Hey guys i got a free copy of linspire 4.5 the other day normally i think its about 49$ heh, (no its not warez its from a competition). For anyone who doesn't have a clue linspire is the new name for the lindows OS which is a combination of linux and window hence the former name lindows. Just wondering if anyones tested it out yet?

@Jay
I haven't personally used it. But, all indications point to it being a good linux distribution.

That thing seems to be good. And **** good if you consider that MS thought it worthwhile to sue them (that's not the main topic here, but I mean, they thought it was so good that they had to prevent it getting further ahead on the plank of their own name). Describing it and the features on my part, would be worthless since they got a good site with all the content/reviews/docu there.

I don't use commercial distributions of linux, since that detracts from the reason I like it for, in the first place. Linspire (previously known as Lindows) supposedly takes the good factors in other distros of linux (like redhat, mandrake, debian,etc.) and adds in goodies to make it able to run *A FEW* windows apps. Its interface is friendly to windows converts as well. You'd be up and running, and get familiar with it in no time at all.

i tried lindows a few days ago on my virtual machine. works very smooth and what impressed me was the lot of utilities that it includes.
i still can't recommend it because it hasn't got support for SATA drives (maybe in linspire it's fixed).

I don't like it.

As a user of one of the most bleeding-edge distros out there, with newly-added content/updates/bugfixes daily to the Portage tree, I can (without bias) say that I don't like it after VMWare'ing it. Bloat? Yes. Dumbed-down? Yes. Wannabe-OS? Yes.

$50USD to use GNU/Linux? What a rip. People who pay for that are getting ripped off, when there are better solutions which are free out there. And no, don't tell me that Linspire is "easier to use" or anything along those lines, when Fedora (ugh) and Mandrake (bleh) are out there. Run Windows programs? That's why WINE/Crossover Office exist. If I want Windows or want to run Windows programs, I'll use Windows, not some wannabe-in-between-OS.

Run as root by default? BAD.

I've tried linspire/lindows, but I'm not a linux man, so it was kinda hard for me.
But I really hate the click'n'run, because it costs $90 per year or something like that for mainline software.
So yes, it sucks worse than windows, because I can't figure out how to pirate software onto it

If you use Linspire, because its based on Debian, you dont need click n run (off with my money)

Because almost all of the software on click n run can be found with APT. install APT, run it, and go download all the crap thats on click n run for free, AND MORE.

@Jay, that brush you used in your avatar.. the text one down the right side? can you email it me? thnx

First tho, I'd have to figure out how to install APT

http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread27839-1.html

Try that. Should work.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's FC2, but the general idea is what's important.

Works well. A lean version of Linux without a lot of bells and whistles. I loaded it up on an old PC I had and my wife uses it for web surfing, IM, and very basic stuff. Good for that, not for an advanced user. That PC would always crash during XP and Red-Hat installs and I was about to give up on it, but Lindows worked fine. Installation is very easy.

I also used Lindows on another old machine and installed PHP and MySQL. Wouldn't recommend it for that other than to play around with it.

I didn't personally use Linspire/Lindows, but the main windows-user friendly "feature" is actually achievable through just about any distro and a good UI. (there's this Xp-imitation one)

I used lindows,
it had bootable cd, so u can boot your computer and start using the os. so I said why not give a try. so I used it for some time.
it has many utilities for all kinds of types u can think of, which are not all for free , click&buy was it? click & download?
haven't crashed on the seldom basis that I used, though if I changed my os i could think of this. it was almost like windows...

ow and I'm sure those u use any distro of linux are better at critisizeing linspire.

wait I remember now why I used lindows at first place. I had seen a banner saying that I could play games on this, like the usual windows games.

and they worked? i installed lindows on my virtual machine so i couldn't try any game.

I seriosly don't remember it. so either it didn't or I didn't fancy it or more likely I was supposed to dl a pay software for it and I didn't,
I'll check if they still have something like that..

edit: yes just as I thought there is a program which u have to pay for called wineX to play games
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_d...s.php?id=12435b

Ha ha ha....
I can guess the answer, SiMoNsAyS!
Those games did not run, that's why he went back in the first place!

But seriously, no lindows or linspire or whatever can emulate a windows totally. The USP of lindows/linspire is that it is linux+GUI+WINE (WINE=Windows Emulator). WINE is an open-source project to give linux the ability to execute win32 instructions. Now WINE runs most older apps/games fine, that is, those that will run on win98. So you can run office 2000, roadrash, and so on. But apps/games that require things not in the scope of WINE, will certainly not run.

For example, Office 2003 (which makes system calls to the IE engine, and is closely tied in to the win2k/XP APIs) and Age of Mythology (a 3D game which uses DirectX) have no hope of ever running even with WINE existing. Of course, you have DirectX compliant builds of WINE (WineX, Codeweaver's WINE, etc.), but those are commercial, and even then, they aren't perfect.

Suffice to say that apps/games for linux will run fine on linux, and apps/games built for windows will run fine on windows.

i guessed that too

@prathapml: and I'm sure the TS and designing of a paid product will happily make linspire a lot more user friendly than Linux usually is. (Just the ads are probably enough )