Comments on: What’s so bad about the Eee PC Xandros anyway?

By: Pieter

Pieter — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:39:11 +0000

I’m on my 3rd eee and agree that Xandros is a problem.

My 5-year old daughter uses a 901 and finds her way around, but she also uses Ubuntu on her mom’s desktop and finds her way around that without trouble. Xandros is a little more resistant to the random damage that little hands do.

But Xandros is useless for any kind of professional use, and ASUS do themselves a disservice by not fully supporting the open distros. It’s abnormal that under Xandros my eee picks up 12-13 wifi networks, but under Ubuntu, it picks up just one. Proprietary tweaks to the wifi driver, hidden in Xandros somewhere.

So an eee user is forced to choose between three broken alternatives, Windows, Xandros, or proper Linux with sub-par hardware support.

Funny thing was I used Xandros for a long time on my desktop. It has other advantages, mainly it works really well with Windows networks thanks to a custom file manager.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:59:01 +0000

An update (after this article was written) makes Favorites the default page, IIRC.

Otherwise, I agree, it’s pretty bad.

By: Peter Watts

Peter Watts — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:51:53 +0000

I believe you have made some very valid points, But I bet when my 11 year old grandson gets a 701 for Christmas that he can call his very own computer not many of the cons are going to matter to him.
I read this blog rel1gously and thank you for your inciteful writing.

By: Shane

Shane — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:33:30 +0000

Nice article! I wish I could get another (functional os) to boot like the default xandros though. In the meantime, I’ll suck it up and use Ubuntu Eee..or should I say Easy Peasy

By: Silvio

Silvio — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:12:46 +0000

Wow!
You really bashed on it. It sounds pretty bad.
I guess when I get my eee PC I’ll try Xandros for a bit and if it is as bad as you say I will install Ubuntu netbook remix.
Thanks for the review!

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:22:06 +0000

Hello -

Came to you site via googling “mephis” & saw your post fr 2005 re: Liunx Live CDs.

My EEE 2G “Surf” model is being shipped in as we speak (free via promo w/ my bank!) & I plan to install “Dreamlinux” on it. This is a light-weight Debian-distro that runs Xfce or Gnome. Via Xfce, I’s successfully cold-booted to >66MB. Should be perfect for the EEE. Come over to the forums & check it out! Debian.org has alot of good docs in their wiki about installing on an EEE PC & the Dreamlinux team are shooting for full support with the upcoming 3.5 release.

Give it a shot! Also, don’t forget that VirtualBox is Open Source, so you’ve no reason to *not* test any of the numerous distros out there or still use (shudder) a certain Redmond-based OS.

By: themcp

themcp — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:32:21 +0000

i join you in your hatred of eee xandros… but i haven’t been able to find anything with a window manager that offers me those Nice Big Buttons. I hate using a desktop based interface on such a small screen.

I pine for the netbook remix to be ready for prime time…