|  Just to try out linspire, i downloaded the promotional copy of Linspire 4.5, then burned the ISO to a CD using Nero Burner. After restarting with the CD in the drive, about 10 seconds later the Linspire screen comes up. There are 2 choices available: Installation, and Diagnostics. I choose installation, and a progress bar below the linspire logo becomes active. About 5 min. later, the Linspire Setup comes up. It asks you if you want it to take over the entire harddrive, or you can choose custom to install it to a partition. I choose custom since i had already setup a partition just for use with Linspire. I click next, and it starts installing. It shows pictures telling things about Linspire in a box on the right of the screen. About 10 - 15 min. later, its done installing and says i can restart. Using Linspire: After i rebooted my pc, i saw the linspire screen again. This time the choices were: Linspire, Diagnostics, Rescan, and Windows XP. I choose Linspire obviously. It shows another loading bar, and about 2 min. later the Linspire KDE boot screen comes up. After that, i see the desktop, and the Audio Assisted Tutorial comes up. It tells you how to use Linspire, like setting up internet, and your network etc. I already know how to use Linux, so i skip all that. First thing i do on any linux distro is set up the users, and put my music on it from my Windows XP partition. Apon opening the Linspire KDE menu, i was very dissapointed. |
| They had all the basic programs a new user would need, but the menus were very scarce. I find XMMS in Sound and Multimedia, so i start it up. I go to copy my music from my Windows XP directory, and it won't let me into it! It reads the Windows XP partition, but unlike every other distro i've tried, it doesn't even let me view the contents of it. Windows XP defaults to NTFS file system, so in Linux that means you can read and copy the files form the partition, but you can't edit any of the files on it. But in Linspire, i couldn't even read it, which really dissapointed me. | I didn't get the trial of CNR, which is the one-click software installer and downloader for Linspire, because i didn't want to give my creditcard to them, but CNR would of probably made my whole experiance better, because it adds so many more programs, but for the user who doesn't want to pay a monthly fee for CNR, they will be vastly dissapointed with Linspire if they've used other Linux OS'. I personally recommend buying Mandrake 10, SuSE 9.1 Personal, or Lycoris for the linux newcomer other than Linspire, for the lack of software in Linspire. All the software in Linspire works great, and loads quickly on the other hand. Office software has Open Office 1.1.0, and Text editors like Kate. It also has utilities like a calculator, and the SIP phone software, which is pretty neat too, for the fact that its free to use it. The Boot screen for Linspire auto-defaults to Linspire, and there was no setting in the configuration to have it default to Windows XP in my case, but using the console i was able to change that, but to the linux newcomer, they wouldn't have a clue how to do this, which is a real pain if you want to be able to boot into windows as default. Summary: Linspire is great for the new user if they are willing to pay the monthly US $ 4.95 fee for it. Linspire makes the setup easy and fast, and the menus are very easy to navigate and find the software. CNR also is extremely easy and user friendly to use once i finally decided to get the trial for it. The only problems i saw is the lack of software included, lack of programs for editing advanced settings, and there not being any setting at all to change the boot screen settings. The thing that really bothered me was that it couldn't read my windows partition, when every other Linux OS i've used could. I would give Linspire, in my opinion, a 3.5 out of 5. All-in-all, Linspire is great for somebody who will pay the CNR fee and just wants Linux for the basics, and to get away form the costly Windows alternative. |
