Linux distribution
Linux distribution
Linspire
(formerly
Lindows
) is a commercial
operating system
based on
Debian
and
Ubuntu
and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. It had been owned by
Linspire. Inc.
from 2001 to 2008, and then by
Xandros
from 2008 to 2017.
On July 1, 2008, Linspire stockholders elected to change the company's name to
Digital Cornerstone
,
[2]
and all assets were acquired by
Xandros
.
[3]
On August 8, 2008, Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros, announced that Linspire would be discontinued in favor of Xandros;
Freespire
would change its base code from Ubuntu to Debian; and the Linspire brand would cease to exist.
[4]
On January 1, 2018, it was announced that PC/OpenSystems LLC had purchased Linspire and Freespire from Xandros, and that Linspire 7 was available for $79.99, while Freespire 3 was available for free.
[5]
History
[
edit
]
Based in
San Diego
,
California
, Lindows, Inc. was incorporated in July 2001 by
Michael Robertson
and began selling products in January 2002.
[6]
Robertson's goal was to develop a
Linux
-based
operating system
capable of running major
Microsoft Windows
applications. It based its Windows compatibility on the
Wine
API
. 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 Lindows was version 1.0, released in late 2001.
[7]
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.
[8]
Microsoft sought a retrial and after this was postponed in February 2004,
[9]
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.
[10]
In 2003, Lindows Mobile PC, which starts at $799, was launched. Lindows said that about Excel about 95%, Word about 90% and PowerPoint about 80% functional. The notebook computer was low cost. Its processor, 933-megahertz C3, was made by
VIA Technologies
. The laptop weighed 2.9 pounds, had a 12.1-inch screen, 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20-gigabyte hard drive.
[11]
On June 15, 2005, Michael Robertson stepped down as
CEO
of Linspire, Inc. He continues as chairman
[
citation needed
]
and was replaced as CEO by Kevin Carmony.
Linspire became a member of the Interop Vendor Alliance which was founded in 2006.
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
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."
[16]
On June 13, 2007, 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.
[17]
This agreement was criticised, most notably by the
Groklaw
website
[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."
[19]
Linspire bases its product code names on fish found near its 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
.
Linspire's CNR (originally Click'N'Run) was a software distribution service based on Debian's APT. It was designed to serve as a GUI-based, user-accessible means of downloading and installing various applications, both free and
proprietary
. The service allowed users to install available applications using a single click. CNR also included a set of
Click and Buy
(CNB) software, which included many commercial applications to members at a discounted rate. CNR had over 38,000 different software packages
[
citation needed
]
, ranging from simple applications to major commercial works such as
Win4Lin
and
StarOffice
.
[20]
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.
[21]
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 license
. The release of the free CNR client was planned to coincide with the release of Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0.
[22]
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 was expected to appear in mid-2007.
[
citation needed
]
On February 8, 2007, Linspire, Inc. announced a partnership with
Canonical Ltd.
, publisher of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This deal would see Linspire and Freespire migrate from the unpredictable Debian release process to the semiannual Ubuntu release cycle. It was intended that the main Ubuntu distribution would become the first recipient of the opening of the Click'N'Run service to Linux distributions besides Linspire.
[16]
Freespire
[
edit
]
In August 2005, Andrew Betts released
Freespire
, a
Live CD
based on Linspire.
[23]
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".
[24]
This followed the model of community-oriented releases by
Red Hat
and
Novell
in the form of
Fedora
and
openSUSE
. Freespire was a community-driven and -supported project tied to the commercial Linspire distribution, and included 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.
[25]
Freespire 2.0.8, released on 30 November 2007,
[26]
and based on Ubuntu 7.04, was the final release until the distribution was revived with 3.0 in January 2018.
[27]
Contributions
[
edit
]
Linspire, Inc. sponsored open source projects including the
Pidgin
and
Kopete
instant messaging clients, the
Mozilla Firefox
web browser,
[
citation needed
]
the
ReiserFS
file system, the
Nvu
WYSIWYG
website editor, and the KDE-Apps.org and KDE-Look.org websites.
[28]
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.
[
citation needed
]
Criticism
[
edit
]
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."
[29]
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
free and open-source software
(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."
[30]
In response, Linspire, Inc. CEO Kevin Carmony stated via a journalist on the Linspire 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
open source software
, but also in the freedom of individuals to choose whatever software they want.
[31]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"
"Linspire 14 Released"
"
.
Archived
from the original on 2024-01-17
. Retrieved
2023-12-18
.
- ^
Brown, Eric (2008-07-01).
"Xandros quietly acquires Linspire"
.
DesktopLinux.com
.
EWeek
. Archived from
the original
on 2009-02-20
. Retrieved
2009-03-25
.
- ^
"Xandros Acquires Linspire, Creator of CNR Application Distribution Facility and Freespire Desktop"
(Press release).
Xandros
. 2008-07-02.
Archived
from the original on 2020-02-07
. Retrieved
2009-03-25
.
- ^
Gasperson, Tina (2008-08-08).
"Linspire Is Going Away"
.
Linux.com
. Archived from
the original
on 2013-07-01
. Retrieved
2009-03-25
.
- ^
"Freespire 3.0 and Linspire 7.0 released"
(Press release).
PC/OpenSystems LLC
. 2018-01-01.
Archived
from the original on 2018-01-10
. Retrieved
2018-01-09
.
- ^
"Form S-1"
.
Archived
from the original on 2022-07-12
. Retrieved
2022-07-12
.
- ^
Dvorak, John C. (2001-10-26).
"The Lindows Conundrum"
.
PC Magazine
. Archived from
the original
on 2006-03-12
. Retrieved
2006-05-02
.
- ^
"Microsoft's Appeal in 'Lindows' Case Rejected"
. internetnews.com.
Archived
from the original on 2012-02-05
. Retrieved
2006-05-02
.
- ^
"Lindows wins in US court Microsoft ruling"
. Silicon.com. Archived from
the original
on 2005-02-08
. Retrieved
2006-05-02
.
- ^
"Lindows And Microsoft Settle Suit"
.
The New York Times
. 2004-07-20.
Archived
from the original on 2006-03-25
. Retrieved
2008-10-12
.
- ^
"Lindows Goes Mobile"
.
Forbes
.
Archived
from the original on 2020-08-12
. Retrieved
2024-04-20
.
- ^
Worthington, David (23 October 2007).
"Microsoft, Turbolinux Reach Patent Pact"
.
sdtimes.com
.
SD Times
. Archived from
the original
on 7 April 2012
. Retrieved
27 April
2015
.
- ^
"Linspire Joins Interop Vendor Alliance Program"
.
linuxelectrons.com
.
Archived
from the original on 2011-09-28
. Retrieved
2013-07-17
.
- ^
.NETDJ News Desk (July 31, 2007).
"Linspire, One of Microsoft's New Patent Covenant Buddies Joins Interop Alliance ...Which already includes Novell, of course, and the purer, untainted Red Hat"
.
sys-con.com
. Archived from
the original
on July 16, 2011
. Retrieved
May 19,
2009
.
- ^
"Member Directory"
.
InteropVendorAlliance.org
. Archived from
the original
on March 30, 2009
. Retrieved
6 January
2016
.
- ^
a
b
"Canonical and Linspire Announce Technology Partnership"
(Press release). London & San Diego. February 8, 2007. Archived from
the original
on February 19, 2007
. Retrieved
6 January
2016
.
- ^
"Microsoft and Linspire Collaboration Promotes Interoperability and Customer Choice"
.
Microsoft
. 2007-06-13. Archived from
the original
on 2007-06-19
. Retrieved
2007-06-18
.
- ^
"Analysis of Microsoft-Linspire covenant terms"
. 2007-06-13.
Archived
from the original on 2010-05-05
. Retrieved
2007-06-18
.
- ^
Carmony, Kevin (2007-06-14).
"Microsoft Will Help Deliver a "Better" Linux"
. Archived from
the original
on 2007-09-27
. Retrieved
2007-06-18
.
- ^
"CNR Warehouse - catalogue of software titles downloadable via CNR"
. Archived from
the original
on 2006-04-25
. Retrieved
2006-04-27
.
- ^
"Linspire Does Away with Annual Fee for "Click 'N Run" Linux Service"
.
Linspire.com
. Archived from
the original
on 2006-10-15
. Retrieved
2006-08-30
.
- ^
"Freespire Roadmap"
.
wiki.freespire.org
. Archived from
the original
on 2009-07-01.
- ^
FAQ Category: About Freespire and The Freespire Project - Freespire
- ^
"Linspire launches Freespire, open-sources CNR"
.
Newsforge.com
. Archived from
the original
on 2013-08-14
. Retrieved
2006-04-25
.
- ^
"Freespire version 1.0 is now available"
.
forum.freespire.org
. Archived from
the original
on 2006-08-13
. Retrieved
2006-08-08
.
- ^
"Freespire 2"
.
Freespire wiki
. freespire.org. 2007-11-30. Archived from
the original
on 2007-09-20
. Retrieved
2009-03-25
.
- ^
"Freespire"
. DistroWatch.com.
Archived
from the original on 2018-06-23
. Retrieved
2018-04-26
.
- ^
KDE-Apps.org
Archived
2016-06-17 at the
Wayback Machine
and
KDE-Look.org
Archived
2020-12-14 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
Matzan, Jem (2005-03-31).
"Distro review: The four-1-1 on Linspire Five-0"
. Linux.com. Archived from
the original
on 2007-09-14
. Retrieved
2007-02-14
.
- ^
Jones, Pamela (2006-04-24).
"Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom"
.
Groklaw.net
.
Archived
from the original on 2010-05-05
. Retrieved
2007-02-07
.
- ^
Parris, DC (2006-05-09).
"Kevin Carmony: Walking The Line of a Divided Community"
.
Archived
from the original on 2006-11-09
. Retrieved
2007-02-07
.
External links
[
edit
]
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