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Freespire is a community-driven Linux distribution currently owned by PC/Open Systems LLC. It is derived from Linspire and is composed mostly of free, open source software, while providing users the choice of including proprietary software including multimedia codecs, device drivers and application software. Freespire 1.0 was based on Debian, while Freespire 2.0 was based on Ubuntu. Linspire was bought by Xandros, who originally planned to switch back to Debian for future Freespire releases. On January 1, 2018, PC/Open Systems announced it had purchased Linspire from Xandros and released Freespire 3.0. While Linspire is available for $29.99, Freespire 3.0 is free. History In August 2005, a distribution Live CD based on Linspire's source pools named ''Freespire'' hit the web by accident. This distribution was created by Andrew Betts and was not produced or released by Linspire Inc. Freespire was confused by some users to be an actual product from Linspire, and at the request of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Device Driver
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used. A driver communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device (drives it). Once the device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in the original calling program. Drivers are hardware dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface. Purpose The main purpose of device drivers is to provide abstraction by acting as a translator b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Closed Source Software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA-bound software—from making use of the software on their own, thereby restricting his or her freedoms. It is often contrasted with open-source or free software. For this reason, it is also known as non-free software or closed-source software. Types Origin Until the late 1960s computers—large and expensive mainframe computers, machines in specially air-conditioned computer rooms—were usually leased to customers rather than sold. Service and all software available were usually supplied by manufacturers without separate charge until 1969. Computer vendors u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as ''WMA'', was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. ''WMA Pro'', a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio. A lossless codec, ''WMA Lossless'', compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity (the regular WMA format is lossy). ''WMA Voice'', targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA. Development history The first WMA codec was based on earlier work by Henrique Malvar and his team which was transferred to the Windows Media team at Microsoft. Malvar was a senior researcher and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Click N' Run
CNR, or One-Click & Run, was a free one-click software delivery service that was created to make finding and installing Linux software easier. It assisted the user in finding and installing software on their computer, and sat dormant in the system tray when not in use. CNR offered a large database of Linux programs that were suitable for everyday and specialty usage. It was available for Linspire and its derivatives, as well as various other Linux distributions. History In 2002, the legacy CNR was created as a digital software delivery service created by Linspire, Inc. The service provide the desktop Linux user with an online software warehouse from which they could click on a product and have it installed on their desktop automatically. It required a paid membership of $49.95 to use the service. The warehouse hosted free, non-free, and commercial Linux software titles. The service relied on a client application to work in concert with Debian's APT and dpkg to resolve dependenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OpenSUSE
openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, such as YaST, Open Build Service, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus, KIWI and OSEM. Product history In the past, the SUSE Linux company had focused on releasing the SUSE Linux Personal and SUSE Linux Professional box sets which included extensive printed documentation that was available for sale in retail stores. The company's ability to sell an open source product was largely due to the closed-source development process used. Although SUSE Linux had always been free software product licensed with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), it was only freely possible to retrieve the source code of the next release 2 months after it was ready for purchase. SUSE Linux' strategy was to create a technically superior Linux distribution with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novell
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the leadership of chief executive Ray Noorda, NetWare became the dominant form of personal computer networking during the second half of the 1980s and first half of the 1990s. At its high point, NetWare had a 63 percent share of the market for network operating systems and by the early 1990s there were over half a million NetWare-based networks installed worldwide encompassing more than 50 million users. Novell technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks, which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model and changed computing worldwide. Novell was the second-largest maker of software for personal computers, trailing only Microsoft Corporation, and became instrumental in making Utah Valley a focus for technology and so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss, Red Hat also offers Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), an enterprise virtualization product. Red Hat provides storage, operating system platforms, middleware, applications, management products, and support, training, and consulting services. Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects. It has acquired several proprietary software product codebases through corporate mergers and acquisitions and has released such software under open source licenses. , Red Hat is the second largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel version 4.14 after Intel. On ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fedora (operating System)
Fedora Linux is a Linux distribution developed by the Fedora Project. Fedora contains software distributed under various free and open-source licenses and aims to be on the leading edge of open-source technologies. Fedora is the upstream source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Since the release of Fedora 35, six different editions are made available tailored to personal computer, server, cloud computing, container and Internet of Things installations. A new version of Fedora Linux is released every six months. , Fedora Linux has an estimated 1.2 million users, including Linus Torvalds (), creator of the Linux kernel. Features Fedora has a reputation for focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies early on and working closely with upstream Linux communities. Making changes upstream instead of specifically for Fedora Linux ensures that the changes are available to all Linux distributions. Fedora Linux has a relatively short life cycle: each version is usually supported ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Live CD
A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading from a hard disk drive. A live CD allows users to run an operating system for any purpose without installing it or making any changes to the computer's configuration. Live CDs can run on a computer without secondary storage, such as a hard disk drive, or with a corrupted hard disk drive or file system, allowing data recovery. As CD and DVD drives have been steadily phased-out, live CDs have become less popular, being replaced by live USBs, which are equivalent systems written onto USB flash drives, which have the added benefit of having writeable storage. The functionality of a live CD is also available with an external hard disk drive connected by USB. Many live CDs offer the option of persistence by writing files to a hard drive or U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xandros
Xandros, Inc. was a software company which sold Xandros Desktop, a Linux distribution. The name Xandros was derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros. Xandros was founded in May 2001 by Linux Global Partners (Will Roseman and Dr. Frederick Berenstein). The company was headquartered in New York City. Xandros Desktop was based on Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution that was acquired along with the development team behind the product from Corel Corporation in August 2001 after Corel decided to sell the Linux distribution market. Xandros was a founding member of the Desktop Linux Consortium and member of the Interop Vendor Alliance. In July 2007, Xandros bought Scalix, a Linux-based email and collaboration product, based on HP OpenMail. In July 2008, Xandros acquired Linspire. , Xandros’ website is unresponsive (with their last update being in November 2009) and DistroWatch lists Xandros as discontinued. On 1 January 2018, it was announced that PC ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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