First Impressions of Freespire 1.0

Nate writes "Freespire 1.0 was released a few days ago, taking the desktop-oriented Linspire distribution and making it freely available (as in beer) to the world. Linux Format has some first impressions of the release, focusing on its much-trumpeted media playback facilities thanks to codec licensing. Flash, Java, DVD and WMV support out-the-box — could this climb to the top of the desktop distro ladder?"

Comments

Umm no

[HotBlackDessiato]

"Our only big gripe is the bootup speed, which takes about twice as long as Ubuntu on this same machine." ...so to answer the last question of the blurb, no.

Re:Umm no

[Tx]

How often exactly do you boot your machine? A lot of people, me included, leave theirs on 24-7, and reboot only when absolutely necessary, so boot time is pretty high on the "do not care" list.

Re:Umm no

[discord5]

At work, my machine is on 24/7, and reboots only when it has to. At home however, I pay the electricity bill, and there is no real use in leaving the thing on 24/7. Uptime is nice to brag about if you don't have to pay for it.

Re:Umm no

[filesiteguy]

Just as an FYI, I reboot my laptops at least three or four times a day. I simply don't trust ACPI for suspending my machines. I'm currently running SUSE 10.1 on both and would appreciate a faster boot time. :)

Re:Umm no

[mrchaotica]

Rebooting to save electricity is only a kludge to compensate for crappy ACPI support.

Time will tell

[suggsjc]

Flash, Java, DVD and WMV support out-the-box

Maybe a good start, but it will take a lot more than that to

climb to the top of the desktop distro ladder

Granted I would think that Linux users are more likely to try different flavors, but to really get to the top takes a lot of time and effort. Slashvertisements might get a couple people to jump, but rises in distros are probably a more organic thing that happens from a solid product (think Ubuntu).

Re:Time will tell

[dsginter]

That's all great but can you tell me the easiest method of getting Ubuntu up to speed with all the codecs, DVD-playback, flash, et cetera... LEGALLY?

The available scripts out there (Automatix, EasyUbuntu, etc) are not legal in the United States thanks to the patent quagmire. This preempts the use of the distribution in a large way (e.g. - most businesses simply can't afford to break the law, no matter how wrong it is).

That said, I *would* like a suggestion to this issue. I'd really like to get up and running on Linux legally. Freespire seems appealing in this respect.

Re:Time will tell

[MrZaius]

The available scripts out there (Automatix, EasyUbuntu, etc) are not legal in the United States thanks to the patent quagmire. This preempts the use of the distribution in a large way (e.g. - most businesses simply can't afford to break the law, no matter how wrong it is).

How many businesses in the US actually care so much about MP3 and DVD support that they'd choose an OS based on it? Flash support is readily available as a browser plugin, and easily installed even without the aforementioned scripts. That's the only thing that could possibly be considered relevant for business users, and even that's a little iffy.

No

[FST]

I don't believe that this has the potential to defeat some other distros. As easy as it is to use, many people will still want to have windows working once they install Freespire, but, from my experience, the installation of its boot-loader is broken and it takes some tweaking to get it to work: not something that most people who use Freespire will know how to do.

Distro ladder

[dhasenan]

"could this climb to the top of the desktop distro ladder?"

Not without geek support, too. And Linspire has a poor reputation currently--no telling how long it will be before that goes away.

Still, it looks like at least a typical distribution for quality, though the boot times are somewhat worrying. (Four to five minutes? That's running full hardware detection each time, by the look of it--that's how long the Ubuntu installer takes, IIRC.) Still, that can be solved; the question is whether geeks think it's worth it to have proprietary codecs by default rather than simply apt-getting them. (And if they do, we'll soon see an alternative Ubuntu installer that does just that.)

hmm.. right

[morphix]

As a fellow linux user, and also a user of ubuntu, i can't see freespire overtaking ubuntu. Sure freespire might have the codecs and players all working properly out of the box, i find it would be too windows like. I like customising linux, instead of trying to make another windows clone.

FAQ on Proprietary Items

[neonprimetime]

From the FAQ
But won't Freespire hurt the momentum of open source by offering the option of proprietary codecs, drivers and applications?

No, quite the opposite. To influence the future of computing to become more open, Linux must first expand its circle of influence by gaining a much larger user base. A big portion of the world is turned off by Linux, because it doesn't legally support things like MP3, DVD, Java, Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, etc., out of the box. Asking millions of people to throw away their iPods (or other favorite MP3 player) or to not legally watch DVDs on their computer, is just too much to ask for most users. The Freespire project believes in providing a free marketplace where the user can decide what software to install and use.

I like the approach. To me, Linux is stuck in a rut where techies are addicted, but users are afraid. This could help bridget the gap.

On an offtopic note: How frickin' long is that Mario Bros poll gonna be up on /. ???? It's so old, you can't even reply to it anymore.

Re:OK, just how GPL compliant is it???

[MindStalker]

First, why would Microsoft license its WMV technologies to a Linux distribution?

Isn't that part of the requirement of the EU decision against Microsoft that they license these things?

That Wasn't a Review...

[eno2001]

...it was a pimp piece. Not to knock anyone, but it ends with the guy basically saying "I guess we'll have to wait and see how this affect Linux adoption". My question is, who was this piece written for? Certainly not Linux users as we're all well aware of why those codecs are not included in pure distros and the difficulty in trying to ethically support them without getting into legal issues. It also couldn't have been written for the Linux "toe-dipper" as the article puts it, since it refers to them in the third person. PHBs? I doubt it. They don't care if you can't hit Youtube or iFilm at work. So just what this piece all about?

Got root?

[leoxx]

Does Linspire still run the entire system as root by default? If so, then IMHO it shouldn't even be considered a real distribution of Linux but rather a poorly hacked together DOS-like operating system that only happens to share components with Linux. Non-superuser accounts must be mandatory for a modern operating system. Period.

Re:Got root? (Flamebait)

[bigredradio]

Flamebait anyone? This has not been an issue for a while. You have always been able to create users. I think most people reading slashdot do not get the concept behind freespire or linspire for that matter. It is about switching users from windows. If you say, install Ubuntu and go back and try to find a repository online and add to synaptic or apt-get. Then install a the proper codecs. The first thing they will say is, what is a codec? What is a repository? Where is apt-get? They just want to install something that works. They are not hobbyists. These users could care less if they run as root. They don't know what root is. I get sick and tired of people bringing up non-issues for "joe six-pack". Having to go elsewhere for codecs to be able to play mp3s/DVDs/Flash IS an issue fro joe six-pack. I think most of the animosity comes from the fact that freespire and linspire are distros that do NOT cater to YOU!!!