Misc. Ramblings

These are my random experiences in installing Xandros 2.5 Business Edition on a Dell Optiplex GX260. Your experience may vary. Remember to backup you data. Use at your own risk. Insert disclaimer here.

First, why install Linux? For me, I've been wanting to switch for sometime. For awhile, its been clear that MS considers its customers as thieves that must be beaten into submission. For example, charging $300 for Windows XP Pro (an outrageous overcharge). Requiring activation on Office (to me, the first step towards renting software). All its so called DRM BS. Add to this the steady drumbeat of security vulnerabilities and it quickly becomes a chore rather than a pleasure to work with Windows. My bottom line is I need to use tools that help me do what I want to do rather than making it more difficult. Windows no longer does that.

So, to start, I decided to boot both Windows XP Pro (which was already installed) and Xandros. Before installing Xandros, I did a disk scan to check for hard disk problems that can cause data loss, then ran defrag to compact the files as much as possible so that when Xandros changed the partition size things would go as fast as possible, and finally backed up my data to ensure I had a way back just in case it all went down the tubes.

Once done, I rebooted with the Xandros CD in the drive and began the install. I took the default installation as I wanted to see how well that went. Along the way, the install asks if you want to create a boot/rescue disk. I highly recommend that you have one since it only takes one floppy disk, a few minutes, and allows you to boot-up should things go horribly wrong.

All went well until it came time to install the printer (HP 2200d LaserJet PCL6). The install identified the printer correctly but nothing would print. So I manually changed the driver to the 2200d PostScript and all was well.

Later in the install, the First Run Wizard allows you to change the default look/feel behavior of the desktop. I chose Windows to see how someone who knew how to use Windows, but not Xandros would do. Unfortunately, doing so crashed the Wizard (signal 11) dropping me back into KDE. You can restart the Wizard by going into Launch--> Applications--> System --> First Run Wizard so all is not lost. But the stability of Xandros/KDE/Linux comes into question.

Changing from the default 32K colors to TrueColor requires a KDE restart (which means you have to save all your work before doing this as all applications will close). One wonders when KDE will catchup with Windows, which allows you to change color depth on the fly.

In any case, in poking around, I found that Xandros defaults to the Reiserfs file system. Whether that is a good thing I will leave up to you to decide. But if the custom install allows you to pick the default file system, you might want to choose something else.

So far, I've been unable to get Xandros to recognize all the keys on my MS Natural Keyboard Pro. This keyboard includes keys such as mute, volume control, back, forward, prev track, next track, and others. None of these keys seem to work in Xandros.

When doing a Xandros Network install, there sometimes is displayed an input box with two buttons (enter and close). I don't know what the input box is for but ignoring it seems to work just fine.

While fonts have gotten a lot better, they still aren't as good as ClearType in Windows. Fonts just aren't as smooth and therefore aren't as readable.

I have yet to install our default email program - Lotus Notes R5 for Windows. In order to do this, I need to get access to our Novell Netware servers. I will detail below how to do this in Xandros. Otherwise, things are moving along and as I know more I detail my results.