Alternate OS?

[Ghosth]

In the past I have tried a variety of alternate Operating Systems. Everything from Red Hat to QNX.
Mostly Linux/Unix based, most of them a real pain the the posterier for a windows user. Even Umbuto which touted itself as being easy to setup & learn was not that easy. However yesterday following a tip on the AH Hardware & Software forum I checked out Xandros.

http://www.xandros.com/index.html.en

At last, a Linux/Unix OS that takes the time to be windows user friendly.
Downloaded the .iso via Utorrent, stuck the disk in the drive, rebooted from the CD, and in less than 15 min I was up & running in Linux. Next, it was a real relief to have a version of Linux that was not mostly text based. Xandros is very much a Gui based OS, just like windows. In fact you can even choose a variety of appearances that will fool you into thinking your still in windows.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but the other thing Xandros does than anything else I've seen  is run windows applications. I have a lot to learn yet, you don't learn a new OS overnight. No not even XP is that user friendly.
But I am hugely impressed, and if you ever  wanted to "tinker" with Linux, but didn't know where to start. Well this is a darn good place to try. Very user friendly, it got my video card & hardware right without even asking.

Dead easy to setup a dual boot system with XP, or other operating system.

Comes with Firefox, & Thunderbird for web browsing & email. Along with both open office, and a 30 day trial of their crossover office that will run windows Apps. There is also a way to have it load windows 98 as a "virtual " machine. That should in theory let me fly Aces High.

So far I've been playing with the open circulation version. What can I say, it was free.
Looks very windows like with most of the controls in the "launch" (instead of start) button.
Unlike windows where everything has to multitask on the same desktop.
Xandros like most Linux varients can run a lot of desktops. It starts with 2, but a simple right click sets how many you want. I'm running with 4 at the moment.

Most linux varients installing addon software can be a real pain in the butt.
Xandros comes with something called "xandros network"  You can quickly figure out which software you wanted to add, just put a check mark next to it, when all done it will download & install, or upgrade. Same process for deleting/uninstalling.

The other thing that really impressed me was how quick & easy it was to setup my networks.
Right click on my 2 hard drives in xandros, sharing, click the box to share. (several options, very windows like)
And hey presto, drives where shared & I was on the network. This is a FIRST for me, nothing else has setup the network this well, this efficiently, and this easily. Ohhh and it has support for wireless as well.

The other thing I really liked is that it didn't block me away from my normal HD directory's like most Unix clones.
C & D drive, with all their folders are a click away, easy to find for importing bookmarks, address books, or backgrounds.

Ohh did I mention that Xandros loads off the bat with CD/DVD writers along with basic audio, dvd playback.

With Microsoft pushing hard for Vista and all the problems that OS has. Its nice to know that there are options out there. And 40 $ for the full version with all the bells & whistles is certainly a lot easier on the pocketbook that what Mr Gates has been hitting us with.

[d0gma]

Actually SuSE is pretty nice.

I have an installation I use when I need to be able to get into an ext2,3 or reiserFS file system.  I used to do a lot of website and email server adminning and had a soft place in my heart for slackware, but that's hardcore user-unfriendly.

[mrmidi]

I think Debian is probably the most stable "Free " version of linux out there I run it on one of my computers here at home.

Midi

[starbird]

I've used fedora since FC1, and various other linux distros for about 10 years (redhat, mandrake, debian, gentoo). I've mainly stuck to fedora, since I know it well. No real advantage to move to something else.

Coming from Amiga OS and some unix experience (had a unix internet account for a few years), I became used to using a shell to get around, and the basic unix layout.

I really like the Linux layout compared to the windows layout. backing up important stuff is much easier, since all of your personal configs are in your home directory. Not spread around the whole tree. If you want to change distros or upgrade, you don't need to rebuild everything. If you have your home directory on its own partition, you don't even have to change anything, other than tell the installer to mount that partition as /home . When you login, all of your settings and configs will be there.

The whole windows interface is just screwy. There are much better ideas out there. OSX is nice, it reminds me of amiga os in a lot of ways. Not suprising since the OSX interface is based on nextstep, and there were a lot of apps for amigaos to make it look and feel like next. It has its problems too, like finder, which is just a pain. I'd much rather use something like directory opus or even konqurer for file browsing.


Fedora uses yum to install apps. Just use the command yum install <app> and your set. I never used the gui, but yumex is the graphical version.

You can even install rpms with yum, and yum will find all of the dependencies and get everything sorted for you. Really nice.

[forHIM]

I haven't used Xandros but use Suse, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora and Ubuntu.  As a Systems Engineer for a Sales organization I play in most operating systems and storage environments.  I like RHEL for business servers.  CentOS for servers that don't need 7x24 support.  One of my clients is very happy with SLES 9.  Fedora really didn't knock me over as impressive espeically since I can get CentOS which is the enterprise version for free.

YUM (Yast Update Manager) is SuSe's answer to up2date that is RedHat's tool.  Both essentially do the same function.  And it is great to use the install options to go get the required packages from the net without having to worry about media localy.

[maddog]

OK so what do I need to do to make a server for my win machines....?

[Ghosth]

BTW I'm posting this on Mepis, similar to Xandros.
One thing I like is the ability to test drive if off a cd without having to install it onto a Hard drive.
Perhaps not quite as windows user friendly as Xandros. But it did do a very good install, video, network all worked right off the bat. And it does see my usb flash drive which is a big plus.

File system not quite as easy to get to as Xandros was.
But like Xandros it comes with Firefox and Thunderbird setup and ready to go.

I'll be playing with it over the next few weeks will let you know how it works.
Ultimately the idea is to see if I can get WINE thus Aces High working on it.

[forHIM]

OK so what do I need to do to make a server for my win machines....?

Install the distro of your choice.  Select "Samba Server" or "Windows File Server" from the packages menu during the install.  Configure samba -- there are a number of tools to do this.  RedHat comes with some gui tools built-in, Samba used to make SWAT and some other tools to do the configuration.  All fairly simple (well to me that is).