Linuxtimes has a fairly detailed review of the Xandros Desktop Management Server up at this link.
Xandros Desktop Management Server Review
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Eugenia Loli
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I posted this at Linuxtimes, but maybe someone here has some answers:
This review raised my interest in Xandros offerings to the point that they now have become a serious contender in my list of potential distributions, but here are my two main questions:
1) I never come across packages built for Xandros when I am browsing for third party utilities or software packages, it is always Mandrake, Suse or Fedora/Red Hat. Are there any third party repositories that are certified to run with Xandros in the same way that Mandrake’s contrib repositories are?
And running Debian packages from testing or unstable is not what I would do on an enterprise network which is where I would use this product.
2) The other issue I have is with user management. If I read the review correctly, there is no way to centralize user management, is there? So does that mean, that I have to create the user Derek in all 10 computers in my network and that if he roams from one to the next one, his settings will not be available to him when he logs in?
If this is the case, this is the biggest issue facing this product. Facilitating the creation of NFS mounted home folders with a NIS directory of users would have really added to the appeal of the product.
Regarding the lack of a policy editor, why hasn’t Xandros incorporated the work done in KDE’s kiosk tool?
Looking forward to your response.
“1) I never come across packages built for Xandros when I am browsing for third party utilities or software packages, it is always Mandrake, Suse or Fedora/Red Hat. Are there any third party repositories that are certified to run with Xandros in the same way that Mandrake’s contrib repositories are?
And running Debian packages from testing or unstable is not what I would do on an enterprise network which is where I would use this product. ”
Archlug has a mirror for packages Xandros doesn’t have, and Xandros supports a Debian sarge unsupported OUT OF DATE mirror.
deb http://www.archlug.org/apt xandros2 archlug
deb http://www.archlug.org/apt x2 zzupp
From http://www.archlug.org/kwiki/XandrosKwikis
BTW I really like Xandros, isn’t it funny how usable KDE comes when Konqueror’s 20 sidebars are removed from the equation?
generally you can compile a program or they will offer it for Xandros specifically. opera is an example of this
1. 1) I never come across packages built for Xandros when I am browsing for third party utilities or software packages, it is always Mandrake, Suse or Fedora/Red Hat. Are there any third party repositories that are certified to run with Xandros in the same way that Mandrake’s contrib repositories are?
And running Debian packages from testing or unstable is not what I would do on an enterprise network which is where I would use this product.
You can compile them for debian youself or you can find them on Xandros networks.. (There is a way to make it advanced and pull from other sites, including extra sites already included in Xandros)
2. 2) The other issue I have is with user management. If I read the review correctly, there is no way to centralize user management, is there? So does that mean, that I have to create the user Derek in all 10 computers in my network and that if he roams from one to the next one, his settings will not be available to him when he logs in?
If this is the case, this is the biggest issue facing this product. Facilitating the creation of NFS mounted home folders with a NIS directory of users would have really added to the appeal of the product.
Regarding the lack of a policy editor, why hasn’t Xandros incorporated the work done in KDE’s kiosk tool?
Looking forward to your response.
If you are using the Business version of Xandros then you can put it in any LDAP structure like Active directory or Openldap (You can set that up on Linux) Suse has a really good set up. Xandros works really well with active directory (I use my Xandros machine in a Windows 2003 network with Active Diectory and I don’t have any local user accounts besides root)
With the policy stuff remember Xandros is just on it’s second version and I am sure those things will be better in Xandros 3 which is in beta as we speak.