Print This Article

Date: August 1, 2006
Author(s): Rob Williams

Linspire recently announced a free version of their popular distribution, appropriately called Freespire. Though early in testing, we take a hard look to see if this will be a distro you should be considering.

Control Center

The KDE control center has had an overhaul, and offers a ton of functionality. Under the system administration, you can view all of the information you would ever need regarding your hardware.

Though some of the backend software is outdated, they did not hold back with the software users will use everyday. Included is Firefox 1.5.0.4, GAIM 2.0 and k3b 0.12.7.

Michael Robertsons other pet project, Gizmo, is also included and up to date. For those unaware, Gizmo is a Skype replacement that promises free calls, and more features than it's competition. In fact, they state that you get features that Skype will charge you extra for. Though feature packed, it's closed source so it is available for only a select number of Distros including SUSE and Debian of course.