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."

Comments

Obscure stuff

[clang_jangle]

From the eweek link:

#97 Kevin Carmony - Linspire/Freespire
Guiding Linux distribution to be among the most popular on the desktop.

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?

Re:Obscure stuff

[roc97007]

Good points, but Xandros is the default Linux distro for the Asus EEE PC. I'd expect a sudden boost in popularity just from that.

Re:Obscure stuff

[Dice]

Come to think of it, who the heck is eweek?

They're one of those shitty "tech magazines". PC World, Network World, CIO Mag, all trash magazines that you can basically pick up for free in those little magazine racks that nobody pays attention to in computer stores. The magazines are 75% ads and 25% ads masquerading as articles.

Re:Obscure stuff

[jonah82]

Seeing as Xandros is the default eeepc distro I'm guessing quite a lot of people are using it. As to why asus decided on it, that, I agree is perplexing.

Re:Obscure stuff

[SydShamino]

My first home server ran Xandros. After a failed attempt many years ago with Redhat, then a half-way working attempt with Debian, I found Xandros (2.0 at the time, I think) to be something that "just worked". I kept that server running for a few years, before I switched to Ubuntu.

At the time it was $99 well spent, since it made Linux work for a non-user, hardware engineer. Since then Ubuntu (and OpenOffice) have filled that gap well and it's just not necessary to buy a distribution for those benefits.

Re:Obscure stuff

[hairyfeet]

Well,I can tell you I have been very happily running Xandros Business on my laptop since Xandros 3(currently at 4.1) and I can tell you that if you need to interface Windows networks,especially with AD or Exchange,you really can't go wrong with it. And from what I have read on the forums the only reason that Xandros signed that deal with MSFT was because MSFT refused to give them the code for the AD/Exchange APIs they had to have for interoperability. Considering that Xandros is for mixed business networks and that Xandros server was designed to be dropped right into a Windows AD forest and inter-operate, without access to those APIs they would have been toast.

As it is it really does make a nice drop in replacement for a business desktop on a Windows network,and even comes with Crossover Office so your major Windows apps will run. As it is I am quite happy with its performance and ability to get me on different SMB AD networks that I am called in to work on without hassle. When I am out on a job I don't have to twiddle with the CLI,and for me Xandros just gets the job done reliably. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Obscure stuff

[Sleepy]

Xandros? I used it, and installed it for like 5 people.

That was, of course, WAYY back when it was "Corel Linux", an innovative desktop for sure (and yes, they fell behind because they forked KDE... but man it was SO COOL being able to resize your display rez without restarting X... yes, Linux was THAT bad back then).

The other distros were all neat back when Red Hat was IGNORING the desktop. They still are, but Ubuntu has steamrolled and consolidated this space... and deservedly so!

Re:Obscure stuff

[stm2]

I am former Linspire user, now I use Freespire.
You can see a picture of me using Linspire here:
http://www.linspire.com/lraiser_success.php?serial=318
(rather old picture anyway).
My main cmoputer iss an HP Pavilion dv 5000 laptop. Ubuntu prior 8.04 didn't recognize the wifi card (unless you do extensive hacking, to have a sub-standart result). With Freespire it works "out of the box" (using NDISwrapper). Everything work very easy, even easier than Ubuntu (my wife machine, a Sony VAIO VGN-CR220E, uses Ubuntu).
But I tried the 8.04 liveCD in my HP and a wizard downloaded the driver for my wifi, so there is no need to keep on using Freespire, but I didn't found time to make the change, yet.
CNR is a big selling point of Freespire/Linspire, but it will be available to Ubuntu AFAIK. (see http://www.cnr.com./
Freespire were releasing several products every month at the beginning, but now they are somehow without to much activity.
If you value your time, Linspire is not a bad choice.

Used Freespire (And Lindows)

[s0litaire]

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

Eee

[wytcld]

The ASUS EEE runs a derivative of Xandros, although Xandros sort of disowns it:

Does Xandros Provide Support for the Eee PC?
No. The Eee PC is an ASUS product and is solely supported by them, including Operating system issues. The Operating System on the Eee PC is not a Xandros Product. While Xandros may have aided in the development of the Eee PC OS, it is owned and supported by ASUS.

Name change idea

[mrroot]

Might I suggest... Lindows?

Re:Name change idea

[CastrTroy]

Since I'm a Mandriva user, in the spirit of Mandrake + Connectiva = Mandriva, I vote for Xandros + Linspire = Xanspire. Or maybe Lindros, but I think that may give people a concussion.

Re:Name change idea

[ydrol]

lxiannsdpriorse

Darn, domain is taken.

Linspire...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Linspire...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I'd agree, but no one knows about it in the first place. I have followed its development, only because Micheal Robertson's Micheal's minutes blog posts were so wrong they were funny. They required you to pay to use the beta that required you to run the system as root. That's so freaking sadistic, its hilarious.

eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[Orion Blastar]

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.

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[PCM2]

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.

As a former senior editor at InfoWorld, I request that you either substantiate that claim or keep your opinions to yourself. You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

For the record, I know for a fact that nobody accepts any kind of gifts in exchange for editorial coverage at InfoWorld. I can't speak for eWeek of my own experience, but I have no reason to believe they're any different.

Incidentally, I'm sure there are plenty of people on Slashdot who will say that you're shitty at your job, too, but it's really none of their business, now is it?

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[Orion Blastar]

Gladly, Infoworld explores such a thing here.

It is no secret that vendors give out "gifts" and this happens for many corporations even magazine publishing corporations.

So you are telling me that despite Infoworld employees being given "gifts" by vendors, it does not influence how they write their article, and just because the article written is positive and the writer and/or editor got "gifts" it is not selling out or shilling or even considered unethical?

That somehow because I cited a problem in the media, it means I do a shitty job?

Well to be civil, and because you are upset and angry over it and it appears I touched a nerve, I will withdraw the statement for your sake. I don't want you getting stressed out over it, or anyone to say you did anything wrong over it, eWeek too as well as Infoworld. :)

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[PCM2]

So you are telling me that despite Infoworld employees being given "gifts" by vendors, it does not influence how they write their article, and just because the article written is positive and the writer and/or editor got "gifts" it is not selling out or shilling or even considered unethical?

And I am telling you -- not just making stuff up, as you are doing, but telling you -- that it is specifically against InfoWorld editorial policy to accept gifts of any kind in exchange for editorial coverage. I say this out of firsthand knowledge. On what do you base your repeated claims? An editorial that was written in 2002 on a different topic?

That somehow because I cited a problem in the media, it means I do a shitty job?

No, what I am saying is that by making baseless accusations you are in effect accusing a lot of very talented, very dedicated people of doing shitty jobs. I wouldn't do that to you. What gives you the right? Furthermore, what makes you think you shouldn't be called out on it?

If you had any kind of evidence to support your claims, you would name names, at least, and allow those people to defend themselves. God forbid you should have any actual evidence. But to just say "all the editors take bribes," without so much as naming a single name, makes you not just a liar, but a coward, too.

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[Orion Blastar]

Well some people seem to think so and so do others and some gave awards for shilling.

But clearly I must apologize as I don't know what I am talking about, nor does any other Slashdot reader. I don't know why we say these things, must be a geek thing. We are all liars and cowards, like you said. Must be why we disagree about Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows with you.

I'm sorry and I apologize, it was a botched joke.

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[PCM2]

I accept the apology. I likewise apologize; you made me hot under the collar, because as you point out above, people in my industry have to take crap like this all the time.

I'll put it to you this way, and then I'll leave it alone, because you've already apologized and it's seriously off-topic anyway: You can say that I or any of my colleagues in the industry are stupid. You can say we don't know what we're talking about. You can say we can't write. You could say you could do a better job than us. You can say we're ugly and we smell, for all I care. None of that matters to me; when you sign your name to something that you publish online, you set yourself up for that. But when you call into question someone's professionalism, their dedication, their standards, and their ethics, and you imply that they're somehow corrupt and easily bought, and you do it in such a way that it sounds like you're stating some kind of incontrovertible facts -- to me, that's not right. When I hear that, I feel compelled to set you straight. The people I have had the pleasure to work alongside in this industry are not prostitutes, nor are they shills for Microsoft or any other company. I suspect people will never quit saying that they are, but I may never cease to be annoyed by it. That's all.

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[Spy der Mann]

PCM2 (aka Neil Mcallister) is right.

Here's an excerpt from one of his articles at Infoworld, entitled "Schwartz doesn't get Linux".

Schwartz really had me going there - right up to his next line. "And frankly," he said, "its principal competitor is none other than Microsoft Windows." Huh?! That's like a company that sells nothing but certified, purebred cocker spaniels claiming that the principal competition for its product is a purebred cat. But then, Sun has never been able to own up to the elephant-size mutt in the room. Say what you want about Microsoft's business practices, but at least give Redmond credit for giving up on pretending Linux doesn't exist. If you look at Sun's public statements about Linux over the past few years, you can sum up its competitive strategy in three easy steps:

      1. Equate all Linux with Red Hat
      2. Trash-talk Red Hat, its pricing, and its business model
      3. Point customers toward Solaris

That may be a clever way to run a sales call, but Schwartz can't honestly believe that's how the thought process works in real life - can he? "We will be one of the consolidators of the open source industry," Schwartz went on to say, "as well as, certainly, in the open source operating system industry." Consolidators? Can he be serious? I know that, what with all the buzz around Oracle recently, buying up small open source companies is in vogue. But at least Larry Ellison is smart enough to recognize that it's hard to buy and sell what you cannot own.

While I read the roughlydrafted article pointing to Oliver Rist as a shill, at least we can be sure Neil does NOT shill. In fact, the whole article was anti-fud. Neil, you're on my friends list now. Keep up the good work.

Re:eWeek and Spencer the Cat

[dbcad7]

Having had a girlfriend who was diagnosed as schizoaffective, I know that you probably go through hell. I do want to tell you something related to the post you linked to.. It is highly doubtful that anyone "hates" you for any post. The thing about discussion boards is it can end up with people trying to show each other up and trying to prove how much smarter they are.. and true there are going to be times when you may say something someone else doesn't like, but to say they "hate" you would be incorrect.

In your situation, discussion boards can be good for you.. but.. Just make sure you don't over anaylise peoples responses.. and remember this really doesn't mean squat in the big picture of life. Mod points and karma won't get you a nickel off a burrito at Taco Bell... and people don't sit at home thinking about what Orion Blaster posted that they did or didn't agree with.

Although you may not be ready to go to work, you might consider using your skills at home to help some open source projects, or even just starting you own project (even if for fun).. just keep things as manageable as you want, and work when your feeling good, and concentrate on your health when your not feeling so good.

Best of luck to you, and hang in there.

Commercial Viability

[jasonmanley]

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?

Re:Commercial Viability

[gujo-odori]

I'm not sure why anyone would mod this Insightful when it's nothing of the sort and may be just a troll, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and answer.

Yes, the money to be made from offering a Linux distro comes mostly from support contracts. Red Hat Enterprise Linux costs what it does not because it's better than free versions such as CentOS - which is an unbranded version of RHEL, recompiled from the RHEL source packages - but because RH provides enterprise-level support for RHEL/RHAS licenses. That includes, I suppose, the theoretical "who do we sue if something goes wrong" that more than a few people fantasize they can do when they buy software licenses. Good luck with that; notice that people have sued Microsoft for a lot of things, sometimes successfully, but not - AFAIK - for software that failed, even if it did so in a way that cost them real money out of pocket.

For many years, Red Hat sold a boxed version of the old Red Hat distro (up through 7.3, at least; maybe 8.0?), but they eventually stopped doing it because there was just no money in it. Now they offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and also sell support and professional services. There's a lot of money to be made there; IBM, for example, has a huge professional services division, and I'm sure you've heard of EDS, one of the oldest names in the professional services, AKA outsourcing, business.

Red Had has GPLed every piece of software they've written - or acquired - and they still make money. There is a solid business model for making money in the Linux business, and Red Hat seems to be better at it than anyone.

You're right about Free solutions, though. There are too many free and Free Linux distros that get the job done, and get it done well, for people to make much money trying to sell Linux distros to end users, or even to sell proprietary Linux applications. Mandriva ekes out a living, but they had to merge with Connectiva to have enough critical mass to keep that going. Red Hat get out of the boxed set businesses. Linspire failed to make a go of it. Xandros seems to be pretty much dead on the vine; I was actually surprised to hear they were still enough of a going concern to pick up what was left of Linspire. The Kompany was an abject failure at selling proprietary Linux apps. I'm sure I'm leaving out someone important here. And of course, there's Corel/SCO, the poster child for how not to do a Linux business. Free solutions are not only good enough for most Linux users, even in the enterprise, but they keep getting better all the time. I dual-boot Kubuntu on my MacBook Pro; most things work perfectly, and are most of the way as good as Apple's stuff. The things that don't work perfectly at least partly work, and in a year or two I expect that everything on this machine will pretty much just work under Linux. At that point, I might find myself spending more time in Kubuntu than in OS X.

Re:Commercial Viability

[gujo-odori]

Precisely. I never expected Linspire to succeed, partly because of what they were trying to do, and partly because of who it was that was trying to do it, and partly because of when they were trying to do it - long after the ship for Yet Another Proprietary Linux Distro had already sailed.

Xandros had, in their day, a better shot at what they were trying to do. When Xandros came out, they put some user-friendly wrappings around Debian and took extra care to make it integrate easily and well into a Windows network. The problems they face, as I see it, were:

1) Xandros was too expensive.

2) Very slow release cycle. Xandros releases tend to come so far apart they make Debian look downright speedy.

3) They had proprietary bits, and that tends to make you unpopular with much of the Linux community.

I actually spent a little time with Xandros; my dad had bought a copy of it. Xandros has a lot going for it, but I found it to be inflexible, in large part because of the aforementioned slow release cycle. They were way behind pretty much everyone, and you couldn't point Xandros at some other repositories and bring it up to date without breaking all sorts of stuff. If Xandros had been on the kind of aggressive release cycle that Ubuntu has followed, they might well have been a major success, even allowing for points 1 and 3.

Re:Forrest Gump moment...

[2muchcoffeeman]

... filled with an infinite series of choices.

Re:it is like this

[clampolo]

one turd swallows another turd, all you got is a bigger turd...

You are a true poet.

the geek's short attention span

[westlake]

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

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

Re:VA Research/Linux/Software 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad that's over. Maybe they should rename it Perspire.

Or Expire...