Part One-

In part one of the Linspire review, I touched on some of the hardware aspects you can expect from this OS. This week, I will be looking more into the software side of things.

As most of you already know, Linspire uses a tool called CNR to install and uninstall software. CNR offers Linspire users the ability for ease of installation and more importantly, ease of discovery. Yes, the one thing that CNR has going for it is that it is like having Downloads.com built into your OS. For a newer computer user, this is a wonderful thing indeed. Unfortunately, uninstalling software is not nearly as intuitive as the installation.

All of the above is fine and dandy. Yet, the meat and potatoes of CNR has to be the software being offered. Below, I would like to list some of the programs that stood out to me the most. And please, before ranting about these programs being OSS and how they ought to be free, take a moment and read the previous article.

Akregator, amaroK, GRAMPS, Kontact, Lphoto, Lsongs, MoneyDance, Nvu, JDiskReport, Lassist and many, many others. Each program listed can be downloaded from CNR with utmost of ease. And unlike downloading software from those ‘repositories’ offered as stable, unstable, etc - you can install apps for Linspire without fear of breaking something. Yes, apt-get without knowing for sure where you are getting things from is risky business. And yes, it is VERY easy to break something by trying to compile it yourself. I have done this many, many times. Most people are not interested in compiling software themselves. Besides, most people are interested in installing software, not chasing down dependencies.

For the most part, the software being offered by the CNR installation tool is pretty up to date. And while some of it may not be as updated as it could be, they are pretty good about making sure the staples for PC use like Firefox and Thunderbird are spot-on with being current. To me, this goes a long way.

Now, not all of this is peaches and cream. While I believe this issue was corrected recently, they seem to get a little behind with keeping their video drivers up to date. And since this is offered by CNR, this would have to be a mark against the Linspire CNR repository. Having said this, here the other day CNR alerted me that there were in fact new drivers ready to go. That and updates for some other applications as well, really made up for the previous short coming.

Oh that reminds me. I almost forgot one of CNR’s coolest features: Not only will CNR will keep your OS up to date with basic membership, but if you opt to spend those ‘big bucks’ for Gold service, your installed applications will remain in sync with the latest version being offered from the CNR repository. I’d definitely recommend the Gold service. The update feature alone makes the small additional cost worthwhile.

All and all, I am really enjoying Linspire’s software management. One thing that I see missing however, is the lack of desktop themes and splash screens being offered for CNR users as kde-look.org yields plenty to choose from. For someone like me who knows how to install such things, this may not seem like a big deal. But for Joe-average however, it just feels like they are being shortchanged.

Software is an important part of any OS. And while there are still many titles that I need to use with Windows, I have discovered a number of new apps in the Linux world that I had not even heard of before Linspire! CNR has definitely provided me with a clear and concise area for software discovery.

Well, that is it for now. In part three, we’ll be looking at the challenges faced when going with my notebook PC and taking things into the WiFi realm. Until then…

[tags]linux,open source,closed source,linspire,wifi,cnr[/tags]