Linspire inspired to launch Freespire

LINUX FIRM Linspire, this week announced plans for a free version of its operating system, called Freespire.

Kevin Carmony, Linspire president and CEO, unveiled the Freespire project in his keynote address to the 4th Annual Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego.

Carmony said Freespire would be a "community driven and developed" project, that would allow users the choice to download a version that is 100 percent open-source or one that includes proprietary software.

The first beta release of the operating system to be made available for download in August.

Linspire reckons Linux has met with "some resistance" from computer users, because of its lack of native support for some hardware, file types and multi media formats. Freespire will offer proprietary drivers and software as a choice, and give desktop Linux users the option of "out-of-the-box" legal support for MP3, DVD, Windows Media, QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, Adobe Acrobat Reader, third-party fonts, and what have you.

"The user should be free to decide what software they want to install on their systems, be that proprietary or open source," Carmony said. µ

L'INQ
www.freespire.org