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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...
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.
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.
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.