Slashdot Mirror
Linspire Announces Freespire Distribution
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."
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.
Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
First post and most useless post. Even the trolls will have something more constructive to say.
There is nothing wrong with choices
There are only a small few popular distros really
Linspire, though not the most popular, has been around longer than many, such as ubuntu.
Mext time try and let your little brain's cogs turn a few fractions of a radian before posting.
I'm curious if this will end up with a more Windows-replacement centric Linux system or just one that departs from the Free Software Foundation's picture of what the GPL should embrace.
Second, I always felt that a good Web browser at its core should just be a simple file viewer but it has departed pretty far from that - it would be nice to have my Linux partition able to use/open/view as many or nearly as many types of files that my Windows machine can.
They should call them Beerspire and Speechspire.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
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"?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
these shots?
Infidels! It's à la, not a là.
And before anyone says anything about CNR (click and run), I will point you to klik - free open and wonderful, and not tied to any distro.
Enough said.
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.
Looks like Linspire is planning on giving away the razor and trying to sell the blades for $20 a year.
On the other hand, at least the "creating a user account so you don't run everyhing as root" step isn't optional 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.
On DistroWatch, there are around 600 distributions, how can people want to make any more?
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
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.
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
Rirelobql xabjf gung EBG-13 vf gur yrnfg frpher rapelcgvba rire, ohg jbhyq lbh jnfgr lbhe gvzr npghnyyl qrpelcgvat vg???
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.
Dude, I'll take the huge pile of manure any day. I can avoid the big pile; but I'd keep stepping on the little turds and messing up my shoes.
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
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.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
This is a good thing. One of my major gripes with Linspire was the fact that they did not have any option like this.
I do not see how this is a bad move at all.
Plan 9 offers a completely usable, modern desktop. So there is no need for Linspire.
Would that give us freedows?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
openSUSE is not a community distro. It is the community it self. The distribution is still called SUSE.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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!
Ceci n'est pas un post.
YAFLD... Dime a dozen at this point.
If it survives a year, then we can talk about it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
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?
Live barefoot!
free engravings/woodcuts
Too little too late. Linspire sees Ubuntu becoming the popular girl at school so now she'll sleep with anyone for free.
Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060424 164142296)
---
Stefano Spinucci
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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
That was a good one.
How can you not mod this one as completely hilarious!!! Plan 9 http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9/&e=9797/ doesn't have a functional web browser. "The best way to get a fully supported web browser under plan9 is to use the vnc client to connect to a linux or Windows box. This performs very well if used over a fast network connection." The bunny logo is amazingly cute.
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.
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) which is worth a read. I intend to at least give it a try when the time comes.
Mext time try and let your little brain's cogs turn a few fractions of a radian before posting.
damn, you were so close to making sence to. Oh well, Mext time you should do what you preach.
Asspire and Perspire
I say the more the merrier. Everybody keeps saying "oh why don't all the distros just come together and make a superdistro."
I hate to break it to some, but a lot of the people working on improving the distros (as a hobby or a job) wouldn't be doing so if there was only 1, 3, or even 7 ultra-distros.
Especially the hobbyists. They'd feel like their voice wouldn't be heard, that they are just another cog in the machinery, or the distro doesn't go in the direction they want (can 1 distro satisfy the goals of LPS or Gentoo or Ubuntu or DamnSmall and an Embedded linux all put together?) - and out they'd be out the door, working on something else that interests them.
If someone wants monolithic, go Windows or MacOSX. For me, complaining about the amount of distros is like shitting on someone elses work...
Though I can sympathize sometimes:)
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 to Windows.
I think it is nice that they want to do this. I also think it is a sign of desperation. And an admission of how far Linux has to go before any sort of real desktop adoption. It took Apple to get a *nix OS on the desktop, not insignifigant backing. It's going to take the same sort of chutzpah and power and polish and support to get Linux out there. I don't see these people bringing that, Red Hat and Novell are rabidly corporate, and who's left to address the desktop?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
French is a foreign language in Germany, too!
They're announcing a Linux distribution that won't be available for download in BETA for another 4 months?
What was that?
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
This is a great move IMO on Linspires part and I really dont understand why its being recieved so negatively. Use your preferred distro and be happy with it. Does everyone really feel a need to go bashing on another distro simply because its not the one that they use? To top things off Linspire is a big sponsor of a lot of the major open source projects but no props for that either. Most people seem to be pretty good at nothing but bashing. Please show me some big support coming from Ubuntu for some major open source projects.
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.
...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.
Computer scientist, Software engineer.
Linspire the only distrobution to lock up both VMware and the host system.
I think that really says all that needs to be said.
... they'll be named Widows
I wasn't the first to say; someone or somthing(likely origin is France) known as "Guy Montag" said this.
without prejudice
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?
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
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 pulling in different directions. Quality over quanity. RedHat makes money - small distro companies don't.
"Workers of Earth, I bring you good tidings...of Peanuts and Beer."
-- Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy
without prejudice
Anyone that uses ClearWindows is obviously is opposRe:I really miss Lindowsed to the security brought by our closed Windows(TM) product.
Baal Gates of Microsoft Corporation.
Greetings and blessings!
It's à la, not a là.
Are you certain that it's "à la", and not "à la" is He?
God isn't an it. He made man as male and female. An it is below the standing of man; for example a human, roman, german. Did He not call them Adam?
Drink and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
with love,
Gregory-Thomas
without prejudice
Have you tried Kubuntu? All the advantages of Ubuntu with a solid KDE. My current system.
It is one of the easiest and slickest out there too. I have tried many different versions and keep going back to Linspire.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
Well if this project gets really COLD, it'll be FREEZEpire.
If it gets really HOT, it'll be FreesPYRE.
If it sucks the life from other distros, it'll be VAMpire.
If it flat-out dies off, it'll EXpire.
If it continues to live, it'll REspire.
If it has a kernel panic, it might PERspire.
If it woos it's intended audience, then may it TRANCEpire
But, hopefully, it'll be really NEAT, and good things will TRANSpire...
(C) David Syes, 2006-04-24 2025
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The early worm gets the bird.
Will it encourage people to add users or encourage to just have a root user as it is now?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Fuck off. That was really lame.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Cheese covered in the rotting, orally-ejected intestines of the first mouse.
Yummy.
Ya Suse , RH , Mandrake (whatever) all try to make money as well but it's always struck me that Linspire's (whatever) primary goal from the word go was "money" where as RH, Suse , etc wanted to make a distro and needed to make money to support that idea. That may not be the case at all but that's what it seems like. Short story : I dont like Linspire cause it seems their heart isn't in it, just their wallet.
"Freedom and Justice for All" is a registered trademark of The United States Govt Inc. Not available in all areas.
I second that. MOD that fucker out of existance.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I guess you wooley and pooper really need to go find some s-c-e-x or a hobby... Why r u so uptight? I'm not ATTACKING the distro, since obviously it's under the thread "wordplay"! I s'pose there's no point reasoning with or expecting humour out of you two...
/. could use a "dry humor" tag...
Obviously
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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 completely antithetical to the entire idea of a public library, more so than censorship and law enforcement accessing records. Librarians, on the whole, don't seem to understand that yet. If we could get them, as a group, to denounce DRM and proprietary codecs, we might prevent a Right to Read scenario...
Linux may be dying, but BSD is dead. Netcraft told me so.
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.
Actually I dont give a flying F**K what they call themselves or what their motives are, or for that matter how many friggen distros there are. Give me a viable, easy to use alternative to m$ crapware is all I ask. The key words here are "easy to use" I use OS X at home M$ at work and FC4 for my server. IMHO, OS X rocks, M$ sucks and FC is somewhere in between. I also don't give a F**K what you think about my opinions by the way, so any flames wont be responded to. In general Linux distros are too different to M$ to attract new users - unless they are like me and read/digest/think about viable alternatives. Come on guys .... get into the real world and ask yourselves why the linux distros have not taken off ...... they are too efffin different to M$ shitware. And M$ is what we are being fed.
As soon as linux distros "lookand feel (whatever the hell that means)" familiar, and are easy to: install new software/ play the latest shit game/install the latest and newest usless piece of crappy software, then we may be getting somewhere.
For f**cks sake, give linspire a go. At least they are attepting to make the user experience consistent and friendly.
Jeez its good posting to Slahdot whith a skinfull under my belt .......
Yours in the spirit of inebriation
TimTheTosser
You should consider submitting those to Piers Anthony.
Quick! You'd better email them at their office and tell them that all the money they've made is only phantom money. They'll be glad that someone with a bit more insight was able to warn them in time!
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).
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200604241 64142296
Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom
Monday, April 24 2006 @ 06:36 PM EDT
PJ is 100% exactly correct.
PS - Anonymous Coward's take...
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now."
* JANIS JOPLIN -- ( Me Bobby Mcgee Lyrics )
Freedom today in technology, is Freedom of Speech, period!
What percentage of communication today is done by some kind of computer? The
lines are not blurred anymore they are as black and white as the lyric.
I remember when I first heard Janice Joplin sing those lyrics, the context was
plain as the day that they emerged, the days of a different struggle, those
words were powerful then, and they are just as powerful today.
"But I'd trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday"
>I have stuck by gnome for years...but I am weary of it, just weary
Weary doesn't even begin to descibe how I feel about GNOME. I just simply cannot understand the mentatility of the project and their continual removal of features. The end result of the GNOME project is going to be a GUI that consists of a single button which takes up the entire desktop.
Every time I try a Linux distro it's GNOME that always ends up driving me back to Windows. It may be a bug riddled, security nightmare, but at least it has the basic functionality right. Consistent copy & paste between programs, consistent menus, consistent window behaviour, consistent right click menus in the file manager, buttons in the right order, the ability to set file proerties on more than one file at a time, the abilaity to process objects recursively... In other words the features that allow you to get on with doing your work etc. etc. etc.
In contrast GNOME is an unusable mess which seems to be based on 20 year old *very bad* design paradigms. Using GNOME makes me feel I'm back in the 1980s and using an Atari ST.
It makes me very, very weary too.
nice but still...
i'll continue to use my LesBian Unstable with her wonderfull slut-get package manager, genitoo is nice also with his erect package manager.
LOL!!! Well, if it's a hard-core slut, then it'll be more than a "manager"; it'll be a MAN AGER!!! Age the hell out of the hapless man who gets into her dragnet...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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.
It by default runs as root. WTF. That is one of the worst parts of Windows, why bring that to Linux? Especially when under Linux it's not necessary (ie, properly designed applications). It does seem that Freespire will create a regular user by default, though.
IMHO, the Mac OS X and Ubuntu approach of disabling root is the best idea. I set up all my Fedora desktops to behave the same way. Hopefully that will become the standard for desktop systems.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
There! Now I've violated your "copyright". So sue me.
dumbass. It wasn't even all *that* funny....
---
Well if this project gets really COLD, it'll be FREEZEpire.
If it gets really HOT, it'll be FreesPYRE.
If it sucks the life from other distros, it'll be VAMpire.
If it flat-out dies off, it'll EXpire.
If it continues to live, it'll REspire.
If it has a kernel panic, it might PERspire.
If it woos it's intended audience, then may it TRANCEpire
But, hopefully, it'll be really NEAT, and good things will TRANSpire...
(C) David Syes, 2006-04-24 2025
Okay, so how do I play my WMV files or my Quicktime files on my new Kubuntu box?
I heard that Quake 4 was supported under Linux, and I want to play it, but the program says it will not run without "3D acceleration", so I go to ATI's site to download their drivers. First, I am not sure which X I have, so I just pick the first one on the list; I am sure Ubuntu supports XFree86 4.1. It takes me a while to figure out how to open an RPM file; I have to google all over the place, and several minutes later, I find a forum post that says I have to type in some wizardly commands "rpm -ivh ~/fglrx_4_1_0-8.24.8-1.i386.rpm". I then search through the KMenu through the K menu for a little while, and finally I click on the Terminal icon, and a little white box pops up, and it looks like it wants me to enter something. I then type the wizardly command listed above, and it appears that the first part of the command, rpm, was not found, bu I just typed it in. How stupid can you be Linux?
In frustration, I navigate back to ATI's website, and I come across the ATI installer, and then I read the instructions, but it says that only Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse are supported. So it appears, that I have used the wrong Linux operating system. My Suse 10 CDs are curently in route to my house, and I should be installing them any day now.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
You copyrighted *that*? Please, use your power as copyright owner, and don't ever let anyone repeat it ever again.
Man I hate puns.
Usually I am quite nice. I apologize. It just came out of me.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Apology accepted, sir. (Thank you, too. I admit, however, I do expose (and sometimes espouse, I suppose) some quite weird/unorthodox opinions and ramblings...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The real bastards.
Who would have thought there would be such immoral people....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
PCLinuxOS is the most stable and up-to-date Linux distribution out there IMHO. http://www.pclinuxos.com/