An Early Look at Freespire Linux

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday August 2, 2006 @06:52AM from the lime-in-the-coconut dept.

An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com takes an early look at Freespire Linux in a recent article. Linspire will be releasing their first version of Freespire, the first community Linux distribution to include many third-party proprietary codecs, drivers, and software. From the article: 'While I still have my doubts about the long-term wisdom of using proprietary software and drivers with Linux, I must say that if you feel you need to use such programs, Freespire makes it much easier than any other Linux distribution. And, when is all said and done, that's really what Freespire is all about -- making Linux as easy as possible for users.'"

1 of 171 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

non-GPL Kernel modules by Chutzpah · 2006-08-02 07:06 · Score: 0, Troll

From what I can tell, freespire advertises that they ship the nVidia and ATI drivers? If they are shipping precompiled copies of the source that is distributed, then they are violating the GPL, and it is likely that the kernel developers will have a talk with them.

It is illegal to distribute non-GPL binary kernel modules (ask any kernel developer), and Freespire should respect the GPL since they are a Linux company.