It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others - De Montaigne
|
|
|
Xandros acquisition of Linspire may keep both outfits afloat
IT'S OFFICIAL, the Xandros Linux distribution best known for its use on Asus Eee PCs has acquired Linspire, another struggling Debian based Linux distribution that's noted only for changing its name from Lindows after it got sued by Microsoft. Microsoft thought Lindows sounded too much like Windows, which it might. In some places.
Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos and Linspire Chairman Michael Robertson issued a joint press release on Wednesday in which they both attempted to put upbeat spins on the deal.
Typaldos proclaimed: "Products like the ASUS Eee PC have demonstrated the huge potential market for Linux-based OEM netbook solutions, and CNR will help Xandros make these platforms easy to enhance and maintain, while providing on-demand delivery of a growing number of Linux applications, utilities, games, and content. Linspire's CNR technologies will speed up Xandros' expansion into the applications space and encourage the development of third party content critical for facilitating Linux adoption." So it's all good.
For his part, Robertson fairly enthused, "Xandros has emerged as a leader in the OEM, mobility, desktop and PC management and application business, so I'm excited to see the Linspire technology, including CNR, go to a worthy competitor that shares our vision. The Linux business is going through some healthy and necessary consolidation," he said, "which will give resulting companies greater assets and size to deliver on larger initiatives so Linux can touch more people. "
As though marketing a version of Linux that apes Windows - even to the point of having users run with root administrator privileges by default - and running it into the ground while it's ignored by both Windows and Linux users, then selling it out on the cheap, is somehow a win. Just part of needed Linux consolidation, right.
That Xandros is preloaded on Asus Eee PC netbooks is perhaps its only real support, and that might be the only reason this acquisition happened, instead of both of these unevenly integrated and struggling, third-tier wanna-be consumer Linux distributions simply failing.
Both Xandros and Linspire signed toxic patent protection pacts with Microsoft, but so far niether of them seems to have gained any discernable benefits from them. Merely the fact that they so eagerly jumped into bed with Microsoft has queered their pitches with Linux users and called the propriety of their handling of free, open source code into question.
There are several other consumer desktop-oriented Linux distributions available that are arguably better engineered, well integrated with end-user GUI toolsets, more mature and easy for casual Linux users to drive. Once a few of those become adapted for use on some ultramobile netbooks, Xandros and Linspire could both find themselves on life support. ยต
See Also
SDK
makes programming eeeasey peeeasey
INQUIRER
guide to free operating systems
Asus
EEE PC "breaks GPL" claim
Xandros
dance with Microsoft turns to a smooch
Microsoft's
overtures towards open source show just how scared it is
L'Inq
OS
News
Share this:
Share
That's one way you can view it. Both parties pretty much signed their own death warrants when it came to Microsoft's Patent Covenant. (aka: Patent Extortion Racket through fear...Remember Steve Ballmer's magic number? 235 possible patent infringements? Where are they? What are they?).

Xandros/Linspire are being largely ignored and disliked at the same time. That's a double whammy, as it means that very few people will actually use their products. So they have to imitate MS's OEM tactic with system builders.

It may get worse for Xandros, as there is word going around that ASUS engineers have started talking to Debian folks directly via mailinglists, etc. (something to do with setting up pretty infrastructure with EeePC line?).
From ?Netherlands, Xandros is ZOMFEAR Group & Very Poor. Xandros Doctor being enraged Clown that emails 40 page Flames Demanding entire contents be read or ?else. 
Its Lady Down block in Xandros, of course & BAD Attitude extends into "Their" O/S. 
Its small in size,too & therefore of Little Real Use. thank God they arn't Allowed into Normal O/s quality Market, We'd have 200 Children Climbing fence every Night.
drashek
Oh look, another person who seems to lose rational thought when there's a vague mention of Microsoft.

True, Xandros' strength is that they've got a very good link-up with Asus and their Eee range of low-cost computers. If they lose that, then they're probably toast.

It's a big "if" though.

A competing distro would have to take its place, and it would have to be better in the eyes of Asus (and, as such, in the eye of the non-techy Linux user), and I have no problems with the better distro winning.

Unfortunately distro politics start to get in the way - what about patents? What about MP3 support? The version of XMMS that came with Ubuntu 6.x was the Debian version, and that lacked MP3 support due to Debian's self-imposed rules.

What good is a music player without MP3 support in this day and age?

And don't get me started on the codecs required for mplayer...

And as for Eee Xandros aping Windows.... you haven't really used it, have you? The simple desktop is just a standard icon-driven menu system, the sort of which we've all seen over the past twenty years. The full desktop is KDE.

I'm not saying that Xandros is the best Linux distro out there, but the Eee version is bloody good.
My understanding is that Xandros teamed up with Viyya Technologies to create the most awesome and unique internet search experience. The search engine throws away the junk websites and concentrates on what the viewer is looking for, giving a competitive edge in the work, home, and entertainment environments. Instead of getting 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 responses to a search with 99.9999999999999999999999999999% irrelevance, you will get only what you are looking for, eliminating the need to look through useless websites and refining searches until you find what you are looking for hours or days later. Remember folks, something for free does not save you or your company money. The proper management of time is what saves money. Xandros and Viyya Technologies have the tools available to save you and your company time and money. And you can take that to the bank.