Linspire 5-O released!

My blog has been pretty quiet lately since I became a insider. Due to the nature of what I was doing I really could not talk about much that was being done. Now I can write about my experiences as a "Insider" and Linspire's latest version which was named Marlin and is now version 5.0.


I like my laptop and I've had hell getting it to work properly with many Linux distros. Each one seemed to have it's own problems. Linspire 5.0 does everything I want it to. My laptop is a 2003 Model HP Pavilion ZE4430US if you care to look up it's specs.

ACPI works great and I get better battery life out of the machine than under Windows XP. Software suspend also works flawlessly along with out of the box support for my 54g wifi card built in. My web browser and email buttons fire up the correct applications and softkeys to mute, dim the monitor, and volume control all work as they are supposed to. I have not been happier with a OS ever.

Linspire ships with the 2.6.10 kernel, KDE 3.3 and Openoffice Org 1.3 with plans to include point updates to KDE 3.4 and OOO 2.0 in the near future to be expected Linspire is definately worth the money.

If you're looking to get your feet wet and jump into the Linux world definately get a copy of Linspire 5.0 from their website (Stores will have the new boxes by April) http://www.linspire.com/buylinspire

I believe the CNR edition is the best deal since you get a discount on a years worth of CNR service which allows you to install programs with one click. If you're familiar with Linux and package management and even if you're not understand that it's a mess. Many problems arise from bad packages, slow downloads from mirrors, and in some cases the software requires a bunch of cryptic dependencies to be installed that most users can not understand.

CNR takes all these problems away with a fast repository that is always up. With more than 2000 packages available and growing each one tested and modified to work with Linspire and maintain the overall look of the OS. Linspire also in some cases makes improvements to the software to increase it's functionality. With CNR you get a ton of benefits and none of the headache of installing software on Linux. Subscriptions to CNR also entitle users to free upgrades to the operating system so when Linspire 5.1 5.2 5.3 or 6.0 were to come out while maintaining a subscription to CNR you get all of that for free. What better deal could you get.