Today what we are going to be tackling are some frequently asked questions that me and our support team get. So we have compiled a list of them and here we go.
ADVISORY: SOME COARSE LANGUAGE IS USED
Why another distribution? Why not just add on to one of the many distributions out there?
When we first started out we did that and it was less than am optimal solution. Having our own distribution means we control the upgrade cycle, we can test and release on our own time table without getting that dreaded 3 am call that something broke during distro X upgrade and "we need it fixed now." That's one of the reasons why we created, market and deploy our own distribution.
Why did you shift the focus to cloud only apps in the distribution?
Michael Robertson, like him or hate him, had that idea back in 2005. He knew that cloud based apps were going to be a big deal. The problem Michael had in terms of web apps is that he was 15 years ahead of his time. There were other problems too but that's not for me to speak on. What we do is we listen to our customers, we survey our customers on the good and the bad and one thing our customers have told us is that when they received the distribution they stripped a lot of the applications out. The default office suite for most of our customers is Google Docs. They don't use Thunderbird they use the Gmail web interface. They use Spotify and YouTube TV. So we decided there was no time like the present to go ahead and make the leap and for the few that still use traditional desktop applications they can install whatever they like.
Why Google and Microsoft web apps?
Very simple, customers asked for it. That's what they are using. Now lets go ahead and dispel a little rumor out there WE GET ZERO DOLLARS FROM MICROSOFT OR GOOGLE. They do not pay us in any way nor do we transmit any customer data to them and we do not share sales data to them. The only transmission to Microsoft that is made is to check the repositories for updates to PowerShell and .NET Core; both of which are open source technologies. More importantly we hide NOTHING!!! Customers know what they are getting when they purchase Linspire or Xandros and they know when they sign into Google or Microsoft's web apps and whats being transmitted. For customers who DO NOT want to use Google or Microsoft services we do offer a release that has none of it and users can decide what services they wish to use. If people get a hold of us and say "Hey I don't want to use Microsoft or Googles services." OK, we have them covered. Once again, not unreasonable about it and we do have many of our customers and users that ask for Googles services and that's why we include them in Linspire.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz who writes for Techrights says you are in bed with Microsoft and has called for a boycott of Linspire and Xandros..
Number 1, once again we have ZERO agreements with Microsoft. They don't pay us. We have not signed any kind of agreement with Microsoft nor does Microsoft have any access to customer data. Linspire Inc., Xandros and Bridgeways agreements with Microsoft have ALL expired. The ONLY time Microsoft see's data from the customer is when he/she/they uses their services of their own volition and they know what they are doing. Same goes for Google. It is also worth pointing out PC/OpenSystems LLC is a member of the OIN (Open Invention Network) Number 2, I don't care what he thinks because his is not a customer of mine and he is more interested in fighting a battle that he is over a decade too late in fighting. I haven't seen much of a boycott BTW. I haven't read any of his "articles" or rants although yes I have heard about them. The thing is if you were to try and take an FSF "blessed" distribution and market it and distribute it it would fail and it would fail BADLY. To be successful today you need to either sell hardware OR come preinstalled on hardware. The only time we sell boxed software is to the few people who are interested in it because they read some random news article on it or someone talked shit and they want to see what the fuss is about, those who want to re-purpose old hardware and repeat customers. People who have bought hardware from us. Now, people don't care about codecs and they don't care about free software. They want to turn the computer on and it just work. They want to be able to go to Walmart and Staples buy a network adapter, printer or whatever and it just work and be supported. They don't care what companies open source their drivers and 3/4 of them don't know what a codec is. But this guy has beef with me? Why? I'm a small fish in the Linux pond, You want to fight the good fight go talk to Google about ChromeOS. But wait, oh that's right he doesn't have an issue with ChromeOS even though they ship proprietary software and do indeed have active agreements with Microsoft. But he wants to criticize us for including OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE because he doesn't like where it came from. Yeah, whatever and I'm sure he will come up with some kind of cheeky response I wont read or care about.
What are the main differences between you and Linspire Inc. considering there doesn't seem to be many differences between you and Michael Robertson?
Oh there are indeed many differences between myself and Michael Robertson. There is so much more to business than just building great products and making money. You have to build something beyond yourself and the product. You have to build trust. Our customers trust us. Over 14 years in business we have a 98% retention rate of customers. Some of them have been with us since 2007. Money is secondary. Whether I had one customer or NONE I care about our product and yes I know I'm overbearing when it comes to the work I do and the course of my company. I have no issues expressing my dissatisfaction at someones lack of effort. Michael Robertson had a lot of problems. Some were self inflicted. Some may even be mental. Some stem from his leadership style which comes from that many decades old management technique which entails the whole "Do as I say and don't ask any fucking questions" Don't take that as me digging on Michael. I'm not. I wish him the best of luck when it comes to his businesses. Two things my people will tell you is I shoot them straight and I'm not unnecessarily cruel. Customer and employee both, I don't hold back. If we are in trouble they need to know. We almost died, figuratively, during the Pandemic and we are still struggling to come back from it. That's the problem when 80% of your business involves face to face contact with customers. Yes some of the guys had to go part time or be laid off. We were finally recently able to bring some of them back and ALL of them when I reached out came back. That's what it takes. To be a good leader you have to be half hard ass and half compassionate, don't lie to them and shoot your people straight. If they like you, respect you and trust you they will walk across a field of broken glass barefoot for you; if you are a douchebag who lies, cheats and try to relegate them to the hamster wheel the overwhelming response will be "Fuck that guy!!"
How many people work on Linspire and Freespire? What do you work on?
Collectively 15 people work on Linspire and Freespire. I barely touch Freespire. We have another guy who is the lead developer on Freespire and he has his own team of people. I mostly work on Linspire, Xandros and on the hardware side of things. We have regular meetings where we talk about whats going on. I do get asked a lot about the social media aspects of it. I don't run the twitter feeds so if you have a question send it to me personally. If you DM the Twitter accounts it will most likely be ignored. Just send it to my e-mail or DM my personal Twitter account.
Do you think desktop Linux is dead?
I hope not <laughs> I really don't. When you look at things like Roku's, Chromebooks, Android tablets, Fire Tablets, Firesticks and WebOS smart TV's all of those devices use Linux at the heart. The "Year of the Linux desktop" arrived in 2015; it just wasn't in the form we thought it was going to be. Now, if you are asking desktop distributions I think those hopes are pretty much done. Even with us, all of our customers don't just run Xandros or Linspire. They run Chromebooks, Macs, Windows or a few other Linux distributions in combination with Linspire or Xandros. Linux distributors and companies missed several opportunities. When we had the switch from Windows ME to Windows XP we had a chance to breakthrough and we even had a few user friendly distributions then. Corel Linux is the first one that comes to mind. Didn't happen. XP to Vista, plenty of opportunities because Vista was delayed. Didn't happen. Windows 7 to Windows 10. Didn't happen. Windows 10 to Windows 11. Will not happen. I tend to look at "desktop" Linux like I did "desktop" UNIX. Companies and users will use a variety of the different flavors and distributions. You will have some companies like System76 who pump out some bad ass hardware configurations that are Linux only and you will see some mainstream PC makers who will use Linux as a secondary OS but will we see a specific distribution pop up and wrestle Microsoft and Apple to the ground? Is Mint, Ubuntu, Freespire, Fedora, OpenSUSE or MXLinux going to put those guys in a John Cena type armbar until we start hearing bones snap? No. But if you look at reality and put the overzealous arguments aside what you have are good companies like Amazon, Google and Roku who came up with damn good services, damn good interfaces and damn good hardware and have been successful. Really; consumer Linux has been very successful and I think consumer services and devices like that are where you are going to see continued success.
Whats the oldest system you still see in deployment?
Windows NT 3.51. We have one client who runs their inventory software on it and the damn thing works like a charm.
Why don't you call it GNU/Linux?
Because its not necessary. The GNU Project did not invent Linux. Linus Torvalds did. The GNU Project has many opportunities to release their own distro and call it GNU/Linux. When I buy a car or in my case, TRUCK, and I add my bed liner, cold air intake, aftermarket radiators, oil filters and other customization its not then called ROBERTO/Ford is it? No. I use Dewalt drills and screwdrivers and other tools when I build a bookshelf. Does it become a DEWALT/Ikea at that point? No. Its a fucking ridiculous argument in my opinion but people can call it what they like. I don't care and I'm sure no one cares about my opinion on it anyway. (Except for the person that asked that is)
Are you guys still moving to Debian?
We are going to let our users decide what we move to. We will have a build based on ChromiumOS one on Debian and one on Ubuntu 22.04 and the users can decide which one we go to. But yes, so far Debian seems to be the most popular choice but I have to tell ya. I have used the ChromiumOS based release and I like that one. I like it A LOT.
Why do you guys charge so much for Linspire?
Actually we are priced pretty competitively with the other competitors especially with our download edition. If you look at SUSE, Red Hat and Oracle we match up pretty nicely. With ChromeOS who is our main competitor in the cloud OS stage, we are EXTREMELY competitive.
Why should I pay for Linux when I can get it for free?
You aren't paying us for Linux you are paying for the different support options and/or install media. Secondly, we are in the Linux market but we are not targeting the Linux community per say. Our target is the consumer. People who have been on Mac, ChromeOS and Windows and want a choice. They don't want to upgrade because of some stupid TPM requirement and/or some halfassed container technology that is in beta FOREVER and since Apple is moving to the M1 chip, people will need an OS for their old x86 Macs and not have to spend all day on forums trying to figure the shit out. We are under no illusion that the distro hoppers or the free or die crowd are going to open their wallets. Its not going to happen. We are far more interested in the people who want more or less the same experience they get on Windows, MacOS and ChromeOS and want to buy it. But for those of you that do like to distro hop; stop on by.
Will you ever stop Linspire?
Not planning to. If something happened such as health issues I would consider it. if I got an offer from a company that I felt could take the products to the next level, I would consider it. 2 companies have offered to buy us out but we are not for sale.
So that's it guys. We will be releasing Xandros OpenDesktop MR1 and Xandros OpenServer 2022 mid January and Linspire 11 December 27th.
Thanks again.
