Installation:
I've gotten good at this one! The install is very easy for the new user, if he or she is giving up an entire drive to the distro. The cd gives you several options including installing Freespire, running the the cd as a LiveCD of Freespire, and using the cd as a partitioning tool. I did try out the LiveCD version (which worked well) as well as installation. Choosing install gives you a happy greeting thanking you for trying Freespire and letting you know a little about what will happen from here. From there you get Keyboard layout, partitioning or take over entire hard drive, computer name and user name and password, a confirmation and a do you really want to do this to your hard drive message and than it just goes. Once finished, about 22 minutes on my reasonably modern pc, you are given a note letting you know everything is done, and to click "Ok" to finish. On shutting down for the reboot, you are given the complete idiots guide to what to do with the cd, three pictures showing the cd drawer opening, you removing the cd and then clicking enter, it doesn't get any more straight forward that that!
See the rest of OSDirs screenshots:
First Boot:
I've gotten good at this one! The install is very easy for the new user, if he or she is giving up an entire drive to the distro. The cd gives you several options including installing Freespire, running the the cd as a LiveCD of Freespire, and using the cd as a partitioning tool. I did try out the LiveCD version (which worked well) as well as installation. Choosing install gives you a happy greeting thanking you for trying Freespire and letting you know a little about what will happen from here. From there you get Keyboard layout, partitioning or take over entire hard drive, computer name and user name and password, a confirmation and a do you really want to do this to your hard drive message and than it just goes. Once finished, about 22 minutes on my reasonably modern pc, you are given a note letting you know everything is done, and to click "Ok" to finish. On shutting down for the reboot, you are given the complete idiots guide to what to do with the cd, three pictures showing the cd drawer opening, you removing the cd and then clicking enter, it doesn't get any more straight forward that that!
See the rest of OSDirs screenshots:
First Boot:
Booting
up moves you through a basic GRUB bootloader, and than to a very
attractive progress bar under the Freespire logo. The boot time
feels rather slow to me, but I did not go as far as to time it against
other distros. A modified version of KDM finally comes up and you
log in. You are briefly teased with the desktop when a EULA pops
up over everything, agreeing brings up a sound check screen and then a
settings screen which gives you the opportunity to set up time and time
zone, display settings, add users, configure your network or dial-up,
or change the password. Finishing all of this finally grants you
access to the KDE desktop.
The desktop is an attractive blue curve look with the Freespire logo, it looks very polished and attractive. There are an assortment of icons pre-made including a "My Computer", any drives you may have, printer settings, network access, your trash can, and of course a link to Linspire's CNR. In addition to the icon, there are also two different CNR icons in the system tray, one is designed to prompt you for any updates that are available, and the other is just a quick launch to CNR.
In case you have missed the entire CNR concept, it is short for Click n' Run. And it pretty much does just that. It is a front end for Apt-Get which is the debian package management tool. There are a few packages that one can install without a membership to CNR, and I tried a few of them out, it does exactly what it claims, you click it downloads and installs and than it runs, it really does work. The downfall to CNR is if you want more from it than the 5 choices in the free aisle, you need to sign up at the not unreasonable price of $20.00 USD a year. You can get a free 30 day trial, so you can decide if it is worth the simplicity or not. The alternative is to open a command line and type "sudo apt-get install synaptic". Once done, you can then run "sudo synaptic" and have the entirety of the CNR warehouse at your fingertips for free, just not quite as easy.
What it has:
Lots of shiny stuff! Seriously, there is a lot here, Openoffice, K3b, re-badged versions of FIrefox and Thunderbird, Linspires own Lphoto, a good variety of games, a very impressive collection of dial-up connections including AOL, Earthlink, Juno, Netzero and more. KDE 3.3.2 is the only window manager installed, many others are available via Apt, all of which is based on a 2.6.14 kernel.
Simplicity is also here, if you have used Windows, and lets face it, who hasn't at some point in time, you will feel reasonably comfortable here. Freespire is not a perfect Windows replica, but it is pretty darn close.
CNR is here, as well is the entirety of Apt, both work well, if you chose to install Synaptic or any of the other package managers and forgo CNR you will still be able to update and install programs with ease. There are also a plethora of CNR icons throughout the menu system just in case you forgot that it is the Freespire preferred method of application install.
What it has not:
There is not a great deal that is missing, while it is still in Release Candidate status, nearly everything works as promised. My only personal issue is the network connection icon in the system tray will not tell me that I am connected to the network even though I am. This has been true of all three installs.
Usage:
There are several things that are immediately noticeable, first self promotion is everywhere, I found a total of 14 different CNR icons throughout my usage. Secondly, the response time to your click of any given icon is not exactly quick, at least the first time on my fairly modern comupter (My PC). When I opened Firefox the first time, I thought it had failed to load, so I had clicked it again only to then have 2 versions of the browser open. The program immediately appears on the taskbar only to disappear for what seems like a very long time for a program to open, and then it actually opens. When compared to other distros, the overall feel is very slow on the first opening of any given program. Once it has been opened, much of the program is left in cache, so subsequent starts are significantly quicker, but still feels slower than other distros.
In my usage, I encountered no crashes or any program failures of any sort, so stability appears to be here as well, in short, there is a lot here (and more to get) and it all pretty much works!
As mentioned above, Freespire has gotten around the only user as root issue that has followed Linspire for ages by using sudo for root issues. While I personally am not a big fan of sudo, it does work and I cannot complain. If I want to make changes to the root/user structure, I can do that as well, the options are here.
Conclusions:
So, what's the conclusion? Freespire is a very well put together distro in RC status, that still has a few small bugs to work out. Over all I am quite impressed, and am comfortable recommending it to most anyone who is interesting in trying Linux out. I still have not made up my mind about the "power user" Freespire claims to be good enough for; it is a fully functional distro, that is solid and very usable and is really good enough for the power user, but unless I am interested in having CNR, I would think that a pure Debian (or Ubuntu) based system would provide the same stability and ease of use. The shiny stuff can be added latter if you wish. Of course staying with Freespire would mean cleaning out all the CNR icons and disabling the system tray programs in my world, but that's only because I have a hard time justifying paying for access to something I can get without CNR. Don't get me wrong, I like CNR, it works exactly as promised, and I can see the value and attraction to it. The darn thing is easy and effective, just not something I am needing to pay for, by the way, I have given at least $20.00 a year to the gang at PCLOS as well as other opensource projects over the last few years so it is not a matter of my being tight, I just prefer to be given the option to donate. So this raises the question in my mind of who is this thing for? I can see my in-laws who are seriously computer impaired (but do have a computer) really liking Freespire and CNR and being more than willing and happy to pay the 20 bucks for it. For their needs, Freespire or it's cousin Linspire would be perfect, no muss, no fuss, it just works.
In the end, I think there is a good deal of value here, Freespire is solid, reliable and easy to use, period. The only caveats are it is a bit slow, and the self promotion. I like it, I would use it, but I'm not ready to replace my primary distro with it at this time.
The desktop is an attractive blue curve look with the Freespire logo, it looks very polished and attractive. There are an assortment of icons pre-made including a "My Computer", any drives you may have, printer settings, network access, your trash can, and of course a link to Linspire's CNR. In addition to the icon, there are also two different CNR icons in the system tray, one is designed to prompt you for any updates that are available, and the other is just a quick launch to CNR.
In case you have missed the entire CNR concept, it is short for Click n' Run. And it pretty much does just that. It is a front end for Apt-Get which is the debian package management tool. There are a few packages that one can install without a membership to CNR, and I tried a few of them out, it does exactly what it claims, you click it downloads and installs and than it runs, it really does work. The downfall to CNR is if you want more from it than the 5 choices in the free aisle, you need to sign up at the not unreasonable price of $20.00 USD a year. You can get a free 30 day trial, so you can decide if it is worth the simplicity or not. The alternative is to open a command line and type "sudo apt-get install synaptic". Once done, you can then run "sudo synaptic" and have the entirety of the CNR warehouse at your fingertips for free, just not quite as easy.
What it has:
Lots of shiny stuff! Seriously, there is a lot here, Openoffice, K3b, re-badged versions of FIrefox and Thunderbird, Linspires own Lphoto, a good variety of games, a very impressive collection of dial-up connections including AOL, Earthlink, Juno, Netzero and more. KDE 3.3.2 is the only window manager installed, many others are available via Apt, all of which is based on a 2.6.14 kernel.
Simplicity is also here, if you have used Windows, and lets face it, who hasn't at some point in time, you will feel reasonably comfortable here. Freespire is not a perfect Windows replica, but it is pretty darn close.
CNR is here, as well is the entirety of Apt, both work well, if you chose to install Synaptic or any of the other package managers and forgo CNR you will still be able to update and install programs with ease. There are also a plethora of CNR icons throughout the menu system just in case you forgot that it is the Freespire preferred method of application install.
What it has not:
There is not a great deal that is missing, while it is still in Release Candidate status, nearly everything works as promised. My only personal issue is the network connection icon in the system tray will not tell me that I am connected to the network even though I am. This has been true of all three installs.
Usage:
There are several things that are immediately noticeable, first self promotion is everywhere, I found a total of 14 different CNR icons throughout my usage. Secondly, the response time to your click of any given icon is not exactly quick, at least the first time on my fairly modern comupter (My PC). When I opened Firefox the first time, I thought it had failed to load, so I had clicked it again only to then have 2 versions of the browser open. The program immediately appears on the taskbar only to disappear for what seems like a very long time for a program to open, and then it actually opens. When compared to other distros, the overall feel is very slow on the first opening of any given program. Once it has been opened, much of the program is left in cache, so subsequent starts are significantly quicker, but still feels slower than other distros.
In my usage, I encountered no crashes or any program failures of any sort, so stability appears to be here as well, in short, there is a lot here (and more to get) and it all pretty much works!
As mentioned above, Freespire has gotten around the only user as root issue that has followed Linspire for ages by using sudo for root issues. While I personally am not a big fan of sudo, it does work and I cannot complain. If I want to make changes to the root/user structure, I can do that as well, the options are here.
Conclusions:
So, what's the conclusion? Freespire is a very well put together distro in RC status, that still has a few small bugs to work out. Over all I am quite impressed, and am comfortable recommending it to most anyone who is interesting in trying Linux out. I still have not made up my mind about the "power user" Freespire claims to be good enough for; it is a fully functional distro, that is solid and very usable and is really good enough for the power user, but unless I am interested in having CNR, I would think that a pure Debian (or Ubuntu) based system would provide the same stability and ease of use. The shiny stuff can be added latter if you wish. Of course staying with Freespire would mean cleaning out all the CNR icons and disabling the system tray programs in my world, but that's only because I have a hard time justifying paying for access to something I can get without CNR. Don't get me wrong, I like CNR, it works exactly as promised, and I can see the value and attraction to it. The darn thing is easy and effective, just not something I am needing to pay for, by the way, I have given at least $20.00 a year to the gang at PCLOS as well as other opensource projects over the last few years so it is not a matter of my being tight, I just prefer to be given the option to donate. So this raises the question in my mind of who is this thing for? I can see my in-laws who are seriously computer impaired (but do have a computer) really liking Freespire and CNR and being more than willing and happy to pay the 20 bucks for it. For their needs, Freespire or it's cousin Linspire would be perfect, no muss, no fuss, it just works.
In the end, I think there is a good deal of value here, Freespire is solid, reliable and easy to use, period. The only caveats are it is a bit slow, and the self promotion. I like it, I would use it, but I'm not ready to replace my primary distro with it at this time.
