Xandros goes after small businesses with Xandros Server Standard Edition

Add Xandros to the list of commercial Linux server distributions targeting the small and midsize business market.

Xandros had been pushing its Xandros Desktop product – which is basically the old Corel Linux distribution – for several years, with modest success. (A survey last year by the Open Source Development Lab of Linux desktop users has Xandros running on 3% of respondents’ desktops.) Now Xandros is hoping to make a bigger impact in small-business servers with its Xandros Server Standard Edition.

Xandros has taken the Debian Linux kernel and built a simple business server targeting small companies that want to deploy their own servers but don’t have deep Linux sys-admin skills in-house. The Xandros server – which promises “Windows-2000-like familiarity” – is meant to be easy to set up and run, with GUI-based configuration and management tools, similar to Windows server operating systems.

The operating system will be available in May, priced at $450. It will include an e-mail/collaboration/calendar server, server backup utilities, print server services, and streaming media capabilities. The fact that it does not ship with Apache or other Web server software could be seen as a shortcoming. However, most SMBs outsource their business Web pages, so the Xandros box is intended mostly to support basic small office functions – tools that it appears to have.

The server also promises complete Windows 2000/2003 and XP server/client interoperability, which should help its cause in trying to attract small-business customers.