From the review: “As a linux user for the past three years, I have used a lot of distributions, and read many different reviews. Most of those reviews spend a lot of time on the installation, and give details of which versions of the gcc compiler, kernel, xfree86, KDE, and Gnome are included. This is not one of those reviews. This is the kind of review I wish I’d had when I was still looking for just the right distro. This is the review that says “Here is your linux distribution. Just install it, and your stuff will work.”‘
Review of Xandros Desktop by Linurati.net
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Not to knock Xandros, which I’ve never used or installed, but from the screenshots, the UI clearly looks pre-2000 – like something inspired by Win95. That’s what happens when you take forever to roll out a product. I hope its not going to be the same for Ximian.
By all accounts, Xandros has a good product, but its kinda hard for linux users to buy a product they haven’t tested. I think they should be a bit more flexible with the marketing. Maybe they can offer a SUSE-like ‘evaluation CD’ so that people can try it out and decide if they want to buy it.
Everything is good except the UI which is worse than XP’s, IMO. They should switch to KDE 3.1
They could reduce the price a few bucks more by using whatever Mdk 9.1 uses for NTFS resizing (what is it?)
But, having tried both Mdk and Xandros, Mdk 9.1 gets my choice because it has everything in the standard xandros package for a great price (free).
Xandros does not look too attractive out of the box, but witha little tweaking it will look fine. It is IMO the best distribution out there.
insignia you are terribly dillusional Xandros gives far more than Mandrake 9.1, if you are interested you would search and see yourself. In addition the UI is much cleaner and easier usability wise. CLicking on tehd esktop will not give 15+ options not including submenus usually useless and clicking on empty space in the filemanager will not yield 20 options not including submenus. It will only give what you expect and need, clicking on the trash produces similar easy and logical results unlike KDE 3.1.
The more I read about Xandros, the more I wish that other distros had its file manager.
Insignia,
Does Mandrake have:
1. Automatic Samba configuration
2. Fast user switching
3. Nvidia drivers configured by default
4. Access to the excellent Debian software
Point number 1 is extremely important if you work in a windows network environment- for some people it is a MUST have feature. All the rest are very nice to have.
I would like to have KDE 3.1 as well. But it is impossible for me to even consider other distros until they improve their support for Windows networking. At the end of the day, work productivity is more important than eye candy.
I’ve lurked around this site for a long time. Finally, someone writes a review that really clicks for those 98%ers who just use computers because it’s a tool for work. No arcane acronyms, no dissecting the minutia of this kernel or that kernel — none of the my dog is bigger, faster, meaner, etc. THIS is the kind of information that will get people to try Linux. As for the screenshots, they may not be exciting, but they are easy to understand. If you want to pry people away from Windows, you again have to show how easy it is to access all the files you’ve accumulated for the past 10+ years. When I get a spare $99, I will try Xandros (I’ll need to hang on to the NTFS partition for a little while).
> The more I read about Xandros, the more I wish that other distros had its file manager.
Perhaps if Xandros would release the soure to the Xandros File Manager you would see other distrobutions benefit. After all, pretty much their entire product is based off work done by competing distributors who returned their advancements to the public. It is obvious that Xandros is not intrested in investing back into the community what it has taken out of it.
“Another small complaint I have is that the CD-burning software included is X-CD-Roast. I personally think that this program is unneccessarily difficult to use, and much prefer gnomeToaster, which is much more intuitive and familiar to users coming from Roxio’s Easy CD Creator.”
Yea the problem is that pretty much ALL the other cd buring programs are broken in some way or another. Xcdroast does exactly what it advertises it does and is easy enough, once you get the hang of it.
“1. Automatic Samba configuration”
It can search the network and mount samba shares through a nice gui via LinNeighborhood or Mandrake Control Center
“2. Fast user switching”
yes
“3. Nvidia drivers configured by default”
yes
“4. Access to the excellent Debian software”
access to all urpmi software (contrib, plf, Tex)
Does Xandros give back to the community that made it?
is that MOST of the features I need for user-friendliness are there for FREE in mandrake. And they’re getting better now. Hence, the price/feature comparison is what I am making.
>> But it is impossible for me to even consider other distros until they improve their support for Windows networking.
>>
Did you try mandrake 9.1? Mounting shares and stuff is a breeze, I was more than pleasantly suprised. I never liked Mandrake, because it always was childishly flashy, but 9.1 is much better than any distribution I’ve tried so far. It’s certainly much better than RedHat 9 for sure.
if you are looking for the NTFS tool wich mandrake used to resize NTFS partition, then look at the following link:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/
cheers
SteveB
I use Xandros, I bought and it works great. I USED to use Mandrake. I bought it (several times in fact) but it did not work great. I have downloaded the most recent version (9.1) and installed it. I took a look at it and have to admit they did finally start cleaning up the interface. On the other hand I immediately ran into the same quirky half working behavior that Mandrake has always had. 9.1 lasted all of about 1.5 hours including install time on my test hard drive before I wiped it and loaded something else.
“linux-baby Not to knock Xandros, which I’ve never used or installed, but from the screenshots, the UI clearly looks pre-2000 – like something inspired by Win95.”
Thats simple enough to change. A quick trip to kde-look.org and it has as much eye candy as you wish.
“insignia-Everything is good except the UI which is worse than XP’s, IMO. They should switch to KDE 3.1”
There is nothing on this planet worse than XP’s UI! As I said above, its quite simple to change as with any Linux distribution. KDE3.x comes with the Tech Preview included in the deluxe version. It may be a while before all of the customizations Xandros has done with KDE2.2 migrate to the 3.x version. It will get there.
“ashley-I would like to have KDE 3.1 as well. But it is impossible for me to even consider other distros until they improve their support for Windows networking. At the end of the day, work productivity is more important than eye candy.”
I couldn’t agree more. Excellent point.
“anon-Perhaps if Xandros would release the soure to the Xandros File Manager you would see other distrobutions benefit. After all, pretty much their entire product is based off work done by competing distributors who returned their advancements to the public. It is obvious that Xandros is not intrested in investing back into the community what it has taken out of it.”
and
“anon-Does Xandros give back to the community that made it?”
Xandros has a ftp source code site. The address is ftp://ftp2.xandros.com/src/. Stop making half baked assumptions and go get your source code. Additionally many of the main Xandros employees worked for Corel before Microsoft “invested” in Corel and ended its involvement with Linux. Corel’s early Linux efforts benefited Linux users a lot. Many other companies have spun out of the early Corel efforts, Transgaming to name one.
“insignia-My point is that MOST of the features I need for user-friendliness are there for FREE in mandrake. And they’re getting better now. Hence, the price/feature comparison is what I am making.”
You’re Mandrakes worst enemy. At least I paid for their product while I used and disliked them. You sound as though you think it should be “FREE”. No wonder they’re on the verge of collapse. With customers like you who needs enemys.
“Xandros has a ftp source code site. The address is ftp://ftp2.xandros.com/src/. Stop making half baked assumptions and go get your source code. Additionally many of the main Xandros employees worked for Corel before Microsoft “invested” in Corel and ended its involvement with Linux. Corel’s early Linux efforts benefited Linux users a lot. Many other companies have spun out of the early Corel efforts, Transgaming to name one.”
I must have missed the file manager source code in there somewhere…
How can you say Mandrake has this! I have Mandrake on another computer and it doe snot. Fast user switching is jsut lke in XP wehre you can ahve 2 users logged on at th same time and with 2-3 clicks switch to another suer and back and forth. Ofcourse you could configure it to ask for a password when switching. For example fi your running your user and root it would ask for a password unless configured otherwise.
In addition, their file manger is easy to use, IMO it is great that it looks and functions almost exactly like Explorer. MS may not bea good company , but they invested billions in Explorer and usbility wise as well as in performance it is quite good. Much etter than Konqueror in usability and slightly better in performance.
Xandros also has great tools for networking like joint domain, all kinds of authenticity devices and so forth. With 2 clicks you can also easily sahre a file floppy device folder etc.
It also ahs great printer support and it is even easier to set up printers than in mandrake.
“You’re Mandrakes worst enemy. At least I paid for their product while I used and disliked them. You sound as though you think it should be “FREE”. No wonder they’re on the verge of collapse. With customers like you who needs enemys”
Atleast I can TRY out mandrake before deciding to purchase it.
I agree that I would rather try a demo version of a product first. Having bought 3 Mandrake powerpack distro’s, I paid for the product, but only after a test run. Some others that I tried, never came close to their claims, including SOT,ELX, COLLEGE, and LIBRANET. I would have been greatly agitated to have purchased these products, and find out they don’t live up to their claims.
“How can you say Mandrake has this! I have Mandrake on another computer and it doe snot. Fast user switching is jsut lke in XP wehre you can ahve 2 users logged on at th same time and with 2-3 clicks switch to another suer and back and forth.”
Any distro that has GDM has this ability.
News is news and reviews are reviews. I love this site but I am getting very bored of the continuous onslaught of reviews and articles that pertain to Windows VS Linux.
I wish this site would move beyond these types of articles. How much time does everyone spend here arguing the same stupid points? Ask yourself if you are getting any smarter by spending 30 minutes every other day arguing about which Linux distribution is better or what review of Mandrake is the most accurate.
I am not writing this article to get flamed but to only help some people to look in the mirror and ask what is important in life. Just because the editors of this site decide to post a review about Mandrake from a clueless Windows reviewer, it does not mean you have to respond. However, we could all save ourselves many headaches if these stupid reviews were not even posted. By posting these reviews you are certainly NOT posting news. You are only posting opinions and wasting everyones time.
Like we are all going to agree which distro is the best. I have a better chance of winning the lotto before seeing that day!!! So why keep arguing it? It’s pointless, fruitless, and getting really old.
All I ask is more news and less junk.
News is news and reviews are reviews. I love this site but I am getting very bored of the continuous onslaught of reviews and articles that pertain to Windows VS Linux.
I wish this site would move beyond these types of articles. How much time does everyone spend here arguing the same stupid points? Ask yourself if you are getting any smarter by spending 30 minutes every other day arguing about which Linux distribution is better or what review of Mandrake is the most accurate.
I am not writing this article to get flamed but to only help some people to look in the mirror and ask what is important in life. Just because the editors of this site decide to post a review about Mandrake from a clueless Windows reviewer, it does not mean you have to respond. However, we could all save ourselves many headaches if these stupid reviews were not even posted. By posting these reviews you are certainly NOT posting news. You are only posting opinions and wasting everyones time.
Like we are all going to agree which distro is the best. I have a better chance of winning the lotto before seeing that day!!! So why keep arguing it? It’s pointless, fruitless, and getting really old.
All I ask is more news and less junk.
>Any distro that has GDM has this ability.
GDM lets you switch between users wihtout shutting down or logging out and while continuing to run rhe programs in each session?
example: I have Everquest running under winex as a user on another screen.
I decide to check OSNews so I hit ctrl+alt+f7 and I’m at my original user’s desktop with Everquest still running under the other user.
I hear something going on in the game so I hit ctrl+alt+F8 and I switch back to the Everquest user.
GDM does this?
why should they release the source for XFM? it is 100% home grown and does not use anything from any OSS project.
tehy have returned all improovements to the OSS code they used back to the projects but the stuff they invented they are keeping close becasue THAT is waht gives them the competative edge.
example: I have Everquest running under winex as a user on another screen.
I decide to check OSNews so I hit ctrl+alt+f7 and I’m at my original user’s desktop with Everquest still running under the other user.
I hear something going on in the game so I hit ctrl+alt+F8 and I switch back to the Everquest user.
GDM does this?
no, GDM isn’t necessary. to accomplish “fast” user switching Xandros spawns another instance of X on a different virtual terminal. this can be done with any OS that includes XFree86(maybe with other implementations of X11), but Xandros seems to have done a little work on kdm to make this easier.
the problem with doing it this way is that when you switch users, you now have multiple instance of X, kdm and kde running. as a gamer, you’re also doing it backwards. the second instance of X doesn’t have access to DRI, so you’d be better off using your first user for gaming and your second user for surfing. you can check that with glxinfo on each desktop. you’ll probably also take a good performance hit from the new instance of X in your card’s video RAM.
the quick dirty way of doing this from any *BSD/Linux/etc, would be to switch to another vt or open an xterm and run:
startx — :1
and you could increment the number for each new instance, using su to change users, if needed. this isn’t as pretty as the way that Xandros has it set up, but considering how simple this really is, it shouldn’t take much to clean it up. the changes to the kdm sources should also be available at the ftp site. since I don’t normally use a display manager unless I need XDMCP, can’t tell ya how to get this all working smoother with gdm or kdm.
BTW, is it just me or is Xandros ungodly slow?? guess maybe I’m too used to FreeBSD, XF86 4.3 and KDE 3.1… it was painfully slow in comparision.
I use Xandros as my primary OS on my laptop. With Win4Lin installed, I can run *every* application I need that relies on Windows, and I am more productive due to the availability of all the tools I want for Linux.
The interface does not wow you. However, much more importantly, it does not get in your way. With Xandros, the interface is mostly transparent. Things just work, and they generally work quickly. This goes for the file manager as well. Although everyone in the file managing world seems to have ripped off Explorer, Xandros also has incorporated functionality that isn’t seen by any other OS (that I’ve seen anyway) OOTB. As an aside, I’d like to point out that Xandros is the first distribution I’ve ever used that allows you to use the Winkey on most keyboards. Why Redhat and other distros don’t do that, I have no idea.
I think people in the Linux world get too caught up in the latest and greatest GUI’s and all that. My work has to get done regardless of Gnome 1 or 2, KDE 2 or 3. Besides, interfaces aren’t supposed to be the end all, be all of an OS. They are just gateways to the underlying power of your OS. They are supposed to give you the tools you need to do what you want, and then they are supposed to get the heck out of your way.
Anyway, the point is that although Xandros isn’t OHMYGODITSBEYOOOOOOTIFUL, it doesn’t have to be because it’s still more functional OOTB than every other distro I’ve used.
(note: I don’t use Xandros for server stuff, so I can’t comment on that. I imagine you’ll get the same performance as you would on Mandrake)
>the problem with doing it this way is that when you switch users, you now have multiple instance of X, kdm and kde running. as a gamer, you’re also doing it backwards. the second instance of X doesn’t have access to DRI, so you’d be better off using your first user for gaming and your second user for surfing. you can check that with glxinfo on each desktop. you’ll probably also take a good performance hit from the new instance of X in your card’s video RAM.
Well I checked glxinfo for both users and they’re the same as far as I can tell, both have ‘direct rendering; yes’. Though of course running another instance of X is going to take a performance hit, that’s a given with any system.
However, having played EQ under Windows I can tell you that I have much better performance on the secondary screen under Xandros than I have when I switch away under Windows. Under Windows checking email or surfing the web with EQ running is painfully slow and unstable (and likely to make EQ crash at any time). It works very well under Xandros. I don’t notice a significant performance hit either in the game or on the desktop.
>the quick dirty way of doing this from any *BSD/Linux/etc, would be to switch to another vt or open an xterm and run:
>startx — :1
As far as I know that no longer works with nvidia drivers, unless it’s been fixed in the very latest drivers. There was much discussion over this at Transgaming.com and conclusion was that it’s currently broken under nvidia. Having tried multiple times I simply couldn’t get it to work under Redhat.
>BTW, is it just me or is Xandros ungodly slow?? guess maybe I’m too used to FreeBSD, XF86 4.3 and KDE 3.1… it was painfully slow in comparision.
Having used lots of various Linux distros I can’t say that I find it noticably slower than anything else. But, I haven’t used your particular setup.
“”You’re Mandrakes worst enemy. At least I paid for their product while I used and disliked them. You sound as though you think it should be “FREE”. No wonder they’re on the verge of collapse. With customers like you who needs enemys””
“Atleast I can TRY out mandrake before deciding to purchase it.”
So how long you gonna try it out?????
Well I checked glxinfo for both users and they’re the same as far as I can tell, both have ‘direct rendering; yes’.
yeah, hadn’t taken into account the nvidia drivers. using standard DRI that comes with XF86, it only allows one X server access…
>startx — :1
As far as I know that no longer works with nvidia drivers, unless it’s been fixed in the very latest drivers.
must be redhat specific, because the difference between that and how Xandros accomplishes fast switching is minimal. I’d need to actually want to load Red Hat and an nvidia card. I’ll stick with the radeon, it’ll run anything from openstep to solaris with minimal hassle.
Having used lots of various Linux distros I can’t say that I find it noticably slower than anything else.
well, 2 major problems I noticed was that X was configured in a least common denominator type fashion by setup.. that helped a little, but not really a lot. another thing I notice is that their build of Mozilla badly needs to be replaced. building 1.3 from source will hopefully take care of that. I dunno, nothing else wrong that I can see… just seems damn sluggish.
anyway, no doubt I’d prefer Xandros to any of the workstation Linux distros… I mean Lindows is just a trashed out version of Xandros(check the 2.0 beta that still had the “powered by XandrOS” logo on the splash screen before anyone complains), I’ve never really cared for Mandrake, and these new crop of desktop linux’s seems to be more ttrying to cash in on “desktop linux” than trying to do a good distro…
hehe, not impressed enough to use it much, though… crossover office is about as painful as wine, most of the time.
I have to agree with the Xandros review on just about all points. Xandros just works. But this discussion, like so many others at OSNews, is just turning into a petty argument about some obscure point or another. Today it seems to be Xandros vs. Mandrake. There’s plenty of room for both OS’s. But if you just want stuff to work out of the box (and believe it or not, some people do), then Xandros is something you need to take a serious look at. Is it perfect? No. Could it be a little prettier? Probably. But virtually everything works – in a familiar way – immediately after installation.
There seems to be a large contingent of OSNews readers who don’t feel an OS is worth having unless a: you have to compile the kernel , and b: it’s free. Xandros isn’t for you. You have to actually pay for it to get a copy, and we all know that’s disgusting. A company actually charging for their product? Go back to using the evaluation car that the auto manufacturers provide, or the evaluation computer that Dell made available for you.
Good review, bang on about the ‘I wish I had ….’ , it’s to bad all that functioality comes in a dated package. For those that want to escape the Microsoft stanglehold, this is a great way to get them off to a good start.
For those with the desire to be a little more up to date as a linux user, the Mandrake 9.1 guys do a good job in restoring the faith of the almost defunct.
Both companies get my financial support as well.
Now when is xandros v-2 out???
ahhh, forgot. it’s nice to have truetype fonts install by default. I don’t really care if the others have them too, it’s nice to see a mostly configured system when from the first boot.
There seems to be a large contingent of OSNews readers who don’t feel an OS is worth having unless a: you have to compile the kernel
it’s not “you have to compile the kernel”, it’s “you get to compile the kernel”. speaking of which, lets see if the fabled low latency patch is really that good…
one thing I did notice about red hat not so long ago was that up2date installed an athlon optimized kernel for me… it would be nice if all commercial distributions did that during the installation.
>another thing I notice is that their build of Mozilla badly needs to be replaced. building 1.3 from source will hopefully take care of that. I dunno, nothing else wrong that I can see… just seems damn sluggish.
There are user created instructions for upgrading to 1.3 in the forums, though I haven’t tried them. As I understand it an official Xandros upgrade to 1.3 (I think) will be up soon.
Xandros is impressive. It’s a very solid, complete solution. It’s also very stable being primarily debian woody. To me, it did feel much slower than other distros on the same hardware. It may be because I’m comparing with newer distros based on gcc 3.2.x and Xandros (being woody) is gcc 2.95 I think. I don’t have the fastest machine in the world though. It’s a 1200mhz tualatin celeron with 512 meg, radeon 9000 with 128 meg ram, 80gig wd drive with 8meg cache.
The most impressive thing to me about Xandros was after installation, I had pretty poor video quality because there was no built-in driver for the radeon card. But running the Xandros networks program I was able to download the driver, installation was automatic and it worked great.
As far as the gui, it is a little on the blah side being kde 2.2. I did manage to get gnome 2.2 (backported to woody) installed but I still manged to break some of the Xandros tools. I’m going to try it again though, that would really make a difference if you could run the new gnome and still have kde2.2 available to support the custom Xandros functionality.
BTW, X-CD-Roast is pretty primitive. It works, but not even it’s staunchest defenders would call it user-friendly or intuitive.
I just wanted to point out to those that are judging Xandro’s look on those screenshots in the review, that that is *not* the default background in Xandros.Screenshots are available on the Xandros website, if you’re interested.
Personally, what a desktop looks like is irrelevant to me, I only see it for about 30 seconds a day. I agree with those saying that a UI’s purpose is to allow you to get to work.
Xandros does that nicely, IMHO.
Dave
that is *not* the default background in Xandros.
sure it is, the red background is the default superuser background. the same background in blue is the default user background.
I don’t really think that’s what people are complaining about. more likely it’s the default redmond theme, and even more likely is that a lot of people remember exactly how KDE 2.2 looked…
anyway, it doesn’t really matter what it looks like, the difference in feel between KDE 2 and KDE 3 is like night and day. otherwise, I’d still be using gnome.
Hey wlsb, is there a radeon-compatible driver for openstep?
AFAIK, the ati rage drive won’t work with one.
Did you find a way around that?
Or are you talking about the vesa driver (monochrome)?
>sure it is, the red background is the default superuser background. the same background in blue is the default user background.
Actually, not it isn’t. The reviewer has replaced the desktop background with an ugly (at least to me) rust-red gradiant. You can tell the desktop background has been changed by looking at the colors of the vitrual desktop icons in the panel. They’re normally Blue, Green, Yellow and Magenta. They become a single color when the background is changed.
The normal Xandros desktop has an attractive blue swirl pattern while the root screen is the swirl in red.
Actually, not it isn’t. The reviewer has replaced the desktop background with an ugly (at least to me) rust-red gradiant.
you’re right, my bad… all I remembered about the screen shots was the red when I wrote that, should have had another look. the Xandros backgrounds are Mac’ish.
hmmm, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at it. I think I ended up using the SVGA driver floating around for vmware, but I can’t be sure of that atm.
I had my radeon 7200 working with Openstep 4.2 with at least 16bit(I think) at 800×600. I’ll look at it tonight and post how it’s configured. I would have wiped it in minutes had I been forced to use a monochrome display.
“GDM lets you switch between users wihtout shutting down or logging out and while continuing to run rhe programs in each session?”
YES. Its in the menu for mandrake or you can enter gdmflexiserver at the command line.
I use Mandrake, and I’m probably not going to switch because I’m used to it, but I really wish Xandros all the best. C’mon people! Other Linux distros are not the enemy, they’re family! To each his/her own, choice is good. There’s room for everyone, even MS if they do decide to play nice.
“BTW, X-CD-Roast is pretty primitive. It works, but not even it’s staunchest defenders would call it user-friendly or intuitive.”
Xcdroast is NOT “primitive”. The ONLY feature that it lacks is the ability to burn music cds directly from mp3s. You have to convert them to wav files. This feature on other burning programs does not even work most of the time. Can you burn cds without scsi emulation in any other program w/ the 2.4.x kernel?
Now this is what a lot of people have been demanding for years
A stable, easy to install linux distro that doesn’t bombard the user with options and is automatically configured to the users computer and in a LOGICAL WAY. Ok it isn’t fast or sexy, so what? If this brings in more users into the Linux community and away from microsoft, surely thats a good thing?
Mandrake is a good distro, as is Red Had and all the others, sure some are better at some things than others, but they work. Xandros to me seems to represent what I think a lot of users have been crying out for: a Viable easy to use alternative to Windows. Ok it doesn’t have feature xyz, so what if everything works out of the box with minimal configuration? How many other Distros can say that?
I’m impressed to be quite frank, they’ve managed to lower the learning curve enough so that the average user can actually get to grips with what I’m told is a superb OS (I don’t use linux, quite frankly a lot of its users and user manuals scare me away long before I get to the point of installing my own distro).
Well played Xandros, I may well be knocking on your sales office door for a copy.
“Win4Lin only supports Windows 98”
I don’t know why the user said this, because I had WindowsME installed using Win4Lin. It worked like a charm.
What I think the reviewer meant to say was, “Win4Lin only supports Windows 9x & ME, and not NT or XP. Because Win4Lin emulates the DOS under pinnings that is used by all versions of Win9x (including ME)”.
One thing that is not included with Win4Lin though, is DirectX support. That is provided as a work-in-progress by WineX (which you can find over at transgaming.com). Though, I am sure that many of you may already be aware of this.
Hey wlsb, is there a radeon-compatible driver for openstep?
AFAIK, the ati rage drive won’t work with one.
Did you find a way around that?
Or are you talking about the vesa driver (monochrome)?
hey Owl, sorry for the delay. actually, I am using the vesa VBE driver. I’m not getting monochrome, though.
I currently have 1280×1024 at 32bpp with that driver and my radeon. it is a little slow, but that’s the nature of vesa, I guess. I can’t really say how it would work with an 8500 or 9000, but again I bought the poor 7200 cause it seemed to have pretty decent OS support.
sucks to have to sacrifice performance for compatibility, but it’s better than being bound to windows…
Thanks for the tip! I didn’t see VBE…will take another look (monochrome sux).
I have decided to go with a Matrox G400 for reasonably faster/newer card. Plus maximum OS compatibility. Vesa 3 plus native drivers for Win3x-XP, Linux, OS/2 (Matrox) and BeOS, NeXT/Open-Step, QNX, Solaris, XFree86 (3rd party).