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A Look at Xandros Desktop 3

Xandros Corporation released a new version of its flagship product, Xandros Desktop, shortly before Christmas last year. This was in line with the company's previous two releases, coming out in roughly annual intervals and targeting mostly home and business users who are interested in migrating to Linux, but would prefer not to have to learn bash. There are two editions of Xandros Desktop 3 - a $50 Standard edition and a $90 Deluxe edition, with the main difference between the two being the inclusion of CrossOver Office in the Deluxe edition. As the previous two Xandros releases received highly positive reviews by the Linux media, we expected the same high quality, attention to detail, and intuitive, user-friendly desktop as in the company's previous releases, and we weren't disappointed.

Xandros Desktop 3 Deluxe came in a standard software box with two CDs (installation and application CDs), a 9-page Getting Started Guide, and a hefty, 350-page User Guide. The User Guide turned out to be a pleasant surprise and a valuable resource for users just starting to explore a Linux-based operating system. The guide is still based on the old Corel Linux manual, but it is much more comprehensive with screenshots, illustrations, tips, and step-by-step instructions for completing tasks. Xandros has to be applauded for making an honest effort to provide solid printed documentation; nowadays, even those few distribution makers that still ship their products in traditional software boxes rarely include good printed documentation (with SUSE LINUX possibly the only exception to the rule).

After examining the content of the box, we proceeded with installing the brand new Xandros Desktop on a test computer with the following specifications: Intel Pentium 4 1.4 GHz, ASUS P4T mainboard with Intel 850 chipset, 384 MB RDRAM, Matrox Millennium G450 graphics card, two 7200RPM hard disks (120 GB Maxtor and 80 GB Western Digital), PlexWriter CD-RW drive, Realtek 8139too (on board) network card, and Lemel TF700 17 inch LCD monitor.

Surprisingly, things didn't go well - the installation media would hang during the hardware detection stage. Upon closer examination it turned out that the installer was trying to check all 18 partitions on the first hard disk (that's what a test computer of somebody testing distributions for living looks like) and would not go any further after the 15th partition. This was due to what seemed like a bug in Xandros' boot sequence (there was no problem booting Xandros 1.0 or 2.0 on the same system). We had to physically disconnect the first hard disk before we could complete the installation of Xandros Desktop on the second hard disk, which didn't have as many partitions. We decided not to hold this against Xandros since no user in their target spectrum is likely to have more than 15 partitions on their hard disk; probably much fewer than that.

There is not much to say about the installer except that it worked as expected. Xandros has produced what surely is one of the best installers of any distribution - simple enough without it being dumbed down Linspire-style, but still powerful enough if one chooses the custom install option. Hardware detection was almost perfect, with only the screen resolution requiring a minor adjustment after the installation. The system, running on top of the kernel 2.6.9, boots into graphical environment with KDE 3.3.0, but the default applications for various tasks are not always KDE packages; as an example, the default browser and mail applications are Mozilla (with pre-configured Flash and RealPlayer plugins) and Mozilla Mail. Neither Firefox, nor Thunderbird are installed, although Firefox is available for download through Xandros Networks. There is an Updates applet in the system tray to alert the user to the fact that a security or bug fix patch has been released. All the other best-loved features of Xandros Desktop, such as the desktop switching utility or the Xandros File Manager are also present.

What are the most important new features in Xandros Desktop 3? One of them is the ability to encrypt home directories of users on the system. This option can be selected from the "User Manager" module in the KDE Control Center where the system administrator can choose one of the 12 available cryptographic algorithms and two (fast or slow) creation methods. The only downside of this feature is that, depending on the selected options, it can take up to several hours to complete the encryption process. Once a home directory of a user has been encrypted, no other user, not even the superuser, can see what is inside that directory; it will simply appear to them as an empty directory. (Of course, the superuser could always install a modified kernel to capture plain text or the encryption key). Needless to say, it is not possible to delete an encrypted directory.

Xandros Desktop 3 also comes with a new firewall wizard which, designed in the usual Xandros-style user-friendly manner, allows even non-technical users to setup and run an effective firewall on their computers connected to the Internet. As an example, the user can simply tick the "Peer to Peer file-sharing server" checkbox in the wizard to enable BitTorrent traffic, which is so much more intuitive than the usual "punch a hole through ports 6881-6999", often found in FAQs or online documentation. The firewall can be turned on and off from the main menu, with an option to start it at boot time. The firewall is definitely a useful addition; we were surprised to see quite a few services running by default on a stock Xandros system (including Samba and ProFTPd), but turning unneeded services off was not nearly as intuitive as setting up the Xandros Firewall.

The Xandros-specific application that allows drag-and-drop CD burning from within its file manager has been further enhanced by the addition of a DVD burning tool. No matter how excellent K3b is for this purpose, it is always a pleasure to open a file manager, then simply drag files from a hard disk folder and drop them into the CD or DVD drive. This action then launches a pop-up wizard that guides the user through creating a new data or media project. And while on the subject of dragging and dropping files around the Xandros File Manager, this feature is available not just for mounted devices, such as USB drives or NTFS partitions (read only), but also remote file systems, like NFS, Samba or FTP - all automatically set up and ready to use.

Packages in Xandros are managed through Xandros Networks. This is essentially a web browser with a hierarchical folder structure listing applications in the left pane. Besides providing security and bug-fix updates for the product, Xandros Networks also lists a number of packages that are not on the installation CD, but are available for download. As an example, there is a whole lot of development tools and server software that can be downloaded and installed with a single mouse click, but these are not deemed essential for most users so they are not installed by default. Some might be surprised to see that GIMP or Evolution are not installed either, but this might be due to the fact that the Deluxe edition comes with CrossOver Office, which supports Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office. Xandros Networks also includes an online store, which contains a curious mix of free and commercial applications. Some of these are available for free after registration (e.g. GnuCash), others require that a user become a Premium member of Xandros Networks at a cost of $39 per year (e.g. several game demos), and still others require cash payments (e.g. StarOffice, CrossOver Office, Xandros Desktop User Guide in PDF format).

Other new features include newly added VPN client (konnectvpn), a VoIP application for Internet Telephony (KPhone), a scanner application (Kooka), better support for wireless networking, ISDN connections, web cams, software modems, and Palm Pilot. However, support for proprietary media formats is still missing and so is playback of encrypted DVDs. Interestingly, although Xandros is based on Debian, which has yet to follow most other distributions and migrate from XFree86 to X.Org as its preferred X window system, Xandros Desktop 3 comes with X.Org (version 6.7.0).

There is not much wrong with Xandros Desktop 3. The developers have created a fine product that can be safely recommended to users wishing to try out an alternative operating system without having to go through a steep learning curve. And although we didn't care much for CrossOver Office, those users who cannot be without Photoshop, or have complex macros and VBA code in their MS Office files, will find the application invaluable. For the rest of us, the $50 Standard edition is a fair price for a product that has matured to become one of the best, if not the best, Linux distribution for novice and non-technical computer users.

Comments (2 posted)

Distribution News

Fedora Core 4 plans announced

A tentative schedule and plan for the Fedora Core 4 release has been posted; the first test release is due on February 21. The plans include the possible incorporation of GCC 4, GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, Xen, an SELinux "targeted" policy with more targets, better Java support (including Eclipse), and more; click below for the details.

Full Story (comments: 23)

Fedora Core 2 Status Update

The Fedora Steering Committee has proposed to transfer Fedora Core 2 to the Fedora Legacy Project at the point Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is released. This is currently scheduled for March 21, 2005.

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Debian and Mozilla: a new proposal

Gervase Markham, the Mozilla Foundation representative charged with negotiating an agreement with Debian over the use of Mozilla's trademarks, has posted a new proposal to that end. Mozilla would retain control over trademark use, but would no longer be able to exercise that control after a package is frozen for a stable release.

Comments (6 posted)

Debian GNU/Linux

Here's a call for papers and registrations for Debian Miniconf, which will take place in Canberra, Australia on April 18 and 19, 2005.

There is also a call for papers for the Asia Debian Mini-Conf 2005, which takes place February 28 and March 1, 2005 in Beijing, China.

Bits from the dpkg maintainer looks at the stable version which is in a state of freeze and a new experimental version.

The Final Report on the 5th Debian Conference is now available.

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Ubuntu Community Council meeting 2005-01-11

The Ubuntu Linux Community Council meeting on January 11, 2005 covered a number of issues but there are two major issues which are of particularly noteworthy: new Local Community Teams and getting community members involved in contributing to and maintaining pieces of Universe. Both a summary and a full log are available, or click below for more information.

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Fedora updates

FC3: gpdf (update to 2.8.2), w3m (fixed a duplicated w3mimgdisplay), gimp (major version upgrade from 2.0.x to 2.2.x), NetworkManager (update to latest CVS), gimp-help (new version 2-0.6), gimp (clip thumbnail quality at 75), dovecot (bug fix update for the Dovecot IMAP server), dhcpv6 (adds Relay Agent support, fixes bugs), dhcp (updates DHCP and DHCLIENT packages), bind (updates), vixie-cron (updates), sysklogd (updates and bug fixes), gpdf (minor security patch).

FC2: gpdf (update to 2.8.2), system-config-kickstart (rebuilt 2.5.19 for FC2 to fix bug #143946), dovecot (bug fix update for the Dovecot IMAP server), gpdf (minor security patch).

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Slackware Linux

Slackware has a few changes noted in the slackware-current changelog. Upgrades include cups-1.1.23, udev-050, glib2-2.6.1, gtk+2-2.6.1, libtiff-3.7.1, gnupg-1.2.7, stunnel-4.07, gimp-2.2.1, sane-backends-1.0.15, xine-lib-1.0. Gnupg-1.4.0 is in testing.

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Trustix Secure Linux

TSL has a bug fix advisory for glibc, iproute, setup and tsl-utils. Click below to find out more.

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Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for January 18, 2005 is out. This issue covers the Call for Papers for the Asia Debian Mini-Conf, a list of packages in contrib which should be forced into the testing stage of contrib, ten ways to give back to the Free Software community, the final DebConf 4 report, and more.

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for January 17, 2005 looks at Gentoo name and logo usage guidelines, and other topics.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 83

The DistroWatch Weekly for January 17, 2005 is out. "Welcome to this year's 3rd edition of DistroWatch Weekly! Lots of new releases over the weekend, especially for gaming enthusiasts, with new versions of Linux Live Game Project and Hikarunix. Also in this issue - a comment on the recent distribution comparison feature in Linux Format, news about the upcoming Fedora Core 4 and Beyond Linux From Scratch 6.0, as well as a review of DistroWatch by NewsForge. Happy reading!"

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Newsletters and articles of interest

Site review: Distrowatch.com (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews the web site Distrowatch.com. "Distrowatch is one of the best resources for people who want to choose a Linux distro they'd find suitable. The site also raises awareness for smaller distributions. It has a large database with just about every Linux distribution currently available, along with useful information about each one that will help Linux searchers find the best one for them."

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More FreeBSD for Linux Users (O'ReillyNet)

Dru Lavigne examines some of the common command differences a Linux user might encounter on a FreeBSD system. "One of the minor irritations that comes with using another operating system is the change in the environment. Some of the first things many Linux users discover about a default FreeBSD installation are that it doesn't include bash and doesn't colorize the output of ls. Fortunately, if you've become accustomed to these features, it only takes a moment or so to integrate them into FreeBSD."

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Distribution reviews

Installing Debian From Scratch (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers Debian From Scratch installation. "DFS started last summer when John Goerzen, a long-time Debian developer and author of several books on Debian and Linux, found himself faced with two problems at the same time. He wanted an installer for Debian's AMD64 port, and a rescue CD that would support filesystems like Reiser4 that are not available in the standard Debian rescue set. (The new Debian-Installer has since made DFS's AMD64 installer unnecessary.) A bootable CD, he decided, would solve both problems. Modifying an existing bootable CD such as Knoppix seemed too complex, so he developed his own."

Comments (1 posted)

Novell Linux Desktop Gathers Enterprise Strength (eWeek)

eWeek reviews Novell Linux Desktop. "eWEEK Labs tested Novell Linux Desktop 9, the first specifically Novell-branded Linux operating system to ship since the company began flying its penguin flag, and we found the product to be as capable and well-made as any desktop Linux distribution we've seen yet."

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My workstation OS: NetBSD (NewsForge)

Alan Dipert lists his reasons for choosing NetBSD, on NewsForge. "On the NetBSD Web site, you'll find that the NetBSD team prides itself on NetBSD's "clean design," and with good reason. As a Slackware Linux refugee, I could appreciate the BSD rc initialization and configuration scripts. I was also happy with the relatively low amount of software that comes with a default install. I've had trouble in the past paring down Linux distributions to installations of software I actually require. It's my philosophy, and apparently NetBSD's, to start with software sets of absolutely essential programs and libraries, then let users add what they require after the system has booted on its own. Though NetBSD installs with X11 by default, the environment is sparse to say the least. There are no automatic setup or configuration scripts, graphical or otherwise. After my installation was all said and done, NetBSD consumed less than 300MB of space on my machine, including XFree86."

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