Freespire Lives, Goes Back To Debian

nerdyH writes "Following Xandros's acquisition of Linspire, some feared for the future of Freespire, the free version of Linspire. However, Xandros today announced a new version of Freespire that will return the popular free Linux distro to its Debian-based roots."

Comments

Re:Popular?

[dedazo]

There's a small company in Chile that sells custom-built boxes with it installed, and they sell quite a lot of them to lower-middle income families in the capital.

Don't ask me why they picked it, I have no idea. Having seen one of these systems up close, they're really crappy (hardware-wise), but I guess they work well enough. They also provide tech support for a nominal fee.

Re:Xandros and Linspire

[BlackCreek]

I still haven't u what we need Ubuntu for. We have Debian. Granted, not that trendy but it works.

Except that

• stable releases took 2 / 3 years to happen
• that manners were often lacking at Debian mailing lists.
• Debian didn't really strive to simply "work out of the box".

  On the topic of working out of the box:

  1. the installation process was NOT newbie friendly, and stopped short of setting many useful stuff by default (this was a long time ago but -- why couldn't it simply detect which device was handling the mouse?)
  2. everyone (with experience) knew that the boot time would get much faster by using ash/dash, but that never became a default...
  3. the mentality when reaching a difficult point was often to let it, in the name of security, unconfigured by default (user belonging to audio groups -- but how many users would actually solve that right? (Mandrake had gotten that right *years* before...))
  4. did you ever read that scary 'charset for the "less" pager' configuration question during installation? I had years as a SysAdmin when I faced that for the first time, and had no clue of what exactly was being asked. For a novice, it would be the confirmation of everything they feared about Linux.
  5. often the cause of the lack of a setting was not even

They often avoided a difficult (political or technical) decision and left it to the user. Who was supposed to "know better what to do", or to read and study in order to take any decision. Increasing the dedication necessary to run the system.

In short, Debian //never// went own to produce a system for someone who wasn't, at least, a hobbyist UNIX sysadmin.

Sure, many of these points are probably much better now, but this was surely the context that made Ubuntu a welcomed offering.

The greatest plague of modern computing is complexity. Debian tackles a whole world of it through its dependency work, testing, and dpkg/APT. But they still (leave?) left way too much unnecessary complexity into the system.

Why did Linspire's CNR fail?

[ricegf]

I'm honestly not sure why CNR hasn't done better (which is to say, generate any noticeable use). It's free-as-in-beer, supports several major distros in a central location, offers social features such as reviews and ratings, allows grouping of apps into "aisles" for easy one-click installation and sharing, handles commercial software sales as well as free software installation compatibly and rather efficiently, and generally provides a rather nice experience.

Why has it wilted like a Friendster? Because it's not free-as-in-speech? Is Applications -> Add / Remove or Synaptic simply "good enough"? Do enough Linux users really object to their Microsoft deal and abstain on moral grounds?

Of course, I don't use it personally. And I'm not sure why. Would a FOSS version by a more credible member of the community generate more interest and enjoy some success?

Re:Xandros and Linspire

[tinkertim]

My point still stands. The Ubuntu devs could have focused their efforts on Debian. Their distro today still is binary compatible with Debian.

Actually, they have focused their attention on Debian. You would have to examine Ubuntu and Debian source packages to really see just how much effort Ubuntu is putting into Debian.

In every distro there is a list of stuff that nobody wants to do. For instance, getting 'bashisms' out of init and other shell scripts so that a fully POSIX compatible shell (such as dash) can parse them correctly. Ubuntu tackled a lot of that list.

If you look at the Ubuntu source packages, you will see a ton of patches in debian/ , Ubuntu has structured their patches so that Debian can cherry pick from their improvements easily. Debian has and will continue to do this. For instance, if Debian just wants the patch that takes bashisms out of a given script, they can just take that and leave the rest.

Similarly, Debian security updates and other things are easily cherry picked by Ubuntu. Managing patches like this is very time consuming, Ubuntu could have said 'screw that' but they didn't.

Its a rather interesting symbiosis. While the projects are going in separate directions, devs from both camps continue to ensure that improvements remain isolated and rather portable.

My desktop is a mix of Ubuntu and Debian packages, for instance. Most things I use begin with Debian source packages, then I grab the Ubuntu source packages and get the patches that I want ... then make my own thing. Granted, this isn't typical use but it illustrates the benefits of a larger cooperative effort.