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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?"
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
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.
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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.
Oh no... it's the future.
"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.)
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?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I turn my desktop off to save on power and to try to keep my room cooler. Plus it dual-boots between Windows (for games) and Linux (for work). My laptop goes with me many times I leave the house. So to answer your question, I boot my machines quite often.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
If you had read TFA, you would know that they're sticking with 3.3 because of stability issues with newer versions, and that it's probable future releases will include 3.5.
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.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
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?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Because they have a lot invested in their custom patches to KDE, and haven't bothered to migrate them to 3.5 yet. I suspect it's a simple question of available resources and priorities for them.
I know, there's the "stability" argument as well, but I think that's most likely bogus.
Throw the bums out!
The downside is, of course, that you have to wait probably at least one full day for all of this stuff to compile from scratch.
But seriously, Gentoo doesn't seem to have nearly the problems I hear of other distros having with licensing. Is there really such a legal difference between distributing ebuilds (which contain download URLs for the codecs) and distributing the codecs themselves in debs? Could debs include download URLs?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That a big argument (excuse?) often given for the slow (non) migration to Linux from Windows is that there is no WMV, DVD, MP3, etc, support out-of-the-box. Now that there is a distro making an effort to offer these features, it's roundly dismissed. While I wouldn't personally use it (I'm absolutely loving ubuntu right now), I might take a look and see if it's ready for my parents, girlfriend, non-geek friends/relatives (I don't have high expectations, but who knows).
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
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.
Randal Graves says: I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class... Especially since I rule.
Hope that helps.
*Haven't used Gentoo, but Debian/Ubuntu call the grub configuration file menu.list while FC/RH call it grub.conf."Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
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.
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. :)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
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.
From the FAQ
/. ???? It's so old, you can't even reply to it anymore.
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 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?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Rebooting to save electricity is only a kludge to compensate for crappy ACPI support.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Where I work, backups are run at night over the network, as are software/OS upgrades, etc. Leaving the computer on is company policy (turning off the monitor though is OK and is encouraged).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Power management that works would be something to brag about. The best of both worlds.
...would this distro be named Freedows? I don't think Frito Lay would be very happy about that.
No, they haven't for a long time now. They listened to the kvetching (it was a good point after all) and changed. My impression is they really do listen, really want an easy desktop "just works" type distro that most anyone could use or OEM hardware vendors can use, and have tried pretty hard to pull it off. They need to make a buck somehow to work fulltime on it obviously, but most of the other larger distros do that as well. You can go to their forums and frequently see the ceo answering questions. Maybe not perfect, but it shows they are trying.
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!!!
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX