So today I was sent an article by Betanews that broke down its reasoning for telling its readers to NOT purchase Linspire 9.0 which is our newest release of Linspire. While I do appreciate Mr. Fagioli's opinions and highly respect him as a journalist there are some things he said that I feel need clarification. For those of you that missed the release here is a link to it.
https://www.linspirelinux.com/2020/08/linspire-90-released.html
In his article, he said that we use the 18.04 codebase and not the 20.04 codebase and that is true and why is that? Because 20.04 was not available when we started developing Linspire 9. We started the development cycle back in February 2020 for Linspire 9. That was well before 20.04 was released. Linspire is not for the hardiest of Linux nerds. Those who compile their own kernels or build their own distributions (we do have those utilities available for those who do though) but Linspire is a distribution for people who want a stable and secure desktop for which to use. Linspire is a distribution for the masses. People who want to turn on their computer and just have it work. We at Linspire are not on a race to the finish line where our users and customers are continuous beta testers. We want to make sure our customers and users will NOT wake up one day and find their systems unusable because of a faulty update (that makes our support team very grouchy)
Furthermore, is using a tried and true codebase that bad? Are you going to tell Red Hat's RHEL 8 customers not to purchase RHEL 8 because it uses the 4.18 kernel and an older version of the GNOME desktop? BTW that's even after their April update. I bet not. If customers and users are worried about kernel revisions, the 20.04 kernels are available for download onto a finished system in case you absolutely need them.
To decry Linspire 9 or our team for using a tried and tested base is kind of absurd. Look at our past record we ALWAYS introduce the newest LTS bases 8 months to a year after they are released because it allows development teams to work out any show-stopping bugs in their code. This is a practice that we have ALWAYS done. It's nothing new and it's not anything anyone on the team would apologize for.
Now in this article, he claims we have no compelling reasons to market Linspire 9.0. How about COMPLETE Microsoft Office compatibility, complete multimedia playback including DVD and Blu-Ray playback, 39 state governments have certified Linspire for use on their own Intranet and office environments and this includes our cloud and desktop editions.
Another point here is that Mr. Fagioli is quick to recommend Windows 10 to his readers because he doesn't like our pricing framework. A product that is known to be rife with bugs and as stated above one update can render their systems COMPLETELY unusable to the point they have to revert or reinstall an OLDER version just to be able to use their system. Give me a break.
The last point, Mr. Fagioli is quick to recommend Linux Mint which is fine. Its a good community-based system because it's free (Oh and he also posted a link to the donate link. Biased much?) you don't have to purchase it but is quick to leave out the fact and link to Freespire. Our free and FOSS release which can be downloaded and used on any system that any user wishes. You can download that here:
In closing, we at PC/OpenSystems LLC have been in business since 2008. We have been producing Linux and BSD distributions since 2008. Our company is not only built on trust but also based on building and distributing quality products and doing the right thing by our customers. Our job is not to make customers work for their computer but to make their computer work for them. For that reason, I am completely unapologetic.
If you wish to read his article. You may do so here.
