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Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time
drunkennewfiemidget writes "The people at Linspire are giving Linspire 5.0 away for free (digital download only) until September 6th. Simply go to purchase the $49.95 digital edition, and then enter coupon code 'freespire' to receive a $49.95 discount." From the site: "'Freespire' was the term Andrew Betts gave to a private project he had been working on. The project comprised various open source components, taken from the freely available source repository for the Linspire operating system...Linspire has no problem with anyone using the open source code from our operating system - in fact we applaud such projects. The name Freespire, however, did create some confusion in the short time it was used...We thought it would be fun, for all of those who were looking at this project to experience a true 'Freespire', to give away a free digital copy of Linspire for a few days!"
Hey, BeOS did this right before they died too.
Looks like server suicide to me...
sigfault. core dumped.
I was hoping for the analog one...
because everyone is busy downloading the software? They've already posted warnings that the site is getting "slammed" and that the coupon processing doesn't always work. And the download is a separate step via BitTorrent, so it should be great-- the more downloaders the better. They recommend trying between 11:00pm and 5:00am Eastern Time.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
From what I have read, people haven't been all that impressed with Linspire. Even if it's free, is it worth the trouble with all the other distributions out there?
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
I think that you answered this yourself; you may sell it, but those to whom you do sell it are entitled to the source as well. Linspire, however, has a good bit of proprietary stuff in it to which the source it not available (and it is not GPLed).
Linspire is actually quite impressive. It is a step in the right direction for desktop Linux. While not as easy to use as Mac OS X, for instance, it is still an ideal system to set up for office use, and is quite friendly to the new Linux user.
It provides an excellent stepping stone towards SuSE or Debian. A new user gets the basics down pat easily and quickly, and soon he or she is ready to use a more traditional Linux distro.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Linspire does make the source available to GPL code. However, their distro includes Sun's JVM, Macromedia's Flash plug-in, Acroread, Real Player and several other non-free bits and pieces.
They also have a legally-licensed DVD player (plug-in to Xine) and MP3 codec that are available cheaply ($5 ?) to subscribers.
So, the entire PACKAGE isn't available for give away - normally.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
What, were they running the server on Linspire?
Marketing ploy? Advertizing your product by giving it away in order to spread word of mouth.....uhhhhh, DO YA THINK? Of course its a marketing ploy, and a good one if you ask me. (Downloading right now...) Its a company, they want to make money. Don't act surprised.
AFAIK they can't GPL it because of non-free portions of the distro (JVM, Flash).
Well, Lindows had to change its name to Linspire, because it was too much like Windows. Well, now Freespire is too much like Linspire. So how about we call it Freedows?
Mind you, Frito-Lay might raise an eyebrow.
But then it would be just like Ubuntu, MEPIS, and others. Yaawwwnnnn
Linspire is unique in that it has legally licensed things like MP3, Java, Flash, Windows Media, Quick Time, Real, Nvidia drivers, music files, etc. If you take all that away, you don't have Linspire, you have Ubuntu and have to be a friggin' genius and figure out how to get all that on your own. But of course, for this crowd (slashdot) it's not a big deal, but for 98% of the rest of the world, it's very important.
A freely available operating system for PCs. Why slashdot you've done it again!
Whatever will you chaps come up with next.
We dream of the day when telegrams may be sent around the world for the price of a local telephone call. God bless you technological pioneers and God speed to your radical new endeavours.
I just noticed you say it's available in "digital form" too. Why I almost vommited my evening dose of laudenum in excitement.
Once again slashdot has lowered me to the lowest form of wit.
No.
In fact, this isn't so much a publicity stunt as a way to get more users dependant on their subscription download services, Click-N-Run (CNR). Links to that service are imbedded into practically every single menu you can find on the desktop, with no way to take them out. They are EVERYWHERE, within every sub-menu, on the taskbar, imbedded within web browsers and other programs, etc.
Of course it's INCREDIBLY useful for people who DO end up subscribing, since this is probably the easiest, most user-friendly way to install without any effort a MASSIVE library of software. However, if you would prefer to get your software packages on your own (through apt-get or whatever) and have no use for CNR, you're just gonna be stuck with a desktop operating system whose main purpose is to get CNR subscribers.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
Since the servers are pretty much crawling already, here's a link to the torrent
The apt-get sources is still commented out in 5.0, but points to the standard Debian repositories. Two seconds in vi (ten in emacs) and you're in business if you can't find twenty bucks.
No, what would be worse is naming all the variables and functions things like "plus", "times", "leftParen", "greaterThan", "rightBracket"...:
...
if (leftParen >= (plus + lessThan(minus) + lessThan * plus )) {
Maybe not