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Linspire Announces Freespire Distribution 223

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the let's-muddy-the-waters-a-bit dept.
LinuxScribe writes "Is the world ready for another community Linux distro a là Fedora and openSUSE? We're about to find out, as Linspire used the Desktop Linux Summit to announce a community-driven version of Linspire, to be called Freespire. But here's the twist, Freespire will come in two flavors: a completely open source version and a version that includes all of the fully-licensed proprietary apps, drivers, and codecs in Linspire."
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Linspire Announces Freespire Distribution More

Linspire Announces Freespire Distribution

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  • *~shudder~* (Score:4, Funny)

    by showardkid ( 823639 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:32PM (#15193607) Journal
    You mixed that up, man. There's an accent on 'a' and not on 'la'. It's "à la". Yes, I'm a Foreign Language nazi.

  • To beat an analogy to death (Score:4, Funny)

    by uberjoe ( 726765 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:35PM (#15193625)
    They should call them Beerspire and Speechspire.

  • I wonder what's up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Illbay ( 700081 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:37PM (#15193632) Journal
    Fedora was established as the bleeding-edge benchmark for development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

    Linspire, in contrast, is rather staid and unadventurous. One questions whether a "bleeding edge" is even required for that distro.

    So what is the purpose of "Freespire"?

    • Re:I wonder what's up (Score:5, Interesting)

      by soupdevil ( 587476 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:56PM (#15193735)
      Of course, the purpose is to get us talking about them again, since much of the buzz lately has been about Ubuntu and Fedora. And with simple scripts available to add proprietary codecs to Ubuntu, there are few to no reasons to pay for Linspire, and pay again for access to their library of OSS apps.
      • And with simple scripts available to add proprietary codecs to Ubuntu, there are few to no reasons to pay for Linspire, and pay again for access to their library of OSS apps.
        Few reasons, but good reasons: Freespire will have done its due diligence to ensure your codecs are properly licensed, whether free as in speech, beer, or crack. 'Free as in Beer' may yet prove the gateway drug of the software world.
      • The question concerning these scripts, is why doesn't Ubuntu offer to install codecs during installation? Even if the codecs don't reside physically on the CD, that doesn't mean that Ubuntu can't add an extra source or two to its package list and offer to install anything it finds there as the last step of installation. That could include Sun's JDK, Nvidias display driver, codecs etc. etc.

        Trying to get these things is a huge pain in the butt, and doubtless confirms to many people that Linux is "hard". Whe

        • Re:I wonder what's up (Score:3, Interesting)

          by harrkev ( 623093 )
          Well, the leaders at Ubuntu have taken a hard-line stance on both the GPL and not doing anything that would get them or any of their users in any sort of legal trouble (including DMCA and patents).

          And this is why Automatix was born. It works well and turns Ubuntu into something truly usable on a day-to-day basis.

          I wish that Ubuntu was more pragmatic, and included the "Automatix" stuff on a 2nd optional CD. If you don't want the CD, then don't download it an burn it. But Automatix does essentially the sam
          • Most interesting stuff is that Dapper includes now perfectly working Gstreamer 0.10, which includes gstreamer-plugins-bad and gstreamer-plugins-uggly and ffmpeg-gstreamer, which enables play divx/wma/quicktime prioritary stuff. Enabling them is very easy for advanced user and could be improved with giving a choice to enable those codecs when user can't play them.

            Most of Automatix stuff is not needed anymore.

    • So what is the purpose of "Freespire"?

      I have always thought Linspire was trying to position itself as the Linux easy enough for grandma to use. Whether they had succeeded, and whether they were the only valid option, is arguable. What is clear is that, by asking for money up front, they were putting themselves as a disadvantage, compared to such desktop distros as Ubuntu, Mandriva and Slackware.

      Freespire is designed to get Linspire onto people's machines so they can sell their CNR service. I reserve

  • I don't get the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:39PM (#15193641)
    Yet another community-maintained Debian-based distro? Why in the world would I want to choose this over (U|K)buntu? Debian based, but with a bastardized broken KDE... sounds super!

    And before anyone says anything about CNR (click and run), I will point you to klik [atekon.de] - free open and wonderful, and not tied to any distro.

    Enough said.

    • What's broken about their KDE.. last time I checked it worked fine. Please elaborate.
      • Last time I looked at Linspire, (which, given, was a year ago), their KDE was non-standard, modified like nuts. This caused numerous problems when building your own packages from source against theirs.

        • Re:It's non-standard (Score:2, Insightful)

          by linvir ( 970218 )
          To build apps from source in Linspire is to miss its point completely.

          • Many of the hottest and newest apps on SourceForge and Freshmeat don't have binary releaases. And if they aren't popular enough to get packaged by Linspire themselves you're SOL and have to make due with a shitty equivalent, or even worse nothing at all.

            If I wanted to put up with sub-par software selection I would just use windows.


    • I think the neat thing here is that it'll have everything by default. (K)Ubuntu is about as easy as anything gets, unless you want to play an mp3, dvd, or anything covered by the w32 codec pack such as wmv. Then you have to grab additional software.

      Yes it is really easy to get that software - if you know what you are doing (or you know how to google). But a lot of people don't. This distro is novel in that it will include support for all that stuff by default (OpenSuSE and Fedora don't include suppor

  • Mod Company -1: Troll (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:39PM (#15193644)
    Let's not forget what we're dealing with here. This is a company with a known history of pulling whatever attention getting stunt it can, including starting with a name of "Lindows" that got shot down by MS. All along, their goal has been simple: try to find a buck out of distributing open source software, including making their "Click and Run" store of mostly freely available apps.

    This is about as newsworthy as a paid-software vendor announcing a free trial edition that replaces all the "good stuff" with reminders to buy the full version.
    • Actually, they *won* the MS battle- they were paid several million to change their name.
    • Yup. Their business model seems to go like this.

      1) Come up with a brand name.
      2) Sell a bunch of stuff that's already free.
      3) Profit.

      Now they've added.

      1) Come up with a brand name.
      2) Sell a bunch of stuff that's already free.
      2.5) Get people to update what little value added we put in there for free.
      3) Profit.

    • Re:Mod Company -1: Troll (Score:5, Insightful)

      by linvir ( 970218 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:19PM (#15193833)
      I don't get it. Why do people always piss on Linspire for selling Free Software, when so many others had already been doing it for so long? Is it because of a perceived lack of contribution back into Open Source on the part of Linspire? From a slightly biased Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
      Linspire has contributed millions of dollars in direct funds and contributed code to several open source projects. For a company of Linspire's size, their contributions have been quite admirable. With very few exceptions, all code that is developed by Linspire is contributed back to the open source community. Linspire is also the lead maintainer for important projects such as Nvu, Lsongs, Lphoto, and an important contributor to other projects such as Mozilla Firefox, Gaim, Reiser FS, and many others.
      • There's nothing wrong with selling free software. There IS something wrong with confusing proprietary mushware, like the drivers and codecs they distribute, with free software. Big difference.

    • I really miss Lindows (Score:5, Interesting)

      by r00t ( 33219 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:19PM (#15193837) Journal
      I so wish this had gone to trial, especially since the appeals court ruled that the jury would get to decide if "windows" was a generic term back when Microsoft first started using it. Killing the Windows trademark would be lots of fun.

      Not that I'd want to see "Macrohard Windows", "Slack Windows", "Brown Dog Windows", "iWindows", "eWindows", "Turbo Windows", "IBM Windows", "Debian GNU/Windows", "Windows for Playgroups", "WindowsBSD", "ClearWindows", "Sunny Windows"...

      Aw, yes I would. :-)

      • Re:I really miss Lindows (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hawk ( 1151 )
        It predates the web, so I haven'tfound it by casual searching (and am not interested enough in proving it to spend the needed time with paper), but at the time, Microsoft made a big deal about the trademark being "Microsoft Windows" rather than "Windows." Both the Apple II (at memory locations 12-15, iirc) and the TRS-80 (for its speech sy
        nthesizer, and possibly others), and I presume others that I don't recall (had Star been shown off by then?), used "windows" to describe a section of the screen. At t

    • Re:Mod Company -1: Troll (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chris_eineke ( 634570 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:23PM (#15193854) Homepage Journal
      try to find a buck out of distributing open source software
      Yeah, like Redhat, SuSE, Mandriva, etc.

      Tell me: When has selling Free / Open Source Software become a sin against humanity?

  • Hmm... Nice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Psykechan ( 255694 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:42PM (#15193665)
    Looks like Linspire is planning on giving away the razor and trying to sell the blades for $20 a year. [freespire.org]

    On the other hand, at least the "creating a user account so you don't run everyhing as root" step isn't optional [freespire.org] in Freespire. This "new" distribution is something that might be a good first step for newbie Linux users that want certain features (DVD/MP3 playback) immediately after install.
    • I have to say I agree with that of a good first step... at least I know I would have liked for this one to be available a week ago after spending the last 4 days trying to get the nvidia drivers working on ubuntu (just got them working about an hour ago.. but I won't claim full victory until it keeps working tomorrow night, wouldn't be the first time I get them working only to die the next day... :) ). This is my first post from within linux, anyway... :)
  • On DistroWatch [distrowatch.com], there are around 600 distributions, how can people want to make any more?

    • Re:Oh My Gosh (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah. There should just be one, really good distro. I'm gonna go over to Distrowatch and start a new "one-size-fits-all" distro to combat this too-many-distros problem.

    • Re:Oh My Gosh (Score:3, Informative)

      by linvir ( 970218 )
      Man, every time I think Slashdot has moved on from this, it pops back up.

      If there are 600 distros, surely you have to accept that people are finding plenty of reasons to create new ones? Surely you don't think you can just declare that they are only faking this need or that they shouldn't do it?

      It's easy (if a little arrogant) to look at the total and dismiss the effort as needless, but it's much harder to go through each distro and show that it doesn't fulfill some niche or need.

      I picked a load of unpopula

  • No offense but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:44PM (#15193677) Homepage Journal
    weren't the add-ons the ones that gave Linspire the viability to ACTUALLY replace Windows? Without them, Linspire is naked, and I don't think they have the experience to handle a "plain vanilla" distro.

    So if I had to choose between Freespire and say, Ubuntu Dapper, I'd choose Dapper all the way.

  • Nice... (Score:4, Funny)

    by advs89 ( 921250 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:45PM (#15193683) Homepage
    I think I'll be the first to say that I like this idea.





    Well, I don't actually... I just thought it would be cool to be the first to say that.

    -Advs89

  • This is good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:48PM (#15193691)
    More distributions is better. I think that if every distro does one thing right, with a thousand distros, we're in great shape. Linus's Law of "With enough eyes, every bug is shallow" also works on features. If one distro does a feature really well, then everyone else can adopt it. That's the beauty of the GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses, anyone else in OSS can copy it or re-do it. Therefore, adding another distro or two is good.

    Confusion is not really an issue, because anyone looking at Linux will be getting a friend who has a favorite distro, or will have a computer vendor with only one or two choices, which will likely be a choice between Freespire and Linspire or Fedora and Red Hat
  • ... but I'm actually fairly interested in this. Personally, I've wondered when I'd be able to use a both free and legal DVD player in the US.

    • Re:I don't know about you ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:18PM (#15193829)
      > Personally, I've wondered when I'd be able to use a both free and legal DVD player in the US.

      Exactly. While all the FSF absolutists will flame away I say it is about darned time. Of course I wouldn't switch distros JUST for the DVD player or any of the other closed bits, but if I could buy em and run them on my preferred distro I'd get a P.O. to em.

      You see, it is only by being willing to compromise (the minimum I can get away with) on the Free principles have I been able to deploy a linux based desktop into a public library setting. Just one example, we use Crossover Office to get IE running. IE isn't negotiable, the only question is Crossover, VMWare or which other method I was going to use to get it running. Too many sites just don't work any other way. For example, assume I'd brazened my way past all the other objections and deployed without IE. Last year wne the Katrina refugees flooded in and discovered they couldn't file an application with FEMA from our labs I'd have been tasked with getting XP installed on am post haste. Especially when Rita hit us directly, making it OUR patrons that we wouln't have been able to help get disaster assistance.

      We don't have much of a need to play video DVDs thankfully, but it doesn't go down all that well when I explain that it would be illegal to do it. People just can't believe it and I really don't have the time to explain the complicated legal probems involved. At home I use libdecss and say "screw em if they don't like it." Hell, I have even mentioned it in protest letters to elected officials. But I won't deploy it at work, the legal liability is just too great. This isn't a problem Free Software can solve. We already HAVE the code but there isn't any path to lagalizing it. Same for Windows Media, Real, etc.

      • Re:I don't know about you ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @11:16PM (#15194412)
        You know what should be illegal? Making a public site for refugees that only works on one OS and Browser. That's should be criminal.

        Buy Microsoft and run IE or we won't help you. Holy crap, my taxes pay for this?!
        • > Making a public site for refugees that only works on one OS and Browser. That's should be criminal.

          Well the flames they got over it has caused them to finally correct their site. But that is just one down and thousands to go, all too many of them government agencies that have idiot MCSE types designing web portals. The point is that we have to be able to provide a solution that allows patrons to get to IE only sites. It just isn't something that we can compromise on. So a 100% Free Software stack i
        • I only use IE for Windows updates and FireFox for everything else. I've never had an issue accessing any Canadian Federal, Provincial, or Municipal web site. AFAIK, government web sites (here in Canada, anyway) are legislated to be cross platform (i.e. not use any browser specific code).

      • So what do you do? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by XanC ( 644172 )
        I run a public library's computers also, so this is more than idle curiosity. What do you do about the w32codecs? It sounds like you don't have them installed, so if that's true, do people complain about not being able to watch videos on news sites, or movie trailers, or the online defensive driving course they're taking?

        If you're telling these people it doesn't work and to take it up with the publishers, then wow, you're a better man than I.

        I really think that DRM and proprietary codecs are completel

        • Re:So what do you do? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) *
          > What do you do about the w32codecs?

          It is a total bitch. Realplayer helps a little, the Crossover plugin gets us a few others, including Quicktime. Since Fraunhaufer doesn't seem to be chasing decoders I took a chance and deployed a version of xmms with mp3 support enabled.

          The problem is most of the interesting (to the kids in the labs anyway) content isn't in html, it is in flash, windows media and such. You either find ways to deal with a fair percentage of it or the calls to install Windows will g
          • That's a good idea, to come up with some feature they'll really find useful but can't find anywhere else.

            Still, I'm wondering about these codecs... Is it any more "legal" to install Quicktime on Crossover than to just take the codec and plug it into mplayer? Also, if the hardware came with Windows, that might be a pretty good defense on running the Windows codecs. It may be against the EULA but it's a lot harder to call it "piracy". Did your machines have OEM Windows or did you avoid the MS tax?

        • Librarians, on the whole, don't seem to understand that yet

          If you want librarians to understand DRM, get them to read The Well of Lost Plots [amazon.co.uk]. As well as being entertaining fiction, it does a good job of placing DRM in the context of books. It's also worth reading for any geek, since it is packed full of oblique references to areas of the tech industry.

  • Plan 9 is better (Score:4, Funny)

    by bizzynut ( 887594 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:57PM (#15193738)
    Plan 9 offers a completely usable, modern desktop. So there is no need for Linspire.

    • Re:Plan 9 is better (Score:5, Interesting)

      by linguae ( 763922 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @09:03PM (#15193996)
      Plan 9 offers a completely usable, modern desktop.

      Plan 9 is a research operating system. I like Plan 9's architecture, file system, and many other ideas. Plan 9's goal is to further extend the notion of Unix's "everything is a file" idea. Everything, even the windowing system (rio), is a file. Plan 9 also vastly simplifies systems programming (compared to Unix). Plan 9 is a wonderful research operating system that I would love to tinker with and explore.

      However, it isn't a desktop replacement for Windows/OS X users or even for Linux or BSD users. There is no office suites (or even a word processor unless you love text editors and TeX or troff), no browser on the scale of Firefox or Konqueror, no music/video players, nothing that 99% of the world uses with a computer. Besides, I'm pretty sure that users are more comfortable using this desktop [kde.org], these desktops [gnome.org], or especially this desktop [apple.com] before they use this desktop [bell-labs.com]. For even the most ardent *nix hackers or computer scientists, Plan 9 would be something they played with on the side (kind of like Minix or an operating system that they're working on), and Linux/BSD is their main OS.

      I like Plan 9, but it isn't a desktop OS; it's a research OS. However, Plan 9 is a very innovative operating system; I wish that the major OS sellers (I'm talking to you, Apple and Microsoft) would be a bit more cutting-edge in the architecture of their OSes rather than just appearances (even though Apple has done very well since the bought NeXT; they have a hybrid kernel, for one). Plan 9, L4, the MIT exokernel project, and other projects look very interesting, and I would like to see them in use.

  • And what if they hadn't changed their name? (Score:4, Funny)

    by bflong ( 107195 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:57PM (#15193739)
    Would that give us freedows?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Evolution (Score:5, Funny)

    by the darn ( 624240 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:58PM (#15193748) Homepage
    Lindows -> Linspire -> Freespire
    So, if they hadn't been forced to change, would this new distro be called Freedows? The mascot could have been the Freedow Bandido!
  • YAFLD... Dime a dozen at this point.

    If it survives a year, then we can talk about it.
    • How can a Linux distribution fail to survive? Become unmaintained, with a negligible userbase and no package repositories active? That's the closest possible, and even then, someone could restore it. FLOSS is quite difficult to kill.

  • Here's the twist... but it's not a new twist (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ankh ( 19084 ) * on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:02PM (#15193764) Homepage
    Freespire will come in two flavors: a completely open source version and a version that includes all of the fully-licensed proprietary apps, drivers, and codecs in Linspire

    Well, maybe, but they're hardly the first to do that: Mandriva (Mandrake) has been doing it for a long time, with the commercial version including extra drivers as well as applications. Probably others have too.

    What makes a community effort stand or fall is how well the outside people are integrated, and how much voice they have.

    One reason I the distribution I do is that it attracts both seasoned programmers and newcomers, and there's a good chance I can show my laptop to people and say, here, this is what it's like, you can use the same as me. It's not clear that I'll be doing that with Linspire, nor that a community-based version that's not as good will in fact help me. Who will it help?

  • Ubuntuspire... (Score:4, Funny)

    by blankoboy ( 719577 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:03PM (#15193770)
    Too little too late. Linspire sees Ubuntu becoming the popular girl at school so now she'll sleep with anyone for free.

  • Freespire = give up your freedom for a driver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:05PM (#15193778)
    Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060424 164142296 [groklaw.net])

    ---
    Stefano Spinucci
    • Look, for the last friggin time, desktop users don't care about high falutin' ideas of freedom. They want to watch DVDs, play MP3s and watch those oh-so-funny videos of people falling over on eBaumsWorld. Going on a rampage against such functionality because it isn't under the GPL is bullshit, and yet another example of certain sections of the Linux community placing ideology above functionality.

  • This is a good thing. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:09PM (#15193795) Homepage Journal
    For people who are used to the Windows way of doing things, the deliberately simplified Linspire way of doing things is a very good thing. It's good that they are "getting religion" about the inadvisability of running as root. And the ultimate best thing of all might be CNR technology being opened up. Imagine alternative Free CNR repositories! With CNR 100% opened up, there will be no stopping people from creating a F/OSS-only CNR repository that people who might not want to get chained to Linspire, Inc. might use instead. This was something the Lycoris community was trying to do with IRIS, Lycoris' answer to CNR.

    With Lycoris by and large a dead issue, a Freespire might be just the ticket for folks who are just not ready for Ubuntu/Kubuntu yet.
    • ...a Freespire might be just the ticket for folks who are just not ready for Ubuntu/Kubuntu yet.

      Who are these people? I would like to meet one of them. I love Ubuntu and it's my distro of choice, but let's face it: it's almost the fisher price "my first distro" of distros. The only reason why someone wouldn't be ready for it is b/c the name "linux" attached to it scares them.

  • There are some differences (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @08:35PM (#15193896)
    Many of the comments so far are to the effect that Freespire is just another "me too" free distro. I think a careful review shows that this is not quite true. The most important difference is that it comes, out of the box, with proprietary software when necessary because there is no viable free alternative. One can argue whether this is a good thing, but it is a difference.

    The indications are that they have thought this through quite thoroughly. The initial announcement and the web site are quite well done, I think. Considering it is still four months until the first beta, they have a good FAQ (here [freespire.org]) which is worth a read. I intend to at least give it a try when the time comes.

  • That sums up my take on this. It's like an Object Desktop version of Windows ME. Glitzy to start, but under the hood... (insert blood curdling newbie scream here...)

    I really don't see people who use this only because of nebulous dissatisfaction with Windows XP who don't even know what DOS and Windows 3.11 were (or even ME) learning to get under the hood and tinker and learn Linux. CNR sounds nice, but ultimately the bag of hammers Unix lineage cannot be avoided and will hit them in the face like a 2x4. Back

  • First Beta in August 2006? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Merlynnus ( 209292 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @09:18PM (#15194045)
    WTF? From their FAQ:


    30. When will Freespire be available for download?

    The first beta download for the community will be available around August, 2006.


    They're announcing a Linux distribution that won't be available for download in BETA for another 4 months?

  • not *all* the codecs are included... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hex1b ( 46201 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @10:06PM (#15194219)
    ...only the cheap ones. This was asked by a member of the audience and answered by the CEO during the presentation where the announcement was made today in San Diego. Specifically, no DVD licence.

  • How many PCs can this crash? (Score:3, Funny)

    by crossmr ( 957846 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @10:11PM (#15194243) Journal
    Linspire the only distrobution to lock up both VMware and the host system.
    I think that really says all that needs to be said.
  • If it wasn't for Linspire, there wouldn't be any cheap hardware available in large stores like Frys. Also by buying linspire computers you are supporting linux developers. What's wrong with that?

    Their latest ones are quiet low power (think Watts) AMD Geode based machines. Who else is fighting against the MS tax in the large stores?
  • And two are clearly RedHat and SuSE. Third.. Debian or other uber-geek version. Today there are hundreds or thousands of Linux distributions. It is like hippie movement from 60s: every a**hole can make their own OS and put it on public servers. They got downloaded (new stuf!! check it out) and forgotten within week. IMO they better apply for jobs in RH, SuSE and bring in their ideas, and help Linux (that matters) as whole gain share. With years things just are going worse: more and more "unique" distros

  • Notes from the Freespire announcement (Score:3, Informative)

    by twasserman ( 878174 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @03:51AM (#15195079)
    I am attending the Desktop Linux Summit where Kevin Carmody (Linspire CEO) made the Freespire announcement. (Side note: he's a very good speaker.)

    I thought that his positioning of Freespire and his reasoning behind it are worth sharing with Slashdotters. Linspire is, of course, a purely commercial effort, with the goal of selling a shrink-wrapped OS that looks externally as much like Windows as possible. His target audience is not the Slashdot crowd, but rather the people who buy their computers at Wal-Mart. Really! For them, it's all about the out-of-the-box experience, starting up a computer with preinstalled OS and apps and just using it. As someone who has recently installed Mandriva, Fedora 5, and Ubuntu Breezy on various machines, I think that the experience is much better than it once was, but still falls short of the "Wal-Mart" or even the Windows experience.

    To listen to Kevin Carmody, Freespire is offered in the spirit of recognizing the contributions of the open source community, and giving people the opportunity to stay "pure", i.e., without licensed and proprietary pieces, or hybrid, where the user can choose to download and perhaps pay for the licensed and proprietary pieces. He gave an analogy with food, where the choices were Junk Food (Windows and proprietary software), Healthy Food, and Vegan. Open source vegans, of course, are those who would never want music in the proprietary MP3 format or images in the proprietary JPG format.

    His belief is that most consumers and business people would like Healthy Food, which is some mix of Linux and those proprietary formats, plus some drivers for graphics cards, etc.. He and his company are actually going out to Fortune 500 companies and talking to them about why they should consider a move to something like Freespire rather than suffering the pain and expense of migrating to Windows Vista (if and when it ever ships). This is a fairly brave, not to say crazy, thing to do, and I think that they deserve some credit and support for their evangelism, even from people who don't care for the whole Linspire business. Getting 3-4% penetration of Linux (any flavor) on corporate desktops would be quite an achievement, and it won't come from Linspire on its own.

    Carmody also said that they are going to open source Click N Run because they think that it is the best updating program, and are offering it to others for the taking. If I were responsible for Ubuntu or other Debian-based distros, I would be very tempted to take them up on their offer. I've done enough "apt-get"s.

  • People don't seem to get this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BeardsmoreA ( 951706 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @06:19AM (#15195388) Homepage
    Everyone complaining about 'yet another distribution', and saying 'why this over Ubuntu / Fedora /... doesn't seem to understand (or are conveniently ignoring) a couple of points:

    • Ubuntu etc. cannot legally play a DVD
    • cannot legally play an mp3
    • and countless other examples

    ... at least in the US. I haven't even looked into the legalities in the UK, where I am, as I frankly don't care for home use, but this stuff really stops people using Linux in a lot of situations.

    I think it will be interesting to see how they integrate the proprietary stuff, (and how it's paid for, free as in beer is a big attraction of OSS, whatever the principles at stake).

  • Well if those drivers work in the Freespire with all their codecs and stuff, I'll give it a try. I've yet to get those to work in anything but Windows so far.

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