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

OK, just how GPL compliant is it???

[advocate_one]

can I make a copy of the cdrom and pass it on to my friends and even charge for my time in making the copy??? do those licensed codecs conflict with my rights under the GPL for the rest of the distro?

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

[yuna49]

No, you have no redistribution rights whatsoever for the proprietary components. See
http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Summary_of_Pro prietary_Components. There's an "OSS" version that contains none of the proprietary items and is, presumably, redistributable.

I'm really puzzled by all of this. First, why would Microsoft license its WMV technologies to a Linux distribution? I can understand someone like Sun licensing Java, or ATI/nVidia licensing their drivers, but Microsoft? Why would they want to make it easier for a Linux distribution to compete with Windows, especially in an area where Microsoft has the advantage, namely bundling proprietary software?

Second, who is paying the licensing fees here? I presume that Linspire has to pay royalties for each download of Freespire. Where is the money coming from? On the wiki site, Linspire says it's paying for things like server space, etc., but doesn't really talk about the licensing fees. Are they really making so much money that they can afford to pay royalties but not be compensated by end-users in return?

Re:KDE 3.3 ? Are they stuck in time??

[GreatBunzinni]

And have you noticed that since 3.3 there was 3.4 and now there is 3.5? Why is this distribution the only one having stability problems with KDE so that it can only ship with a version which is almost 2 years old? KDE 3.3 may be stable but so is 3.4. There is absolutely no need to ship with such a backward version.

Proprietary Codec Fun

[ElleyKitten]

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

Mepis and a few other distros have these. What is special about Freespire? I rtfa, and the difference seems to be an older KDE. My friend wants me to install the new Mepis on her computer. Is there any reason I should look at Freespire?

Re:Proprietary Codec Fun

[ElleyKitten]

"Mepis and a few other distros have these. What is special about Freespire? I rtfa, and the difference seems to be an older KDE. My friend wants me to install the new Mepis on her computer. Is there any reason I should look at Freespire?"

No. But then you're not who this is aimed at. I suspect this is geared more to the people wanting to try Linux for themselves having already used Windows.

Well, so is Mepis. To clarify a bit on what I was saying in my first post: My friend, who doesn't have a lot of Linux experience, is interested in Mepis because I've told her it's good for Linux newbs, and she'll still have all the proprietary goodness without the install hassle (I used more words when describing this to her). Mepis and Freespire seem very simular, is there anything about Freespire that would make it better for my friend than Mepis?

Am I missing something?

[WidescreenFreak]

I'm curious as to how this is going to help Linspire. I reviewed one of their books recently, and they said that the primary reason why they've had to charge for the software is to pay for the codec licensing. Okay, I understand that completely. But what the (insanely light) article doesn't go into is how the free version with codecs is comparable to the "commercial" version.

Because this free version is DVD and WMV compliant at installation, that right there means that those are two technologies that supposedly have to be licensed. Linspire is now giving them away. So, wouldn't that mean that they're actively losing money on those licensing fees with every download? How is that going to benefit a Linux distro that already is not very popular?

Is there some "between the lines" information that I'm just not seeing here?

Re:Wireless

[AlexDeGruven]

I'm currently running a Broadcom wlan (Dell TrueMobile 1400). Uses the bcmwl5 windows driver and works like a champ. Some stuff is still WIP like WPA, but it does everything I currently need it to.

Re:Why are these things even an issue?

[Excelsior]

But seriously, Gentoo doesn't seem to have nearly the problems I hear of other distros having with licensing.

Don't be confused. What Gentoo and most desktop-centric distributions are doing is being legal by putting it on the users to break the law to get the features they want. That's fine, and that's the best we can expect from a non-profit distribution. But don't confuse it with being all around legal. It simply works because no patent holder is going to attempt to extract royalties from the anonymous hordes of people that have downloaded and installed Gentoo or Ubuntu. That doesn't mean it's legal.

Conversely, Linspire acquires licenses for encumbered software, then distributes the software licensed. I believe they are still tainting the kernel they distribute and losing GPL compliance, though.