“Freespire, the free as in beer version of the Linspire Linux distribution, this month released Freespire 2.0, the first version of the operating system based on the popular Ubuntu distribution, and the first to contain proprietary codecs and drivers. Despite its attractive appearance, it left me with mixed feelings.”
“I personally liked Freespire, but it may not be the best choice for a person coming straight from Windows, as I found some previous Linux experience necessary in order to fully enjoy it”
it is too bad… The aim of Linspire is exactly to target Windows converts… 🙁
The earlier Lindows seemed to be somewhat easier to use, didn’t it? I’m surprised that they hadn’t done a better job on Freespire.
I couldn’t tell Freespire is built upon Ubuntu until I used the command line or the native package management system. Under Ubuntu, many commands required the use of sudo to gain superuser privilege. I find it easier to use su to become root once than to use sudo for every command, so the first thing I do in a Ubuntu-based distro is set a root password.
This sounds convenient but dangerous. Is there a good reason to get around security, really?
The best method I find for Ubuntu is to use the command ‘sudo bash’ instead of ‘su’.
Using ‘sudo bash’ is more-or-less equivalent to ‘su’ except that the former does not require a superuser password and the latter does.
‘sudo -i’ is my preferred way. Same reason really, no root password. Of course, the user who can sudo must now be treated with a little care, so my routine involves su adminuser, adminuser password, sudo -i, adminuser password. the fun that is is immeasurable
“Using ‘sudo bash’ is more-or-less equivalent to ‘su’ except that the former does not require a superuser password and the latter does.”
uh, su requires the root password, at least it has on every Linux/BSD I’ve ever used.
oops, sorry, reread the question. my bad
Using sudo has its own consequences. If I can attack your system and gain your password, and you allow your user to do things as root via sudo with password, then I have root via sudo, without the real root password.
Worse is if your system has something like
reguser ALL=NOPASSWD:ALL
Then I would need no passwords, only to exploit a normal user account through a hole.
There is nothing wrong with requiring root to have a password and locking root to local logins. It is, in fact, better than the misuse of sudo as it has been used by default. Remember, your sudo based security setups only require one password to be stolen.
Sudo is your friend…
And for those competent enough to use the commands given to them or to read man pages, “sudo -i” will give you an interactive root shell. It is the best of breed in that you use sudo while keeping a locked root account and still get a root shell.
No sense crying over spilt milk but I think Linspire/Freespire is officially dead.What they should have done from the beginning was to make it free and involve the community from the get go, they failed to do.So in my mind that among other business deals,left a sour taste in the community’s mouths not even to use it much less recommend it to other people.
Edited 2007-08-20 22:52
Ok, here’s a question for somebody who lives in the USA who is actually worried about not being in legal jeopardy from patent laws…
The w32codecs are technically illegal in the USA. At least, if I ran a business, I would be afraid to have w32codecs installed on my workstations. But here comes Linspire offering legal playback of these files for free. In other words, they have apparently paid Microsoft and probably Apple for the rights to decode these file types like Windows Media and Quicktime. And apparently 1 user or 1,000,000 users can take advantage of this, whoever wants to download it for free now has the legal right, and the patent holders were paid their royalties. So if I download or install Freespire, do I now have the right to install w32codecs on my Debian or Gentoo box, since I am now a legal user of those patented formats?
As Jonathan Riddel responded to someone pretty much asking the same question. However, you did not really ask the question, you merely made a statement.
http://lwn.net/Articles/244873/
Microsoft licences codecs to them at no cost as part of the settlement
for Lindows changing their name to Linspire.
With the loss of michael robertson, and kevin carmony, I really don’t see who is driving this product any more.
They seem to really lack direction and focus at this point.
Yea it’s dead. They keep making excuses for CNR not working even.
I guarantee you if they tossed it to a small group who understands open source and not just another “profiteering clan” of Bill Gates clones then Linspire/Freespire might not take over the world but get better coverage.
So losing Mr Robertson and Mr Carmony can be a silver lining in a dark cloud in reshaping the image of Linspire/Freespire.Shows Linux needs to be managed by people who understand opensource more than understanding profit.Look at Mr Shuttleworth for example along with Red Hat.Compare those to OpenSuse and Mandriva who have lost touch and had to suffer the consequences for it in losing mindshare.
Edited 2007-08-21 13:51
Yep it needs a lawyer to decipher.
http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Freespire_End_User_License_Agre…
Doesn’t mention Microsoft at all but it sure reads like their EULA.
Not hard to notice ubuntu has the lead. In terms of package management, high availability repo servers, the abundance of packages,easy multimedia,huge community and so on. There’s only enough room for the more enthusiast distros like debian,slackware,fedora,gentoo and arch. As an allround userfriendly distro ubuntu still has to be beaten imho.
I installed freespire
I ignored the tools it had installed and its intended aims (eg including drivers so newbies don’t have to worry about them)
used commandline instead!!!
I guarentee you this, if using the nvidea driver and other changes requires editing a config file NONE of its intended userbase will ever do so
I guarentee you this, if using the nvidea driver and other changes requires editing a config file NONE of its intended userbase will ever do so
That alone defeats the goal targeted.
Well that’s not Linspire’s fault at all. It’s a known issue in Ubuntu as well with Nvidia cards because the recent driver doesn’t detect people’s monitors very well. Perhaps its simply because there’s so many types of monitors out there. I ended up digging through my monitor makers website to find the information to change the V and H rates, then added my resolutions and it worked.
I really don’t know how Linspire could fix that. The only way is probably for OEM’s to sell only equipment that the drivers are known to correctly identify. I’ve thought for some time anyway that a Linux oem should try to build and sell equipment for Linux then only support their equipment ala Apple. That or the largest distros like Ubuntu, and OpenSuse have a program where equipment makers can put a Tux sticker on it to indicate it works out of the box with *nix.
Debian (and, hence, also Ubuntu and Freespire) includes a debconf script for configuring Xorg. From the command line you can run this script by typing “dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg” as root (or add sudo to the beginning in Ubuntu & Freespire). Debconf can be configured to use a GUI (gtk or qt) frontend by typing “dpkg-reconfigure debconf” (“sudo dpkg-reconfigure debconf”).
There’s also a GUI frontend to this dpkg-reconfigure command, called gkdebconf. In Ubuntu you can find gkdebconf in the “universe” repo. To make gkdebconf look a bit nicer, GNOME users can also install the libgnome2-perl package and KDE users should install libqt-perl.
Freespire could install gkdebconf by default and add it to their menu, so users don’t need to touch the command line. Of course, you need to know the technical details of your hardware before you can successfully configure Xorg even via a GUI tool. The next Xorg release (or is it the next xserver-xorg release?) should add an improved autodetection of display hardware, and this is probably the ideal solution to Xorg configuration problems.
I also noticed that Ubuntu plans to add a new GUI tool for configuring some Xorg settings, like the graphics driver, screen resolution and the number of monitors. Apparently this new GUI tool is not ready for common use yet.
http://fosswire.com/2007/08/17/ubuntu-getting-xorgconf-gui/
The Ion window manager seems like a strange choice in Freespire. It’s easy on the system resources but new Linux users might find Ion a bit difficult, I suspect. Ion is great if you learn the keybindings but it’s not exactly designed for point-and-click use.
yea that script screws things up a lot though. You’ll find on the Ubuntu message board that the dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg script doesn’t work for everyone so you’ll see many tips about just editing the xorg.conf file by hand.
Interesting note though about Ubuntu considering adding some GUI. I dunno, I find the command line Linux’s strength and so often I can get things done faster in it.
This project is DOA.
I would recommend using any of the debian variants eg, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Debian over this thing.
I don’t know if Linspire/Freespire are dead…
But, I’m not the proponent of the OS that I used to be. The broken promises after broken promises have just got to me…
Broken promises I said?
Here:
1. Lindows would be Windows Compatible Linux Distribution allowing seamless operation of Windows Software WITHOUT a Windows license. Broken.
2. Give us $100.00 and we’ll make you a lifetime CNR member. Ok… But, CNR isn’t working in the latest releases of Linspire and Freespire. So how can I download and install all the software I paid for? (See below).
3. I paid for DVD software TWICE (original and PowerDVD). Can’t download them because CNR isn’t working yet.
4. I paid for an MP3 program they created to make a nice Jukebox. It isn’t supported past Linspire 5.0.
5. Thy changed to Ubuntu and asked us to hold on… The change would be worth it. I’m holding on… But the person who told me to hold on, didn’t…
I’m not a Microsoft Fanboy… But, so far Microsoft has a better record of keeping promises and delivering on them than most all of the Alternate OS companies. Only Apple is better than Microsoft, because they usually deliver MORE than they tell you, and the OS gets faster with each point release, instead of slower. I can STILL run MacOS X 10.4 on a G3 350 Blue and White.
I can’t run Vista on my Pentium 233mhz Sony VAIO or my AMD K6-2 500mhz “BeBox”.
I’m disappointed. The change to Ubuntu doesn’t seem to make sense. I prefer Linspire 5.0 and a working CNR with all the apps I paid for, to the current NO-CNR, No Apps I paid for Linspire 6.0/Freespire 2.0.
I’ve tried MEPIS, and didn’t like it.
I like PCLinuxOS, and haven’t heard anything about STUX.
I couldn’t agree more, including the bit about OS X.
While I love Mac OS X and was capable of running 10.2 on a 330MHz G4 (souped-up 1995 PowerMac 7500), it does not get faster with every release. You’re also about to find that Leopard won’t run very well on a G3, if at all.
The change to Kubuntu was simple. Ubuntu already laid most of Linspire’s groundwork for them as far as making Debian into a suitable consumer desktop OS is concerned, and work with a more modern version of the Debian base than Debian stable. All Linspire had to do was add licensed codecs and finetune the choice of applications.
The backlash comes from the realization that Linspire doesn’t add enough value to Kubuntu to justify its price tag. Had Linspire built their own distro from the ground up (not from Debian) there would be a plausible sense of brand to compare, the way SuSE, RH, Gentoo and Debian constitute actual distros with comparable strengths and weaknesses.
But they weren’t built from hardcore geeks with a specific mission, they were built from venture capitalists who thought the GPL was a license to print money on the achievements of others.
MacOS X does INDEED get faster with each point release. I wouldn’t have said it, if it did not… and if there weren’t independant verification it did.
Leopard isn’t out yet, so to say that it won’t run on G3 Systems is besides the point. Vista won’t run on Pentium, Pentium 2 systems…
But, 10.4 (which is the CURRENT OS) DOES run on a G3. I think that’s commendable since the G3 line was discontinued some years ago.
Linspire 5.0 was fine. It just needed the newest Kernel, updated drivers, and more tweaks/upgrades.
The move to Ubuntu as a core, was a step backwards IMHO. MEPIS realized it, and the next release WON’T be Ubuntu based.
It seems to me that most people have forgotten the substance – the distro itself. I tried live cd and I must admit that in spite of what one may say about dirty deals with MS the distro shines. And I just wish that people in Ubuntu take a look and learn what a cool distro one would make from the same stuff. I have never really got all the positive buzz about Ubuntu. In my view it’s a pretty average distro which I’ll never run. I use Debian and do not need any ubuntus.
In fact after all those nasty and unjustified comments (as dor article – I do not how the text justifies the harsh title; in the same vein one would write an article about whatevr distro as none of them is perfect) I have growing desire to install freespire.
I tried Freespire from the liveCD and my response was ‘meh.’ One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that most KDE distros differ marginally. SuSE, Kubuntu and even Slax are pretty difficult to tell apart outside of how their control panels are organized and which package manager they use.
What shines is KDE, not the particular distro. KDE synergizes together applications in a Windows-like manner, not the distro. KDE provides the excellent printer setup and camera: schema, not the distro. All of this is great, but it comes with a performance price that owners of legacy hardware may not appreciate.
If there’s something that was really Linspire-specific you were impressed by, let us know.
To my mind KDE by default sucks. I find KDE in Kubuntu and Debian just awful and extremely ugly. I still think that Kubuntu in comparison with the new Freespire looks half baked.
To repeat my point. I am not a KDE man and KDE does not shine for me (I use Gnome), bet KDE in Freespire is really polished and looks quite decent. The only distros that can be compared to that are SuSE and PCLOS.
Well, I totally disagree that “KDE by default sucks”
Take an unmodified KDE as it comes from kde.org and I find it the best DE of any OS (IMHO).
But then I agree that Kubuntu has badly crippled KDE, while the Freespire, PCLOS and SUSE ones are really polished. SUSE in particular has been famous through the years for its nice implementations of KDE.
“If there’s something that was really Linspire-specific you were impressed by, let us know.”
Cool request. It’s those subtle variations in distros you mention that make what they do cool. Take OpenSuse’s “gecko” button and F/Linspires button for example, they are just cooler looking than the K-gear. OpenSuse also lays out the menu’s in a nice way. Their many many respositories are a nightmare though. Give me K/Ubuntu’s repositories over those anyday. OpenSuse makes networking a pain in the rear too compared to K/Ubuntu & F/Linspire. That’s sad too because one would think networking is OpenSuse’s strong suit – perhaps its too strong and that’s my problem.
So eyecandy is what I’d like to see for K/Ubuntu, I just can’t stand the “K”gear start button.
It is indeed very clean, I’ve actually switched my file server/experimental pc to it. Networking is a snap with it (KDE is just more intuitive for samba but I do like gnome too so don’t flame me).
The CNR Alpha status (not even working) is a pain in the rear but I just use synaptic. I don’t expect CNR to ever work or purchased CNR software to be reclaimed so just use it as a derivitive of Kubuntu and activate dvd playing the pre-Linspire way
. I’m still a believer that dvd playback rights comes with the drive anyway, laws like that are wrong and deserve to be broken continuously until they are repealed.
First of all, I haven’t tried Freespire, but I did try Linspire 6.0 (I paid for a lifetime membership many years ago). I suppose they are very similar.
I forgot to uncheck “install GRUB to MBR” (or something to that effect). I use Acronis OS Selector, and after installing Linspire, GRUB kept regenarating itself countless times, even after deleting the OS: a nightmare.
In the end I solved the problem by issuing the following command:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=446 count=1
for each of my Hard Drives (3)
There is no way known to me to configure a working pppoe. That problem didn’t exist when Linspire was based on Debian.
I couldn’t really give two {hoots} if Frespire is ‘dead’/’corrupt’/unfocused or disliked by ‘the community’.
What I care is that in the 3 hours I had in town to get something working on my mother’s computer, I got Freespire up & running and everything she needs/likes WORKED: sound, check; videos, check; BBC radio streams, check; YouTube, check; mp3s, check; networking, check; decent resolution, check; web browsing, check; BitTorrent, check; and so on. I mean…it ALL worked! OMFG!!!
With my previous flying visits (with 1 task being to overcome the borked Windows install), OSes like LinuxMint, PC-BSD, Ubuntu Ultimate, Wolvix all left some issues that I couldn’t deal with. An install of those would mean hours/days/weeks of research to iron out all the kinks. Hours/days/weeks that I didn’t have.
Now, with Freespire, she’s happy.
The only thing that caused a problem was that CNR isn’t working, but whenever I tried it, I noticed it listed “Aptitude” as already installed. I’m little more than a Windows semi-power-user, but by reading the instructions, I got the last few necessary apps installed.
FWIW it takes about 45 minutes to install *buntu and perhaps another hour to get codecs and a few basic nonbundled apps installed, if you’re familiar with what’s needed and where to find it. Easybuntu does most of this.
yeah, it’s always so easy… in theory… Freespire is the first time it *really* happened to me.
and I’m so supposed to research all that in 800×600 resolution? with the all-important “Yes/No” etc buttons of the Ubuntu install process etc off the bottom of the screen because of the resolution *it* gave me and knows it’s operating under?
(if the Gparted LiveCD of 35mb can give me a useable resolution, I don’t see (or care) why Ubuntu can’t)
I’m so tired of distros that other people say Just Work that it’s a shock to finally experience one that really did work for me.
If ubuntu works for you, congratulations. But ultimately I don’t care; I had my own fish to fry and ONLY Freespire managed it.
(looking over my post, it sounds a bit harsh: don’t take it personal ;=) )
First of all I must thank you for at least having tried it – so many here have not.
I’m sorry but as much as I WANTED to love Freespire and
found that everything DID work at least initially…key words…
Try launching that SDL game lbreakout2 – result was a black
screen ; try to kill lbreakout2 – frozen mouse and keyboard.
Play that DVD – works for 5 minutes but then freezes THE WHOLE SYSTEM!
Trey to get decent resolution for nvidia 7300 – not possible as modes past 1024×768 not detected!(on my 23″ LCD this is not acceptable)
It’s been a while since I have run across a distro this UNSTABLE and upon perusing the forums I have discovered that at least some people think this was
released WAY too early. Also the kernel source is not released(which may have fixed these issues)
Please fix these issues – until then I will enjoy
DesktopBSD or OS X – at least they are stable.
[My hardware is not exotic – P4(3GHZ) i915 chipset
nvidia 7300 card]
Edited 2007-08-22 02:25
well OSTourist a few of us have mentioned how to fix your resolution issue and pointed out that problem is not specific to freespire.
I am well aware that the problem is not specific to freespire…the much hyped Ubuntu also has it..
Here are some unhyped distros(unix and linux)which DO work out-of-the-box
1 Fedora core 7
2 DesktopBSD
3 PC-BSD
4 Nexenta-7 (crappy alpha at that!)
Do you see a pattern here? It is no longer 1997 and
X configuration CAN be done with little nonsense.
The fact that FreeSpire can’t do it shows the hacky nature of the distro.
Yes I did configure my card using various drivers,
nv and nvidea and all still had problems.
“Compare those to OpenSuse and Mandriva who have lost touch and had to suffer the consequences for it in losing mindshare.”
Qualify that statement, what consequences, what mindshare?
Mandriva and OpenSuse have lost alot of popularity among the community with some of the decisions they made.Novell with Microsoft and 10.1 YAST nightmare.Mandriva firing Duval the founder.Community members win most of the Linux converts.Not companies.
Linux is community driven.Dell wont have been putting Ubuntu on their hardware if the community didn’t voice its opinion on their website.Since, more companies are offering Linux on theirs following the Dell intitiative.The Ubuntu community is getting larger,consequently having a larger mindshare.
Edited 2007-08-22 14:30