Part 1 - Part 2:

OK, so it took a little longer than anticipated, but I am finally able to present the final portion of the Xandros version 3 review. The past couple of weeks have been a blur as always and I had to wait on a few things from the Xandros side of the fence anyway.

In this segment, we will start off looking at some of the final thoughts that I had for this distribution and Linux in general. While the folks at Xandros have made some great strides, there are still some areas that need to be examined.

Hardware support-

First off, this is not the fault of Xandros in my opinion. I believe this to be the faulty, backwards thinking of the world’s hardware manufacturers. Apparently some companies are simply living blissfully unaware that there’s a major OS revolution happening all over the world today. Like with most things, we in the states are still catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to Linux usage. Still, this is no excuse for hardware manufacturers to retain this silly belief that if they close their mental blinds long enough, Linux will eventually go away for good. It’s not going to happen guys!

Bugs and quirks-

The Xandros OS still has some bugs out of the box that need to be looked at. The most annoying that comes to mind is not being able to get the DVD player software to stop crashing. If this was some complex bug that was widespread, then I could understand it. But no, as it turns out there is a very simple fix to this that should have been applied when we go to run Xandros Networks for the latest updates.

Another bug of note would be the issue that I am having with my PDA. It is a pretty basic model, just a run of the mill Palm Zire 31 for pity sake. But the PIM software only seems to want to sync with it one way. Now, having said this, the PDA was known to offer no official support. So really, this is my own problem, not theirs. Yet, it’s still so frustrating when I am able to get it to sync one way, but not the other.

The Xandros support dept is working with me to get this resolved, but I’m not going to hold my breath, as this appears to be an issue with Kontact and may not be something that can be fixed so easily.

Another thing that people frequently rant about in Linux is the fact that it can be tricky to get wireless to work. Later on, I will present you with some options that will enable to avoid a lot of the headaches that others have had to contend with in this area.

Must have solutions that are not included-

While this may not seem like a big deal to some people, I expect there to be some sort of data back solution beyond ‘burning DVDs’! I mean, give me a break, folks. It’s not like there are not solutions out there!

Also, having access to a REAL task scheduler would be nice too. The one that comes with KDE is never going to be of any use to the Linux newbie, I’m sorry.

Being that we still remain in a Windows world when it comes to software, I feel that Win4Lin is so much better for us to use than Crossover Office. It should be made available for sale via Xandros Networks ASAP. If you truly want to get people off of Windows, give them this option and just explain that it is a ‘use at your own risk’! Liability be gone, see?

OK, enough of me ripping on an OS that I actually have grown quite fond of. Let’s start looking at some of the solutions that we can start working with, shall we?

DVD player keeps crashing-

Give this a shot, open up a console/shell. Type /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh
(Remember, you must be connected to the Internet for this to work) After pressing enter, it will do its magic and then it will be completed. Now try it…ah, that’s better, isn’t it?

Wireless Internet is not working-

Chances are, you are using one of the run-of-the-mill wireless cards that are so popular today. While you could spend the next 3 hours trying to get it working thanks to that NdisWrapper to work, I decided to take the easy way out. I bought a card that worked out of the box! I ended up with the Orinoco Classic Gold Wi-Fi card, which I bought for a song and dance, so there is no need to think that this is going to cost a fortune. Best of all, it has a lot better range than my old Netgear card as well. Once I popped it into my slot (on the computer), the installation was automatic! All I had to do was boogey into my network settings and renew the IP settings, it was just that simple. See, once you have a card that works, all of those instructions in the Xandros handbook become a lot easier!

Here is a partial list of cards that are ‘reported’ to work well:

Lucent (Agere) WaveLAN (Hermes Rev0) - Worked
Lucent(Agere) Orinoco (Hermes Rev1) - Worked
3Com AirConnect - Worked
Linksys WUSB11 v2.6 - Worked
Intel Anypoint II (AP310) - Worked! (Very obscure radio in this one!)

(As reported from the Xandros forums)

Getting into the backup frame of mind-

Believe it or not, you can use Norton Ghost as a back up solution. On top of that, if you want to stay true to those Linux roots, you might even consider looking into Mondo Rescue as well.

Need of a good partitioning option-

One answer here, try out Partimage. It does work and I have used it with success a few times.

Autostart a program like the Palm sync program-

This is an easy one; just type this into the console/shell:
cd ~/.kde/Autostart
ln -s /usr/bin/kpilot .

Sucking down the notebook PC power-

This one was tough to find since they hide these arrows a bit if you are not really looking hard enough. Just enter klatop config. Then use the left/right arrows till you see the settings for it. It is hidden on the right. Once there, the options are quite straightforward from there. The hard part is locating it, the actual config is easy.

Digicam not working-

I had this problem with the Kodak CX7300. It was really getting on nerves, so I went to Xandros Networks. From there, I enabled access to the unsupported packages by going to edit, then application sources. Now understand that unsupported means just that. If you screw up your install, don’t come crying to me.

OK, once everything is good to go here, just go to the search box and type gtKam. Now once the results show up, just load up all of the related files including the camera database. Once installed, you should be able to access this program either from the run box or the Programs, Graphics area in the launch menu. There you will have a huge database of cameras that blows Digicam out of the water from my own experience.

Conclusion-

Well folks, I have to say that Xandros is much improved over the last version. As a matter of fact, I spend most of my time on that OS vs. Windows nowadays. Still, there are still some areas that were mentioned earlier that I hope can be resolved, other than that; I have to give it a pretty strong thumbs up. ;o)

Oh, in case you missed it. Here is the link to part 1 of the review.