“I’ve been running the recently released Deluxe Edition of Xandros Desktop OS for the past week. Xandros 3 has proven to be all that I hoped for, and more. This release should prove a good fit for many, combining the ease of use and elegant good looks that Xandros brings to the table with the underlying power and stability of Debian.” Read the rest at NewsForge.
Xandros Desktop OS 3 Deluxe Edition Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Have they fixed the issue of not being able to resize the fonts in non-KDE apps out of the box, as was the case in v2?
Looks like the other issue I noticed in v2 is still present in v3 as well, which is the piss-poor selection of apps in Xandros Networks. I did as the author did and switched repositories, but by doing that, you lose some of the ‘elegance’ because the unofficial repository doesn’t integreate as well with the desktop. If this isn’t the case for some sort of universal packaging standard, I don’t know what is. This is a problem, whether or not people want to face up to it.
I always recommended Xandros OCE to newbies, instead of MDK, Fedora and SuSE, just because of the easy install and the consistency of desktop. With this version 3 looks like they did it again: looking forward for an OCEv3.
Talking about Xandros Networks: I think that they focus on a certain choice of packages that fits in the goal of this distro (a well refined SOHO environment). They cannot cover all the Debian universe and if you need some particular package, well you are on your own: this is not even true, since the Xandros forums are quite friendly.
The choice is definitely poor against the Debian repository, but is quite good if you stay in the “boundaries” of Xandros Desktop.
I installed Xandros OS v3.0 on one of my laptops and no, as far as I can see non-KDE applications continue showing an extremely small font out of the box.
As I posted previously here in OSNews I am an avid Xandros user since version 1 but I am very disappointed about the lack of innovation and new features of these release. Yes, I know kernel is new and KDE has been also updated to one of the latest versions but the lack of new features does not worth the upgrade from version 2
GUI is as bad as it was on version 1 and designers should seriously think about putting a new icon theme for the out of the box experience. Gnome integration into the desktop is a disaster if you compare it with the “old” bluecurve thing in the days of Red Hat 8.
Laptop support is poor to say the less. My Intel wireless card works now with this version but there is no utility there to check for available wireless networks on the area or to check for encrypted/non-encrypted networks on wireless signal status, etc. You have to know to what wireless network you want to connect before connecting and this is not practical for public hot-spotted areas.
I know all these can be solved tweaking a little but it is supposed this version is aimed for former Windows users with no experience or little experience in Linux
We expect more an more innovation and features from free distros like Fedora and we must expect a lot more for a pay per download distro like Xandros.
This just could be called a version 2.1. Xandros team: I am a loyal customer since version 1 of your product and I hope you the best, honestly, but you really should think twice before launching all that marketing into the Windows and Linux community around an over-priced distro that lacks many features already present in other Linux flavours.
David
I’m a fairly new Xandros convert (I’ve been using OCE 2 for about a month now) and I have to say that I’m impressed. I use it at work and love the fact that it just works. It lets me do my job without having to continually tinker with it. Although it’s true that the software selection in Xandros Networks is pretty small, it had everything I needed for a good productive desktop. If you like to tinker with new and different programs, OS features, etc. then this is not the distribution for you. If you want to install an OS and forget about it (you know, just run your programs), Xandros is an excellent choice.
install gtk theme switch from xandros networks. change the font. thus gaim, etc all look + work fine.
I’ve tried to install on 3 vastly different machines now, and Xandros won’t install come hell or high water. The CD is perfect, MD5 checks out.
One thing to notice… GTK and KDE apps should look identical. It’s absolutely a farce if they don’t. Font handling sounds like it hasn’t improved over 1990 technology either – I mean, Windows 95 did fonts perfectly and it’s taken linux about HOW MANY years to achieve such basics??
I respect OSnews.com’s decision to post reviews of beta and alpha quality software, but please stop labelling it final product. Thanks.
To really position themselves as a windows repalcement, they should include, pre-installed, microsoft office. That would be the ultimate in added value.
Sure it would raise the price, but just think if CTOs had the option to outfit their company with an OS AND industry standard office tools for $199-$299 a seat.
no firefox by default?
install gtk theme switch from xandros networks. change the font. thus gaim, etc all look + work fine.
Certainly, they explain how to do all this in the manual, correct? Not like Joe Sixpack is going to go thumbing through linuxquestions.org for an hour and a half.
Only Desktop 2 is available and my system sometimes doesn’t boot.
I don’t know why some distro’s keep adding mozilla to their default setup instead of firefox.
I had trouble installing Xandros v3 into two of my desktops, even followed tips on their forum. So I gave up and keep using v2. Very disappointed.
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install gtk theme switch from xandros networks. change the font. thus gaim, etc all look + work fine.
Certainly, they explain how to do all this in the manual, correct? Not like Joe Sixpack is going to go thumbing through linuxquestions.org for an hour and a half.
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no, but the base xandros install has no GTK apps in it. its all kde, only if you go looking for gnome/gtk apps will you actually see anything different.
”
One thing to notice… GTK and KDE apps should look identical. It’s absolutely a farce if they don’t. Font handling sounds like it hasn’t improved over 1990 technology either – I mean, Windows 95 did fonts perfectly and it’s taken linux about HOW MANY years to achieve such basics??
”
Ummmm….not as many as you’d like to think. Just because Xandros is taking its time getting fonts right doesnt mean that NO Linux distro has it done right. I am running Ubuntu right now, and it handles fonts out of the box just fine, even on QT apps in Ubuntu (a Gnome-based distribution). In fact, I have yet to find font problems in any recent linux distro except Xandros.
I suppose that Linux’s SMP abilities suck because Xandros doesn’t scale up to 32 Opteron’s and 64 GB of RAM, or because Linspire doesnt run on IBM’s supercomputers, hmmm?
Sounds great
I stopped when I read:
Note: If you are a regular Debian user, you may not have heard, but version 2.0 of the Linux kernel was released in 1996. Really! I’m not teasing!
Did I miss something else in the article?