Why Freespire 2.0.0 Is A Failure

At least you won’t have any trouble getting your money back. Try that with MS……………..

Scott, true enough, but not very satisfying, since I was expecting greatness.

It does renew appreciation for the work MS has done, but it also makes me wonder why the slide backwards.

Thanks for the comment.

Well, who are the testers, if not you and I??

A] sometimes all that Microsoft certification makes it harder for Linux to use the hardware, since portions might not be following openly accessible industry supported standards (I remember a USB drive issue that Microsoft certified as works, but Linux, when using the full USB specifications could not get some feature to work… Microsoft skipped over that USB requirement and did it a different way… and certified the hardware based on that nonstandard method). Thanks go to Microsoft.

B] sometimes the coders do not test installation software. ArchLinux suffered that problem back at 0.3 or 0.4 (I found and reported the issue, much to their lead developers embarrassment). The lead developer never did cold installs (he only had ONE pc, and that was for writing the next distro). He admitted he only did rolling updates (another developer there only installed onto preformatted partitions - the error I found was the Arch installer of that day went about formatting EVERY partition found… buh bye MP3s on /dev/hdc, buh bye Windows ME on /dev/hda2)

C] sometimes the installer portion uses drivers that have bugs. A prime example was for a non-BusyBox based installer that would snag on ATAPI resets for HOURS on this one machine I owned. People everywhere convinced me I had an I/O problem with the 40x CDROM drive… until I tried a BusyBox based installer, and it all went smooth as silk on the same CDROM drive. The drivers were more generic on the BusyBox version, from what I was told.

D] sometimes, the installer fails to ask you when it should be asking: you have 2 ATAPI compliant devices and one can burn DS DVDs…. Installer just makes them into 2 CDROMS. And not setup IDE-SCSI. Lack of thinking, and then that inadequate installer ‘decision tree’ gets copied to another installer in a different distro, so they all make the same wrong assumptions. Nobody ever seems to believe me when I say ‘Installer foul’; they instead say ‘Learn to fix it yourself, why be so lazy, don’t be an inconsiderate whiner, read the docs, blah blah’). This decision tree thing is likely the majority of your issues. I’ve seen distros run at 640×480 after PROPERLY installed (KDE needs 600×800 MINIMUM)… and I had selected my resolution as 1024×768 when the installer asked my input!! That last one was a minor oversight - Xorg gets multiple configuration files, and the skeleton user file had the correct resolution…. the first system boot was only into root (not using the skeleton data) to add users, and I couldn’t see the ‘add user’ box - it was too large to fit the screen!

Sometimes, the good help gets dumped on. I tested undocumented software for 8+ months, I’m NOT without some credibility here. The real issue is when people with skills report issues in forums, they get treated as if as dumb as a stump.

mmmmna - I agree totally with your assessments. I have seen your A example (not exact, but similar).

The most ACCURATE installs I have gotten were from the ugliest install routines - FreeBSD and older Fedora. The whole time I was installing I thought “Why can’t they make this look better”, but in each case the install went off without a hitch, with some fairly non-standard hardware.

I understand B,C, and D, but like a writer - sometimes it takes a different pair of eyes to make sure the article, or install, comes out ok. With software, I would want several pairs of eyes, all with different hardware.

Thanks for the comment.

I agree with many of your frustrations, having experienced them myself.

If you aren’t already aware (sorry BTW if you are), you can move any window on the desktop by holding ALT and then left-clicking anywhere in the window. This is helpful when the OK / CANCEL buttons are off-screen. That might have helped with your resolution issue.

Craig, I tried this and nothing happened. Perhaps, since I was upset at the time, I’ll try it again, more calm, and see what results I get.

Still, the frustration is there - as all the other products don’t show this behavior.

Thanks for the comment.

Um, I’m going to have to tread lightly here because you may know something I don’t but as I understand it the highest available color resolution is 24 bit. Microsoft calls it 32 bit color but also uses eight “dummy” bits to make 32. Linux simply calls it what it is; 24 bit color but I think they too use the extra 8 “dummy” bits..

A lot of motherboards made for P3 processors have very minimal on-board video RAM, expecting Windows systems to “borrow” a little system RAM to get the video going. I was able to get Debian Sarge to run on these machines by manually configuring the video, telling the OS how much RAM to borrow (my preferred resolution is 1024 X 768 which, with 24 bit color, requires 16 MB of video RAM). Debian Etch seems to understand what’s needed with only minimal input from me so I’ve had no trouble getting the video resolution I desire “right out of the box” with a Net installation of Etch but this hasn’t been true of many other distros I’ve tried on the same machines (one of which was Freespire). Another thing I disliked about Freespire, and Mandriva for that matter, was the fact that they’re both more closely related to adware than free and/or Open Source products.

Don, the Dell 8200 is a P4 with a real 64MB video card. That’s why it should have had no trouble bringing up video at 1280×1024 even if it was only 8 or 16 bit depth.

As far as color depth goes, I know that programming 32bits is more efficient than 24, but also the human eye cannot discern more than 24 bit color rendition - however, as far as I know, the actual colors available are 2to the 32nd power -1.

Anyway, 1280×1024 should have been possible on either video card, and on the Dell, the OS should look at video memory and the BIOS on the VGA card to determine what resolutions are supported. As mmmmna stated KDE is supposed to be 800×600 minimum, so 640×480 was completely from outside the stadium (as opposed to left field).

Thanks for the comment.

I tried version 2.0.8 on an older Dell Inspiron 1000 notebook and it worked great. I think to some degree Freespire is getting a bad rap.

The look does look a little blah, when comparing to XP or Vista, but there is probably something that could be done to improve that.

But I went on to try KUbutu (with KDE 4.0) and the Novell linux seso or whatever and both of those did not install the wireless networking hardware so basically I was stuck (I am a newby).

At least the Freespire installed all the networking support and I was able to get online relatively easily (just added WEP).

The CNR utility is not bad, kind of neat, actually.

Whatever flavor you use, it should at least get common wired and wireless hardware ready to run from just the install CD. All versions need an easier way for newbies to upgrade certain components (Firefox browser, KDE desktop, etc.) should be a way to upgrade those individual packages without disturbing the core Linux.

Jeff, glad it worked for you. You note, however, that what you tried was 8 minor revisions ahead of what I used, and the troubles I experienced were probably fixed by then. My hardware was pretty standard, so when I had problems I was also sure that many others would also, and that those problems encountered by the greatest number of people would be the first to be repaired.

I’ll probably try it again, as I was really impressed with Linspire 5.0 - and I like the Ubuntu distributions.

My opinion remains however, that SuSE Linux works without incident on the greatest numbers of machines, simply because, as it is slanted at business users, it MUST work without hassles, or business users will avoid it like the plague.

I’m glad it worked for you, and will try it again, reporting the results soon. I am just now readying a machine for Xandros 4.