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

The Reason Why It can be Free

[neonprimetime]

according to CEO Kevin Carmony, Linspire is doing well enough from selling its higher-end products and services that it can afford to offer its basic CNR service free of charge

Good for him, and good for us! I guess that's what happens when you become innovative and create multiple products / services!

Well Duh

[MindStalker]

They are charging for most of the software you download via CNR. I never understood why they charged for the service in the first place, as any charges reduce your potential software sales customer base.

Quite cool

[TommyBear]

I was a tester in the early days of Lindo... Linspire :) It was a good system then and it is still now. It's a good thing(tm) that it has been made free. They can still sell their commercial products through that chain.

Re:One question

[AKAImBatman]

How are they going to make money?

1. OEM installations
2. Commission from commercial software sold on CNR

Well what do you know

[Provocateur]

/. actually showed what the acronym stands for in the summary. The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization is now complete. Dogs and Cats can now live together.

I took a while, but...

[IWorkForMorons]

I can finally see this being a good option for people I don't want to deal with helping them "fix" Windows. I knew this 5 years ago, I know this now.

The only reason I post this is in the hopes that the geek I met 5 years ago will read this and realise how much of a stuck-up geek he is. I was at the bus terminal waiting for my bus to go to work. I saw this guy holding a PDA, casually glanced at it, and he just got all excited that someone was checking it out because he had Linux on it and wanted to show it off. So on the bus ride he's prattling on about how great Linux is, how you can do everything in Linux that you can in Windows, how much better Linux is over Windows. So I ask him if he's checked out this new disto, seeing as I just found it and thought it was a cool idea. Nice, easy, user friendly, had this cool utility that downloaded and installed software for you in a single click. "It's called Lindows" I said. "Looks cool enough, and would be nice for the average person that doesn't want to rebuild their kernel." His face dropped...he looked so disgusted. It was like I just killed a puppy in front of him. He could barely even talk. He asked for my email address to "talk about Linux", but I never heard from him. Dumbass stuck-up geek...THIS IS FOR PEOPLE WHO AREN'T GEEKS! It's so that these people bother other people to help them, or don't need help at all because the damn thing just works! It's to free up the geek's time! But he just couldn't see the potential...too disgusted that it was "like Windows"...

Re:One question

[gEvil (beta)]

How are they going to make money?

Duh, the same way everyone else does:
2) ???

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

[DoofusOfDeath]

How are they going to make money?

Volume!

True

[ylikone]

While I am not personally a Linspire user, it always annoys me when ignorant people complain about them charging for free software. They never did! The free software was always free. If you choose to use the CNR method to install it, you had to pay $20/year for the service of doing so. You didn't pay for all the free software it installed for you though.

Re:Does anyone actually use this?

[AnotherCaptainTux]

Hi, I use Linspire and Freespire almost exclusively (my server is CentOS) I've been a Linux user since late 2001. I started working in sales for a company that exclusively used RHL on the server and desktop. I was a bit lost as a long time Mac user and ordered a PII on ebay and started using Mandrake. I subscribed to Linux Format Magazine as well. For a newbie who had not done anything deeper than pointing and clicking for the last ten years, my learning curve was harsh. I would go to forums and mail lists for help and be told to RTFM....my question was always WHAT Fing manual! Where?!?!? I bought dummies books, I bought books and went to websites that promised to be helpful, they were not. It was the vision explained by Eic Raymond in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" that kept me going and not the functionality or usability. Along the way I discovered SUSE 8.2 and thought..."Much better, but I am still using my Mac." I had read about Lindows in a review in Linux Format about version 3.0. I liked what I read. I asked some friends about it and went to slash dot and was told they are evil and kicked puppies. So, I listened to the muses that abused me into a co dependent relationship of confusion and stayed lost and continued to use my Mac. In 2004, Lindows changed the name to Linspire and had a free offer for the ISO. By this point I had grown pretty darn comfortable with the shell, RPM, YAST, etc etc. I was even a member of a local LUG and had taken some classes at a local College to get better acquainted with Linux. This is, by the way, far more than the average person would do. Anyway, I downloaded Linspire and checked it out on my box. Darn thing installed with zero effort. It had flash tutorials that explained how to do many basic things that would help newbies. There was Lsongs and Lphoto which were intuitive and overall, it just worked. Now, I still had a problem with this CNR. Paying for free software! Damn puppy kickers! But they had a 15 day trial. I figured I would try it for 15 days, download everything I wanted and cancel. HA! During that 15 day trial, I got spoiled. I go to the warehouse, read a description, read user reviews, one click and it is installed and even adds it in the menu and a pretty icon on my desktop if I so desire. Here is the kicker, if something did NOT work, I could contact Linspire and they would fix it. Customer support for 3rd party applications as long as I download it through CNR? WOW! Then I go to the forums. I see users who are new to Linux being treated with kindness, courtesy, and respect. The immediate need would be fed first and then they would be given tips and advice on how to find answers for themselves. By the time 5-0 came out, I sold my Mac. As far as other Linspire users out in the world? I know of 3 in my home town and seven in the neighboring town. I know many others on forums, mail lists, and Summits. Some are industry professionals. You know who the rest are? Senior citizens, hair dressers, stay at home parents, bus drivers, truck drivers, pilots, avon reps, librarians, and well...normal people. For newbies, Linux needs to just work and the command line is something a single mom working 50 hours a week only to be a mom and a house manager when she gets home will not ever have the interest or inclination to go to. If Linux is malleable and flexible, as well as more secure and more stable, we should be able to make it simple enough for her to use. Open source needs open arms. the open arms to newbies is one of the reasons I am with Linspire and Freespire even though it is "too simple" for me. Cheers! Patrick

Re:One question

[GreyPoopon]

sorry to be rude, but if you are a real n00b to linux, are you qualified to judge lindows, er, linspire, er, freespire beyond the install and first impressions phase?

Absolutely! It's one clear data point about how well Linspire / Freespire handles the transition of a Windows user to Linux. It's EXACTLY the kind of assessment needed if you want to know whether or not your product stands a chance of stealing market share from your biggest competitor. It's also important to understand that opinions of experienced Linux users are important too, but they answer a completely different set of questions about the product.

Re:One question

[Kadin2048]

I think, as a Windows user, he's perfectly qualified to judge Linspire as a replacement for Windows. In fact, I'd say he's probably more qualified than someone who has a lot of previous Linux experience, or who isn't coming from a full-time, Windows-only background.

Honestly, it's that "hard to understand" part that is a major problem to getting non-geeks, or even geeks who don't like spending a lot of time twiddling with their computer's software, to be interested in Linux. I'd say that trading #2 for #1 (in your post) is not always a bad thing, depending on your ultimate goals for the system.

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.