Submitted by “Linspire Inc. claims that the recently released Freespire is the development version of Linspire, much like Fedora Core is the freely available development version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. During the several days that I used it, I found this to be true in both a good and a bad way. It’s good in the sense that the software that comprises Freespire is a bit more modern, but bad in that it has a few problems that make it unsuitable for a production release.” Read more at TheJemReport.
Freespire 1.0 Review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This is great for those who were interested in Linspire but didn’t want to pay. I’ll give this a whirl.
Edited 2006-08-16 10:04
Would have to say that I approached Freespire with high hopes. It was based on Debian Sarge, with a bit of backporting, and had a customised desktop and apt.
BUT
I was disappointed to find that it’s version of GRUB didn’t want to play with other distros, it had a non-standard disk naming strategy, and there was always a subtle pressure to “buy”. Whilst I understand the desire to make this a financial success, I just had the feeling they were trying to corral me into a corner to get my money.
Perhaps I see a “microsoft in every shadow” ….
Rgds.
was disappointed to find that it’s version of GRUB didn’t want to play with other distros
Do you mean GRUB does not want work in a dual-boot configuration? I have not had any success in dual booting debian or ubuntu with freebsd, GRUB gets corrupted.
Edited 2006-08-16 10:33
happycamper ..
GRUB did not detect other distros when it was installed, and to hand edit the “menu.lst” you needed to use a non-standard partition nomenclature .. ie NOT /dev/hda1 and the like.
It wasn’t GRUB per se, but the way Freespire has set it up. Like I said, I had high hopes for the distro, but for me, things like this put me off. Having said that, others may be perfectly happy with it. I guess I’m just not in the target market.
Rgds.
Not that I’ve used Freespire but….
“ie NOT /dev/hda1 and the like.”
GRUB has never used /dev/hdaX to identify partitions. It uses (hd0,0). This isn’t non-standard, for grub anyway.
grub-install /dev/hda works.
You know I installed Freespire and Kubuntu on two machines at home this weekend, and while I was impressed with the polish and quality of the Freespire installation process the “free isle” of package management just didn’t cut it. Understanding that it’s a meager $20 a year to download unlimited packages, why would someone do that instead of using Kubuntu which has a very similar software installation interface, the ability to use apt with Yakuake if desired, and no fees?
/Uninstalled Freespire less then an hour after loading it (thank goodness it installs in 10 minutes). Now I have two Kubuntu boxes.
“GRUB has never used /dev/hdaX to identify partitions. It uses (hd0,0). This isn’t non-standard, for grub anyway.”
Yes, quite correct .. but it is not really what I was getting at. The main comment I made is still valid with reference to the disk naming. I’ve taken it off my machine now, so I can’t tell you exactly what it uses, however a visit to the Freespire forums will show a couple of posts that reflect what I said above.
At the risk concentrating on a Freespire feature that to a number of people is not important, the distro just doesn’t want to share with others. In contrast, GRUB on my Debian install happily plays with everybody.
Rgds
“”Understanding that it’s a meager $20 a year to download unlimited packages””
Sphinx, you dont have to pay. You CAN use apt-get as well… so there is no real difference between freespire and kubunut.
CNR is optional. I’d say most freespire users are never gonna get a CNR subbie.
Wow. Non-standard? What is non-standard about using scsi drive names? This is a much older standard, and it is the only standard that all of the block devices on your system speak. It is the other system that is non-standard. We will use /dev/hd* for IDE devices and /dev/sd for scsi devices. Oh wait, except that we are also going call any usb device /dev/sd as well. But all the IDE devices will be /dev/hd. Oh wait, except SATA devices, which are technically IDE devices, we are also going to call those /dev/sd as well.
The Freespire solution may not be the best solution, but to say that it is non-standard when the only thing that is standard about the other system is that it is the one that you are used to is just resistance to something that you do not understand. Did you bother to ask why they may have chosen to go with that system? Perhaps there was a problem that they were trying to solve with it. Have you thought about how grub gets its drive numbers? Does grub distinguish between PATA drives and all other drives? What happens when you have one SATA drive /dev/sda and one PATA drive /dev/hda? Which one will grub see as hd(0) and which will be hd(1)? There is no sure way to tell if you refer to the drives as /dev/sda and /dev/hda
Anyway, sorry if this post is overly sarcastic, but it does bother me a bit when people assume that something is wrong just because it is not the way that they are used to doing it.
Heck – I have a CNR subscription and I don’t bother using it with freespire.
They need to add synaptic in there by default for those who would like it. That would give it a bit of balance with the CNR option. Otherwise all one needs to do is type in sudo apt-get….
Kubuntu is a great distro as well. I tend to prefer freespire due to the pre-installed codecs. Less work with setting up players and such.
What I’m looking forward to is seeing how freespire moves forward now. What they decide to keep and what they decide to add.