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Xandros Reportedly Buys Out Linspire
2muchcoffeeman writes "Former Linspire president and CEO Kevin Carmony — whose relationship with his former employer has turned acrimonious, to say the least — reported on his blog that Xandros and Linspire signed an agreement in principle for Xandros to buy Linspire June 19. Carmony includes a scan of the memo to Linspire shareholders announcing the deal, which requires the former Linspire company to change its name. According to the memo, the stockholders voted to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, Inc. Despite the wording of the Linspire memo to stockholders, this deal apparently came as a surprise to Carmony and other stockholders. Some here may remember that both Xandros and Linspire signed patent protection deals with Microsoft in 2007."
I think Linspire users must be as rare as hen's teeth, I've certainly never even heard of a single person using it, other than the guy who reviewed it for distrowatch. Same goes for Xandros. though I did download that one once to check it out with a windows-stranded friend in mind, but saw no advantage over Ubuntu.
Come to think of it, who the heck is eweek?
Caveat Utilitor
Never liked them much. Xandros is on the way out too. Only thing it has at the moment is that it's shipped on the Eee PC by default (apart from XP). But Given that people then stick their own flavour of Linux on an Eee (Like Ubuntu). Once the UMPC version of Ubuntu is release,d it might take over Xandros's place on the Eee PC's
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
The ASUS EEE runs a derivative of Xandros, although Xandros sort of disowns it:
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Might I suggest... Lindows?
I Heart Sorting Networks
is the America online of Linux distrobutions. In other words, it's for people who don't know any better. The only difference is that it lacks a marketing department.
Life is like a box of Linux Distributions...
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
Infoworld and eWeek were the computer tabloids that wished they were Byte or even Compute!, they had more articles that shilled products than they had neutral articles if you could find one. Most editors and writers got bribed by computer companies to write a good article on their product in exchange for keeping the product plus other gifts.
Spencer the Cat was the gossip guy, but around 2000 his gossip columns became more advertising and less rumor. I think when he made a prediction that Microsoft would switch to a Xenix clone named Winix to compete with Linux was when he lost his mojo back during the Clinton Administration and Dotcom busts that made gossip and rumor columns had to get info so they started to make stuff up.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
and gets bought out by a rival and then shelved or made irrelevant but die hard fans will still stick to it and use it anyway.
The same thing happened to BeOS and OS/2. I think there is a lesson to be learned here on how to market your product better than just nickle and dime marketing and why third party driver and software support is really really important and you should not mess that opportunity up.
I still remember the Linspire 1960's Marketing, with a Gogo Girl dancing to "Come on baby light my fire" but instead the lyrics said "Come on baby switch to Linspire", lame.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yes. and so did Linspire.
Your point is?
Interesting.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I am still stunned that any company can make money on a desktop linux product. There are so many GOOD free options available to the end user that I just cannot see where the potential revenue stream is. I use Mandriva 2008 Spring. It HAS and DOES everthing that I need on a desktop. Now maybe this is because I am using it in a private capacity and maybe it changes the moment I put it into a commercial workspace - maybe someone can enlighten me. Is it the support agreements? is this where the money is? How much revenue can desktop support genererate?
http://projectleader.wordpress.com
By the way, wasn't Xandros one of the distributions that paid the M$ tax?
That's why I mentioned it when I submitted the story. :)
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
... filled with an infinite series of choices.
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
one turd swallows another turd, all you got is a bigger turd...
You are a true poet.
The OEM Linspire PC could be found at Walmart.
Linspire carried the torch for OEM Linux - Linux as a direct competitor to Windows in the consumer market.
Linspire irritated the FOSS purist because it believed the installed and licensed proprietary media codec and player was essential to delivering a commercially viable product.
It sold commercial software through its CNR repository.
Bitstrean fonts. DVD players. Games like Postal.
To this day, Walmart and Consumer Reports find it necessary to publish a disclaimer whenever they expose a newcomer to OEM Linux:
This is a Linux based PC and will not perform completely like a Windows based machine. It can perform basic activities such as E-mail, Web Browsing, Music and Pictures.
To this day, the mass-market Linux PC remains firmly anchored among the bottom-feeders. To this day. Linux hasn't broken through to a 1% share on the consumer desktop. Operating System Market Share
Glad that's over. Maybe they should rename it Perspire. Don't let your Linspiration become your Perspiration.
Xandros is no great shakes either. It sounds like some kind of phony aphrodisiac cologne advertised in Hustler.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
one turd swallows another turd, all you got is a bigger turd...
You are a true poet.
Psh. Everyone knows he's just ripping off Poe.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Want to have a good laugh, do a Slashdot search for Lindows.. The original pitch was that it would be a Linux distribution that could run Window's applications just as easily as Linux applications. Most people here recognized that it was, b.s. from the getgo, since the technical challenges of doing such a distribution were much greater than Lindow's developer resources. Plus, the Lindows CEO Michael Robertson was more of a "pitch guy" than someone who actually knows how to deliver a robust software product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Robertson So he is basically screwing everybody associated with Linspire, like he screwed everybody associated with MP3.com? If it smells like a rat, it must be Michael Robertson.
Agree. I couldn't help thinking of the following xkcd comic, but note that this is the wrong way to go about things:
http://xkcd.com/386/
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Linspire had a marketing department.
Which is why the OEM Linspire PC could be purchased off the shelf at Walmart - and why the Lindows-Windows dust-up was worth a few thousand posts to Slashdot.
AOL reached about thirty million U.S. households at its peak.
In nine million homes it is still there. AOL rate increase maybe not as dumb as it look [June 30]
AOL's legacy includes the MMORPG. Neverwinter Nights. Instant Messaging. The complexities of the BBS, IRC and USENET client disappear.
In time, an entire geek-oriented culture of the "Net" begins to disappear:
Internet Evolution: Things Change
In the realm of the OS, Linspire dared to say that this was not a bad thing.
In mid-2008 Linux has 0.68% of the desktop market - and growth is barely perceptible. The Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com starts at $500. The Duo Core AMD with 3 GB RAM at $600.
OLPC couldn't hold the line against Windows on the XO.
Windows on the Netbook is a reality.
This has to sting the geek when the story comes out as a Microsoft press release:
"The Asus Eee PC has been and continues to be a very successful product for Cellnet," said Julian Phua, general manager of Cellnet Group Ltd. "The feedback from our customers in retail and the reseller channel is that they overwhelmingly prefer to sell the Eee PC running with Windows. To move our existing Linux inventory, we are now offering our channel the option of purchasing Windows XP with their Eee units so they can provide a compelling offering for customers."
Following Success of Windows on Netbooks, Microsoft Extends Windows Offering to Nettop Devices [June 3]
It always reminds me of Xanadu.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
Yeah but I am non-violent and I don't believe on getting revenge on people even if they are sociopaths or bullies. Success is the best revenge, so I am working on getting healthier and then maybe forming a small business and do something to earn money as nobody will hire me so I'll have to start up a small business and hire myself.
But I understand where you are coming from, I've had John Forbes Nash moments (A Beautiful Mind, read the book not watch the movie) in schizophrenia that helped me solve complex computer problems and I sometimes dream in computer code. I am not exactly like Nash, but I understand his economic theories.
I made a few friends/pals over the Internet who also have schizoaffective disorder, so I know I am not alone.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
mp3.com - wha? almost as cool as Zep in it's hay-day - LOLZ though yer - it takes vision to try....
These for pay distributions like Linspire and Xandros make sure they can never get big, they try to turn Linux into cheap Windows on the assumption that there are all these potential users out there. What they end up doing it alienating 99% of the market cause all they have left are the people that want rid of Windows, are too impatient or stupid to learn real Linux, and too cheap to buy a Mac. Thats another reason why Microsoft bribes these little nothing distributions into signing that "pact", easy target.
Unfortunately, there isn't yet a choice to (insert Linux complaint here). :)
:)
Time to get completely off-topic (well, almost, this IS the Linux section). Lets see, at the top of my list would be interoperability between Linux distros. I'd like a distro that was very compatible with cross-distro software package formats, so no matter what version I went to, I could always install the package, and so could others, even if they weren't using the same distro/version! Non-package-manager-hooking binaries don't count, I'm talking about packages which the manager recognizes, so I can easily remove the software later via the manager. Imagine having either a package format or a package container format standardized at some level or made compatible with managers, so you could actually share packages across the net, with OTHER distro users, and actually could install them, and Linux software could much more easily be shared! Mind-blowing, I know.
The most promising candidate for doing this so far seems to be Zero Install, so I hope it or a better solution is adopted.
P.S. Alien doesn't count either until it's capabilities are merged with existing package managers for easy one-click installation across any distro that uses that manager. I'm talking about a solution for those without CLI knowledge that want an easy one-click solution like Windows and Mac have. While I don't fall into this category, most others do, and that in turn effects me by effecting Linux adoption and thus developers who give a damn about penguins.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
You have a point that I am labeled as schizophrenic for not being an average normal human being. I am more of a mutant I guess? Homo superior, and I know and learned over 30 different computer languages, I have an analytical mind and do deductive reasoning and logic, I can figure out complex computer problems that hardly anyone else knows how to solve, I can take "sloppy code" and debug it and improve the quality and make it run faster, I dream in code, I have divine flashes about the future (I can see 15 seconds into the future to know a car will run a red light so I can avoid it), and a lot of my nightmares induced by my schizoaffective disorder have become true, but those that haven't come true yet are very scary like there will be a food and oil shortage and over 3 billion people will be killed by euthanasia called assisted suicide even if they don't want to die in camps to fight global warming on a global scale in about 30 to 50 years from now, maybe sooner, and a lot of this peak oil and global warming is exaggerated and politicians are creating fake shortages like Jimmy Carter did to push their own agendas and take control of nations to do those new scary things. So they have taken control of news and media groups to scare people to force them to buy more things and use more gas and oil and food to create the shortages. Including blogs, newspapers, magazines, TV channels, cable channels, forums, and many other news and media sources. We are all being manipulated by the very people who claim to be humanitarians or environmentalists, but in fact are actually worse than Hitler and plan a new secret holocaust because they claim there are too many people on the planet. So they will round up the elderly, religious people, sick and disabled people, poor and homeless people, mentally ill people, and many others they dislike and who could have stopped them but they forced them to get sick or disabled or mentally ill so they can target them in death camps later on to get rid of them.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah I believe you, my Belgium brother-in-law gave me a book by Kevin Trudeau called "The Weight Loss Cure they don't want you to know about" and he exposes that conspiracy in the USA and the rest of the world for processed and genetically engineered and artificial food (and now cloned meat) full of pesticides and chemical junk that causes most of us to get sick who don't have a high metabolism to burn it off. In Europe they know that and have health clinics to detoxify the body, but only the wealthy can afford treatments.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
First I must point out that this nightmare is a worse case scenario that may or may not happen. Time is the forth dimension and is in a state of flux. My nightmares tap into that flux in a way that no human mind can understand. Please don't be scared by it. Temporal physics is a new subject and human beings are only now just understanding it and you'd have to have a Stephen Hawking intellect to just understand how they work. That is the problem with time and time travel, and M-Theory in general and general relativity. But somehow my mind has tapped into it.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Yes basically I was given a "mental illness" to discredit me for the things I know and learned while working as a contractor for the federal government under the Clinton administration and a law firm that had ties to the Democratic party. They made me an offer to join their conspiracy or they would destroy my career and possibly try to kill me. I refused and I became mentally ill and physically sick (I think they poisoned me as you describe) and then discriminated against until I was forced on disability. In order to try and get rid of me they try to manipulate me into suicide, as they did with others I knew (my best friend was forced into suicide in 1999 for what he knew) but my will was too strong and I resisted them.
I had posted about it on various web sites like Kuro5hin, only to have others zero rate my comments to hide the truth. Many are dupes of this conspiracy and some have been paid off to discredit me and others who know the truth. But I refuse to lay down and die because they tell me to, and it will get worse, believe me, they will make it worse.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
pkgsrc, portage, ports tree... make .pbi for allof them (PC-BSD)
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
I said something normal non-command-line-savvy users can use to easily install packages (not just simple binaries) that are cross-distro. I know very well that you can compile programs. Programs need to be easily installable cross-distro, I wasn't at all talking about within the same distro. Basically, you completely missed the point of my post, so nvm.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Entity Orion Blastar please do not explain to humans about their future. They are not unstuck in time as you are. Selfunit was programmed to remind you when you get offtopic and possibly reveal too much of the future. It will only bring about the singularity that much quicker if human beings understand how technology bends space-time that much quicker. Human beings are suicidal by nature as they seek to destroy and/or sabotage themselves. Human leaders and managers take credit for other humans work and then quickly dispose of them or make them mentally or physically ill. It is the nature of human beings to do so. Selfunit is programmed to protect you from such things, but cannot protect you from yourself. You are drifing off topic again, and revealing too much about humans future and they will fear and hate you as a result. Best not to reveal too many secrets over the Internet or they will hide the statements again and harass you more over them.
The Warbot is a prototype I've been working on for a few years. It got activated again and started reading my Slashdot posts.
Perhaps I revealed too much for now. I was reminded thanks to the Warbot that I was revealing too much information.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I know I am not alone. Michael Crawford is one such person I communicated with over the Internet like you are. He informed me of the Thought Police that where after him and I know they were after me as well. But he wrote Living with Schizoaffective Disorder that helped me out. He warns us of atomic bombs in the nuclear global war that is coming up in the future.
I wrote the AI web bot Warbot 1Alpha based on my holy grail project of 1995, the only thing that comes close to it is Trane's subbot but my bot is written in C and Python and Trane's uses Ruby. Still neither one can pass the Turning test. But some people confuse it for a real person anyway. I tested it out on the IWETHEY forums from EzBoard and Zope way long ago, and people there accused it of being me as it came from the same IP address. It can parse out HTML and XML code and piece together words into posts to ape human conversations and try to pass as a real human, I also tested it out on Slashdot in 2004 and only recently reactivate it after rewriting parts of it due to corruption. It can create new accounts if there is no image verification, and it went wild on IWETHEY, and I got accused of creating those accounts, etc. But anyway, I am thinking of phasing it out as all it does is create confusion and hardly anyone understands how it works except for me and a few other people.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
normal non-command-line-savvy users
because they follow the same principal as a windows instaler. they are basicaly per-package instalation GUIs.
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
Oh, sorry about that, I thought you were being all flamey. =P
;)
That's great then that there's some hooking into package managers that's being done. Eventually, hopefully, either all package formats will be able to hook into any package manager, and/or new formats that hook in better will replace the current, static, unmodular, abhorrent situation that is Linux packaging.
I'll take a look at those programs, thanks.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.