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Linspire CEO dispels Linspire Linux Myths

Posted by samzenpus on Fri Apr 07, 2006 05:03 PM
from the not-just-for-root-anymore dept.
Linux Business IT
An anonymous reader writes "Chances are that you think Linspire lets you run Windows applications, that you have to run it as root, and that it's really not quite a proper Linux. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. At LinuxWorld in Boston this week, CEO Kevin Carmony explained what Linspire Linux is, and isn't all about. Carmony said that people are still getting these things wrong. Yes, in the beginning, Linspire had the goal of letting Linux users run Windows applications with WINE, but it dropped that theme years ago. As for requiring you to run as root, that was, Carmony said, only the case with an early alpha release that was never put in the public's hands. As for not being a real Linux, that's nonsense, too."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Linspire Announces Freespire Distribution 223 comments
LinuxScribe writes "Is the world ready for another community Linux distro a là Fedora and openSUSE? We're about to find out, as Linspire used the Desktop Linux Summit to announce a community-driven version of Linspire, to be called Freespire. But here's the twist, Freespire will come in two flavors: a completely open source version and a version that includes all of the fully-licensed proprietary apps, drivers, and codecs in Linspire."
[+] Kevin Carmony Responds to Criticism 300 comments
sharkscott writes to tell us that LXer's Don Parris took a few minutes to get Kevin Carmony's response to the large amount of criticism he has been taking over offering non-free software in Linspire. From the article: "Essentially, Carmony's position is that, in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, in terms of convincing vendors to release libre codecs and drivers. In other words, the strategy doesn't seem to be working. Additionally, while some will be patient, most users would prefer to have something - anything - that works in the meanwhile."
[+] An Early Look at Freespire Linux 171 comments
An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com takes an early look at Freespire Linux in a recent article. Linspire will be releasing their first version of Freespire, the first community Linux distribution to include many third-party proprietary codecs, drivers, and software. From the article: 'While I still have my doubts about the long-term wisdom of using proprietary software and drivers with Linux, I must say that if you feel you need to use such programs, Freespire makes it much easier than any other Linux distribution. And, when is all said and done, that's really what Freespire is all about -- making Linux as easy as possible for users.'"
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Linspire CEO dispels Linspire Linux Myths 50 Comments More /

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  • Linspire does actually run as root... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gossi (731861) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:08PM (#15088224)
    ...By default. When you install Linspire, it sets you up as root by default. I know this because I supported it from Lindows 4 to Linspire Five-Oh. You have to go and manually add a user account, should you want one. That said, it is actually a lot more secure than people make out. There _is_ a lot of FUD about Linspire. For grannies and people who can't be bothered with technical things (including me, sometimes - I just want things that work) it's great.
    • When you install Linspire, it sets you up as root by default.

      Looks like a good opportunity for an Ambidextrous Linux/Windows Virus [slashdot.org]

      But who ever installs Linspire? Doesn't it come installed from the shop?

    • A virus that infects the user account can destroy everything that matters. It can email my private data to anybody.

      I'll be generous, and say it can't change $PATH or define an alias for su or sudo. :-) It certainly couldn't make a wrapper for xterm or install itself as an X input method. :-)

      What is protected? Oh, the OS itself. I got that from a CD-ROM. I don't even need a backup for that data. Heck, if it gets trashed, I'll use the opportunity to upgrade my OS.

      We don't have real security until users get th
        • Think of the situation where there's more than one person with an account on the machine. As it stands the worst a viral 'rm -rf /' (or whatever) can do is trash my files. My wife's files are safe. If I run that same code as root, I lose my files, the OS's files and all conjugal privileges!
        • Well, if you're running as root and get compromised, it might do more than just steal or delete your data. It might install spyware or a bot that infects / spams / whatevers other people, and continues to corrupt / steal your data going forward.

          There's a lot more danger to a virus than losing your personal data. There's other users of the same machine, and even for single-user machines, there's forward going infection, and danger to other netizens.

          Get a rootkit in place, and you might be unwittingly givin

      • "They really should work out a system like Apple is using, where the first user account is automatically in the wheel group and can sudo, but is otherwise a normal user account, with the root account disabled entirely."

        Several Linux distributions are set up that way, including Ubuntu and Mandriva (unless Mandriva has changed that in the last couple of years). But not Linspire, apparently. It would be a better idea for a distro that bases its marketing appeal on user-friendliness, wouldn't it?

  • Linspire doesn't equal linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reklusband (862215) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:10PM (#15088237)
    I don't think anybody ever thought it wasn't linux, just that it was a CRAPPY version of linux. I also don't think too many people thought about linspire in terms of OS, more in terms of questionable politics.

    • Re:Linspire doesn't equal linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tonymus (671219) on Friday April 07 2006, @06:54PM (#15088762)
      "I don't think anybody ever thought it wasn't linux, just that it was a CRAPPY version of linux."
      That's bullshit-ese for "they dare to charge for their product".

      I've been using Linspire for years; it's my third try at Linux (after Mandrake ver 7 and Lycoris Desktop L/X). It's stable, has lots of eye candy, runs KDE, and install and runs much Linux software with one click, thanks to Click 'N Run, the killer Linspire application. It supports many Internet file formats automatically, and lets me use my computer DVD player without becoming a pirate (per US laws).

      I understand the OS is a bit slow loading, and some OS'es may be a bit quicker in spots, but this doesn't bother me much at all. Linspire is MY choice for linux; YMMV.

      Really, these religous wars among distributions doesn't do Linux as a whole any good...

        • "The problem isn't that they charge for their product. The problem is that Linspire markets their product as a bait-and-switch scheme. You buy ubercheap PC, get it home, switch it on, and ...surprise... we'll give you some software as soon as you pay an extra $50. Any distro, pay or not, would be preferrable to Linspire. Linspire is a scam. For crying out loud....they try to sell a freakin virus scanner to their clueless users. They put the stupid thing right on the desktop panel to annoy them into paying

          • I agree that there's a lot of unnecessary ill-will that's subconsciously and reflexively generated whenever we Linux geeks hear that some software costs money. Although Linux is predicated on software freedom ("free" software), we are too accustomed to zero-cost software ("free" software).

            The quantity of quality zero-cost software is nothing short of astounding, for which I will always be grateful to the hacker community --but at the same time, it creates expectations that form a trap. We are used to leve
    • I'm an IT geek by dayy, running a 200+ system Linux shop, and *I* am interested in Linspire at home. At home, I just want to install an OS and have everything work. I mkean *everything*. It sucks when my wife wants to do something basic, and I have to go download a bunch of stuff and try to make it work with my current version of Linux.

      If you're not referring to the fact that they include some proprietary software, please explain. Otherwise just realize that Linux will never* get out of cult status in t
  • Aren't they getting a bit ahead of themselves trying to dispel 'common myths' about Linspire when the vast majority of people have no idea what it is, let alone whether its main goal is to run Windows applications?

  • Uh... okay (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07 2006, @05:12PM (#15088246)
    But here's the important thing. There's, like, ninety-six linux distributions. I already know that Ubuntu is friendly when you don't want to spend a lot of time configuring things, and Redhat is friendly to people in suits. But why the heck should I care about this one, Linspire? What, if anything, differentiates it from the other ninety-four linux distributions I don't personally have a use for at the present time? Because if there isn't a good answer to that question, it needs to go get back at the end of the line.

        • Installing programs is SUPER EASY! (Score:4, Informative)

          by ylikone (589264) on Friday April 07 2006, @07:35PM (#15088942) Homepage
          I just set grandma up with Linspire. I did the initial install and yes, it is easy but still not something I would let grandma do herself. I wouldn't let grandma install any OS by herself.

          The part where it REALLY is easy is software installation. They have a system called CNR (Click and Run) which costs $20/year, but it is well worth it. You get a icon on your desktop that you can click, then browse software categories. When you find something you like, just click the install button and voila, CNR downloads it, puts an entry in the Start menus and puts an icon on the desktop. No other distro that I know of does this with such ease.

  • Intersting statement from TFA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TubeSteak (669689) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:12PM (#15088247) Journal
    Linspire also doesn't rely on downloads, subscriptions, or box sales for its revenue. Instead, Linspire's bottom line relies upon two things. The first is sales of Linspire-equipped PCs.

    "I don't care about how many people download Linspire or buy our boxes in the stores. What I care about is how many people bought a computer with Linspire on it," [Linspire CEO] Carmony said.
    I'm not really sure what to make of this statement.

    It strikes me as somewhat... odd. Especially coming from a CEO.
    Maybe someone can put my vague feeling into words.

    • Re:Intersting statement from TFA (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheRealMindChild (743925) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:17PM (#15088281) Homepage Journal
      The reason BeOS failed (so they calim) was that microsoft strongarmed vendors to not sell machines with BeOS preinstalled (MS: If you sell machines with BeOS, you can't sell Windows machines anymore). Retail sales of an operating system of todays magnitude doesn't pay the bills. Not even close.

      • Re:Intersting statement from TFA (Score:5, Informative)

        by x2A (858210) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:29PM (#15088349)
        "(MS: If you sell machines with BeOS, you can't sell Windows machines anymore)"

        Well I think it was more like "If you only sell machines with Windows preinstalled, we'll give you a discount on the purchase price" ... so anyone trying to move away from selling all their machines with windows (either selling blank machines, or selling machines with another OS installed) was instantly less competative on their windows machines, locking them in :-/

        So yes in a way I guess it was like saying "you can't sell windows machines anymore", but more "we're gonna make it difficult to".

    • He was channeling Bill Gates.

    • Re:Intersting statement from TFA (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think what he's getting at is that most of the big money in OS sales comes from OEM deals rather than sales direct to customers. Microsoft make most of their sales via OEMs so why shouldn't Linspire try and do the same? Sounds like a winning formula to me.
    • Boxes as in boxed OS product, not box as in computer.

    • Re:Intersting statement from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by evil agent (918566) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:33PM (#15088370)
      Translation:

      Many people download Linspire
      Implies: geeks are using Linspire
      Conclusion: who cares, nothing new

      Many people buy computers with Linspire on them
      Implies: regular, 'non-geek' people are using Linspire
      Conclusion: increase in Linux adoption

    • I'm not really sure what to make of this statement.

      Allow me to explain: Michael Roberts does business by drawing attention to himself. He makes various outlandish statements that he simply can't backup. (Remember when Lindows was going to run 90% of the Windows programs?) If you want to make something of his statements, interpret them as nothing more than pandering to the audience.

  • Re-tree (Score:5, Insightful)

    by x2A (858210) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:15PM (#15088264)
    Many complaints I hear about moving over to unix like systems is the filesystem hierarchy. I think for a really easy-for-noobs and for grabbing windows users, I'd like to see a patched distro where /dev, /proc, /sys etc are moved to (for example) /system. Put them all together and move them where the users knows they're not gonna need to go into.

    Could even have a chrooted dir with mount --binds to make a seperate namespace for unpatched/closed source apps.

    We really could do with tidying the root. Yes it breaks compatibility with unpatched software, but as it is breaks compatibility with users.

    (let the flaming commense)

    • I actually agree... the Linux/Unix file tree is confusing and gives the impression of being unorganized. I find it difficult to determine where things exist on my Linux machine as an advanced user, I can only imagine how it looks to a novice. A lot can be done to Linux to add usability for less advances users while keeping the options open for experts... I'd like to see even more strides made toward usability in future releases.

    • Re:Re-tree (Score:5, Informative)

      by maxx_730 (909644) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:26PM (#15088332)
      Already exists :D

      Check www.gobolinux.org

    • Re:Re-tree (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Eideewt (603267) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:33PM (#15088371)
      I would say that root is a place that users never need to go into. A user's home directory is the only part of the computer they ought to mess with. Ideally, a noob will never know about the directories above /home/yournamehere unless they decide they want to learn some stuff and muck around with the guts of their system. The current way puts the user's zone in its own litte branch of the file system, which is pretty much the same as hiding the rest of the system in a subdirectory, except instead of knowing not to enter the dreaded system folder, users don't even have to be aware of it (and they can't rm -rf * it). A user should never ever be messing around in root. That's why a normally configured system doesn't even let them do more that look at it. It's true that most home users will at some point need to be their own admin as well, but in that case, it doesn't much matter that the system files are right there, since the admin is working with them anyway.

    • Re:Re-tree (Score:5, Informative)

      by GlassHeart (579618) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:48PM (#15088459) Journal
      Many complaints I hear about moving over to unix like systems is the filesystem hierarchy. I think for a really easy-for-noobs and for grabbing windows users, I'd like to see a patched distro where /dev, /proc, /sys etc are moved to (for example) /system.

      Check out MacOS X sometime. If you use the Finder (the GUI), you see your drives (technically, a partition on a drive, but they are displayed with a drive icon). Clicking on the main one shows you four directories: Applications, Library, System, and Users. However, if you bring up the terminal and cd to the root directory, you see all the other Unixy directories, along with the four named above.

      Thus, newbies who don't bring up the terminal never see the Unix directories, people who want to can still do it, and software don't have to be patched.

  • Seems to me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter (3800) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:16PM (#15088276) Journal
    My impression is that Lindows/Linspire has always been viewed as outside the world of "real Linux" because:

    1) None of the ultra-user-friendly commercial distros have ever really caught on with the Linux enthusiast community.

    2) Linspire's business plan has alwasy been based on charging users for installing sofware, something that is free everywhere else in the Linux world.

    3) As #2 illustrates, there's always been something sleazy about Linspire. They appeared, making ludicrous claims about Windows compatability, stepping on Microsoft's trademark while prominently advertising rebadged KDE apps as their own, and they've been like that ever since. They may not do anything wrong but it's always ... off.

    • Re:Seems to me... (Score:5, Funny)

      by tktk (540564) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:25PM (#15088327)
      3) As #2 illustrates, there's always been something sleazy about Linspire. They appeared, making ludicrous claims about Windows compatability, stepping on Microsoft's trademark while prominently advertising rebadged KDE apps as their own, and they've been like that ever since. They may not do anything wrong but it's always ... off.

      So...you're saying it's the used-car saleman of the linux world?

      • Re:Seems to me... (Score:5, Informative)

        by One Louder (595430) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:55PM (#15088494)
        Actually, Microsoft didn't win - when it was clear from some of the judge's rulings that they were about to lose the "Windows" trademark in the United States on the basis of genericness, they decided to buy themselves out of the litigation they initiated by paying Lindows/Linspire $20 million.

        Technically it was a settlement, but it's rare that the plaintiff pays off the defendant in order to get out of a case.

        • decided to buy themselves out of the litigation they initiated by paying Lindows/Linspire $20 million.

          I didn't know that. I am off now to make up my own "Windows" trademark. I can feel retirement coming on.

          • They got preliminary injunctions in some countries (in some case without Lindows even being notified in advance of the hearing), but did not prevail in any actual trial in any country. It is quite likely they would have won the cases in at least some of them, but they would have been hollow victories if they lost in the US and other English-speaking countries. It was clearly worth $20 million to them to not find out.
          • That's because the fact that Lindows was using the Windows name was much clearer in the languages of those countries. They have their own words for application windows and none of them are "windows". But Windows the OS was still called Windows, and Lindows was also called Lindows. It would be like someone here starting a company and calling it "Reddish Hat".

  • Gnu/Linux for some people (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jc87 (882219) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:23PM (#15088315)
    I have read in the past some of this guy posts at Ubuntu forums (yes he sometimes open/reply threads there) and let me say he raises some good questions in several areas, in general i would say he manages to perfectly justify making a distro for dumb/proprietary human beings and recognizing Linspire is not a perfect distro ,neither one destined to every single person out there.

    Kudos for him at least for being modest and realistic.

    Off course i will never use Linspire , Ubuntu plus a extra repos to the sources.list works fine for me.

  • Secret shake (Score:5, Funny)

    by basneder (591273) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:26PM (#15088334)
    "Some people seem to think that Linux is a secret club, where you have to pay your dues before you can learn the secret handshake and run it."

    Dude, dont even mention the Secret Shake! It's supposed to be a secret.

  • consumer reports... (Score:3, Informative)

    by wpegden (931091) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:27PM (#15088341)
    didn't like lindows at all... they reviewed the Walmart Lindows pcs. If you have a CR subscription (or know someone who does) it's a good article to read from the standpoint of understanding what still stands in the way of mainstream acceptance of these distros.

  • Carmony is great (Score:5, Interesting)

    by caffeination (947825) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:39PM (#15088395)
    Seriously, Carmony really seems like a decent guy. Listen to him [lugradio.org], you'll see what I mean. The Slashdot smart asses usually crap all over Linspire's quality, security, morality, business model, and so on and so on, but give the guy a chance, he's not all bad.

    • Seriously, Carmony really seems like a decent guy.

      Yeah, he probably is, just keep him away from the keyboard.

      My first job out of college (before I'd graduated, really) was working for a small Point-of-Sale software company that Carmony founded. I spent nearly two years there working on a POS system that he had written. What an unbelievable mess. After I'd been in the code for a couple of weeks, the engineering dept. manager mentioned to me that Carmony had hacked the whole thing in a few months of a

      • Re:Carmony is great (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kevin Carmony (673400) on Friday April 07 2006, @10:40PM (#15089448) Homepage
        LOL! Ah, a blast from my programming past (a very short-lived past!). But...let's put this in perspective though...that code was written almost 25 years ago!!! There weren't even hard drives when I hacked that code. It was put together on the very original IBM PC with 64K of memory and floppy drives. So, yes, duh, of course it was written in Basic, about the only thing you could hack with on those original PC's. My degree is in Business, and the only formal training I ever had was DP 101 in college. I've never professed to be a coder. But, that code that I hacked was used by 25% of all video rental stores to check customers in and out in its day. I turned it into a very substantial business, which I later sold for a great deal, and that business is still around today, 20 plus years later! How many of you can say that? =) Kevin Carmony

  • Long Overdue (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drDugan (219551) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:53PM (#15088482) Homepage
    After reading TFA and reading about CNR, all I can say is... great. I had written off Linspire when I first read about it - the wine stuff that I knew was impossible and buggy... etc. But the philosophy is a good one: bring Linnux under the hood on a polished, housewife/housewide audience - not just the hackers.

    I wish him all the best. Now I'll get back to trying to my dkpg-reconfigure and apt-get'ing the latest Ruby Gem from unstable while not upgrading my Standord C libs.

  • The reality of Linspire (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bob Loblaw (545027) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:57PM (#15088508)
    In reality, no OS has achieved the status of so simple yet so useful that grandma/sister/computer-novice can use without assistance.

    I have some experience being the family IT support guy and got so sick of cleaning our viruses, spyware and other junk from my sister's computer that I bough her a computer with Linspire 4 on it thinking that it was the easiest Linux for her to adapt to. In the end, I can't say that it was any better or worse than any other distro. The Click-N-Run concept is a good one but it is was very poorly executed. It certainly *did* encourage users to run as root and was a PITA to set up as a multi-user system.

    However, when things went wrong (as they do with any OS/Distro/computerized thing), I found that Linspire did things differently enough that it was very difficult to troubleshoot the problem, find help online and you ended up fighting with a system that tried to second guess you with automated scripts ... sort of like dealing with Windows sometimes.

    In the end I switched her to another distro (Ubuntu) and now have just as many problems but I don't have to pay a subscription fee and, if I don't know the answer myself, I can find answers online extremely quickly since it doesn't deviate too far from upstream.

    So all the power to Linspire in achieving that "easy enough for a novice to use" status but since we're not there yet, I would stick with a more maintainable distro like Ubuntu or Fedora Core.
      • There are a few factors at play here ... and none of them are retardation :]

        1) scope of usage:
        If your 2 yr old is writing letters, emailing, printing, transferring pictures from their camera, burning music CDs, balancing their bank account, tracking their stocks, etc. then I will be impressed by your superior genes. However, many people have no problems doing the simple things like finding a game and playing it. Yet with complexity comes difficulty.

        2) familiarity
        If someone has learned a particular way of do

  • good stuff (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aurelito (566884) on Friday April 07 2006, @05:59PM (#15088516)
    People on Slashdot often speak of Linux as if it's a finite resource: that if Linspire takes off, it must mean distributions like Slackware or Debian or Gentoo are losing users. That's not true at all. Linspire's target market is a niche previously untapped (not even by Ubuntu or short-lived Caldera) of people who just want a workstation with a web browser, a word processor, a calculator and maybe solitaire. All the power to to Linspire for doing this. There's room in the Linux world for this. I think they're doing a useful thing, and if they come up with some good, non-crippling ideas that improve usability, perhaps other distros will benefit from their innovation one day too.

  • Funny how things change (Score:4, Informative)

    by stevey (64018) on Friday April 07 2006, @06:03PM (#15088548) Homepage

    It was only a short time ago that Michael Robertson, CEO of Linspire [slashdot.org] said "I defy anybody to tell me why is it more secure to not run as root. Nobody really has a good answer. They say 'oh, yeah, it is!', but it really isn't."

  • Running as Root (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kevin Carmony (673400) on Friday April 07 2006, @08:01PM (#15089024) Homepage
    The very first sneak preview of Linspire didn't have ANY way to add users, but we never released that commercially. That first sneak preview didn't have a lot of things in it! Not sure it even printed. =)

    What Linspire does is during the install it has you first set up your Admin Password (root) and THEN takes you to a screen where you can add users, right during the install's install Wizard.

    Kevin Carmony
    CEO & President, Linspire, Inc.

  • For the record... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kevin Carmony (673400) on Friday April 07 2006, @08:18PM (#15089079) Homepage
    For the record... I didn't set out to "set the record straight about Linspire myths." (That was just the fancy spin this reporter put on his story. =) I simply gave an address at LinuxWorld called "Desktop Linux Adoption by Mainstream Consumers." During my address I made mention to a few of the things that consumers DEMAND which Linspire provides, which then create problems for some in the Linux community. For example, we support DVD, MP3, Windows Media, Real Audio, QuickTime, Java, Flash, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, etc. We do this because most consumers won't touch Linux without these things (heck, I wouldn't!) Most have iPods and other MP3 players and want their computer to work with them. They have DVD's and want their computer to play them. Linspire pleads guilty to supporting all of this out of the box, and for that, we're not always understood. If I really wanted to dispel myths about Linspire, I'd have started right here on Slashdot (I read more misinformation here than anywhere about all sorts of topics, not just Linspire =). Kevin Carmony CEO & President, Linspire, Inc.

    • "It isn't about Linux but it is about making money, simple. However, unlike other companies this one only takes and doesn't give anything in return."

      Go to http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_license.p hp#ope [linspire.com], and scroll down to "Open Source Support, Projects & Initiatives", dumbass.

      It's brain-dead morons like this guy spreading bald-faced lies that makes it hard for any commercial linux distribution to succeed...

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