Skip to Main Content
Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions
book

Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions

by Christopher Negus
February 2008
Beginner content levelBeginner
888 pages
24h 13m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Linux® Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 11 Other Distributions

Chapter 15. Running Linspire and Freespire

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Understanding Freespire, Linspire, and Lindows

  • Linspire support and software

  • Installing Linspire

The brief history of Linspire is colorful and has been portrayed as a "David and Goliath" story, at least in some of the news media. In this case, Linspire is David and a PC desktop market share is Goliath. While Goliath seems to have gotten his way, to some extent, David is still breathing.

Linspire is a commercial, desktop-oriented Linux system that has made a play for the retail market. Linspire, Inc. has marketed itself as a direct competitor to Microsoft Windows by offering boxed sets of Linspire, as well as preinstalled versions on inexpensive PCs.

Freespire is a community project backed by Linspire, Inc., which provides a more traditional Linux distribution freely available on the Internet. Selected versions of Freespire will become the basis of future Linspire releases.

This chapter describes what Linspire and Freespire are, their major features, how to install them, and where to find more information.

Overview of Linspire

Linspire began as Lindows, founded by Michael Robertson in 2001, after his tenure with MP3.com. His goal was to bring Linux to the desktop once and for all.

The general concept was to develop an operating system that would be inexpensive, easy to install and use, and a competitive alternative to Microsoft Windows on the desktop PC. To accomplish that, Lindows needed to be simple enough for a nontechnical user ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Linux® Bible 2011 Edition: Boot up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 13 Other Distributions

Linux® Bible 2011 Edition: Boot up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 13 Other Distributions

Christopher Negus

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780470230190Purchase book