Distributions [LWN.net]

News and Editorials

Interview with Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO

November 21, 2003

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

Two weeks ago, Xandros Corporation announced the release of Xandros Desktop OS 2.0, which will be available for purchase beginning December 9. We have taken this opportunity to ask the recently appointed CEO of Xandros Corporation Andreas Typaldos about the product features, plans for the future and other topics of interest.

Mr. Typaldos, thank you very much for your time. You have been with Xandros Corporation for less than a month. What are your first impressions? What motivated you to take up the challenge?

It's really quite simple. The Linux desktop market is about to explode and Xandros has a clear vision, a great product and the best engineering team in the business. My challenge is to parlay engineering leadership into market leadership.

Let's talk about your upcoming 2.0 release. Your announcement has given us a preview of what to expect, such as your new drag and drop CD burning ability integrated into the Xandros File Manager and improved compatibility with Windows. Anything else we can look forward to?

Our engineers are continually refining usability features to keep up with user needs. In version 2 you can create zip and tar archives of selected files with a single click and easily hook up to hundreds of digital cameras. There's even a Boot Manager control panel that lets you set the default operating system and time-out for dual-boot machines. Stay tuned for further Windows compatibility announcements from Xandros.

Just as important as what Xandros is doing is what's happening with other open source projects: kernel development, Debian, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org and many others. Between their improvements and ours we now have one incredible desktop distribution. We've reached such a quality plateau that once a Windows user tries Xandros 2, I believe they'll never want to go back.

A question about Xandros Networks. If I understand it correctly, this will be a repository of software, free or otherwise, available for a single-click installation, similar to Lindows.com's Click-N-Run. Do you mind revealing what applications can we expect to find there? Anything unique or worth paying for?

We've offered free single-click updates for bug fixes and patches since the initial release of Xandros 1. That policy will not only continue with Xandros 2, but Xandros Desktop users will also have access to one of the world's largest inventories of free Linux software. Xandros Networks is an important sales channel, so expect to hear some interesting announcements about it in the near future. Rest assured that any subscriptions or direct sales will be for real value add, such as version enhancements or third-party software that's been QA'd by Xandros engineers.

I should also point out that Xandros provides everything most users need right out of the box and we don't charge for updates to otherwise free software such as OpenOffice.org or the Mozilla communications suite.

Besides the upcoming Xandros Desktop OS 2.0, will we see any other products in the near future? Just after your 1.0 release, there has been talk about Xandros Server, but this idea seems to have been dropped since. Or is it still on the cards?

No, it has not been dropped. We plan to be a complete solutions company. In fact, as early as January, we'll be announcing some exciting new Xandros Business Solutions that are designed to address critical deployment, management, and thin-client needs. As with all Xandros solutions, they'll be engineered to smoothly integrate with existing network environments. They'll save organizations a bundle, but even more important, they'll put control of critical systems and data back into customer hands.

It would appear that Xandros Desktop OS is a distribution designed predominantly for home users. Are there any plans to conquer the corporate desktop?

That's really a misperception since the Deluxe Edition of Xandros Desktop OS already has superior enterprise capabilities, most notably seamless integration with Windows applications and networks. Please come to LinuxWorld in January to hear the full story of how we plan to conquer the corporate desktop.

How is Xandros Corporation doing financially?

We have recently begun a new marketing strategy and we are on track based on our plan. We are progressing very well with our alliances and revenue generators. Our market presence continues to increase in part due to great product reviews. We expect 2004 to be a breakout year for Xandros and Desktop Linux.

Excellent as Xandros 1.x was, it hasn't reached its potential in terms of market penetration. We haven't seen much marketing and advertising from Xandros. Is this going to change or do you believe that the "word of mouth" strategy works well enough?

No, we are planning to go way beyond "word of mouth". Following on its product quality from our Corel legacy, Xandros is already well known for its engineering excellence, with a development team that's second to none. Now we are building it as a premier software company across-the-board; fully staffed with quality management, marketing, and support. In July, the company launched a concerted marketing effort to raise the profile of the great products we were turning out. We hired an experienced industry veteran David Finkelstein to head up Sales & Marketing and a quality PR firm. As a result, we are already working on a number of strategic deals that will increase Xandros' profile dramatically.

The xandros.com website has some brief information about OEM deals and high-profile industry partnerships. Can you tell us more?

We are close to announcing a number of significant partnerships. We have already signed up large distributors in Asia, Australia, South America and Europe. As a matter of fact our Latin American reseller sold over 7,000 units in only two months! Our Asia/Australia distributor plans a major marketing and ad campaign in conjunction with the version 2 release and has already signed up almost 100 resellers for Xandros.

This is a subject often brought up by users on public forums: does Xandros contribute back to the Linux community? After all, much of what constitutes Xandros Desktop OS is free software developed by enthusiasts and packaged by Debian developers, so it's only fair that some of Xandros' work go back to the community for the benefit of the rest of us. Does Xandros do that? Does your company sponsor any open source projects?

We have always contributed back to open source projects that we use. We report any bugs we find and send all our patches back to the maintainers. We are also working with the Debian project to ensure that the next version of Debian GNU/Linux will be LSB compliant. We have sponsored open source developers on various projects in the past and expect to do so again in the near future.

Do you personally use Xandros Desktop as your primary operating system?

Of Course! Xandros Desktop gives me everything I need right out of the box. The all-in-one Xandros File Manager makes transition to Linux a breeze. Everything on my Xandros Desktop works just as expected, including the Mozilla Internet suite and OpenOffice.org. I can read and edit Word docs in my daily business, and the party on the other end is never aware that I'm not using Microsoft Word.

How would you answer this question from a Windows user who has just walked up to you: "I use Windows on my computer. Why should I spend $40 or $90 to switch to Xandros Desktop?"

Stability, security, which is a big issue nowadays, and a great experience! Any Windows user interested in exploring the Xandros alternative will be able to go to our web site in December to download and install a 30-day trial version of the Standard Edition of Xandros Desktop OS. They can then create a dual boot machine with both Xandros and Windows and decide which OS is best suited to their present and future needs.

Mr. Typaldos, thank you very much for your answers and all the best with your new job!

Comments (18 posted)

Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

The Debian Project has sent out an alert to the effect that several of its systems have been broken into. These include systems running the bug tracking system, mailing lists, web servers, CVS server, and some archives. The project claims that the Debian archive itself has not been affected, but some (in particular the security archive) are undergoing close inspection before being returned to the net. Everything should be back by the time you read this, however this page has been set up to provide status reports and other pertinent information. Wichert Akkerman has also provided this overview of the progress so far.

The Debian Project has released the anticipated 'woody' upgrade, officially named Debian GNU/Linux 3.0r2. This release contains many security fixes and other revisions that maintainers of stable 'woody' systems should have.

Debian Planet reports progress on the Debian GNU/NetBSD port, using the GNU C library as a base instead of NetBSD's libc.

Comments (none posted)

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 47

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of November 24, 2003 is available. Gentoo Managers' Meeting Summary - 17 November 2003 and the Gentoo Desktop update are among this week's topics.

Full Story (comments: none)

Mandrake Linux

The Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter for November 24 is out; it looks at the release of 9.2 ISO images, the LG drive problem, some new tutorials, and more.

The Multi Network Firewall 8.2 had a version of freeswan bundled with the latest kernel update which did not match the installed freeswan package, making freeswan unusable. This update brings the freeswan package up to date with the kernel version.

Comments (none posted)

Slackware Linux

The latest changes to slackware-current include an upgrade to mysql-4.0.16 and some KDE fixes among other things.

Comments (none posted)

SUSE Linux

SUSE has announced the availability of the download version of SUSE Linux 9.0. As usual, some non-free programs are missing, and it is not possible to download (or create) installation CD images.

SUSE also announced the release of Service Pack 3 for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8.

Comments (none posted)

Using and Customizing Knoppix (O'ReillyNet)

Here's an O'ReillyNet article celebrating the joys of using and configuring Knoppix. "Klaus Knopper created Knoppix. Though this distribution is rather young, it stands out for its hardware detection and autoconfiguration abilities. The packages and OS structure are based on the Debian distribution, but the hardware-discovery process uses kudzu, Redhat's hardware probing utility."

Comments (2 posted)

New Distributions

Firenet mini linux

Firenet mini linux contains busybox and a Linux kernel. No other binary files are included. It supports inetd, telnetd, httpd, devfsd, networking, dhcpd, and more. The system uses busybox's init and implements a Debian-style SysV-init boot script, which is helpful when adding a new system service. The system is also a good example of using busybox in an embedded system. The initial public release of Firenet, version 0.1, was released November 23, 2003.

Comments (none posted)

Minor distribution updates

Devil-Linux v1.0.2b is available

Version 1.0.2b of Devil-Linux is available, with a bunch of bug fixes and added support for older computers which require ISAPNP support. Click below for more information.

Full Story (comments: none)

Fedora Core 1 Update

This update (redhat-config-packages-1.2.7-1) fixes problems with trying to use RedHat/RPMS instead of Fedora/RPMS on Fedora Core CDs with redhat-config-packages.

Full Story (comments: none)

LEAF Bering-uClibc 2.0

LEAF (Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall) has announced the release of Bering-uClibc 2.0. This version uses the Bering releases of LEAF, compiled with uClibc 0.9.20. Click below for more information.

Full Story (comments: none)

MoviX

MoviX has released v0.8.1pre5 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: Supervesafb and NVidiaTV bugs have been fixed, remote support has been added to slideshows, GIF and PhotoCD are now displayable by slideshows, the switch to the MPlayer menu has been improved, and support for serial Hauppauge remotes has been added."

Comments (none posted)

Puppy Linux

Puppy live-CD version 0.7.8 has been released. The ISO is now 41M, and has the "kitchen sink" in it, including Mozilla web browser and Scribus desktop publishing. Click below to see the release notes.

Full Story (comments: none)

RxLinux

RxLinux has released v1.5.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: A package editor has been added to the rxmaster ("Edit packages"). Packages can now be copied from the site-wide repository to the group or host packages repository. Files inside packages can be modified using the rsmaster Web interface. A wait loop at boot time has been added to give time to auto negotiating switches. sz, rz, and rsync are included in the base system."

Comments (none posted)

SENTINIX

Sentinix 0.70.5 (beta 2) has been released. Click below for more information.

Full Story (comments: none)

SmoothWall

SmoothWall has released v2.0RC1 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This is the first release candidate for SmoothWall Express 2.0. ipac was replaced with RRDtool. Custom DynDNS was fixed. Some changes were made to the Web UI. The updates list location has changed. More bugs were corrected."

Comments (none posted)

Snootix

Snootix has released v0.5-pre1 with major bugfixes. "Changes: This release should build an LFS system without trouble. If it builds LFS on three systems other than the author's, it will be moved to the default (stable) branch."

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Next page: Development>>