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Linspire (formerly Lindows) is a commercial
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
based on
Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
and
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. It had been owned by Linspire. Inc. from 2001 to 2008, and then by Xandros from 2008 to 2017. On July 1, 2008, Linspire stockholders elected to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, and all assets were acquired by Xandros. On August 8, 2008, Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros, announced that Linspire would be discontinued in favor of Xandros; Freespire would change its base code from Ubuntu to Debian; and the Linspire brand would cease to exist. On January 1, 2018, it was announced that PC/OpenSystems LLC had purchased Linspire and Freespire from Xandros, and that Linspire 7 was available for $79.99, while Freespire 3 was available for free.


History

Based in
San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...
,
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, Lindows, Inc. was incorporated in July 2001 by Michael Robertson and began selling products in January 2002. Robertson's goal was to develop a
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
-based
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
capable of running major
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
applications. It based its Windows compatibility on the
Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...
API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...
. The company later abandoned this approach in favor of attempting to make Linux applications easy to download, install and use. To this end a program named " CNR" was developed: based on Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool, it provides an easy-to-use
graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...
and a slightly modified package system for an annual fee. The first public release of Lindows was version 1.0, released in late 2001. In 2002,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
sued Lindows, Inc. claiming the name ''Lindows'' constituted an infringement of their ''Windows'' trademark. Microsoft's claims were rejected by the court, which asserted that Microsoft had used the term ''windows'' to describe graphical user interfaces before the Windows product was ever released, and that the windowing technique had already been implemented by
Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...
and
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...
many years before. Microsoft sought a retrial and after this was postponed in February 2004, offered to settle the case. As part of the licensing settlement, Microsoft paid an estimated $20 million, and Lindows, Inc. transferred the ''Lindows'' trademark to Microsoft and changed its name to Linspire, Inc. In 2003, Lindows Mobile PC, which starts at $799, was launched. Lindows said that about Excel about 95%, Word about 90% and PowerPoint about 80% functional. The notebook computer was low cost. Its processor, 933-megahertz C3, was made by VIA Technologies. The laptop weighed 2.9 pounds, had a 12.1-inch screen, 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20-gigabyte hard drive. On June 15, 2005, Michael Robertson stepped down as CEO of Linspire, Inc. He continues as chairman and was replaced as CEO by Kevin Carmony. Linspire became a member of the Interop Vendor Alliance which was founded in 2006. On February 8, 2007, Linspire, Inc. and Canonical Ltd, the lead sponsor and developer of the
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
operating system, announced plans for a new technology partnership, with Linspire aiming to "begin basing ...
heir Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...
desktop Linux offerings on Ubuntu." On June 13, 2007, Linspire and Microsoft announced an interoperability collaboration agreement with a focus on document format compatibility, instant messaging, digital media, web search, and patent covenants for Linspire customers. This agreement was criticised, most notably by the Groklaw website for being disingenuously short-lived and limited, and against the spirit of the
GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...
. Linspire CEO Carmony, in a blog post on the company's website, said that the agreement would "bring even more choices to desktop Linux users, and together, offer a 'better' Linux experience." Linspire bases its product code names on fish found near its headquarters: Linspire/LindowsOS 4.5 was code named
Coho COHO, short for Coherent Oscillator, is a technique used with radar systems based on the cavity magnetron to allow them to implement a moving target indicator display. Because the signals are only coherent when received, not transmitted, the concept ...
; Linspire Five-0 (5.0 and 5.1) and Freespire 1.0, Marlin; and Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0, Skipjack.


CNR

Linspire's CNR (originally Click'N'Run) was a software distribution service based on Debian's APT. It was designed to serve as a GUI-based, user-accessible means of downloading and installing various applications, both free and proprietary. The service allowed users to install available applications using a single click. CNR also included a set of ''Click and Buy'' (CNB) software, which included many commercial applications to members at a discounted rate. CNR had over 38,000 different software packages, ranging from simple applications to major commercial works such as Win4Lin and StarOffice. CNR was originally subscription-based with two tiers: ''basic'' service cost $20 annually, and ''gold'', featuring discounts on some commercial applications, $50. In 2006, Linspire announced that the ''basic'' service was to be made available for free. Linspire planned to port CNR to the Ubuntu distribution. The company announced on April 24, 2006 that CNR would be released under an open source license. The release of the free CNR client was planned to coincide with the release of Freespire 2.0 and Linspire 6.0. On January 23, 2007, Linspire announced that it intended to provide CNR for other Linux distributions, both APT- and RPM-based, including Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. This support was expected to appear in mid-2007. On February 8, 2007, Linspire, Inc. announced a partnership with Canonical Ltd., publisher of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. This deal would see Linspire and Freespire migrate from the unpredictable Debian release process to the semiannual Ubuntu release cycle. It was intended that the main Ubuntu distribution would become the first recipient of the opening of the Click'N'Run service to Linux distributions besides Linspire.


Freespire

In August 2005, Andrew Betts released Freespire, a Live CD based on Linspire. Some users mistook this for a product from Linspire, Inc. Linspire, Inc. offered users a "free Linspire" (purchase price discounted to $0) by using the coupon code "Freespire" until September 9, 2005. On April 24, 2006, Linspire announced its own project named "Freespire". This followed the model of community-oriented releases by
Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...
and
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 NetWare. Novell technolog ...
in the form of Fedora and openSUSE. Freespire was a community-driven and -supported project tied to the commercial Linspire distribution, and included previously proprietary elements from Linspire, such as the CNR Client, while other elements, which Linspire, Inc. licenses but does not own, like the Windows Media Audio compatibility libraries, remain closed-source. Consequently, there are two versions of Freespire, one with the closed source libraries, and one, called Freespire OSS Edition, that includes only open-source components. Freespire 1.0 was released on August 7, 2006. Freespire 2.0.8, released on 30 November 2007, and based on Ubuntu 7.04, was the final release until the distribution was revived with 3.0 in January 2018.


Contributions

Linspire, Inc. sponsored open source projects including the
Pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...
and Kopete instant messaging clients, the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the ReiserFS file system, the Nvu
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...
website editor, and the KDE-Apps.org and KDE-Look.org websites. In the past, Linspire has hosted several Linux and open source events, such as the annual Desktop Linux Summit, DebConf and the KDE Developers Conference.


Criticism

Linspire has drawn some criticism from the
free software community The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, ...
. This has included criticism for including
proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...
, with GNU founder
Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
commenting: "No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master." In addition, following the initial Freespire announcement Pamela Jones of the Groklaw website published an article entitled "Freespire: A Linux Distro For When You Couldn't Care Less About Freedom;" that was highly critical of Linspire, Inc., and the Freespire project, for including closed-source components and advertising them as a favourable point—an action she classed as ignoring
free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...
(FOSS) community values in a "community-driven" distribution, asserting that "Free Software isn't about proprietary drivers" and that "proprietary codecs, drivers and applications are not Open Source or open in any way." In response, Linspire, Inc. CEO Kevin Carmony stated via a journalist on the Linspire website that in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, that many users are already using proprietary software and, although some would hold out, most would prefer to have something that works rather than nothing. He also asserted that the company believed in
open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
, but also in the freedom of individuals to choose whatever software they want.


See also

* Commercial use of copyleft works * Zorin OS,
Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...
, MX Linux, free Linux distributions designed to imitate Windows or recommended for longtime Windows users


References


External links


Official website
* *
LugRadio podcast featuring an interview with Kevin CarmonyLindows reggae song included with Lindows OS
{{Linux distributions Debian-based distributions Proprietary software Ubuntu derivatives Linux distributions