Mark Shuttleworth & Kevin Carmony(Linspire CEO)

[TravisNewman]

Wow, a star has visited out forums

I've had some reservations about Linspire in the past, but I've always loved the ease of use aspect for new users to Linux. Once I looked past what I was hung up on and saw the bigger picture I realized why you were doing things the way you were.

So thank you Kevin for everything you've done for everyone here, whether they know about you or not.

[fozza21]

In principal, I think that a cooperation between various distros has to be welcomed, since I think that there are already so many good projects out there and so many ideas alive but that the linux community can bunch power to challenge the big.

but there's a but: why shouldn't offer ubuntu a nifty, well-supported and up-to-date distro as well? I know there is a problem with the licensing of mp3, swf, real and java, but to be honest, which desktop-pc can nowaday run without these services?

None, definitely none. If Linux wants to escape from geeky island and conquer the continent, we have to get over this problems - but without giving up the principle of not asking for any fee...

And yet another point:
Women are still that underrepresentated within the linux community. Do we really want to change this to bring linux to another level of computing or do we want to stick to the old patriotic pathos?

[TravisNewman]

fozza21-- under 3rd party projects here, there's a subforum for Ubuntu Women. We're trying to change the way people see women in the linux community, but initially in THIS community. We have a lot of women here-- more than in any other linux distro community I've seen-- but things still need to change.

[Kvark]

but there's a but: why shouldn't offer ubuntu a nifty, well-supported and up-to-date distro as well? I know there is a problem with the licensing of mp3, swf, real and java, but to be honest, which desktop-pc can nowaday run without these services?

None, definitely none. If Linux wants to escape from geeky island and conquer the continent, we have to get over this problems - but without giving up the principle of not asking for any fee...

Ubuntu is a nifty, well-supported and up-to-date distro.

As for non-free things. Install them yourself, for most things it's just to mark a checkbox in synaptic, a piece of cake. But if that is too hard then you always got linspire.

Btw, windows definately does not come with everything out of the box, and downloading+installing stuff on windows is more work then marking a checkbox.
(Talking about after you install windows yourself, if dell does it for you then they might take care of some of the extra stuff while they're at it, i dunno)

[sonny]

Ubuntu is a nifty, well-supported and up-to-date distro.

As for non-free things. Install them yourself, for most things it's just to mark a checkbox in synaptic, a piece of cake. But if that is too hard then you always got linspire.

Btw, windows definately does not come with everything out of the box, and downloading+installing stuff on windows is more work then marking a checkbox.
(Talking about after you install windows yourself, if dell does it for you then they might take care of some of the extra stuff while they're at it, i dunno)

I don't think the check-box in synaptics is the problem, I think the real roblem is the names. We certanly have to respect the name the author gave to his/her program, but some names are confusing for newcomers. Don't get me wrong, but why don't put ins synaptic: java plugin for web browser (or something like that) instead of jre-5.1-bla-bla no newbie would understand this. I know what are you going to say: "they have to read the description", well the truth is that people don't like reading descriptions, they like screenshots or easy-to-remember names, that tells them in a few words wat they do, perhaps a "mask" name would do, and a more precise description, short and exactly what newcomers want to hear, example:
Name: "Java Plugin for Web Browser" (instead of jre5-bla-bla-etc)
Description: "Web browser plugin required for some web content, such as games, databases, etc. (instead of etc, some more entries)"

[Kevin Carmony]

Welcome to our forum

Thank you.

Will linspire be ubuntu based ?

We baseline from Debian and then, much like Ubuntu, add our special herbs and spices. We do, however, try to maintain stability with Debian's pool. In other words, CNR (click and run) users can safely pull from different CNR warehouses (stable, Insiders, "Thrillseekers," etc.) but we can also pull packages in directly from Debian without breaking our warehouses. This allows Linspire users to have the latest and greatest, but still have a nice volume of core packages.

We think it's a good thing to have a common core, and even though Debian doesn't move as quickly as some would like, we do think it makes for a good core baseline from which to expand beyond.

I don't understand. I thought Michael whats-his-name was CEO of linspire? I still get regular emails from him and they have the linspire logo. What affiliation does he have with Linspire now?

Michael is our Chairman and is involved with several different companies. You can read more about this here.

I've had some reservations about Linspire in the past, but I've always loved the ease of use aspect for new users to Linux. Once I looked past what I was hung up on and saw the bigger picture I realized why you were doing things the way you were.

Yes, Linspire has certainly been misunderstood at times. Because our target market is really MS Windows users (95% of the world!) who are new to Linux, we tend to have a layer of simplicity that more advanced Linux users don't need. Also, we have been so bloody busy these past few years, with our head buried down, working hard on our products and services, we didn't have a lot of time to communicate outside our own forums. Our users know us very well (like Ubuntu, we have a very active forum and community, including thousands of posts by myself in our forums. Now, however, that we think we've finally gotten the product at a pretty good place, we're doing a lot better job of communicating to non-Linspire users what we're all about.

So thank you Kevin for everything you've done for everyone here, whether they know about you or not.

Thanks for noticing! We do a lot for open source, but we're not ones to go around bragging about it, but sometimes it's good to let people know, so they don't misunderstand us. We contribute a lot of code, money, and perhaps most important, awareness about Linux to the 99% of the world who haven't tried it yet.

If Linux wants to escape from geeky island and conquer the continent, we have to get over this problems - but without giving up the principle of not asking for any fee...

Yes, Mark and I spoke about this as well. That's why we need choices. Ubuntu does great work and supports 100% the core belief of open source being 1) 100% open source and 2) free. Linspire, however, does license mp3, dvd, windows media, flash, java, quicktime, Bitstream fonts, etc. This gives users a choice. If they want 100% free and non-proprietary, they have Debian, Ubuntu, etc. If they don't mind paying a bit and including some proprietary bits (at least until these parts can be replaced by open source alternatives), then Linspire is there for them. Choice is a good thing! They key is to work together, so ALL choices get better.

Women are still that underrepresentated within the linux community. Do we really want to change this to bring linux to another level of computing or do we want to stick to the old patriotic pathos?

I'm proud to say that the head of Linspire's OS team is a woman, Theresa Brennan, and she's great! CNR is also headed up by a super bright woman, Sharon Holmes. We also have several top-notch female engineers on our team. The faces of Linspire. I agree, it's great to see a broader group of people embracing Linux!

As for non-free things. Install them yourself, for most things it's just to mark a checkbox in synaptic, a piece of cake. But if that is too hard then you always got linspire.

Exactly! Ubuntu is great for those who have a bit of technical knowledge and can install the missing bits. Linspire is a good choice for those who want it all just there without having to install anything. (Unlike MS Windows, we pretty much include EVERYTHING. Supported file types out of the box with Linspire.)

We certanly have to respect the name the author gave to his/her program, but some names are confusing for newcomers.

Yes, a lot of new terms certainly confuses new Linux users coming from MS Win land. GIMP, GNOME, KDE, Kopete, Mozilla, XINE, K3b, etc. make people think they have to learn a foreign language to use Linux. Linspire renames things to generic terms and then uses "Powered by" to give credit and let users know where the source of the project lives. For example, our IM client is called "Instant Messenger powered by GAIM" and "Internet Suite powered by Mozilla," and so on.

Thanks for the friendly welcome. Again, keep up the great work!

Kevin

[TravisNewman]

I don't think the check-box in synaptics is the problem, I think the real roblem is the names. We certanly have to respect the name the author gave to his/her program, but some names are confusing for newcomers. Don't get me wrong, but why don't put ins synaptic: java plugin for web browser (or something like that) instead of jre-5.1-bla-bla no newbie would understand this. I know what are you going to say: "they have to read the description", well the truth is that people don't like reading descriptions, they like screenshots or easy-to-remember names, that tells them in a few words wat they do, perhaps a "mask" name would do, and a more precise description, short and exactly what newcomers want to hear, example:
Name: "Java Plugin for Web Browser" (instead of jre5-bla-bla-etc)
Description: "Web browser plugin required for some web content, such as games, databases, etc. (instead of etc, some more entries)"

A bit off topic, but I think this is one point that some new users get stuck on coming from Windows. In Windows, you have printer properties, sound properties, network places, media player, etc. In Linux, to do those same tasks, you have CUPS, ALSA, SAMBA/NFS, XMMS/Amarok/etc, respectively. It's understandable WHY these things aren't named "printer properties" etc, but it can be confusing. I wonder if there's anything in the works to try and unify it for the user more.

[Kevin Carmony]

A bit off topic, but I think this is one point that some new users get stuck on coming from Windows. In Windows, you have printer properties, sound properties, network places, media player, etc. In Linux, to do those same tasks, you have CUPS, ALSA, SAMBA/NFS, XMMS/Amarok/etc, respectively. It's understandable WHY these things aren't named "printer properties" etc, but it can be confusing. I wonder if there's anything in the works to try and unify it for the user more.

This is how Linspire does it now, and we always give our patches back, but they're not usually accepted because many of the projects find our changes TOO "Windows like." We've gotten a very good build process in place that lets us normalize the core Linux with all our unique patches (over 200 to Moz/Firefox alone for example).

Perhaps in time more and more projects will see the value in this and start coming together. It's about finding that nice balance between being able to innovate, but still feeling familiar enough to the rest of the world that we don't scare them away. We have a lot of hard-core Linux users as well, using Linspire, so hopefully we're trying to hit that balance (power of Linux AND ease of use).

Kevin

[TravisNewman]

That's awesome. I'd imagine it would be pretty hard to get overall adoption of something like that, but doing it in at least one distribution is great.

[hqlinux]

As a long time Linspire user (since Oct. 2002) and Insider, I would like to take the opportunity to say that you all would feel welcome in the Linspire forums. We discuss most of the Linux distros out there, giving our personal reviews, and even advice on how to install the various flavors of Linux. Someone here in this thread said that we HATE Ubuntu. I have NEVER seen this expressed in our forums, EVER. Quite the contrary, actually. There have been several posts saying how good it is. You may think....well, he might have missed it. I say it's certainly possible, but I have over 6300 posts in the Linspire forums, so I don't usually miss much

As a matter of fact, I haven't personally tried Ubuntu. I prefer KDE, instead of Gnome. Just a personal preference...not trying to start any flame wars, here . Maybe I will try your KDE version soon. I have a question though. Is it true that root is locked out of your distros??? If so, what do you have to do....terminal....su ???

Harvey

PS How do you turn on the Smilies in the signature, or is this even possible here???