14 DAY TRIAL // On 8th February, Linspire Inc. and Canonical Ltd. announced a technology partnership for the integration of their Linux distributions into one another. Long story short, this new partnership will consequently produce changes in Ubuntu, Linspire and Freespire Linux distributions as follows:
- Linspire and Freespire will be based on Ubuntu distro, rather than Debian as it was until now. - Ubuntu distibution will integrate the popular CNR package installer from Linspire.
Starting with the next release of Ubuntu (7.04, a.k.a. Feisty Fawn) in April this year, users of this free operating system will gain access to Linspire's CNR technology, and this announcement confirms that Ubuntu will also be the first Linux system to use the newly opened CNR. Ubuntu users will have the same repository and installation options as before, but they will gain access to a range of commercial consumer applications, games and multimedia support, through the Linispire's CNR technology.
"This partnership will enable us to provide commercial software products and services such as legally licensed DVD and media players to users who want them." noted Steve George, Director of Support and Services for Canonical.
"Ubuntu is the most successful community-based Linux project to date. They have done a fantastic job with the development community and creating tools for utilizing their technology. It made a tremendous amount of sense to partner with Canonical and begin basing our desktop Linux offerings on Ubuntu." - said Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire.
Linspire is known to be unique among Linux distributions because it offers out-of-the-box support for a broader range of software, hardware and multimedia file types than the Debian or Ubuntu baseline alone, and it will continue to combine proprietary drivers, codecs, applications and other unique features that are important to its users and that make the Linspire desktop Linux easy to use and a turn-key solution for OEMs.
"This technology partnership goes a long way in advancing and unifying the Linux desktop. Linux faces many challenges as it competes in a world historically dominated by Microsoft Windows, so there is plenty of work to go around and we're pleased to be able to offer differentiation and choice, while reducing fragmentation." - said Kevin Carmony.
About Canonical and Ubuntu
Canonical Ltd is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution and a global organization headquartered in Europe. Canonical is committed to the distribution, development and support of open source software products and communities. Commercial support for Ubuntu is available through Canonical's Global Support Services team and partners. Launched for the first time in October 2004, Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions, with millions of users around the world and it will always be free to download, use and distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the center of a global open source software ecosystem.
About Linspire and Freespire
The Linspire, Inc. company was founded in 2001 with one goal in mind, to bring choice into the operating system market. His first and main product, the Linspire operating system, is an affordable, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system distributed primarily pre-installed on PCs for home, school, and business users. Linspire pioneered the CNR Technology, a technology which allows Linspire users to access thousands of software programs, with just one mouse click. Freespire Linux distribution was born recently from the Linspire distro, with one goal in mind: to be a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines the best that free, open source software have to offer. With Freespire, the choice is yours as to what software is installed on your computer, with no limitations or restrictions placed on that choice. How you choose to maximize the performance of your computer is entirely up to you.