A Xandros Test Drive

Mark Drone, co-founder of the TechGeeks listserv, recently installed Xandros on a Dell laptop and reported his experiences to the list. He’s granted me permission to reproduce his post here:

1) Having never used BitTorrent, I downloaded BitTornado as per the
instructions on the Xandros site. After installation, getting the *.torrent file converted to CD-ROM was easy with their instructions.

2) I installed it on a modest Dell Inspiron 5000 (P-III) with a Xircom
PCMCIA ethernet/modem card. 12GB HDD. Installation was quite simple. Hardware was all detected. Setup was completely wizard-driven.

3) A nice little utility called “Xandros Network” works like Lindows. Connects to the mothership and lets you upgrade/update software titles
or add new apps/utilities. Simply select what you want installed and it
takes care of it for you. Selections are limited, most are free. I
added MySQL and the Mozilla suite just to see how it works with large packages. Verdict: works great. As I’m typing this, I’m currently grabbing an update to “kopete” (a KDE instant messaging app).

4) The desktop is quite friendly compared with others I’ve used. Very
configurable, even for someone unfamiliar with the KDE or Gnome. System
tray and toolbar are familiar. “Start” (Launch) menu has similar organization and groupings to Win32 versions. (I really like multiple desktops… always have.)

5) OpenOffice is included. The biggest “wart” discovered so far is that
OO tends to zap my desktop icons. That’s a pretty big wart. It could be
more related to my hardware/memory than to the system, but
ctrl-alt-backspace is needed to reboot the X-server. This translates into “big inconvenience”, which translates into “pain-in-the-posterior”.

6) Networking has never been easier. Other distros have often been
mysterious in this area, but I’m very pleased with the way Xandros handles it.

7) Installed rdesktop using Xandros Network. Nice to be able too talk to my Microsoft Terminal Server. Very fluid even over a dialup connection (IMHO, nobody does this better than MS). Desktop sharing can be enabled easily in Xandros and can be accessed via any VNC clone.

He closes by saying the distro “definitely fun to explore” and well worth the time to check it out. TechGeeks (which can be found at www.tech-geeks.org) is a forum full of folks helping one another out with technology, and many of the members are fans of free and Open Source tools and utilities and often share their findings with the group. Their wide range of experience includes Linux, Microsoft, and Novell software. The bulk of the list is composed of Illinois educators, but everyone is welcome to join in.