Re: RH questions

[mike808@users.sourceforge.net]

> What is your feeling on Xandros?

I like it. It's not "free" (as in libre), but that's only for a *small* portion
of the apps you get.

Visit the website, and in particular, check out their "Top 10" list.
They pretty much hit that target. Resizing XP partition during install - Yep.
Attach Windows printers as easy as Windows - Yep.
Attach Windows network shares and join a domain as easy as Windows - Yep.
Offer shares to a Windows network as easy as Windows - Yep.
Run Windows apps with Codeweaver's Crossover Office - yep.
Mozilla 1.3 with anti-aliased fonts, and pre-installed Acrobat, RealPlayer,
and Flash plugins.

For a Windows refugee, there's a lot there to like.

And it's based on Debian, so you can install anything in a Debian or apt repository.

I don't know of any other distros that have a Samba config that worked
out-of-the-box and accessed via the file manager. (Xandros uses the XFM, a
sort-of konqueror proprietary file manager/explorer that came from Corel).

And I hear the upcoming 2.0 is even better and smoother (can't say more).

The downside - it's based on the gcc2.95 and libc5 (2.0 will address this) and
KDE2. But that was what was in woody (Debian stable release) at the time
(November, last year). And they hooked into *lots* of stuff in KDE, Mozilla, 
and Konqueror for XFM to do the stuff it does. So, you really have to watch
what you upgrade (or pin things properly in your apt preferences).

The user community is pretty active, I've only had to use support once, and
they responded quickly (email, 1-2 days). 

This is the distro my wife and 4-year-old son use for "their" computer.
My son plays games and doesn't know/care about the OS. My wife had some 
concerns about being "Micrsoft-free", but after using Mozilla and OpenOffice, 
she only grumbles about running into IE-only stuff on the web. But at least
now she's grumbling that it's the *web site's fault*. :=)

She *loves* the adblock (mozdev.org) and popup-block features (builtin).
Now that adblock works on *flash* ads too... :=)

All in all - worth what I paid for it.

Mike/

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