Linspire was formally known as Lindows, but sold its name to Microsoft
for an estimated $24 million as a settlement over court action lost by
Microsoft.
Linspire is a full-featured operating system (based on Debian
and
Ubuntu),
founded with the aim of creating a Linux based operating
system capable of running Windows based software . Linspire features
exclusive Click-N-Run (CNR)
technology that makes installing software on Linspire fast and easy --
simply find the software you want in the Click-N-Run (CNR) Warehouse,
then
click and run it! CNR is based on Debian's APT package
management
software. There are over 20,000 applications to be
installed via CNR.
Linspire has faced considerable criticism in the past from the Linux
communtiy, with some people citing that it contains too much
proprietary software, and, in particular, Richard Stallman (founder of
the GNU Project) lamenting on the lack of freedom in the
distro.
However, Linspire Inc has made donations to many GPL projects, and
sponsors Freespire, "... a community-involved, Linux-based operating
system that combines the best that free, open source software has to
offer (community involved, freely distributed, open source code, etc.),
but also provides users the choice of including proprietary
codecs, drivers and applications as they see fit."
