1. Submitted by RRR, Sunday 27th November 2005

I have been using Linspire since 2002

and I know it runs much better than Micro SOFT'S

crummy os I refuse to call it windows how can they copyright a genric word.

My daughter had MS on her computer and she crashed it all the time and I had to fix it for her so I built her a computer and installed Lindows on it Linspire was called Lindows then.That was a couple of years ago she has not crashed it yet.

Try playing dvd's on SUSE 10.0 if you think it is as easy to install a DVD player as it is on Linspire. RRR

2. Submitted by Daniel, Monday 28th November 2005

Good review. I have toyed with the idea of playing with Linspire. As happy as I am with Kubuntu (Ubuntu's KDE flavor), I never got to Linspire. I would've been turned off by all the points you laid out in your review.

Thus, good job on your analysis. I won't even look at it. I spent far too many years on RedHat and am very glad to enjoy Debianesque stability with Kubuntu.

3. Submitted by Anonymous, Tuesday 29th November 2005

Linspire sponsors the development of NVU, but NVU is not a Linspire application.

Since individual applications have replaced the Mozilla Suite as the primary developement target NVU was created as an individual application to replace what was in Mozilla Suite just as Firefox and Thunderbird were, so it shouldn't seem too surprising if the application in part or as a whole continues to feel a bit like Composer.

4. Submitted by Betwixt, Tuesday 29th November 2005

I think the reviewer was unfair, perhaps because he objects to Linspire charging to stay in business, or because he is a techie who finds it provides inadequate challenge compared to many other distributions.

I have loaded Linspire 5 on 3 different computers without a problem, each time taking less than 20 mins to complete. Contrary to the review, a UK keyboard is included - look in Control Panel>Regional and Accessibility - although not British English which I believe is now available. Moreover, although the Administrator (root) account is set up by default, a panel appears giving reason to consider a user account and how to go about it. I did so satisfactorily.

In contrast to that I have not succeeded in getting SUSE, Mandrake and a couple of others to work for lack of Linux 'nuts and bolts' knowledge. They took considerably longer to install and confused with the large choice of alternatives, most of which were unrecognisable to the newcomer.

Linspire 5 does take longer to boot up than earlier versions, and loading an application similarly, but once up it does what is expected. Additionally, the charge for ClicknRun is very reasonable for the one click installing and updating facility, especially as the bugs will have been ironed out for you

If Linux is to make real headway on the desktop it needs to be familiar for the Windows user, be simple to install, use and update, and also have a comprehensive and friendly support system. Linspire scores on all those. It's now my main system.

5. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Tuesday 29th November 2005

In response to #4:

I agree that Linspire is simple to install, use and update, especially with CNR... but then, I also believe that other distributions are similarly easy, for example, Fedora Core 4. Although I wouldn't use Linspire if it were completely free, it would be a lot more enticing to me. As it stands, however, I don't think it is worth the extra cost over other distributions.

As for the keyboard... I (wrongly!) assumed the layout would be with the keyboard entry in Peripherals - my mistake!