IntroductionI'm one of the many people in the world who have been looking - hard - at finding an alternative to Windows. Since I have a substantial investment in hardware here already, the Mac osX wasn't an option. Standard Linux distributions, while having come a long way in useability and reliability, still require a substantial amount of expertise, especially when it comes to integrating them in a Windows environment, installing drivers, etc. Certainly, successfully installing and running existing Linux distributions is beyond the scope of the average Windows user.Along comes Xandros 1.0. Xandros is the love child of Ming Poon, the founder of Corel Linux. Some of you may remember the old days when Corel Linux was one of the easier distributions to use, as it came bundled with Corel WordPerfect and some other niceties you just didn't see in the other distros. Ming Poon and Xandros pick up where Corel Linux left off, and 'kick it up to notches unknown' (thank you, Emeril). I should also point out that Xandros is based on the Debian Linux distribution, which is known as one of the most secure and stable distros around.I purchased Xandros online (currently selling for $99 US delivered anywhere in the world), using the BeyondUnreal PO box as the address. Unfortunately, I noticed a couple of days later that it was shipping UPS, who doesn't deliver to PO boxes. I emailed a stock 'sales@xandros.com' email address and gave them my street address, in the event UPS would not drop it off at the post office. About an hour later, I received an email from - gasp - Ming Poon himself, who informed me that not only would they upgrade my shipping for free and get Xandros to me, they fixed the web site so that it would not accept PO boxes! Talk about your customer service! I received my Xandros 1.0 the very next day.The box contains the distro CD (yes, just one), a 'Technology Preview' CD (basically a Debian KDE 3.0 system, unsupported and unfinished), and a 220 page user manual, written in simple, straightforward English in a manner that won't scare off any average Linux newbie. There's no scary talk about compiling kernels, runlevels, init.d examples, etc. In fact, you don't even get to the console command section until the very end of the manual, and it only contains a handful of commands you'll need to know. Why is this? Because you'll find you'll want to do most of your work from the graphical desktop. If you want to learn hard-core Linux, you'll want to buy another book. This manual takes the fast, easy path to getting you productive.