just thought i would let u guys know

Xandros Debian/GNU/Linux
is out december 9th
it has got to be one of the easest distro's to install and use
(IMHO)

Rubbish. I installed it and then it doesn't give me a CDROM or floppy drive in the file manager. I can't even find any devices for it in /dev that would allow me to use it (OK, we go into mknod). I just wanted to get my Netgear MA101 working quickly on a laptop but it doesn't even recognise this - and having no floppy or cdrom to install the drivers, well ...

Won't last long on my laptop. I did get it off a magazine but I'll be going back to slack/suse/mandrake/redhat whatever before I go there again.

I heard that Xandros requires a License Key....Is that true?

I don't know If I want to invest any time using a distro that requires a key....

my .02,
manny

It doesn't need a licence key. The ISOs is not available for download though, you have to buy the cd or pay them to download it.

Well, actually, the two disks came on the front cover of Linux Magazine here in the UK this month. I'd read some pretty good reviews of it and thought "I'll try this on my laptop".
Everything looked OK (although I'm a big user/fan of the stock KDE - 3.2 looking excellent anyway).
It said wireless networking support out of the box. I know what a pain this can be with other distros so I gave it a go. Disaster. It's bad enough Windoze XP not having enough resource for the USB hub (dark ages problem) but a Linux distro not finding your CDROM or floppy, even though it installed off it!!!! In the bin. Stick with SuSE ... or Mandrake ... or Slackware ... or Debian or RedHat for that matter.

It's these annoyances which really irritate. I'm a seasoned Linux person who could've sorted this out but that's not why I tried it in the first place. I wanted a distro I could recommend to newbies (promotion material) that would ease them over from Windoze. For now, I'll be sticking with Mandrake/SuSE. I know there's Lindoze etc. but I'm not going there.

Just like scobiej I was also very dissapointed with xandros 2. I gave the deluxe version a try but wasn't satisfied. I think it looks and behaves too much where I'm running away from .

Really, it perfectly resembles windows xp. If you like that xandros would be good for you. With the crossoverplugin you can install officexp, quicktime plugins, etc. But if I wanted that I would definetely install xp...

Besides, it was so damn slow but I think I'm spoiled because I use XFCE4 and not KDE...

I do think it is fair to recognize that many potential Xandros users are current Windows users. For those who take such offense to Windows that they hate anything that in any way resembles it, perhaps Xandros is not a good choice. However, let me come to its defense.

Xandros, even in its version 1 flavor, is one of the easiest system softtware packages to install. The full flavored version has excellent interoperability with Windows, and it works well. The cut down standard version omits the Windows emulation capabilities provided by CodeWeavers, but otherwise includes the same stable code.

Version 2 considerably updates the code. Xandros has added several newer applications than what's provided in the Debian stable distribution, including a recent version of the KDE applications.

If you're a Debian purist, you can still use Xandros as a convenience - it installs to the hard drive in around 20 minutes. You can use Xandros-supplied update sites, or you can use the famous Debian mirror sites to upgrade or downgrade or modify any software. The value of Xandros is that the base is very stable, the installation program is very easy, and you can ease your way into Debian- perhaps the true purist wouldn't appreciate such things, but I found them to be useful, even though I can install Debian software in several different ways - from floppy disk, from a CD ISO image that points to a network installation, from prepacked live CD implementations, and from complete systems that are available either freely by download or commercially.

I like lightweight display and window managers, too, such as the IceWM (Window Manager) or the XFCE (desktop environment) software.

I give Xandros 2 a thumbs up.