Wednesday, February 10, 2021

The future of our products

 As you guys have seen we launched Linspire 10 on Feb 8, 2021.  The acceptance of that product has been overwhelming.  Much more overwhelming than we have experienced on any of our past product launches.  Which we do appreciate.  But Linspire 10 and 11 by extension which is what we are putting together for testing right now is in no means a culmination of our efforts.  After Linspire 11 there will be many changes to the distribution some of which some will like and as always some will hate.  If we could make the ONE distribution for everyone so that we could see wide acceptance we would do it.

Linspire 11 will mark the last release of Linspire based on Ubuntu.  With Linspire 12 we will be returning to Debian Stable.  That is one of the reasons we have moved to GNOME because we want that vanilla GNOME experience because in the market that we are in which is the commercial Linux desktop market in the US, GNOME is the desktop of choice.  Some people will love it, some people will hate it but see above.  We are also making the return to Debian Stable because there are some things in Ubuntu that we don't like.  We feel that Debian Stable is malleable enough that we can make it our own and stay within the parameters of free software as defined by the FSF for Freespire.  I have always said since day one almost 13 years ago that with our products I want to be able to give back to the community and NO ONE can say we haven't had a version of the product that wasn't free to download, redistribute and spin any which way the users wanted.  

In a couple of weeks we will be releasing Freespire 7.2 which will also be based on GNOME and Linspire 10.0.1 which will fix some issues that users had with the RTM release of Linspire and that happens with any software release.  People have issues.  Some of them are small and annoying and others are large and meandering  

Starting in April, we will be following the same practice we do with Xandros.  There will no longer be a digital download option.  Everyone will get a PHYSICAL copy of the software.  If you are an international customer or just want a download to be able to use Linspire right away we will do that as for updated ISO's we will provide those through download as well.  That's how we deliver Xandros and customers like it.  Some will like it and some will hate it; see above.

As for Xandros; we are currently working on Xandros.  OpenDesktop 2021 is already in alpha.  Xandros OpenServer 2021 will continue to be free for download for anyone who wants to do self support of course there will be a supported option as well.  Xandros Cloud is going away and we will be introducing Xandros Core which will be like Cloud and we will build in the Chromebook support and people can still use it like Cloud.  They can continue to run it as a ChromeOS alternative or if they want to use it on a Point of Sale system they can; its a very flexible system.  If they want to run it on a single board or IoT system they can do that as well.

I'm very excited about the future of our product lines.  For those that want to troll or be insulting to myself, the company and our employees you will continue to be blocked and continue to be excluded from the conversation.  For those that want to offer valid feedback and who want to contribute to our continued success; Welcome.

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