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August 16th, 2007 Return to Archive
I recently flew to New York and the
gentleman in the seat next to
me wrestled with his laptop trying to get it to boot XP for 1.5 hours
before retreating to the airline magazine crossword puzzle. Meanwhile,
I
was watching videos and playing music on my IBM laptop running Freespire
-
a new free version of Linux designed for desktops and laptops. Linux is
really gaining polish and maturity and warrants a new look if you're in
the market for a low cost operating system that comes without the
security hassles
and constant maintenance of XP or Vista. I gave a copy to
my 10 year
old with instructions to load it on his laptop last week. I came
home from work to find him on AddictingGames
and YouTube.
Freespire and
its commercial cousin Linspire
install in a remarkable 10 minutes and
offer out-of-the-box support of a wide range of multimedia without the
tinkering that is commonplace in Linux. Plus, they come with CNR which
lets you install software and updates with a single mouse click. With
the exception of playing digitally restricted (DRM) music and movies
(that I believe are a misguided strategy that has hurt the media
companies it was intended to help) there's just about nothing I can't
do with my Freespire computer.
Desktop Linux has been more of a labor of love than profit for me over
the last 6 years. I believed then as I do now that desktop software is
too
expensive and healthy competition can help to correct the pricing
irregularities.
The only possible way to compete with Microsoft's 20 year head start is
to approach the business from a vastly different strategy and that
strategy is
open source.
Energizing the desktop Linux movement
recently is a new comer - Ubuntu.
Backed by net mogul Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu has
galvanized global support. The latest versions of Freespire
and Linspire
are built on top of Ubuntu meaning the engine is in fact
Ubuntu. What makes Freespire and Linspire different is that they have
an easy to use interface that XP users will find comfortable and adds
non-open source software that most consumers expect (MP3, Flash,
Windows Media) with support from popular hardware such as Nvidia and
ATI graphic cards. Linux has historically been dominated by
radicals opposed to
proprietary software. While I'd admire their zeal I care more about
making software practical for the average user. This means making
things work using whatever type of software is required.
Working with Ubuntu will help Freespire/Linspire focus more time
on CNR. When I started Linspire (then called Lindows) the idea was to
make software one-click installable but Linux was so hard to use we
first had to create an operating system. It's taken longer than I
predicted but Freespire
and Linspire
are terrific products that are
full featured and easy to use (Read Freespire Reviews). We will continue to spend energy and
money creating our *spire operating systems but leveraging Ubuntu will
help us do it faster. We will take those time savings and work on
offering CNR for all Linux users. It is not just the operating system
that is too expensive but productivity software like office suite,
drawing, flow charts, etc. CNR.com will make
it easy to find and
install low cost or free alternatives making Linux even cheaper.
CNR is more than just a catalog of
software programs. With a single
click any listed software program is downloaded, installed and ready to
use on
your computer. Plus we're making CNR wiki-based so you can see what
others are saying about each software title. If you're so inclined, you
can add comments about your own experience. If you want to experience
full multimedia support on Linux then download
your free copy of
Freespire
and install it on your computer. Then visit CNR.com
which is now in alpha to experience one click software installs of the
best Linux software.
-- MR
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