With the launch of Windows Vista, many companies are evaluating their upgrade options for existing PCs. Vista will run on most PCs manufactured in the last year or two, but will only run well on computers with a good graphics card and lots of RAM. Vista needs 512MB of RAM just to run, and 1 GB to run well. Xandros wants to be your alternative to Windows Vista. It is a Linux distribution based on the Debian Sarge Xandros wants to be your alternative to Windows Vista. It is a Linux distribution based on the Debian Sarge core, with an enhanced user interface and file manager. It can run on almost any Intel or AMD CPU with a clock of at least 450MHz. It can run in 128MB of RAM, and run well in 256MB. Enabling its new three-dimensional desktop effects requires specific graphics chipsets (which, remarkably, don’t include NVidia), but these effects are not exactly a business requirement.Xandros has gone to great lengths to make this Linux distribution look and feel familiar to Windows users. It has also gone to great lengths to achieve compatibility at many other levels: applications, disk and file formats, utility functions, and network protocols. It can even run many Windows applications, using CodeWeavers CrossOver Linux Standard. A new and welcome capability is the ability to write to NTFS partitions, making Xandros more viable than it has been in a dual-boot scenario with Windows.Almost everything I tried worked, although not everything worked smoothly. About the only serious incompatibility that I found was in the Xandros VPN client: the only supported VPN protocol is PPTP, and not the more secure L2TP/IPSec. The VPN authentication methods are also limited; I was not able to connect to any of the VPNs to which I have access. Xandros Professional Desktop 4.1 Cost: $99.99 Availability: Now Verdict: Xandros is about 90% of the way towards providing a fully-functional alternative to Windows desktops. I can see companies with mixed Windows and Linux networks using it internally, especially for older computers that would not run Windows Vista well. Technology Industry