Subject: Re: [Alug]newbie desktop distros From: jmb@paston.co.uk (John Billings) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 13:46:15 +0100

Greetings,

On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 06:59:23AM +0100, Syd Hancock wrote:

Has anyone used xandros, lindows or any similar distro?

Yes - See below.

Very interested in any comments/experiences.

I do realise all the disadvantages etc for the more knowledgable user - so pardon the heresy :-)

Heh. My mum and dad both now use free-er software than they did when using Microsoft based systems, and both are happy with the increased reliablility. Dad is reasonably eager to learn more about the unlying system - mum cares as little about the under lying system as she did when using windows. Either way i'd score it as a win for Free Software, or at least a scoredraw.

I've installed/used Desktop/LX (www.lycoris.com) which is RedHat based, and also the Debian based Xandros (www.xandros.com).

Desktop/LX - Downloaded a CD image and burnt it. - Installer: Pretty reasonable. Has auto detected everything on all but one machine i've installed it on - it screwed up on a fairly new and very poor embedded graphics card to the point where i went and got Xandros, of which more later. Partioning was easy enough. IIRC you could choose your user level, and the sorts of things you were likely to want, from which it chose to install various utils and environments. A nice touch is the game of solitare it gives you to play while you wait for the installer to finish. Better than looking at endlessly looping billboards anyway.

Desktop: KDE based, with a different icon set - a fancy looking windows XP-alike one. The familiar (to existing users) cogwheel of the KDE 'start' menu is replaced by a flower, and there's a 'My Linux System' type icon on the desktop, which gives access to drives and other bits and pieces. The Kontrol Center has had a new interface added, to make it more XP-ish, grouping the settings panels into wider catagories. Quite friendly if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. By default I think you get 4 desktops, each of which can obviously have different proggies running on them. The default web browser is Mozilla, and the KOffice suite is also provided, IIRC.

Updates: Via a graphical interface, but you need to pay to play it seems. I did, and it didn't - this may be because of my downloaded version of the software tho.

Novice (linux) User Comments: Dad: "Comfortable looking - obvious where things are." Mum: "Looks like what i used to use." Housemate: "I managed to install it in 40 mins - woah"

Windows: If you're interested in windows compatibility, it's not bad - you can easily mount samba shares, and talk to samba printers - you can also run some windows proggies with the supplied version of wine, but in order to get a couple of bits of my dad's software installed I had to download and install a new RPM with the latest version in.

License: IIRC, it's entirely Free, but I could be wrong.

Xandros - Bought from a UK supplier, who's name i've now forgotten. - Installer: Fantastic - Have yet to trip it up, even on my dodgy new Toys-R-Us laptop everything was detected. Looks slick, and on a blank system with an express install only asks 5 questions before installing the system. An expert install allows more control over partitioning and software to install. One note on partitioning is that the installer does not (yet) allow the resizing of windows partitions, which is contrary to what is said on the box and on the website. Either that or i'm missing something. Which is possible. No game of solitare here either.

Desktop: Another KDE clone, this time with a 'Launch' button with the xandros 'X' symbol on it - fairly familiar layout of icons, including a 'My Computer' clone, and a 'network neighborhood' clone. The Xandros File Manager (XFM) is quite cool as graphical file managers go - windows users will be quite at home with it. One interface can be used to copy files between CDs, floppys, HDs, Samba and NFS shares and FTP sites. I also merrily recognised and displayed my Fuji Camera, which acts as a standard USB Mass storage device. You can also do such wonderful things as right clicking on folders in XFM and go to properties, in order to update permissions and share things as samba shares. Internet dialup was easy, once we gave up on an internal winmodem, alltho I have to say that the support we got in trying to get this to work was fantastic. There are 4 desktops set by default, each with a different colouration to let you know where you are easily. Mozilla is the default for web and mail. Koffice and abiword are supplied, and OpenOffice can be easily downloaded from the Xandros Archive, or from a standard Debian repositry.

Updates: From xandros or debian apt archives, via a very usable graphical apt tool. Could do with a little bit of interface tweaking to make it a bit more intuitive, but it was worked out fairly quickly.

Novice (linux) User Comments: Dad: "Fantastic - very professional looking - wouldn't be out of place in a corporate workplace" Mum: See above Housemate: "no solitare on this installer. that sucks"

Windows: Xandros is available in it's more expensive form with Crossover Office, which pretty flawlessly runs a given set of normally windows based software. Once we'd installed a version of wine from deb unstable (which wasn't as hard as it sounds, using the graphical tool) we also managed to run a plethora of dad's accounting and office manager type software.

License: This is the sticker - it's not all Free, specifically the Crossover Office and XFM bits. In terms of installation you're allowed to install it on any number of home PCs, and 1 business PC.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

John