“Freespire version 2.0 Alpha2U (1.2.49) is now available for download. This is the second alpha build based on Ubuntu that might not be good for the health of a production machine. Expect improvements as future builds are released. Some of the release notes: automatic boot menu management does not always work, do not install if you are not experienced at repairing GRUB configurations and MBRs; no upgrade path available from Freespire 1.0 or previous versions of Freespire 2.0 alphas; NVIDIA and ATI drivers are not automatically installed; Jack has been removed – any applications which do not use ALSA may not work properly.”
>> no upgrade path available from Freespire 1.0 or
>> previous versions of Freespire 2.0 alphas; NVIDIA
>> and ATI drivers are not automatically installed;
>> Jack has been removed – any applications which do
>> not use ALSA may not work properly.”
So the ONLY reasons to even try this over another distro have been removed… and somehow stuff that worked fine in the previous version and is fairly straight forward to implement in a distro has been nebfered… Gotcha.
You know, it’s scary for ANYONE to be labelling a linux distro as alpha, since it’s just putting together componants that already exist… much less to have the laundry list of issues they are warning you of before you even try it.
Just how does one screw up linux, starting from a WORKING Ubuntu baseline, to the point of it being at alpha with this many problems?
Edited 2007-03-24 22:48
It is called an alpha. and it is based on a pre-release of ubuntu too. They are applying their customizations to ubuntu’s base.
Wait for the final release if you are an end user that expects things to just work.
The only reason to install this is if you are a developer or want to help do some testing for them and file useful bug reports. =)
>>The only reason to install this is if you are a
>> developer or want to help do some testing for them
>> and file useful bug reports. =)
I understand the concept of alpha – I’m just wondering how they can fubar simple things that shouldn’t need any modifications… like the boot menu manager. What, they need to relearn how GRUB works?
Stuff like: Do not install if you are not experienced at repairing Grub configurations and MBRs.
Doesn’t exactly instill confidence in their abilities, since that’s old hat and stuff they REALLY shouldn’t be needing to futz with at this point. Their installer is so fubar it screws up setting up GRUB?!? Serious whiskey tango foxtrot territory.
I’m not a big Linspire fan, but it sure looks like you have your own agenda which involves finding a way to attack and find fault with it.
Not a very constructive approach, IMO.
Grub installation problems are not uncommon. It’s a tricky thing to get right for all configurations.
Pretty much any distro that I have used extensively has managed to get it wrong at some point. This includes enterprise distros.
Try not to be so obvious in your attacks upon distros you don’t like, whatever your reasons might be.
Truly I don’t think the comments were THAT far out of line, not near the level of FUD or anything in that direction. Misguided, miseducated, but that’s about it. There are a lot of people who believe if you start with another distro, well then the rest just has to be easy right? Wrong of course, but plenty believe it.
On the other hand, IF you are a distro that is trying to move yourself out from the rest of the pack, do you really want to be releasing ANY versions lacking the items that do that?
“””
not near the level of FUD or anything in that direction. Misguided, miseducated, but that’s about it.
“””
That view would work if Deathshadow were simply ignorant.
It’s just that I happen to know that he is not. And attacking Linspire/Freespire is a popular sport.
I never said FUD. (I don’t use that term; It’s been abused too much to be a meaningful anymore.)
This is the second alpha release. No doubt early in their release cycle. (I don’t follow it.) If they did not release early versions we would be reading about how Freespire is not really open, and about how its development model is cathedral style and closed, and about how that can just be expected from a company like Linspire.
I simply take a live and let live attitude toward Linspire, while acknowledging that it’s probably a good fit for some users (who don’t happen to be me.)
It must be hard for Freespire, trying to form a real community distro in an environment which is often actively hostile toward them because of the “spire” in their name.
I didn’t mean to imply the use of the word, but without a history to go by (of which I have none) it felt like your comment was headed in that direction, I stand corrected.
As to Freespire being slammed for not being open enough etc . . . releasing an Alpha release, beta release etc has nothing to do with it. The question is; how open is their development process, and from what I gather, hardly open at all. I, like a couple of others here, am a lifetime Linspire member. I purchased the membership quite some time ago hoping to help a Linux company, I have never used Linspire or Freespire.
When Freespire was announced I did attempt to get on one of their boards, aiding in the direction of the distribution but soon learned that those seats had been picked very early on, and at least to me, seemed more political but this was fine. I thought the idea and oppotunity for Freespire was great, I still do. The problem is that it SEEMS to keep moving more and more in the companies direction and less and less the communities direction. I understand the need for company direction and I understand that they are flipping the bill but if it ends up all company direction what was the purpose, other than cheap PR?
I don’t blame their founder for leaving, that’s what founders generally do, create and leave. I don’t blame them for not fullfilling their original promises, they never really understood what would be required to do so. What I do blame them for is starting an Open Source project that seems to get less and less open everyday. When you start a community based project you have a responsibility to that community. In my opinion, they haven’t lived up to that responsibility yet and it APPEARS as though they have no intention to do so.
Hey garret,
Yeah, I have an active distaste for the term FUD. It is so often misapplied that it has no real meaning at all any more. Even when what one *wants* to imply is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, it is now an ineffective way to say it.
Anyway, I should say that I really do not follow Linspire or Freespire development. And I have no problem whatsoever with your better informed and constructive criticism of the project.
But the original post was just rock throwing and I wanted to express my opinion on that.
Edited 2007-03-25 15:50
There’s more to it than just putting together a bunch of programs and sticking it on a disk. You have to make sure all the configurations are right, set up all the backends, frontends, libraries, etc just so. With various major changes, and large amounts of new programs they want to stick in… yes, it’ll be kinda awkward.
Just ask a Gentoo user if compiling programs is all there is to it.
deathshadow: Just how does one screw up linux, starting from a WORKING Ubuntu baseline, to the point of it being at alpha with this many problems?
Adjectives fail me. Excuse my deigning remark, but to expect a working GNU/Linux distribution just because it is based off some other WORKING distribution is a fundamental misconception that is so far beyond the way building a distribution actually works, I can’t help but think that a desktop user is writing there…
It is not to defend Freespire, but just to lampoon people who have little clue, really.
Adjectives fail me. Excuse my deigning remark, but to expect a working GNU/Linux distribution just because it is based off some other WORKING distribution is a fundamental misconception that is so far beyond the way building a distribution actually works, I can’t help but think that a desktop user is writing there…
It is not to defend Freespire, but just to lampoon people who have little clue, really.
Instead of resorting to vague attacks on a more personal level, why don’t you enlighten the original poster and explain the fundamentals of building a distribution so he gets a better understanding of why you can’t expect a distro based off another already working distro to be at least mostly functional?
>> Instead of resorting to vague attacks on a more
>> personal level, why don’t you enlighten the
>> original poster and explain the fundamentals of
>> building a distribution so he gets a better
>> understanding of why you can’t expect a distro
>> based off another already working distro to be at
>> least mostly functional?
Because personal attacks without supporting them by facts are the resort of people who don’t understand it themselves, and just get their panties in a twist because someone DARED to point out how silly linux distro’s can get?
Repeatedly you see kneejerk flameboy posts the minute anyone dares criticise ANYTHING that isn’t MS. It’s that simple.
Edited 2007-03-25 11:22
Yeah…Doesn’t look good for Freespire at all….Needs more work.
Jack being removed??
Is this being superceded by gstreamer or something?
They didn’t say this was a final decision. Let’s all just take it easy and wait for the final release before passing judgment.
Jack is being dropped, here is a link to the mailing list post talking about the reason behind it, and its replacement:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.freespire.user/18…
Wow, thanks for the link. It appears that they believe ALSA has matured enough to use it instead of Jack, but what’s really cool is that they’re developing a kernel module to automatically route OSS sound through ALSA. Nice!
I still expect that it will be possible to install Jack if you use apps that need it. Whether it will be easy to set it up is another question….
I am a Linspire lifetime member. They asked us money when they were in trouble, but I feel they have neglected us ever since.
Moving from Debian to Ubuntu was a major change, and I feel they should have asked our opinion. Not a word, I learned it from DistroWatch.
yeah, some time ago, when linspise was the infant lindows, i also signed as a lifetime member, insider, etc etc etc. i took notice of michael robertson abandoning the ship, even after he swore up and down that lindows/linspire was the savior of the linux desktop, and like you, i didn’t receive any prior insider info they were joining with ubuntu. damn, they are a desperate group !!
I don’t have any involvement with either project, even as a user. I do think that the recent “ubuntu as a base” surge we have been seeing is a very bad idea in the long run, though. I guess time will tell, though.
Hmm, I’d be interested in hearing why this would be a bad idea, not that I’m disagreeing, just that I haven’t been convinced as of yet. I keep hearing the same thing from a number of places but have yet to hear a real explanation for it, something that makes sense. As far as I’ve seen it isn’t any more negative than many distributions basing themselves on either Debian or Redhat, or Slack or Mandriva for that matter, which indeed NEVER seems to be an issue.
So quite honestly, why not Ubuntu? What better to base a distribution off of?
As far as I know, ubuntu is still a derivative of debian. I think that having distros based on a distro that is, itself based on another distro is bound to lead to issues. I’m very unhappy with some of the choices the kubuntu devs have made, patchwise, and I’m worried that since now at least two other kde-centric distros are now simply using ubuntu’s repos to build themselves, these patches will continue to be pushed further downstream. How long until the tail wags the dog? There’s more to it than that, but I’m too tired to explain it clearly.
People that constantly bitch about (Lin)Freespire should take a look at Eric Raymond’s and Rob Landley’s paper titled “World Domination 201”.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination…
In (very) brief, they are talking about how any kind of movement from one dominant platform to another has always historically taken place during the increase of computing bits (8 bit to 16 bit, 16 bit to 32 bit, and now 32 bit to 64 bit).
They talk about the brief window of opportunity there is now during the 32 to 64 bit shift, but how with Linux the big conundrum is getting all media stuff, wifi, 3d acceleration, etc working 100% out of the box, without bothering Aunt Tillie to do a multi-step command line / edit config files process (or search forums, download via synaptic, etc).
To do this, Linux distros have to ship non-free (non-pure free software), proprietary stuff along with OSS. Plain and simple. While it’s technically feasible, there are legal limitations that will cause OEMs to avoid it like the plague.
And the Linux desktop market is far to tiny right now to use market demand to force all the encumbered stuff to become unencumbered – chicken and the egg. Thus, the need to make a temporary compromise and legally license proprietary stuff and ship it out of the box (or provide a CD that is brain dead simple).
That way, Linux desktop can expand beyond the extremely limited market of geeks and techies and power users, and gain millions of Joe Six Packs and Aunt Tillys. With that comes market clout, which makes hardware manufacturers, content provides, and the like take notice, and eventually become forced to open up their stuff or risk losing out.
That’s where distros like Linspire come in. It’s also where Ubuntu comes in, in regards to trying to make it easier for people to get their codecs (by providing automatic wizards in Fiesty, and by featuring Linspire’s CNR).
Let’s all face it, if we all truly want Linux to become a major player in the desktop market, we absolutely have to provide both a legal and easy way for Linux to run proprietary media codecs, proprietary video drivers, proprietary wifi, etc.
And we should all applaud Linspire, as well as Ubuntu, Mepis, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, etc for all trying to do this, in one form or another. But Linspire in particular, because they have all that proprietary stuff already fully legally licensed.
>> They talk about the brief window of opportunity
>> there is now during the 32 to 64 bit shift
Which would mean something if there was a fundemental shift in capabilities like there was on the previous bit-width increases – but fact is, there has yet to be ANY evidence of that in a way that users would actually CARE about.
At BEST benchmarks on most applications are showing a MAYBE 10% speed boost, and the lions share of new computers are STILL shipping with a quarter the maximum memory of the 32 bit bus.
The ONLY two advantages the wider bus brings is being able to move a large block of memory in half the clocks, and being able to mount more than 4 gigs of memory… and the sad fact is people just don’t need that, and don’t look to need that any time soon.
The BIG problem is those nice big 64 bit operations can actually create MORE overhead on ‘off sized’ datasets – the two methods around this have their own problems: Increasing to the nearest 8 byte boundary just makes the memory footprint bigger and requires more overhead code to find the actual end, while the classic ‘loop the modulo’ can potentially be as many as 7 loops instead of the 3 maximum, meaning quite often a number of opcodes and clock cycles wasted negating the advantage.
Much less the huge datasets at which 64 bit ops excel, well, really are no longer DONE by the cpu, but the GPU… and those are being in 128 and even 256 bit operations these days.
64 bit is definately in our future, but they are going to have to shove it down the majority of users throats since it really doesn’t deliver on the hype for ‘joe average’.
2008 is only eight months off, and I’ll be AMAZED to see the ‘minimum’ computer shipping with 4 gigs of RAM before the end of the decade – hell, Apple still ships 512 standard, and Dell ONLY just switched to a gig with the intro of Vista – While that ‘world domination’ article claims a 1 gig ‘low end’ in 2005… making it well… it would make a really good Penn and Teller special on Showtime.
Not that I have any idea what your post has to do with the topic at hand.
Edited 2007-03-26 17:13
“Not that I have any idea what your post has to do with the topic at hand.”
The topic at hand is Linspire producing a new version based on Ubuntu.
The point of my post, which I used the article to add beef to, was that for desktop Linux to succeed, it needs work out of the box with all the media codecs.
The article was talking about the inevitable shift from 32 bit to 64 bit, and how that shift presents a window of opportunity for a new platform to take hold.
Whether I agree with the author’s time frame, or how much of a shift to 64 bit will actually occur, is another story.
But they make the solid point about market forces. We can’t expect more open formats until there is a substantial enough market to make the providers provide them. But we can’t get that substantial enough market unless we provide a complete “out of the box” – turn it on and it just works – experience to Aunt Tilly and Joe Six Pack. This requires both legal and easy access to the (currently) closed formats.
Even as easy as Automatix is to most Ubuntu users, most regular users (read- non geeks) wouldn’t even know it exists, and would be intimidated by downloading it and running dpkg in the command line. In other words, if it ain’t already there or if it ain’t complete simple, obvious point and click, forget about it. It’s crippleware as fare as those users are concerned.
First, thanks for the clarification – it looks like we are in fact on the same page, just wording it differently.
>>We can’t expect more open formats until there is
>> a substantial enough market to make the providers
>> provide them. But we can’t get that substantial
>> enough market unless we provide a complete “out of
>> the box” – turn it on and it just works –
>> experience to Aunt Tilly and Joe Six Pack. This
>> requires both legal and easy access to the
>> (currently) closed formats.
AMEN. That actually ties into what seem to be the two big problems ‘free software’ usually ends up facing.
First being the ‘free as in freedom or nothing’ zealots making a LOT of businessmen go ‘Yeah right, see you later dirty hippy’. Free software supporters tend to be their own worst enemies where doing ANY of this as a business is involved. It often seems like for every person who sees Open Source and Free Software as just another method or tool, there’s the psuedo-religious zealot who makes Aunt Tilly and Joe Six pack go “Get a shower, haircut, and grow the hell up.”
More important though is that the nature of most open source projects preventing certain things from ever getting implemented… If a user who isn’t a programmer (or just doesn’t have the time because they have a day job – you know, food on table) wants a feature (or at least a bug fixed, yes FF I’m looking at your ‘feature’), and no programmer working on the project sees a value in it, the feature will NEVER get implemented or the bug will never get fixed (which of course is a case of reality flying in the face of their propaganda about bugs getting fixed faster).
Bounties certainly help this to an extent, but there are a LOT of ‘little details’ you see in paid projects like Windows and OSX going back a decade that are still at the 1991 level in the linux world. (multiple display support, simplicity of program installation, etc, etc, etc).
Combine that with as you said things like automatix2… Which isn’t even NEEDED given most of what it does can ALREADY BE DONE FROM SYNAPTIC (sorry, did I commit a heresy?) or the simpler ‘add/remove programs’ found in Ubunutu. (there’s your Aunt Tilly and Joe Six pack method)
One of the things you see over and over again is a simple lack of understanding on the part of the people WORKING on a project when it comes to the needs of the ‘average joe’. You see it in the instructions for doing the simplest of things – like say… enabling the multiverse and universe in Debian when Synaptic is present. EVERY site on the subject says to open up a terminal, use a text editor to manually add lines to apt-get, do a whole bunch of mumbo-jumbo command line functions that the average joe isn’t going to be even able to copy (most of them still can’t figure out simply copying and pasting from browser to terminal, and you expect them to do four to six lines of near gibberish? RIGHT.) and it’s ALL UNNECESSARY BULLSHIT at this point because you can do the same thing by opening synaptic, going into settings > repositories, go to the internet tab, check the two checkboxes for multiverse and universe, close settings window, refresh, mark all upgrades, DONE. 8 mouse clicks and a password entry, THAT’S IT. Yet even Linspire and Ubuntu don’t even mention that way of doing it.
There is NO excuse to install something in Automatix2 or Synaptic and not have it show up on the start menu – well over half the packages still work that way. There is NO excuse to expect grandma to have to go to the terminal for ANYTHING – yet that’s how 99% of the instructions are worded, even for stuff you don’t HAVE to do it with.
This has resulted in a great many programs that are, as you put it: crippleware as far as those users are concerned.
I think that has been the biggest dissapointment about Lindows/Linspire, is that they’re original idea of hiding all the *nix bull from joe average was great… but everything since gives one the impression they have truly lost that objective. This can also be said about just about every other distro that’s marketed itself as ‘easy to use’… they start out with great ideas, but inside a year or two they end up ‘just another distro’.
MIND YOU, a lot of that isn’t so much their fault, but the reality of how hardware drivers and software installs work under linux.
Let’s all face it, if we want sold down the river, we can trust ESR/Kevin Carmony and the Linbuntu folks to do it. Freedom is NOT about market share.
Fine and dandy. That is a viable choice. We can be complete free software purists, and be content with our niche market. And that’s perfectly fine.
Or, we can choose to try get more “regular users” to use Linux on the desktop, which means providing a complete out of the box experience, where media codecs, 3D acceleration, Flash, and Java work, with no fuss. And, in turn this means providing legal and easy access to some proprietary codecs and drivers.
And that means more market share. And with more market share comes more power to get vendors to cooperate in providing non-encumbered codecs and drivers. In essence, we can choose to lose a short term battle in order to help win the long term war.
But we can’t be free software purists, and expect the Linux desktop to ever grow beyond the geek/power user niche.
We can preach about how open source is a better development method than closed source (it is).
We talk all we want about how much more secure and stable and efficient Linux is than Windows (it is on all three counts).
We wax poetic about how proprietary software is immoral and limits end users freedoms (generally speaking, unreasonable proprietary licenses that severely restrict end users “fair use” freedoms are highly immoral).
But at the end of the day, non tech or non power users simply want to watch their DVDs, play their on-line Flash games, and play their songs purchased from iTunes, all working out of the box without having to execute a multi-step process (often involving the command line), with the hand-holding of a local Linux geek.
So it’s either we compromise a teensy-weensy little tiny bit and ship a very small percentage of proprietary stuff (legally) in order to make non-tech users happy, or we consign ourselves to our niche desktop market, and be happy in our free software purism and outsider/minority status.
It’s really that plain and simple.
Linspire has made the “teensy-weensy compromise” choice, and is legally shipping the proprietary codecs and drivers. They’ve also opened CNR for other distros, so that they, too, can gain easy, legal access to those proprietary bits.
And, IMHO, that is the wise choice.
‘m glad there pure free software distros. I’m glad there is Richard Stallman going around singing the praises and virtues of free software.
But in order for broad, across the board change in the market to occur, Linux on the desktop has to, absolutely has to, gain market share. With market share comes power and influence, and ultimately the incentive for vendors or patent holders to open up their stuff.
In essence, shipping a teensy-weensy bit of proprietary stuff now means much more Free, open, and unencumbered stuff in the future.
The currently-closed-source driver/codec/binary blob provider is suddenly supposed to “get religion” and turn loose open source alternatives when the “critical mass” is reached BY ACCEPTING AND RUNNING the closed-source binary blobs? Yeah, right! Said provider will say: “You been fine with the closed source all this time, you been running it all along, ain’t no reason for ME to change. Don’t like it, bugger off!” You accept the closed-source, you acquiesce and become an aider and abetter.
oh come on now.
When we have market share we can force companies to do the *right* thing! ………..I have no idea how but that is what everyone says……….
Sure. Yea. Thats the ticket. And using the term *open source* somehow makes *free software* LESS confusing and very friendly to business. Yeaa…riiiight…
64bit will be the gateway to linux taking over the world too… tooo….. toooo frickin funny!
Something different that changes to become the same…..well it isn’t really different after that is it. So anyone who wants GNU+linux to change – justw ants to make it the same. How is that good?