Vlogcanic

The distro formerly known as Lindows is a commercial Linux distribution based in Debian and KDE available for download if you care to pay some 50 bucks for it. It is very controversial among the open source and free software crowd because of a pragmatic view towards proprietary software in which Linspire trades off the GNU’s freedom and idealism for usability in order to provide the end user with a better Linux experiencie –or so Linspire claims.

The beginning and a clash with Redmond.

Lindows got started in 2001 by Michael Robertson with the goal to create a Linux distro capable of running every major Windows application natively or through Wine.

It wasn’t long (a year) before they got sued by the Redmond crew. The lawsuit was about Lindows breaking the Windows trade mark but it didn’t work as there are other uses for the word Windows besides the one associated with Microsoft so it had to file suit once more in order to push Lindows into a corner. They struck a deal: Lindows dropped the name in Microsfoft’s favor, Microsoft dropped 20 million dollars in turn –one hell of a price for an OS’ rechristening. Thus Lindows became Linspire.

Free as in I really couldn’t care less.

Linspire’s war cry is that the combination of open source and proprietary software is marriage made in heaven, the best of two worlds. It also claims this is the better way to go in user’s experience terms as it’s allways better to have non free software that actually works as opposed to free software that doesn’t. Linspire’s detractors, on the other hand, oppose to such view arguing that it provides no freedom to the user but merely a new master.

The controversy is unlikely ever to be resolved.

A couple thoughts.

Linux has gone a long way in terms of hardware support and while it’s true that it still lags behind Windows, it’s also true that nowadays you can cope with it successfuly by choosing the right free distro and the right hardware.

Also, the current success enjoyed by Ubuntu seems to show that usability and proprietary software are not as inextricably linked as i would seem.

Recent developments.

This last February Linspire anounced an agreement with Canonical Ltd. to slowly shift its base to Ubuntu.

Also this year another deal was done with the current owner of the Lindows name aiming to build some bridges between both operating systems.