Interview with Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO [LWN.net]

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!

(Log in to post comments)

Interview with Andreas Typaldos or with Market Droid?

Posted Nov 22, 2003 0:34 UTC (Sat) by jjstwerff (subscriber, #4082) [Link]

What do you expect from someone in charge for only 2 months. Reading into the details and getting exited... I do believe there is a strong need in the market for a party that concentrates on the desktop. Just read the recent stories from Bruce Perens and compare it to these guys.. they will love to sponsor better hardware integration with laptops and all kinds of gadgets.

The bigs guys look for the big market with big companies.

The small guys will work for the normal customers...

I like to have a super desktop OS...

Interview with Andreas Typaldos or with Market Droid?

Posted Nov 26, 2003 22:17 UTC (Wed) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link]

Bull, reread the interview. All of the answers are deliberately vague and devoid of any real answers. As far as needing a distribution for the desktop, what is Mandrake?

All of the other distributions are open about how they contribute back to Linux, Xandros brushes it off with some vague statement "we submit our patches like good boys". Exactally how many kernel developers do they employ and what have they contributed back. What community projects have they sponsored or participated in. They make claims about their great Windows compatability then they should have made some significant contributions to the Samba code base or Wine.

Everything I have seen or heard from these folks indicates that they are just parasites and this interview does nothing to change my mind.

-- Dennis

"Desktop" too generic

Posted Nov 22, 2003 10:43 UTC (Sat) by dmantione (guest, #4640) [Link]

Because many Linux users prefer to create an end-user solution themselves, using a
toolkit. They need a distribution that is a toolkit from which they can quickly generate a
solution for any purpose.

A specialized distribution would be a solution for a specific task. It would be usefull for
the people that it is targetted to, however, those people usually are not the people that
are adventurous enough to try Linux. Instead, a Linux wizard usually rolls out a solution
for such a person, but that guru wants a complete toolkit with everything included.

"Desktop" too generic

Posted Nov 26, 2003 6:24 UTC (Wed) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

Why not optimize distributions for specific tasks?

There is some value in that, I know that I would like a more niche-centric desktop distribution, kind of like what SME Server/e-smith does for a small office server. They cut down the packages quite a bit (there's no GCC on install) and they have about 3 security updates a year. No sendmail helps there too. I think another option is to have multiple install options, kinda like whet Red Hat does with Personal Desktop vs. Workstation on their install, but with more and better (smaller) options.

Here's some of the things I've found wrong with the Linux desktops I've played with to date:

Too much stuff: I don't need the security liability of an MTA like sendmail on my desktop box. I don't need it taking up space or consuming resources. I don't need it period, and many users like myself with most of their recent desktop time on MS products won't need it and won't miss it.
Too much overhead: My RH9 desktop is heavy! I suppose if I were using a new computer and not this AMD K6-3 450 it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe over time this won't be a factor due to Moore's law, I don't know. I do know that RH9 slugs on this AMD box compared to Win98... ...big time (but RH9 is stable).
Inconsistency in UIs between applications.
Too many default installed applications.

I don't think a new distribution is necessary for each profile of desktop user, though. Instead, why not have about half a dozen desktop installation profiles to chose from? Here's some off the top of my head thoughts...

A. Me, I want a lighter window manager, no MTA, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution is fine, plus a graphical FTP/SSH client. GCC is debatable. This would be the 'light desktop'. Look at e-smith. The desktop equivelent of that is what I want. Many computer users don't need a compiler or an MTA on their systems.

B. From there, you could bump up to a GNOME desktop with more stuff. This would be a 'GNOME Desktop'.

C. Then of course there's KDE, so the similar option would be 'KDE Desktop'.

D. The 'Bloated Desktop' would offer about everything under the sun for Desktop use. It'd run KDE and GNOME, and tons of apps. (you wouldn't call it 'Bloated', but that's what it'd be)

E. 'Developer's desktop'. Set up with Apache and all those goodies, plus OpenOffice, Mozilla, compilers, etc. etc.

F. 'Simple Desktop'. Something really simplified, perhaps running an OEone type interface. The simple desktop is Grandma's desktop.

My disappointment with the Desktop distrubutions I've played with to date is that they're either defective on installing and/or they're huge default installs, artificially huge. Xandros ranks among the better ones I've played with. ELX on a fast box had merit. (though the installer could use some polish)

I don't see why there needs to be an entirely new distribution for each of the above. Have a default installation floor for each install option ('light desktop', 'GNOME Desktop', etc.), and allow people to add apps as needed in the installer or afterwords.

I to this day haven't been fully satisfied with any desktop distribution. Honestly, the Xandros 2.0 looks like a nice option, about as good as any. It's a shame it's not free as in speech or as in beer.

Maybe gnUserLinux will address this. I hope so. Right now a challenge I find inside and outside of business is a desktop distribution to recommend. Hopefully the name will change to something more marketable, I'm still not liking the idea of explaining "This is good software" and keeping attention there while also explaining "the 'gn' is silent". Please Mr. Perens, use a name that's marketable. You'd think 'stable' and 'free' would be enough to sell something regardless of name but in reality it has to be sold to management and they aren't always the most technically saavy and some will decide against something in part because it 'sounds stupid'. Unfortunately, those of us not at the top of the rock pile have to suffer when a superior doesn't get it.

-Brock

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 22, 2003 9:19 UTC (Sat) by keithw (guest, #3127) [Link]

It does have that feel, doesn't it. In terms of this being something that I "buy" with my subscription dollars, I don't feel like I got great value with this one. What I'd like to pay for is plausibly impartial insight into the whatever is under discussion, this is closer to boosterism.

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 23, 2003 23:21 UTC (Sun) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link]

I don't think it was a "bought" peice. But I did find it boring. The questions weren't great, and the answers were just flat. But, having asked for the interview, I suppose it would be rude for LWN to refuse to run it.

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 22, 2003 15:24 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

It's just another article by Ladislav, who has been writing lead articles for the distributions page for months. This one came in early and we decided to put out on its own. I'm truly sorry if you didn't like it, but you can be assured that it is not in any way "sponsored" by any vendor.

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 23, 2003 3:50 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Sure looks sponsored. Not the kind of thing I'd like to read in the weekly edition.

e.g: the question about contributing to the community: what about the file manager? What abotu all the "value-aded" features they claim to provide. They don't contribute it back to Debian. This may be right and may be wrong, but it means that the answer that "we do contribute", as given in the interview is just half the truth.

And this is just one example (but regrding the summary text).

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 26, 2003 2:13 UTC (Wed) by ladislav (guest, #247) [Link]

Let me go on record here and state that I have not received any payment for the interview with Andreas Typaldos. Xandros does not in any way sponsor DistroWatch.com. The only thing Xandros offered was a free review copy of Xandros Desktop 2.0 (when released), but this was offered without any conditions attached and well before I thought about interviewing the Xandros CEO.

I am sorry that some of you did not enjoy the interview. Given the new upcoming release (which I happened to beta test), I thought it would be interesting to talk to the new CEO of Xandros and ask him a few questions about the product and future plans.

Those of you who found the questions boring, please suggest better ones. It is of course too late to redo the interview, but perhaps your suggestions and examples of "interesting" questions will give me some ideas for more interesting interviews in the future.

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 26, 2003 12:21 UTC (Wed) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

First: Congrats on taking the critique seriously rather than sulking in the corner. That is a trait I see *waaay* to seldom in a journalist.

You want suggestions for better questions. Obviously I can only speak for myself, and not for all the others, but here are some of the things I'd like to hear about a new (for me) distribution;

* What makes them different from all the other gazillion distros out there ?

* In which way do the distro contribute to the overall Open Source development ? What code if any have they written, improved or released ?

* What is their position on the political scale ? Free as in Freedom only ? Free only in main-distro but proprietary add-ons available ? Proprietary parts in the main-distro that makes the thing useless for a user who prefers to urn only free stuff ?

* Which direction are they going ? What areas are they focusing on improving in the future ? What do they see as the important part ?

* Whats the scale of their effort ? How many programmers do they employ ?
(Sorry, I personally have very little interest in how many marketing-droids they have)

* How is the maintenance ? For how long are older releases supported ? Does it cost anything to receive bugfixes/updates (this was actually partly adressed in your interview), how does upgrades from one version to the next happen ?

Lastly, it matters perhaps more who you talk to than about what. This sounded like a marketing-guy. Noone here is interested or impressed that they have a utility for configuring grub and/or lilo, so has every other distro and it's nothing even remotely new or interesting. Try if you can get an interview with one of the engineers actually working on the distro. Ask him what he did this week, and what is his plans for the next half-year.

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Nov 26, 2003 22:07 UTC (Wed) by ogre (guest, #14142) [Link]

I don't think your questions were particularly bad, some of them were perfect leadins to their marketing but mostly they weren't too bad. I think the big problem was that the answers you got were canned marketoid material. It makes the whole interview read like a promotional piece you would find on their website.

As for alternate questions, it doesn't matter what you asked the answers would have been run through a PR speak filter and been equally bland. I think the interview makes a big statement about the sort of company that Xandros really is.

-- Dennis

Is this an "advertorial"?

Posted Dec 4, 2003 15:22 UTC (Thu) by Sauja (guest, #17526) [Link]

Xandros has a extremely solid and easy distro even version 1.0 (which is more than a 1.0 version since Corel already had a very solid OS for Xandros to start from).

Version 2.0 will be even better and until it is released, not much more can be said.

The one thing Xandros has been missing as a company is Marketing, and I'm glad to see some at last. (I am so tired of hearing about Lindows and thier antics!)

I find value in the add-ons or enhancements that Xandros provides, and they are under no obligation to release those. They give Xandros a competitive advantage over Lindows and Lycoris and that's fine by me. (Although I too would like to know more specifics on what contributions they've made).

Xandros is positioning itself as an alternative to Windows. If you already have an "All Free" distro that you are happy with, this isn't for you anyway.

You can't condemn them for putting marketing ahead of development, because they aren't. The marketing just has so much catching up to do.

Sauja

Desktop breakdown

Posted Nov 30, 2003 16:28 UTC (Sun) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

While the interview was a little fluffy it should not take away from the Xandros distributions real good qualities. I've been playing with and using and testing Linux distros since before there were distros^* so I have a little experience with this. The issue of "what is a desktop" is a very valid point so I will break down the different definitions of desktop as I see them.

WinXX Replacement - Business
Right now, the best WinXX replacement desktop Linux options are Xandros followed closely by Lycoris and Lindows. Xandros gets the nod due to it's integration of the CrossOver products. None of the big name distros come close to these two at being WinXX replacements in this catagory.

WinXX Replacement - Home
Xandros, Lindows and Lycoris are leaders here as well but another options is OEone's HomeBase Linux. If you need a system to do web, email, calender, games & basic document editing/creation then HomeBase can't be beat. The big name distros fair better in this catagory in that any of them would be ok as long as there's a knowledgable Linux techie nearby.

Power User - Home & Business
Here is where things change. The WinXX replacements fall way down the ladder here with the big names coming up to the top. In the western hemisphere, Red Hat/Fedora, Novell/SUSE and Mandrake all come out equal for both home and business use.

Developer/Techie/SysAdmin
Here you'll find that the big names are joined by the likes of Debian, Gentoo, Lunar Linux, Slackware, Vector Linux... Basically, once you get to this level just about anything on the LWN Distro page will probably do. With this class of user you're likely to find as many people running different distros are there are different distros.

The bottom line is that there are different definitions of desktop and, with the available Linux options, there is a Linux solution fo all of them.

^*I have been using Linux since November 1991