Linspire, Canonical, Freespire, Ubuntu Join Forces

An anonymous reader writes: Canonical Ltd., the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Linspire Inc. the developer of Linspire and Freespire, have announced a technology partnership to integrate with each other's Linux distributions. Linspire/Freespire will be based on Ubuntu, rather than Debian, and Ubuntu will integrate with Linspire's CNR package installer/updater. For Linspire, that will mean moving from Debian to Ubuntu as the base for its Linspire and Freespire desktop operating systems. For Ubuntu, starting with the 7.04 release in April, this means that Ubuntu users will gain access to the newly opened Linspire CNR (Click and Run) software delivery system, which will give them one-click access to commercial programs and proprietary multimedia CODECs and drivers.