Linspire

Infobox OS
name = Linspire



caption = Screenshot of Linspire
developer = Linspire, Inc.
family = Linux
latest_release_version = 6.0
latest_release_date = October 10, 2007
kernel_type = Monolithic kernel
ui = KDE
updatemodel = CNR
license = Both free and proprietary software
working_state = Current
website = http://www.linspire.com/

Linspire, previously known as LindowsOS, was a commercial operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and later Ubuntu [ [http://www.linuxelectrons.com/news/linux/linspire-moves-debian-ubuntu Linspire Moves from Debian to Ubuntu | LinuxElectrons ] ] . Linspire was published by Linspire, Inc. and focused on ease-of-use targeting home PC users. The last stable release of Linspire was version 6.0 which was released in October 2007. [distrowatch|linspire|NAME=Linspire]

On July 1, 2008, Linspire stockholders elected to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, [cite web | url=http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3046495745.html | title=Xandros quietly acquires Linspire] and all assets were acquired by Xandros. [cite web | url=http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=242 | title=Xandros Acquires Linspire, Creator of CNR Application Distribution Facility and Freespire Desktop]

On August 8, 2008, It was announced by Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros, that Linspire would be discontinued in favor of Xandros, Freespire would change it's base code from Ubuntu to Debian, and the Linspire brand would cease to exist. [cite web | url=http://www.linux.com/feature/144307 | title=Linspire Is Going Away]

History

Based in San Diego, California, Lindows, Inc. was founded in August 2001 by Michael Robertson with the goal of developing a Linux-based operating system capable of running major Microsoft Windows applications. It based its Windows compatibility on the Wine API emulation layer. The company later abandoned this approach in favor of attempting to make Linux applications easy to download, install and use. To this end a program named "CNR" was developed: based on Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool, it provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface and a slightly modified package system for an annual fee. The first public release of Linspire was version 1.0, released in late 2001. [cite web | url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,754,00.asp | accessdate=2006-05-02 | author=John C. Dvorak | title=The Lindows Conundrum]

In 2002 Microsoft sued Lindows, Inc. claiming the name "Lindows" constituted an infringement of their "Windows" trademark. Microsoft's claims were rejected by the court, which asserted that Microsoft had used the term "windows" to describe graphical user interfaces before the Windows product was ever released, and that the windowing technique had already been implemented by Xerox and Apple Computer many years before. [ cite web | url=http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/1135821 | title = Microsoft's Appeal in 'Lindows' Case Rejected | publisher = internetnews.com | accessdate = 2006-05-02 ] Microsoft sought a retrial and after this was postponed in February 2004, [ cite web | url = http://www.silicon.com/software/os/0,39024651,39118328,00.htm | title = Lindows wins in US court Microsoft ruling | publisher = Silicon.com | accessdate = 2006-05-02 ] offered to settle the case. As part of the licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated $20 million, and Lindows, Inc. transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft and changed its name to Linspire, Inc. [cite web|url=http://www.channelinsider.com/article/Microsoft+Lindows+Settle+Trademark+Dispute/131732_1.aspx|author=Matthew Hicks|title=Microsoft, Lindows Settle Trademark Dispute|date=2004-07-19|accessdate=2007-02-07]

On 2005-06-15, Michael Robertson stepped down as CEO of Linspire, Inc. He continues as Chairman and was replaced as CEO by Kevin Carmony. [cite web | url = http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=175 | accessdate = 2005-06-15 | author = Michael Robertson | title = Michael's Minute 6/15/05] Carmony resigned from Linspire on July 31, 2007. [cite web|url=http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8364062244.html|publisher=Linux-Watch|title=Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony resigns|author=Steven J Vaughan-Nichols|date=2007-08-05|accessdate=2007-29-10]

On February 8, 2007 Linspire, Inc. and Canonical Ltd, the lead sponsor and developer of the Ubuntu operating system, announced plans for a new technology partnership, with Linspire aiming to "begin basing ... [their] desktop Linux offerings on Ubuntu." [ [http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=213 Linspire.com - Press Resources ] ]

On 2007-06-13 Linspire and Microsoft announced an interoperability collaboration agreement with a focus on: document format compatibility, instant messaging, digital media, web search, and patent covenants for Linspire customers. [cite web|url=http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jun07/06-13LinspirePR.mspx|title=Microsoft and Linspire Collaboration Promotes Interoperability and Customer Choice|date=2007-06-13|accessdate=2007-06-18] This agreement has been criticised, most notably by the Groklaw website [cite web|url=http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007072014373817|title=Analysis of Microsoft-Linspire convenant terms|date=2007-06-13|accessdate=2007-06-18] for being disingenuously short-lived and limited, and against the spirit of the GNU General Public License. Kevin Carmony, in one of the regular "Linspire Letters," asserted that the agreement would "bring even more choices to desktop Linux users [and] ... offer a "better" Linux experience." [cite web|authore=Kevin Carmony|url=http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=48|title= Microsoft Will Help Deliver a "Better" Linux |date=2007-06-14|accessdate=2007-06-18]

On July 10, 2007 Linspire released Linspire 6.0 based on Freespire 2.0.

Linspire bases their product code names on fish found around their headquarters: Linspire/LindowsOS 4.5 was code named Coho; Linspire Five-0 (5.0 and 5.1) and Freespire 1.0, Marlin; and Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0, Skipjack.

CNR

Linspire's CNR (originally "Click'N'Run") is a software distribution service based on Debian's APT. It is designed to serve as a GUI-based, user-accessible means of downloading and installing various applications, both free and proprietary. The service allows users to install available applications using a single click. CNR also includes a set of "Click and Buy" (CNB) software, which includes many commercial applications to members at a discounted rate. Currently CNR has over 38,000 different software packages, ranging from simple applications to major commercial works such as Win4Lin and StarOffice. [cite web | url = http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_categories.php | title = CNR Warehouse - catalogue of software titles downloadable via CNR | accessdate = 2006-04-27] CNR was originally subscription-based with two tiers: "basic" service cost $20 annually, and "gold", featuring discounts on some commercial applications, $50. In 2006, Linspire announced that the "basic" service was to be made available for free. [cite web | url = http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=203 | title = Linspire Does Away with Annual Fee for "Click 'N Run" Linux Service | accessdate = 2006-08-30]

Linspire planned to port CNR to the Ubuntu distribution, the company announced on April 24, 2006 that CNR would be released under an open source licence. The release of the free CNR client is planned to coincide with the release of Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0. [cite web | url=http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Freespire_Roadmap | title=Freespire Roadmap] On January 23, 2007, Linspire announced that it intended to provide CNR for other Linux distributions, both APT- and RPM-based, including Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. This support is expected to appear in mid-2007. [cite web|url=http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=212 | title=Linspire Standardizes Software Installation Across Linux Distributions] On February 8, 2007, Linspire, Inc. announced a partnership with Canonical Ltd., publisher of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This deal, to take effect before the fourth quarter of 2007, would see Linspire and Freespire migrate from the unpredictable Debian release process to the semiannual Ubuntu release cycle. This means that the main Ubuntu distribution will become the first recipient of the opening of the Click'N'Run service to Linux distributions besides Linspire. [cite web|author=Kevin Carmony|url=http://www.linspire.com/linspire_letter_archives.php?id=40|title=Linspire's New Partnership with Canonical and Ubuntu|date=2007-02-08|accessdate=2007-02-08] [cite web|author=Canonical and Linspire Announce Technology Partnership|url=http://www.ubuntu.com/news/LinspirePartnership|title=Canonical and Linspire Announce Technology Partnership|date=2007-02-08|accessdate=2007-02-08]

Web software

CNR.com also provides access to thousands of Web-based Applications, providing the Linux community with the option of local Linux and Web Software, available through a single source (as of February 2008).The same capabilities to browse and search the library of products with additional capabilities planned to improve the Web Software experience (bookmarking). The community will also have the capability to add new products to the already extensive library of applications available.

Freespire

In August 2005, Andrew Betts released a Live CD based on Linspire and named "Freespire". [ [http://www.freespire.org Freespire's website.] ] Some users mistook this for a product from Linspire, Inc. Linspire, Inc. offered users a "free Linspire" (purchase price discounted to $0) by using the coupon code "Freespire" until September 9, 2005. On April 24, 2006, Linspire announced its own project named "Freespire".cite web | url=http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/04/24/1951201 | title=Newsforge: Linspire launches Freespire, open-sources CNR | accessdate=2006-04-25] This follows the model of community-oriented releases by Red Hat and Novell in the form of Fedora and openSUSE. Freespire is a community-driven and -supported project tied to the commercial Linspire distribution, and includes previously proprietary elements from Linspire, such as the CNR Client, while other elements, which Linspire, Inc. licenses but does not own, like the Windows Media Audio compatibility libraries, remain closed-source. Consequently there are two versions of Freespire, one with the closed source libraries, and one, called Freespire OSS Edition, that includes only open-source components. Freespire 1.0 was released on August 7, 2006, three weeks ahead of schedule. [cite web |url=http://forum.freespire.org/showthread.php?t=723|title = Freespire version 1.0 is now available] It is now known that Freespire will change its code base from Ubuntu to Debian on any future releases. [cite web | url=http://www.linux.com/feature/144307 | title=Linspire Is Going Away]

Freespire 2.0

Freespire 2.0 was released on August 7, 2007 using core repositories based on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). This was the first OS build to include the CNR.com Client.CNR works similar to APT-GET which is available in other Ubuntu/kubuntu, however CNR provides a much easier to use interface and has been slowly extended to be able to be used by any distro. CNR is currently for use with Freespire, Linspire, Ubuntu, Opensuse, Linux Mint, Debian and even Fedora.

Contributions

Linspire, Inc. sponsors open source projects including the Pidgin and Kopete instant messaging clients, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the ReiserFS file system, the Nvu WYSIWYG website editor, and the KDE-Apps.org and KDE-Look.org websites. [ [http://www.kde-apps.org/ KDE-Apps.org] and [http://www.kde-look.org/ KDE-Look.org.] ] In the past, Linspire has hosted several Linux and open source events, such as the annual Desktop Linux Summit, DebConf and the KDE Developers Conference. In addition, Linspire maintains an online system to allow people to submit translations of Linspire and other open source software. Known as IRMA (Internationalization Resource Management Application), it currently supports over 50 languages and claims to have over 2,500 translators.Fact|date=November 2007

Criticism

Linspire has drawn some criticism from the free software community. This has included criticism for including proprietary software, with GNU founder Richard Stallman commenting: "No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master." [cite web|url=http://distrocenter.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/30/1346247|title=Review of Linspire|title=Distro review: The four-1-1 on Linspire Five-0|published=Linux.com|author=Jem Matzan|date=2005-03-31|accessdate=2007-02-14] In addition, following the initial Freespire announcement Pamela Jones of the Groklaw website published an article entitled "Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom;" that was highly critical of Linspire, Inc., and the Freespire project, for including closed-source components and advertising them as a favourable point—an action she classed as ignoring FOSS community values in a "community-driven" distribution, asserting that "Free Software isn't about proprietary drivers" and that "proprietary codecs, drivers and applications are not Open Source or open in any way." [cite web|author=Pamela Jones|url=http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060424164142296|title=Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom|date=2006-04-24|accessdate=2007-02-07] In response, Linspire, Inc. CEO Kevin Carmony stated via a journalist on the LXer website that in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, that many users are already using proprietary software and, although some would hold out, most would prefer to have something that works rather than nothing. He also asserted that the company believed in OSS, but also in the freedom of individuals to choose whatever software they want. [cite web|author=DC Parris|url=http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/60384/index.html|title=Kevin Carmony: Walking The Line of a Divided Community|date=2006-05-09|accessdate=2007-02-07]

Linspire has also been criticized for recommending that users use root privileges on their accounts, which is a potential security risk.Fact|date=August 2008

See also

* Comparison of Linux distributions

References

External links

* [http://www.linspire.com/ Linspire official website]
*DistroWatch|linspire|NAME=Linspire
* [http://www.freespire.org/ Freespire official website]
** [http://wiki.freespire.org/ Freespire wiki]
* [http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/50 LugRadio podcast featuring an interview with Kevin Carmony]