tattoovampire Posted December 27, 2004 Posted December 27, 2004 Some Linux users may sneer at the distros that offer simplified installation and XP-like interfaces, but I recently purchased Xandros Desktop Deluxe 3.0 after reading some good reviews. Mandrake 10.1 was sacrificed to make room, although I did leave /home so as not to lose some installed program settings. Installation took a grand total of six minutes and upon reboot I had.... nothing! The GUI would not launch. After a few minutes of cursing I remembered Xandros uses a heavily modified KDE and it doubtless was choking on my saved KDE settings in /home. So, I deleted all KDE info via the command line, rebooted from CD and did a rescue install. Success! I logged into a beautiful modded KDE desktop. Xandros had found all my hardware and set it up correctly with one exception - it didn't notice my net connection via LAN, which I was able to fix in a few seconds. The default browser is Mozilla (yuck) and Java and Flash both worked right off the bat when I browsed a few sites. The distro comes with everything the average user needs - Mozilla browser and mail, OpenOffice, CD player, MP3 player, Xine video player and other basics. Deluxe 3.0 also comes with an applications CD containing, among other things, the Firefox browser (yes!) and Evolution, an Outlook wannabe. Xandros' two strong features are Xandros Networks and the Xandros File Manager. Xandros Networks is nothing but a fancy front end for apt-get (Xandros is Debian-based) and is how most users will update/patch their OS and install new or updated applications. It's geared for the n00b coming over from Windows and is a quite elegant app. The user can browse software packages available for download, then simply point and click to install it. You can also browse commercial software available and purchase it from within Xandros Networks. One bonus with Xandros Networks - you can add "unsupported" repositories to the list of sources and thus have access to the huge number of Debian packages out there. And if you don't like the GUI, drop to a terminal and run good old apt-get! The Xandros File Manager is Windoze Explorer on steroids. It's an all-in-one utility - file manager, network browser and CD/DVD burner. Xandros deserves much credit for making Samba work so well - XFM found all Windoze shares on my LAN, mounted them and made them available for use. It also mounted and made available the Windoze partitions on my local machine. As an extra treat, Xandros 3.0 Deluxe comes with Crossover Office, a compatibility layer that will run many, many Windoze applications. I was able to install and run Photoshop 7 and Forte Agent 2.0 with just a few mouse clicks. In summation, Xandros is great for either the n00b or the experienced Linux user. Once you get past the slick interface it IS still just a Debian distro, after all, with all the power and stability Debian is famous for. In short order I installed the Pan newsreader, KMail, Firefox, and the Kaffeine media player. One caveat - don't try to update KDE. Xandros runs a heavily modified version of KDE and attempting to update from conventional sources will definitely BREAK your system. Xandros 3.0 is available in several configurations and there are discounts if you're upgrading from an older version. Read more about it at www.xandros.com. I've been a faithful Mandrake user for three years and IMHO, Xandros simply blows Mandrake and other user-friendly distros away. Quote
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