I installed Xandros because I wanted an easy to use Linux distribution for home (I use Gentoo Linux at work. I don’t have broadband Internet access at home so I needed something that wouldn’t a lot of downloading to get going. I purchased the download edition of Xandros Deluxe 2.0 and had no problem downloading (from work) and burning the ISO’s. I’ve been using it for about a week now and I’m fairly happy with it.
If you are a less experienced user you should consider purchasing the boxed version of Xandros. It comes with a 350 page User Guide.
Before we get started here are my system specs :
- AMD Duron 1300mhz
- 512 MB of RAM / 60GB Hard Drive
- ATI Radeon 8500 LE
- 17″ HP Monitor
- USB Mouse / PS2 Keyboard
- Generic cd-r Drive
- Generic dvd Drive
INSTALL
The Xandros install gives you two different install options, simple and advanced.
I chose advanced because I had Windows installed on my machine and didn’t
want to erase it. Overall the install was extremely easy. There were only
two small areas of the install that gave me trouble.
Issue 1 – Disk Partitioning
The first problem I ran into was when I was assigning names to windows partitions.
I manually setup my Linux partitions, but when I tried to assign partition
names to my Windows partitions I was only given the option to format them.
I finally decided that I could just edit the fstab once I got everything
installed. Once I finished installing Xandros I was surprised to find out
that Xandros has recognized and manually mounted my drives for me. The show
up in the file system as C: & D: just like they do in Windows and are mounted
under /disks. Xandros actually has a really nice convention that puts my
windows drives under /disks as “C” and “D”. These disks automatically show
up in the file manager.
Issue 2 – Dual Boot
The other thing I couldn’t find during the install procedure was any way to
setup my machine to dual boot. I figured that I would just have to do this
manually as well. It turns out that Xandros did this for me… Nice! (for
those who are interested, Xandros uses Lilo)
Other than these two issues (or non-issues) the install went just fine and
was very easy. I’ve installed RH 8 & 9 and Fedora Core 1 on this machine and
have had similar results (i.e. no major problems). Since Linux has always installed
very easily on this machine I really can’t comment on how well Xandros deals
with strange hardware configurations.
On a non-technical note I would like to mention that during the install process
Xandros made a specific mention to the fact that it uses the open source desktop
environment KDE. This was a very welcome site showing that Xandros appreciates
the open source community. It’s nice to see that a commerical distribution
recognizes the importance of open source.
What Xandros does well
Xandros does have a few extras that make really nice to work with. Here are
a few things that work really well…
I have a compact flash card that I was able to (with much reading) setup in
Fedora. It connects to my pct through a usb reader. In Xandros when you connect
the usb reader to the pc it automatically mounts the flash card and displays
it in the file manager. For some reason my disk shows up twice, but still
works just fine. I’m able to copy files to/from it just like if it was a
floppy disk. To eject the flash card you just hit the ‘eject’ button in the
file manager.
Crossover Plugin & Office
Crossover office works well. I’m not going to comment much on it since I haven’t
installed many Windows applications yet and this isn’t a Xandros specific
product. The only application I’ve installed is IE 6 and it works fine. It’s
a tad slow, but I am just amazed that it is possible to put IE 6 on Linux.
Windows File Systems
The Xandros file manager allows me to see both my FAT and NTFS Windows partitions.
The NTFS partition is read-only, but I can read/write to the FAT partition.
This was all done automatically and works well.
The control center is the same management tool that comes with KDE. It looks
like Xandros has customized it some. Since I don’t use KDE I can’t say exactly
what Xandros changed, but this tool works very well. I used it to setup my
printer, work group for samba, modem (ppp) connection and edit my screen
resolution.
Printer Setup
I have a HP Deskjet 812C printer that I share on a 200mhz machine that I put E-smith on.
Xandros allowed me to easily connect to the printer and I had it working within
30 seconds.
Samba Sharing
I was VERY easily able to setup and connect to samba shares on my E-smith server. I just set the workgroup and had this up and working within about 30 seconds
as well. I’m sure that sharing would work just as easily with Windows systems.
Xandros has a really easy to use cd-burning tool build into it’s file manager.
Less experienced users will find it very helpful. More advanced users may
still want to install something like k3b, but I still haven’t used k3b even
though I installed it.
Where Xandros disappoints
Despite all the good things about Xandros there are still a few things that
bothered me. Here are some issues I had with Xandros:
No Gnome
The most disappointingly part of Xandros is that there are no Gnome applications
installed by default. Not only are there no Gnome applications installed,
but when you do install one it looks completely different than KDE applications.
They look terrible by default. I sure hope that when UserLinux is
created the allow both Gnome and KDE applications to run instead of limiting
our choices. Xandros should have setup it up so that both KDE and Gnome applications
could run under their desktop.
Not enough Applications
I use a few Linux applications on a regular basic. On every other Linux distribution
that I have installed I have been able to install most of these applications
during the install process. In Xandros I couldn’t install a lot of the applications
without adding an extra source in my sources.list file.
Less experienced Linux users might be happy to find out that Xandros seemed
to pick one of each type of application instead of having a ton of choices
like other distributions do. Experienced users should be able to add additional
applications themselves.
Here are the applications that I use and was able to install through the Xandros
Network, but weren’t installed by default.
- evolution
- bogofilter
- quanta
- gimp
- whois
- nslookup
Here are the applications I use that I couldn’t install in Linux by default:
- synaptic
- gnome-terminal
- gnumeric
- galeon
- gaim – I usually use gaim for instant messaging, but I actually started
using Kopete since it was installed by default. I was very impress with how
well it works. - k3b
In order to be able to add the following like to the “/etc/apt/sources.list” file.
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
After editing my sources.list file and then running apt-get I was able to
install all the programs Xandros didn’t have that I needed. I actually needed
to run ‘gnome-control-center’ to pick a new theme for Gnome applications. The
Xandros Network had an option to use an unsupported Debian repository, but
I figured that if I was going to do something unsupported I would choose my
repository myself.
Manually editing your sources file isn’t supported, but there are ways to
try to make sure you don’t damage your system using a method called pinholing.
LINK HERE
Xandros Network
One of my least favorite parts of Xandros was their “Xandros Network” application.
This is the application you use to download security updates. Every time you
start the program it opens a progress bar that says “Rebuilding software database”.
One major annoyance I had with the program is that I had a really hard time
getting it to use both of my Xandros CD’s as apt sources. Each time I tried
to use both CD’s as sources and tried to update the package database the network
application would give an error after reading the first cd I put in. I finally
placed one cd in my cd drive and another in my dvd drive and was able to get
it to work.
For newer users the Xandros Network application should work fairly well. It
seemed a little clunky to me, but it did work without any problems for me.
More advanced users can install Synaptic if they want to.
Icons
I found the icons installed by default in Xandros to be really ugly. I downloaded
the “Crystal Icon” set from kde-look.com and now I’m happy with them. The
OpenOffice.org icons were actually much better than the default icons and
I really liked these icons. Xandros did a good job there.
Login Screen
The login screen is really ugly as well. I decided to not fix this, but it
is something that should be updated in the future since it shouldn’t take
much to fix and would make the distribution seem nicer.
Overview
Overall I found Xandros to be one of the most user-friendly Linux distributions available. Xandros did a good job narrowing the focus and coming out with something that is actually usable. As a more advanced user I found a few things that annoyed me, but I think that less experienced Linux users will enjoy it.
Xandros should have a 30 day demo coming out sometime soon. If you are short on cash you might want to wait so you can try it before you purchase it. If not you can get the personal edition for $40. The deluxe version costs $99.95, but is being offered for $89.00 for a limited time.
Rating
I would give Xandros a 7/10 as a desktop operating system. I rated it down 1 points because it needs to be a little more polish graphically and 2 points because it completely ignores Gnome applications.
About the Author
Short biography: I graduated from the University of Montana with a B.S. in Computer Science. I enjoy trying out all sorts of operating systems including
any Linux distribution I can get my hands on. After graduating college I started my own web design company in Missoula, Montana. I write database back ends for the websites we build.
Computer Experience: My first computer was a Macintosh LC II. It didn’t do much, but it put a soft spot in my heart from Macs. I was a Macintosh user
until I discovered Linux in 1996. A little while after I found Linux I was hooked and I eventually bought a PC and switched almost entirely to Linux (I use Windows to play games). Since I switched to Linux I have tried just about every version of Linux I could get my hands on. I’ve tried various versions Redhat, Gentoo, E-Smith, IPCop, Debian, Libranet, Suse and Xandros.
Personal Website: http://www.hiddenspiral.net
Xandros doe shave support for GNOME applications, it has all the latest libraries installed and there are quite a number GNOME/GTK+ applications available through Xandros Networks. This isn’t Sun JDS or anything like that, Xandros has not limited your choice they just haven’t included GNOME applications by default because they try as Lindows does to provide only the essential applications and if you want more you can download more through Xandros Networks for free and they will be tightly integrated in your system.
And no GNOME is by all means a plus, new users from my experience only stick with the defauult DE anyway and the ones that venture in another DE, like Redhat’s KDE find that it is not as nicely integrated and supported. They find they have to relearn many of the things they know again, they have regrets that they should have sued the other one when they start sticking to one and become less productive and they are confused by a choice as broad as DE. I would say the same thing if this was a GNOME distribution about KDE.
Xandros Networks is a great application it does more than just update your system, it is like Click N Run in most aspects, just a smaller pool of software at the moment. But most of the applications you need are or will be available, for example I just installed gimp, frozen bubble, pingus, lbreakout, gltron, periodic, tv time, and a few more. Also it only rebuilds the databases at the beginning,a fter that it just updates it, which take sless time.
You should explore this application in more depth.
Again, 2 points for not including GNOME applications?! Rate them for what they have not what they don’t. Rate the KDE applications that are meant to do the job of the GNOME applications. For example Kopete vs Gaim, rate how well it works for waht it has, how well of a job it does. You think computer novices which is mostly Xandros’s target audience will care whether an application is GNOME or KDE, not too much, they will only care that it is better integrated and looks nicer, Xandros has tried to make the desktop seem as integrated adn consistent as possible by not including GNOME applications by default.
But this is no reason to rate it down 2 points. Not when you can install the applications you need with Xandros Networks with just a few clicks. In that case SUSE should get a very low score too, their default install includes hardly if any GNOME applications and it certainly doesn’t include GNOME. But people don’t rate it down for this, why? Because it can easily be remedied, just as in Xandros.
Xandros does not provide a million applications of which 1/5 do the same thing but are reimplemented in a different toolkit, they provide what is most integrated and what works, those who need more will download more. many don’t want a distribution to take 3 GB+ and have menus spanning over 25 entries many without an icon even. Xandros’s menus are clean, all their applications work, and thankfully have icons, unlike some distributions (JDS, SUSE, Mandrake etc. IT IS QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!
You also gave a shallow review in some areas. I would have liked you to touch more on Xandros’s unique features and attention to detail. For example being able to restore files from trash, playing a CD in either drive, resizing NTFS, hyperthreading support, SMP support, AMD64 support, search network utility, server functionality, and more. You also mentioned that Codeweavers’s CrossOver products for Xandros aren’t important for you, but inf act many plugins work only for Windows such as Windows Media, Quicktime, realplayer, Shockwave and over a dozen more supported by CrossOver plugin. These plugins are required for many websites and quite important. In addiition some plugins that do work for Linux natively are so incredibly slow that you can not really use it for anything more than simple cases. Take Macromedia Flash, try to play some of the games on Newgrounds.com, such as Divine Intervention, sound laggs, animation laggs, it’s horrible. Than install Macromedia Flash through CrossOve, it just flies. It also should be mentioned that Xandros does come with many varied commercial products by default such as ATI and Nvidia drivers for X which are automatically configured, Realplayer, Java, Flash, CrossOver Plugin + CrossOver office ($100 alone for these two) and others. It’s one of the few distributions on which I can install Limewire and C++Builder X from Borland without any extra configuration =)
I’m just scratching the surface here, but you really should have looked through it at more depth.
Maybe I wasn’t really clear enough. I’m fine that they didn’t include gnome. That’s a good idea. I was pointing out that when you do install gnome applications they look like crap because no time was taken to make them look like their KDE counterparts.
How is it possible that guys that don’t have a clue about OSes get to post reviews of them on Osnews? I prefere to read one good article a day than 10 bad articles. It’s not the quantity that counts, but the quality! Where do you get these reviewers from? The recycle bin? Like no other site is going to publish what they write, but Osnews does? I’ve read many articles lately on Osnews, and I’ve noticed the reviewers throw around pluses and minuses as many as they like. Maybe someone should tell these people to focus on the real subject while writing. That’s what I think. Am I the only one? Don’t think so…
I agree as well. There is a lot of Mediocre crap going on lately. Although I don’t mind it because its the holiday season, and basically something is better than nothing. Noone is getting paid to do these reviews, they come from the community. As everyone knows some of these users are young or don’t have the conditioning that someone let’s say at CNET would have. I don’t mind it but do find it irritating. But since I have paid nothing to read this site, and it is a great alternative to some of the lamer sites out there I have to say thanks and show my appreciation to this site. But your right a couple of screenshots and babble on the page doesn’t do any good and it might draw some of the more helpful people away from this site. Which would be a shame. But if these writers are going to get experience this way and learn from the feedback and learn what people expect then great, maybe their next review will be better. What the hell do I know though.
I’ll tell you what I know about Xandros 2. It’s amazing, I installed Gnome from apt and it’s fantastic. To sum it up it just works and is worth the money. It’s not all marketing hype, it is really a good system. If you like to fiddle with things then straight debian or Gentoo is for you. If you want to get into linux and have a great experience then Xandros should be considered as an option. There’s a convenient pay for .iso images download that I took advantage of and I am not in Xandros feeling like the “easy” Linux desktop has a future.
Sorry, this was my first review ever. I really should have just called it ‘my impressions’ rather than a review since it wasn’t as complete as it could have been.
As for points I think you are right. Having any sort of point system is pretty arbitrary anyway.
And no, I didn’t come out of the recycle bin, I came out of /dev/null …
Isn’t it amazing what 4 characters will do to the value of a review (“7/10” if you’re wondering.)? The blasted thing has been out for a whole week and a half – how good a review can it be, what were you expecting?! Give it some time for a truly complete review. As for the rating – well, Cory I have some critisizm, but not with the daggers. That rating pertains to the system overall – and being frank, gnome apps looking kinda crap compared to kde ones doesn’t make the os 20% worse – a few more flaws and we’d be down to a 0 on the 10 scale in no time. -2 is good when talking about installing gnome applications (even more of a negative there would be fine), but when placed against all the good things in the system and it’s ease and useability, -2 is just too much, imho. That final number reflects your overall opinion of the OS – and frankly, in the Linux Distros world – a 7/10 roughly equates to “It’s ok for some people, but I’m going to wait for something better.”, and that doesn’t merit shelling out 90 bucks for the thing at all.
As for adding sources to sources.list – I haven’t checked out my sources.list file after doing it (to see if it uses pinholing. I doubt it – but *shrug*), but where you go to have it use xandros unsupported sources there’s also a part where you can add sources of your own – adding the deb stable repository there works fine.
The “No GNOME” section was really strange.
1) Xandros includes the GNOME libraries.
2) As a result of (1), that means that GNOME applications *do* run under the Xandros desktop.
3) UserLinux is completely different, because not only do they pick a default DE (which is fine), but they leave out support for running KDE applications entirely, which Xandros does not do.
4) Xandros didn’t do anything to make KDE and GNOME apps look the same, because (a) Xandros is a KDE-oriented (but not KDE-exclusive!) distribution, and (b) Xandros uses Plastik, and there is no GTK+ equivilent of Plastik.
I think Cory made a lot of good points. I run Xandros 2 now (Xandros 1 before that) and had a lot of the same issues. I am not a Linux newbie, and it took me quite a while to get X2 configured “right” on my system.
Sometimes I get the feeling that Xandros users are little like Mac users with respect to advocacy. Not everything is perfect with Xandros, and, you know what… that’s OK. It’s a great system. It could be better. Flaming people for pointing out issues that could make it better is wrong.
Btw – I thought it was a good review, the only real flaw I found was in those four little characters:P Shesh:P Keep it up man – and don’t worry, these people are ruthless;)
No really, let me tell you what is the problem with the review. Thing is you guys are studying or have already graduated in Computer Science, and you think that qualifies you to write about desktop OSes. That’s why there’s always debate related to your articles. Can you really look at an OS from the JOE-user point of view? NO! Why? Because you got used to always try and see what happends actions. Why don’t you focus on what JOE is interested in? Does he care if the GUI is Kde or Gnome or Window Maker or IceWM? NO! He just wants to be able to read the news on CNN, check e-mail, print some stuff and maybe plug in some digital camera he got for Christmas. Has Xandros taken care of all that for JOE? YES! Oh, almost forgot… maybe JOE wants to use IM to connect to MSN or Yahoo! Does he need 10 IM applications for that? NO! Is the one bundled in Xandros up to the task? YES! Then what is the purpose of your article? The true linux user doesn’t care about what you’ve written cause he uses Fedora or Slackware or some other distro, and JOE is so scared of those minuses that he’ll run right back to windows.
You don’t need a computer science degree to know something looks funny. GNOME apps look funny under Xandros 2, end of story. We know Joe doesn’t care that it’s a GNOME app. All the more reason to make it look better out of the box so Joe doesn’t need to worry about it.
FWIW, Mozilla is a GNOME app. Tell me Joe doesn’t want to use that in Xandros and I’ll start to agree with you.
You know what? Maybe I should write a review on Xandros! I don’t have a degree in computer science. But I know a lot about computers – learned it all by myself. I’ve been a Xandros 2 beta tester. I use Xandros everyday on my computer. Does it has good and bad points? Of course! Like any other OS out there! Do I need Gnome on it? No, because KDE does everything I need! Maybe there should be a review from the true user’s point of view, you know what I mean!? Anyway, why is Gnome that important to some people, KDE is way ahead of it, and you know it!(about to start a war here) Anyway, I’ve spent too much time writing back about this one article…
:::Proud to be living in the birthland of LINUX:::
does JOE read osnews.com? NO!
these reviews arnt for joe, they are for the people who come here and read news about operating systems. joe user reads reviews from wired or whatnot, where a technical review is out of place.
kde is kde, kopete is kopete, CUPS is CUPS, no matter what the distro. i dont want to read a review on CUPS, i want to read a review on X2. his review is done simply detailing his personal experiences while using it as a linux user who is giving it a shot, now considering im a linux user who wants to more know about it, that kind of review is perfect for me.
and as a side note, xandros users, get off your high horse. so he gave it a seven on ten, you would give it higher, so what? eugenia gave fedora an abysmal rating awhile back, fedora is my favorite distro. does that mean she did a crap review? no. that just means issues she ran into, i didnt even consider problems as either i dont use the app, or it would be more of a pain to learn the redhat way of doing things, so i just go commandline. so you love xandros, crossover means alot to you, etc, etc, etc. for him, he thought xandros networks could use some work, he has no need for crossover office, and he finds some gnome apps indespensable. so make your comments, add your experiences to people who want to read them, but dont flame a perfectly good (if not all that objective) review
… except web browsing, unless you’re willing to live with XFM/Konqueror as your web browser. But not even Xandros is willing to make people put up with that.
So yes, you do need GNOME if you want to use Xandros, at least if you want to use Mozilla, and I presume you do as it’s installed and touted as as Xandros’ default web browser. Xandros Networks uses Mozilla under the hood as well, so you doubly need GNOME to use the potentially most prominent and useful applications on the system.
So. GNOME apps look bad on Xandros by default. It would be nice if they didn’t. That’s pretty much the argument Corey was making and he’s right. No need for the religious wars. We all want the same thing here. 😉
the only kde/gnome war is in the eyes of zealots 😉
kde has a technically superior toolkit, but a god awful ui. gtk is in c, which isnt the most advanced language in the world, but when it comes to interface design and overall HIGification, they beat kde into the ground with an ugly stick.
the only reason to use one and not the other is personal preference.
I received my boxed version today from Xandros. I will install it tonight and get the review ready as soon as I can.
I guess you’re happy with what you’ve read today about Xandros, aren’t you?! Now you know everything there is to know about it… that’s a relief! If someone asks you… just tell them that Xandros 2 is a 7 out of 10!
:::PROUD TO BE LIVING IN THE BIRTHLAND OF LINUS TORVALDS:::
i dont know everything there is to know about xandros 2, but i have a very good impression of it.
based on this review (and others) i would recommend it for a user friendly distro over lindows. the fact that its debian based tells me alot about it right off, but if i went debian based it would be libranet all the way, i wouldnt shell out the money to have a specific set of apps preconfigured for me, on the other hand i would definately recommend it for others.
xandros networks seems to sorta click-‘n-run style, which is alwas just a dumbed down synaptic. i really like what i read about the wine integration into the shell, and is something i will most likely look into. the installer sounds user friendly, especially with the option to add the sarge repository, it gives the user a real easy way to access far more apps with no extra hassle, a definate plus.
do i know xandros? no. ive never used it. but after reading reviews, i have a general idea of it.
I see the GNOME propoganda machine is having its desired effect. Next you’ll think that OpenOffice is a GNOME app because its in “Gnome Office”
Seriously, though, Mozilla is an XUL app, not a GNOME app. Epiphany and Galeon are GNOME apps!
You’re wrong. XUL is implemented on top of a lower-level UI library on all systems. On Xandros, Mozilla has been compiled to use GDK/GTK for this purpose. If you look at the dependencies of Xandros/Debian’s mozilla-browser package, lo and behold, you’ll see libgtk2 and libglib.
For end users the only sane way to configure GDK/GTK apps is through GNOME configuration programs. Namely, the font settings for Mozilla’s windows and menus are most easily controlled via the gnome-control-center applet.
So for the purposes of this discussion (at least at a very high level), Mozilla is indeed a GNOME app.
It was a good review. Don’t worry about the negative comments, some people will hate you forever because you dissed their sacred cow. But all you were doing was giving your first impressions of a brand new distro. And from that viewpoint it was a perfectly acceptable review.
And you are as well qualified to post a review as any other user.
B. Smith
Mozilla only uses Pango for font rendering. That barely makes it a GTK+ app. And since Mozilla does not depend on *any* GNOME libraries, there is no way you can call it a GNOME app! Besides, this discussion is about GNOME apps looking “weird” besides Xandros’s KDE apps. No amount of integrating GNOME and KDE would make Mozilla look any different, because it’s not a GNOME app!
While Mozilla is not a GNOME application, when compiled against gtk2, it does look like a gtk application and looks better integrated on GNOME than on KDE.
tudy
How is it possible that guys that don’t have a clue about OSes get to post reviews of them on Osnews?
In this particular case, the Xandros desktop (AFAIK) was made for people who don’t know a lot about the OS, so the last thing I want is to read a review of Xandros written by a Linux kernel hacker. Even though the review was short, I think he hit the major points: the good stuff – installation, windows network sharing, etc. and the bad stuff – non KDE apps look shitty out of the box, Xandros Networks is ass (at least I’m not the only one who noticed the issue with trying to install apt sources from the CDs, but there are other problems as well), icons are butt ugly, etc. The only thing missing is a discussion of how bad Crossover Office handls ‘non-supported’ Windows apps without a lot of tweaking being done.
Of course, maybe the review wasn’t entirely accurate in some places, such as the bad looking non-KDE apps could probably be fixed if you apt-get the Gnome control center, but people like me who have an interest in Xandros really don’t care to know that. It’s broken out of the box when it shouldn’t be, so let’s move on – kthnx.
Anonymous
and being frank, gnome apps looking kinda crap compared to kde ones doesn’t make the os 20% worse
I have to disagree with this. When you go into the control panel and configure your fonts, and the fonts don’t change in your web browser OR your office suite (and even your email program if you download Evolution), that is a HUGE usability issue, especially since the UI fonts don’t look right to begin with. If the fonts had been configured to look like the KDE fonts out of the box, this might have been forgivable. But the fact that the apps look different AND Xandros didn’t include the Gnome control center by default so you can configure them is where the 20% hit comes in. Of course, you can’t really include the Gnome control center with this distro without breaking the continuity of the rest of the package, which just goes to show you that continuity/integration in Linux works about as far as the DE level, and then it just falls apart.
If you want to argue on the level of semantics, ok, Mozilla is not a GNOME app. Whatever! I’ve already spent two days chasing this down, so arguing about this is just a further waste of time to me.
I think I may not have stated the goal clearly enough. The menu and titlebar fonts used for GTK+ apps (including for purposes of this discussion, Mozilla, please never mind the semantics for a moment) look bad by default. I cannot find a sane way to configure the menu and titlebar fonts used by GTK+ apps in Xandros 2 without using the gnome-font-properties application. If you know of a different way, please share it.
“Xandros Networks uses Mozilla under the hood as well, so you doubly need GNOME to use the potentially most prominent and useful applications on the system.”
It did so in 1.0 (not under the hood really..) but now its based on Konquerors KHTML engine.
Oh, wow, didn’t know that about new XN/KDE, thanks!
Mozilla only uses GTK+2 sparingly, and even in epiphany the rendering engine uses it’s own widgets in the rendering window 9/10ths of the time.
Calling Mozilla a GNOME app is no more truthful then calling it a XFCE or ROX-Desktop app.
It’s a GTK+2 app? Yes. A GNOME app? No. That’s like calling Opera a KDE app.
The fact is that I cannot configure the menu and titlebar fonts in Mozilla without using gnome-font-properties. If you can find a better solution for me, that would be useful. Otherwise, it’s just semantics.
The fact is that I cannot configure the menu and titlebar fonts in Mozilla without using gnome-font-properties.
I think it would be more correct to say:
“The fact is that I cannot configure the user interface fonts in non-KDE apps without using gnome-font-properties.”
Even still, the fact that people are argueing semantics with you probably means that they are trying to avoid the main issue, and that issue is that you can’t configure fonts in non-KDE apps with the default Xandros install, even though they ship two such apps as the default web browser, email program, and office suite.
Installing Xandros 2.0 in VMWare. It looks pretty nice and polished. Was in for a surprise when VMWare Tools couldn’t find GCC to compile its kernel modules with. I didn’t understand since I had selected “C/C++ Development Tools” in the installer. But I was able to install GCC from Xandros Networks.
I think Xandros has a nice distro if you take it for what it is: a Windows replacement for Windows users. In that view, it works pretty much how it’s supposed to. For what one might call “serious” Linux users, it falls a little short. Though DE developers can probably learn a thing or two from some of the nicer, finer points of Xandros.
I was not arguing semantics. Let me paraphrase:
crism: Mozilla is a GNOME app.
me: But it doesn’t link to any GNOME libraries…
crism: Semantics!
If you’re going to argue that Xandros should have included a way to change the Mozilla font from KDE, then just say that, instead of making a horribly indirect argument by trying to connect Mozilla to GNOME via font configruation!
Anyway, that aside:
Its easy to change the font of gtk apps without using GNOME. There is a program “gtk-theme-switch” that will manage fonts and themes for GTK1 and GTK2 apps. Start up “switch” (for gtk 1.x) and “switch2” (for gtk 2.x). Click the little plus icon to expand the dialog. Click “Use Font” and hit the “Browse” button to select your font. Hit apply.
gtk-theme-switch is in the Debian repository, so getting it on Xandros should be a simple matter of “apt-get install gtk-theme-switch” or the Synaptic equivilent.
Oh, good, I got gcc installed from Xandros networks, but then vmware tools complains that linux kernel headers aren’t installed. I go into /usr/src and they have the kernel source bzipped up. That’s at least a little kind… but they should have just left /usr/src/linux there. I had to symlink it, no big deal… but then other problems. Nicely enough, that’s a bare kernel source, so I had to build it too, which takes awhile. Considering Xandros doesn’t build different kernels for different computers, they could have at least left the kernel tree in builded form for me. But eh, I guess that’s asking too much (I don’t even think Redhat is that kind).
Nonetheless, I reran vmware’s config and it complained my kernel was “2.4.22-x1” while my source was for “2.4.22”. What the hell is the “x1” appendix? Beats me. I know it’ll taint my kernel, but I decide this is purely cosmetic and I just modify /usr/src/linux/include/linux/version.h to say the kernel is 2.4.22-x1. The module loads with warnings, and now the toolbox works.
How whacky…
I hear the responses already–VMWare isn’t supported by Xandros! Yea, but I assume module compilation isn’t, either?
Just wanted to state that I used Xandros 1.0 it was one of the best at the time but when it takes a year for updates thats just too long with Linux distros. Another is the lack of communications from Xandros I have settled on Lindows for the good response from the corp offices and the forum is great very nice people there. Also Lindows has Gaim and is polished and I look to have an updated OS in March/April and I don’t have to pay for the upgrade to Lindows 5.0 which is great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People complain about a year between “updates”. That’s not true. There are usually updates at least every couple of days. If you’re talking about a new version of the distro, then you’re probably right. But hmmmm…. WinXP came out in what… 2000? And the next version is slated for 2005/6 now. Give it a rest. So what if they don’t add your new favorite app. Install it yourself and quit complaining.
Thanks, but switch2 has absolutely no effect whatsoever on Mozilla menu and titlebar fonts. Only by messing around in gnome-font-properties am I able to effect that. Shrug.
“It was a good review. Don’t worry about the negative comments, some people will hate you forever because you dissed their sacred cow. But all you were doing was giving your first impressions of a brand new distro. And from that viewpoint it was a perfectly acceptable review.
Than call it a first impressions.
How does one change gnome fonts for other kde distros like Lindows, Lycoris etc?
Do they have menu tools for changing fonts to mozilla and openoffice?
I agree that this is problematic from a usability problem.
The fact is that I cannot configure the menu and titlebar fonts in Mozilla without using gnome-font-properties. If you can find a better solution for me, that would be useful. Otherwise, it’s just semantics.
ROX-Session will do it.
XFCE 4’s settings will do it.
editing your .gtkrc-2 file will do it.
As someone else said, gtk-theme-switch will do it. (click on the ‘+’ on the right side of the dialog to get the font settings)
Considering KDE will make a gtkrc file for the theme colors, you’d think it could make one for the fonts, but…
Anyway, there are multiple ways to set the fonts in GTK+2 apps.
Also, there is a metatheme called GtkQt on kdelook.org that’ll grab fonts and try to match your KDE theme.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6954
I use ‘gnome-control-center’ to change Gnome themes in Xandros.
Before we get all wet about how Xandros is biased consider this: My experience with distros that focus on one DE is that GNOME-based distros always leave out KDE completely … including redhat with its default personal workstation install. No KDE-based distro has done that. And its not because GNOME is better than KDE but rather it reflects a holier-than-thou attitude of GNOME supporters. KDE is a much more mature DE and is complete. Themes/Styles are much easily done. Also, with each version upgrade of GNOME, all configuration tools seem to start dancing to a new tune! KDE has evolved gradually and no wonder most commercially successful distros are rooting on KDE rather than GNOME!
Having said that, GNOME has more applications that are useful and complete. So in the end, we should cut the crap about KDE v/s GNOME and look for integration of look and feel so GNOME apps look as good as the KDE DE. However, as rightly pointed out by a few commentators here, Sun JDS et al remove all traces of KDE and their users are the biggest losers!
To even out this comment, here is a list of apps I have downloaded and installed on Xandros without any issues — and if you get gnome 2.4 config tools from debian repositories (apt-get.org) you can get the same look and feel across all applications. The moot point is that with Xandros you *can* do it! Okay … here’s my list of must haves:
1. Evolution
2. Mozilla Firebird
3. K3b
4. Quanta+
5. GIMP
6. Digikam
7. Konqueror (file manager *and* web browser)
8. Kopete / GAIM (both are equally competent)
9. Mplayer (for quicktime)
10. Xine (for DVD’s)
My $ .02
I also think that Mozilla, by default, looks a little weird in Xandros. There are two choices I see:
– make Mozilla use the kde theme
– make Konqueror/Xandros File Manager better
I personally hope they chose the second route. I’ve owned a G5 for a month now, and I have been greatly impressed by Safari. I think it’s a much better browser than Mozilla/Firebird/Camino are. If they can make Konqueror as good as Safari (which shouldn’t be that hard since they use the same rendering engine), it’d be great. I sorely miss Safari whenever I use x86 hardware. Konqueror, last time I used it as a browser (back in hmm.. 3.0?), wasn’t there yet.
I have downloaded a copy of Xandros to try it out, and I was very very impressed. I am a Linux user for 2 years now, always on the Red Hat side, and I am satisfied. But this is amazing: Xandros installed in a breeze, configuring *everything*, and leaving me in a polished and clean environment.
I am a huge Gnome fan, but I don’t really care using KDE, if there’s a project behind it.
In this case the choice is made to have a unified desktop with unique features (such as the “switch user” button: my sister comes out every 10 minutes complaining she needs internet. In fedora I have to go to another tty and starting another X; here it’s just a 2 click process).
I think this is the way to go in home and business distributions: I really don’t mind paying 90 bucks, if the product’s good as this. And we shall not forget that there’s the license for Crossover!
Obviously I have erased xandros from my system, but if I have to suggest a distro to a Joe user, I would definitely take this.
Here’s my two cents.
@dale
Lindows sucks, it’s heavy bloated, and if you’d like
to install apps via apt-get, you’ll completely break the
CNR Warehouse! Also, it’s way too commercial, and Xandros
has one of the best (if not the best) support community,
avialable at forums.xandros.com!
Many good thoughts made it into Xandros 2.0 also.
X2 is “colored” enough, if you want a Fisherprice GUI,
then life with your Lindows and you’ll be alright.
Lindows is bloated? That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that! LOL (at you, not with you) Lindows has less “bloat” than practically any distro as it hardly comes with anything….
A colourful theme is NOT bloat.
And just to een it up, if you start apt-getting stuff on xandros you’ll break it too.
You can safely use apt-get on either system, but you first better read up on pinning your priority for apt-get so you don’t break system packages.
If you’re going to troll, at least try to troll well. That was a pretty sorry attempt.
BTW, lindows is based on xandros. I LOVE xandros, but it annoys me when people say silly things that are untrue.
Lindows, as you say isin’t bloated, infact it includes as little as possible to get you to a desktop, pretty much like Windows.
BTW, Lindows isin’t based on Xandros, Xandros is based on Corel Linux, Lindows is based on Caldera.
Gotta say this was a pretty nice review though, although it was really more of a first impressions article, it pushed me over the edge so I ordered a copy of Standard edition
Already have a licence to Xover office.
actually, it’s more correct to say that lindows is based on xandros. Corel linux did not exist when lindows was developed. xandros had already bought the code, started customizing it, and partnering with Codeweavers. Sure, Corel is the original base of both projects, but xandros OWNS all original Corel linux code.
xandros is lindows’ daddy, where Corel Linux would be like the grandfather….
So, lindows is based on xandros, which is based on corel.
It goes like this:
corel >> xandros >> lindows
Not like this:
corel >> xandros
corel >> lindows
Maybe I’m just being picky….but I agree with anyway that the review was a good little read. I was one of the beta testers for xandros, so I’m quite familiar with the product. IMO, it’s the best distro going for non-geek desktop use.
Lindows is based on Caldera.
Where did you get that information? That is totally false!
Lindows is very much based on Xandros, which is based on Corel, which is based on Debian………so on and so forth.
wow…didn’t notice he said that….
he must have it confused with lycoris, because lycoris is the only current distro based on caldera.
Thank you for your impressions, Cory. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us, and I wish more people would read it in that spirit.
If your last time trying Konqueror was 3.0, you should give it a spin when 3.2 comes out. Konqueror has improved *immensely* since then. It should be on a par with Safari, since many of Apple’s improvements to KHTML were merged in 3.2. I don’t think it’s quite equal to Mozilla yet, because there are a few sites that still don’t work properly, but its getting close.
I’m running Xandros 2 and prepping my own review for OSNEWS as we speak, I want to get deeper into a distro for “My” needs, not Linux in general,
So far Xandros 2 has been impressing me every step of the way
Hey people wake up!!!
I tried XandrOS, and must say…. no words to describe how far Linux have come, , , BEACAUSE since the first time I used Micro$oft OS was a VMWARE as a service on a Slackware box, I have not alllllot of experiance with windows, or with the “look and feal” that atracts people to “Firendly distro’sss”.
So I am NOT a windows veteran, But as a linux user, who enjoyed basically all known distro’s, from RedHat, Fedora,Debian, Slackware,SuSE,FreeBSD,etc.. which I got all for free…., I must say that trying Xandros put a smile on my face because its a straight forward OPERATING SYSTEM!!, basically (I am not an MS veteran) it beats a few steps ahead every distro on this planet, for that, especially when you have to install many boxes…
Bottom Line Xandros is a Polished /hardened Debian… And is worth paying for…
I just finished reading all 55 comments to Chris’s review, and I want to thank everyone, especially Chris, for sharing their opinions. Even though some opinions were expressed more “forcefully” than others, I’m glad that they were because variety is the spice of life, as they say. Also, heated discussions, such as this one, allows potential Linux users/converts to see that not all Linux users/advocates are not just computer geeks who hate Bill Gates because he’s a gazillionaire;) Thanks again . . .
Incidentally, Windows is not immune to showing one device multiple times. I have a CF reader that shows up twice in Win2k and WinXP. Anybody know why this is an issue for both Linux and Windows ?
It is the first time that I read an account of Xandros that gives me some points of comparison to what I currently use and not some “Xandros is nice and polished”
I understood your point about the inconsistent gnome theme, that was clear enough for me and the confusing bits of the install.
Don’t pay attention to the first feedback. They didn’t really read the review.
Get a life, seriously.
As the President of Lindows.com, and as the first employee Michael Robertson hired when he started Lindows.com 2.5 years ago, I think I’m qualified to set the record straight on what LindowsOS is or is not based on.
VERY early on, we worked with Caldera briefly, but that dead ended very early on and we never released any product with substantial work by Caldera. We were, however, fortunate enough to have been able to bypass all the “SCO issues” because of our agreement with Caldera and the work they did for us. (http://lindows.com/sco)
Next, we hired Xandros to do some work for us. This too ended up not giving us what we needed, so we also discontinued using Xandros for any programming well over a year ago. The first few early versions of LindowsOS contained some of the Xandros work, but all of that work has long since been replaced by our own code or other open source work. The last couple of versions of LindowsOS don’t use any of the work we had paid Xandros or Caldera for. It was our hope to out source work to these companies as we got started early on, but now that we’ve grown to a good size with a solid group of dozens of our own engineers, we just use our own code and leverage heavily on existing open source projects (http://lindows.com/opensource).
So, the best answer would be to say that LindowsOS is based on DEBIAN. (Any similarities one might find between Xandros and LindowsOS can be traced back to us both being based on Debian, other than that, we’re quite different products.) We start with Debian and then add to that to make things cleaner and easier for the average computer user. Sure, LindowsOS is very polished and “pretty” on the outside, but under the hood, it’s 100% Debian Linux. The “Developers Edition” of LindowsOS is particularly comfortable for even power Linux users and programmers.
As for LindowsOS being “bloated,” I’d have to agree that this is the first time we’ve EVER been accused of that. LindowsOS comes on one CD that installs in about 7 minutes. It installs enhanced and polished versions of the core Debian OS, Mozilla, GAIM, XMMS, MPlayer, Flash, RealAudio, OpenOffice, and a few other goodies, but that’s about it. We then use CNR (click-n-run) to let the user decide which of over 1,800 other programs (http://lindows.com/warehouse) they would like to add, each with just a simple click of their mouse. (http://lindows.com/clicknrun).
I hope that helps clear things up.
Kevin Carmony
President, Lindows.com, Inc.
I also did the advanced install and I was able to assign my own names to all of my existing linux partitions. Xandros foratted my two vfat partitions as resierfs and I’m quite sure that I told it to not format these partitions?
I am having crazy and dumb problems with Xandros! 🙁
First off I was a Xandros fan, really in to them and excited about Xandros 2 coming out but now I must admit that I am now in the pot of disappointed, so much so that I would ask for a refund if I could!
How can a company go backwards and make a product that is much worst then the previous??
Let me start on the basics!
I am installing this on 2 machines. Both ran 1.1 fine. The one is my laptop which is a Gateway 400 VTX P4 2GHZ 40 GB HD with Intel nic card 256 MB of ram and built in CDRW/DVD player.
The other is a AMD 2000+ , AMD motherboard, Nvidia 64 MB video card, Intel Nic, 500 MB ram, 40 GB HD.
1. First off I didn’t know that they were taking out the domain login feature that was in 1 and 1.1! I upgraded to 2 and low and behold now I can’t login to my Windows 2000, NT mixed mode environment! What’s up with that??? I was shocked, I never saw it written anywhere in Xandros documentation that this feature would not be in the deluxe edition! Just that alone blew my high! But I figured since I have it and I can’t get a refund let me at least try it out before I go back to 1.1.
2. That brings me to point #2. When I upgraded to version 2 my nic card stopped working. Ok I know what people are going to say “Maybe you got a bad CD or download!” (Well I downloaded the iso on 2 different machines and burned it 4 TIMES!) Maybe the upgrade didn’t work? So I installed the full version 3 times on my laptop but it got stuck on the boot up when trying to install on my desktop (Even though 1.1 installs and runs fine)! So I tried from the control center and from the command line to restart the Nic card and I get the error: SIOCSIFFLAGS: invalid argument! Now I know this is probably an IRQ problem or something but there is no easy way to fix this without editing files and playing around. (Hummm this worked fine in 1.1 didn’t have to tweak my install like that!)
3. Well I did get Xandros 2 installed on my laptop but guess what! The file manager locks up, I can’t read my NTFS partition without crashing the file manager. Can’t burn a CD without crashing it. (And yes, I reinstalled, reinstalled, reinstalled till I couldn’t reinstall anymore!)
Anyway back to 1.1 I go (Or on to something else) This is one of the worse releases of any version of Linux I have ever seen. 🙁
(I hate to be that critical about any thing but this was a big waste of time. And $99)
The review is ok, but you should have used the distro longer and explored the features more.. You just touch the surface of it.. PS… Instead of using the debian sources use the xandros unsuported (its a faster source
… Btw the biggest tip I can give you is to not give any ratings, ratings never get correct and created flamewars deluxe… Just state what you think about it and what not.
I’ve done so many distrojumps its not even funny, I even started with slackware when it still was 1.something.
I’ve been with xandros since it came in 1.0 and followed them all the way, even was a beta tester for the X2.
I think its a perfect distro for the advanced user aswell, since you can use your time on the things that is fun, instead of wresling basic config every freeking time you install something.
Tyrone, if you read about the distros you would have understood that Xandros std and deluxe is the equivalent to the XP Home edition (means its a cutdown network thing) While Xandros Buissiness edition is the big cahuna with windows domain support and so on. The buissiness edition will come later this year, its beta stages is starting quite soon. Oh and instead of fuming like that over your HW issues, post a bug at the xandros site or ask support and you will get help with this. And it will get fixed in later updates for others as well. For your information the pnp software was rewritten to make it more versatile so I bet they will be happy for your feedback.
I just know I can go on and on about this distro, but I just want to mention its autodetect/pnp features, since none of you have. You can install the distro on a machine, move the harddrive to a completely different computer and it will start just fine, with some log messages about hardware change. I have it installed on a Dell Inspiron 8200 with the ATI Radeon chipset, and EVERYTHING even the winmodem is up and running in the computer (yepp its a laptop).
The only issues I still have with Xandros is the graphix driver support for 3D and multi screen setups on some parts. But that is just as much the XFree project as Xandros…
As a side note for the Lindows guy, thanks for correcting these guys.
Crap I need more space
ok then ill stop right here….