Xandros is a Linux distribution company, creator of the Xandros Desktop Linux distribution. Founded in 2001, the company is located in New York City and Ottawa, Ontario. The distribution is based on Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution which was acquired from Corel Corporation in 2001 after Corel decided to leave the Linux distribution market. Xandros is also founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium.
Product line
Xandros targets both the home user and the business user. The home desktop is targeted at the home user which is lower cost and less complex than the business edition. There are two editions, the Standard edition and the Deluxe edition. The main difference between the two is that the Deluxe version includes a user manual, support for running Microsoft Windows applications and the installer can resize NTFS partitions. There is also extra bundled software included with the Deluxe version.
The business edition is more expensive and includes support for things like active directory and advanced processor features like SMP and Hyperthreading. There also tools for the administration and deployment of Xandros desktops within a company.
There is also a cut down version of Xandros known as Xandros Open Circulation Edition which can be freely distributed for non-commercial use. This has a limited set of software: cd-burning is restricted to 4x speed and the only web browser available is Mozilla Firefox. Xandros Open Circulation Edition used to include Opera, yet this has been removed. Email is receivable by KDE Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.
Desktop
The Xandros desktop uses a modified version of KDE, which includes replacing Konqueror with its own proprietary file manager called XFM . It also uses a package manager known as Xandros Networks, which handles installation of software. Installation of Xandros is done by a wizard that asks questions about partitioning and the administrator (root) password.
The graphical user interface has many changes compared to other Linux distributions that make it look similar to a Microsoft Windows GUI, including a rectangular "launch" button similar to the start button , modified context menus, and the file manager features a Windows 98 style look. While this has been criticized for making Linux look like Windows, it is also said that this aids the migration to Linux by minimizing the need for re-training.
Other themes are available nonetheless, KDE, Mac OS (looks like OS9) style, UNIX style and its own style.
It's possible to run Xandros as an Apache or Samba server. It also can use Linux and Windows networks.
See also
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