Xandros has announced that it started offering a free 30-day trial edition of Xandros Desktop 4 Premium for free download. Xandros Desktop 4 is a beginner-friendly distribution with a customised version of KDE and a host of intuitive desktop utilities designed to ease migration from Windows to Linux.
Free Download of Xandros Desktop 4 Trial Edition
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I tried an older version of Xandros a few years ago. It looked very nice and seemed complete, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to pay money for a home Linux distribution. Perhaps a company that needs support, but for me, I’ll stick with Ubuntu. It might have more warts than Xandros, but at least I didn’t pay anything for it
I can understand the reasoning behind this (marketing) but this just sounds like shareware, something i thought i wouldn’t be seeing in a Linux distro.
It’s not Shareware, it’s a commercial Linux distribution, just like RedHat and others.
But is it any better than the free ones? Freespire looks more interesting than this and it’s not even that great compared to many other distros.
Since Xandros is commercial and has invested in good networking & server tools for corporate business’s I don’t see that home users would matter much to them like before.
I’m happy to donate for a top notch works out the box Linux desktop, and its PCLinuxOS that works for me. I tried the Xandros 3.0 OCE before and one app per task is not for me. Its good to be spoiled for choice.
Looks like maybe their server crashed. I’m getting email failure when trying to submit my info to try the 30 day version.
Odd… I was getting the same thing with Microsoft Passport trying to download Expression Web Designer to test on ubuntu under crossover.
but back on tpic…
My biggest issue with Xandros is the fact that they use their XFN (Not the XFN you’re used to… XandrOS File Manager) instead of Konqueror. When I used it, it just felt like a crippled version of Konq. It’s like the false familiarity thing everyone talks about with DEs that look like Windows but are different enough to be annoying and harder to use.
In light of this, I tried to upgrade to a newer version of KDE by adding my Debian repos to my sources.list … in short…. it didn’t work. I ended up with a thoroughly broken DE… and the graphical login was gone because for some reason KDM and whatever XandrOS uses aren’t interchangeable.
On the other hand… things might be different now? It’s been about 2 years. I switched to Debian, which I liked very much, then found Kubuntu… like Debian but more stuff works out of the box, and never went back.
“Xandros Desktop Home Edition – Premium” ??? So first they get with the product activation and now they are coming up with long @ss names like MS.
WTF is with these OS names?
Sorry if this sounds like a lame thing to complain about!
Edited 2006-09-15 14:38
Yes, target audience is the same: donkeys.
From Ubuntu….spelling. Whatever.
I wish them the best; but what I advise them to do is to buy a small OEM company and start supporting execlusively their code on them rather than trying to be another distro or windows wanna be.
Their current samba networking didn’t work as fast as fedora5 or Mandriva2006 or SLED10 when networked to windows shares on a gigabit/S connection.
Their integration of proprietary nvidia drivers were not smart enough to enable 1920x1200x32@60 configuration on my viewsonic monitor, unlike solaris 10 or 11 or vista.
Their boot time is huge with todays standards unlike Zeta,OSX and Vista/XP.
But their choice of packages and kernel really rocks, It is very close to fedora5/RHEL distros in stability. I have to yet see a crash of their selected programs.
Good Luck for them!
In short, this is my Xandros experience of today>
1. After 2 days of trying to register because of a bug on the xandros website as reported above, i finaly made it today. I received my download link wityhin minutes
2. I downloaded and burned Xandros with no problems using YABA, the Zeta burning app
3. Partitioning, installing, configuring sound and grafics and wireless lan, no problem.
4. BAMM! – after 4 minutes of using Xandros, a window pops up that tells me that this version of Xandros has expired and i have to buy it ASAP. This Version will shut down after 30 minutes without saving anything.
I am shocked. Thanks Xandros from keeping me away from your product within 5 minutes.
Edited 2006-09-16 15:52
It’s not working for me at all.
I keep getting the mail error.
I hope they fix this soon!
They sent the following text with a working link:
“Thank you for your interest in a 30-day trial of Xandros Home Edition – Premium. Due to an unanticipated volume of requests, some of the download links requested on Thursday and Friday of last week were not sent by our mail server.
If you did not receive your download link. The free 30-day trial will be available for the next 7 days at the following URL.”
I’m downloading it now…