Episode: 385
Title: HPR0385: Why Xandros doesn't suck
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0385/hpr0385.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 19:31:58

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We will see you next week.
Welcome to another episode of HBR, I'm your host Enigma and today I will be giving my
first netbook review. Today the one is aptly titled Why Zanderous Doesn't Suck. As the title
implies I'll be talking about the Zanderous OS which came on my ASUS Tripoli 900 series.
So I've had this OS for barely Tripoli for about seven months now and I've been pretty
happy with it and pretty happy actually with the Zanderous OS for the day-to-day operations
that I use my Tripoli for. I have several laptops in the house and the netbooks have their
niche for being, you know, just for easy web access, you know, mail, PDF, readers, some
basic office documents, you know, nothing processor intensive or ram intensive. I have my larger
laptops that can do that but the Tripoli is meant for long battery life. I use mine a
lot on my plane flights I travel a lot so my laptop, my larger laptops don't have the
battery life for it, you know, they only last maybe two hours but my Tripoli lasts, I believe
the stock battery lasts about three hours, you know, two and a half, three hours which,
you know, I do a lot of West Coast travel and I live on the East Coast so it's a good four
or five hour plane flight and that's not including the, not including layovers in, you know, Houston
or Atlanta that I inevitably get stuck in but anyway I digress. So as I said, primarily
I use it for, you know, internet access, messaging, things like that. So I'm going to go through
some of the apps that it has for the web. It has Firefox as a default browser for the
messenger. It uses Pigeon. Both I use on my main, you know, Linux laptop I run a bunch
to 804 or 810 I believe still I haven't upgraded yet. Other internet applications that are
nice are the Skype application that I use a lot and it's got a built in, my at least my
laptop has a built-in mic and webcam which works straight out of box with the OS and worked
fairly well. The mic, I don't know if it's my, if it's the Tripoli's fault but I get a lot
of ambient noise in backgrounds when I'm using the built-in recorder. However, with the Skype app
I don't get nearly as much background noise and I don't know. I've only used it once and I recorded
back in December I believe I recorded an HPR episode. If you listen to that I actually did a lot
of editing for that and it still sounds pretty horrible. So hopefully the sound quality on this
app since I'm on my desktop recording will be a lot better. So sorry about the poor sound
quality on that one. And for a office document or office suite it has OpenOffice 2.0. It has the
dock, the spreadsheets, the presentation. It doesn't come with the database software. It has
PDF to reader. It has a mail app. It has a pretty much a very slim down file manager. It works for
what you know you need it for. Not real fancy. None of the apps are really that fancy or cutting edge
there. You know very skilled down versions of the normal applications because you don't have
that much to that many resources to work with with the triplies. Also has a paint program. It has
some learning software. It has a math program and a science program for kids and the games
personally. My favorite game is on this one is Penguin Racer. I'm a big fan.
And of course it has Frozen Bubble which I hate that game to no end but I digress again. I fail
at the Frozen Bubble and you guys can laugh at me but I do fail. It has a stupid potato guide
game and Sudoku and Solter. Oh and a ripoff of Tetris called Altress Tetris. And as I said it has a
sound recorder where you can that it just records into a wave file and that's how I recorded that
game review HPR. And the printers work fairly well. The printers drivers that uses cups I believe.
I really haven't tried that and I think that's about it that I wanted to talk about. I'm just
looking here. I've actually got my ASUS in front of me and don't think there was anything else but
the main reason that I use this OS is you don't have to screw around with it a lot. It works straight
out of the box. All the apps work. The wireless works straight out of the box which I don't know if
you guys have the trouble that I have with wireless and Linux. Most of the time when I install
an IOS on a new laptop I always have issues with the wireless drivers.
It never seems to fail me because I always get the wrong chipset and you know it just fails me.
So a couple of announcements I'd like to thank personally thank Monster B and Klaatu for doing
you know a stellar job at getting me at HPR episodes. Monster B has a new series called
TIT radio. It's a like it's if you've seen or if you've heard Linux Cranks it's somewhat similar to
that. It's like a roundtable discussion. I believe they have it live on DDP hack radio so go check
that out. I think it's every other week if I correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's every other
week and Linux Cranks on the off weeks. So check those two shows out and I think that's about it
for today. If you have any questions or hate mail or whatever email me admin at HPR or I'm sorry
admin at HackerPublicRadio.org feedback at HackerPublicRadio.org and we now have a Twitter
and a Facebook group and I know I'm going to get some hate mail for that so yes I'm a media
whore so you can just say it now and that's about it for today. Again email me you know we always
need posts so if you want to do a show or have questions just email me and we or catch me in IRC
I'm usually in free note and you can always catch me on bin rev you know PME and the bin
rev forums and that's about it. I should have another the next two reviews I believe are going to
be backtrack three or four I haven't decided yet on the triple E and triple E Ubuntu on my
triple E as well I've got to get a SD card big enough to install them with because obviously a
two gig isn't big enough had some issues with that so stay tuned for that and hopefully I'll be
recording some more shows I know I haven't recorded in a while but thanks to the guys that you
know I've kept HBR such a success we're up to 382 what I want to say episodes this should be 383
or 384 I lost track and for you guys that do pay attention to the the ID3 tags I need to go back
and correct some of those I was working nights there for a while and and was slipping on the
ID3 tag so sorry about that guys and oh I've got a new blog if you want to check check it out it's
insecuretech.com go over there I try to post like once a week at least hopefully I can post some
more good content over there and have a good day and we'll see you tomorrow on Hacker Public Radio.
Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. HBR is sponsored by Carol.net so head on over to
