Freespire Beta

[bhobjj]

Linspire has released the 1st beta (http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Download_Freespire) of it's new freely available Freespire (http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/Download_Freespire).


From the site:
. . .community-driven, Debian-based Linux distribution which legally supports (or has one-click access to support): MP3, DVD, Windows Media, QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, Adobe Acrobat Reader, proprietary WiFi drivers, fonts, and so on.
The source code (ftp://public.linspire.com/freespire-beta1-source/) is also easily available.

I just gave it a try. The CD boots with a choice of live CD or install. The installation is very fast. About 10 to 15 minutes. I chose custom or advanced or somthing. Durring the installation, I unchecked the box "install boot record to mbr" I figured that it would install a boot loader to the root partition, but it did not install any bootloader.

Everything else seems to work without a problem. It seems to start and run much faster than Xandros (also Kde-based).
Although click-n-run icons are everywhere including each submenu, apt-get is all ready setup to work with lots of sources in the /etc/apt/source.list.

[deanlinkous]

When I tried using apt it was a mess. Software is also fairly limited. Trying to install a metapackage would start installing and then crap out not being able to find packages. I noticed they released a new beta so hopefully better! They need to clean up that repository and get the sources file straightened out IMO.

Of course, I still have not seen the open source version that they claimed would be available so I dont see how it is any different than linspire itself except no cost.