A press release was sent out yesterday regarding the new Linspire 6.0 Linux operating system that was just released. For those of you who haven’t heard of Linspire before it’s probably because you have to shell out $50 to buy it. The reason you have to pay for it is that it includes proprietary software, drivers, and codecs which make the operating system ready to use out-of-the-box.
It does have a free companion called Freespire that is more focused on providing the latest features, whereas Linspire is better known for its stability. Here’s a comparison chart of the differences between Freespire and Linspire.
I’ve kept an eye on Linspire ever since it was known as Lindows (naturally it was forced to change its name). While I’ve never actually bought the software I have had a legal license for it. Periodically Linspire tries to bump up their user base by offering the $50 operating system at no cost. I’m sure this new version won’t be given away for at least a few months, but the differences between Linspire and Freespire aren’t big enough to make me want to drop the money on it.
Linspire 6.0 is now based on the Ubuntu operating system, which I’m sure will make it more appealing to a larger crowd. Here’s a more complete list of the codecs and drivers Linspire supports, as well as some of its features:
- CNR available
CNR.com provides one-click access to over 20,000 free & commercial software programs, packages and libraries. - Multimedia Support
Linspire comes pre-loaded and ready to support MP3, Real, Quicktime, Windows Media, Java, Flash, and more. Everything is already licensed and ready to run. Optional DVD playback support is just a click away at CNR.com. - Plug-N-Play Hardware Support
Linspire provides the most extensive hardware support available including drivers from ATI, nVidia, Intel, and others. Connect digital cameras, scanners, MP3 players and more. Linspire instantly recognizes USB and Firewire devices. Thousands of peripherals are supported without requiring the messy installation of drivers or other software. - Wireless Networking
Linspire supports the latest 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networking and an updated Network Control panel lets you customize profiles so you can effortlessly shift between home, work and other networks without bothering with any configuration screens. - Includes Powerful Software
- OpenOffice 2.2
- Linspire Internet Suite
- Pidgin
- Lphoto (photo manager)
- Lsongs (music manager)
- Gizmo Project VoIP
- Microsoft IP Protection
We provide you the confidence of knowing that Linspire actively secures proper intellectual property licenses and assurances for 3rd party technology that are part of our products. These efforts include licensing agreements between Linspire and dozens of commercial software vendors, including our arrangement with Microsoft to provide Linspire customers with Microsoft patent covenants.
No way, Ubuntu is more user-friendly than Linspire. While the whole CNR thing looked appealing to me back when I was still figuring out what distribution I liked best, it doesn’t differ that much from Ubuntu’s Add/Remove tool. I prefer Ubuntu over Linspire for both graphical and terminal-based (using ’sudo apt-get’) software management.
Besides, isn’t CNR now available in all major Linuxes since that agreement Linspire made with Ubuntu, SuSE etc? The only other thing is few apps, multimedia codecs and formats are also now easy enough for beginners to download in Ubuntu, though they may not be legal.
Out-of-the-box user friendly though? If you were a big business looking to switch to Linux you would probably want something that came with all of the proprietary codecs and stuff so that you didn’t have to worry about the legal entanglement that may result. I don’t think Linspire is necessarily geared towards consumers as much as it is businesses.
I don’t remember all of the details about the agreement, but those OS’s would need to have CNR running on them to get the access to their extensive library. I haven’t heard about a download available from any of those companies to get the CNR software, but it is currently in the Beta state.