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Linspire Releases 2.0 Version of Free OS

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

August 8, 2007, 4:43 PM

Linspire on Wednesday released the second version of Freespire, the community-based operating system based on Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution, enhancing it with its own proprietary software, drivers, and codecs.

The San Diego company's announcement comes a little over a year after the company first announced its plans to split its Linspire efforts into a commercial and free variant. The company hopes the free version will help spur use of Linux.

Linspire says that the proprietary software, which comes from a variety of sources, not only Linspire itself, would provide a better user experience for those who install it. Freespire 2.0 also provides access to the CNR Server, which allows one-click installation of open-source applications.

Freespire makes improvements to out-of-the-box support for several types of hardware, file types, and multimedia. This includes MP3, Windows Media, Real Networks, Java, Flash, ATI, nVidia, WiFi, among others.

Support for Open XML allows users editing documents within OpenOffice to open and write to Microsoft Word .docx files, the company added.

"Freespire 2.0 picks up where Ubuntu leaves off by adding proprietary software, drivers and codecs, to make for a more complete turn-key solution for mainstream desktop computing," Linspire president and CEO Larry Kettler said.

The company will continue to provide commercial versions of its Linspire operating system, it said, aiming for the general user. Freespire, on the other hand, is geared towards computer enthusiasts and others who may be interested in the Linux platform.

Add a Comment (11 Comments)

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By new_khan

edited Sep 3, 2007 - 1:49 PM

plz send me this trial vr.

Score: 0

By frankwick

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 11:34 AM

Is Linspire the old Lindows?

Score: 0

By sjc001

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 7:02 PM

Yes. Microsoft thought that all of us were too stupid to tell the difference between this and Windows so they had forced them to change the name.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 11:47 AM

Yeppers.

Score: 0

By sjc001

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 5:56 AM

This is not Linspire. Its Freespire and I have used it and found the free version to be far better than their paid version. Freespire 2.0 final is NOW based on Ubuntu which is a very excellent version of Linux that is both easy to use and very compatible with hardware.

Score: 0

By DoHickey

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 12:53 AM

Oh goody, an update for Wal-Mart's cheap brand of computers. Yuk! I'd rather use Windows 3.1

Score: 0

By Red_Vader

posted Aug 9, 2007 - 10:29 AM

Have you evre actually used free/linspire? As for the cheap walmart computers they work fine for surfing, email, and word processing (the three tasks they were designed for); particularly after you double the RAM.