JTruesdaleOnXandros2
Jay Truesdale on Xandros 2.0
JTruesdale, after writing the MandrakeMoveReview (and gets a licensed copy of MandrakeMove after a successful MandrakeMoveReviewAcceptance), is providing another review, but withdrew from competing for a licensed Xandros Deluxe 2.0 over on Xandros2Review. As the review below notes, he already has his own licensed copy. It seems Jay has gotten the "review writing" bug. 
Xandros 2.0 Initial Impressions
I intend to update these comments frequently over the next few days as I explore this new release. Last updated around 12/31/2003 @5:30 AM.
I received my upgrade copy of Xandros 2.0, Deluxe Edition, from Xandros on 12/23/2003 after pre-ordering it 12/11/2003.
The package includes a one-page End User License Agreement, a small nine-page Xandros Desktop OS Getting Started Guide, a 300-page manual Xandros Desktop OS Version 2 Deluxe User Guide and an envelope containing the Installation CD and the Applications CD along with a sticker that has the 25-position serial number.
My first install was on a system consisting of an Asus A7V333 motherboard, a 1.3 Ghz Athlon CPU, 512 MB RAM, a Western Digital IDE 120 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, an Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI card with HP scanner attached, an Adaptec Firewire card, a 250 MB USB Zip drive, an ATI Radeon 7000 video card attached to a Viewsonic 17PS monitor, a Siemens Speed Stream PCI 10/100 Ethernet card and a Plextor 16/10/40A CD/RW drive.
Out of paranoia, I did a custom install into a previously unused 10 GB partition. The installation took about 8 or 9 minutes. I tried to create a rescue disk, but every floppy disk that I tried was reported as unusable. I checked another console and errors were being reported when Xandros was trying to probe the floppy drive. I found this odd as the other distributions on the machine seem to be able to use the floppy drive just fine.
After the installation, I was able to use the Floppy Disk Formatter application to completely format one of the floppy disks that was unusable as a rescue disk. After installing Xandros, I wanted to create a Rescue Disk. How do you do this? There is no mention in the manual on how to manually create a rescue disk, nor could I find anything in the on-line man pages using man -k. I tried a number of wild card searches with find but could not locate anything to create a rescue disk. I did a search in the Xandros User Forums and found a reference to the command build-bootfloppy and I was able to create a boot floppy with it. I tested it and it enabled me to boot my Xandros 2.0 installation. Given the importance of a Rescue Disk, I am surprised that the procedure for manually creating one is not very well-documented.
After booting from the CD-ROM, the animated Xandros logo is displayed as the installer goes about its business. I noticed that there is no version number displayed during this process. It sure would be good user feedback to display the version number of the distribution that has just booted.
There is no on-line help for any of the options during a custom install, which may or may not be an issue for the intended expert user. I wasn't exactly sure what the "enforce strong passwords" check box was going to do and it would have been nice to know exactly what this option did. There was no mention of this option in either of the included manuals.
As part of the startup, a sound is played and, as I discovered, the VOLUME IS SET ALMOST TO THE MAXIMUM. I'm really glad that I wasn't installing this in the wee hours of the morning!
The install process recognized the existing swap partition and enabled its use. All of the other pre-existing partitions (containing Windows 2000, Red Hat 9, SuSE 8.2, Xandros 1.1 and a Linux swap partition) were properly recognized and added to the boot menu as appropriate.
One of the first things that I did was to run Xandros Networks and install all of the pending security updates. Xandros Networks is improved over the version that came with Xandros 1.1 - the multiple browser widows are gone. There is now a shop selection where you can actually purchase software. You can also download software "free for all registered customers," what an interesting way to encourage (force?) your customers to register. Software available in this manner includes GnuCash 1.8.7, KDevelop 2.1.5.1, Tux Racer 0.61, TuxKart 0.2.0, Scribus 1.0.1, Opera 6.1, Quanta Plus 3.1.4, and a trial version of Win4Lin 5.0. Of course, you could install these yourself from non-Xandros sources but then you end up with a nonsupported configuration. A new feature of Xandros Networks is that you can check multiple items to be installed and then tell Xandros Networks to install them at once - no more "install, wait, repeat" cycles.
I was able to set the resolution to 1280 x 1024 x 16 bits with no problem. I was disappointed that there is no easy way to select my specific monitor and its specific refresh rates. There is only a generic list of display modes and a fixed list of refresh rates including one labeled auto detect. Plus, when you change video modes, the desktop must be restarted which requires you to log in again - I don't recall other recent Linux distributions (Red Hat 9 and SuSE 9) requiring me to do this. I suppose that for most users, the video will typically be set only once. I do like the test pattern that is displayed by Xandros - you can use the pattern to adjust the display size of your monitor and there is a hold button that keeps the pattern displayed until you click OK. The time-out value is set to 30 seconds, which is a long time to wait if you chose a bad refresh rate... then you have log in again, wait for the desktop to be initialized and then run the Control Center again and try another refresh rate. Windows NT got this procedure correct a few years ago!
I inserted the Applications CD and was disappointed that there was no read me file on the disc explaining the contents of the disc or how to install the software. After poking around in the manual, I determined that you use the Xandros Networks application under Edit / Set Application Sources to specify the Applications CD. I installed some applications and the CD-ROM drive was making noise, so I guess it was working. According to a post in the Xandros forum, the content of the Application CD is available to all via the Xandros Networks - the Application CD is merely a convenience for the users of the Deluxe Edition. Of course, if you have no Internet connection then this is more than a mere convenience, it's a necessity. I wonder how nonconnected users would obtain patches?
I noticed that some of the software included that I use frequently has been updated since Xandros 1.1. Open Office is up to version 1.1.0, Mozilla is 1.4 and Perl is (finally) at 5.8.
All of the system's settings are integrated into the Control Center. The Control Center (so far at least) seems to have just about anything you would want to change. There is a Boot Manager set up where you can choose the default operating system to boot and the time-out value. I find it easier to find things in the Xandros Control Center's tree-based structure than in SuSE 9.0's YAsT tool.
When I got around to setting up access to my network printer shared via Samba, I discovered that Xandros had already detected the printer and set it as the default but it did not work. I had to install a new network printer using their wizard and then I was able to print both a test page and an Open Office document with no problems.
I tried to set up my installation to use the Network Time Protocol but could not find any mention of support for NTP in either the printed or on-line documentation. A search of the Xandros user forums turned up how to use NTP in Xandros 1.1 (ntpdate), but nothing for Xandros 2.0. I posted a query in the Xandros user forums and 23 minutes later, I had my answer:
- In Xandros Networks, turn on expert mode: Settings / Expert View.
- In Xandros Networks, turn on the use of unsupported Debian sources: Edit / Set Application Sources, and check the 'Debian Unsupported Site' option.
After this, I was able to search for ntpdate and install it. I put a short script into the cron.daily directory to run the ntpdate command.
I have an old HP Scan Jet 2c SCSI scanner which was correctly detected as SCSI device C1750A. This scanner has a max resolution of 400 x 400 dpi. I tested this scanner with the Kooka scanner application (really a front-end to the SANE software) and the results were disappointing. The resulting images were all fuzzy, lacking the sharpness and clarity that I get with this scanner under Windows using the HP scanner software. I previously obtained the same results with SANE and another front end program in Red Hat 9. Knowing that the scanner is capable of producing better results, my guess is that this scanner is not supported very well by SANE even though this model is listed as completely supported. Perhaps a newer scanner would be better supported by SANE, but I have no way at the present to test this theory.
The KDE Help Center is less than useful. When I did a find on the command mount from the root of the Help Center, nothing was found. From the root of the UNIX Manual Pages, nothing was found. From the root of section 8 of the man pages, the mount command was finally found. The Select All option in the Edit menu had no effect on the searches. Contrast this to the SuSE 9.0 Help Center which, when searched for the mount command, found five matches in the User Guide, 10 matches in the Administration Guide, nine matches in the info pages and 25 matches in the Man Pages. This is much more useful, especially if you're not exactly sure where to look!
I found that if you're looking for an application, but not quite sure what you want, use the search feature in Xandros Networks; this way you search for programs you may not have installed yet. For example, I searched for 1394 and I got back a list of programs that support using the IEEE1394 (!FireWire) interface. For best results, make sure you set the expert view in Xandros Networks as mentioned above. Note that the search feature in Xandros Networks returns two sets of results in the Search Results section of the tree on the left.
Xandros installations are predatory to other previously installed boot managers After previously installing Xandros 1.1 followed by Red Hat 9 and grub, I then rebooted and checked that Xandros 1.1 was still working. Grub had been replaced by Xandros' lilo! After installing Xandros 2.0 for this review, I decided to go back and boot Xandros 1.1 to check a few facts. After rebooting from Xandros 1.1, the menu options had changed to those of Xandros 1.1! I rebooted into Xandros 2.0 assuming that would fix the problem. It did, sort of... the Xandros 2.0 boot menu was back. So far, so good. I was able to boot SuSE 8.2 and Windows 2000 with no problem. When I tried to boot Xandros 2.0 again, the boot process froze solid. Not so good. I decided to try the restore mode of the Xandros 2.0 install CD. I was able to select the partition to restore but was unable to get Xandros 2.0 to boot again; it just froze up as before. I ended up booting from the CD and doing a custom install that renamed the existing /boot and /home partitions to *_old but did not otherwise lose any user data (desktop & display settings, etc. were lost). I wish that Xandros would leave the boot manager alone unless specifically instructed to do something to it by the user! In my opinion, this is almost as bad as Microsoft replacing the Master Boot Record with no warning when you install one of its operating systems.
I tried to use Cross Over Office with one of the few Windows applications that I still use, Delorme's Street Atlas USA. The installation failed to work at all. I don't use any of the Windows applications that Cross Over Office specifically supports.
I installed the demo version of Win4Lin that is available through Xandros. What is it and how is it different from Cross Over Office? From the Win4Lin manual: "Win4Lin is a Linux application that installs the Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me operating system into your Linux environment. Win4Lin uses the X Window System to display the familiar Windows desktop in a window on your Linux desktop (e.g., GNOME or KDE) or in full-screen mode. Running Windows via Win4Lin in full-screen mode is indistinguishable from a native Windows session." The demo will run for four hours at a time and is a 30-day trial. The install process was similar to that in the documentation and relatively straight forward (I had a few minor issues but this is not a review of Win4Lin). I was able to run Microsoft's Internet Explorer, upgrade it to version 6.x, install the Windows 98 updates and finally install and actually run Delorme's Street Atlas USA. Performance was good enough. Frankly, I was impressed that it worked at all.
I installed Mozilla 1.5 and it worked fine. So did Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0.
I wanted to test the performance of Win4Lin by playing some movie trailers via Qicktime, but I was unable to get Quicktime to work in either Internet Explorer or Mozilla. In both cases Quicktime crashed.
Comments on this Review
Jay, the MBR was overwritten when you selected the "Express Install". It's one of the things you give up being able to pick when you choose the "4-click install". If you had chosen the "Custom Install", you get a checkbox which asks if you want to install the bootloader into the MBR. However, Xandros could have done a better job at explaining that during the install, since so few people read the manual (pages 19-20) to know that when you have multiple OSes installed (besides a Windows dual-boot scenario), you should choose the "Custom Install".
Comments on the Comments
I have always used the "Custom Install", never used the "Express Install". I don't recall any check boxes in regards to the installation of the boot loader, but I'll pay closer attention the next time I run through the install process. I always used the "Manage disks and partitions" option as well so that I have complete control over what goes where, with multiple OSs installed, the last thing I need is for an install process to make some decisions for me.
In any event, when I booted 1.1 it overwrote what 2.0 had done! Then when I booted 2.0, it did its own thing to the boot loader (or MBR, or whatever)! Note that I am talking about booting the operating system after it has been installed, I am not talking about something done at install time! In my opinion, Xandros ought to leave the boot loader / MBR / boot loader configuration alone unless directed otherwise by the user.
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