The latest release of the Xandros Linux desktop edition was in June 2006, which is several lifetimes in the history of Linux. Is this the end of the line for the Xandros desktop?

You may know of Xandros Linux; for many people exposure came through the Eee PC, with this being the distro chosen by Linux-turncoat ASUS. Yet, what is Xandros' stance on open source software? Might Xandros be a thinly-veiled Microsoft tout as Linspire reborn?

Early reports yesterday alleged that Xandros had secretly purchased Linspire, an accusation later confirmed by Xandros executives. We now have fresh details on the deal, straight from the mouth of Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros and freshly installed President of Linspire.

Xandros, the company behind the Linux distribution called Xandros OS, has launched a custom application store that will deliver digital content to any kind of Internet-connect device, agnostic of any sort of platform.

Xandros is gambling that their transition from a desktop Linux player to an end-to-end Linux platform player will drive Xandros mindshare, so as to position them with the Linux “big boys.”

OVER the past few weeks we've seen a lot of Presto coverage but almost nothing else from Xandros*, which also contains Linspire now (it lumped up two patent deals with Microsoft).

Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos said Thursday his company did not agree that its Linux distribution violates any Microsoft patents nor did the software giant ask Xandros to do so as part of the patent cross-licensing deal the two signed Monday.

Presto from Xandros just won't work with GNU/Linux and Xandros won't advertise it as such, either

Linux distributor Xandros along with NoMachine, maker of NX virtualization desktop, remote access and server management software, will announce on July 18 that NoMachine's NX Enterprise Server will start shipping immediately with Xandros Server 2.0.