Roberto's Ramblings

Is Desktop Linux a dead idea

2025-02-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

With the end-of-life for Windows 10 approaching in October many folks are bringing up the idea of the Linux desktop again. With that comes the arguments. Which one to use? You have the free ones, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin, Siduction or any multitude of others. Do you use one of the ones that have corporate backing; Red Hat, Oracle Linux, Linspire or SUSE, Chrome OS Flex.

Do you know which OS the general computing public will choose? Windows 11. 95% of Windows 10 users will simply buy a new computer or bite the bullet and upgrade their Windows 11 compatible PC's to Windows 11. The 3% will simply stay on Windows 10. I know many people who continue to use Windows 7 and dont plan to upgrade. So what about the other 2%?

The major hinderance to Linux adoption is the lack of preinstalled PC's and no company willing to challenge Microsoft. Community distributions dont have the capital or reach to be a real challenge. Red Hat and Oracle dont care about the desktop, Canonical does but you dont hear much from them. SUSE and PC/OpenSystems pretty much we see more adoption on Enterprise desktops and school systems. Sure we have our consumer users but our Enterprise customers far outnumber our consumer users.

I have seen many articles written lately where these people are having fever dreams about all 60% of Windows 10 users will come to Linux and be happy. Cupcakes and unicorns all around. Anyone can install Linux, we just have to teach them to download an ISO, teach them how to create a bootable USB key and fiddle with their BIOS and then try to explain to them why Office and other shit they use doesnt work. Also, which desktop? Gnome, KDE or XFCE.

As for the other 2%. They will buy Chromebooks or use Chrome OS Flex. Google has done a great job of making a stupid, so easy to use that anyone can use it OS. Chrome OS IS the Linux desktop and its hard to beat.

As for Windows 11, would I knock people for using it? No, technically and operationally speaking its the best Windows OS since NT 3.1 IMO. Its gorgeous, dumbed down easy to use and adequate for what people need. Will I call people stupid for using Chrome OS? No. There is plenty to like about it over traditional Linux distributions and I personally call it a win because they will be using what I love and thats Linux.

Why do we honor the Lindows lifetime agreement from Linspire Inc.

2023-08-05T20:27:00.006-07:00

One of the questions people have asked me; Why do you continue to honor Lindows lifetime members even though Linspire Inc is no longer around? I dont do it because I am some self righteous prick who wants to be seen as a good guy. The reason I do it is because those people who spent that money years ago got fucked over. There is no better way to put it.

Its not a drama thing for me to cause any kind of uproar but Linspire Inc in its final days screwed people over. They were selling the lifetime membership thing THE SAME DAY they made the announcement that they were selling to Bridgeways. So what we do is I said look, if you were a Lindows lifetime member and I dont have the record if you give me the actual receipt I will honor it. In the 7 years we have been making and marketing Linspire we have continued honoring the Lindows lifetime agreements. Some have been screaming at me "Thats not fair!!!!" The way I see it it is fair. Whats not fair is for me to say "Ok you have to have bought lifetime between this year and that year. The weather had to be sunny and 75 or cloudy and 68." You do it for one you do it for EVERYONE or dont do it at all. I will continue to do it. If you contact us if we cant find it in the database and you have the actual receipt we will honor it for as long as we make Linspire.

This year we will also continue to offer Linspire for free on December 25. Christmas day the download is made available free of charge for 24 hours. We have done that every year since we started making Linspire. We will continue to do so for as long as we make it.

Ubuntu: The good, The Bad and The Ugly

2023-07-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

So word has gotten around that Canonical is making a move to make everything a SNAP package for Ubuntu 24.04. With the new "SNAP store" it places SNAP's first and .deb packages as second class. So why are they doing it? and what happens to classic Ubuntu?

To understand SNAPS we have to look at Ubuntu and think about what Ubuntu has done right. Canonical basically made a stable version of Debian testing. They made Debian user friendly for the novices. Easy to use and FREE. Ubuntu reigned supreme as the Linux desktop of choice for millions of people. Ubuntu has long pushed the limit of the Linux desktop for DECADES. Unity Desktop, despite the small number of people who hated it, was well received. We loved it our customers not so much. Every downstream Ubuntu spin that we have produced always had a Unity spin. Mostly for me but for those that liked Unity as well. But Ubuntu, for as much good as they do, have started to place themselves outside of the open source community. Canonical in its push to be different have alienated many, not all, but many in the OSS community. Why is that? Because Canonical has abandoned their core user base. What their user base wants is a stable Debian testing. There were many cheers when Ubuntu abandoned Unity and Mir. Personally, I think dumping Unity was a mistake. They should have just replaced Mir with Wayland IMO. But the user base and the industry was hoping they would abandon SNAPS later for Flatpack or AppImage which are arguably community standards. But Canonical has stayed the course. Ask yourselves, why does every downstream distribution of Ubuntu does not ship with SNAP's as the default?

SNAPS are proprietary. While SNAPD is open source the backend to SNAP's are not. Its centralized so there is that question of trust. SNAP's do have a broader range of support for non-desktop apps where Flatpak only focuses on desktop apps. Before this turns into a SNAP vs Flatpak argument. Why is Ubuntu doing this? To make money of course. Ubuntu is not a vanity project for Mark Shuttleworth. Its a business. Now, while I catch a lot of flack for that he doesnt. But thats OK mad respect for Mark because he makes no bones that he is doing this for profit. Thats why you get ad-bombed when you do a "sudo apt update" on a vanilla Ubuntu system about ESM packages and Ubuntu Advantage. But thats also where the problem comes in. I could see Ubuntu having two versions, classic Ubuntu: Stable Debian testing that Ubuntu users know and love. Ubuntu Pro/XL/Enterprise Linux WHATEVER that you attach ESM and Ubuntu Advantage to. Oracle does this. You download Oracle Linux for free then you add your support contract and you dont get ad-bombed every time you go to update the system. We know what Ubuntu Advantage is. We dont need to be reminded constantly.

So another variable is Ubuntu Core. The immutable OS that one of Canonicals employee's blogged about. They dont write blog posts like that to relay thoughts or to play out different scenarios. Its to gauge how many people are paying attention and how much shit is going to hit the fan when they do it. So its coming. It'll start with SNAP only, then it will evolve into an immutable core and then Ubuntu is done. Immutable OS's are good in the cases of phones, tablets, and systems where the user does very little modifications to the hardware they are running. With an open platform like Ubuntu (and others) its stupid unless of course you want to maintain thousands of images that cover all possible hardware configurations. Google does immutable because they control the hardware. Apple can do immutable because they control the hardware. Ubuntu doesnt. Unless of course Canonical enters into agreements with hardware vendors and decide on a specific presets of configurations. The only problem with that is the open market and you run into the same problem that Google has with ChromeOS Flex where the experience is great on some systems and not so great on others. Then users get frustrated, call you names online and on Youtube videos and then go buy a Windows PC or a Chromebook because they are going to say "Fuck Linux" and call it "garbage" At that point if you are going to run a ChromeOS like system just buy a Chromebook.

Canonical needs to work with the open source community more closely and use the community developed standards rather then try to pave their own way. While it may be rewarding to their balance sheets it comes at a sacrifice of their reputation within the Linux and open source communities. To Canonical; you gave it a go. You did a great job but SNAP is DEAD. If you cant get mainstream adoption on SNAP in the YEARS you have been developing this tech its dead. Work with the community on Flatpak and AppImage and stop fragmenting an already fragmented community and operating system.

When is it time to quit

2023-06-29T20:39:00.004-07:00

Some people have asked me when/if I will ever stop developing Linspire/Freespire/Xandros. My answer has always been, when there is no need for me to do it. As I approach 50 the curtain call is inevitable. Time is that inevitable thing that we have no control over. So is that time now? No. Of course not.

There are very few companies aside from us and Canonical who focus on the commercial desktop space. Most enterprise Linux companies focus on servers. As much as people hate when I say this, ChromeOS and Android are NOT Linux distributions. They use the Linux kernel. That is it. The rest of it is proprietary to Google. We compete with them for customers and yes Google has been very successful. We do sell a TON of Chromebooks, Chromeboxes and Chromebases to our Education and some enterprise customers but the installed base for Linspire is nothing to cackle at.

But, back to when it is time for Linspire to hang up its hat. That time will come when something comes along that makes us irrelevant in the commercial desktop space. From the demand for our products and from our customers we are nowhere near that point. The closest would be ChromeOS/ChromeOS Flex. We had 20 of our customers pilot ChromeOS Flex. We helped them with setup and testing. How many dropped Linspire and adopted ChromeOS Flex? 3 of them. We still help them. We provide them with support and we test new and old systems they want to deploy to make sure Flex runs well and there are no issues.

Three customers, is nowhere near the threshold that would make me fold up shop and become a Google house. Nowhere close. Now as time goes on and Flex gets better. The Linux support gets better and if/when Android apps come to it THEN we will reevaluate our position. The approach of PWA's with offline capabilities is becoming very attractive to businesses and to our industry. Even Microsoft's apps are becoming PWA's and I think the ChromeOS model is one that will succeed in the near future. The security model, the method of digesting apps, and the infrastructure is far more powerful to users and consumers than what most people give them credit for. Hell, there have been some murmurs that Windows 12 will ship in S mode by default. You will only be able to install apps that have been vetted by Microsoft from their app store and with those being "sandboxed" and not being able to touch the core system will take Windows to the next level in terms of security. Of course they will have to find some way to make a "developer mode" available but that is on them to figure that out IF they go that route.

As for Linspire. Businesses and consumers want that traditional desktop experience. Businesses want to control their data whether that is local storage or creating a private cloud. Not a lot of businesses and especially Government agencies want to trust their data to public clouds. So as long as there is a need for the traditional desktop experience for businesses, education, government agencies and consumers. Linspire will continue to exist. So when the need for a traditional commercial desktop system ceases to exist that is when it's time to quit.

Olympus Has Fallen: Turmoil at IBM and Red Hat

2023-06-28T13:21:00.002-07:00

So with the news that Red Hat Linux will stop releasing the source code for RHEL publicly and now customers will have to purchase that access and well; they cant publicly share that code. IBM is one of those companies who dont mind profiting off of open source technologies. They just dont understand it. They dont get community (TeamOS/2). Look at their business partnerships that always seem to fall apart. Ask Commodore (Well get a Ouija Board and ask Commodore) ask Microsoft and ask Apple. Failure, after failure after failure.

Well first lets dispose with the doom and gloom that everyone seems to be pissed off and spreading. You can still share the Fedora source code and since most of RHEL is based on Fedora community distributions such as AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux and Rocky Linux will not be going away. So while this is not a problem as it is more of an annoyance.

Can IBM do this legally? Yes. The GPL and subsequent licenses state you have to make the source code available. It does not say you have to provide it for free. The only thing I see that may be an issue is that IBM dba Red Hat says you cannot make that source code available public. That is the one condition where I personally feel they will run into some problems. But yes, it is legal but I think challenges could successfully be made in court about some of the stipulations but thats a wait and see what happens.

Red Hat themselves responded to much of this criticism in a blog post by Mike McGrath. Now, I dont know Mike and Im not criticizing Mike. Im sure his blog post was vetted and changed 50 times before it went public. But those statements were a bunch of BULLSHIT. So lets dissect these one at at time shall we.

We will always send our code upstream and abide by the open source licenses our products use, which includes the GPL..

This is true. No complaints here

I feel that much of the anger from our recent decision around the downstream sources comes from either those who do not want to pay for the time, effort and resources going into RHEL or those who want to repackage it for their own profit. This demand for RHEL code is disingenuous.

This is one I disagree with. No, these complaints are not just from rebuilders who want to rip you off or "take your hard work and profit from it" I actually didnt hear about this situation from the community or news. I heard about this from a CUSTOMER. who uses your SRPM's to add a driver that you guys dont include for a specific piece of hardware they use. WAKE UP CALL thats the WHOLE POINT OF OPEN SOURCE. Further in the statement he focuses on the rebuilders which shows me this is more about making money than it is about community. This companese translates to "This is the easiest and most efficient way to profit off of rebuilders." If you dont want to share your source or would much prefer to protect your product from the mean rebuilders who refuse to pay you, go use FreeBSD. FreeBSD is just as usable on the desktop, server and mainframe as Linux is these days and their license says you can refuse to share source code that you dont want to share. 50,000 distributions based on Debian and you dont see them complaining. The anger you see is that you are taking away something people are used to and USE and putting it behind a paywall. The only people who will be happy about this decision are Oracle and SUSE.

Simply rebuilding code, without adding value or changing it in any way, represents a real threat to open source companies everywhere. This is a real threat to open source, and one that has the potential to revert open source back into a hobbyist- and hackers-only activity.

That statement reminds me of Bill Gates open letter to hobbyists from the 70's. It was bullshit then, its bullshit now. In EVERYTHING you have the basic building blocks. People dont want to change the core system. Most rebuilders out there, myself included, we do add value.to rebuilds. We offer service and support at a much cheaper cost than you do. With our releases we control the update cycle and we take liability off of YOU guys. If something goes wrong. We take the blame. You dont see people who have issues with Linspire or Xandros go to Red Hat or Canonical. I fall on the sword for that. When people have issues with ChromeOS/ChromeOS Flex they dont go to Gentoo or Debian for that. They go to Google. Once again, companese that says "We dont want to share unless you pay us." BTW the statement he made here "We don’t want that and I know our community members, customers and partners don’t want that. Innovation happens in the upstream. Building on the shoulders of others is what open source is about. Let’s continue to drive innovation, support one another and keep moving forward." contradicts Red Hats stance on this situation .

Now, there are some in the community who say we cant trust company led distributions and we need to just focus on community distributions. We cant do that unfortunately. Community distributions dont have the infrastructure, man-power or finances to run on site service calls. They dont make the money to employ anyone. Nor do they have the liability insurance to do that. So like it or not company led distributions are a necessity and unless you are IBM, we LOVE our jobs and we love Linux. Driving community led distribution ONLY will just make the unemployment lines longer.

As for Red Hats future; I think this is the beginning of the end. While you have people at Red Hat themselves who get community and who get the benefits of open source IBM just DOESNT and they dont want to. Their mindset is from the 80's they see software as a product and something they can make money off of. They see it as ITS OURS. So if you are a company that relies on Red Hat technology my recommendation would be to start side-by-side deploying Oracle Linux as a backup plan. I have been in this industry since 1994. I have seen this movie. There will be no happy ending. Now, can Red Hat turn this around? They could but I dont think IBM will let them. I would be very surprised.

Product Development progress report for March 2022

2022-03-11T16:06:00.003-08:00

I have decided going forward I'm going to go ahead and give monthly progress reports on our progress on product development. This helps communicate whats going on and doesnt leave our customers and users in the dark.

Our work with Ubuntu 22.04

This has progressed quite a bit and Im pleased to announce that the new build of Freespire using the 22.04 codebase may drop earlier than expected. We are aiming for the first of the year 2023. We will still be Kubuntu based. Freespire when it comes to the new LTS code base will ALWAYS drop first. The reason for this is because Linspire is still used by a lot of our enterprise and education customers and they need time to test and make changes to any in-house apps they may have and really putting it through the paces. So yes, our 22.04 builds will be dropping earlier than whats on the roadmap.

Older builds

The Xandros 11 series starting in September 2022 will be moving to critical support only. Being as it is based on 16.04 LTS we have updated as much as we can and to save the company time, money and resources we have decided to move it to critical support meaning there will be no monthly ISO refreshes and we will patch only critical issues and paid for patches going forward. EOL is still October of 2024 so yes we will be ending support at that time.

Linspire

Linspire 11.5 will still be released March 14, 2022. There have been MANY changes to this system. This includes not only KDE, but several kernel improvements and security fixes. We just built the final ISO today and it has been uploaded. We have included the minimal install feature that mainstream Ubuntu offers for people who want to deploy specialized desktop systems. Linspire does remain our number 1 best seller even for Enterprise customers and Education customers. Sales have been down since the start of the pandemic but we are starting to see a creep upwards and a pick up although nowhere near our sales numbers that we had in 2019 and early 2020.

PC/OS

PC/OS Desktop 20.04.4 and Server 20.04.4 have just been updated and to say sales have picked up recently and I think the introduction of free downloads has helped quite a bit. All the PC/OS builds have moved over to KDE and Server contains KDE and DWM.

Server is one that we are continuing to improve on and customer adoption has seriously grown. Some of the changes coming in the new release are DWM is now the default desktop. We do still include KDE for a more friendlier desktop but customers have relayed to us that for server work they like DWM more, so after you install the system on first boot DWM is the default desktop environment. Some customers have also asked us to put back in Live testing. The more recent releases we had removed live testing and put in install only. But they told us they run this on older systems and desktops and the #1 complaint was that they were going through the install and on first boot it would fail. By allowing you to test through the live environment for those use cases many of these issues will be worked out. Ubiquity matches the desktop installer and is not the custom Ubiquity that we used for Server although that will be changing. Other changes include updated server kernel, clonezilla, timeshift and better headless support.

PC/OS EOL will be December 2027

Freespire

Freespire 8.2 was released a couple of weeks ago and downloads have been extraordinary. We are approaching 7 digit downloads for Freespire and feedback from the community has been AWESOME. Freespire 8.5 will drop in June and 9 will drop on Halloween day. Freesire 10 as I said will be earlier than we anticipated but wont drop in 2022. Today we have updated Freespire 8.2 with all the security updates up to March 11, 2022 and thats available today at https://www.freespire.net

So there you go guys, and as I stated I will have the progress report for April about the same time.

Thanks all

Turmoil at Elementary OS

2022-03-10T13:47:00.009-08:00

This morning one of my developers shot me a message on Facebook and asked me if I heard whats happening at Elementary OS. He gave me a brief rundown and I went and saw what Bryan had to say about it. As everyone knows, if you want a full rundown of anything, go to Lunduke. I will say this is sad. It is sad because I went through the same thing in 2009.

I started PC/OpenSystems LLC with a friend. Someone whom I trusted and someone who I knew would always have my back or so I thought. Warren was an intricate part of the process. I saw the change halfway through 2008 and we finally came to a head in 2009 and it was an ugly "breakup" to the point he was trying to lure our developers, at the time we only had 3 other people, and was trying to lure them away to work with him on his new project he was starting which was making a Darwin distribution. They ended up being more loyal to me than they were to him so instead of leaving they told me what was going on. So I started working on separating him from PC/OpenSystems. For me it wasnt hard. Everything was in my name because I have the better credit. Loans, properties and other business related stuff. We sat down and talked and decided the best thing to do for him was walk away. He said to me "This thing is a failure, you are wasting your time. Im not going down on this sinking ship with you." BUT he wanted to maintain ownership and royalty rights. I said no. I felt like he was trying to bank on the future of what he considered a "failing company" So I told him, "Go fuck yourself. NO!!" He told me "Go fuck yourself and die" But overall through mediation from other people we agreed to part on a gentleman's handshake and a large sum of cash, my mistake, and never spoke to him after that until 2015. In 2013 we turned a profit. In 2015 profits went up and he turns around and sues me for royalty rights. We go to court and he lost. In 2021 he died from COVID. When I heard about the death, because his wife was still friends with my wife, I felt sad. Because I always thought we would have time to make up and mend that friendship.

I know where Danielle is coming from. I had the same feelings when I perceived someone as a friend was trying to screw me over. That's a natural response when you have love and passion for something and someone tries to take it or try to enter you into an agreement that seems lopsided. From my experiences with Warren I can see where Cassidy is coming from, believe it or not, and Cassidy reminds me a lot of Warren. Cassidy, it seems, is looking at this through a practical lens and fear. Fear that what he spent a good amount of time on, is in jeopardy and that boulder is coming down the hill and everything may be going away. BUT he wants to remain a presence just in case Danielle manages to avoid the boulder or minimizes the fallout somehow. Danielle is looking at this as I did through the lens of passion and love. It is what she does, it is what she is good at and she is willing to call the house bet. When fear and passion collide; a middle ground is extremely HARD to come by. I may be wrong. It may just be greed but Im calling it from my knowledge and what I know.

COVID was extremely hard on everyone. We almost lost the company. PC/OpenSystems is nowhere near 100% of what we were before the pandemic. We are still struggling. So I get where Danielle is coming from. Sales are down EVERYWHERE. It does suck big time.

I do hope they work it out. elementaryOS is a great distro and the world is a better place with it.

Should we stop recommending Ubuntu

2022-03-09T00:44:00.005-08:00

Linux Experiment, Nick, put up a video today on why he no longer recommends Ubuntu to users.

Now, that video makes the same mistake that many other Linux YouTubers make. They emphasize the wrong shit.

First thing he talked about was the desktop. How Ubuntu stays a version or two behind the current release of GNOME. Thats OK to bitch about but in reality. No one cares. I have converted DOZEN's of people to the Linux desktop. Whether Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME or Linspire 11 with KDE and not a SINGLE person came to me and said thats GNOME or thats KDE. It's either I dont like it or I like it. They dont even KNOW what GNOME or KDE is. They dont know they are using it. For Windows users KDE seems to produce the better result and with Mac users GNOME hits the sweet spot. But I never had someone say to me, "Oh I dont like that because its not GNOME 41 or 42" or "I sure do hate thats not KDE 5.24" it just never happens.

Second thing, he talks about Snap vs Flatpak. Snaps are slow, Snaps take up a lot of disk space and Snaps dont follow system theming. Blah Blah Blah Blah. Once again, users who have NEVER used Linux before DO NOT CARE I dont like Snap because of the security issues so I tend to lean more towards Flatpak. Most people want to run web apps anyway more than anything these days so for the browser I tend to install either Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge which produce web properties with a more desktop integrated look and feel. Overall though I do agree Ubuntu should get rid of Snap and move to Flatpak but I dont see that happening anytime soon.

He also goes on to name quite a few fine community distributions which is great but lets get to the bread and butter about this post. Linux does not have a distribution problem. Linux has a community problem.

The problem is this. They LOVE to preach to the choir. Now all his criticisms are valid criticisms. The only problem is they are ONLY valid to the hobbyists and enthusiasts that already use Linux. The normal consumer user doesnt care about that stuff. As long as it is stable, doesnt crash and doesnt eat 80% of their ram thats what they care about. They want to hit the button and the computer cuts on. They want to click on the browser icon and their internet browser launches. Thats it. They dont care about mismatched libraries, they dont care that the application has a dark menu and the rest of the chrome is light (although that does need to be fixed) the consumer user cares about the experience and that it JUST WORKS. If it doesnt work they are going to find someone to reinstall Windows or macOS and if you refuse they are just going to take it to the geek squad or someone else and pay them to do it.

Linux has a real problem when it comes to desktop adoption and everything he talks about is not it (thats a post for another day) the community and developers better wake up otherwise every year will be the year of the Linux desktop with no progress.

But, if someone really wants to get into Linux I will always offer Ubuntu as a choice. Alot of those other distributions are just white noise. I personally would never suggest Linux Mint, Manjaro, Fedora, or Zorin. They are community driven targeting people who already use Linux and who are proficient with Linux. Ubuntu has been and will always be the closest to the Linux desktop that we will ever get. Its that 500 lb gorilla in the Linux world and if we have learned anything from Microsoft; that gorilla is hard to take down. For current users of Linux its a good video and shows Ubuntu's shortcomings and lists alternatives that you can use if you rather have new and shiny instead of stability. For beginners, or rather if you should offer Ubuntu to new users it really has no context. It comes off as sounding like sour grapes.

Why we wont stop using Ubuntu and chat about Internet privacy

2022-03-05T22:39:00.001-08:00

With the issues with SNAP recently, some people have asked? Is it time for distros based on Ubuntu to die? The answer to that is a firm NO. Its time for SNAP to die but from Ubuntu's snap developers it doesnt look like it is going anywhere. We have disabled SNAP by default in our ISO refreshes. You cant even install it and we decided to just stick with DEB's and Flatpak. With Ubuntu moving entirely over to SNAP's will that make it difficult? Not really. Someone will build the debs or we will do it ourselves. But should we change or do the Linux Mint route and look at Debian? First, Linux Mint has always had a Debian edition, so I dont think SNAP had anything to do with it. B, Im the person who doesnt like to throw the baby out with the bath water. Ubuntu does a lot of things right, they do a couple of things wrong. The things they do right far outweigh what I dont like about it. So while we did look at switching to Debian, Arch and Red Hat and while all great distributions we like Ubuntu. If we were to look at making a change it would either be Chromium OS or Gentoo. But to change the base because of ONE thing, SNAP, is ridiculous, asinine, and fucking stupid.

Some other reasons people have put out there is because they work with Microsoft or business practices or Canonical's use of proprietary software. I dont care that they use proprietary software, I dont care if they have agreements with Microsoft. Those things are not important to me. Besides, if you seriously want to look at it Microsoft is right now the biggest distributor of Linux. WSL combined with Windows Azure. Besides, most commercial Linux and Open Source companies have an agreement with Microsoft or some other group. Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, SUSE, pick one. Microsoft is a member of the Linux foundation and you have Microsoft employee's on the kernel team. I dont think many users really care about Microsoft anymore. Why? If you look at the top Windows app Linux users have wanted for DECADE's the ONE top app. Guess which one... Microsoft Office. Its never been done fully but now with Edge on Linux the online suite is great for basic needs which is what most people use it for. VS Code and Edge have been extremely popular on the Linux platform and there have been some people who use Edge and VS Code full time that I never thought I would see them ever use it to be frank. Seriously, this argument has gotten old. Everyone's screaming privacy, all web browsers do data collection; ALL OF THEM. Unless you make your own browser those bits and bobs are going somewhere you cant control. Its seriously a question of whether you want to shoot yourself in the right foot or the left foot. If the US Government wants to get your browsing data and everything you do online, you will not stop them no matter how many computers you have with Tor, VPN's etc. etc. etc. You want privacy on the internet? Dont use the internet. Its that simple.

Linspire 11 SE

2022-02-25T00:16:00.003-08:00

Some of our education customers have asked us if we can expect a new release specifically aimed at the education market. Linspire 8 EDU has gotten a little long in the tooth and was released 4 years ago. With the next release of Linspire in March we are introducing Linspire 11 SE. Which is aimed specifically at the education market.

Some of the improvements include.

Fully up to date stack based on the latest LTS.

It has two modes; Full install which most schools will use for IT staff, administration and public library systems which includes Web Browser, e-mail application, Office Suite multimedia players etc. Then we have the minimal install which schools can use on the student PC's which includes only 2 applications. The web browser and Zoom. The minimal install is great for school systems who use PWA's and Internal web apps. It also fully supports all Intel based Chromebooks. This also keeps us from having to support two different ISO's for our customers.

Security is paramount and we have made some changes to the way the OS works. Under the full install school staff has access to every application and can install apps through the software center. The minimal install allows students to only access the web browser and Zoom. They cannot install apps and command line access is restricted. On the minimal install apps can be installed through the Admin Console by a system administrator.

Application lineup highlights include; KDE 5.18.8, Microsoft Edge 98, Thunderbird 91, OnlyOffice 7, Timeshift, Deja-dup backup, Zoom, Juk, DragonPlayer and DISCOVER software center.

Current subscribers will get the new release for free through us or their current IT consulting firm. We will have a dedicated page for people who want to purchase the new release.

Chrome OS Flex and what it means for desktop Linux distributions

2022-02-17T14:06:00.005-08:00

I got tons of e-mail and messages about this and people asked me my opinion. As you guys know Google is making Chrome OS available for older PC's and Macs through a new OS they call Chrome OS Flex and thats good for them. Its based on CloudReady made by a company called Neverware that they purchased a couple of years ago. CloudReady is going away and my thoughts on that is that this opens up the market. What do I mean by that? Chrome OS Flex has one of two ways it can go and we will talk about that in a second. In the meantime I have downloaded Flex and it is nice. Its really a good attempt. If you want to browse the web and watch YouTube its a perfect solution. If you are a developer or tinkerer you are shit out of luck. You cant access the command line at all, Shell Access has been removed. Android app support is not there yet IF ever and if your PC is older than 2 years you cant run Crostini and without shell access ChromeBrew is gone so once again this has one of two ways this can go. If they bring Android apps to Flex, if they enable some kind of developer mode yeah it has the potential to be a bullet in the head of desktop Linux distributions. If they dont, and I dont think they will because Google cant do basic math, and they stay on the current path they are on. Well, Flex will fail and will wind up in the Google Graveyard of what could have been within a year or two because Google is a company that likes to shoot itself in the foot, repeatedly until it cries for mommy. Google has had opportunity after opportunity to get ahead in everything but its core markets and hasn't and that is because they like to blow off their own toes which is why almost NONE of their past projects ever got past ad revenue, browsers and search. My bet is Google graveyard in 12 months. Google is its own worst enemy and its going to torture itself and then come to the realization it failed. Google has basically delivered to us Chrome OS 2009. Sorry guys the industry and users decided that that was NOT ENOUGH. Thats why Neverware never really caught hold with developers and why even its users didnt standardize on it. We run parallel with Neverware in many of our school systems. They used Neverware on a lot of their throw away old laptops so if a kid didnt return it at the end of the year or the systems got stolen it was not a huge loss. Now for those of you who are tech savvy you can get into the command line environment by configuring GRUB and if you dont know what that is Im not going to tell you because you can fuck things up BIG TIME.

Google has missed the general rule of software and product development. Listen to your users. Google gives its customers what Google wants and then gives their customers the middle finger and that is why they fail in everything BUT search. But, I think you will see a ton of downloads by people who are curious and people will want to use this thing for grandma and Stacy's mom who do nothing but check e-mail, do banking, general web browsing and watch YouTube and Netflix but for your broader tech consumer they are going to see very quickly how totally fucking useless this thing is in its current incarnation and reinstall Windows just like they did with CloudReady. Bring Android and developer mode, watch this thing become the brightest star in the tech industry. Make it CloudReady 2.0 and watch it crash and burn in a spectacular fashion. Some of us will have fun with that everyone loves a trainwreck. But based on Googles past performance in moving beyond its core market, Im not optimistic.

Those are my thoughts everyone have a nice day!!!

Why we dont just modify Ubuntu and support that?

2022-01-30T02:11:00.002-08:00

One of the questions I get often is; Why dont we just modify Ubuntu and support that? The reason is Canonical. Canonical owns the trademark on all of their derivatives, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and even Cinnabuntu I think. Either way, we cannot just take Ubuntu, load our licensed properties and sell that to customers. Canonical's policy is you have to sell it unmodified. Its not like with Gentoo and Debian, we sold modified Gentoo for years and never had issues, where they are community based projects and no one really cares. Canonical is a business. Just like you cant sell a modified version of Red Hat and you cant sell a modified version of SUSE and its completely understandable. It's their name. If someone puts out an Ubuntu OS with malware on it people are going to look for that throat to choke and its going to be Canonical's. Thats why you see so many derivatives out there with different names and why Ultimate Edition had to change their name and that is why System 76 came up with their own name and derivative, PopOS is a solid, solid distribution stupid name, but regardless Ubuntu is a trusted name. I get it and Im perfectly OK with it on one hand, on the other though I do think the unmodified bit I think thats kind of silly. When Microsoft sells their Android phones they sell it with Edge as the default browser and they have their own bits in there and they dont call it Microsoft A/OS or something like that. The phone when it boots up says Android. When you buy a new PC its not uncommon to find a different browser, Chrome usually, preinstalled along with other bits and bobs. Hell even some Chromebooks are coming now with Android apps preinstalled. So yes in some ways I find that rule completely silly but in the other I get it. Now with the systems that we sell some people ask for just Ubuntu or Kubuntu and we sell it to them unmodified and we tell them its a vanilla install of Ubuntu or Kubuntu if you want us to modify it we can do it after the purchase and we do support Ubuntu and Kubuntu for customers just like we support RHEL and Oracle Linux for customers. With Linspire and Xandros I prefer to err on the side of caution and just rebrand it.

Xinuos vs IBM/Red Hat

2022-01-27T23:36:00.003-08:00

Some of you may have missed this. I did as I thought this was just a rehash of the SCO wars of the early 2000's. Xinuos formerly known as the SCO Group is suing IBM/Red Hat for copyright infringement, intellectual property theft and anti-competitive practices. While this is similar its not the same. They seem to be focusing on the anti-competitive practices more than the copyright infringement and intellectual property claims. The copyright and intellectual property claims were pretty much scrubbed by Novell during the first court case and Novell is now Micro Focus so I dont know how thats going to work out in the wash but lets take a look at their other claims; Anti-Competitive practices.

Do IBM and Red Hat practice anti-competitive behavior? Sure. But so does every other technology company out there. Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and IBM have long been engaged in that behavior. Giving perks to potential customers, giving free hardware and software to potential customers to squeeze small tech companies out of the picture and making crappy software on other companies platforms so they can sell their solution as "optimized" . Is it shitty? yes. Is it underhanded? yes. Is it anti-competitive? absolutely. Does it fucking matter? NOPE. Look, their claims stem on that they are butt hurt because they haven't sold enough product and they are looking for the bad guy. What I hate is that they are dragging the Open Source community and FreeBSD into this shit like Preparation H to soothe the pain. Look, you want to sell product MAKE COMPELLING PRODUCTS!!!! If you make it, and its good, they will come. Red Hat is going to implode soon enough Im still saying within 5 years. But, you cannot blame IBM or Red Hat for your erectile dysfunction predicament because your products lack sex appeal. You inherited winners with SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare both GREAT products for their day. Where are the 64 bit versions? Where is your broadened hardware support? You expect your customers to buy your products, scrounge eBay or Craigslist to find spare parts because SCO UnixWare and SCO OpenServer dont run on any system manufactured after 2002. Oh wait they can purchase another operating system license so they can run it under VM? Give me a break. Now, OpenServer 10 is NOT a bad product. I actually downloaded it when it was released and still have a VM with it. Not bad at all. But its FreeBSD with XFCE. Where are your actual server packages? What is it optimized for? What are your server roles? You cannot just take FreeBSD remove as much as you can and make a couple of web tools and call that a server. You have to optimize performance, you have to give customers the ability to clone that setup so they can deploy it to other systems. Your data sheets and customer docs are almost non-existent and pretty much the worst I have seen. My 12 year old son could write a better documentation on his worst day. Oh and BTW customers would love to know what you are working on. Staying silent for 3 years and popping up to sue IBM and Red Hat one day out of the blue is not a recipe for success.

Im not saying Im the smartest bear in the forest. Im definitely not the dumbest. We do pretty decent business. We make enough to pay the bills, pay the employee's and live. I have no aspirations to be the next Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, Red Hat, SUSE or IBM but we have been pretty successful in what we do and we make a damn decent living.

Not a dig at Xinuos but I think its past time for SCO and the like minded to just die. The tech industry has evolved and the old ways of doing business are DONE. You either keep up with the times or you are gone. Personally I dont think this lawsuit will go anywhere. But it wouldn't surprise me if IBM just settled it. My hope is they just go ahead and take a sledgehammer to this case if for nothing more to drive home a point.

Xandros OpenServer 12: What we delivered on and how we can do better

2022-01-26T02:04:00.002-08:00

So a few weeks ago we delivered Xandros OpenServer 12 which by far has been one of our most popular server systems. With downloads approaching the 6 digit mark and I'd say about 80% of our server customers upgrading lets take this time to talk about what we delivered. That was a solid release but as we listen to customers and users lets talk about ways we make it better because yes, even though we just dropped that release we are currently doing work on the next one. MR2 which will drop August 3rd BTW a little side note ALL releases will be in lockstep for the next release date. Users have told us they want a minimal install and as some of you know we have been making it very modular, so yes on MR2 you guys will get a minimal install option that takes out Apache and MongoDB but leaves the rest of it intact. Next, customers told us they want network install capabilities and that is currently being worked on. The next thing they want; the capabilities to do images so they can mirror systems and we ARE including that with the next release. RPM support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux applications; in the first release it was ehhh, it worked most of the time, in the new release you can install those packages or convert them to debian packages using Alien. Those were the major ones of course we have little knitpicks we are working on as well.

What did we get right. Cockpit. The change from Webmin to cockpit has been great. Dont get me wrong, Webmin is a fantastic tool but Cockpit has some features that are just great so that was a winner. The switch from Oracle VirtualBox to KVM has also been well received. But overall, this is a good release. It has some quirks and bugs to work out but overall I am satisfied with how it turned out.

RIP Red Hat..It was nice while it lasted

2022-01-12T18:37:00.003-08:00

Last year Red Hat was bought by IBM and there were cheers and lots of bottles of champagne being opened in celebration. I have a feeling Red Hat Linux will go the way of OS/2. Now there are several reasons why I think this will happen and it will happen because of IBM. Some will say "Oh its a subsidiary and things will be OK" No. Rot happens from the head down and when it comes to the PC market and Operating Systems, IBM is a bumblefuck. The original PC what happened? They relinquished it to Microsoft. OS/2 while there was a lot of excitement and it was an AWESOME operating system IBM just up and one day gave up. Without warning, without any kind of signals, they just gave up. Apples Copland which was a joint venture between Apple, Motorola and IBM from people that I know that worked in Copland almost all the fingers got pointed at IBM. IBM marketing and management doesnt like work. They want immediate gratification. They dont want to build. They just want to be on the top. If it doesnt happen. They go the OS/2 route and say it was great while it lasted. It happens every time. Look at AIX. Back in the late 90's/early 2000's AIX was going to be the top of the market for Operating Systems. Desktop and Server. Suddenly, sales were blah and the workstations and servers all but disappeared; put in the basement and out of sight and out of mind.

This wont happen overnight and it wont be this year but I suspect in 5 years Red Hat will be gone. I have seen IBM purchase many companies and they lay off half the engineering staff and put in yes men. I would say there is not going to be much to worry about until you see that start to happen. When people start leaving left and right. Find the off ramp. After that happens look for IBM to consolidate Red Hat into their main organization and they will call it IBM OS/Linux, IBM A/Linux or some silly shit like that and then the final destination for Red Hat as a company will be relegated to their mainframe business where IBM has had pretty good success to be fair.

Does this mean Red Hat technology will be dead as well? No. You have Fedora which is community maintained and they will continue to drive forward and keep putting out excellent releases and developing new technology. They will continue to be supported by individuals and companies and more importantly IBM doesnt really have a big presence. Rocky Linux and Oracle Linux will still be around. But Red Hat the company, Red Hat where awesome Linux engineers are born and nurtured and Red Hat the main driving force in Linux mainstream adoption will be GONE.

And that just massively SUCKS!!!!

Why I like GNOME

2022-01-11T09:02:00.006-08:00

People have noticed I started using GNOME as the default interface for Linspire and Xandros and have asked why. Didnt I use to hate GNOME? Yes I did for a long time. This doesnt take away from the other two. I love XFCE and will always be an XFCE fan as well. Plasma is good too. If you are a Windows interface lover you will love Plasma. In fact Windows 11 took a lot of design pointers from KDE. The Windows engineers can deny it but you can see it. There is a lot of KDE influence in Windows 11. But GNOME. Why did I hate it and why did I change my mind?

When I first started using GNOME 3, I made the same mistake that a lot of people did. I used a ton of extensions, 12 to be exact, to try and make the experience better and instead I made it worse. Whenever I would get sent a new copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux I would always go grab XFCE right after install. Then Red Hat sent me a boxed copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. I was so busy working on my other distributions I just did what I normally do. Install it on a test machine but instead of working with it though I just left it alone because honestly I didnt have the time to deal with it at the time. One weekend as I was setting it up for deployment and I started using the standard, vanilla GNOME interface. The more I used it I started to notice the fluidity of the desktop and then I started to get it. I started to see why the GNOME team made the decisions that they made. Now this is not a gush fest over GNOME there are still a couple of things that drive me crazy and to fix some of those I use extensions but instead of 12 I only use 3. An extension to get rid of that stupid spring board animation in the app grid view, one for user themes and coverflow alt-tab. Now I havent even looked at GNOME 41 yet. I probably wont for another year. This will allow time for bugs and quirks to get ironed out.

But if you had the same experience I did and felt like you needed every extension on the planet to make GNOME more usable go back and disable all the extensions and take it back to vanilla GNOME. Use it for awhile. It will take some getting used to. You may even have some frustrations for a minute but give vanilla GNOME a chance and I can almost guarantee that you will see the beauty is in the simplicity and design. I never thought I would ever say this but I have to say I am a fan. I'm now a GNOME guy.

Linspire and Xandros Upgrade Cycle explained

2022-01-11T00:48:00.001-08:00

Some people have asked me what the difference is between Linspire and Xandros update cycles and how does Freespire fit in. Freespire, Linspire and Xandros are all based on the LTS versions of Ubuntu. We dont do any of their incremental releases. Freespire typically gets a base update about a year after Ubuntu releases their LTS. When 16.04 was released we didnt update the base system until 2017. When 18.04 was released we didnt update the base system until 2019. When 20.04 was released we didnt update the base system until 2021. With Linspire and Xandros the base update cycle is what causes confusion. Linspire being the consumer release gets the base updated 1 and a half years after the release. With 16.04 we didnt update until late 2017, with 18.04 the base system got updated fall of 2019. With 20.04 we didnt update the base until July 2021. Xandros is the longest supported release that we have. The base gets updated every 3 years. With 16.04 we didnt update the base until 20.04 because we skipped the 18.04 base completely. It did use the 18.04 kernel but we didnt update all the base packages. Xandros is supported for 10 years. Linspire is supported for 5 years.

This update cycle will be a little longer because we are switching the base system unless something really drastic happens. Which we will talk about later. But the current systems will be updated to the 22.04 kernel. Freespire will get new kernel November of 2022, with the new base about April 2023. Linspire will get the new kernel January 2023, with the new base around fall 2023. Xandros will get the new kernel winter 2023 and the new base in 2024.

Xandros gets updated later because its our Enterprise release with incremental releases every 6 to 9 months and major releases every 3 years and we do that because enterprise customers don't upgrade quite like consumers do. Consumers tend to upgrade every year to year and a half and Enterprise customers don't usually upgrade for 5 years with some of them waiting out the 10 years.

So why do we wait so long before we do base updates? Testing takes up a lot of that time. This also gives time for bugs to get ironed out and any security issues to be patched. When we change the base whether its to Fedora or Debian the upgrade cycle will follow the same timetable that we have established

OldTechBloke Review of Freespire

2022-01-05T11:05:00.008-08:00

Today I was sent a video that Old Tech Bloke did on Freespire:

What are my thoughts? Not bad. I thought he gave Freespire a pretty good going over. There are a few things he did bring up that I do want to clarify and at least one point that he didn't bring up but was in the comments.

1. How did the acquisition of Bridgeways Linux properties come about? and being based on Ubuntu

Back in 2016 we were contacted by a friend of mine who worked for Bridgeways and was told they were leaving the IT industry. I was interested in their Linux properties specifically the old Corel Linux codebase and being a former user of Corel Linux, it had some unique properties to it that I wanted to see if we could utilize. As it turned out there really wasn't. All the new file-managers, Nautilus, Caja, and Thunar all pretty much filled that gap with easy networking and file management. We were actually thinking of dropping everything that we had with PC/OS and Black Lab Linux and go with OpenSUSE (Some of our beta testers still have the OpenSUSE build). But we decided to stick with Ubuntu. So yes, LIKE A LOT OF DISTRIBUTIONS out there we decided to base our releases on Ubuntu. Most distributions these days are based on other distributions and that's the beauty of the Linux world AND by extension the BSD world.

2. Is Freespire, Linspire and Xandros now a money grab?

He didn't bring this up but from some of the comments alluded to this and the answer is NO. Back in 2006 when we started making Linux distributions, we wanted something long term. What the LTS turned out to be. Before 2006 we actually started supporting Linux company wise in 2002, we were supporting Red Hat Linux and when Red Hat decided to go the RHEL route a lot of people were stuck with Fedora and Fedora had no support whatsoever. So, we were one of the few companies that supported Fedora for customers and offering the level of support these customers were used to getting from Red Hat before the switch over to pure RHEL. So, in 2006 we started making our own Linux distribution. We started out with Gentoo and while yes it was great and fun for us, we were hosting our own server to where people had to download and compile everything, we wanted something a lot easier that customers could just download and install while also being fast and simple. Ubuntu met our criteria. So, we started doing an Ubuntu based distribution. The first one that we released was in 2007 and as stated we wanted something long term. At the time Ubuntu releases were exactly 6 months apart. We have always worked in the desktop Linux space so making an argument to paying customers that you had to update every 6 months was a non-starter, so we were supporting Ubuntu's releases a lot longer than they were. So, when you purchase a support license from us, you are not buying Linux. You are paying for the support option for that software while we pay the licensing costs for some of the proprietary codecs and code that we include in the supported releases. We are an operating system company. We also do custom BSD builds for customers and we have been in business for over 20 years in the state of North Carolina. If people want to consider it a grift, it's probably the worst and longest grift in the history of grifts.

3. Our unique selling points and Google Integration

It's all about the base. We aim to offer a stable, long-term option for customers and users. We thoroughly test and prototype before we ship. When Canonical released 20.04, it was 2021 before we shipped the 20.04 LTS codebase in our products. The Google integration as well is a strong selling point for us. It is known that we see Chrome OS as our main competitor to our market. Education customers and enterprise customers make up a broad percentage of our customer base, over 80%, over 260 different school systems, education facilities, government and businesses. We started working on the web centric focus back in 2019 because our customers told us they like the idea of Chrome OS, but they also wanted the flexibility of installing traditional desktop applications. Crostini really wasn't a thing at the time we started, and our business customers wanted a native Linux environment for development and running inhouse apps. Crostini is container technology and it's not really that great right now. I myself have run into several issues with Crostini. Now he does say that anyone can take Xubuntu and do what we do and go with it. But that's the point. We do it so they don't have to. If people don't want to purchase the support options Linspire or Xandros OpenDesktop offers. If they don't need the support Freespire and Xandros CommunityDesktop are free to use, free to distribute and free to install on as many systems as they like.

4. Why Freespire, Linspire and Xandros?

When we first started shipping Linux distributions, I always said I wanted to have a free distribution for users. Something that was free to use, free to distribute and that users could put on as many machines that they liked. Why dont we ship the codecs with Freespire but kept the option to download them in Ubiquity? We wanted to stay as close to the FSF definition of free software as we could and make the distribution usable. But we also wanted to keep the option in there so if that's what users wanted, they could still get them. We believe it's the users' machine and they should be able to do with it what they want. With the supported release, Linspire, it does ship with all the multimedia codecs, Steam, Wine, multiple filesystem support i.e. XFS, JFS full ZFS and comes with 12 months of support. Xandros being an enterprise offering has more in terms of enterprise features and comes with 5 years of support and other support options. So, it's all about the users and what they want. We are a services-based company. We make distributions, Linux or BSD, for other people so we do what our customers tell us to do and what their needs are. We don't just make distributions for ourselves based on our own needs or wants. If that was the case, I would probably be still using Gentoo full time.

5. Basics and oversimplified

That is by design. I hate it when things get overly complex. Customers and users don't feel overwhelmed and everything's neat and tidy. If you have any ideas to where you think we could do better don't hesitate to write me or the support staff and we will consider it. Now this may sound a little bit like being an asshole but its not. The Linux community is not our target audience. We do have customers who are very active with the Linux community and we love them too. But our target audience is the consumer market. We will soon start shipping systems with Linspire and Xandros OpenDesktop preinstalled. We already do for certain customers. We want to introduce Linux to as many people as we can who may not have considered Linux as a viable desktop alternative before. Thats another reason why you see a very basic and simple touch to our marketing and to customer approach. We have been successful with that so far. Now if those users start to explore other options and want to experiment with other distributions that is perfectly fine.

So, to OldTechBloke, sorry man I don't know your real name, I want to personally thank you for the review. Much appreciated. The entire team has watched the video. Thank you very much. The high order bit is this. I love Linux. I have loved Linux since 1994 (UNIX since 1989) and even if PC/OpenSystems LLC went out of business tomorrow I'd still love Linux and would probably go work with a Linux company or start another one the day after.

Thanks everyone.

Linus Tech Tips and Linux and best distribution for Newbies

2022-01-03T13:56:00.004-08:00

So, a few days ago someone sent me some video links to Linus Tech Tips and his Linux series. I watched them and while a few parts of it were cringeworthy the problem here is that Linus's criticisms were legitimate.

There is no ONE perfect Operating System in the world. Whether it's Windows, Solaris, MacOS, any flavor of Linux or Unix there is not a one size fits all offering out there. Now, I'm used to Linux and I have used Linux for decades at this point, so I am used to it and every single-issue Linus had I have an answer for it, but we have to look at this from his perspective. All the common problems Linus had I have heard them before. I work inside the desktop Linux market. I have had to deal with how-to-do-task-x a lot to the point I sometimes find myself repeating a lot. Do I think Linus was trolling? No. I think some of the other YouTubers and some of the commenters are the ones guilty of trolling. I tell people this a lot; Linux is not Windows. It is different. Everything from startup to package install is different. There are some use cases where Windows serves a lot better than Linux. There are some cases where Linux serves a lot better than Windows. Quick question, how many of you that criticized his series reached out with solutions? Judging from the comments and video responses not many and THAT is one of the main problems with the Linux community and why companies like ours and others exist. People don't want to be called stupid because they are trying to learn something new. They don't want to be called TROLLS just because they have legitimate issues with using Linux. Hell, some people just will not like Linux and will go back to Windows or macOS. Ask any Linux distributor. It's happened to all of us at one point or another where a customer has called us and said "Look, I'm moving back to Windows because of X Y or Z" and that's fine. Once again there is NOT a one size fits all distribution out there. One of the issues I had with the series was that they read one of those stupid fucking articles of "Best Distribution <insert year here>" Those types of articles do a great disservice to the Linux community and Linux adoption in general. Why? Because EVERY Linux distribution is the best. These distributors do a lot of hard work making these distributions. Some are better than others, yes but those articles are goddamn insulting to every single distributor out there and yes that includes Red Hat, SUSE, Oracle etc. etc. Once again, its personal preference. Title it "Best Linux distribution(s) I have tried <insert year here>"

As for Linus and Luke. Hey if they want to stay on Windows that's great. Windows 11 is a fine OS. I tried it, I liked it. For me, my entire workflow is on Linux so while I dabble with Windows 11 for my Windows programming, Star Trek Fleet Command and Star Trek Online games (Two titles I can't use on Linux) but I digress, if Linus and Luke want to stay on Windows then that is perfectly fine. There is a lot to like. If they want to go to Linux there are plenty of resources out there for them to use and there is a lot to like about Linux. I watched the series, I didn't have many complaints about it, and I even took notes to see if some of the gripes they had I can fix in my own distributions no matter how cringeworthy I thought some of the complaints were.

Expanding Xandros: Xandros CommunityDesktop 2022

2021-12-23T22:42:00.004-08:00

When Xandros was first released in the early years of the 2000's after Xandros acquired Corel Linux they had a release called the Xandros Open Circulation which was their free to download, non-commercial use and free to use version of Xandros DesktopOS. We have fielded calls from past Xandros customers and our users about something like that. So we have decided to do that.

Xandros CommunityDesktop 2022 is our version of "open circulation". Xandros CommunityDesktop 2022. Since CommunityDesktop will be free to use and redistribute for non-commercial use there will be some caveats to that. It will contain limited codec support and will not contain many of our OpenDesktop capabilities. There will not be any multi-filesystem support, no remote administration capabilities, and no Virtual Machine support. Xandros CommunityDesktop will also follow the upgrade schedule of Xandros. While Freespire and Linspire will be upgraded to the 22.04 base in 2023, Xandros will not be upgraded to a new base until 2024 . Xandros CommunityDesktop will be community supported only and no warranty expressed or implied will be offered.

Xandros CommunityDesktop will follow our recent strategy of using cloud apps instead of traditional desktop apps and will utilize Googles services as default. There will be NO Office 365 release of CommunityDesktop.

Now some people will ask what does this mean for Freespire and Linspire? Nothing at all. Freespire and Linspire will continue to be developed and distributed for consumer desktop users. Home users, school, gamers and freelance developers and Xandros will continue to be developed and distributed for our education, enterprise and professional customers.

Another question that many of our customers will ask; can we add Xandros CommunityDesktop to our current support contracts? No. Xandros CommunityDesktop will be community support only if you wish to add an additional license to your support contract you will have to purchase an extra license for Xandros OpenDesktop

First release will be available mid January 2022

Linspire, Freespire and Xandros: Frequently asked questions 2021

2021-12-13T16:33:00.004-08:00

Today what we are going to be tackling are some frequently asked questions that me and our support team get. So we have compiled a list of them and here we go.

ADVISORY: SOME COARSE LANGUAGE IS USED

Why another distribution? Why not just add on to one of the many distributions out there?

When we first started out we did that and it was less than am optimal solution. Having our own distribution means we control the upgrade cycle, we can test and release on our own time table without getting that dreaded 3 am call that something broke during distro X upgrade and "we need it fixed now." That's one of the reasons why we created, market and deploy our own distribution.

Why did you shift the focus to cloud only apps in the distribution?

Michael Robertson, like him or hate him, had that idea back in 2005. He knew that cloud based apps were going to be a big deal. The problem Michael had in terms of web apps is that he was 15 years ahead of his time. There were other problems too but that's not for me to speak on. What we do is we listen to our customers, we survey our customers on the good and the bad and one thing our customers have told us is that when they received the distribution they stripped a lot of the applications out. The default office suite for most of our customers is Google Docs. They don't use Thunderbird they use the Gmail web interface. They use Spotify and YouTube TV. So we decided there was no time like the present to go ahead and make the leap and for the few that still use traditional desktop applications they can install whatever they like.

Why Google and Microsoft web apps?

Very simple, customers asked for it. That's what they are using. Now lets go ahead and dispel a little rumor out there WE GET ZERO DOLLARS FROM MICROSOFT OR GOOGLE. They do not pay us in any way nor do we transmit any customer data to them and we do not share sales data to them. The only transmission to Microsoft that is made is to check the repositories for updates to PowerShell and .NET Core; both of which are open source technologies. More importantly we hide NOTHING!!! Customers know what they are getting when they purchase Linspire or Xandros and they know when they sign into Google or Microsoft's web apps and whats being transmitted. For customers who DO NOT want to use Google or Microsoft services we do offer a release that has none of it and users can decide what services they wish to use. If people get a hold of us and say "Hey I don't want to use Microsoft or Googles services." OK, we have them covered. Once again, not unreasonable about it and we do have many of our customers and users that ask for Googles services and that's why we include them in Linspire.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz who writes for Techrights says you are in bed with Microsoft and has called for a boycott of Linspire and Xandros..

Number 1, once again we have ZERO agreements with Microsoft. They don't pay us. We have not signed any kind of agreement with Microsoft nor does Microsoft have any access to customer data. Linspire Inc., Xandros and Bridgeways agreements with Microsoft have ALL expired. The ONLY time Microsoft see's data from the customer is when he/she/they uses their services of their own volition and they know what they are doing. Same goes for Google. It is also worth pointing out PC/OpenSystems LLC is a member of the OIN (Open Invention Network) Number 2, I don't care what he thinks because his is not a customer of mine and he is more interested in fighting a battle that he is over a decade too late in fighting. I haven't seen much of a boycott BTW. I haven't read any of his "articles" or rants although yes I have heard about them. The thing is if you were to try and take an FSF "blessed" distribution and market it and distribute it it would fail and it would fail BADLY. To be successful today you need to either sell hardware OR come preinstalled on hardware. The only time we sell boxed software is to the few people who are interested in it because they read some random news article on it or someone talked shit and they want to see what the fuss is about, those who want to re-purpose old hardware and repeat customers. People who have bought hardware from us. Now, people don't care about codecs and they don't care about free software. They want to turn the computer on and it just work. They want to be able to go to Walmart and Staples buy a network adapter, printer or whatever and it just work and be supported. They don't care what companies open source their drivers and 3/4 of them don't know what a codec is. But this guy has beef with me? Why? I'm a small fish in the Linux pond, You want to fight the good fight go talk to Google about ChromeOS. But wait, oh that's right he doesn't have an issue with ChromeOS even though they ship proprietary software and do indeed have active agreements with Microsoft. But he wants to criticize us for including OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE because he doesn't like where it came from. Yeah, whatever and I'm sure he will come up with some kind of cheeky response I wont read or care about.

What are the main differences between you and Linspire Inc. considering there doesn't seem to be many differences between you and Michael Robertson?

Oh there are indeed many differences between myself and Michael Robertson. There is so much more to business than just building great products and making money. You have to build something beyond yourself and the product. You have to build trust. Our customers trust us. Over 14 years in business we have a 98% retention rate of customers. Some of them have been with us since 2007. Money is secondary. Whether I had one customer or NONE I care about our product and yes I know I'm overbearing when it comes to the work I do and the course of my company. I have no issues expressing my dissatisfaction at someones lack of effort. Michael Robertson had a lot of problems. Some were self inflicted. Some may even be mental. Some stem from his leadership style which comes from that many decades old management technique which entails the whole "Do as I say and don't ask any fucking questions" Don't take that as me digging on Michael. I'm not. I wish him the best of luck when it comes to his businesses. Two things my people will tell you is I shoot them straight and I'm not unnecessarily cruel. Customer and employee both, I don't hold back. If we are in trouble they need to know. We almost died, figuratively, during the Pandemic and we are still struggling to come back from it. That's the problem when 80% of your business involves face to face contact with customers. Yes some of the guys had to go part time or be laid off. We were finally recently able to bring some of them back and ALL of them when I reached out came back. That's what it takes. To be a good leader you have to be half hard ass and half compassionate, don't lie to them and shoot your people straight. If they like you, respect you and trust you they will walk across a field of broken glass barefoot for you; if you are a douchebag who lies, cheats and try to relegate them to the hamster wheel the overwhelming response will be "Fuck that guy!!"

How many people work on Linspire and Freespire? What do you work on?

Collectively 15 people work on Linspire and Freespire. I barely touch Freespire. We have another guy who is the lead developer on Freespire and he has his own team of people. I mostly work on Linspire, Xandros and on the hardware side of things. We have regular meetings where we talk about whats going on. I do get asked a lot about the social media aspects of it. I don't run the twitter feeds so if you have a question send it to me personally. If you DM the Twitter accounts it will most likely be ignored. Just send it to my e-mail or DM my personal Twitter account.

Do you think desktop Linux is dead?

I hope not <laughs> I really don't. When you look at things like Roku's, Chromebooks, Android tablets, Fire Tablets, Firesticks and WebOS smart TV's all of those devices use Linux at the heart. The "Year of the Linux desktop" arrived in 2015; it just wasn't in the form we thought it was going to be. Now, if you are asking desktop distributions I think those hopes are pretty much done. Even with us, all of our customers don't just run Xandros or Linspire. They run Chromebooks, Macs, Windows or a few other Linux distributions in combination with Linspire or Xandros. Linux distributors and companies missed several opportunities. When we had the switch from Windows ME to Windows XP we had a chance to breakthrough and we even had a few user friendly distributions then. Corel Linux is the first one that comes to mind. Didn't happen. XP to Vista, plenty of opportunities because Vista was delayed. Didn't happen. Windows 7 to Windows 10. Didn't happen. Windows 10 to Windows 11. Will not happen. I tend to look at "desktop" Linux like I did "desktop" UNIX. Companies and users will use a variety of the different flavors and distributions. You will have some companies like System76 who pump out some bad ass hardware configurations that are Linux only and you will see some mainstream PC makers who will use Linux as a secondary OS but will we see a specific distribution pop up and wrestle Microsoft and Apple to the ground? Is Mint, Ubuntu, Freespire, Fedora, OpenSUSE or MXLinux going to put those guys in a John Cena type armbar until we start hearing bones snap? No. But if you look at reality and put the overzealous arguments aside what you have are good companies like Amazon, Google and Roku who came up with damn good services, damn good interfaces and damn good hardware and have been successful. Really; consumer Linux has been very successful and I think consumer services and devices like that are where you are going to see continued success.

Whats the oldest system you still see in deployment?

Windows NT 3.51. We have one client who runs their inventory software on it and the damn thing works like a charm.

Why don't you call it GNU/Linux?

Because its not necessary. The GNU Project did not invent Linux. Linus Torvalds did. The GNU Project has many opportunities to release their own distro and call it GNU/Linux. When I buy a car or in my case, TRUCK, and I add my bed liner, cold air intake, aftermarket radiators, oil filters and other customization its not then called ROBERTO/Ford is it? No. I use Dewalt drills and screwdrivers and other tools when I build a bookshelf. Does it become a DEWALT/Ikea at that point? No. Its a fucking ridiculous argument in my opinion but people can call it what they like. I don't care and I'm sure no one cares about my opinion on it anyway. (Except for the person that asked that is)

Are you guys still moving to Debian?

We are going to let our users decide what we move to. We will have a build based on ChromiumOS one on Debian and one on Ubuntu 22.04 and the users can decide which one we go to. But yes, so far Debian seems to be the most popular choice but I have to tell ya. I have used the ChromiumOS based release and I like that one. I like it A LOT.

Why do you guys charge so much for Linspire?

Actually we are priced pretty competitively with the other competitors especially with our download edition. If you look at SUSE, Red Hat and Oracle we match up pretty nicely. With ChromeOS who is our main competitor in the cloud OS stage, we are EXTREMELY competitive.

Why should I pay for Linux when I can get it for free?

You aren't paying us for Linux you are paying for the different support options and/or install media. Secondly, we are in the Linux market but we are not targeting the Linux community per say. Our target is the consumer. People who have been on Mac, ChromeOS and Windows and want a choice. They don't want to upgrade because of some stupid TPM requirement and/or some halfassed container technology that is in beta FOREVER and since Apple is moving to the M1 chip, people will need an OS for their old x86 Macs and not have to spend all day on forums trying to figure the shit out. We are under no illusion that the distro hoppers or the free or die crowd are going to open their wallets. Its not going to happen. We are far more interested in the people who want more or less the same experience they get on Windows, MacOS and ChromeOS and want to buy it. But for those of you that do like to distro hop; stop on by.

Will you ever stop Linspire?

Not planning to. If something happened such as health issues I would consider it. if I got an offer from a company that I felt could take the products to the next level, I would consider it. 2 companies have offered to buy us out but we are not for sale.

So that's it guys. We will be releasing Xandros OpenDesktop MR1 and Xandros OpenServer 2022 mid January and Linspire 11 December 27th.

Thanks again.

To Ubuntu or NOT to Ubuntu, that is the question

2021-11-03T20:25:00.003-07:00

As we approach 2022 there will be a new LTS release of Ubuntu. We have announced we will not update our base from 20.04 until Fall 2023 at the earliest. So with that said what are our official plans for Freespire, Linspire and Xandros?

We have discussed the possibility of using Ubuntu 22.04 as our base and we have been experimenting with and building our OS's using Debian and ChromiumOS. So we are officially announcing Ubuntu 20.04 is the END of the road for our Ubuntu base usage unless something drastic does happen.

Summer 2022 we will start releasing builds based on ChromiumOS and Debian and we will let our users decide the route we will go. Since our OS products have moved to cloud applications we could technically use either one but we do love the feedback from our customers and users on what we are doing.

With the Debian build we will have Google Chrome, ICE and XFCE included. There will be little difference from our Ubuntu versions that we release now so that will be the smoothest upgrade for users. There will be a few differences in the installer, Linspire and Xandros users will have to input a license key for verifiable purchases, if you dont have a key it will log you out after 30 minutes and tell you that you need to purchase a license key. We feel that this helps in two ways. 1. It lets users test on their hardware to make sure it runs as smoothly as possible. 2. It lets users decide if they wish to purchase or not. Freespire will not have the license key feature in its installer.

The ChromiumOS distribution will include standard ChromiumOS features along with the Linux subsystem enabled by default so you can install any local apps from the Debian repository that you want.

This brings us to Xandros. Xandros OpenDesktop will be shipped with the new base in 2025. Xandros will continue to get kernel and system updates and refreshed ISO's. We will continue to ship the Standard and Office 365 releases even with the new base.

Linspire and Microsoft: Match made in heaven?

2021-09-23T10:29:00.001-07:00

So there seems to be some misinformation out there spreading about Linspire, Xandros and Microsoft. The question has been asked; Is Linspire and Xandros by extension in bed with Microsoft? NO!! Not at all. There are NO agreements in place anymore with regards to Linspire, Xandros or Microsoft. The patent protection that Linspire Inc and Bridgeways got from Microsoft has long since expired. There are no partnerships that need to be announced at this time.

So certain people want to throw a fit, make slanderous remarks, and start unnecessary drama because we include Powershell, .NET Core and VS Code in our distributions. NEWS FLASH!!!! They are Open Source pieces of software. Furthermore, the inclusion of this software was REQUESTED by customers for interoperability. Xandros OpenDesktop 2021 Office 365 uses the web based Microsoft Office 365 and other Microsoft centric web applications. Why? Because customers requested it. Xandros OpenDesktop Office 365 accounts for 90% of our enterprise and education customer sales. A minority chooses Standard Edition which includes the Google applications. PC/OpenSystems makes our products based on customer feedback. No more and no less.

What information do we give to Microsoft? Absolutely NONE. When you update the system does it communicate with Microsoft servers? Yes. As with everything Debian based software is stored in a repository. When you run an update and it communicates with Microsofts repositories and if an update is available it gets downloaded. This is the nature of the beast when it comes to upgrading software on ANY Debian based system. On Xandros Office 365 same thing and of course when you access Microsofts web apps a little bit of information is exchanged when you login to your Microsoft account. The point here is very simple, customers who purchase our products know exactly what they are getting. We don't hide it, we aren't embarrassed of it and according to our sales and subscription renewals; customers LIKE IT!!!

Now, some of the mundane trolls want to start a boycott of Linspire and Xandros. Listen to yourselves, really listen to your silly little comments. You want to boycott Linspire and Xandros for using OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE!!!! As with everything Linux you have the ability to remove any piece of software that you choose. Are you boycotting Ubuntu? They work with Microsoft closer than we do. How about Red Hat and SUSE? They work with Microsoft closer than we do. How about Deepin and Windowsfx? Who work as hard as they can to clone the Windows interface. Some people like to live in the past and if you are interested in trying to keep this war with Microsoft vs Open Source alive, you are 15 years too late. If you are interested in keeping the war alive with Michael Robertson and Linspire Inc. You are 14 years too late. The industry has spoken they would rather have interoperability than rhetoric, bullying and bullshit. When it comes to IT and services the end goal is the same and you don't have to reinvent the wheel to get there.

Linspires new direction explained

2021-07-24T01:06:00.013-07:00

For the past year we have internally at PC/OpenSystems LLC launched a project called CLOUD9. The aim of this project was to create an OS that utilized cloud apps in replacement of traditional desktop applications. Some of those manifested themselves into Xandros Cloud but we wanted to bring that to all of our desktop users. Some of the efforts were successful (Xandros Cloud Office 365 was our best seller for our education customers and some of our enterprise customers) But we wanted to make the best Cloud centric OS that we could.

First, we created a Chromium OS build of Freespire (Which I personally liked) The problem with ChromiumOS was that it relied solely on web apps during our focus groups and user testing we found that some users still want to run some traditional desktop apps (Gimp, Krita, Video editing software, music and video players) and while ChromiumOS has Crostini but it is not enabled by default. The other issue was it was not easy to install. This was before Google integrated the Neverware installer.

Second, we created an Android build. Which again I liked. But it was still too much of a desktop OS and relied on packages being installed from the Google Play Store.

Third, what culminated in Xandros Cloud which was use our traditional base and to pre-install Google or Microsoft's services. This was the direction we ultimately decided to go and there are a few reasons.

Ease of use. Freespire, Linspire and Xandros are by far the easiest Linux distributions for the average computer user.
Software availability. Not only do users have the ability to use apps from the Ubuntu repositories, native Debain/Ubuntu packages, FlatPak, Appimage and SNAPS but users do not have to rely on some obscure framework which may or may not work and that is in perpetual beta for years on end. Apps are available to be fully installed on the system and new apps available through the software center.
Users wanted native speed and full availability without having to rely on container technology
User focus groups and beta testing. During our testing we found that users had much more success with our traditional distributions. We discovered that users very rarely use LibreOffice and Thunderbird the apps we found they most used were Google Chrome, Gmail and Google Office or Microsoft Office 365 (This includes Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, OneNote etc.)

So, we have made several changes to Freespire, Linspire and Xandros. Linspire and Xandros will now offer cloud apps for the tasks of office suites, calendar, e-mail, and online storage. What will the new direction offer us?

Refined distribution. Uses less resources and smaller ISO images.
It allows us to run on more Intel based Chromebooks that have reached EOL and allows users to take even more advantage of their current hardware investments. Users and customers will be able to download an ISO and upgrade their current systems. No new hardware purchases necessary unless that system is older than 5 years.
More secure to attacks because of smaller attack surface.
There will be less of a need to create custom distributions for customers because of the common base resulting in lower prices for our customers.
No preconceived notions of apps and services customers and users want to use. Customers and users decide for themselves
Most state governments, federal facilities, enterprise users and educational facilities already certify Google Chrome in their environments and test their internal and public web properties on Chrome and Chromium.
Makes us more competitive with ChromeOS and CloudReady.
We will continue to work with Google to make sure that we stay compatible with the Admin console.

What can you expect from the new distributions:

Freespire 7.7 will continue to be our free to download and redistribute distribution and will not be distributed with proprietary codecs. Freespire will include, Chrome and IceSSB. It will also include Geary mail client, games, Parole media player and Rhythmbox. It will be delivered sans any Google or Microsoft services and users can decide what services they wish to use by default.

Linspire 10 SP 1.5 will include all of Googles services. Docs, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Keep, YouTube, Google Maps and Weather.com. Local apps will include Chrome, IceSSB, Video Player, Rhythmbox, Games, Shotwell and Krita. It will include all proprietary multimedia codecs and DVD/Blu-Ray support.

Xandros OpenDesktop 2021 will come in two flavors. Standard Edition with all the Google services preinstalled and Office 365 edition which will utilize Microsofts web services. With the Office 365 edition Bing will also be the default homepage and the default search engine in Google Chrome. Both will ship with .NET Core, Powershell and Visual Studios Code. Local apps will include, Chrome, Video Player, Rhythmbox, games, Shotwell and Krita for image editing. Both editions of Xandros OpenDesktop will also include all the proprietary media codecs and DVD/Blu-Ray support

Xandros OpenServer and Xandros Terminal Services will not be affected by these changes.

We look forward to bringing you these new products and look forward to servicing our customers and users for years to come.

Microsoft Edge on Linux

2021-06-25T15:35:00.004-07:00

When Microsoft announced they were porting Microsoft Edge to Linux there were three reactions. The first reaction was meeeh who cares. The second reaction was "NOOOOOO NEVER!!!!!! I WONT TAINT MY LINUX SYSTEM WITH MICRO$OFT SHIT!!!!!" The third reaction was optimism with a pinch of skepticism. This is not the first time Microsoft has ported its web browsers to an alternative Operating System platform. Microsoft had IE on Macintosh and they had also ported IE to Unix. I used IE for Unix and while it worked great it looked out of place and that is because when it came to the UI elements not a lot of work was done on that front and it didn't last long before Microsoft quit.

Now enter Microsoft Edge. Microsoft decided that they were going to change the underlying engine to a Chromium base. Chromium is the open source engine and browser that lives in Chrome and Chrome OS. Microsoft released their final version on Mac OS, iOS, Android and on Windows and promised a port to Linux. The beta version of that dropped last Oct. While I dabbled in it I recently started using Microsoft Edge on Linux full time and I have to say. It is pretty great. It is extremely fast, uses the same extensions that you find on Chrome and uses native hardware acceleration. If you are using Facebook messenger or Google Meet it automatically chooses your input devices which is a vast improvement over its earlier betas. Microsoft Edge for Linux also allows users to take full advantage of Microsoft's services. If you are an IT shop that uses both platforms, Windows and Linux, Microsoft Edge for Linux also is a great tool for interoperability. The one improvement you can take note of is the speed. Microsoft Edge is perhaps the fastest Chromium based browser I have used. Now, there are some downsides. Netflix performance needs some improvements in Edge for Linux. Another downfall is that its still only a Beta product. For some people that will be a turnoff and there has been no statement from Microsoft when it will reach gold status.

Do I think the mass of Linux distributors will move to bundle Edge in lieu of Firefox and Chrome? No. In the Linux community there is still a lot of hesitancy when it comes to Microsoft and per past behavior Microsoft can get a little wishy washy on its nix support. IE for Unix was a great product. The only problem is that product was short lived. But, I'm optimistic because this is a new Microsoft. Satya Nadella GETS open source and he GETS user preference and he understands that not everyone will want to use Microsoft products. Working with a lot of clients who use mixed environments Powershell, Visual Studio CODE, Teams and SQL Server have alleviated a lot of pain and I can imagine Microsoft Edge for Linux will also be a huge product for those clients. In the high order bit, would we as a Linux distributor make Microsoft Edge our default browser? Probably. I look at software like this. Who makes the best tools and the most polished software? I do not get in religious fights. I would need some assurances that Microsoft Edge will not disappear in 9 months. We currently bundle CODE and Powershell in Xandros and Powershell in Linspire. People who want to use Firefox or Chrome can always just uninstall Edge and use whatever browser they like.

Until next time....