Linspire Makes Click and Run Free

An anonymous reader writes "After five years of charging an annual fee for their CNR (click and run) service, Linspire has dropped the annual fee, making the CNR service free. This combined with their previous announcement of open sourcing the CNR client, and the Freespire project, is all very big news. This means Freespire users can now have a free distro, using a free CNR service."

Comments

One question

[LWATCDR]

How are they going to make money?

Re:One question

[cerelib]

Linspire's goal seems to be a preload alternative to Windows. If they can score a few more contracts with consumer PC makers then they stand to make some good money.

Re:One question

[Duds]

And to be quite frank, as a windows only computer user, Freespire is EASILY the most impressive Linux I've ever seen. Everything I wanted to work did and it highly likely to go on my next laptop.

CNR free might have clinched that.

Re:One question

[liliafan]

Actually I would say the parent is perfect to judge linspire, their main demographic is windows users, he admits to being a windows user and says he likes linspire since it is so easy to use.

I have been using linux for about 10 years, my main OS is gentoo, I am a Unix systems administrator, I would never consider introducing a windows user to linux through gentoo, or debian they need a gateway distribution, I don't feel fedora fits this bill well enough the same applies to SuSE, however linspire(freespire) are ideal, they get the users used to working in an environment that is similar enough to windows for them to find their way around, when these users want to move onto something more powerful they can change distributions.

As for:

1/ trivial to get started, difficult to do non-standard tasks
and
2/ hard to understand, easy to do your own thing".

Are you serious?? Linux is linux, yes there is differences between distributions, yes perhaps fedora provides a nice GUI to set up wireless networking and perhaps linspire provides a nice installation method but once the user becomes experienced enough with using Linux they are usually going to learn to bypass the pretty tools anyway and get themselves into the guts of the system, in which case the distribution itself is really just a matter of personal preference.

Once you get to an operating system that attempts to give the user the power to do advanced things in a simple way you find other difficulties and complications. There is no such thing as the perfect operating system for everybody.

Re:One question

[Duds]

Given that's the whole point then yes.

But thanks for being patronising. It's not that I don't use Linux because I "don't understand it". I've used it more than enough in home and business.

I don't use it because it's an utter pig to get running, an utter pig to install things and an utter pig to manage. And that goes for Debian, Mandriva, Red Hat, Suse and even Fedora. Freespire worked.

And actually I think Microsoft has had pefect success in that area. I've never had the slightest hint of a virus, security or crashing problem with XP behind a router. Of course I don't use IE.

Re:The Reason Why It can be Free

[gid13]

It's perhaps worth mentioning that this is what I was waiting for to try it out. And if it's good, then I'll tell people. As long as they have SOME means of making money, increased adoption is usually a good thing. :)

Great!...but too late...

[cb_abq]

...I have already switched to Ubuntu.

Here comes the targeted scripts

[fastgood]

sudo with no password needed for the default user.

I'd call it Lindows if that hadn't already been tried. FreeDows?

Re:Quite cool

[garcia]

They can still sell their commercial products through that chain.

I want to know how many users they actually have and how many of those users would buy commercial software via CNR. I just can't see them having that many total users, nevermind total users that will actually buy this stuff.

Re:Does anyone actually use this?

[PFI_Optix]

"Paying for home desktop Linux just strikes me as....bizarre. ..."

I can only think of one valid reason to pay for Linux: support.

If a company sold Linux for a reasonable price and offered competent phone support, it would be worthwhile for people looking for a Windows alternative who don't have the time to invest in getting to know Linux well enough to be comfortable with it as their only operating system.

It's not in use at my work (except in a few dedicated roles using live CDs) because the adminstrator doesn't know Linux well enough to be comfortable with relying on it. There isn't a support structure comparable to Microsoft's; their knowledge base alone trumps any support offerings I've ever seen for Linux.

People who like easy installs

[ylikone]

CNR is unquestionably the BEST software installer on ANY distro or Windows or Mac. Screenshots, description and reviews before you single-click-to-get-it-installed-with-an-icon-on-y our-desktop is hard to beat!

Re:Does anyone actually use this?

[larryau]

Actually at my job many of the desktops were switched to linspire. Worked great for many of the employees. I think the company did not mind the fee because it gave them that security if anything went wrong they could get support. The entire time I have been there they have not once had to call for support. Now granted the vast majority of the users are just using it for normal stuff like email, word processing, ...etc.

I personally like it because it is easy to set up and use much is clear to understand what does what. Not like many of the other distros you have to hunt around and guess how to do something or worse for someone that is not linux savvy have to hack something to get it to work.

One of the biggest plus is how to install and update software. The process is crystal clear. Unlike many other distros where it almost always does not work the way it says it is suppose to. Many times you have to go hacking around the config files to add a repository or change some obscure setting that just does not mean anything to the average employee / user.

The key is ease of use. It installs very fast, one of the fastest to install out of all the distros. It does not ask a lot of complicated questions, it just does it and it works.

As for other distors I like SUSE, but it is not smooth such as the recent fiasco with the ZNetwork, Yast, YOU, RUG stuff had many people pulling there hair out. And even though SUSE is getting better you still have to get into the OS to get it to behave.

Ubuntu was nice install, but frankly its just plain ugly. Its update and install software is a bit more refined, but needs additional work. Its not always clear what it is doing or were to go to get what.

Linspire is an excellent choice for those that are not linux or geek heads, it was never meant to be that. It was meant to be an alternative to windows and it fulfills that very well. You just plug it in and it goes.

Re:What is Linspire's Value Added?

[Squarewav]

The main advantage of linspire/freespire is that it works very well out of the box nvidia/ati drivers, printer/network printer/ media codecs (divx/mpg/quicktime/wm/real/ect) all preinstalled wich makes it a good choice for small OEMS that want to install linux and not have to do a lot of tweeking to get the distro to work with the hardware

as far as maintenance/updates spire follows sorta debian stable aproach in that it takes them a long time to update software unless there is a security problem (spire is not for people who want the latest and greatest)

The major drawbacks I found with freespire/linspire
1) Its dog slow, takes a long time to bootup, apps take longer to start compared to other distros
2) doesnt setup the monitor corectly, requires setting the resolution and refresh rate in its controll panal, possible to set it outside the spects of the display (i.e 100 hz on a 75hz max monitor)
3) A lot of outdated software such as kde 3.3