Why Linspire Should Drop Linspire

(Column) - Do you see what is happening here? Whether or not Linspire understands what is going on, Canonical is prepping to pick-up where Linspire left off. It will be a new means of software distribution, but bundled in a much more widely used distribution of Linux.

For the Love of Humanity, Let It Go. In light of an upcoming interview I'm doing with Linspire's new CEO, I want to be as kind as possible: stop trying to be a distribution company. They could completely drop the hassles of promoting the Linspire OS by becoming "CNR, Inc." Linspire's CNR could become their exclusive focus and truly serve the Linux community with more choices, not another Microsoft supported distribution of Linux. After further consideration, continuing to support Freespire, while remaining unattached to it might work in the long-term, however. The distro, while not as popular as other distributions, does have its own market share, and thus far Linspire appears to be happy with this.

On the flip side of this, however, once Linspire finally releases restricted media codecs 'legally' (US Law) to American Ubuntu users via CNR, there will be little reason for American Linux OEMs to bother at all with Freespire. I'm not trying to be unfair, but it is only logical. Freespire's two saving graces are CNR and legal access to restricted media codecs. I used Linspire personally for over two years, so I'm not talking as some Linux fanatic looking to initiate a flame war. I'm being completely honest.

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