linux, but aren’t good for stuff like Debian or Slackware. I think Xandros would have a better shot at SOHO market – people that couldn’t care less about OS.
No…no…no. The plan isn’t to get home users to use Linux. You have OS X and Windows for them. The plan is to get Linux into the enterprise market, corporations and such.
As it stands today, you’d still have to be a geek, or have a sincere interest in learning a different way of using your computer, to use Linux at home.
Actually, Xandros sports a look ala Wndows 98, rather than Luna. I really think they should change their UI, but CrossOver apps looks better with the default UI. Butt-ugly compared even with KDE 3.2. But totally fixable… (IMHO, LindowsOS looks more uglier… but at least they tried)
Huh? The default Xandros theme is Plastik…which IIRC is the newest default KDE theme also
– Fonts in KDE and non-KDE apps are not consistant. If you want to configure the fonts in the Gnome apps, according to Xandros user forums, you have to apt-get the gnome control center or find it in Xandros networks somewhere. Also, user interface fonts for Mozilla, OO, Evolution, etc are too small. According to Xandros forums, their support team is looking into the issue. I’m sure there is a ‘Linux’ way of fixing this but being mainly a Windows user, I have no idea how.
The settings in the Gnome control center change the fonts in Mozilla, OO, ect. as stated in the thread on the Xandros forums
“Actually, Xandros sports a look ala Wndows 98, rather than Luna.”
If you read the original “It’s Ironic…” post again by Vanieter, you will discover the Luna comment was about the web site desktopos.com where the review came from, not the Xandros Linux distro.
You might be trying to comment on the look of Xandros itself, but don’t use a thread referring to the appearance of the desktopos.com web site to do so please…it gets a bit confusing.
I really like Xandros 2. Keep in mind it’s in the genre of a “real” desktop OS. Mandrake, Suse and many others don’t really compare. I was getting sick of installing applications and typing endlessly to get stuff to work. I bought the Xandros 2 professional and Microsoft Word works really well, everything is integrated into Xandros file manager, it doesn’t have a KDE feel at all. It feels like a desktop should, similar to MacOSX or some kind of “future” version of the way Linux should be. Slick competitors would be Lindows 4.5, and Lycoris and similar distros. The major old timers still don’t have the desktop right. I have tried about 30 distros in my linux time since 1996 and have to say Xandros is great. If you keep apt in the stable tree you can even get the Gnome 2.2 backports which are stable and working. I hated having applicatons crashing and having to edit configuration files and such. Xandros is a great distro out of the box. I installed Gnome and the gdm login manager and now I am sad to say the Default Xandros installation is the best, KDE is not even close (even though its based on KDE). This is why you would pay money for a distro. The only “freedom” distro I would recommend for those poor collage students that kind of comes close is JAMD. But then you still have to edit some files. $89 well spent for a positive experience. I am optimistic at these “desktop” distros, I am sorry to say I have ignored Xandros and the rest (Lycoris, Lindows) for far too long.
This is a good point, font settings (among others) should really be system-wide, not desktop-wide. That’s where XSETTINGS would come useful:
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/xsettings-spec
It’s slowly getting there. I really can’t wait for GNOME 2.6 and Fedora Core 2.
Sorry to say that my experience was very different from the reviewer’s. I used Xandros 1.0 with no problems, but I can’t say the same for 2.0. Rather than detail my personal experience with Xandros 2.0 thus far, let me say that the icons still look homemade, and I wish they had waited for the 2.6 kernel and KDE 3.2 to be released and incorporated them into the distro, although theoretically those can be upgraded in the future. Also a DVD burning program, which I understand is coming, although if I can figure out how to get and install K3B, I may not care. But their biggest miscalculation was releasing just before Christmas, knowing that their tech-support, which is already stretched thin, would be available only for a very limited time in the 2 weeks following release. There must be some sort of tax advantage to doing it when they did. I ordered my copy on December 12; received it Christmas Eve, and by the next morning I had received an auto-generated e-mail from their support department telling me that they would respond within 5 business days. That sounds like it could be the week of January 5th.
I do plan to write a full review of my experience once I have worked with their tech-support personnel to see if the problems I’ve experienced can be corrected.
“- Default interface is clean, but apps are sparse out of the box. Installation doesn’t ask you to install apps from CD2 – you have to do that in Xandros Networks, and it took me several hours to figure out that if you have a machine with two CD drives, you have to have CD2 in the second drive before it’ll work (have verified this on two different machines.) Otherwise, you get all kinds of strange errors. ”
Are you sure you have to have the CD in the secondary drive and not just in that one, you installed from which is in your case always the secondary!?
“- The Xandros File Manager seems to lack a ‘List’ view and suffers from some redraw issues (filenames being cut off) in Small Icons mode, it seems much faster than the default KDE file manager.”
That is no redraw issue, its always like that. I think it was the same way with explorer in Windows 95. So thhey should really change that…
“- Crossover Office: Unless you’re running the officially supported apps, your odds of getting something to work the easy way are not in your favor.”
Which isn’t suprising as Crossover Office (as the name suggests) is *not meant* to ran other apps than the supported ones. Its a tweaked version of wine to especially run office without a problem, which results in other apps not runing.
They are really close but the polish is what is missing. But the rest is great too. Kudos to Xandros anyway.
I ask this not to flame, yet rather because I am curious. Reading this review, I noticed that many of these things that the reviewer liked in Xandros are also present in Mac OS X. So, as someone relatively unfamiliar with other non-Windows operating systems, I ask what other features distinguish Xandros from OS X?
“So, as someone relatively unfamiliar with other non- Windows operating systems, I ask what other features distinguish Xandros from OS X?”
It runs on X86 Hardware
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINUS TORVLAD!!!!!!!!!!!
Hes 34 today!
lol whoops
*Torvald
[i]That a website dedicated to the Linux desktop would have a Luna-like interface, eh ? [i]
You don’t need the IP address to tell afellow Canadian, eh ?
I’ve been sinking considerable time into trying to get a Linux distro to work as my primary desktop. Mostly used Redhat 8, then 9 and then Fedora Core 1 with side trips through Lindows 4, 4.5 and Xandros 1. After too many stability problems with FC 1 (which I otherwise love), I gave X2 a shot and am now ready to settle into at least medium term distro monogamy. The UI is crisp and more stable than anything else I’ve tried. I’m still new to apt pinning but you don’t need to go there unless you want to use X2 in ways you probably shouldn’t. Enabling DVD reading required a quick, though well explained drop to the command line to get libdvdcss (which isn’t even illegal in the country I am in).
Having CrossOver, Win4Lin and the Xandros File Manager makes working with other Windows machines in the house simple but if you need more, getting VMWare to work is almost trivial.
Perfect it ain’t. Applications choices are limited and some of the best Linux apps are Gnome. But, if you want to work rather than tinker (and you don’t work as a developer), then switch to Xandros 2.
It’s not hard – just not absolutely perfect to get going.
Just run over to the k3b website:
http://k3b.sourceforge.net/
And download the debian sarge file for the latest binary version of K3B. There’s a little note saying you need to grab kde from sid, but you don’t. That deb file installs fine – but there’s no links in the menus or desktop.
But that’s easy to fix too – just go into their little menu editor (right click on launch, I think there’s a link to it there, else it’s in system or utilities (sorry – I can’t remember which and I’m in windows atm.). Anyhow, it’s not hard to use at all. Just click on multimedia (where I put it), add a link (I called it ‘K3B CD Burner’), and for the command just type ‘k3b’ and that’s all – it’ll work just fine. Alternately – if you don’t mind Alt F2, then you can just use that and just type k3b and it’s up, lickety split.
When K3B loads up it’ll give you a dialogue with instructions to get the program it uses to burn DVD’s (can’t remember the name, but I found it on XN just fine (with expert mode and unsupported sources enabled anyway, haven’t checked without), and to run it’s K3B setup program. Easy Peasy.
Don’t let me put you off though by sounding cryptic – it’s really not all that complicated at all if you just give it a shot. Heck, it’s not even frustrating:P
Just one thing – when I did it, after running the K3B setup program, it couldn’t detect my cdrecord program. Going into XN and removing/reinstalling it again fixed that. Enough for a frown – but not a deal breaker. As far as burning DVD’s goes it runs great, so no complaints there. With my DSL it took me a whole 5-10 minutes tops.
I just re-read my post, when I said ‘removing/reinstalling it’ I was talking about cdrecord – not k3b itself. Cdrecord is such a tiny program it’s no big deal imho. Anyway, sorry for any confusion:)
what’s long-term mean? i thought Xandros was corel to begin with, and why anyone would want to use that thing is beyond me.
Jason: It is not just dedicated to Linux though. If you read what they are about and look up the different forums, you will find that Windows is also a focus of the site. They in addition to being a Windows and Linux site offer forums on Mac, games, and a couple of other things. It looks like the site just launched though so there isn’t a whole lot on the site.
Which explains the site slogan, “Bringing Linux Desktop Operating System to you,” ehh? Besides, the proper answer would be that the theme is a ready made myPHPnuke theme, Somara-XP.
Anonymous: No…no…no. The plan isn’t to get home users to use Linux. You have OS X and Windows for them. The plan is to get Linux into the enterprise market, corporations and such.
If Xandros thinks the home user market is profitable, who the hell are you to say it is not according to some plan?
Huh? The default Xandros theme is Plastik…which IIRC is the newest default KDE theme also
Oh, I didn’t know that (the screenies still look like their old look). And on KDE’s new default style, I didn’t know that either. Cause in beta 2, it was still Keramik as default. Maybe in CVS, though.
Jason: If you read the original “It’s Ironic…” post again by Vanieter, you will discover the Luna comment was about the web site desktopos.com where the review came from, not the Xandros Linux distro.
I’ve just realized that.
But apparently it took you quite some time to realize too.
lefty1: Rather than detail my personal experience with Xandros 2.0 thus far, let me say that the icons still look homemade, and I wish they had waited for the 2.6 kernel and KDE 3.2 to be released and incorporated them into the distro, although theoretically those can be upgraded in the future.
1. If they are following Xandros tradition, most of the KDE 3.2 is patched into Xandros’ version. KDE 3.2’s main strenght is with Konqueror, but Xandros doesn’t use it – Xandros FM and Mozilla sound familiar to you?
2. Linux 2.6 is far from ready, even though if it just got released. Remember when 2.4 released? Mandrake 7.2 came out, the first time I got hit with a kernel panic. Give 2.6 some time and besides, most of its features would take time to be properly implemented in Xandros so that you would enjoy its benefits.
lefty1: I ordered my copy on December 12; received it Christmas Eve, and by the next morning I had received an auto-generated e-mail from their support department telling me that they would respond within 5 business days. That sounds like it could be the week of January 5th.
Once working for a support company, this is common. The reason is that the support team is streached during the holidays, especially because most of the staff are off, while boxes fly off the store shelves.
Jonathan: Reading this review, I noticed that many of these things that the reviewer liked in Xandros are also present in Mac OS X. So, as someone relatively unfamiliar with other non-Windows operating systems, I ask what other features distinguish Xandros from OS X?
1. Xandros runs on cheap commodity PC hardware, while if you want Mac OS X, you need a Mac (or one of those AmigaOnes, which cost even more).
2. Xandros’ UI is very similar to Windows. OS X UI philosophy itself is very different from Windows, no less the implementation. Take for example, the menubar is on top the screen all the time, while toolbars (normally) get fitted under it, instead of the application window.
That’s the main differences.
Douglas: Perfect it ain’t. Applications choices are limited and some of the best Linux apps are Gnome. But, if you want to work rather than tinker (and you don’t work as a developer), then switch to Xandros 2.
Gee. Compare Kate with GEdit. Which is better? Compare KOffice with GNOME Office. Which is better? Compare Konqueror minus the UI quirks with Nautilus. Which is better? Compare Quanta with whatever GNOME application in the same market. Which is better? I can go on and on. In all the cases I’ve mention, the KDE one is better. And if there is a better app, like OpenOffice.org, it isn’t a GNOME app.
BiggyP: what’s long-term mean? i thought Xandros was corel to begin with, and why anyone would want to use that thing is beyond me.
It’s apparently easy for anyone to get beyond you.
Oh, I didn’t know that (the screenies still look like their old look). And on KDE’s new default style, I didn’t know that either. Cause in beta 2, it was still Keramik as default. Maybe in CVS, though.
It does look pretty much the same overall, but at the same time it looks a whole lot better. You wont be able to tell from screenshots however:( To really see the polish you must have used both 1.x and 2.0 – 2.0 looks a LOT better and much more polished. It’s almost like Windows 98 vs. Windows 2000 – overall it doesn’t look much different at all, but subtle differences (like brighter grays and cleaner icons, for example). In Xandros this is done to a much greater extent, but without changing the overall UI itself. Personally, while I frowned at it at first, it does make sense – windows did it for years and it made it so people who were comfortable with the UI didn’t have to get used to a new one (XP’s was very akward to get used to for a while for me.)
Anyway, just wanted to babble about that.
Good post btw!