ShadowFoxLSU Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Well according to this page Xandros is giving away a version of it's OS. What do you think? Will you try it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grendal Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 I may, I had considered Xandros before, but settled on staying with Mandrake. But now I am tempted :deal: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 I "played" with 2.0, it isn't something that i would use, but i would give it to my grandma or some one that is just new to linux and just wants to run it and doesn't care about doing all the stuff i do! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwiftDeath Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 My aunt is thinking about trying linux.. So you guys think this would be better to give her than mandrake official 10.0? I guess I'll download. Looks pretty descent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Xandros has like a 3 or 4 step install, i think just about anyone can do it so it might be eaiser to install. I don't know how well there hdw setup and all that is for everything, but i think they are supposed to be pretty good in that area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sitor Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 Anyone who has used it? Is it safe or has it the same kind of security problems as e.g. Lindash (everything done with root account)? BTW, there is something that I do not understand. I thought that the GPL says that if you distribute GPL stuff, that you should GPL anything else that you distribute with it. In that case Xandros should be completely GPL. Then why hasn't there been free copies of Xandros been available on FTP servers since ages? Or did I interpret the GPL in a wrong way? Can anyone clarify? Ciao, Sitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted June 11, 2004 Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 sitor, thats Microsoft FUD... Of course you can have a commercial software and Lin- doesnt have a security problem if you spend 20 secs making a user account... START/SETTINGS/KUSER or something... thats just more FUD from linux purists this time.... its appropraite to someone who doesnt want to have to learn anything but I think its more office based than lin- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sitor Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 OK, I looked at the GPL again and it is now more clear to me. I was stuck with the notion that if you distribute a SW that uses another GPLed SW, your SW should be GPLed as well. It is the definition of USING another piece of SW that is the thing here. I thought that any SW running on the Linux Kernel is using the kernel and as the kernel is GPL, the SW running on the kernel should be GPL as well. And so on for SW running on that one. And again, and again,... In the GPL FAQ there are some topics on that: What is the difference between "mere aggregation" and "combining two modules into one program"? Mere aggregation of two programs means putting them side by side on the same CD-ROM or hard disk. We use this term in the case where they are separate programs, not parts of a single program. In this case, if one of the programs is covered by the GPL, it has no effect on the other program. Combining two modules means connecting them together so that they form a single larger program. If either part is covered by the GPL, the whole combination must also be released under the GPL--if you can't, or won't, do that, you may not combine them. What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged). If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means combining them into one program. By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program. and If a programming language interpreter is released under the GPL, does that mean programs written to be interpreted by it must be under GPL-compatible licenses? When the interpreter just interprets a language, the answer is no. The interpreted program, to the interpreter, is just data; a free software license like the GPL, based on copyright law, cannot limit what data you use the interpreter on. You can run it on any data (interpreted program), any way you like, and there are no requirements about licensing that data to anyone. However, when the interpreter is extended to provide "bindings" to other facilities (often, but not necessarily, libraries), the interpreted program is effectively linked to the facilities it uses through these bindings. So if these facilities are released under the GPL, the interpreted program that uses them must be released in a GPL-compatible way. The JNI or Java Native Interface is an example of such a facility; libraries that are accessed in this way are linked dynamically with the Java programs that call them. Another similar and very common case is to provide libraries with the interpreter which are themselves interpreted. For instance, Perl comes with many Perl modules, and a Java implementation comes with many Java classes. These libraries and the programs that call them are always dynamically linked together. A consequence is that if you choose to use GPL'd Perl modules or Java classes in your program, you must release the program in a GPL-compatible way, regardless of the license used in the Perl or Java interpreter that the combined Perl or Java program will run on. It is all very subtle in differences, and as I'm not a programmer myself it is sometimes difficult to grasp the differences. But it is somewhat clearer now. Important for the roadmap of our own products. From the few comments I have seen from Xandros users, it seems that it should be good. I guess that the best way to find out will be to test it, huh? Ciao, Sitor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted June 17, 2004 Report Share Posted June 17, 2004 I guess that the best way to find out will be to test it, huh? Ciao, Sitor Yup. In my humble opinion, for desktop/newbie use, These are the distro's you should really try. (in no particular order): - Mandrake 10 - SuSe 9.1 - Xandros 2.0 (2.1?) - Linspire 4.5 (5.0 within a few months) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.