Xandros Desktop--Not Your Father's Linux Distribution

By: Bill von Hagen
Monday, November 11, 2002 10:37:54 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/4539/1/

From Corel to Xandros

With the last year or two of Linux press describing the financial woes of various Linux distributions, it's refreshing to see a new Linux distribution launched with some fanfare. "New" is something of a misnomer--the Xandros Desktop is a descendant of Corel Linux, but with a new purpose and sharper focus than ever before.

Xandros purchased an exclusive license to Corel's Linux distribution in the summer of 2001, with the goal of producing a true desktop Linux distribution. Though well-known for the quality of its installer and the general user-friendliness of the distribution, Corel's Linux wasn't unique enough to truly differentiate itself in the market. Caught up in the post-coital depression of the Linux market, the collapse of hundreds of dot bomb companies, and financial problems brought on by failed hardware experiments such as the NetWinder, Corel decided that it couldn't afford to promote and support an independent Linux distribution. For a few million dollars, Xandros took up the torch--and is now crossing the finish line with a well thought-out, differentiated product that has great potential for success.

The Xandros Linux distribution, known as Xandros Desktop, is based on the Debian Linux distribution, which is a relative rarity for a large-scale commercial Linux distribution. Debian Linux has much to recommend it, most importantly the power and flexibility of its underlying update utility, apt. Debian is largely perceived as a hacker's distribution, primarily because the Debian Project itself has no commercial face. Xandros Linux may just be Debian's break-through opportunity--especially due to Xandros' obvious commitment to the desktop and the end-user's needs and satisfaction.

Installing and Configuring Xandros

The Xandros Desktop installer is quite user-friendly, requiring a minimum amount of information in order to successfully install the operating system. The Xandros installer is much more reminiscent of the installers for true commercial operating systems such as Apple's Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, dividing the installation and configuration of the system into two steps. All of the non-critical configuration is done by Xandros' First Run Wizard the first time you boot the operating system, rather than as part of the actual installation process. This is a refreshing change from the long-winded installation processes used by distributions such as red Hat, even in workstation mode.

Xandros' installer has seven stages: a Welcome message, the Xandros license agreement, choosing between an express or custom install, setting the root password and creating a user account, a summary screen, and the actual installation process which ends with a classic Linux "Create a boot disk" dialog. During all of my test installs, the mouse froze on my system during this last dialog, but I was able to cope by using the Tab key to cycle between buttons.

Xandros' Express Install takes over a single disk in your system and installs a selection of packages known as their "Standard Desktop", requiring 1204 MB. Selecting the Custom Install enables you to select alternate sets of packages, known as the "Minimal Desktop' (845 MB) and "Complete Desktop" (1438 MB). The custom installation also enables you to manually configure disk partitioning and mount points, manually configure your network settings, and so on.

Once the install completes and your system reboots, the system prompts you for one of three boot modes: the Xandros Desktop, Safe Mode (shades of Windows!), and Custom (Expert) mode.

The first time you boot your system using the Xandros Desktop mode (the default), you can log in using the account you created as part of the installation process. Once you log in, Xandros runs its "First Run Wizard", which completes the configuration of the system by prompting for information such as whether you're right or left handed, the date, time, and timezone, printer configuration, system (GUI) behavior, and a final dialog that enables you to access the Xandros version of the KDE Control Center, or run the Xandros Networks tool, a preview of a browser-based news and update application.

Using Xandros Desktop

Once you log in and get past the First Run Wizard, using Xandros Desktop is a breeze. Xandros Desktop is based on the 2.4.19 kernel, which is quite up-to-date and provides robust support for popular subsystems such as USB. Xandros uses the devfs filesystem for populating and managing device entries in /dev, which can be confusing the first time you execute the df command but provides greater flexibility for hot-swap devices. Xandros also uses the new "hotplug" scheme for monitoring and managing hot-swap and removable media device. Xandros uses LILO rather than GRUB as a boot manager, which is acceptable but surprisingly dated considering how up-to-the-minute the rest of Xandros' underpinning are.

Xandros' selection of bundled software is similarly up-to-date. OpenOffice 1.0.1, Acrobat Reader 5.0, and GIMP 1.2.3 are also pre-installed in a Complete Install, which also includes pre-installed IBM Java2-13. All of this contributes to a perception of Xandros Desktop as an impressively modern and thorough desktop distribution.

Xandros has spent a fair amount of time branding and customizing the KDE 2.2.2 desktop to differentiate themselves from the pack, which is probably why they haven't jumped to KDE 3.0 yet. Besides just shuffling bitmaps, backgrounds, and application title bars, Xandros has developed a few applications that are Xandros-specific. The Xandros Update utility (see Figure 1) is Xandros' answer to applications such as Red Hat's up2date and Ximian's RedCarpet utilities. More impressive than Xandros Update is the Xandros File Manager, which is slick and multi-function enough to cause severe application envy in fans of KDE's Konqueror or GNOME's Nautilus (see Figure 2).

The Xandros File Manager is a filesystem browser, Web browser, Windows Network and NFS browser, gum, candy, and floorwax all rolled into one. It is visually attractive, quite fast, and is obviously the result of a lot of work and love on the part of its authors. Following the standard two-panel model where the left-hand panel is a hierarchical table of contents for its key functions and the right-hand panel displays a view of the selected topic, whether this is a directory, CD or floppy device, networked Windows or NFS filesystem, or whatever. Its inclusion of a usable SMB browser for Windows shares is almost worth the price of admission all by itself.

Given Xandros' desktop orientation, it isn't all that surprising that gcc is only installed as part of a Custom, Complete Install. What is more surprising is the version of gcc that is installed, which is 2.95.4. Given the fact that the rest of the software included with Xandros Desktop is so up-to-date, I would have expected gcc 3.0 or better, but perhaps this version of gcc is better suited to KDE 2.2.2.

All in all, Xandros Desktop provides an impressive assortment of modern Linux software oriented toward desktop users. The fact that things like OpenOffice and Adobe Acrobat Reader are pre-installed is a great convenience to someone who is more interested in getting work done out-of-the-box rather than hunting down useful applications.

A Very Fine WINE, Indeed

The Xandros Desktop distribution is aimed squarely at the desktop market, the elusive goal of many Linux distributions due to the preeminence of Microsoft Windows. Marketing discussions aside, a successful Linux distribution has to support the types of applications that people need, and if possible, support the specific applications that people are already familiar with. For Xandros Desktop, the key to this is CodeWeavers CrossOver Office, a truly amazing product that makes it easy to install and run popular Windows applications on a Linux system.

To install a popular application like Microsoft office on a Windows system, you simply insert the CD and, after prompting for some basic information, the application installs and automatically inserts appropriate entries for running itself in the Start menu. That is also exactly what happens on a Xandros Desktop system. No fuss, no muss, and no CS degree required for tuning obscure parameters. It just plain works.

CodeWeavers CrossOver Office is based on the Linux WINE (WINdows Emulation) project, and is seamlessly integrated into the Xandros Desktop. Though WINE is freely available as an open-source project, CodeWeavers has done a lot of work to improve its robustness and to make it truly easy to install "important" Windows applications on a Linux system. It supports a variety of Windows applications, primarily Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and bundled versions of these applications such as Office 97 and Office 2000 (see Figure 3).

The Xandros Desktop includes the latest version of CrossOver Office--even newer than the one that you can get from the CodeWeavers site, and I'm already a customer. Other Linux distributions aimed at the desktop, most notably Lindows, have bundled CrossOver Office, but only Xandros provides the latest, most powerful version--which is quite important in an emulator.

Xandros' integrated support for Windows applications makes it an attractive choice for deployment in commercial or academic environments. Large enterprise and academic computing sites can save a good deal of money and support costs by installing a secure, stable operating system such as Linux, as long as it runs the applications that their users need, which usually means Microsoft Office. Xandros Desktop is an excellent choice for wide-scale adoption in these environments because it costs much less than Windows and runs the applications that users need. You'll still need licenses for the Windows software that you want to run, but you won't need Windows.

Xandros Speedbumps

The primary situation in which you'll find Xandros Desktop difficult to use is if you're already a hard-core Linux user or developer. In this case, Xandros' desktop orientation will take a bit of getting used to because some of the classic Linux tools are either tricky to locate or must be separately installed. For example, even the complete, custom Xandros installation doesn't install emacs. Similarly, finding a way to start an X Window System terminal (xterm) is tricky, requiring either that you use the right-click menu's "Run Command" menu option to explicitly start one, or that you execute one from within a console session (Launch|Applications|System|Console). You can add an icon for an xterm to the panel, but it was disconcerting for it to be such a hassle to start the application that I most commonly use in Linux.

I noticed a few minor problems when using Xandros over the first weekend I spent with it. When I used the Express Install to automatically install the Standard Desktop, the version of /bin/ps that was installed wasn't executable--even the file utility reported it to be data (i.e., a random binary) rather than an ELF executable. When I reinstalled the Complete Desktop using a Custom Install and downloaded all of the updates using , the Xandros Update utility, /bin/ps was fine. The X Window system hung once, to the point where the system wouldn't respond to a three-finger salute (control-alt-delete). I had to reset the machine to get it working again, but this never happened again.

Some aspects of Xandros' default configuration and application categorization also seemed a bit odd to me. The default run-level is '2', which is generally un-used and didn't seem to differ from runlevel '5', which is what I expected. GIMP was missing from the standard install, which I found odd since it's one of what I would consider the "standard" Linux desktop applications. SSH isn't started by default, though the ftp daemon is. Similarly, given Xandros' desktop orientation and great Windows Integration, I expected some support for "standard" Linux VPN software such as IPsec or pptp--no such luck.

Xandros also takes a simple, straightforward approach to the KDE versus GNOME religious war--GNOME isn't there, and it isn't available even as possible updates from the Xandros site via the Xandros Update utility. Enough of the GNOME libraries are present to run bundled application such as Evolution, Ximian's excellent mail client, but that's about it. While GNOME fans might lament this Boolean approach to resolving Linux's favorite desktop debate, it does simplify things.

Wrapping UP

The Xandros Desktop is already a mature Linux product, thanks to its roots in Corel Linux, several extensive rounds of beta testing from Linux and Corel fans, and the apparent excellence and commitment of the people at Xandros. In the long run, as any technologist knows, a great product isn't a guarantee of success. Differentiation and promotion are the keys to long-term survival in the Linux market.

The Xandros Desktop is an eminently usable distribution aimed at desktop users, not the people who want to run muscle-bound Web, email, or news servers. Xandros' focus on the types of software that end-users want to run and their amazingly tight integration with and support for Microsoft Windows applications gives them an edge over any other end-user desktop Linux distribution that I've encountered.

The whole idea of creating and selling Linux distributions is to make life easier for end users by providing a robust installer, good hardware detection and support, and the applications that your target users need. Xandros has done all of these. Given a few corporate or academic partnerships and relationships with PC hardware vendors who will bundle the Xandros Desktop with their hardware, the future should be incredibly bright for Xandros.