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New Linux User

Geeky Fun: Xandros Linux.

by Jon on March 6th, 2006

My regular readers are probably used to me switching distros more often than most people change their underware. Without knowing how often the average person changes his or her underware it’s hard to say how accurate that thought it, but yeah - I change distros a lot. My recent foray with Slackware went OK, but I couldn’t get any reliable functionality out of my wifi card. One boot it would work, the next boot it wouldn’t. I got tired of that after a few hours, and went searching for a new distro.

I’ve used most of the distros on Distrowatch’s top 20 list with varying degrees of success, but one that I had never gotten around to trying was Xandros. Xandros is a Canadian pay distro, although there is a free version available.

Xandros has a gazillion versions: Home, Business, and Education. There’s also an unmentioned free version called the Open Community Edition. I elected to pay $10 to get the OCE via http download, but if you’re into torrents, you can get it free.

My thoughts

I installed Xandros on my Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop. The current OCE edition of Xandros is 3.02 and it installed flawlessly. It didn’t pick up my Linksys WPC11 wifi PCMCIA card during install, but on the first boot it picked it up and I was able to use the standard KDE Control Panel to configure it.

Even better? Suspend works! It didn’t work out of the box, but with some minimal tweaking it worked just fine. I’ll post the details on enabling suspend in Xandros in another entry.

Xandros is a Debian-based distro that uses the KDE desktop. I have to admit that the pay distros are really getting my attention these days. Linspire and Xandros are the only two distros I’ve ever run that have supported suspend. With a laptop and (let’s face it) pretty slow boot times for almost all GNU/Linux distros, I need suspend.

Xandros has a software repository (called XN for Xandros Networks) much like Linspire’s CNR repository. The idea is the same - click and install software through a nice GUI on top of apt-get, but that’s where the similarity ends. The range of software available on XN is really quite abysmal when compared to Linspire’s CNR. I don’t know the actual numbers, but Linspire has over 2000 applications in their CNR and there’s like…20 in XN.

However, you can get around that by adding Debian Sarge repositories to your sources.list file. Unlike Linspire, Xandros seems to have stuck close enough to the Debian lines that applications apt-getted from those repositories work. I’ve installed Nano, Audacity, and Open Office 2.0 from the Debian Sarge repositories and it worked just fine.

The applications that Xandros comes with are pretty rudimentary and the absence of anything other than a single Xandros repository in the sources.list file left me thinking that while this was a nice desktop, I was going to be screwed for applications. Happily, though, normal Debian applications seem to run OK.

I’ll be playing with Xandros over the next week and posting my thoughts and observations. Two entries that I will be making for sure are:

  1. How to enable suspend in Xandros
  2. How to add Debian repositories to Xandros

I’ll link to them when I’ve written them.

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POSTED IN: Geeky Fun

9 opinions for Geeky Fun: Xandros Linux.

  • New Linux User » HOWTO: Add Debian Repositories to Xandros.
    Mar 8, 2006 at 5:56 am

    […] During my recent foray with Xandros Linux, I identified two things that I had to do to make Xandros usable. The first was to get suspend working, which is covered here, and the second was to gain access to more applications. The Xandros Networks (XN) is sadly bereft of applications. […]

  • woodsmoke
    Mar 9, 2006 at 10:36 pm

    Hi,
    I just ran across your site, and gave a mention of your reviews of Xandros back at the forum….

    And, if anyone wants to take a look, I have a Xandros “fan” site, with tweaked games, wallpapers, an odd article or two and Spanish translations for our Hispanic friends….

    Hey, I bookmarked this site…. I’ll be coming back it looks pretty good.

    ain’t xandros great!
    woodsmoke

  • Jon
    Mar 13, 2006 at 5:47 am

    Hey Woodsmoke. Thanks for stopping by and sorry it took me so long to moderate this comment. Busy days around here :)

    I’ve moved on from Xandros - Linspire is much more my cup of tea (read: much more advanced) but I’ll be keeping an eye on Xandros. I’m Canadian and would love to use a Canadian distro ;)

  • woodsmoke
    Mar 13, 2006 at 10:46 am

    Hi Jon,
    Hey, my best buddy of many years name is spelled Jon…
    His kids are Jean, Jeannene, Jonell, Jonna and Jon…
    Anyhow, thanks for the reply…. Yeah a lot of YOU GUYS that are into all the techy stuff move on.. I admit, from what I’ve seen of the other distros, there are a LOT that have a lot more “cutting edge” stuff and will do things like the “science” stuff, that my boy does, he’s an astronomer.. but he kind of “rolls his own”… But, for what I need which is FREEDOM from MS and the ability to KNOW that when I turn the machine on it just works, so I can add an Impress slide to the lecture for tomorrow…. the j/c which REQUIRES MS….. runs Impress just fine….. what they don’t know, doesn’t hurt me! :)
    And I donate a LOT of computers, up into thirty odd so far… a lot of them “modded” for kids…. and I went through a STACK of distros trying to find one that would “just work” and was also a one cd install…. I don’t have hours to be loading and picking between fifty-dozen different keybards and then trying to set up a printer… And was almost ready to give up with the first computer, then I did Fedora Core 3….. yep several cds but it did find everything, enven though it took some configuring…. printer, internet, speakers, etc.

    And in a couple of weeks there was Xandros, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve sold one to the wife of a fellow who is the early stages of Alzheimers’s and she wanted him to be able to play Yhatzee online…. go figure… and didn’t want viruses and wanted something simple and logical…. I’ve donated to kids who do their homework, the USB ports and pen drives just work along with Open Office, and they have plenty of games from Xandros Networks….and some crossover games…. and Hispanics who can use it to IM and e-mail with their relatives elsewhere. (I do ESL also)… The distro is so good for “that level” of people that I’ve actually got e-mails from folks who are still using Xandros almost a year later, and had one guy, just last week, who dropped off a computer for me to “rehabilatate and donate” that uses it for E-Bay sayles(uses AOL) and, yes, AOL is “OS independent” but, he just fired up Xandros and put the CD in and away he went…

    So…. for SOME FOLKS :) who are more cutting edge… Xandros is doesn’t have enough horsepower, but for us Lazy Bones…. I like to nap a LOT :) it works ok….

    And, if you don’t mind, I put a link for my fansite in the little box but it didn’t show up…. you can type in XandrosFun in Google and get to it…

    I must say that you have an “eclectic” bunch of things going on here…..

    again, nice site!
    woodsmoke

  • Jon
    Mar 14, 2006 at 6:10 am

    It’s true - different stroked for different folks. My needs aren’t so much techhy as they are a desire to have my laptop function as intended with Linux running on it. Linux is far enough along now that my computer should ‘just work’ and with Linspire, it does.

    I have far less problems with my desktop since its hardware isn’t as exotic. I’m currently running SuSE 10 on it., Beauty…

  • woodsmoke
    Mar 14, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    HI,
    yeah… a friend of mine runs SUSE…. and really likes it, he’s into sound….. and a student or two use Fedora…. one thing about linux is that there really is something for everybody!

    ain’t xandros great!
    woodsmoke

  • Jim
    Mar 16, 2006 at 12:13 pm

    http://www.newlinuxuser.com/howto-enable-suspend-with-xandros/

    This link seems to be hacked. When I punch it, it comes up on microsoft.com

  • Jon
    Mar 16, 2006 at 12:38 pm

    Hey Jim,

    Not hacked, just a type on my part.

    If a link has two http:// in it, it will go to Microsoft. I have no idea how MS managed that because it happens in FF as well as IE, but they did.

    Try it:

    http://http//www.newlinuxuser.com/howto-enable-suspend-with-xandros/

    Now the correct one:

    http//www.newlinuxuser.com/howto-enable-suspend-with-xandros/

    I fixed the link in the entry. Thanks!

  • Mac
    Mar 12, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    Like Xandros alot, but I can’t bring myself to get away from
    Freespire 2.0 or 1.0. I run 7 computers for fun ? The linux distros have no problems the MS stuff…. well you know.
    The only issue I have had with Xandros is the sound card drivers for a high end Creative Labs card. A guy’s gotta have sound. The Freespire shortcoming’s are related to not playing dvd’s commercial movies. I am new to Linux so still struggling with that but overall Linux Xandros and Freespire really rock
    Mac

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