December 26, 2006 by erw.

I recently bought both the premium and professional versions of Xandros 4.0. I wanted to see how the product performed and to get a look at the differences between premium and professional.
In this world of Linux where Open source is king, why would someone want to purchase a Linux distribution? Well, there are a few reasons… First, since some people are not very technical, purchasing a distro will provide support. How much? For Xandros, the support is via email, 60 days for premium and 90 days for professional versions. So, if I don’t get the Internet working on my PC, I think I’m in trouble! The second reason is the level of integration for the distribution. The user pays to have a bug free environment where all of it’s components work well together. The Xandros distribution seems to do a reasonably good job at this and I haven’t really had any complaints about either version. I will say that the differences between the two versions don’t appear to be enough for the average user to consider the professional version. The next bonus for buying a commercial version of a distro is custom written apps specific to the distro. I have to say that I really like the Xandros file manager. The Security Suite front-end on the other hand drives me nuts. But I can see the need for some users to be prompted regarding security issues, so I forgive Xandros for this annoying little application. The final reason to buy a distro is that some of the money ends up going (indirectly) back into the open source community in the form of updates, code fixes, and developers. The open source concept is beautiful, but so is getting paid, eating, and having electricity. So I don’t have a problem paying for a solid Linux distribution.
All things considered the Xandros 4 premium and professional versions seem to be pretty solid. The startup and shutdown is a bit slower than I’m used to, but that’s ok. The desktop is average as far as speed goes, but the file manager is pretty quick. The distribution is stable, I’ve been running the professional version for a few weeks with no real complaints. I think Xandros would be a good OS for someone who wants to move to Linux, but doesn’t need to customize very much. It would also be a good choice for Linux migration in a business environment, since it integrates Crossover Office into it’s distribution.

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December 26, 2006 by erw.

I first noticed this on slashdot. In the article Peter Gutmann does an interesting Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. There are a few really scary things that come to mind after reading this article. First, Microsoft can barely manage to patch their current OS, this one looks to be infinitely more complex. Second, how are games going to function in this type of a setup? Finally, how can all this be supported the enterprise? Will companies actually go buy new PCs, deal with digital rights issues,
and accept the complexities of Vista?

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December 6, 2006 by erw.

Scientists say they’ve found water on mars (Times Online)

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