First up, thanks to Category 5 TV for their review and interview. I do appreciate it and it was a ton of fun. So major shout out to those guys
And next was a "first look" by Linux Unplugged. To be 100% honest, I didnt know who Chris Fisher was. I apologize for that Chris but I binge watched a couple of his episodes and his old show the Linux Action show and definitely a good show.
I have a thick skin about stuff, but they labeled Linspire the most "Expensive Linux Distro" and no, its not. Red Hat Developer workstation retails at $299.00 USD
https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-developer-workstation#?sku=RH3482727
But thats neither here nor there. It just proves my point from my previous post. But shout out to Chris Fisher as well. I appreciate the coverage.
Anyone who wants an interview contact me or press@pc-opensystems.com and place a request.
Now, because of those shows I have had several more e-mails. Some snarky and insulting which I wont cover here I'll let you guys use your imagination onto some more curious ones and I'll add these to the FAQ later but I just want to touch on some points here.
Q) Why should I buy Linspire for $79.00 USD when Windows is $129.00?
Are you kidding me? I looked at it and thought is this a serious question. But have you looked at the privacy and security issues with Windows? Look, there is no genuine advantage and I dont track what you are doing. The license for Linspire is provided ON YOUR HONOR. I am not a babysitter and while I could add some sort of authentication to Linspire we dont. Now why should you give us a chance? We offer a secure, easy to use and supported general desktop Linux distribution. Short of running Microsoft Office and Photoshop there is very little that you can do on a Windows or Mac PC that you cant do on Linspire. To be fair, yes you can download Mint or Ubuntu and do the same things but only after taking some considerable time to set it up yourself and aside from posting to forums or Google searching some solutions you are basically on your own. We do help you find solutions, we do assist in helping customers setting up applications that they want. Whether they purchase from us or someone else. Now, yes customers want to be able to purchase hardware and not necessarily from us and have the OS installed. We are in talks about bundling with PC hardware outside of our own and that just takes a lot of time and back and forth.
Q) Why are you basing Linspire on Ubuntu? Is it laziness?
No. I look at contingencies. Im human. What happens if I get hit by a bus? or I perish in a fiery car crash? While Im sure that would be a fitting end that would bring joy to those who despise me but things happen. Companies get acquired and sometimes they go bankrupt. We looked at what happened with Linspire and Xandros. We also looked at what happened to Parsix. When we were building Linspire we built several prototypes. We used CentOS, we used OpenSUSE, we used Fedora, we used Debian and yes we even looked at Android. We decided on Ubuntu because A) we were familiar with it and B) Because they have the highest level of support. We wanted to make sure that if anything happened users would still get updates and they wouldnt have to rush out and pick SOMETHING. They can take their time. Now, we could have recompiled everything and set up our own repositories such as what we are doing with a new repository (more on that later) but mostly its set up this way for contingency issues.
Q) What about Mate, GNOME or KDE?
What about them? Look all are fine desktops. I like Mate, I like GNOME and I like KDE. But we wanted a desktop that was light on its feet, easy to administer and one that would ease the task of retraining and thats why we chose XFCE and standardized on the XFCE desktop. We will not be changing it and its the standard desktop on all our releases. One of the things about Windows and macOS is that they rarely change and its consistent across all devices desktops and even servers.
Q) Will we ever acquire the linspire.com domain?
Currently no. The current owners want way to much money for them
In closing, I cant reitirate enough that Linspire and Freespire are directed towards two different segments. Linspire is directed towards the commercial market and towards businesses. Freespire is directed more towards the community. There are a lot of differences in both and if you become a customer, thank you. If you are a Freespire user we appreciate you as well.
Any more questions or comments about Linspire will be answered on the homepage and FAQ
http://www.linspirelinux.com or http://www.pc-opensystems.com/p/freespireos.html
