Submitted by “There are several ‘business’, ‘corporate’, or ‘professional’ desktop operating systems on the market today, all aimed at seeping into large corporations that already use GNU/Linux on servers. It’s a pretty good plan, and most of the operating systems in this arena are pretty good – not perfect, but pretty good. Xandros has had such a product for a while now, and it’s always been near the top of the list in terms of features and quality. The market is now mature and the products are more competitive, though, and the product formerly known as Xandros Business Desktop, while still a good operating system, isn’t keeping up with the industry’s pace.”
The problem with Xandros is that they never quite realized that people running a Debian based system would want to hook up to and install from Debian repositories.
In my experience, the quickest way to turns your Xandros machine into a brick is to install and update from standard Debian repositories.
That is too bad.
They do a fairly good job of making it easy to integrate into a Windows network though. As long as you use their repositories, you are fine.
Edited 2006-12-12 00:31
The problem with Xandros is that they never quite realized that people running a Debian based system would want to hook up to and install from Debian repositories.
That’s not the kind of audience Xandros is looking for.
People that run Xandros are not required to know what Debian, repository, dpkg, apt-get all even means, and why should they?
People that just want an office pc that’s stable, for internet, creating documents and spreadsheets, printing, working easily with Windows in a network, and playing a few mp3s or minesweeper in the meantime, don’t need a repository with thousands of packages for easily installing Liferea or Nano, let alone if they wouldn’t know where to look.
Those that want Debian, might as well use Debian.
It doesn’t matter who your target market is, the fact remains that a segment of Linux users exist that don’t want to deal with Debian (or at least Debian the way it was a few years ago when Xandros first came out) but were very interested in Corel Linux/Xandros because they basically hoped it would give them what Ubuntu does today; an easy to install and use Debian system.
Xandros had the opportunity, in my opinion, to be where Ubuntu is today, but they messed it up by being incompatible with the Debian repositories. Instead of spending their time custom tweaking KDE, they should have ensured compatibility. I think they would be a lot more successful today if they had.
Those that want Debian, might as well use Debian.
When Xandros first came out, that wasn’t possible for many people. Just installing Debian was way beyond many people’s grasp.
When Xandros first came out, I remember a lot of people I worked with being excited because it was based on Debian. Of course, they were disappointed by it when it failed to work correctly as mentioned by the other poster.
No company can expect to release a Linux distribution with out having the Linux community try it out. That is ridiculous.
http://www.thecodingstudio.com/opensource/linux/screenshots/index.p…
Well, Xandros never really gave me the impression that they were very involved with the rest of the Linux community. That and the fact that you pretty much have to look for them. My boss who’s been in IT for 23 years, and is the decision maker for all things IT within our company in North America, has never even heard of Xandros. I think that kinda says something about how well they get they’re name out there. Even though they may be a commercial Linux the same rules apply as the regular community driven projects. If a distro has a lot of face time with its user and developer base then it will thrive; however, if nobody even know the system exists then how well could it possibly do? Hell, the only reason I know as much about Xandros as I do is because of OSNews.com
Edited 2006-12-12 12:50
been in IT for 23 yeas and never heard Xandros mean nothing….
i work in it since a couple of year and i know xandros…
xandros come from corel linux
“been in IT for 23 yeas and never heard Xandros mean nothing….”
No, it does mean something. Just because a lot of us are 20 something and 30 something tech geeks who know about every Linux ever made doesn’t matter. What matters it that the people who have the decision making power know their options. Having an IT manager who’s heard of a product and having one who never heard of it makes a huge difference. Especially to companies like Xandros who could have maybe sold a few thousand more copies if they would have done the right advertising.
As for DrillSgt’s response to my comment: When you live and work in Maine where there’s no CompUSA or any other tech store within an hours drive, then you won’t be seeing many copies of Xandros floating around in your day to day life.
I totally agree that to people that are borderline geeks and beyond, knowing of a company like Xandros is nothing special. But these companies need to find better ways of doing advertising.
“My boss who’s been in IT for 23 years, and is the decision maker for all things IT within our company in North America, has never even heard of Xandros.”
He should read some industry publications then, or take a walk through CompUSA once in awhile to see what is out there. Xandros is the only Linux besides Redhat that advertises in major IT publications. I’ll direct you to one once I can find the ad I remember
I used to like there systems a few years back There desktop was just better then anyone else on the market. Now it just seems like they are in the middle of the pack, But everyone else has bettermore software to choose from….
The author says this:
“The ability to authenticate users on a Windows-controlled network seems important at first, but when you consider the environment that such a need would exist in, it looks a little unrealistic. If you’re committed to Xandros on desktop machines, why wouldn’t you ditch Windows entirely and go with a Xandros server?”
I can see this as being a fairly likely scenario. Xandros offers a very Windows-like experience with easy network access but without the viruses and spyware. Were I a network manager wanting to quickly halve the number of spyware calls, I’d look at Xandros.
For myself, I’d choose other distros, but for less techie colleagues, these Windows clones could be a winner.
While replacing your whole Windows structure with Xandros is a cool thought, it’s not practical in a lot of instances. I work for a large organization that has Windows Active Directory servers running our security and file sharing. While the organization itself wasn’t about to switch gears, they were happy to let me install Xandros on my workstation. I have to say that the Windows integration was phenominally good. By far the easiest setup I’ve ever done (that includes Ubuntu, RedHat WS, Suse, and Fedora) and that was on version 3 which is almost 3 years old.
If you’re looking for a workhorse OS, Xandros is a great choice. If you’re looking to tinker or have a need for bleeding edge software, then Xandros may not be for you. That’s the beauty of Linux, you can choose the distro that fits your needs.
Yup, it’s not my choice, but you can see it has its uses.
because of crossover, i purchased home premium edition 3 but lost interest after about 2 weeks. i made the request to download the 30 day trial of edition 4 and still haven’t done anything. i guess i’m waiting for a review that tells me THIS is the distro i can’t live without. anyone ? amyone ?
There have been several reviews of Home Edition on OSNews. Click the Xandros icon next to this story to see them. This one was by the same site that wrote the above review of Desktop Professional: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15217
i think the big problem with linux it’s linux distribution don’t do enought publicity
also they should do some deals with hp, compaq, dell, gateway, nec…. to sell computer with linux…
The problem is that they’d lose the massive discount Microsoft gives them on the OEM version of Windows.
Why is it that when, say, Acer pre-installs Linux, it’s some really lame distro (that can’t even detect a PS/2 mouse, which is pretty bog standard) I’ve never heard of?
I am currently using Xandros Desktop Professional 4.1 at work. We have a Windows Active Directory Network and exchange server and it runs great. I am running Office XP Professional, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and Real Player. After the addition of one package I also can play all DVDs. At work we are a Windows company but they let me run Xandros. Why did I pick Xandros 4? Out of the box everything works! It interfaces perfectly with our Windows Network. There is a market for this version of Linux.
Edited 2006-12-13 19:38