Larry Kettler, of Xandros, at Moblin Executive Summit, 2009 Computex

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Larry Kettler, VP of business development at Xandros, notes his compan's implementation of Linux for the pioneering Asus EEE PC. He says Xandros has adopted Moblin v2 for future netbook implementations. He demonstrates a Moblin v2-based fast boot product called "presto," which is aimed at Windows systems. He also shows off the Xandros CNR (click and run) application store, and highlights Xandros's PIM product for Moblin, a "Flipper" application switcher, and a push email client for Moblin. He concludes with a plug for the Xandros ecosystem, app store, and user experience.

Asus Eee PC Xandros Linux and AsusLauncher Review

Ant of Eeeuser has posted a review of the Xandros (Linux) OS that comes bundled with the Asus Eee PC. The review provides a rather detailed rundown of the custom interface specially designed for the unit and includes a gallery of screen shots.

Ant ends with a favorable impression of Xandros and suggests that although "I’m hoping to now give Windows XP and Ubuntu a shot ...I think over time the Xandros Linux install may turn out to be the best overall for daily use on the Eee PC!"

Xandros 800 x 480 screenshots

Over at the Eeeuser forum, a member by the name of virtual has posted some screen shots of Xandros running at 800x480 in vmware:

"This is the Xandros OC version empty desktop after I changed the panel size to "tiny" (I still have to figure out how to reduce the grid spacing for the desktop icons)



Here is the quanta Plus text editor (which i will probably use for coding), with only the toolbar icons set to smallest. You can see that the editor part of the screen is still pretty small



This is the quanta Plus text editor after moving some buttons around and switching it to full screen mode. It adds about 8 extra lines of code in the editor (very important for a coder ).



On this screen shot you can see the gimp with 3 screen shots loaded. If you check the gkrellm panel to the right, you can see that at this point it is only using about half of the 256MB memory that was setup in this virtual machine and about 2 MB of my 100 MB swap space. I removed open office which is why I have 420 MB hard disk space free. The size of 2 GB might be a bit wishful thinking because the SSD hard disk might be only 2,000,000,000 bytes (2 GB as used by hard drive manufacturers) in stead of 2,147,483,648 bytes (2 GiB as used by the operating system)."

Asus low-end laptops to run Xandros

Just a press release about Xandros running on the Asus Eee -

Jul. 19, 2007 - In early June, Asustek Computer and Intel announced they would soon be releasing a low-end $199 subnotebook, the Asus Eee PC 701. It appears to be on schedule, and when it arrives in customers' hands in late August or early September it will be running a variation of Xandros Desktop Linux.

Like other new generation subnotebooks, the real news with the Eee is its size. At 8.6 by 6.5 by 1.3 inches and barely 2 pounds, a user can tuck it into a backpack or purse and hardly notice that it's there.

The Eee PC 701 comes with two interfaces. The first is meant for users who may have never used a computer before. In fact the name Eee, besides being a play on Nintendo's popular Wii game system, represented a threefold repetition of the word "easy," as in "easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work."

The other interface is KDE-based. Both Windows XP and KDE users will find it familiar-looking. Linux users will also find such familiar open-source applications as OpenOffice, Firefox and Skype.

Of course, Eee users will have to get used to seeing the interface and their applications on a 7-inch display. This 800 by 480 pixel display won't be overly snappy either, as its GPU uses UMA. This means that the graphics borrow memory from the computer's 512MB RAM.

While this may not sound like enough RAM to run Xandros, this Linux version is well-known for its ability to run with a bare minimum of RAM. In a DesktopLinux.com review in 2006, we were able to run Xandros Desktop 4.0, on a far less powerful system: a 500MHz Pentium III processor, 128MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive.

The heart of this ultraportable is a 900MHz Pentium M running on the Intel 910 Mobile chip set. For main storage, the Eee uses 4 to 16GB of solid state flash memory.

While even the maximum storage isn't even a quarter of Dell's Ubuntu-powered Inspiron 1420s with 80GB hard drive, it's much faster. Booting up Xandros on an Eee takes less than 15 seconds. If more storage is needed, the user can connect USB drives to any of the laptop's three USB 2.0 ports.

The Eee also includes 10/100 Ethernet, a 56K modem, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, built-in stereo speakers, a microphone and a 300K-pixel video camera. A four-cell, 2s2p (two-in-series, two-in-parallel) 5200mAh battery provides a claimed 3 hours of battery life.

The full press release can be read at Desktop Linux .

Xandros signs deal with Microsoft

Not sure if this will have any impact on the Asus Eee or its pricing, but Xandros recently signed a collaboration and patent agreement with Microsoft last June 4. The question, I guess, is, as Linux-Watch in its report, asks, "What to make of it?"