“There’s quite a bit of value here for anyone and we feel very comfortable recommending it to anyone who wants to move off of Windows and onto Linux. It’s stable, easy to use, and comes with a good range of applications. Laptop wireless problem aside, in terms of ease of use, we think that Xandros has set a new standard for Linux distributions.” Read the review at ExtremeTech.
Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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They pretty much fix KDE and they want Gnome? Can anyone explain why?
Even I as a Gnome user prefer Xandros’ KDE…
Someone needs to learn how to take simple professional screenshots.
I wonder if using the windows xp driver with the ndiswrapper might have solved their wireless problem. Maybe, maybe not. I guess it depends if the problem is really hardware or not.
They list the absence of Gnome, their preferred DE, to be a problem. It’s cooked the way it is boys, go find another item on the menu.
“Firefox is better than Mozilla / Gaim is better than kopete”
While i might agree its more personal of wich app you prefer than it is the way to go.
You can install by the Xandros Network, Gaim (use expert mode so that is get the debain feeds instead of only the xandros feeds) and ALWAYS can download and install/run Firefox.
The are not problems these are personal issues and they should not be mentioned as problems..
I curently run Linspire 5 (Thrillseeker Unstable) and my Netgear is fully supported and running, so was my Linksys and KPN aircard (uses the orinoco drivers).
I am not sure if Xandros still works togheter with Linspire but if they do those wireless problems could be addressed soon.
Xandros is an Excellent distro!
ps. Has anyone have had any expirience with Freedows (www.freedows.com) it looks very promising)
Right now there is not a whole lot in Xandros Networks. I’ve been through the whole thing and GAIM is not there.
I bought the Deluxe version in haste. It is so close to being th perfect distro.
1. No Juk or Rhythmbox. The only jukebox type app is xmms which I really dislike. No GTK or Gnome devel packages so compiling is difficuly and time consuming. The also seem to have gone to the trouble of removing most of the applications from kdemultimedia package. Why? Seems crazy.
2. Uses the ugly 2.6 series and below Gnome style. Fonts on a 1600 x 1200 screen for Gnome/GTK apps are just tiny and the widgets dont go well witht he KDE ones. If the had of just used Industrial or something like that.
3. It would have been nice to have quanta or something like that. Why not? I downloaded kwebdev and compiled. Unfortunately this application crashes all the time if you do a straight configure,compile,install in Xandros.
4. Lastly if you do want to configure things you have to use a text editor. There is nothing like SuSE or mandrake available. It seems that they really do want to detect everything for you and you should never change any of those settings. There is of course the KDE control centre, but I am talking about things outside of those.
Whats good.
————
1. fast user switching is a nice touch.
2. Feels really solid and fast.
3. The file manager is absolutely wonderful.
4. Sets up home networking more easily than Windows. It did it all for me.
5. After enabling anti-aliasing for fonts, they look great!
6. Changes to font sizes in the KDE Control centre are recognized by OpenOffice. I was not aware of this happening on any other distro.
Gaim and JuK should be on the “debian unsupported site”
Thanks. Are those repositories commented out in the source list? Or are they in the pdf manual?
Xandros 3.0 is based on kernel 2.6.9, and some odd things did occur on the way to the upgrade.
Under Xandros 2.0, with 2.4 kernel, many wifi cards such as the Netgear 402 and Microsoft 520 card booted right up. Wo worries, but the D-Link 650 would not work.
Now, cards that used to work don’t. They obviously didn’t get ported up to 2.6. Stranger still, however, is that the D-Link 650 fired right up!!!
Linux and wireless and always been a bit of an adventure, but while I am a big Xandros fan, the lack of consistancy in issues such as this must drive noobies crazy and this is the target audience in many cases.
People repeatedly complain about Xandros’ limited choices in the repository or that FireFox isn’t immediately available. The fact is that FireFox is clearly listed in the menu of the Xandros Network as available, as was the GIMP. Furthermore, by actually taking the time to discover that you can set Xandros Network to expert mode, and also can allow the Network to address Debian files and other repositories, the whole world is available. Some times it appears that people just don’t want to actually learn anything. Every OS, from Windows, OS-X and especially Linux does require the user to actually learn, discover and adapt certain things to be maximized. Geez!
Use XN, set applications sources and check the box for that option.
Thanks. I actually just reinstalled in to try your suggestion out and I saw. Crazy because I hove the applications disk and had activated it there previously so I should have seen the unsupported site.
Do you have any ideas why xandros in not detecting my USB 2.0 external hard drive. Its one of those notebook harddrives with an enclosure. Fedora KDE finds it.
Xandros detected my ATI card 9550 and installed the ATI drivers with 3d acceleration (I hope). Anyway I thought that you could not user their drivers with x.org 6.8. The ATI site says you need XFree.
So thats a real bonus
I agree – excellent distro and I’ve been real happy with the “Open Circulation” version. I’ve just added a new entry to my FreeBSD blog about why I moved to Xandros on one of my machines. And yes, it isn’t obvious how to add an unsupported site to XN, but once you do, you get all the pieces you want. Not quite as easy to use as the Ports stuff in FreeBSD, but still very simple.
“Anyway I thought that you could not user their drivers with x.org 6.8. The ATI site says you need XFree.”
I also use them fine with xorg. Its still virtually identical to xfree for the most part, so its not such a suprise.
Just some quick feedback about the JUK thing. I got it installed now. Works perfect for my needs. I will keep Xandros on my system now. I see it installed Gstreamer 0.6 as a requirement. Seems like they are a bit behind, 0.8 being the current release.
I also installed Quanta. Quanta is version 3.2 not version 3.3. I hope they make updates a some stage. I would pay a click-and-run style fee if they kept packages up to date.
Does anyone know what Xandros uses (i.e. underneath the pretty wizard) for VPN access?
This review didn’t do a very good research job. Mandrake’s had a VPN wizard (drakvpn) since Februrary, which means it was in 10.0 and 10.1.
I’ll be ….. Your’e right, I just tried typing in the command.
Shame on you Mandrake, it’s not in the menu or any of the configuration tools…
I haven’t looked, but it ought to be in drakconf somewhere. I’ll check when I get home.
Looks good. I’ve just downloaded Mandrake 10.1 for a friend, he’s totally fed up with Windoze and wants to dip his toes. Sick of spyware, sick of trojans, sick of viruses, sick of the desktop refreshing and loosing icons in his sys-tray…sound familiar anyone? 😉
He’s also disappointed that many of the “features” Microsoft talked-up and promised for Longhorn are slowly vaporising.
Meantime he’s watching Linux begin to blossom and become something which interests him, rather than something which intimidates him. He’s read some of the reviews of Mandrake and the “friendlier” distribtions and asks me “why doesn’t my XP work like that?”.
I’m no evangelist, his toe-dipping is entirely self-motivated, so it’s interesting for me as a long-time Linux user to witness this “awakening” hehe 😉
This too looks like an excellent distribution. I don’t like the idea of DOS drive letters in the xfm window though…that’s too scary for me!
What’s next? A BASIC prompt for C64 converts? Now that would be kinda cool LOAD”*”,8,1 😉
well, there’s no other logical way to name drives with windows on, is there? Why call them anything other than what Windows does?
btw, I just went looking for drakvpn in drakconf and I couldn’t find it either. sigh. Time to go break a few heads.
I’d favour naming the drives with their mount point names, or symlink names, an actual name rather than C: D: E: because, lets face it when people first start using Windows they wonder what the hell C: D: E: blah means.
I think it’s one thing to make things look “familiar”, but it’s another to be hampered by an old DOS legacy “feature” which Windows would be best shot of too imho.
It makes me smile whenever one of my friends adds a new harddisk or CD/DVD and all the drive letters change, they then have to shuffle or re-apply new stickers to the front of all their devices, lol 😀 Sure you can re-assign the drive letters, but it’s an arse-about way of doing things – is a little complicated for novice users, and has no place in a truly modern OS.
A lame argument? Maybe, but it could be that these “sticker folks” are the target audience of these “friendly” distributions? Better that they are encouraged to apply sensible drive names and “throw away those stickers” 😉
I’ve been playing with Xandros Open Circulation edition and had a demo version of Xandros Desktop OS 2. I’ve been impressed with how simple the install is…even a “non-tech” could do it.
So with version 3 just out…I think I’ll take the plunge.
Agree with all of you guys about ease of use of Xandros! Only wanted to add that even Xandros Open Circulation edition is using those beautiful and popular MS true type fonts: arial, tahoma, verdana, etc which are looking even better if anti-aliasing setting is chosen.